Depends on Who's Asking

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  “Speaking of house,” Michael said. “I went over to Cop Row earlier and saw a black behemoth of a cat go into your house via a cat door. Did you know you have cats going in and out of there?”

  I nodded. “I rescued a bunch of cats from an op about five or six months ago. I was going to find them homes, but I ended up keeping all five of the cats. They run wild now. Come and go as they please. They’re all spayed and neutered, though. The rest of Cop Row like them because they keep all the field mice at bay.”

  Being butted up to some extensive hay fields at our backs, that meant that we had quite a few field mice finding their way into our places.

  Now that the cats were there, they’d been doing a good job at keeping them contained.

  “There was a litter of Maine coons that I rescued,” I said. “There’re a couple of big gray ones that weigh about thirty pounds, and three black ones that are bigger yet. They are around thirty-five pounds each. They’re all rather large-boned, I’ve heard, for Maine coons. But they’re fuckin’ beautiful.”

  “All right, Carolina, the present whisperer,” Clayton said. “How about you start openin’ some of those. When you get to the normal amount that we have, then we’ll start.”

  Carolina rolled her eyes but nonetheless started to dig into her presents.

  The first one she opened was from something that I’d tried to help her with when we were about a week into quarantine.

  She wanted to learn how to snatch which is a CrossFit move involving throwing a weight up over your head, and she’d said ‘oh, I should get some lifters.’ I’d gotten the special CrossFit shoes for lifting weights for her that day once I’d found out what shoe size she was.

  I’d intended to give them to her if they arrived, but they’d taken longer to do that thanks to the holidays. So, when they finally did come in, I decided to wrap them myself. Or, more importantly, I had the lady at the pack and mail place do it for me since I had no supplies save for scissors to wrap with.

  She opened up the box and her eyes went huge.

  “I can’t wait to use these to see if they make a difference!” She clapped them together, causing a resounding smack to go through the room.

  “I can’t believe that you’re actually getting her to work out and enjoy it,” Michael mused. “Do you know how boring of a kid she was? No football. No soccer. No volleyball. Not even golf. I forced her to play a sport her freshman year, and you would’ve thought that I asked her to commit the murder of her favorite pet.”

  “Well,” Carolina said. “I’m not very good at it. I don’t have any hand-eye coordination. However, lifting doesn’t require that. It’s all skill set.”

  Michael’s eyes were amused. “You could’ve joined the weight-lifting team in high school.”

  “The weight-lifting team in high school were all boys,” she said. “There was no way in hell I would’ve done that.”

  Carolina went back to opening presents, but, unlike what Clayton had planned, he waited until Carolina was completely depleted of presents because, like me, he enjoyed her reaction to everything, as well as the stories behind each present.

  Her final present was something that I’d give her later. Something that I would have to ask her father for permission before I did.

  CHAPTER 21

  Cry me a river and drown in it, bitch.

  -T-shirt

  CAROLINA

  “What’s that about?” I asked as I watched Dad and Saint walk out of the room and out onto the front porch.

  “I asked your daddy to start the grill,” she hedged.

  She’d done no such thing.

  What she had done was play interference so that I wouldn’t follow them outside.

  I didn’t like the look of Clayton and Connor following them out.

  More importantly, I didn’t like that they were outside while I was inside wondering what was going on.

  “Just let it be for now, baby,” my mother ordered.

  I sighed and went back to peeling potatoes.

  “I’m nervous because I don’t want them to say anything to make him leave,” I admitted. “I enjoy being here, and I’m having a really good day after some really shitty ones. I want to be with my family, and I want him to be here, too.”

  She looked at me with a grin on her face.

  “When he asks you to marry him, you’ll say yes?” she teased.

  I scoffed. “In a heartbeat.”

  “You love him?” she asked, turning to face me now that she’d washed her hands free of meat juices.

  “I love him,” I confirmed. “I’ve loved him for a while, I think. But the quarantine only served to magnify it. I didn’t realize that I would like him as much as I do. He’s smart, kind, and funny. He’s also very quiet and unsure because of how he was raised. Do you know that when he was ten, he started this whole thing with the presidential run? Look at this picture. I found it when I googled him.”

  She leaned in close and I showed her a photo of him on Christmas Eve standing in front of some Christmas trees on the lawn of the governor’s mansion in Little Rock.

  “The only people around him are his security details,” I said. “In almost every single picture, it’s just him. He’s walking by himself, ten paces behind his parents. When his parents are in the picture, it’s the security detail that he’s closer to, not them. It’s just… he’s so used to being alone. I don’t want to overwhelm him.”

  She looked at me with love in her eyes.

  “You’re not going to overwhelm him,” she said. “A person like that? It’s not that they prefer to be alone. It’s that they’re not sure how to be around people. People like that are starving for people. Starving for human touch. Starving to be included.” She looked at me thoughtfully. “I know that you don’t want to hear this, but Saint doesn’t just take after your daddy name-wise. He’s a lot like him personality-wise. Daddy was very used to being alone. But he did let someone in… and look where that got him.”

  She tweaked my cheek, causing me to roll my eyes.

  “With three awful kids?” I teased.

  She snorted. “Y’all aren’t awful. Nico’s kids are awful.”

  I laughed then.

  Nico was my uncle and my mom’s brother and his kids were awful. But they’d all grown up to be great people, despite their attitudes when they were small.

  “Booth and Bourne are really good now,” I pointed out.

  She rolled her eyes. “If you say so, baby. If you say so.”

  I walked over and pressed my nose to the glass door that separated the kitchen from the back porch and stared at the four men on the back deck.

  “I should’ve taken lip-reading classes,” I said, making the window condensation puff up around where my mouth was. “Saint looks nervous. Dad, Connor, and Clayton look pissy. Like they get when you’re lecturing them about picking up their trash instead of just throwing it on the ground wherever they happen to be standing.”

  Mom snorted. “They still haven’t quite gotten the hang of that. Just yesterday your dad got a package in the mail. It had a plastic bag around the box because they thought it might rain. So when he gets inside, he rips the plastic wrap off, throws it on the ground, then slices his knife across the packaging tape. When he pulls out this thing that he’s ordered, all the packing peanuts went flying. And instead of picking any of it up, he literally left it all there so he could go hide the present underneath the tree. I left it, thinking that he’d come back, but he never did. I cleaned it up last night before I went to bed. But saying that, I’ll take a whole lot more from your father than I will from your brothers. Because I’m raising your brothers not to be douchebags like their father.”

  I giggled as I pulled back, then wrote ‘hi’ in the condensation on the glass.

  Saint’s eyes flicked to the window and his lips twitched.

  Dad looked over his shoulder and narrowed his eyes.

  He turned back around and said something to Saint who immediately
started to nod his head.

  “I think they’re talking about me,” I admitted. “I feel bad because I didn’t get Saint very many presents. I was kind of mad at him, I’ll admit. But I got him something yesterday. But I left it at home.”

  “What?” she asked as she ripped open a bag of Lay’s potato chips and pulled out a handful.

  I held my hand open for one and she dropped it inside before coming up to stand beside me.

  “I’ll bet that he’s asking your father for your hand in marriage.”

  I gasped and turned. “You really think that?”

  • • •

  SAINT

  “Are you sure that you want to marry that?” Connor asked, sounding amused. “She’s weird.”

  I looked at where Carolina was now blowing on the window to make a massive spot so she could write in the condensation.

  “What’s she writing?” I asked. “I don’t have my glasses on.”

  I’d left them inside when we’d opened presents and had forgotten to put them back on.

  “It says ‘did he say yes?’” Michael said. “I’ve changed my mind. You can have her. But you have to fix her.”

  Clayton and Connor started to laugh.

  I, on the other hand, felt elation pour through me at having his permission.

  There were a lot of things that I felt like I didn’t do right in life.

  If I could start over, I would definitely have pursued Carolina a long time ago. A year ago, to be exact.

  “I knew the moment that y’all saw each other that night that she was pulled over by that motherfucker who wasn’t a cop that she had feelings for you. My baby girl has a good head on her shoulders. I just hope that you know that there are no takebacks,” Michael said.

  My eyes met his.

  “I wouldn’t ever give her back, even if you wanted her,” I told him bluntly.

  Michael’s smile was fierce. “If I wanted her, I think that I could get her to choose me.”

  “I’ll bet if I open that door right now, she’ll come to me first,” I countered.

  “Ohhh,” Connor said as he walked to the door. “Let’s see.”

  He opened the door, and whatever Carolina had been writing was smudged as her canvas was taken away.

  She blinked at Connor.

  “Close it back. I wasn’t done.”

  Connor did as he was told and watched with amusement as she finished writing whatever was on the door.

  “What’s that one say?” I wondered.

  “It said, ‘if you’re asking him if you can marry me, I say yes.’” Connor snorted.

  He opened the door again, but this time it was Nikki who told him to close it back.

  She leaned forward, refreshed her fog on the door, then started writing.

  “What’s it say?” My voice was laced with amusement.

  “It says ‘I want grandbabies.’” Clayton was laughing so hard now that he was doubled over with his arm around his stomach.

  “Are you sure, sure?” Michael asked. “Because my daughter gets her weirdness from her mother.”

  This time when Connor opened the door, Carolina walked out. She walked around her father and threw herself into my arms. “Well?”

  My brows rose as I looked down into her eyes. “I’m sorry, but since you’ve already proposed, I don’t think that I need to ask my question. But, just sayin’, the polite thing to do is to ask my father for my hand in marriage.”

  She snorted and looped her arms around my shoulders, not saying anything, but waiting patiently.

  “I had this all planned out,” I said. “I was going to ask you when we got home later.”

  “Saint,” she whined. “Come on!”

  Grinning like a fool, I put my hand in my pocket and pulled out the ring that I was going to propose to her later with. And, in front of her entire family, I dropped down to one knee and held the ring up for her to see.

  “Carolina, I know that I haven’t known you long. I know that we have a lot of learning to do together. I know that you may not realize how much you mean to me yet, but I swear I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to prove to you that I’m the best man for you. Will you…”

  Smoke walked out of the house then and headed for the grass.

  Then he took a massive dump right next to the deck stairs.

  “…marry me?” I asked.

  She looked at me, then at Smoke, then at me again.

  “A thousand times today, and a million on Sunday.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Don’t get your tinsel in a tangle.

  -Wine glass

  SAINT

  I was nervous as fuck.

  I wasn’t sure why.

  This was my father after all.

  But for some reason, I felt like his opinion was necessary.

  But I wanted him to like Carolina. Not for anything but because it was important to Carolina for my father to like her.

  We walked hand in hand into the hospital and I was unsurprised to find not just Phillipe and Daniel at the door, but Brad, too.

  They were all huddled together talking, but they were more than aware that I was heading their way.

  “That one on the right is Phillipe,” I said. “Brad, the one in the middle you know. And the one on the left is Daniel.”

  Carolina nodded her head, her eyes taking in the three large men.

  When we finally got to the end of the hallway, they stopped and turned.

  “You were warned I was on my way up?” I guessed.

  Brad’s lips twitched. “Of course.”

  “Carolina, this is the security team that used to protect my dad and sometimes me. Phillipe, Daniel, Brad. This is my fiancée, Carolina,” I introduced them.

  All three of their brows went up to their hairlines.

  “No shit?” Phillipe asked. “When did that happen?”

  Carolina held out her hand to all three men as she said, “Yesterday. He’s crazy for taking me on, we know. But I’ll make sure that when he’s not dealing with the crazy, he’s still having a great time.”

  Daniel snorted. “Bringing some life into this kid would be a miracle. I swear he was the most boring kid we’ve ever had the bad luck to have a detail on.”

  I flipped them all off.

  “I was a good kid,” I said. “I could’ve made your life a living hell, but I didn’t. I was overall a very good kid that didn’t give y’all any trouble.”

  “I think it was more sad than anything,” Daniel said. “Do you know that the ‘friskiest’ you ever got was the day that you decided to join the military? That was the weirdest fucking day. I was so proud of you, but I wanted to shake you because I lost you on detail that day.”

  Saint finally started to chuckle at that. “I’ve never seen you so mad in my life.”

  “I was hot,” Daniel agreed. “Almost lost my job that day, too. I was pissed as hell and got in your dad’s face. I swear to God, it was like he didn’t even notice that you were gone. And when he finally knew, he didn’t really care.”

  Daniel immediately winced as he looked over his shoulder at where my father was likely holding down the fort.

  “Don’t.” I snorted. “I know who he is.”

  Daniel shrugged, then quietly so that only we could hear, he said, “Not sure why you’re visiting, to be honest.”

  Carolina drew in a shallow breath.

  I looked down at her and nodded my head. “Yeah, he’s really that bad. That’s why I told you not to get your hopes up if he’s a dick. On camera, or in front of a room full of people, he’s the nicest guy in the world. Any other time? It’s like he’s not even the same person.”

  She looked over Phillipe’s shoulder to the room beyond.

  “Do you think we have to go in there at all?” she asked.

  I wished that I didn’t.

  Yet, I had to get this over with.

  I had to talk to him.

  I may not be overly fond of him, but he was still my fat
her.

  That deserved at least some respect.

  Plus, I wanted him to meet Carolina.

  I wanted her to know all of me.

  Slapping Brad on the back, I pushed him to the side so I could get in. Tugging Carolina, who seemed a lot more reluctant now, I headed straight for the bed.

  I was used to my dad being larger than life.

  He’d always been impeccably dressed, even when he was at home.

  And I couldn’t tell you the last time that I saw him unshaven.

  But seeing him in the hospital bed, looking rough and unkempt, I almost pulled out my phone and took a photo.

  “Dad,” I said when his eyes locked on mine. “How are you feeling?”

  My father looked up, allowed his eyes to trail over to Carolina, then back to me.

  “Fine.” He paused. “Who is this?”

  “This” —I tugged Carolina close— “is my soon-to-be wife, Carolina. Carolina, I’d like you to meet my father, Christian.”

  Dad’s eye twitched at the use of his first name.

  He didn’t like for anyone to call him anything other than ‘Mr. Nicholson’ or ‘President Nicholson.’ For me to have introduced him like that meant something, and he knew it.

  “Nice to meet you,” Carolina said softly, holding out her hand.

  My father took it, trained to do so from the time he was born, and shook it once before dropping it.

  “Took you long enough to get here, kid,” he grumbled. “One would think that your father hadn’t been shot.”

  My eye twitched.

  “I got here as fast as I could,” I lied.

  I didn’t really want to come.

  It was more of an obligation at this point.

  “I heard about your mother,” he said. “Did she look like she shot me and didn’t care?”

  I didn’t know what to say to that.

  After my father had woken up yesterday, he’d apparently told Phillipe and Daniel everything, including my mother being the one behind it all with his advisor.

  “Ummm,” I said. “I don’t know how to answer that.”

  She didn’t look too broken up about it, if that was what he was wanting to know.