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I arched a brow. “At least I’m willing to employ you.”When no one else is.
My parents had hoped my work ethic would rub off on Declan, but since I scheduled him to work when I wasn’t there, that was unlikely. I sighed. I wasn’t taking the blame for his slacker ways, but I supposed there was more I could do.
“Whatever,” he muttered and shuffled out the door.
“You’re too hard on him,” Carmen said. “He’s trying to get his shit together.”
“He needs to try harder,” I retorted.
If he hadn’t been my brother, I would have fired his lazy ass his first day. All of my other siblings were productive members of society, so why couldn’t he be? My parents weren’t hard enough on him, so someone had to be. I reaffirmed my commitment to my tough-love style of dealing with Declan.
“There’s always the military,” Wes suggested. “It whipped my ass into shape.”
I shook my head. “He wouldn’t survive boot camp.”
“Sure he would,” Wes said. “He’d have no choice.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
Wes drained the last of his coffee and stood. “I gotta go. The hippies are frolicking on the beach again today.”
“Have fun with that,” I said, glad it was him and not me.
Participants in the retreat were supposed to be cleansing their bodies along with their minds, so that meant few of them would be patronizing my place. I was okay with that. I doubted they’d be my kind of people.
Damn.I sounded like a judgmental bastard even in my own mind.Not judgmental. Just honest about my opinions.
“Flip the sign on your way out, please,” Carmen called. Wes did as she asked, turning the sign to Closed. She sighed. “As usual, I baked way too much. Hudson might be right. By the time summer rolls around, the cops aren’t going to fit into their uniforms.”
I snickered at the thought of the buttons popping off of Wes’s uniform. Carmen shot me a sharp look, and I quieted. I was an asshole. “Package them up, and I’ll put them out tonight.”
“I’m not sure lemon bars mesh well with IPA.”
I snorted. “Everything goes well with IPA.”
Despite her objections, my sister assembled a cardboard bakery box to pack up the bars. “Have you talked to Mom lately?”
A pang of guilt hit me. “Not for the last few days. Why?”
“She’s really stressed about Paul’s surgery.” Paul, our stepdad, was undergoing a long-overdue hip replacement. When he’d nearly fallen at Christmas, he’d finally put aside his pride and admitted he needed help.
“What’s she worried about?” I asked. “They’re confident in the doctor.” I’d even gone with them to one of the pre-op appointments to calm their nerves.
“I think she’s more concerned about the recovery. Paul is not going to take to being out of commission for several weeks.”
“Which is why we set up a schedule, remember? Between the eight of us kids, we’ll keep him entertained. And I’ll be there the first few days to help him get around.” Since my mom was petite, it would be difficult for her to support his weight. Declan was the more obvious choice to help out since he didn’t have shit to do, but I didn’t trust him to be reliable, even with something as important as this.
“I know that, but maybe give her a call? You’ve always been better at talking her off the ledge.”
I’d been six years old when my biological father abandoned the family, shortly after the twins were born. Out of the four Ramsey kids, I was the only one who remembered him, but I didn’t remember much. My mom didn’t marry Paul until I was twelve, so for a while, as the oldest kid in the house, I had picked up some of the slack. My mom and I had a unique relationship as a result. She’d started treating me as an adult way earlier than any of my other siblings.
“I’ll do better than that,” I said. “I’ll go by.”
I should have done that before, anyway. It bothered me that I had to hear about how she was doing from my sister. If my mom was worried, she should have talked to me and not stressed out my siblings. She should have known I would handle it.
“Great. Because if I know Paul, he’ll use any excuse—even Mom’s worrying—to put off the procedure.”
Not if I had anything to say about it. We’d been about to stage an intervention when he’d caved. “I got it covered, sis.”
