BWWM Interracial Romance 6: Her Protector by Elena Brown

smiling in spite of Sawyer’s gaffe.
     
     
     

Chapter Five
     
    Sawyer pulled up to his brother’s house, smiling slightly to himself. It had been a few weeks since he’d had the opportunity to visit with his brother and nephews; he missed the sense of comfortable family life that he always got when he was around them. During those weeks, Sawyer and Adriana continued seeing each other on a daily basis; their bond growing stronger with each meeting.
    Sawyer shut off the car and climbed out, walking quickly to the front door and knocking in the way that his brother would instantly recognize as his. In a few moments, Jacob had opened the door, giving Sawyer the full effect of two excitedly shrieking twin boys crowding around his brother’s legs, jostling to be the first to greet their uncle. The boys had turned three a few months before, and they were endowed with all of the mischievous tendencies that Sawyer could remember himself and his brother possessing in their own childhood.
    “Unk’ Sawwer!” they both shouted over and over again, lurching on tiny legs to launch themselves at him. Sawyer dropped down and wrapped his arms around both Ian and Aaron, giving them a tight hug and lifting them up in his arms. They squirmed and squealed in ear-bending toddler voices, burrowing their faces into his shoulder and neck, and Sawyer couldn’t have possibly been more pleased.
    Jacob, standing off to the side as Sawyer carried his nephews over to the couch, chuckled and shook his head, closing the front door and following the three into the living room. “I swear,” Jacob said, with an air of almost-pride, “they get better and better at making trouble every day.”
    When Sawyer was safely settled on the couch, he loosened his grip and the two boys squirmed away, jumping up and down just outside of his reach and shouting in broken words about their new toys, their happiness at seeing him, anything and everything that they could manage to communicate. In the span of a few minutes, Sawyer learned that his nephews were lobbying for a puppy, that they had gotten a new swing set, that their parents were making chicken for dinner—a tumbling, almost unceasing rush of information that filled his ears and mind.
    “Boys, don’t jump on your uncle,” Jacob’s wife Rebecca said, coming into the room. Her voice was patient but firm—and Sawyer smiled a greeting at her as he nodded to one nephew and then the other, agreeing with everything they said without paying attention to the content. Eventually, within ten or fifteen minutes of his arrival, the novelty of seeing their uncle wore off, and Ian and Aaron both ran away on toddling, unsteady legs, making their way to the play area off to the side of the living room.
    “How’ve you been, bro?” Jacob took the opening to give his brother a hug before handing him a beer, sitting down in a chair nearby. Rebecca leaned against the arm, looking as lovely as ever. At one point in his life, Sawyer had envied his brother and the woman he’d married. Rebecca was beautiful, and he knew that she was sweet as well as kind—genuinely good-hearted and calm, rarely ruffled; a contrast to Jacob, who had a quick temper and a constant need for activity.
    “I’ve been all right, I guess,” Sawyer said, taking a long pull of his beer. “I’ve started seeing someone recently.”
    “Oh? Who are you seeing?” Jacob and Rebecca were both fairly insulated against the town gossip, living on the outskirts of the city, far in the suburbs, and spending almost all of their time to themselves, cozy in their family life.
    “Adriana Ellis,” Sawyer said, trying to sound as matter-of-fact and light as possible. “Adriana Ellis, that’s interesting,” Jacob said. “You were totally into her in high school—I always wondered why you never just made a move and got it over with.” Sawyer shrugged.
    “You remember what it was like back then. You never got your nerve up to ask Shannon Galston