by Heather Long
“Good, sounds like someone needs to stab him. Repeatedly. In non-vital places. So it hurts more.” The viciousness in her tone pulled a smile from me.
“Aww, Archie will be touched that you care.”
She snorted and pinched me. “Rich Boy is a lot of things, but he redeems himself in my eyes every time he looks at you. No one deserves a prick like that for a parent.”
I grinned wider. “Your softer side is showing.”
“Pfft. I trust Archie to take care of his father and that ice bitch of a mother. What about yours?” With the way her dark eyes focused on me, I didn’t have anywhere to go to escape the studying gaze. Fortunately, I didn’t want to.
“My emancipation court date is in a little under two weeks.”
“Okay, and that’s fantastic. Hopefully, you stick it to the bitch when you cut ties.” Rachel braced a hand on the bed. “But what are we doing about her?”
“That’s the ten-thousand-dollar question.” I pursed my lips. “I have an idea. But I don’t know if it’s as cruel and manipulative as something she would do because it definitely serves my interests and not hers.” Even as I said it, I hesitated, then grimaced. “It’s not even about my interests, it’s about getting Eddie back for Archie as much as it is getting back at Maddy.”
“Color me intrigued,” Rachel said with a slow grin. “And I’m all in. What do you want to do?”
It was the middle of the day. The guys had all had school today and I was technically still on internship hours, but I had promised Archie and the boys I wouldn’t go anywhere near Standish. Archie guaranteed it wouldn’t be a problem for the internship, and to be honest, even if it was, I didn’t care. I wasn’t sure what I would do or say if I saw Edward Standish again.
I would have to, sooner or later, but I still didn’t know what I would say. Or to be correct, what I would say beyond telling him what a cataclysmic asshole he was.
“My grandparents,” I said slowly. Archie and I had talked about them a little, but that conversation had upset him on some level, and after the last few days, I wanted to keep things lighter for him. Fuck knew how we’d do that, but I still wanted to.
“I’m listening.” Rachel pulled a pillow around to hug it as she leaned forward and focused on me.
“Patience,” I said with a half-snort, because talk about irony, “and Eugene Grayson. As far as I know, Maddy is their only child. When I did an internet search, I found them living in New England, although they have a home in California as well as another in Europe and vested interest in places in the Caribbean.”
“Okay.” Nothing in Rachel’s expression changed. She was letting me work this out aloud, and it was the first time I’d actually tried talking about them since I’d brought it up with Archie. When I’d emailed Wittaker, he’d also sent me a two-page letter summarizing them. “So they’re rich.”
“They own resorts and hotels all over the world. A lot of them.”
“So, they’re filthy, stinking rich.”
I gave a little shrug. “I guess. Their net worth is in the billions.”
“Holy fuck.”
Another shrug. “I don’t want to think about that part, because Maddy came from that kind of money and I grew up with her living paycheck to paycheck and shopping at discount stores and using duct tape to hold my shoes together when I got holes in them and she couldn’t afford to get them fixed.”
I had no shame about that. I could stretch a dollar. I was self-reliant. I could support myself.
“Girl, do not tell me you are feeling sorry for her?”
“I don’t—I don’t know what I feel exactly. But how do you go from that kind of money to living how we were?” I spread my hands. I’d kept some of the pieces out of the story, the pieces that were personal to Archie. Like the fact his parents were made to get married or whatever. “And she always throws that thing in my face about how she could have given me up for adoption or had an abortion. Is that why? Was she exiled for having me?”
“I don’t care if she was given fifty lashes and tossed out on her ass,” Rachel said, expression tightening into a frown of disbelief. “Parents are supposed to love and take care of you, not inflict their emotional damage onto you or make you responsible for their bullshit.”
True. Eddie was a fucking moron. He blamed Archie because Eddie got caught with his dick out and had to marry Muriel. At the end of the day though, that was a choice, right? What if he’d refused? He’d have been cut off.
Had Maddy been given a similar choice?
Fuck, this whole thing gave me a headache. “I don’t feel sorry for her.” I didn’t. “I just don’t understand her.”
“Well, if you look up ‘raging cunt’ in the dictionary, I’m sure you’ll find her picture next to it.”
I laughed.
“I’m serious,” she deadpanned. “Because fuck that woman. Please tell me she’s the one you want to fuck with because I am so down for that.”
“Except I don’t even think we can fuck with her, except to point out to Eddie that she lied.” Which, we were going to do. Maddy only cared about what she wanted, what affected her, and I guessed telling Eddie I was his kid was her in. Well, fuck her and that plan. My life wasn’t her damn toy to play with. “But the rest of it?” I rubbed my hands against my face. “Rachel, I don’t know. Do I try to meet these people? Do I care?”
“Didn’t you say your grandmother came once when you were a kid?”
I nodded.
“But you really didn’t talk to her?”
“No, she was pretty cold. Like, you could freeze ice on her ass cold.”
Rachel shot me a comical look, and I shrugged.
“What? She was? She and Maddy argued, that I remember, but it wasn’t heated or anything. It was cold and distant and just impersonal as hell, and then she was gone again. I don’t think she gave two shits about me then, so I can’t imagine she’d care now.”
“But you want to know,” Rachel concluded softly.
“I’m an open book, huh?”
“No.” Her smile was almost wistful and a bit teasing. “Well, yes, but more you have a big heart. That’s always been you, Frankie. It’s why those idiots are so possessive of you, because you love so fiercely and openly. You really are feeling bad for Maddy, even if it’s only on some abstract, intellectual level because you can’t fathom how a parent can do that to their child, even if your parent did it to you.”
I spent the rest of the afternoon with Rachel, but headed home to meet Jake after school let out and to go do some deliveries. While I’d seen him over the last few days, we hadn’t really had any us time and I’d missed him.
Of course, he laughed at me when I told him that. “Baby Girl, you never have to miss me.”
“Pfft,” I said, sticking my tongue out at him. “You know what I mean.”
“I do.” He was driving because we were going to work a couple of hours for him and a couple of hours for me. We’d tried using both of our apps at the same time and that just got complicated as hell, so it was easier if we did it one at a time. The point was to spend time together. “You missed me. So that means you should spend the whole weekend with me.”
I laughed. “I would, except I’m sure your ‘secret project’ with Archie will keep you both tied up.” Not that I was complaining. I liked that Jake had been there for Archie, especially over the last few days.
“Nah, he can take care of it. You and me, we’ll lock ourselves in the bedroom and make Coop deliver us pizza whenever we want a little change in the sexual menu.”
I died. Seriously. Died. Laughing, I leaned against the door. “Change in the sexual menu.”
He grinned. “I don’t hear you saying no.”
“And you won’t. Because you love it too.”
“Hell yes, I do.”
We kept it light and playful for the first couple of deliveries, but it quieted after the third one. He pulled over into an empty slot near a row of restaurants. They were typically
the most popular ordering spots, so it was as good a space as any.
“You doing okay, Baby Girl?” He coiled a lock of my hair around his finger and tugged gently. “It’s been a long few days.”
“It was,” I said. “And I still have to figure out what to do about the internship and the trust and all that other stuff, but a big part of me wants to just blow it all off and focus on graduation and the future, you know?”
“Then do it. You know we’re going to back you on anything you want to do.”
I did know that. “But isn’t that just running away?” One thing Archie had said to me the other day had been playing on a quiet repeat in the back of my mind. I had me. I was the most self-reliant person he’d ever known. He didn’t think I needed any of it—the family, such as it was, the trust, the history, and with all of it, the baggage.
On the one hand, I loved that he believed in me like that more than I would ever be able to express. But on the other…
“Talk to me, Baby Girl. I’m not Coop, I don’t have magical insight into what’s going on behind those stunning eyes of yours, but I’m right here. If I can fix it, I will. If you just need me to listen, I can do that, too.”
“You’ll call it like it is, though.” Because Jake had never pulled his punches with me. Except, you know, asking me straight out to be his girlfriend.
He tugged my hair gently. “Yep, so tell me what you want.”
“I want to understand.” And I thought that Jake, of all people, would get that.
“Okay, let’s start with the pieces you want to understand—why your mother told Archie’s father what she did?” He ticked it off on his fingers. “Why did your grandparents and mother cut ties with each other? Why there’s a trust fund? Who are your grandparents?”
“Who is Maddy too,” I added to that list. “How much do I take after her?”
“Fine, to the first one, and not a fucking bit to the second. She’s a selfish bitch, and you don’t have a selfish bone in your body.”
I cut him a smile at the resoluteness in his voice. “I love you too.”
“I know.” He winked. “Do you want to add who is your actual father or not to that list?”
“I have no idea.” That nagging headache resumed its dull thump behind my eyes, because that was exactly one of the issues I’d been having. “I didn’t want to know before, remember, when we found the tests?”
“Was that you really not wanting to know, or you not wanting to be disappointed, Baby Girl?”
“Does it matter which?” Sitting sideways in the seat, I stared at him, and he reached over and shut off his availability on the phone.
“Yes,” he answered. “Lately, I’ve been thinking more about my dad and Klara. About the choices he made that I don’t understand, and that I made choices in response to those choices.”
Pulling my knees up, I reached over to catch his fingers. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. The thing is—I’ve been pissed at him for so long, all I saw was what he didn’t do. I never thought about why he did what he did.”
I frowned, but didn’t interrupt as he tangled our fingers together, then turned my hand from side to side as he stroked his thumb over the palm.
“I resented that he didn’t choose his kids. That he didn’t choose Mom. I mean on one level, I knew he couldn’t just leave his commission. That’s one thing about being in the military—you don’t get to decide where you go. You go where you’re sent. I don’t know if I’ll ever understand it,” he admitted. “But at the same time, I never tried. When he calls, I avoid the conversations and just let the girls talk to him. When it comes to going to see him, I pass.”
I hadn’t even realized that he’d had the opportunity, and that surprise must have shown, because he gave me a wry smile that was clear, even in the darkness of the front seat.
“Yeah, there’s been a couple of chances over the last few years. The girls went over to Germany last summer.”
Oh.
“But I passed on it, and not just because I was hoping a certain someone would come out of hiding.” He reached over to trace his free hand down my cheek just before he tweaked my nose. “But also because I didn’t want to understand him.”
I swallowed. “But now you do?”
“Yes and no. I mean, that ship might have sailed, but the other day, I went with Arch to see his dad and…” He shook his head slowly. “I don’t get that about him. He’s an ass to Archie.”
On that we agreed.
“And my dad’s choices might be inexplicable, but he’s never been an ass to me. Even when I was being one to him. Granted, I didn’t really give him the chance, but…but when you say you want to understand, I get that, and it’s why I know you’re nothing like your mom, Baby Girl. That big ass heart of yours is looking for something to forgive.”
I made a face. “I don’t know that I like thinking I have a big ass heart.”
“I do,” he told me, his smile growing. “That big ass heart found a way to forgive all of us, and it still managed to love us, even when we were being asses. It’s made room for all of us and loves us so fiercely, we don’t want there to be a time when it doesn’t.”
My face heated, and his smile softened.
“You showed us it was possible, and while I think we all competed for a long time, it only really started working when we worked together to win you.”
I laughed. “I’m not a prize.”
“Hush, you’re the best prize there is.” He pressed a kiss to my nose and then rested his forehead to mine. “What I’m trying to tell you is don’t be afraid to try to understand. The last thing any of us want is for you to be hurt, which means we’ll be with you every step of the way and if they look at you cross-eyed, well…you don’t worry about it. We have your back.”
“If you want to go and see your dad, I’ll get a passport and go with you.”
He blinked at me.
“What? You didn’t think this road goes two ways? You’ve avoided talking about your dad for years. Now you’ve brought him up twice in a couple of weeks. I’m absolutely on your side. If you want to go and see him, I’ll go with you and we can see Germany together.” Hopefully, we could afford the tickets. “Or at least, I’ll be there to buffer if you need it.”
A smile widened his mouth slowly as he cupped my cheek. “You would, wouldn’t you?”
“In a heartbeat. Though, can we wait until after AP exams? Or if not, I guess we could go spring break. If I can get a passport that fast.” I actually had no idea how long that would take. I’d done research at one point. I was pretty sure it would cost extra, but if Jake needed it, we’d find a way to make it work.
“I adore you, Baby Girl.” Then he was cupping my face and kissing me. The soft brush of his lips was so tender, it had me gasping a little, and then I sighed into the sweetness. I teased his tongue with mine, and his seat slid back as he pulled me out of mine and onto his. The seatbelt slid free because someone had already unlocked it.
“Smooth,” I teased him as I straddled his lap. He chuckled before claiming my lips again, and I ran my fingers through his hair as we played, nibbled, and tasted each other.
“I like to think so,” he answered, nuzzling my chin. “And thank you for offering to go with me. But if I stole you away to Germany over spring break, there would be a riot.”
I laughed. “The boys would understand.”
He gave me a look that said I was fucking nuts, but I tapped his nose gently.
“They would. If Archie needed me to go somewhere, or Coop or Ian, you would understand.”
Grunting, he made a face. “I wouldn’t like it. I’d hate the idea of you being far away where I couldn’t help either of you.”
“But you would understand,” I reiterated.
With a sigh, he nodded. “Yeah. Thank you, Baby Girl. Maybe not yet, but we should look into getting you that passport. Maybe Archie will want to take you to Paris or something.”
I knew he was joking, thou
gh with Archie…okay, maybe not. Still, I couldn’t resist tweaking him just a little. “Well, if we went to Paris, I could say hi to Mathieu.”
Honestly, the pinch he gave my ass hurt, even through my jeans, and he caught my lower lip in his teeth as he scowled at me. Finally, he said, “No Paris for you.”
I laughed.
While we should have been working, we didn’t. I stayed cuddled in his lap, and we kissed and nuzzled and just held each other. If I hadn’t been wearing jeans, I had a feeling I’d already be riding him, but Jake scowled at the lights all around us and then back at me.
Yeah, this was a little too public for him. On the way back to the apartment though, I decided I’d just wear a skirt and no panties next time. I’d surprise Jake, and the thrill of the idea left me tingling all over.
My life was so weird sometimes. I loved all four of them. I loved the time we spent together. And now I was actively planning how to seduce them. Not that I thought it would be hard, but they all loved surprising me and I adored it.
Now I wanted to do the same for them.
“When do I get to hear this new song of yours and Bubba’s?” Jake asked as he locked the car and we headed inside, hand in hand. “Coop said it was hot.”
I stumbled a step, and Jake let out a little whoop, even as he caught me and pulled me to him.
“I knew it! That lucky bastard worked his way in with you and Bubba.”
Clearing my throat, I thumped him. “I’m not having this conversation.”
“You can tell me,” he whispered. “You know you can tell me anything. Bubba talked to me about the classes, and I’ve been reading your books.”
The earlier heat had nothing on how my face caught on fire.
“And in case you were at all curious,” he whispered into my ear. “I’m all in, Baby Girl. That next class of yours, I want to go.”
