“Haven’t seen him since he went looking for tongs or something,” she answered, deftly sliding salad bits into a large bowl.

Jack stole a tomato on the way past, sneakily avoiding getting a smack with the spoon she was stirring dressing with, and made his way into the hall. What he found in their bedroom was a very odd-acting Riley.

“Hayley said you needed help.”

Riley nodded and held up the tongs they used for barbecues. “I couldn’t find the tongs.”

His expression looked a little distant, and worry spiked in Jack.

“What’s wrong, Riley?” He stepped closer and gently took the tongs from Riley’s grip, placing them on the bed, holding his husband’s hands in his. “Are you ill?”

Riley blinked at the question, then shook his head. “I didn’t lose the tongs.”

Jack was really not following this, and he glanced at the offending kitchen utensil on the covers of their bed like it could give him answers. “Okay,” he said. He tried for encouraging with a dose of inquiry.

“I knew where it was, where it always is. In the third drawer on the left, with all the other things we need today. It’s the drawer under the one with the string and batteries and… y’know, the junk drawer where we dump everything that we need to keep.”

“So, you found it?”

“Everything has a place. I don’t know if that’s me, or you, but between us everything is so organized. I have my office, you have your horses, we have Carol, the family. The kids are happy and it seems like every minute we have is all so….”

“So?”

Riley sighed noisily. “We do so much.”

Jack now completely lost it. He couldn’t figure a connection to the tongs, but assumed they were actually little to do with what was in Riley’s head at the moment.

Riley continued. “I miss you. I miss us. I need us-time, and I need to be as organized about it as we are about where we put the freaking tongs. We’re so tired when we get to bed, all we do is sleep.”

“Riley—”

“You know, we’ve only made love three times since the Valentine’s dance?”

“I wasn’t keeping score,” Jack said and frowned.

“Well, I am, and that’s a freaking long time. I don’t want to change how we are. I love who we are, but I don’t want to lose the thing that is us. I don’t want us to be ordinary.”

Riley had worked up the volume in the words, and Jack glanced back at their bedroom door. He released Riley’s hands, crossed to the door, locked it, then returned to Riley.

“We could never be ordinary,” Jack said. He took Riley’s hands again and tugged him close, pressing his nose against the warm skin at the juncture of Riley’s throat and shoulder. Riley smelled of sunshine and shower gel, and the scent alone had Jack half-hard. The taste of Riley was intoxicating and he needed another fix, a habit he never wanted to kick.

“I’m being fucking ridiculous,” Riley muttered. He linked his hands around Jack and held him tight. “We have this perfect life: the kids, the house, family, but we add more and more, the riding stables, the ethical oil exploration, and now the new shelter idea. What happens if we lose us?”

Riley had been off all week, and Jack had put it down to nothing more than one of Riley’s serious times, something that happened every so often. After seeing Anna in the hospital, Riley had been quiet, and that hadn’t changed in seven days. Guilt speared Jack. Was this happening because Riley was actually worried to death about Jack taking on yet another project that would carve away a commitment of time with their family? He hadn’t thought it would be an issue, and he was desperate to do something for the young men he’d met, but should he put that before Riley?

“This is my fault.” Jack gripped Riley back as hard as Riley was holding him. “I’ll find a way to get around the shelter idea—”

“No.” Riley pulled back a little. “I didn’t mean that.” He frowned.

Jack wasn’t afraid to point out how he felt. “I’m confused.”

Riley snorted. “You’re confused? Jesus, Jack, I just had some profound existential crisis over a pair of tongs. I love who we are, I love our lives, and what you plan on doing with the shelter, that is an excellent idea, way past wonderful, but I want to make sure we have us-time. I’ve spent so much time with work….”

The last two weeks since their middle-of-the-night visit to Mercy had flown by. Jack didn’t begrudge the time with family or with work, but Riley was right. Between Eden, work, and the kids, he and Riley really didn’t appear to have as much time together as either of them wanted.

Jack considered what Riley had told him in his convoluted way, and decided the direct approach was for the best here. “So, what you’re saying is that you miss me dragging you to the barn and pushing you to the edge so many times that you beg?”

Silence. Riley said nothing. He very deliberately pressed the heel of his hand on his groin. “Fuck, Jack, you can’t say things like that.”

In a smooth move, Jack had Riley flat on his back on the bed, and straddled him, his knees pinning Riley’s arms. He kissed him as thoroughly as he could, all heat and passion and need, until neither of them could breathe steadily.

“Later,” Jack promised.

“Ouch,” Riley replied.

That wasn’t the teasing reaction Jack had been expecting, but he scrambled off. Had he hurt Riley? When Riley moved a little and pulled out the tongs from where they’d been digging in his back, Jack couldn’t help the snort of laughter. Riley’s expression was comically dejected for a moment, then he joined in the laughter.

Jack held out a hand. “Let’s go, big guy. Me ’n’ Josh have burgers to burn.”

By the time they made it back outside, more family had arrived. Josh was there with Anna and the kids. Logan, with that typical bored-teenager expression, slumped on the porch stairs with his phone in his hands. Sarah and Lea were already helping to set out chairs under the shelter of a gazebo. Anna looked well, her hand protectively on her belly as she supervised chair placement, and Josh hovered by the barbecue, pointedly looking at his watch.

“Won’t start itself,” he warned Jack as soon as he was in hailing distance.

“Hold yer horses,” Jack drawled.

Josh rattled the metal and the whole top slid a little. “Didn’t fix it, then.”

Jack leaned past him and locked the final clip in place. “There,” he said. “Done.”

They set about lighting charcoal, and finally they had some heat going. Riley moved away with Hayley, animatedly discussing something that involved a lot of expansive arm waving. Jack smiled at his husband. The promise of alone time tonight was exactly what both needed.

“Can we talk a minute?” Josh asked seriously, interrupting Jack’s gradually more sex-connected thoughts. He’d waited until the barbecue was underway and before the meat, so Jack assessed it was something important but not life-threatening, in that casual way only the Campbell brothers could. Still, Anna was first in his thoughts.

“Yeah. Is Anna okay?”

“Oh yeah, of course. She’s doing really well. It’s Logan.” Josh inclined his head over to where Logan still slouched. Hayley and Lea sat with him, their heads bowed over an exercise book of some sort. Logan wasn’t talking to them, and Hayley wasn’t paying him any attention. Logan had a complete fuck-off air around him, not inviting conversation or remark.

“What about him?” Various scenarios slid into Jack’s thoughts unbidden. Girlfriend trouble?

“He’s not himself,” Josh summarized. “I don’t know what’s going on with him, but he’s gone way past moody teenager to the idiot I want to lock in an attic until he turns twenty-one.”

“We all went through that,” Jack said with a shrug. “I recall that summer you dyed your hair blue-black, sat on the roof above your room, and wrote poetry.”

“It was song lyrics, asshole.”