by Mia Malone
“None at all. I’m Callum,” one of the Gibson lookalikes said with a grin.
Ah. His oldest boy. The cop. He had lighter hair than Gib, and his eyes were a pale blue instead of his father’s gray, but other than that, he had Gibson written all over him.
“Hey, Callum,” I said. “I’m Lee.”
“I’m Parker,” the next one said.
The middle son, from Gib’s second marriage. His face was narrower, but he had Gibson’s gray eyes. We shook hands, and I turned to the last one.
“Andrew,” he said with a grin.
He’d be the youngest of the brothers, and the one who looked the least like Gibson, I realized. His eyes were a light brown, and his hair was a shade darker. His mouth had a slightly different shape too, but his short beard looked just like his dad’s. He would also be the son who’d heard me over the phone.
“Hey, Andrew.”
“Andy. He’s Cal,” he twitched he head at Callum, “And the dork is Parks.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Get your things, we’re not gonna stand on the front porch like morons the whole day,” Gibson said.
I turned to look at him.
“Did you just call me a moron?”
“No,” he said quickly.
“You did.”
“No,” he repeated. “Called them morons,” he tried to backtrack and indicated his sons.
“Gibson.”
“Yeah, okay, I did. Didn’t mean it, but I accidentally did.”
I looked at his soft gray eyes and the lines around them, giving his laughter away even though he made an admirable effort at staying somber. I sighed.
“I’ve already messed things up, so you might as well just go ahead and call me a moron,” I said.
“Babe, if you think I mind that you told my boys I’m hot, you’re very much mistaken,” he retorted.
“Insanely hot,” one of his sons said, and I thought it might have been Cal. “And it’s nice to know we don’t look like… Duds, was it?”
I turned and, yes. It was Cal, and he wasn’t even trying to hide his laughter.
“Get your bags, settle in,” I sighed. “We’ll be on the back porch. Coffee, beer, or something else?”
“Beer,” four voices said.
“Alrighty,” I murmured, turned around and walked into the kitchen.
When I got there, I leaned forward to rest my forehead on the fridge. What the hell was wrong with me? It had just been too much, I decided. I’d –
“Baby,” Gibson murmured and put his arms around me from behind.
“I’m such an idiot, Gib,” I whispered. “It’s too much. I was nervous, and then we were suddenly exchanging avowals of love. And then we were at the front door, and they were just... standing there. They were like, I don’t know, a huge wall of Gibson, and I –
His laughter stopped my rambling, and when he turned me around, I leaned my cheek on his chest.
“Avowals,” he murmured.
“Declarations,” I clarified.
“Know what avowals mean, babe. Don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone use the word in an actual sentence, but I know what it means.”
“Okay.”
“A wall of Gibson?” he chuckled. “That’s kind of funny.”
“Don’t you dare tell them,” I snapped and leaned back to look up at him. “They think I’m kooky enough as it is.”
“Babe, they don’t, and neither do I. And I gotta give it to you babe,” he said, and the lines around his eyes deepened. “You got us past the awkward, polite phase faster than the speed of light.”
As it turned out, I had indeed done that. Conversation flowed easily as we drank beer and they consumed surprising quantities of chips, which I didn’t even bother serving in a bowl. Gibson preferred eating his straight out of the bag anyway, so I assumed his boys did too and kept the bags coming.
“What’s for dinner?” Parks asked and pushed another handful of chips in his mouth.
The metabolism apparently embedded in the Ward gene must be damned amazing, considering how they all ate. Gibson worked out for a couple of hours each morning, though, which might be part of it, and maybe his sons did too.
“Burgers,” Gibson said.
“Of course,” Andy snorted.
“You complaining?”
“No,” Andy said quickly. “Though, I hope you like to cook, Lee. Or the taste of barbecue, which is about the only thing Dad can manage.”
“He’s not that bad at cooking,” I protested.
“Babe,” Gibson sighed. “Wished you’d phrased that in a slightly less insulting way.”
I grinned at him because I could have, but that would have been a lie. Gib cooked, and he did the basics well enough, but he really was a meat and potato man. As in meat on the grill and mashed potatoes from a bag. Or possibly potatoes that were nuked. Then I remembered the day when I moved into his home.
“I’m sorry. You’re not bad at all. Made really great pasta for lunch that first day.”
Three young men started laughing loudly, and an older one glared at them, but he did it pressing his lips together in a way that made me think he was holding his own grin back.
“What?”
“Let me guess,” Cal snorted.
“Boy,” Gibson said, which Cal ignored.
“Pasta with olive oil, garlic, and parsley. Fried prawns?”
“Uh, yeah,” I confirmed.
“Dad, really?” Parker drawled.
“Boy,” Gibson repeated.
“The wanna get laid-dinner?”
I blinked. What the –
“Boy,” Gibson repeated for the third time, but it was unclear to me which of his openly laughing sons he was addressing.
“What?” I asked again.
“Rite of passage,” Andy shared. “Did it with all of us, last night before moving out. Sat us down, told us he’d kick our ass until we needed a body-cast if he ever heard we didn’t treat any woman we ever dated with respect.”
“Okay?”
“And then we cooked together. Pasta with olive oil, garlic and fried prawns,” Cal cut in.
“Yup,” Andy said and mimicked his father’s deep voice, “You wanna get laid, son, you gotta know how to cook a fucking great first dinner.”
My belly quivered with held back laughter, but my insides had also melted into a puddle of goo. He’d told his boys to always respect their dates, which was a seriously cool thing for a badass dad to do. But more than that, he’d made me his wanna get laid-dinner, for me. Which meant he’d wanted to get laid, with me, already when he bullied me into his guest room.
“Lee?” Gibson said, and when I turned to him, he was squirming a little.
I pursed my mouth a little and looked at his son’s.
“What are you laughing about?” I asked, and their brows went up. “It worked, didn’t it?”
Gibson’s hand on my shoulder twitched a little, and then he said calmly, “Told you it would.”
I leaned my head back to grin up at him and got a crooked smile back. Yeah, I thought. We’d gotten past the polite and awkward phase pretty damned fast.
“Do you have any kids, Lee?” Cal asked suddenly.
“No, I don’t,” I answered and frowned at Gibson when he shifted slightly.
He really had to stop treating it as if it was an issue when it wasn’t one to me.
“We won’t mind, you know.”
“Mind what, honey?”
“It’ll be fun,” Parks cut in. “We’ll babysit.”
“Son,” Gibson said warningly, but I just stared at Cal.
“You think we’re having children?”
“It’ll be fun,” Andy chimed in.
I turned to Gibson, and breathed, “You put them up to this, didn’t you?”
“Nope.”
I turned back toward three confused young men and smiled, huge.
“I
think I love you.”
“What?”
“I’m just a few years younger than your dad,” I shared, assuming they understood my childbearing years would be way gone if I’d had the option in the first place.
They stared at me, and then Cal looked at his dad.
“Seriously?”
“Yup,” Gib said with a small grin.
I started laughing and was still doing that when I heard the door open behind me.
“Hey, Paddy,” I grinned. “Welcome to the house of madness.”
We’d decided to ask Paddy to come over for a barbecue the first evening, partly because the boys loved him but mostly in case things got awkward. Joke was at Oak, and Mac had to work, or they’d been there too.
Paddy leaned down to kiss my cheek and after a quick look at my face, which likely told him everything was going well, he turned to the boys.
“It looks like neither of you’ve said something outrageous that made our sweet Lee run for the hills.”
After a stunned silence, laughter boomed over the porch, and I put a palm over my face, knowing what would come. And it did.
***
Gibson
He was standing on the porch, with his woman next to him, his boys and his friend laughing in the kitchen and a dog running around like a maniac in the backyard. The sun was going down over the mountains he’d grown up in, which was where he planned to live for the rest of his life. The scent of hamburgers wafted up from the grill, and he looked down on Lee with a smile.
There it was, all around him and tucked into his side. What he’d wanted his whole life. What he’d stopped expecting, stopped waiting for. And now he had it.
“What?” Lee asked softly.
“I love you,” he murmured and tilted his head to the side to look at her.
The way her eyes softened in surprised delight cut straight to his heart and squeezed it so tightly he thought he’d stop breathing.
“Love you too,” she murmured and stepped in closer.
“Yeah,” he said and started to flip the burgers.
They stood in silence for a while and then he felt Lee’s head tilt back.
“Which one was it?”
“Was what?”
“Jenny said one of your boys had the record for bringing girls out to kiss them in some place by the river. She said they didn’t even grow up in Wilhelmine, so he did it when you spent time here in the summers.”
Gibson was pretty sure it had been Callum, but he wasn’t going to tell her.
“How many?”
She told him, and he grinned.
“That’s nowhere near the record babe,” he shared.
“What’s the record then?”
He told her and enjoyed watching her eyes widen in surprise.
“Wow,” she breathed. “I wonder who –”
She stopped speaking when she saw the look on his face.
“Please tell me it isn’t you.”
“Paddy,” he murmured.
“Wow,” she breathed again.
Gibson looked down at her astonished face and started laughing.
***
The Ward boys
“Dad doesn’t laugh like that,” Andy said slowly and turned to look at his father and the small woman tucked tightly to his side.
“He used to,” Cal said.
“Yeah,” Parks agreed. “He did. It faded, and then something happened, back around when he got off the force. And he stopped.”
“He was shot, decided to quit, you know that,” Paddy said casually.
“It was something else.”
Cal didn’t put it as a question, and Paddy sighed.
“Yeah, son, it was. But it’s done, and it’s his story, so I’m not talking.”
Three sets of eyes watched him calmly for a while, and Paddy felt his lips twitch when Lee’s description of them flew through his mind. A wall of Gibson. Apt.
“Lee knows?” Parks asked finally.
“Don’t know, he doesn’t talk about it, ever.”
“I think she knows. The way he is with her? She handles him well,” Cal stated.
“Jesus, boy,” Paddy snorted. “You think Gib needs to be handled?”
“Of course, I do,” Callum retorted. “He’s the best there is, but he is not an easy man, Paddy. She handles him, he knows it. And he lets her.”
Paddy watched the three young men in front of him and grinned.
“Clever,” he said. “And accurate.”
“The guys are good with her being here?”
“What do you think?” Paddy murmured and watched how Gibson had stepped away from the grill and was throwing a ball for Boo.
“Right.”
“Does he know how deep he’s in it with her?”
“Your father is not a stupid man,” Paddy said. “Sure he does.”
Lee had joined Boo and was jumping up and down as Gibson fake threw the ball, apparently trying to catch it before the dog did. The men in the kitchen started laughing at her antics, but it was cut short when the blast of a gun vibrated in the air.
Lee crumpled to the ground, and Gibson flew down the steps to cover her with his body as they rushed out through the door, Paddy taking the lead.
“He just nicked me, Gib, go get the motherfucker!” they heard Lee shout, and saw her try to push Gibson away. “Go!” she shouted.
Without looking back, Gibson ran through the yard and disappeared into the bushes where the shot would have come from, a black dog at his heels.
Paddy glanced at her and slowed down, but she shouted at him too.
“He needs you to have his back, Pad. Go.”
He did, and Callum followed immediately, wishing he had his gun but not turning back to get it.
Parks and Andy looked at Lee, and she glanced at them.
“Andy, go. Parks, you’re here with me.”
Andy didn’t hesitate. The look on Lee’s face was not one you argued with, and he was a goddamned accountant, but he would do his bit in getting the fucker who had done this.
Parker started moving toward Lee, but she shook her head.
“Don’t. Call Mac.”
Of course. Jesus, he should have thought about that himself he thought and whipped out his phone. As he alternated between explaining what had happened to a seriously pissed chief of police and listening to him barking out orders, he saw Lee jog inside with her left hand tightly clasped around her upper right arm where blood was seeping out through the light sweater she’d put on. She ran to the kitchen counter and picked up the phone, and he followed her, closing the call with Mac.
“Joke,” she said into the phone, and went on calmly, “Someone shot into Gibson’s backyard.” There was a brief pause and Parks saw to his surprise how Lee rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “He’s fine, stop cursing. Chased after the guys, Paddy and two of the boys are with him.” There was another pause, then she said quietly, “Look, can you bring the medical supply over here?” She drew in a breath and waited for Joke to finish off what Parks thought would be another impressive string of curse words. “Not Gib, honey. But I might have been shot just a little.”
She held the phone away from her ear with a wince, and even Parks could hear the roar that came over the phone.
Yeah, he thought. The brethren were totally fine with Lee being in Wilhelmine.
“Zacharias, I’m good,” she murmured and Parks’ brows went up.
He’d never heard anyone use Joke’s real name.
“Just get here with the kit,” Lee went on, and then, “Okay, honey.”
She closed the call and started pulling at her clothes but gave up immediately and looked at him.
“Scissors,” she said. “It isn’t bad, Parks. It didn’t hit the bone, so we’ll take a look. Between us, we’ll manage for now.”
She was astonishingly calm, he thought. Any other woman he knew would have been in tears, not shout
ing at his dad to go and get the motherfucker.
“How did you know to send Andy with the others?” he asked as they started cutting the sweater off her, and she got what he meant.
“Andy looked at my face, but you looked at the wound. Scanned for other injuries. Med school?”
“First-year intern, surgical.”
“You’re a bit young for that,” she said, and hissed a little as they started to move the fabric away from her wound. “Comes in handy now, though.”
“Accelerated classes. You?” he asked as he started peeling off her tee.
“Fifteen years, trauma nurse in an inner-city ER.”
He reared back and looked at her.
“Really?”
“Yeah,” she said and twisted her arm around a little. “Why are you surprised?”
“Maybe because you look like a fucking kindergarten teacher,” he muttered, and added, “Sorry.”
“Parks, really. Your dad is a fixture in my life. Fuck is not a word unknown to me.”
He started grinning, and when he looked at her, he saw she did too. ER nurses were badass men and women, hitting the front line, day after day, wading through whatever shit came through their doors, doing what had to be done no matter what. Fifteen years were a whole lot of years doing that, which meant she was one tough lady, whatever she looked like. His father had hit the jackpot with Lee, Parker thought as he threw her clothes in a pile on the floor.
“Jesus fucking Christ, what the fuck happened?”
Joke rushed into the room, but when both Lee and Parks started laughing, he stopped and scowled at them. Parks saw through the scowl and recognized the fear behind it, so he calmly took a paper towel and started dabbing blood off Lee’s arm.
“It’s just a flesh wound, Joke,” he murmured.
“Nothing just about it,” Lee murmured and used her good hand to start opening the big first aid kit Joke had slammed down on the kitchen counter. “Hurts like shit, I have to say.”
Joke slapped her hand away and opened the box.
“Fuck,” muttered, put a hand on Lee’s cheek and turned her face up to look at her. “You okay?”
“Yeah, Zacharias,” she said quietly. “I’m good.”
“What the hell happened?” Mac roared as he ran through the door and Lee sighed.
“I’m good. Flesh wound. Go help Gib and Paddy, both of you. Parks and I will manage.”
