by Susan Stoker
Logan kissed her temple after he got her settled onto the cushions, and sat next to her.
“Now . . . what are we betting on?” she asked stubbornly.
“When you’ll give birth,” Alexis told her with a smile. “Blake says this weekend, I say next weekend, and Nathan says in two weeks.”
Grace turned to glare at her brother-in-law. “Two weeks? Lord have mercy. If I had my way, I’d have them today. I’m so done with being pregnant.”
Everyone laughed, and Logan reassured his wife that she’d have their twins when they were good and ready to come out, and not a second before.
Nathan looked at his family as everyone got settled. Grace and Alexis were perfect for his brothers, and he genuinely liked them both. He hadn’t ever been jealous of his siblings . . . until now. Somehow, meeting Bailey and seeing through his brothers’ relationships what he was missing made his life seem empty. He had a small house, enjoyed living alone, but he realized suddenly that he was lonely.
He might not like people in general, but he liked Grace and Bailey. And he liked his brothers. He enjoyed spending time with them, but it wasn’t the same as having a woman sleep next to him. Or the same as hearing her breathe as she slept. To wake up and know someone was by your side. To eat meals made by someone else. To say nothing, but watch television or a movie with someone.
And he wanted that.
Wanted it with Bailey.
Which was insane. He didn’t know her, and she didn’t know him.
But as surely as he knew he’d lay down his life for his brothers and their women, he knew Bailey was meant to be his.
There had to be a reason he’d been so determined to find her.
He wanted to claim Bailey as his own, and her brother too.
As the gentle banter continued around him, Nathan made a vow right then and there to do whatever he could to bring Bailey into the fold. He might not be suave, or the best conversationalist, or even the most interesting man, but Bailey needed family. Needed someone to have her back.
And that someone was going to be him.
Chapter Five
At ten till four, Nathan pulled Marilyn into an empty space in front of one of the garage bays at Clayson’s Auto Body and climbed out. Seeing no one inside the bays, he pushed open the front door to the business and looked around.
Clayson’s was a typical garage. The waiting room wasn’t large, but it had a television, a small table with a few magazines on it, a counter with a cash register, and four hard plastic chairs. It was serviceable, if not that comfortable, but clean.
Nathan had just opened his mouth to call out to see if anyone was around, when an older man with black hair liberally streaked with gray came out of a door in the back of the room. He ambled up to the counter, leaned over it on both hands, and pierced Nathan with a stern look.
“Nathan Anderson. Good to see you.”
Nathan didn’t get upset at the protective vibes emanating from the man. If nothing else, he was glad about them. Happy that Bailey had someone looking out for her. He didn’t recall meeting the man in front of him before, but it was obvious the older man knew who he was. “Yes,” he answered with a nod of his head.
The men eyed each other for a moment before Clayson cut to the chase. “Don’t fuck with Bailey.”
“I won’t,” Nathan returned simply. He stood with his hands in his pockets and met the man’s gaze head-on.
It took another few moments, but the man must’ve seen whatever he was looking for in Nathan’s eyes as he nodded once, then turned back toward the door behind him. Right before he went through it, he looked back at Nathan and said, “Well? Come on.”
Without hesitation, Nathan veered around the counter and followed the man into the back room of the garage.
He entered an office, which was much more comfortable-looking, and cluttered, than the sparse public waiting area. But instead of noticing the furniture, or caring about the piles of papers, Nathan’s eyes immediately went to Bailey.
She was sitting on the couch next to her brother. They were hunched over a book on his lap, and she was pointing at something on the page. She wore a dark T-shirt under a pair of overalls that were smeared with grease. On her feet she had a pair of black steel-toed boots. Her hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail that she was twirling around one finger as she concentrated on what was in the book in front of her.
The boy had on a pair of jeans that looked too short for his lanky frame, and a T-shirt that had a picture of Batman on it. He looked frustrated about something, no doubt whatever it was in the textbook in his lap.
At his entrance, they both looked up, and Nathan knew without a doubt that they were indeed brother and sister. They both had the same black hair, but the boy was going to be big. Not fat, but tall. He was also built very differently than Bailey. He was stocky and well on his way to being a formidable figure of a man.
Nathan gave the couple on the couch a chin lift in greeting and said, “Hello.”
“Oh crud, is it four already?” Bailey said, looking at her left wrist as if she was looking at a watch . . . except there was no watch there. She leaned over and kissed the top of the boy’s head and stood up. “Joel, keep working on those math problems. When I’m done, I’ll take another look at it. Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out.” Then she looked up at Nathan.
“Hi, Nathan. You park outside the bay doors?”
He nodded, not particularly liking the businesslike tone of her voice, but he didn’t get a chance to say anything else.
“Great.” She held out her hand. “Give me your keys, and I’ll get right to work. If it’s only the battery, it shouldn’t take longer than around half an hour, forty-five minutes tops, to get it switched out and those connections cleaned.”
Nathan wanted to prolong his time with her, but couldn’t figure out how without looking like he was trying to prolong his time with her. So he merely fished his key ring out of his pocket and dropped it into her hand, making sure to brush his fingertips against her palm as he did.
Her hand twitched under his, but she quickly closed her fingers around the keys and turned to the older man. “Clayson, if you’ll take his info, I’ll let you know when I’m done.”
“Take your time, hon,” the older man said without concern.
“Thanks.” And with that, she was gone.
Nathan’s eyes flicked to Joel, who hadn’t moved from the couch, to Clayson.
The older man was looking at him with a smirk now, as if something about what had just happened amused him. But he merely held out a clipboard with a piece of paper on it. “If you can fill this out, we’ll have all the info we need. Bailey’ll come in and let you know what’s wrong before she does any work, along with the estimate.”
Nathan nodded and took the clipboard and pen from the man. He looked around at his seating options, and decided to take a chance and sit next to Joel.
He settled into the seat Bailey had occupied, feeling a thrill when the warmth from her body still lingering in the cushion soaked into his backside.
The form had basic information on it, and Nathan was done with it in only a few minutes. He glanced over at the math problems Joel was working on and blinked. His words came out without thought. “What the hell are you doing?” They weren’t rough or mean, but completely baffled.
The boy looked up at him in surprise and said simply, “Math.”
“That doesn’t look like any kind of math I’ve seen,” Nathan said, his eyes on the worksheet in front of the boy and his eyebrows drawn down in confusion.
“That’s what Bailey says too,” Joel responded.
Nathan looked up at him for the first time. “Your sister is right.”
Joel didn’t look confused or upset at his statement, and Nathan was pleased to know he was right about them being siblings.
“It’s Common Core math.”
Nathan looked at him blankly.
“It’s how they’re teaching math these days.”
; “It looks confusing,” Nathan said bluntly.
“It is. I don’t understand it at all.” Joel hung his head and played with the edge of the paper with his fingers. “All the other kids laugh at me because I can’t figure it out. We didn’t do it this way at my old school.”
“Math can be fun,” Nathan told Joel.
That brought the little boy’s eyes flying back up to his. He looked as though someone had just hit him. “Fun?” He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Sure it is. There’s all sorts of things you can do with math.”
“Whatever,” Joel mumbled.
Nathan held out his hand, palm up. “I’ll show you. Can I use your pencil?”
Joel handed it over, but looked up at him skeptically.
In his comfort zone now, Nathan turned the worksheet over to the blank back side and jotted down some numbers. “Okay, so you know that math uses a base ten, right?”
“Base ten?” Joel asked.
“Yeah. Can you count to one hundred by tens?”
“Of course. That’s baby stuff.” Then he proceeded to do just that, showing Nathan that he indeed could do as he’d asked.
“Right, so that’s base ten. There are ten ones in the number ten. And ten tens in the number one hundred.” He pointed down at the number eleven he’d written on the paper. “What’s this?”
“Eleven,” Joel answered immediately.
“No,” Nathan countered. “It’s a ten and a one. The first number shows how many tens there are, and the second shows how many ones. So what’s this number?” He pointed to another number he’d put on the page.
“Two tens and four ones. Twenty-four,” Joel said, confusion still in his eyes, but he was catching on fast.
“Exactly. And this one?”
“Three tens and seven ones.”
“Great!” Nathan enthused. “Okay, now for a hard one. What about this one?” He wrote another number on the page.
“Five tens and nine ones,” Joel said immediately.
“What if I add another one to it, what do I have?” Nathan asked.
“Sixty . . . er . . . I mean six tens.”
“Perfect. So what is the first number again? How many . . .”
“Tens!” Joel answered excitedly.
“And the second number?”
“Ones!”
“Good. And you said you weren’t good at math,” Nathan told the boy, able to see his self-esteem rise right in front of him. “Okay, moving on to harder stuff. If I write these down and ask you to add them together, how do you do it?” Nathan wrote the number ten and the number thirty-two down.
Joel began talking about subtracting numbers from the thirty-two and adding them to the ten and then adding another number back to the thirty-two, and that was where Nathan interrupted him. “Forget the core stuff. Look at it in relation to what we just talked about. Tens and ones.”
Joel cocked his head and looked intently down at the paper. Then he looked up at the man sitting next to him and said hesitantly, “The first number is one ten and zero ones. The second is three tens and two ones.”
“Right,” Nathan praised. “So add them together and what do you get?”
“Four tens and two ones.”
“And?” Nathan asked with a smile.
“Forty-two?”
“Are you asking or telling me that’s the answer?”
Nathan looked down at the paper again, then back up at Nathan. “Telling. Forty-two.”
“Exactamundo!” Nathan exclaimed.
“That . . . that was easy,” Joel said, looking completely shocked. “It can’t be that easy.”
“It is. Let’s do another.” Nathan quickly wrote another two numbers on the page.
As soon as the pencil lead left the page, Joel said, “Seven tens and three ones and then two tens and four ones. So that makes nine tens and seven ones. Ninety-seven!” His voice had risen as he’d spoken, as if he’d found out the meaning of life.
“Exactly right,” Nathan told him. “How about some more?”
He and Joel continued practicing adding up numbers, and Joel got faster and faster at doing the math in his head. Nathan then turned the paper over and handed the pencil back to Joel. “Now try your homework problems.”
Without a word, Joel bent to the page and quickly began to complete the problems he had left. When he was finished, he looked up at Nathan with a concerned look in his eye.
“What is it, Joel?”
“I’m not doing it the way I’m supposed to.”
“But you understand it. And you’re getting the right answers.”
Joel nodded, but still looked concerned.
Nathan leaned against the cushion on the back of the couch and told Joel something he’d learned early in his school career. “You’re right, Joel, you’re not doing it the way you’re supposed to. You’re skipping all the steps your teacher wants you to show. But here’s the thing . . . you’re getting it, right?”
He nodded, but stayed silent.
“You have a choice to make then. You keep doing it the way that makes sense to you, and the way that is faster for you, or you try to do it the way the teacher wants you to. The choice is yours. But if you choose to do it the way that makes sense to you, you’re gonna lose points. The teacher is gonna use her red pen and put slashes and x’s and tell you that you didn’t show your work. You might get a C instead of an A. On the other hand, if you try to do it the way she wants, it’ll take longer. You might confuse yourself more. You might get lots of smileys on your paper, and you might even get an A. Although you might run out of time because you can’t get through all the problems. Would you rather get the C and understand what you’ve done, or get the A and just go through the motions?”
Joel looked up at him as if it was a trick question. “But Bailey wants me to get As.”
“I’m sure she does,” Nathan said immediately. “Do you know why?”
“Because that means I’m successful?”
“And do you think you’d be more successful if you did it the way you understood or the way you were told to do it?”
Joel bit his lip, but didn’t answer.
Nathan could tell he was thinking really hard, so he continued. “Do you think Bailey would rather you truly understand the material and learn it, or just go through the motions?”
“Learn it,” Joel said immediately.
“And would you be happier if you knew what you were doing or if you were just doing what you were told?”
“If I knew what I was doing.”
“So here’s the hard part of the question,” Nathan said, sitting up and looking Joel right in the eyes. “Can you live with being a C student in math and knowing you truly understand it, or being an A student and only half knowing it?”
“But I want to get As,” Joel protested.
“Why?” Nathan returned.
“Well . . . because that means I’m smart.”
“Does it?”
Nathan saw the moment his point got through to the boy. He shook his head slowly.
“Right. So you do what you need to do to pass, and that’s important, Joel. Don’t go your own way so much that you’re failing your classes, because that would just be stupid. But stop trying to please others, and make sure you’re doing what’s best for you. That you’re learning the way you need to learn. It’s perfectly okay to be a C math student rather than an A student.”
“What grade did you get in math?” Joel asked with a small smile.
Nathan leaned toward him and whispered, “C minus. I was a bit too hardheaded and went my own way a bit too much.”
Joel laughed. The sound was carefree and loud in the room.
“I . . . uh . . . have the estimate on your car,” Bailey said from across the small space.
Nathan looked up and saw her leaning against the door frame as if she’d been there awhile. He felt himself blush. He’d been so engrossed in helping Joel and making his point that he
hadn’t even realized she’d come back into the room.
He turned his eyes to Clayson, and the older man was sitting at the desk, grinning at him as well. Damn.
“Oh, great.”
“It’s the connections. Your battery was low on juice too, so I recommend you get a new one. The engine is actually in astonishingly good shape. It might look like a piece of crap, but I’ve got to say, you’ve taken care of it remarkably well.”
Nathan so wanted to make a comment about taking care of a woman under the hood so she’d purr for a lifetime, but he refrained. “Go ahead and put a new battery in, and do what you need to about the connections.”
Bailey held out her hand. “If you give me your forms, I’ll write the estimate down and you can make sure it’s not too much.”
Nathan shook his head. “It’s fine. It needs to be done, so it doesn’t matter what the cost is. Go for it.”
“All right. Joel? You’re okay in here while I finish up?”
The boy looked up at his sister as if she’d said the stupidest thing ever. “Duh. I’m okay in here every day. Why would today be any different?”
Bailey flushed, but merely nodded and backed out of the room.
When she was gone, Nathan said nonchalantly and with no heat, “That was rude.”
“What?” Joel asked in confusion.
“What you just said to your sister.” Nathan could see Joel was trying to come up with a reply, so he went on quickly. “Think about it from her perspective. She’s worried about you. She left you in here with me, someone neither of you knows. She wanted to make sure you were feeling okay about that and weren’t too uncomfortable. If you were, then she probably would’ve invited you to come out and watch her work. That would’ve gotten you out of this office, and away from me. But instead you were rude and dismissed her concerns as stupid. And trust me, having someone to watch your back like your sister does is anything but stupid.”
Joel opened his mouth to respond, and Nathan could tell he was going to back-talk him, so he held up his hand, stopping the boy from saying something he’d regret. “I don’t know you, and I don’t yet know your sister, but it’s obvious she loves you very much. You’re upset with her because you had to move and change schools. You had to give up your friends and everything that was familiar. It’s tough starting a new school and making new friends, but it’s just as hard on your sister. She worries about you, and she only wants the best for you. I’m not saying you aren’t allowed to feel the way you feel, but it might be good if you thought about what other people are feeling when they say something to you.”