Fools Rush In

by Lilliana Anderson

  He just laughed and took another one with a wink. Typical.

  “Cheeky.” I laughed, just as Holland appeared at the base of the stairs.

  “Morning,” she said brightly. She must have slept well. “Something smells amazing.”

  Jasmine looked up and smiled. “Hope you brought your appetite. How’s that husband of yours this morning?”

  “A little hungover,” she said with a laugh. “He’s taking a shower.”

  “Well take a seat. These will be ready in a few minutes.” Jasmine poured batter into the waffle irons, the sizzle and smell instantly filling the air. “Sam, go get your brothers,” she said as she picked up an egg flip and watched over the irons. “We’re going to have a family breakfast this morning.”

  “Anything I can help with?” Holland asked, moving a little closer to us all. This was unusual for her. She was purposely trying to be perky and nice, I could see it in the way she kept resetting her smile.

  “Nothing, dear.” Jasmine smiled while Sam and I exchanged knowing glances before he left the room. “It’s all under control.”

  Holland stood there looking lost for a moment, then took a big dramatic breath.

  Here we go.

  “Jasmine, I want to say that I’m sorry about all the trouble I’ve caused,” she said in a rush. It sounded so forced, but I tried to stay out of it.

  Turning towards Holland, Jasmine placed one hand on her hip and set her shoulders proudly.

  “I appreciate your apology,” she said after a breath, being careful with her words. “I hope you can find a way to embrace us as your family instead of kicking out and creating waves.”

  I stayed silent as I listened on. They would either come to a truce or make everything much worse.

  “I can do that,” Holland said, seeming surprisingly genuine. “I don’t want to be the reason for tension. I just want Nate to be happy.”

  Jasmine handed me the egg flip she was holding, then moved to stand directly in front of Holland. “Then you need to make a decision. Are you in or are you out?”

  Whoa. I wished Sam would get back so I could see his reaction to this. I didn’t think it was going to end well.

  “What do you mean?” Holland asked with caution.

  “I’m giving you a one-time offer, Holland. If you’re unhappy here, you can pack your things and leave. But you’ll need to leave for good and never speak to anyone about our family. We won’t exist to you.”

  Whoa times two! I was not expecting that. Jasmine had done everything to be kind and welcoming to Holland for the sake of her relationship with Nate, but now she was delivering an ultimatum, giving Holland the out she had originally wanted. I guessed it was a test of Holland’s devotion.

  “I don’t understand.” Holland gulped.

  Jasmine actually laughed in a mocking tone. It sent a chill down my spine to catch a glimpse of the woman Jasmine could really be. “I’m offering you your life back. But you’d have to never contact my son again.”

  Holland’s face fell. I actually felt a little bad for her, but even she couldn’t have her cake and eat it too. We all had to make compromises.

  “I don’t want to leave Nate,” she responded.

  Jasmine smiled. “Then you stay, and you give us something to prove you’re in.”

  “I’ve already given you two cars and most of my possessions.”

  “We took those, sweetheart. And you got most of your stuff back.”

  “True.”

  “What I want from you is a job.”

  “A job?” Holland’s eyes went wide. “I don’t even know how I’d find one.”

  “You work at a fancy school. Surely you have some sort of information on someone or something that could prove fruitful. You could be our inside man.” Jasmine wasn’t going to make any part of this easy. It was one thing for Holland to say she would accept the family, but a woman like Jasmine needed proof. Loyalty was something shown by actions.

  Chewing on her lip, Holland looked at me for assistance and I nodded, knowing she had information that would make Jasmine and the rest of the brothers happy.

  “I….” She shook her head, looking like a stage actor who couldn’t remember their lines.

  I pressed my lips together. “What about that fundraiser they do every year?” I suggested.

  Jasmine’s eyes lit up. “Fundraiser?”

  Holland cleared her throat. “Er, yes. It’s like a, um… festival, I suppose. They put on a fair, lots of games and stalls. There’s a silent auction, and the drama students put on a play. This year it’s A Streetcar Named Desire.”

  “And they collect a lot of cash from this event?”

  Her mouth twisted downwards as she nodded. “Last year they raised over a hundred thousand.”

  Jasmine actually gasped. “All cash?”

  “Some cheques, but mostly cash, yes.”

  Jasmine stood up straighter and smiled. “Well that does sound like a nice payday. Do you know where the money gets taken at the end of the day?”

  “The principal’s office. It gets put in a safe, then taken to the bank on Monday.”

  “Well aren’t you just full of wonderful surprises. We can float this with the boys over breakfast. Welcome to the family, Holland.” Jasmine leaned over and kissed Holland on the side of the head.

  “What? No. Absolutely not. She doesn’t need to prove herself,” Nate yelled over breakfast.

  Holland had her head down like a beaten dog. When did she become so morally pious?

  “We don’t need your permission,” Sam pointed out around a mouthful of waffles. “We know enough to plan it ourselves.” He gave Holland a wink, and I knew he was teasing her. The Cartwright brothers lived for the adrenaline rush a good score could get them. And the fact that this one was a lot of cash that wasn’t heavily secured meant it would be a thousand times sweeter.

  “No,” Nate insisted. “Can’t we just let one member of this fucking family live a life that doesn’t revolve around the next score?”

  That comment really pissed me off. She was no better than the rest of us. It was unfair to set her apart. It had already caused enough damage.

  Jasmine waited a moment before responding. “She’s either a Cartwright or she isn’t. We don’t allow freeloaders.”

  “The fact that she works means she’s making her own money.”

  “How does that benefit us?”

  Toby cut in, adding his own thoughts to the situation at hand. “Maybe since Holland is the one who gave us the job, she should be the one who decides if it goes ahead.”

  We all waited for Holland to respond. Did she have the balls to join us, or was she going to continue hiding behind her husband?

  “I—” she started, looking down, pausing and gulping.

  Stop fighting, Holland! I screamed in my mind.

  Then Nate decided to speak. “You don’t want to be like us, duchess. You’re better than we are. You’re good. Stay good.”

  Fuck you, Nate. He didn’t even blink when it was suggested that I get more involved in the family business, but Holland is so good that she can’t? I was fucking insulted.

  “Ain’t no room for good people round our table, brother,” Abbot put in, always one to say exactly what the rest of us were thinking.

  Nate stood up immediately. “Fuck this. We’re leaving. Holland, go get your things.”

  Holland left the table faster than I’d ever seen her move before. She couldn’t wait to get out of there.

  “I swear to you,” Nate growled, holding his finger up while glaring at us all individually, “if you go ahead with this job or do a single thing to hurt her, I will rain bloody hell down upon you all. Family or not.”

  “Are you saying you choose your wife over us?” Jasmine demanded.

  Jaw clenched, his eyes wild, he didn’t respond, so Jasmine continued.

  “You might want to keep her out of this, Nathaniel. But you should’ve thought about that before you dragged her into it.
You caused this. You lured her here, and you got Alesha mixed up in our business too. She’s embraced us. It’s time for Holland to do the same.”

  “I don’t want her involved,” Nate insisted.

  “She already is,” Jasmine hissed. “What do you think will happen to her when you get busted for your precious field of flowers? What do you think will happen the year you have a bad harvest and those goons you’ve mixed yourself up with come to collect? You think you can keep her safe, Nate? You don’t even know how to save yourself, you’re in so deep.”

  Nate growled like a wild animal before he grabbed the table and flipped it on its side. Crockery and glass went everywhere, smashing on tiles while the food and drink coated our legs before we had the chance to jump out of the way. In the chaos, he stormed out and slammed the front door, the screeching of his tires the last thing we heard.

  “Motherfucker ruined our waffles,” Kris shouted, shaking his head at the mess on the floor.

  Abbot bent down. “This one’s OK,” he said, picking one out of the rubble and removing a shard of glass. He went to put it in his mouth, but Toby slapped it from his hand.

  “Don’t eat it, you knucklehead. You’ll be shitting out glass, and I don’t want to be the one to explain your bleeding arsehole in the emergency room.”

  “Let’s just get this cleaned up,” Jasmine said, looking at the mess on the floor with a tight mouth.

  It didn’t take long to put everything right again, and the brothers had the ability to turn anything into a bit of fun.

  But I couldn’t help but feel bad for Jasmine. She’d tried to force family unity and it had all blown up in her face. Now the good china was ruined, much like her relationship with Nate.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Fucking Freedom

  I turned my head to catch the sun and the light breeze against my skin. I loved living in Torquay, loved the salty air and the relaxed atmosphere. In the summer, it had been filled with tourists. Now the crowds had died down and a sense of tranquillity descended. “You know, I had no idea this was a café when I first saw it.” He’d brought me to this beautiful café that was inside an old weatherboard home not far from the Esplanade apartment. The air was fresh, almost icy, but we’d opted to sit outside nonetheless.

  “They’ve got good food, and since breakfast got so thoroughly destroyed, I thought we could do with a change of scenery and some fresh air,” Sam said, picking up the salt from the table, shaking a little in his hand and tossing it over his shoulder.

  “That was a bit messed up, huh? Do you think everyone will work it out?”

  He shrugged. “Eventually. Maybe. I don’t know this time. Nate’s never been this bad.”

  “Do you blame Holland too?”

  He met my eyes and squinted. “No. I blame Nate. He’s not thinking right.”

  “Because he’s crazy from love, right?”

  His jaw tightened a little and he nodded before looking away, watching a couple trying to walk a big excited dog along the seaside pathway. I took that as a sign that the conversation was over. Just as well, since I’d dwelled on that topic far too much of late. I needed to give my mind a break. There was so much more going on around me than my fairy-tale dreaming.

  With my stomach rumbling, I looked toward the entrance in the hopes our meals we being brought out. No such luck,I settled on watching a little red-headed girl on the playground where several other kids were running amok. She was yelling for her brother to help her climb a ladder. He jumped down and struggled to lift her, pushing on her butt until she made it safely on the landing. The sight made me smile.

  Sam reached over and took my hand. “One day,” he said, his thumb moving over my knuckles. He was watching me watch the kids, a topic we hadn’t discussed much since he learned of my condition. I felt a pang where my womb was. When did I start wanting them so much?

  “You know, I thought I had grown used to the idea of a life without children,” I started, smiling a little when the girl squealed as her brother took her down the slide. “Now I find myself looking at them and wondering what it would be like.”

  “Is this your way of saying you want them now?”

  “You know, I don’t know. I’m certainly thinking about it more. But am I thinking about it because I know you want them and I’m a people pleaser or because I finally have the opportunity? It’s hard to get my mind straight sometimes.” Holland’s words from the night before taunted me. Jasmine 2.0 I was trying to be happy, but now I was really confused.

  “That’s why we’re going to wait until you’re one hundred percent sure that kids are what you want. We both need to be on the same page when the time comes.”

  “Thank you,” I said, giving his fingers a squeeze. “I appreciate that. But it doesn’t change the fact that my clock is ticking. I don’t have a lot of time to decide, and the longer we leave it, the harder it’s going to be. Back when I had my initial testing done, the doctors had no idea what my chances would be. They said I’d need further testing when the time came, and that time has never come until now. My insides could be a black hole of nothingness for all I know.”

  “I’m sorry, peaches,” Sam said, his voice so soft it hurt a little to hear.

  I lifted my brow at his apology, so against the grain.

  “I know, I said the forbidden word.” He smiled. “But it’s true. We haven’t really talked about it much, but I really am sorry that your mother did this to you. Drugs are messed up. Jazz has always been dead against them.”

  “She said you were using when you got busted.” I said the words carefully, hoping we were at a point where he wouldn’t launch into attack mode over something he felt I shouldn’t know.

  Thankfully, he nodded and looked down at our joined hands. “Coke mainly. A little dope to take the edge off when it was hard to come down. It’s not a period of my life I’m proud of, and I haven’t touched the stuff since. I’m fully behind the anti-drug stance the Cartwrights take now. They might be easy money, but they’re risky, and they ruin people’s lives. I don’t want that on my conscience.”

  “What about Nate?” I asked, thinking back to the morning’s outburst and Jasmine’s comments.

  Sam shook his head. “He plays his own game, chases his own demons. I try to stay out of it as much as I can.”

  “But he’s involved, isn’t he?”

  Sam nodded.

  “In what way? Jasmine said something about crops and flowers.”

  Sam nodded slowly. He wasn’t giving me any extra information, but he wasn’t going to stop me from putting it all together myself.

  “The only flower I can think of is those opium flowers—poppies, right? Is that what he’s growing?” I kept my voice really low so no one else would hear.

  Sam licked his lips, closed his eyes for a moment and then gave me the smallest of nods.

  “He supplies the people who make it?”

  Another nod.

  Jesus.

  I sat back in my seat on a gasp, feeling as though the air had been knocked out of me. Despite the fact that I wasn’t currently getting along with Holland, I still cared about her, about her wellbeing, and I worried about her all alone with Nate most of the time. Before now, I’d been worried because I kept seeing signs of aggression, but now I knew he was involved with drug dealers—as a supplier, no less. Was Nate insane dragging her into this? How selfish could one person be?

  I closed my eyes as the revelation hit me. Holland had dragged me into this without giving my safety a second thought. Looked like Nate and Holland were perfect for each other.

  “Tell me something funny,” I said releasing the tension in my breath as I opened my eyes. “I need to clear my head and focus on everything that’s good. I don’t need their shit anymore.” I touched my hands to the side of my head and mimed pulling away the bad energy. I’d never tried it before, but it felt like a great way to change my thought process.

  Sam smiled and relaxed his shoulders. “OK. You wan
t a joke?”

  “Sure.”

  “You’ve probably heard it, but here goes. So Superman is flying about, on his way to save the world, when he looks down. Wonder Woman is lying on the beach with nothing on—completely starkers.”

  I wiggled my brows. “Raunchy. Go on.”

  “Well, he sees her and he thinks, ‘Hmm, I wouldn’t mind myself a piece of that.’” This was definitely working, I was already starting to giggle. “He doesn’t have much time, but he can’t resist. So he flies down there, does her lightning fast, then flies away to continue his mission. It happened so fast that Wonder Woman only sees a blur. She sits up and says, ‘What the hell was that?’ Then the invisible man shakes his head and goes, ‘I don’t know, but for some reason my arsehole is really sore.’” His lips twitched as he delivered the punchline.

  “Oh my God!” I laughed, loving the lightness taking over in my chest. I wanted more of that, to focus on joy. “Do you know any more?”

  He grinned. “I know plenty.”

  And that’s how we spent the rest of our morning.

  “What the hell?” Sam lifted his head from the shot he was lining up on the pool table. We’d spent most of our day out of the house, exploring the town and discovering places even Sam as a local didn’t know about. We’d been tempted to be selfish and spend the night at the apartment, but that wasn’t how our family operated. When shit went down, we banded together. Jasmine was going to need us, and we’d done our best to keep her distracted until she decided to have an early night. Now we were hanging out in the rumpus room having a few drinks.

  “Did someone just come through the front door?” I moved slightly to try and look down the hall. It wasn’t exactly a straight shot, but I’d be able to see if someone was coming our way.

  I was expecting it to be Kris or Abbot. They’d gone out about an hour ago, saying they had a couple ‘sweeties’ to meet, so I wasn’t expecting to see them until morning. But hook-ups didn’t always go according to plan.

  “Um, Sam?” I took a step back, shifting until I was behind him. The arrival wasn’t one of the twins, it was Nate. And he looked pissed.