After Her Flower Petals: A Second Chance Romantic Comedy (The Svensson Brothers Book 7)

by Alina Jacobs

  A grin slowly spread across my face. “You’re jealous of Karen.”

  “Hardly.” Meg rolled her eyes.

  “You are. You hate the thought of her being with me.”

  “I don’t think about it at all,” Meg said, not looking at me. “If you want to waste your time with someone like Karen, I will have a glass of wine and watch the nuclear fallout from afar.”

  “You can’t fool me.” My hand came up to rest on her waist. “You’re all hot and bothered because you lost the election.”

  “I didn’t lose. I just didn’t win.”

  “I know,” I purred, “but it’s such a demanding endeavor; don’t you want a little stress relief?”

  Her body was just like I remembered it. My hand crept up slowly, waiting for her to pull away, but she didn’t. “You deserve a consolation prize,” I continued, breathing in her scent.

  “You’re right,” she said, one hand gliding up my chest. Her finger trailed up my collar to my jaw. I turned my head to press my mouth to her palm.

  “I think I do deserve a little consolation prize,” she said in a husky voice.

  Fuck. Yeah. I grew hard just thinking about fucking her.

  “In fact,” she said, her other hand snaking around my waist to my hip, “I think I’ll give Walter a call. Thanks for the inspiration, Hunter.” She slapped my ass and winked at me.

  Fuck.

  29

  Meghan

  I did not call Walter. Instead, I went home, gorged myself on cured meats and cheese with Kate and Susie, then worked after they left.

  I was concerned about my job. Not just that Hunter was going to win the election, but my to-do list was growing longer by the minute. While Barry had been pretty useless as mayor, he hadn’t been completely helpless. And now all his tasks had fallen to me.

  After working through the night, I showered, bought a cup of coffee and a bagel on the way to the campaign office, then worked on the agenda for the next community town hall meeting while simultaneously sitting on a conference call with the governor and his cabinet about some sort of initiative that Barry had been trying to win funding for. It was difficult to concentrate because Kate was gesturing at me that Ida and the Harrogate Girls Club were there wanting to get footage of me for some sort of video they were making. They were trying to assure me that it was absolutely not for anything related to the super PAC, which, by the way, they had decided to name Move on Top of Him.

  One of the state senators cursed then apologized. “That’s not Ida, is it?” he asked in a whisper over the phone. “You need to tell her she can’t keep sending suggestive photos to my work email.”

  I didn’t even want to know what was going on. “I will relay the message. Thank you for your time this morning, everyone.”

  I signed the form Kate had shoved in front of me then turned to solve my next problem.

  Bettina waved a video camera in my face. “Our esteemed deputy mayor working hard at work. See the cream cheese stain from her breakfast on her blazer.”

  “Oh shoot!” I said, taking off the jacket and dumping my bag out for a Tide pen. A box of condoms bounced out. “What the—why are those in there?” I scrambled to hide the box.

  “Had some extra inventory left,” Ida said cheerfully as Bettina turned off the camera.

  “I want to add my healthy Harrogate initiative to the agenda.”

  “I don’t know…”

  Kate was making “go on” gestures at me. Right. I needed Ida’s voters.

  “You can have three minutes to discuss it, no more,” I warned.

  She saluted me. “Yes, ma’am.”

  The city hall building was already chaotic when I walked in that evening. I was late because I’d had yet another long call with one of the regional planning commissioners, who wanted to discuss their proposed transportation plan. As if I was going to let them run a major state route right through the middle of downtown Harrogate.

  “Look who finally bothered to show up,” Karen said loudly.

  For fuck’s sake.

  “I apologize for my tardiness, everyone,” I said into the microphone.

  “Just another example of how you can’t handle being the mayor,” Karen said triumphantly.

  “Actually,” I said slowly, “as we all know, I am currently doing two jobs—both that of deputy mayor and that of mayor. It is quite a lot. So please bear with us during this transition period.”

  “That’s right!” Ida said, jumping up to defend me. “It’s because Meg is a gal who is on top of her shit. She isn’t just the future mayor! She’s a superwoman!”

  “Thank you, Ida. I call this meeting to order. First order of business, open items. This includes a temporary new deputy mayor appointment. As I mentioned, it is becoming a struggle for me to do both jobs. Are there any volunteers to step in as deputy mayor for the next few weeks until the election?”

  No one in the crowd moved.

  “Or we could take nominations. Hazel?”

  My sister looked up at the ceiling.

  Or not…

  “I have an idea,” Karen said.

  “The deputy mayor has to be an official resident of Harrogate,” I added hastily. There was no way in small-town hell that I was going to be working with Karen again. I would quit and let Hunter deal with herding all the cats.

  “I wasn’t suggesting I do it.” Karen scoffed. “But since we now have two mayoral candidates, you both could do the job of mayor, and then everyone could see how well each person performs.”

  “We need a deputy mayor,” I corrected. “As the deputy mayor, when Barry left, I moved up to interim mayor. There is a process…”

  “You’re just scared Hunter’s going to do the job better than you,” Karen shot back.

  No, I’m afraid that Hunter’s going to do absolutely nothing and take credit for all my work. Maybe I should just leave.

  “Motion to make the mayoral duties shared!” one of Hunter’s brothers yelled out.

  “Seconded!” Archer called.

  “Fine.” At least he can sit in on conference calls.

  After the meeting, I found Hunter surrounded by a number of his groupies, who mainly consisted of very elderly women who were admiring his muscles.

  “Look at that wrist action!” one of the women said as Hunter showed them his watch that cost ten times more than all my worldly possessions.

  “I’m forwarding you meeting invites,” I told him.

  “Uh-huh,” he said as one of the women pulled a one-eyed cat out of her purse and started waving it around.

  “If you’re seriously going to help, you need to be there,” I said, growing frustrated. Of course Hunter was blowing me off. “I’m expecting that you’re going to step up on some of these committee meetings.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Hunter said as one of his younger brothers zoomed by on those tennis shoes with the wheels and almost bowled over the old women and the cat. Hunter scooped up the kid under his arms.

  “There is a meeting at seven in the morning tomorrow,” I warned him. “You need to be there.”

  “Sure.” Hunter flashed a smile at me.

  I bet he doesn’t show up. Freaking liar.

  30

  Hunter

  As if I was going to attend a seven a.m. meeting with—I checked the calendar invite—the Harrogate Composting Committee. If I recalled, Barry had never gone to those meetings. The deputy mayor was supposed to do it. Barry usually didn’t even wake up until nine thirty, and then he took a very long breakfast.

  I deleted the reminder on the calendar invite then headed downstairs to deal with my brothers.

  “You can’t have those shoes if you’re going to use them inside,” I told Nate as I grabbed beef out of the freezer to cook dinner for the kids.

  “Why can’t Josie cook?” Nate whined at me.

  “Josie has better things to do than cater to you,” I told him.

  Isaac was slouched at the counter. “I don’t want anythin
g you make.”

  “Funny, because you’re just about old enough to be in charge of making dinner for everyone.”

  Isaac looked at me in horror. “But I’m in school!”

  “Then I guess you’d better be grateful for what I cook.”

  “I have snacks!” Davy offered Isaac, taking a handful of linty cat food out of his pocket.

  “Give me that,” I ordered.

  The rest of my brothers, aside from Remy, were out with their girlfriends all evening. They hadn’t even come back for dinner.

  Figures that they had left me here.

  That was how it always was. They had all flaked out, and I was stuck picking up the slack.

  I sat in one of the small salon rooms near the bedrooms. After catching one of the teenagers hacking into the security system, overwriting it with looped footage, then stealing a car to go joyriding, I now did random checks to catch them out of their rooms.

  While I sat there, I researched my father. It always hit me at night. In the dark, I was reminded of being alone in the compound, my little brothers and I all stacked up like puppies in a pound in one of the tiny bedrooms of the shack my father had forced me to help him build for us to live in. I hated him. I hated him more than anyone else in the world, and yet I still wasn’t able to end him.

  The FBI agent I was working with had no news. My father was too smart to be caught. Plus, my brothers insisted on trying to destroy Leif, and I was sure one of them had inadvertently tipped him off.

  I checked my watch. I needed to make another round. I peeked in each of my brothers’ rooms. They had their own—that was one of the reasons I had insisted on this estate house. I didn’t want them to be kicked out of the cult and then have to live in a similar situation in which they were constantly fighting for food and space. However, old habits were hard to break, and frequently, they would end up bunking together in one room.

  I did a head count. Two rooms were empty, but the next had five of my little brothers piled in Isaac’s bed with the teenager shoved into the corner. I smiled. There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do for my family. And that was one of the reasons Meg had kicked me to the curb.

  I glared down the dark hallway.

  “Hunter?” a little voice said.

  I turned. Justin was behind me, standing in the middle of the hallway, eyeing me warily.

  “You’re supposed to be asleep.”

  He stepped back when I took a step toward him then visibly relaxed when the moonlight from the window hit my face.

  “Thought you were Dad,” he said in relief, running to me.

  “You will never have to see him again,” I promised, picking up the kid and cuddling him to my chest.

  Meg had thought I had wanted her in my life because I wanted to foist the kids on her. That couldn’t be further from the truth. She’d had to take care of her sisters, just like I had to take care of my brothers. I had wanted someone in my life who knew what that was like and respected the sacrifice.

  Except you haven’t been able to rescue your sisters.

  Thinking about my sisters had ruined the rest of my night. My father was never going to release his hold on them. We weren’t even sure how many there even were, though it wasn’t that many. The great irony of my father being the patriarch of a polygamist doomsday cult was that he seemed to be able to father only boys. Girls were preferred in those types of sister wife environments for obvious reasons.

  I pushed myself to run faster along the trails that wound through the large acreage to the back of the property, trying to outrun all the bad memories. A few miles later, I was sweaty, and the blood was pounding in my head as I slowed to a jog and bounded up the terrace steps. I stripped off my shirt when I walked back into the house, wiping my face with it.

  “Coffee?” Mace called as I walked into the dining room. He handed me a mug from a carafe that was on the long buffet. The kids were being herded outside to the bus to take them to school.

  “Must be nice not to have to go to work,” Parker commented snidely.

  “Must be nice to hand out in town at all hours of the night,” I retorted, “and only come back to change clothes and grab a free meal.”

  Parker refilled his mug and raised a hand.

  “Stop making rude gestures,” Mace scolded our younger brother. “You’re the CTO of a major company. You need to act like it. Besides, Hunter’s just mad about the family meeting tonight.”

  “He should be looking forward to it,” Garrett said mildly as he swung his laptop bag over his shoulder. “Crawford’s coming. The fireworks should be a sight to behold.”

  I sipped my coffee as my brothers left. My smart watch reminded me that the meeting about composting had already started. I hit the ignore button.

  I did not have the patience for a small-town meeting. Besides, I needed to worry about my father. Many of my sisters were almost at the age the cult deemed girls marriageable. Time was running out. We had to do something; we couldn’t just sit around and talk about potential solutions.

  I poured another cup of coffee. I was exhausted. If it wasn’t my father haunting my sleep, it was Meg. She could not be with Walter.

  I won’t allow it.

  I balked. I sounded like my father. He loved to control people, keep them off-balance and beholden to him. What if I was doing the same thing to Meg? What if I didn’t really love her; I just wanted to control her?

  Fuck. I rubbed my eyes. You’re just tired. Take a shower and take a nap.

  Ding-dong.

  I frowned. I didn’t recall anyone ringing at the front gate. Paranoia crept into my thoughts.

  What if it was my father? He had shown up in Harrogate a few months back and set off a nuclear bomb among my family.

  I put down the coffee then grabbed one of the knives from the kitchen and snuck to the front door. But when I peeked through the curtains, it wasn’t my father standing on the stoop. Instead, it was the whole gaggle of the Harrogate composting committee… and Meg.

  I swung the door open. “Why are you even—”

  One of the older women screamed.

  31

  Meghan

  It was seven a.m.… and Hunter was nowhere to be found.

  “I guess we should start without him,” Edith said.

  “No,” I replied irritably. “He is supposed to be taking on a portion of the mayoral duties. He doesn’t just get to sleep in then take all the credit for our hard work.”

  I called his cell phone, tapping my pen on my notepad, annoyed. “Of course he’s not answering.”

  “You know how men are,” Edith said, patting me on the arm. “Maybe the two of you can go have lunch, and you can give him the rundown later.”

  “I am not sacrificing my time to make him look good because he couldn’t bother showing up for a meeting that I reminded him multiple times about,” I declared. “Absolutely not.” I stood up, grabbing my bag.

  “So we’re not going to have the meeting?” Dottie asked.

  “Of course we’re having the meeting,” I told her, smiling. “We are going to have it at Hunter’s house.”

  The Svensson brothers were leaving for school or work, depending on their ages, as I pulled up at the gate.

  Garrett smirked when he saw me through his windshield and hit a clicker, letting me swing the decrepit station wagon through the tall iron gate and down the wide drive flanked by old-growth white pines. The huge, sprawling stone mansion of the historic Harrogate estate loomed in front of me as I parked the car with a jerk in the roundabout. Hunter’s black Tesla gleamed in the early-morning sun.

  “I declare,” Bettina said as Edith helped her shakily out of the back of the car. “Meg, you really should treat yourself to a better car.”

  “If you made up with Hunter, I’m sure he’d buy you one,” Dottie said.

  “Not after we surprise him.” I shoved my hip up against the passenger’s door, trying to make it latch close then gave up and made a mental note to buy some duc
t tape. “I do not need to rely on Hunter for favors.”

  “As Ida always told me, if you’re not getting any enjoyment out of sex, then you’re not doing it right,” Dottie said earnestly.

  “I’ve been developing a great smoked-beet lubricant,” Edith told me as I helped her up the tall stone front steps to the solid oak front door.

  “Don’t use it,” Bettina warned. “You smear that thing on, and it looks like a murder scene in your bed. I thought I had started my period until I remembered I was postmenopausal. You ruined my good sheets,” she said irately to Edith.

  “It’s better than that stuff you’re buying online,” Edith retorted as she mashed the doorbell while I wondered why in heaven’s name I had thought coming here was a good idea.

  “I actually think it’s great for anal,” Dottie chirped. I gritted my teeth.

  “The yam one you gave me was too thick.”

  “I guess he’s not here,” I said after a few moments and no sounds from inside.

  “Why don’t we all go to Hazel’s and grab a—”

  Dottie screamed and almost fell back in my arms as the door swung open, and Hunter, half naked with a crazed gleam in his eyes, stood there with a knife.

  “You’re going to give one of these poor women a stroke!” I scolded Hunter as he bit back a curse and threw the knife in the umbrella stand.

  “Help me bring her inside.”

  “I’m fine! I’m fine,” Dottie insisted. She reached up to cup Hunter’s jaw. “I just had a spontaneous orgasm.”

  That was how the meeting started, and it went downhill from there.

  “I’m sorry. I completely forgot what time it was,” Hunter said, lying through his perfect teeth. Not that the horny seniors on the composting committee cared.

  “You know how it is taking care of all these children,” Hunter added.