For now, I’d take anything I could to just hang around with him and enjoy the easy way he could make me laugh and live.
Chapter Three
Levi
I was focused on the geological reports that I’d just received for a site we were looking at, so it wasn’t until Tate said her name that I actually listened in to what he was saying. “…Charlotte. I think it’s because she sees you as a science experiment or a freak of medical nature, but Lily thinks she has a crush on you.”
Looking up from the graphs and printouts covering the wooden surface, I frowned over at my brother. “Why would she think I was a freak of medical nature? Y’all just told me I was a freak of nature when we were kids.”
Shrugging, he tossed the apple in his hand up in the air. “Because you are.”
Closing my eyes in frustration, I dropped my head down, doing my best to talk myself out of what I wanted to do badly… and failed. Without even moving my upper body, I kicked out with my right leg, clipping him in the shin with steel toe cap of my safety boot. “Ow, you big, fat monkey sack. What was that for?”
Fifteen months was all that separated us - with me being the younger brother - but sometimes it felt like I was ten years older than him.
It had always been that way, though, especially after I’d met my best friend Luna when we were just kids. I’d seen a vulnerable little girl, and even though I didn’t know her story then, I’d known that she’d needed to be protected. I’d been way too young to take on the role by myself, but I’d done it anyway, and had also brought her into my family so they could help out. It was an unspoken agreement from day one – we knew she was going through shit at home, and we all looked out for her from that day forward.
When I’d found out the full extent of it all, it hadn’t been because she’d begged me not to do anything that I hadn’t ended up in prison. It had actually been the twat in front of me who’d made it all sink in when he’d asked me who would protect her like I did if I was locked up in a cell. If we’d known that her dad was going to kidnap her and put her through hell for years, though, we maybe would have said fuck it to that question and buried him in a field – and that’s something I was going to have to live with for the rest of my life. She was safe now, though, happily married to my brother, and now a mom to the light in heart, my niece Jamie.
Sighing, I stood up and turned to rest my ass on the table, losing interest in the paperwork I’d been looking at. “I don’t think I need to explain or justify my actions after all these years.”
Shooting a glare at me, he rubbed his shin dramatically. Well, maybe not so dramatically seeing as how those steel toe caps were kind of brutal. “I’m going to show her what you’ve done so she can see how mean you are.”
“You swap maturity levels with Rebel?”
Rebel was his newborn daughter and had been named by her mom who had the most fucked up names for her pets, and now her child. My niece’s full name was Rebel Rowser Townsend – can you believe that shit? Then again, Lily also had a chicken called King Ferdinand the Chicken – aka KFC – and another one called Bojangles, who was the size of a Pterodactyl. Who names their chickens after restaurants that specialize in freaking chicken? And her dogs, those poor furry bastards, their names were just as bad.
And I knew just how to wind my brother up. “Hey, what do you think she’s gonna call your next kid? Creedence Clearwater? Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat?”
“I’m willing to bet big bucks it’ll be Chick Fil-A or Big Mac,” a voice said, making both of us jump. I don’t know how he did it, but our eldest brother Archer was a sneaky bastard who had mastered the ability to appear out of thin air at a young age.
“Funny fuckers, the two of you,” Tate muttered, picking his apple up and biting into it. “At least I have a woman.” Unable to leave it at that, he asked smugly, “How are Charlotte and Bonnie by the way? Haven’t seen them around here for…” he paused, “ever.”
Leaning a shoulder against the wall, Archer looked coolly at him. “That’s a lie, Bonnie was here last night visiting Dahlia. As you know, seeing as how you were there, too.”
Doing my best to hide how tense I was over the question, I straightened my legs out in front of me, and crossed my arms over my chest. “And I know for a fact you also bumped into Charlotte yesterday, when you went to help Parker move his office around.” Something which I’d been told by Parker, obviously.
Sighing, he took another large bite, and chewed slowly on it, thinking over a comeback for both of us. When he finally knew what it was, he swallowed - what was probably nothing given how long he’d taken - and then shrugged. “Yeah, but the difference is that she wasn’t here to see you,” he glanced at Archer, “and Charlotte didn’t mention you,” he directed at me. “If y’all want tips on how to get your women, all you have to do is say.”
Looking over the top of his head, Archer and I just blinked at each other, not needing to ask if he was serious out loud.
“You mean by knocking her up?” A voice asked sweetly from the doorway, this time making Archer jump, too.
A smile I’d only ever seen aimed at Lily took over Tate’s face as he jumped up and walked over to where she was holding their daughter, the infamous Rebel Rowser – at least, with a name like that she would be.
“Hey, baby,” he greeted, giving her a soft kiss, making both of us gag. Shooting a glare over his shoulder and ignoring Lily’s snort, he leaned down to his sleeping daughter. “Hey, angel face.”
Now that wasn’t an exaggeration. Somehow, both of my brother’s daughters were angel faces, regardless of the devil spawn who’d sired them. I’d been certain that they’d be born with horns and a tail, but they looked like miniature Disney princesses. Hell, I even had a photo of Jamie holding a silver bangle over her head like a halo, taken when she was only three weeks old.
She’d been having some photos taken by a professional photographer, and I’d had the idea to get her to hold the bangle – which I’d given to Luna for her birthday – thinking it would look cute in her tiny fist. When she’d raised her arm and bent it so her hand was over her head and the bangle had looked like a halo, phones had come out of everyone’s pockets so that they could catch the moment, and the photographer had kept her finger on the button of her camera praying loudly at least one photo turned out well.
“Thought I’d come and check in on you, and it seems it’s just as well I did,” Lily told him, moving further into the room and passing Rebel to Archer. “Go see your uncle, baby. He needs precious loves because your daddy’s an ass.”
Glaring at her, Tate snapped, “Hey!” You might think it was because of the insult that had just been lobbed his way, but it was because she’d passed his daughter to his brother and not him that was the problem.
Archer turned so his shoulder blocked him when he went to reach for her. “Get your own.”
“She is my own,” he growled.
“Then don’t be so selfish and learn to share.”
Sitting down in the chair her husband had just vacated, Lily shook out her arms. “She might not weigh a whole lot in the grand scheme of things, but man alive my arms are aching.”
“Maybe it’s because of the man-sized child standing sulking behind you,” I suggested, looking pointedly over her shoulder at where he was still glaring at our brother.
Following where I was looking, she called, “Tate, come and sit down and let him cuddle his niece for Pete’s sake.”
It’s funny how a saying like ‘Pete’s sake’ can make you cringe, isn’t it? Well, that’s what it made me do when she said it, remembering the guy who’d been attached to Charlotte the last time I’d seen her.
Actually, it hadn’t been the last time I’d seen her – that was the morning after it when I’d woken up and found her sleeping next to me in my bed. I’d rolled over and tugged her closer to me and had fallen straight back to sleep. When I’d woken up, though, she’d been gone, and I hadn’t heard from her since.
&nbs
p; It had only been a couple of days, but I felt like a part of me was missing. We’d gone from sending texts regularly – and as often as we could with our jobs – to complete silence. And I didn’t like it.
Fortunately, Tate was stubborn to a fault, and always had been – in fact, if I was honest, we all were – so he distracted me from my sulking.
Shooting one last glare at Archer, he turned and his face changed completely as he looked softly at his wife, before walking over and sitting down in the chair next to where she was. When that wasn’t enough, he scooped her out of her chair, and lowered her into his lap, holding her close to him.
“How are you feeling?” he murmured into her hair.
It had taken all of us days to get over it the first time we’d seen him acting like this with Lily. Tate was the joker and the one who lived life to the max in the family. So seeing him soft and tender with her? Yeah, that had taken some time and a couple of shots to get our heads around.
It also hadn’t helped that the first time I’d truly been an asshole in my life had been with Lily when we’d found out she was pregnant, and I’d pretty much called bullshit on it being his baby. I knew she’d forgiven me for it, but I still hadn’t forgiven myself. I hadn’t even gotten past the feeling that I’d let Luna down, so I was pretty sure the guilt of what I’d done to both women was going to be with me for life.
“I’m good,” she mumbled, practically curling around him. “Just tired.”
I knew Rebel was having issues sleeping at night - like most newborn babies - and even my brother looked exhausted just now.
“Why don’t we watch her for an hour or two, and y’all go home and have a nap?” I suggested, ignoring the panicked look Archer shot me. “I’m looking over these for a while,” I gestured at the paperwork, “and Archer has some calls to make to the office, so we’ll be fine.”
Slapping her hand over Tate’s mouth as he opened it, Lily nodded eagerly. “If you’re sure?” She didn’t even wait for a response from us as she stood up and tugged his hand to get him to follow. “Don’t taint this for me,” she warned him. “Just get up, follow me, and sleep.”
Giving us a last look over his shoulder as he was led out of the room, Tate went to say something – more than likely something insulting – but his wife yelled, “Move it, Townsend. Don’t you dare ruin my chance to get some sleep. I’m running on the emptiest that empty can be.”
Concern took over, and he jogged away from us. “Here, let me carry you, baby. And don’t think you’re not in trouble. I told you I’d do some of the night feeds, but you kept telling me it was ok.”
“You work with heavy machinery and technical stuff every day, Tate,” she mumbled, her voice only just audible the farther away from us they got. “I don’t want you being so tired you get injured.”
Sitting down in the chair Lily had just been in, Archer looked down at Rebel. “Aw, isn’t that sickening,” he cooed. “One day, when you’re a grown-up girl, you can puke on them when they talk like that.”
“I think she does that anyway,” I pointed out, knowing it was a fact. “And she doesn’t need them being all gross and shit for it to happen.”
Shrugging, he looked back down at her. “What do you do for fun then, kid? Do you wanna play on my phone?” he asked, sounding hopeful as he pulled it out of his back pocket and shook it next to her.
Holding my hands out to take her from him, I rolled my eyes at how relieved he looked when he passed her over. “She’s only a couple of months old, man. She doesn’t play on phones yet.”
“I call bullshit on that. Kids are born with the manuals of smart phones, tablets, computers in their brains nowadays.”
Looking down at the baby who was watching me with what I swear was an amused look on her face, I came up with an idea. “Wanna go see the nice nurse?”
My brother started to snort and say something smart, but then an idea hit him. “Yeah, that’s a great idea. We’ll take her to go see Charlotte at the hospital.”
Locking the door of the office, we made our way to our parent's house where there was a spare car seat for Rebel and Jamie, and then headed to see the pretty nurse.
I wasn’t blind about why Archer was so enthusiastic about going – it was the first Tuesday of the month, and that meant that Bonnie was going to be there at her monthly appointment with the geneticist. She saw him every month about her atavism, and they’d do scans and blood tests for him to take back to some big college to study.
The following month, they’d discuss the results, look at other cases she’d found, and look at other parts of her genetic makeup, hoping to understand why it happened. And Archer wanted the opportunity to catch her when she couldn’t run away from him, just like I was doing with Charlotte.
And what better way to get that to happen than with our beautiful niece in our arms.
Charlotte
“I don’t know how you can work with him,” Ariana muttered, glaring at Parker’s back. “He’s such a… a… wank stain.”
I bit down on the corner of my lip to hide my grin as I put the Band-Aid over her ‘injury’. Apparently she’d scraped it when she was trying to get into her car – and far away from the Parker in question, but we’ll gloss over that – and he’d freaked out and brought her in.
He knew full well she didn’t need stitches, hell she didn’t even need the Steri-Strips he’d put over it to hold the wound closed. No, the truth was he was head over heels for the girl, but she had her walls built tougher than Fort Knox and he was trying to break them down.
Because of his feelings he was jumpy when it came to her safety, so his overreaction to this tiny injury was all of that rolled into one.
Feeling sorry for the guy, I pointed out, “At least he cares, Ari.”
Over the months since I’d met the Townsends we’d become good friends, and I loved the girl to pieces. She was like an M&M – a crispy coating, with a soft center, and once you got through that coating you got the sweetest surprise. But don’t ever forget the crispy coating because hers was reinforced.
Frowning at me, she looked around us like she was just realizing where we were. Had she hit her head, too? Parker hadn’t mentioned it, but it might account for why he was acting the way he was. “What are you doing in the ER?”
“Uh, Parker brought you in, Ari. You hurt yourself,” I pointed at the Band-Aid and tried to discretely check her pupils while she was looking at me.
“I know that, but you’re not usually down here,” she growled, and I realized what she meant.
Sighing, I crossed my arms and tried to shake off the funk I had going on. Today had been a shitty day, and on top of it I missed her brother.
I hadn’t slept properly since the whole skydiving-gate thing and had only gotten a maximum of forty-five minutes sleep for the last couple of nights. I was irritated, exhausted, emotional, and hormonal.
Yup, to add insult to injury, my period had hit the morning after we’d gone skydiving, meaning that I had to run for my life or poor Levi would have woken up to a mess. Fucking joy.
“Things were quiet upstairs and they were understaffed down here, so I came to help out,” I told her. “Plus, I heard that my favorite patient in the world had been brought in by her favorite doctor in the world – and who would want to miss that?”
Before she could reply, the doctor in question came back holding a disposable tray. “Ok, I’ve got the tetanus one ready,” he said, picking the syringe up and looking over at her. “If you can…”
Jumping off the bed, she put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “If you come near me with that thing, I’ll shove it up your dick.”
“Whoa,” I said loudly, holding my hands up in front of me. “Ok, let’s settle down a bit. Ari, he’s only…”
“I see we’ve got here just in time,” a voice I recognized said behind me. “Nurse Pretty, will you please hold this little angel while we assist the good doctor?” Levi asked when I turned around, holding out a baby to
me.
My arms shot out automatically, the irrational fear that he’d think they were there when they weren’t hitting me, and he put a sleeping bundle of beauty in them.
Bringing her closer to my chest, I recognized her as Tate and Lily’s daughter Rebel, and my heart melted. I’d been there when she came out into the world, and they’d asked me to be her godmother last week before Levi had jumped out of the plane. I wanted to do that for them and Rebel badly, even though I had some reservations given what might be happening to me in the near future, but there was also the chance that it could be a positive thing, so I’d said yes.
I didn’t know what a godmother did, but I’d make sure I followed the instructions once I got the chance to look them up.
“I’ll take heads, you take tails,” a voice that I recognized as belonging to Archer this time rumbled, as he moved around me to join his brother.
Taking a step away from them, I watched as both men moved at the same time to hold Ariana in place for the vaccination. I’d expected them to just grab her arms and hold her still, but Archer wrapped his around her upper half, anchoring her own arms tightly against her body, while Levi squatted and wrapped his around her legs.
“Oh my God,” she screeched, “you’re not seriously doing this. I’m an adult, I get to pick and choose when I get a…” she trailed off when Parker took a step toward her and uncapped the syringe. “Swear to God, Knight, if you touch me with that, I’ll…”
Oh, he touched her with it. In fact, he yanked down the side of her jeans so that part of her ass cheek was out - getting a glare from Levi, whose head was near the area that was uncovered by the move - and then stuck her with the needle.
Kissing his hand, he patted the place he’d just injected gently. “Sorry, baby. But it’s better safe than sorry.”
Going For Gold: Providence Gold Series Book Four Page 3