“Can’t a mother be happy that her boy has finally found the one woman meant for him?”

“Mom.”

She moved forward. The metallic lettering PROUD ARMY MOM on her T-shirt glittered in the fading sunlight. “Thank you for bringing her here. It eases my mind.”

“Why would you have doubts about her?”

“Any doubts I had are gone after seeing you two together.”

He sighed. “You know you’re not making any sense, right?”

She laughed and hugged him. “Or I’m making perfect sense and you’re playing it cool.”

How did his mother always know?

“Talk to me, son.”

“I’m so crazy about her it’s kind of scary,” he admitted.

“I imagine it is.”

“So you got any motherly advice for me?”

“Yeah. Don’t be a jackass and screw this up.”

“That’s it?”

“Yep.” Then she stepped back. “Let’s round up the troops and head out. I’m starved.”

“Like mother, like daughters,” he joked.

She poked him in the chest. “Just for that, I’m sitting by Shiori at dinner and telling her embarrassing stories from your childhood.”

The front door opened and his sisters raced down the steps with Shiori strolling behind them.

“I thought by now they would’ve outgrown their need to run everywhere,” Knox said to his mom.

“You didn’t outgrow that until you left the service, smarty.”

Zara elbowed Vivie aside to speak first. “Can Shiori show us how she got you to submit to her?”

His gaze narrowed on his girlfriend. What had she been talking about with his sisters?

When Shiori reached him, she slipped her arm around his waist. “I tried to tell them the techniques I used on you that first day we met at the dojo are jujitsu black belt secrets, but they didn’t believe me.”

He pushed her hair behind her ear. “Well, I can’t have you giving away our secrets, now, can I?”

Her golden eyes turned solemn. “I’d never do that, Knox.”

“I know.” Just as he lowered his mouth to hers, Rick blasted an air horn, startling them away from each other.

His sisters laughed hysterically.

Rick grinned. “I knew this would come in handy one day, but I never thought I’d have to use it on you, Knox.”

“Bring it along to dinner, Dad,” Vivie suggested. “These two play kissy-face all the time.”

Knox lightly whopped his sister on the butt. “Get in the truck, brat. And no, you don’t get to pick the music we listen to.”

“Then I’m riding with Mom.”

Shiori shook her head. “Sneaky move, Shihan.”

He smiled. “It works every time.”

*   *   *

LATER, after they’d returned to his house and were curled up in his bed, Shiori said, “Thanks for today. I had a great time with your family.”

“I told you there was nothing to worry about.”

“Your mom is sweet. Now I know where you get it from.”

He snorted. Sweet. Right.

Just when he thought she might’ve drifted off, she said, “Why don’t you talk about your time in the army?”

That’d come from out of left field. Knox shifted his arm and trailed his fingers up and down her spine. “Some of it I can’t talk about because I dealt with classified information.”

“Ooh, international intrigue.”

“Which is code for lots of paperwork,” he said dryly.

“Where was your home base?”

Sometimes he forgot her father had served in the armed forces and she’d lived on military bases. “Fort Benning, Georgia. Then my . . . unit, for lack of a better term, which was part of the thirteenth CSSB, was transferred to Fort Lewis/McChord in Washington just as I was getting out of the service.”

“Were you ever in war zones?”

“I got stationed in support outposts in combat zones, but never saw any combat. The luck of the draw, I guess. A couple of my buddies were deployed to those shitholes every other year.”

“You sound like you’re sorry you didn’t see action.”

“Not really. I mean, it is war. It’s ugly and brutal. There’s a dynamic of almost dying together, or seeing others die, that binds those guys in a way I can’t comprehend. So yeah, I took my share of crap about not being a ‘real’ soldier.”