“All right,” she said, louder this time. “And thank you. I don’t know what to say about all you’re—”

He gentled his voice when he cut her off with, “You don’t have to say anything, Josie.”

He heard her sigh and pointed the truck toward town.

“If you like, the kids can come over,” she offered. “The Fletchers are coming for dinner tomorrow night but I can make enough for all of you.”

“Not sure Reverend Fletcher wants to break bread with the owner of the local strip club,” he replied.

“Oh,” she whispered, then again louder, “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“We’ll come over Monday night. Con’s off work and Ethan’s been talkin’ your meatloaf up. Con’s feelin’ left out.”

“I would enjoy meeting your eldest child but I can’t do Monday night. Maybe we can do Tuesday?”

“Can’t do Tuesday. Con’s workin’,” he told her. “What do you have on Monday night?”

“I’m having a drink with Boston Stone at the Club.”

His chest seized and his hand tightened on the steering wheel as his lips forced out, “Come again?”

“I know,” she stated even though he didn’t know until she gave it to him, “It’s irritating.”

He looked her way and saw she also looked irritated. Then again, as polished as she was, Josie still tended to let it all hang out.

He looked back to the road and asked, “He on you about selling the house?”

“He’s told me he’s given up on the house,” she shared. “He wants to”—a pause then, with frustrated emphasis—“get to know me.”

Jesus. Shit.

“He’s makin’ a play when your Gran just died?”

“Yes, and he isn’t easy to put off. So I’ll put him off face to face.”

No, she wouldn’t.

Jake would put him off.

Therefore, he declared, “I’ll deal with it.”

He felt her eyes on him. “Pardon?”

“I’ll deal with it,” he repeated.

“How?”

“Don’t worry about how. Just know it’ll be done and me and the kids’ll be over Monday night.”

“I…” Another pause then, “Maybe I should phone him and be clearer about how I feel about not wishing to get to know him.”

“Babe, what’d I say?”

“What did you say?”

“Yes, what’d I say?”

“I don’t—”

“I’ll deal with it.”

She fell silent.

He simmered.

Boston Stone, fucking dick.

Jake barely knew him but from this shit, he knew he was a fucking dick.

That said, the man was perfect for her. All his money, his class, his power. It wasn’t surprising Josie caught his eye. He had the money to get the best of everything and he was the kind of guy who had it in him to know exactly what the best was. And he didn’t have to know the guy to know he frequently indulged in both, what with the asshole lording his shit all over town.

She decided to change the subject and he knew this when she asked, “What are the children doing tonight?”

“Amber, pouting because she had a date with Noah that she had to break because she’s grounded. She also has no access to the phone so that means she can’t call his ass and talk with him in her bedroom for hours like she normally does. Ethan’s probably eating a shitload of crap so he’ll have a stomachache that’ll wake him up at about two in the morning, which means my ass will be up at two o’clock in the morning. And Con’s always got his old man’s back. In order to look after Ethan and make sure Amber doesn’t do anything that’ll get her into more trouble, one of his girls is comin’ over rather than him takin’ her out.”

“One of his girls?” she asked.

“He’s got five. Steady.”

There was a heavy pause before, “How can he have five steady girls?”

“No clue how the kid manages it, Slick, just know he does. That doesn’t mean those five get along and like sharin’. Just know they put up with it whatever Con does to make ‘em do it.”

“I do not see good things in the future about this, Jake,” she declared. “Women don’t like to share. This détente may last for a while but it won’t last forever.”

“He’s got his hand in the candy bowl and he’s keepin’ it there, he’s gotta deal with the pain when someone bitchslaps him to pull it out.”

“A difficult lesson to learn,” she murmured.

“Conner’s like his dad. He learns by doin’ or, in some cases, by fuckin’ up and tryin’ to be smart enough not to fuck up the same way again.”

He knew he had her eyes again when she protested, “But people are involved, in this case girls and their hearts, and they might get hurt.”

He looked her way to see she was looking at him and he gave her a shake of his head before looking back to the road. “That’s the difficult part, Josie. A man’s any man at all, the first woman he hurts, he learns not to do that shit again. Good he learns at seventeen rather than twenty-five when shit might count.”

She said nothing to that for some time and Jake had pulled off Cross Street and onto the coastal road when she spoke again.

“When did you learn that?”

“How do you think I got married three times?” he answered.

He sensed he again had her eyes when she asked, “Pardon?”

“Learned early. Not at seventeen but saw a girl, had a girl on the side my sophomore year in college. They found out about that shit, it did not go down very well. I felt like a total fuckin’ asshole mostly ‘cause I was. The look on my girl’s face. Fuck.” He shook his head at the road. “Never forget that look, honey.”

“And how did this lead you to getting married three times?”

“Didn’t want to see that look again, got no clue how to get shot of a woman so I find I got her ring on my finger instead of seeing her in my rearview.”

“You…” she paused and her voice was higher pitched when she went on, “married women instead of ending things with them?”

He grinned at the road. “Never claimed to be Einstein.”

“Indeed you haven’t,” she murmured.

“How real do you want it?” he asked.

“How”—another pause—“real?”

“Honest. Straight up. How much of that can you take?”

“You’ve been astoundingly open already, Jake.”

He glanced at her again before looking back to the road and asking, “We gettin’ to know each other?”

“Yes.”

“Are you mine?”

A shocked, “Pardon me?”

“Did Lydie give you to me, babe,” he explained.

“Well…yes.”

Fuck yes.

There it was.

She was his.

“Then you’re mine,” he stated. “And that means you’re my kids’. And that means we gotta dig in there and give each other shit. So we shouldn’t hide and anyway, I got nothin’ to hide. I did what I did, made stupid decisions, fucked up, I’m still standing, my kids are healthy and happy. Not countin’ Amber pouting and being an occasional pain in the ass, Con serial dating and Ethan mourning the only grandmother he’ll really ever know.”

There was another pause before, quietly, she began, “His other grandmothers—”

“My ma’s dead, babe. So’s my dad,” Jake told her. “His mom’s dad is also gone and her mom lives up in Bridgewater. Sweet lady but a little whacked. She’s a hoarder, doesn’t leave her house and I don’t want my kid in a house like that. Plus, it isn’t exactly close. They talk on the phone. That’s all he’s got.”

“I’m sorry to hear of this, including about your parents, Jake,” she said, voice still soft.

“We deal, Josie,” he replied in the same tone.

He didn’t ask about her parents.

This was because he knew her father was dead. He’d asked his cop buddy, Coert, to look into it because Lydie asked him to and Coert found that shit out. He also knew her uncle was alive. And he knew her mother was off the grid, probably buried so deep under whatever identity she took when she escaped Josie’s assclown of a father, if she was alive, she’d never surface, even though her motherfucker of a husband was long gone.

Bitch should have taken her daughter.

But the bitch left her daughter to a monster.

“Would you like to, well…share about how you lost your parents?” she asked carefully.

He didn’t hesitate before he gave it to her.

“Dad, aneurysm. Right at work. Sixty-four. A few months from retirement it hits him, he’s down. Gone. Ethan was born three months later.”

“Jake,” she whispered but said no more.

Jake did.

“Ma died when Eath was nearly two. He doesn’t remember her. She had an infection, didn’t catch it, thought it was just bein’ tired ‘cause she was sad she lost Dad. By the time she looked into that shit, it had done a number on her heart. Too much damage to repair. Few months later, she just slipped away. Amber was tight with her, though. Like with Lydie, she took it hard.”

To this, he got nothing.

When he continued to get nothing, he turned his head and saw she was looking out the side window.

He looked back to the road.

Fuck, he was a dick.

“Josie,” he said gently. “I’m sorry, baby. I shouldn’t have gotten into that shit.”

“Life happens, Jake,” she replied quietly. “And you’re just being”—she hesitated— “real.”

Too real.

“We’ll stop talking about that.”

She said nothing.

He drove on.

Finally, she broke the silence. “So, being, erm…real. Your wives?”

Terrific.

Now he got to give her not him being a dick but instead being an idiot.

“Donna, the first one, loved her. Probably shouldn’t have divorced her. She wanted it, I didn’t get it, but I gave it to her.”

“That sounds odd,” she noted when he said no more.

“It was,” he agreed. “To this day, I still don’t get it but what I get pisses me off so I try not to think about it.”

“You don’t have to share,” she offered.

That made him grin.

“Babe, laid myself out already. Too late for that.”

“Indeed,” she murmured but he heard a smile in her voice too and he looked at her to catch it.

He got a glimpse before returning his eyes to the road and he was glad he took that shot.

She was pretty normally. When she smiled though…

Jesus.

“Though, I don’t want you to get angry,” she went on.

“Too much time has passed, not worth it to get angry anymore,” he told her.

“All right,” she replied and he went for it.

“We fought, not all the time, but that shit happens,” he told her. “And honest to Christ, don’t know what was up her ass but something was. She got her teeth in it and wouldn’t let it go then wouldn’t let anything go then wanted to let me go. How I remember it starting was she wanted a new car. I couldn’t afford a new one so I bought her a used one. It was better than the one she had so I thought she was good. She didn’t. Told me I never listened to her. I told her I did but we couldn’t afford a brand new car. She got shitty, kept bein’ shitty, kicked my ass out. Lost her man but got herself a new car.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she snapped, suddenly pissed and he fought back the grin. But he had to admit he liked it that she gave him that emotion.

“That shit happened. She tried reconciliation. What we had was good, so I tried with her but seein’ as that shit kept comin’ up for me and pissing me off, it didn’t work. She threw away a marriage, a family, for a new car. Not down with that.”

“I heartily agree,” she declared and at that, he didn’t fight the grin.

He gave into it.

“Still, life led me to eventually gettin’ Ethan outta it, wouldn’t have had him with Donna so I guess shit works out the way it should.”

“Yes,” she agreed.

This was breathy and he didn’t know why. But he liked the way it sounded.

“Mandy, number two, was the shit,” he kept going. “Loved her too. She was all over me, all over bein’ stepmom to my kids. Put a ring on her finger, she wanted me, realized, 24/7, she couldn’t hack kids. She took off. Just one day came home and she was gone. Got the divorce papers in the mail. Haven’t seen her since. Good news was, I didn’t have her ticket, but the kids did so it rocked my world but they were glad she was gone.”

“That, well…rocking of your world sounds unpleasant.”

Jake shook his head at her words and the way she said them.

Fuck, half the time with her and the way she talked, he didn’t know whether to laugh or kiss her.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t do the last and didn’t think she’d appreciate him doing the first so he did neither.

“It wasn’t, honey, but don’t worry. Got over it quick, her hauling ass like that. Not cool. Figured, in the end, she was like that, I got off clean and did it fast, so I did all right.”