Page 103 of Captivated

Then, the men were gone. That left Joe with Lucian as his phone rang again, but he didn’t mind answering the call with him there. It was the phone designated for his family, anyway. He figured it probably wasn’t sensitive, or about business.

Tugging the phone out, he put it to his ear as he took another bite. “Hello?”

“Are you talking with your mouth full?”

At the sound of his mother’s amused chiding, Joe quickly chewed the bite and swallowed it a little too fast. It half-lodged in his airway, but then scraped its way all the way down to his stomach.

“No,” he croaked.

“Liar,” Lily said, laughing. “When are you coming home? You’re forgetting your manners being away this long, and I don’t like it.”

“Or you miss me, Ma.”

“Yeah, that too. And your father. Cory. Mon.”

“Cory misses pestering my ass.”

“What are little brothers for?”

They had been telling him that his whole life. Thing was, Joe enjoyed the pestering as much as his brother enjoyed handing it over. He just wasn’t going to tell Cory that.

“I don’t know when I’m going to be back, Ma,” he settled on saying.

“Oh.”

“What, Ma?”

“I think your little friend here is missing you, that’s all.”

Joe smiled at the way his mother twisted the word friend. That’s what he’d offered to her when he called to explain what he could about Liliana, and her stay in Chicago. And then his mother pressed and pressed more until he admitted she was a little more than a friend to him.

A hell of a lot more.

His person.

That one person his father talked about—every man had one, Damian liked to tell him. You just have to find her, son.

Well, he had.

And now she was a couple of states away.

“I like her,” Lily added when Joe stayed quiet.

“Do you?”

“She’s wonderful, Joe.”

“I knew you would, Ma.”

“I bet.” Lily sighed. “Well, that’s all I really called to say. Oh, and Cory is planning to go over and keep her company tomorrow morning.”

“Tell him not to be an annoying ass.”

“Call him, and tell him yourself.”

His mother hung up.

Well, damn.