Jack and Kelsey left San Francisco the next day, because Kelsey wanted to spend a day with Jack's family on their way back to Los Angeles. His hometown, Warren, in California's Central Valley, which was the faster way back down south that they were going to take returning home.

"Are you sure?" Jack asked again. "It's a boring little nothing place, and they're not expecting us or anything, so they won't be offended if we don't stop by."

"I'm sure," Kelsey said firmly. "I want to see where you grew up, and I want to meet your mom and dad. Unless you don't want me to?"

"No, no I don't mind," Jack assured her as he started the car. "You're going to be bored to death, though. It's cows, orchards, and churches, with about twenty thousand of the most conservative people you'll ever meet in your life."

"Yeah, and two of those people are your mom and dad," Kelsey replied. "Don't you want to see them, too?"

Jack shrugged. "Yeah, I guess. I haven't seen them since spring break. Let me call them real quick and tell them we're coming, okay?"

He picked up his phone and punched a couple of buttons. "Mom? Yeah. Hey, what are you guys up to today? Yeah, well, I'm in San Francisco and with a friend, and I thought we'd stop by on our way back home." He listened for a moment before continuing. "Really? No, I didn't know. Yeah, that sounds great! That works out, then, doesn't it. You want us to? Yeah, we can, if you're sure, lemme check real quick--"

He looked over at Kelsey. "Is it okay if we spend the night and leave tomorrow morning?" At her nod, he spoke into his phone again. "Yeah, no problem, Mom. No, you've never met this friend before." He put his hand on Kelsey's thigh and smiled at her. "Yeah, sounds good, see you in a few hours, okay? Love you. Bye.

"So," he said as he pulled out into traffic, "it turns out that Jake, the brother who made the sofa? He was backpacking in Yosemite with a couple friends, but one of them got sick, so they came back early, and he's at my parents' house right now, and my other brother, Jeremy, the one who's at medical school in New York? He flew out to surprise them because he got a break on a ticket or something, so he's there, too." He smiled at Kelsey. "She's going to call Julian, the teacher, to see if he can come down, too. He lives in Sacramento. We're going to have an impromptu family reunion tonight." He hit the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. "This is going to be great! We haven't all been together since Christmas."

Kelsey smiled at his joy. She just hoped she wouldn't embarrass him in front of his family.

"Uh, Kels? I get that you want to keep us on the down low to the general public, but I don't want to keep it a secret from my family, you know?" Jack began. "I mean, first of all, I don't know if I can, you know?" His voice got quiet, and Kelsey could tell he was embarrassed. "My family knows me pretty well, and they could probably tell how crazy about you I am just from how I look at you, you know?"

Kelsey blinked at him. "Jack, I don't want to keep us a secret from your family," she reassured him, putting a hand on his arm. They were on the Bay Bridge now, crossing over to the East Bay, the Berkeley and Oakland side of San Francisco Bay.

"Good," Jack replied, smiling.

They sang songs as they rolled closer to Jack's part of the world, through Pleasanton, Livermore, over the Altamont Pass, and into the Central Valley. The temperature soared up into the triple digits, and Jack watched the engine temperature climb. Kelsey peeled off Jack's sweatshirt, and tied her hair up off her neck, and they cranked the A/C up.

"Holy shit, I can't believe it's the same day," Kelsey said, looking at the readout of the outside temperature. "Is it really one hundred three degrees?"

Jack nodded, laughing. "Welcome to the valley," he said. "This is nothing. We were at a swim meet once and the temperature on the deck was one hundred sixteen degrees. We thought some of the old folks were going to stroke out!"

The town of Warren was, as Jack said, a small town, like most of the small towns around it, though possibly it was more prosperous than some because of the deep roots of the people living there.

He pulled into the driveway of a two-story house with a large maple tree providing deep shade to most of the yard. Hydrangeas flanked the front porch, and a small rose garden provided a splash of color along the side of the house that got all day sun. Kelsey could imagine a young Jack growing up in this comfortable-looking home. As they pulled in farther, she could see a vivid splash of blue from a large pool behind the house.

The side door opened and a man and woman emerged, along with a bouncing, mixed-breed dog that was brown and black. The woman was tall and blonde, and the man looked like Jack, right down to the curly hair, except the man's hair was darker.

"Jack, how wonderful to see you!" the woman exclaimed. He hugged both of them at once, smiling, then released them and turned to include Kelsey in his smile.

"Mom, Dad, this is Kelsey," Jack said, putting a hand on her back. He enjoyed their looks of surprise as he presented her to them. "My parents, Anne and John, and the pooch is Peter Parker, otherwise known as Spidey."

His smile grew when he heard her words. "Hello, it's a real pleasure to meet you. I'm Jack's girlfriend," she said, holding out her hand.

"Did I just hear the words 'Jack's girlfriend'?" A deep voice called from inside. The door opened again and a tall, thin young man in his early twenties emerged. Again, the resemblance to Jack was uncanny, except that the curly hair was longer, and tied up in a pony tail.

"Jake!" Jack cried, hugging the newcomer.

"Baby Bro!" Jake returned, picking Jack up in a huge bear hug. He caught sight of Kelsey over Jack's shoulder and his eyes widened as he lowered his brother to the ground.

"Yo! Jeremy!" he called over his shoulder without looking away. "You'd better get out here, pronto, dude!"

The door banged open again. "Coming, coming!" called the man who came out. He was a little bit shorter in stature, with short, curly hair and brown eyes. "Baby Bro Jack!" he shouted, hugging Jack. Like his brother, he saw Kelsey and shut up, blinking.

"Jack? Introduce us?" he said, stepping back next to his brother.

Jack laughed and put a comfortable arm around Kelsey. "Everyone, this is my girlfriend, Kelsey Carlisle, okay?" He made sure everyone heard him. "And before you all ask, the great job I got this summer was teaching her to swim for a movie she's going to be filming in the fall." He looked at Kelsey. "Kels? You've already met my mom and dad, and these two ugly guys here are my brothers. The hippy with the ponytail is Jake, the preppy with the short hair is Jeremy."

He looked around. "Now, can we go inside before we all melt out here, please?"

"Oh, of course, where are our manners?" Jack's mother spoke first. "Boys, get their things, they're spending the night." And she led Kelsey inside. "You must be so tired from the drive over--"

"Man you have a lot of explaining to do," Jake said to Jack quietly as they got the bags out of the trunk. "Not the least of which is how you come to be driving this absolutely bitching car. Hers?"

"Of course," Jack said. "What do you think? Where's Julian?"

"He'll be here in a couple of hours," Jeremy said.

The boys carried the bags up to Jack's old room and everyone gathered in the comfortable family room and chatted until Julian arrived. Spidey made his preferences known by climbing onto Kelsey's lap and refusing to budge. Jack made the introductions all over again, and Kelsey shook hands with Jack's oldest brother, who looked more like Jack than the other two brothers, due to the fact that his eyes were blue.

"Okay, I'm going to fire up the grill, back in a bit," Jack's dad said, rising.

Anne looked at Kelsey. "We planned a cookout for tonight, so most of the food is already prepared," she said. "Potato salad, chips, I hope you like that kind of food?"

"Oh yes," Kelsey replied. "Is there anything I can do to help?" She rose, but Anne waved her back into her chair.

"Of course not," she declared. "The beauty of a barbecue is that most of it is already done, you know?"

Jack's phone buzzed with a text. It was from Jake.

"We were thinking of inviting some people over to swim. Is that cool, or should we not?"

"Kels? Come upstairs with me for a sec?" he asked.

"Sure," she replied, rising and following him to Jack's old room.

"What's up?" she asked as he closed the door.

"Maybe I just wanted to make out with you," he said with a grin, throwing her down on the bed and straddling her.

"Oh, yummy," she replied, hugging him and laughing comfortably as he attacked her neck.

"My brothers wanted to know if it was okay to invite people over," he murmured in between kissing her. "Or would you rather keep things quiet, just us?"

"Oh, of course," Kelsey replied, closing her eyes at how good Jack felt on top of her. "Tell them to invite whomever they want. I mean," she stopped to kiss Jack, "it's their house--" she trailed off.

"Okay," he said, lowering the strap of her tank top to kiss her shoulder.

"Ahhh," he said a few minutes later. "I guess we'd better stop and go back downstairs."

"All right," Kelsey said. She lowered her shirt, covering her stomach, which Jack had been kissing moments before. "Jack? You need to, um, take a cold shower or something first, if you know what I mean," she said with a laugh, pointing at his crotch.

"Oh, whoops," he said, making some adjustments as he walked around. "Better?" he asked, turning around.

Kelsey looked again at his groin area, nodding finally. They left his room and went to the back yard, where the other brothers and Spidey were already swimming in the huge pool.

"Oh god, Jack, they swim like you," Kelsey gasped. "That's amazing! I never knew that there could be a family resemblance in how people swam, but wow!"

"Kelsey, good for you," Jack answered, pleased. "You're really learning a lot about swimming if you can tell that we look alike in the water." He leaned over and kissed her cheek.

"Dinner!" Jack's dad called, and everyone sat at the table under the patio to eat. Friends of the boys started showing up as everyone was finishing up, and Kelsey could tell that what she was seeing had happened at this house time without number. There was whooping and hollering as people helped themselves to potato salad and watermelon, beer and wine coolers.

They all gave Kelsey looks as they entered the back gate, but Kelsey was just introduced as a "friend" that Jack was coaching, and it was left at that.

"Would you like to swim, too?" Jack asked. They were sitting with Jack's parents, watching the swimming.

"I don't have a suit," Kelsey said.

"Oh, honey, the one thing we have plenty of here is swim suits," Anne said, leaning over to her. "Come on, we'll get you fixed up. Jack, you go change."

Kelsey followed Anne, giving Jack a look of helplessness as she went inside.

Jack went upstairs and changed as fast as he could, not wanting to leave Kelsey alone, but she was already back when he returned. He could tell she felt uncomfortable, which was a strange situation for the normally in charge actress.

She was wearing a plain, red racing suit, but she was still a supermodel, and still looked stunning, way more glamorous than most of the girls there. She and Jack sat at the edge of the pool and chatted for a few minutes before one of the guys swam up to talk to them.

"So, Kelsey, how did you wash up in our dinky little berg?" he asked, shaking the water out of his hair.

"Well, I needed someone to teach me to swim for a part I'm playing, and the studio hired Jack here to coach me," Kelsey said. She smiled, the world-famous smile that had already earned her millions of dollars.

"Jack." The blond man acknowledged the guy sitting next to Kelsey in a neutral voice.

"Beau." Jack replied evenly, eyeing the man in the water. He was so extra-large he dwarfed most of the men in the pool, including Jack.

"How'd you score such a great job, little man?" Beau asked, smiling. He was the quintessential swimmer dude, blond, blue-eyed, built.

Jack shrugged. "Through my coach. He knew I needed a summer job, thought I'd fit the bill, I guess."

"One of the perks of going to a school in LaLa Land, huh?" he said, shaking his head.

He again addressed Kelsey. "I got recruited by USC pretty heavily, but my dad went to Ohio, and they offered a full ride, so I went with them," he confessed. He stepped closer to her, putting a hand on the brick next to her leg.

She shifted a little closer to Jack, away from Beau's meaty paw.

"How nice for you," she said, with another sunny smile.

"Why are you even back in town?" Jack asked. "I thought you were staying there for the summer? Doing the summer program?"

Beau shrugged, rolling the muscles in his shoulder. Behind him, there was a lot of splashing and laughing in the pool. "I didn't feel like hanging around in Ohio for the summer, you know?" He smiled again at Kelsey, and lightly touched her knee. "Seems like Warren, California is the best place to be right now, anyway. Kelsey Carlisle, in the flesh, right here, ladies and gentlemen."

"Oh, wait a minute," Jack said. "You got cut from the summer program, didn't you? I think Jake told me that. Sorry, man, I forgot."

"I didn't get cut, I left, little man, get your facts straight, okay?" Beau said, showing his teeth to Jack in what could possibly have been a smile.

He touched Kelsey's knee again. "Why don't you come show me what this little guy's been teaching you?" he suggested. "I can make sure he's getting it right.

"Or," he continued, as if it it had just occurred to him, "we could even get out of here, I could take you out? We could head to the city? What do you think? San Francisco? You and me?" He raised his eyebrows at her.

Jack swallowed and looked around, and only Kelsey could see that his hands were balled into fists, though his brothers could see from their various vantage points around the pool that something very tense was happening with the three of them over in the shallow end.

Kelsey leaned into Jack, slipping her hand between his legs comfortably. "You know, Jack and I just spent a long, romantic weekend in San Francisco, so I don't think so."

At Beau's look of shock, she smiled a sunny smile, kissed Jack's cheek, and nodded. "Yeah, Jack found out I'd never been, so we drove up the coast from LA and spent three days there. We're spending the night here on our way back, aren't we, honey?" She turned to Jack for corroboration. "I wanted to meet my boyfriend's parents," she confessed. She ran a hand through Jack's curls before slipping in the water, pulling a surprised Jack in after her.

Beau backed up to make room for them.

"Come on, Jack, let's go swim a little, okay?" she called, striking out for the deep end. By now the whole pool was silent as everyone watched the little tableau unfold.

"Oh, and Beau, I've been Jack's girlfriend for a while now? And I doubt there's anything you could teach me that he hasn't already,  better than you ever could." She bit her lips together and raised her eyebrows back at him in the warm, summer dusk, grinning as she pulled a by now laughing Jack after her.

"Kiss me, you," he murmured seconds later, looping his arms around Kelsey as they trod water in the deep end, surrounded by the pool party, which had slowly come back to life around them.

"My pleasure," Kelsey said, smiling the smile he loved as she leaned in.