My eyes widened as I glanced around the room to get my brothers’s take on that revelation. We were all shocked for approximately two minutes before I burst out laughing right along with Baffle and Knuckles. Glitch stood there with his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes focused on Josh and Brian.
“That’s actually pretty funny,” I admitted. “You’d be Uncle Daddy and Sammy would be Mommy Cousin.” I laughed louder as the words left me because it sounded even more ridiculous out loud than it did in my own head. The Morton brothers stared at me like I’d lost my mind. Well, two of them did that. Brady’s shoulders shook as he laughed along with me.
“I wish Sammy had been here to hear that,” Brady eventually admitted.
“That’s my daughter! Are you telling me you’re not just protecting her because she saved you, but that you’re interested in her romantically? Does she know that?”
“I am and she does.”
“And did she agree to date you?”
I laughed again as all the times Sammy had denied me flashed through my mind. “Right now, she thinks I’m stalking her, but eventually I’ll wear her down,” I joked just to get a rise out of Brian.
“What the fuck did you just say?”
“Fucking relax, asshole. I’m only half kidding. Melissa, who happens to be my son’s mother and your brother’s secret girlfriend, gave your daughter the impression that we were very much together as a couple when she met her in the hospital.” I turned my attention from Brian to Josh then. “Good luck explaining to your niece how you’ve been dating Lis for a year when it was Lis who told her that she’s my ol’ lady.”
“Son of a bitch!” Josh growled. “She doesn’t know how to make life easy on a man, does she?”
There was a reason I’d never even considered getting serious with Melissa, even after she found out she was pregnant. In fact, I fully believed her pregnancy had been a goal of hers, because she thought it would force my hand. She learned quickly that shit was not going to go her way.
“Nope,” I finally answered Josh. “Why do you think I never made her my ol’ lady when she had my kid?” I chuckled at the contemplative look on his face. “She’s not my biggest concern right now, though I’ll deal with her bullshit later.” I turned back to Brian. “Your ol’ lady is my problem, and we need to deal with her because there’s no telling what the fuck she’s been up to or what she has put in the works.”
“The house!” Brady shouted. “Colleen has been adamant about getting our parents’ home, but Dad left it to Sammy.”
“What’s the point?” Josh asked.
“The point is that I moved Sammy into the house after that incident with the fucking Mojave Devil. She said that it looked like someone had been cleaning things out of the house that shouldn’t have been taken and moved some things in that shouldn’t be there.” He turned to his brothers then. “The grandfather clock is one of the pieces missing.” There was something important in that statement, but Brian spoke before I could ask questions.
“She’s been on me to get Sammy to sign something giving us the house. She probably thought I’d get it done and started to redecorate.”
“Why the fuck would she think that? You know damn well Sam was planning to renovate before she moved in. We already got the master bath done and were about to start working on the kitchen. She wouldn’t renovate just to give up her claim on the house.”
“She’s been living in the cabin, I figured I could talk her around, since I have a kid that needs more space.” That statement worked to piss Brady right the fuck off.
“Funny that space was plenty big enough for you to raise Sammy with Joy but not enough to raise Ryan with Colleen,” Brady spat at him.
“Shut the fuck up!” I yelled out to silence the brothers who devolved into a whole name-calling situation after that.
“Brady, why are you concerned about what Colleen has taken out of or put in the house?”
“Besides the fact that the clock was a priceless piece of our family history dating back to 1740s Scotland, and belonged to Sammy?” he questioned, then I watched as the blood drained from his face. “What if she had the place wired up?” he eventually asked.
“Wired up…” I repeated as the words sank in. “Fuck. Glitch!”
“On it, boss.” He turned to the Morton brothers. “One of you needs to come with me, so I can’t be accused of trespassing. Not that I’d care, but I can’t help Sammy if your bitch wife decides to call the law on me.” Glitch threw a pointed look back toward me. He couldn’t mention to the civilians that our local sheriff was dirty and working for the people trying to kill Sammy and me. They were close to the situation, but not close enough that we could share that, considering we weren’t really sure how Brian would react or what he might pass back to his wife - whether intentionally or not.
“Brady and Brian stay. We have things to discuss. You go,” I said as I pointed my finger at Josh. “We’ll figure shit out later where the family dynamics are concerned.” Josh nodded and followed behind Glitch as they got ready to leave the office. I stopped him with one question, because it was important that I got the answer to it before he hauled ass. “Are you serious about Melissa?”
“Yeah, I am.”
“Even though she claimed me as her old man in front of your niece?”
Josh heaved out a somewhat defeated sigh. “She panicked. I’m not fucking happy about it, but it’s something we can work through.”
“All right. You handle Lis. I’ll handle Sammy.”
“No one is handling my daughter,” Brian insisted.
