There was a sort of intensity, a neediness in his face right then that made me realize how big a deal it was for him to want to introduce me to them. I had heard a lot about the Mallick family from him, like he had heard a lot about my brothers. Every time he spoke of them, even if he was bitching about them or ragging on them, it was with love, with a deep, unshakable bond. I understood how much that meant because it was exactly how I spoke of my own family.
I also knew that Mark had never been a settling-down sort, that he never introduced his family to a woman in a 'this is serious' kind of way.
So this was a big thing for him.
And he needed me to not be a chickenshit, a flight risk.
He needed me to drink my coffee, take my shower, calm down, get dressed, and go down and meet his family, take whatever they threw at me, even if he was wrong and they did want to grill me. He needed that from me. Given that he had been nothing but good to me, I owed that to him.
"Okay," I agreed, taking a breath so deep it burned, and reached for the coffee. "It might take me a while, but I promise I will be down."
His hand squeezed my thigh reassuring me as all the tension left his jaw and shoulders, letting me know I said the right thing.
"No rush. Trust me, this storming in thing takes a half an hour itself. And I bet my left arm Eli brought the mutt which means he and the girls will be fawning over it. I can show them your chick too if you take too long." He moved to stand up, then turned back, reached down, grabbed me by the back of the neck, and gave me a hard, fast kiss. "Thanks, baby."
With that, making my chest do that weird swelling thing again, he was gone, closing the door behind him, making it clear it was on my own time, that he wasn't rushing me by the sounds from below.
Though, two minutes later when the clan all crowded in downstairs, the closed door did nothing to muffle the loudness of that particular group of people.
"The fuck is that fuzzy little shit?" Was a phrase that had me grinning huge all alone in bed as I finished my coffee.
That fuzzy little shit must have been Nugget.
And all of a sudden, I wasn't worried anymore. I didn't want to put it off. I moved into the bathroom, quickly showered and made myself presentable, slipping into black skinny jeans and a simple white tee, checking my hair one more time, then going to the door to head down, realizing how much I actually wanted to meet them - the people who made Mark who he was. I had a feeling they all had to be pretty freaking amazing to help shape the man he was.
The man I was most definitely starting to fall for.
Nope, that wasn't even right.
I was pretty sure the falling was over, and I had landed.
Smack-dab in the middle of it.
Love.
Oh, God.
That realization had me freezing on the bottom stair, completely unable to force the thoughts away and keep moving.
"Breathe into your stomach," a female voice called out of nowhere, making me jerk and turn to find one of the women from the pictures - blonde, green-eyed, sweet-looking - standing in a corner behind the front door, her hand on her belly, her eyes a little wild.
"I'm sorry?" I asked, head ducking to the side.
"They're overwhelming," she clarified. "I know. Trust me, I know," she said, brows raising. "Hence why I am standing in this corner and breathing into my stomach. It's just... very crowded in here. I'm still not used to it. Plus the dog and the chick and... yeah, I needed a minute. You can take a minute with me. They won't come looking for us. They know I need to get away sometimes."
"You have panic attacks?" I asked, figuring that explained the big eyes and the deep breathing thing.
"I was agoraphobic, and now, well, it's just... a process. Progress and regression. Like now, I am regressing for a few, and then I will progress my butt right back out there again. I'm Dusty," she said, offering me a kind smile.
"Scotti," I agreed, nodding.
"I'm with Ryan," she explained, giving me a chance to get things straight before I was bombarded by strong personalities. "He will be the one in a suit."
"Oh, yeah, I saw him at the gym once. He's the more... serious one. Oldest."
"Right," she agreed, nodding. "He's not as intimidating as he seems right at first. None of them are really. They're just a bit, ah, in-your-face. But they have been nothing but nice to all the serious girlfriends."
"Good to know. You want to walk in with me, or do you still need a minute?" I offered, noticing she had relaxed a bit, but her hand was still on her belly as she took deep breaths.
"Need a minute," she admitted. "But I'll be in. You'll be fine."
I gave her a smile, maybe a little charmed that in the midst of a panic attack she felt the need to try to comfort me.
"I'm not saying that," another female voice said as I rounded into the living room. It seemed everyone was in the kitchen area. "I'm saying if you don't stop spoiling her, you are going to be in deep sugar-honey-iced-tea."
"Sugar-honey-iced-tea?" one of the men asked, clearly sounding amused. "Are you worried about our virgin ears, Fee?"
"Becca likes curse words now," Fee informed them all. "And she likes to repeat them. Loudly. At school. So everyone is going to have to step up their acronym game until she's over this little phase."
"You expect all of us to... ah, there she is." This came from the one I knew as Shane, the biggest one, the owner of the gym. "Expected you to put this sh..." he started, only to cut off when Fee gave him a hard look, "this sugar-honey-iced-tea off for at least another twenty minutes."
"Guys," Mark said, giving me a smile as he walked toward me. "This is Scotti. Scotti this is, well, everyone. But let's start with my parents. This is Helen and Charlie," he supplied, leading me over to an older version of himself and a gorgeous woman with way too nice a body to have popped out five giant sons.
"Nice to meet you," I said, shaking their hands when they were offered, feeling weird as hell about it the whole time.
"So you're in the..." Helen started, looking down at her granddaughters, then back up at me, "less than legal acquisitions trade."
If I had a drink in my mouth, this would have been a genuine spit-take moment.
"Breathe," a newly familiar voice called to me from across the room as the girls moved their game of fetch outside into the backyard. I turned my head over my shoulder to find Dusty curled up into Ryan's side, his arm possessively around her. "I was a shut-in who held a stash of drugs for a dealer friend of mine when Ryan first met me."
"And I was a phone-sex operator with a cutting problem and a fucked up - God it felt good to say fuck - " the other blonde, the one with a bunch of tattoos said, "childhood... when they first met me."
"And I was a phone-sex operator on the run from the MC I was raised in," the last woman said, a tall, leggy brunette who was just perhaps too damn pretty.
"The point being," Helen said with a smile, "I wasn't saying it as a judgment, just an observation. I always wondered what kind of woman could rein this whore in," she said, slapping the back of her son's head, but giving him a warm smile. "Now I know. Should have guessed it would be some badass, combat-boot-wearing armed robber. That sounds just his type."
"Thanks, Ma," Mark said, shaking his head, looking just a tiny bit bashful. "And she's going straight now," he added.
"And settling here." That was Charlie.
It wasn't a question, but I answered anyway. "It seems like a good place for a criminal to retire. Or, a whole group of them to be exact."
"Yes, we heard about the brothers," Helen said, nodding. "I have to look into expanding my dining room. Hunt is going to need to make me a much larger dining table too."
And that, that sentence right there, it reminded me of something I had almost long-forgotten.
See, we had been so busy avenging the bad treatment of our mother that we had started to forget the things we missed most about her. Motherhood. That huge, open heart. That willingness to open your arms and your table. T
hat generous spirit I was convinced you only ever truly found in maternal figures.
There was Mark's mother, a woman who screamed 'badass' from her awesome hair to her heeled feet, who had only known me two minutes, who knew almost nothing about me, my life, or my brothers, but she was willing to entertain the idea of inviting all of us into her home, cooking for us, sharing dinner conversation with us.
I don't think I had ever felt more welcome in my life.
I didn't let myself often think about what I missed about my mother. Knowing, perhaps, that it would be everything from the way she opened up all the curtains first in the morning to let the sunlight in, to the way she would buy big tubs of ice cream when one of us had a hard day and would sit in front of the TV with us, eating it right out of the container, to the way she kept up the Santa charade well into our teens even though she damn well knew we all stopped believing by ten. I missed the French toast on Christmas morning and the stuffing she made from scratch for Thanksgiving. I missed having her non-judgmental ear, her love-me-despite-all-my-flaws heart, her terrible singing voice, and her determination to keep us all close. Maybe because she knew, as all parents did, that she would be gone someday and all we would have left is one another.
"You alright?" Mark asked as the girls came running back in, drawing everyone else's attention.
And because I felt it, because it hurt, because I knew that the only way to have any kind of relationship was by sharing that kind of thing, I leaned in closer, dropped my voice, and admitted, "I miss my mom."
His arms went around me, pulling me close, holding just a bit too tight as if to say he couldn't imagine, but he understood.
"You're welcome to share mine," he offered, giving me a squeeze before pulling back slightly.
Sure, I didn't know her. And, likely, she was nothing like my own mother. But regardless, that meant something to me. Some day, if things progressed, it would be nice to know there would be a maternal figure in my life again. Hell, even in my brothers' lives. Sure, I had been a makeshift stand-in. I did the laundry. I cleaned. I fretted over them when they were sick or hurt. I cooked on special occasions. But I knew it was nowhere near the same.
They needed a mom just as much as I did. And even though they all got more time with her than I did, that didn't mean they didn't still need her. I don't think you ever stopped needing your mother.
"She seems pretty badass," I admitted.
"You got no fucking idea," he said, giving me a wicked look that promised a lot of future stories.
"So, we're stealing her," Fee announced suddenly, moving to stand in front of her brother-in-law. As if they had choreographed it, Lea moved in as well.
"I would pretend to fight for you," Mark said, releasing me, "but I don't stand a chance against them."
"See how good we have him trained already?" Fee asked, patting his cheek, and giving me a smile. "Want to get some air?" she asked, turning before I even finished nodding.
I was vaguely aware of Dusty breaking away from Ryan and moving our way as well.
"Becca," Fee called when we stepped out to find her three daughters running around the yard. "Uncle Mark said you could totally jump on his bed," she announced in a dramatic voice, making the girls squeal and charge inside to put that to the test. She gave me a smile. "That is payback for him dropping my girls off to me last month with a karaoke machine. I love my girls, but good God in heaven, not a single one of them can carry a tune. They make all the dogs in the neighborhood shriek in misery. So, you're Scotti."
"I'm Scotti," I agreed, nodding.
"I'm gonna level with you, I didn't think Mark was ever going to find a girl. Let alone some badass armed robber. You really up our cool quotient. Navesink Bank has a lot of badass women from bomb-makers to self-defense gurus and on and on. We needed everyone else to know..."
"No one can know about my past," I cut her off, voice maybe a little too shrill considering she was someone I wanted to get along with, but my need for self-preservation so strong that there was no way not to be a tad bit snippy.
"Well, duh," she said, rolling her eyes a little. "But just for our own confidence-level, y'know? It's cool to have a certifiable badass around. I mean, Helen is the shit and Lea used to be a biker and whatnot. But, all said and done, Dusty and I are almost painfully normal. Sorry, Dust. I know you have your drug and agoraphobia thing, but before that you were a school teacher. And while I have that fucked up backstory and run a phone sex business, I'm kinda just a boring mom and wife now."
"You might not be a bomb-maker, but you seem pretty badass in your own right. Who else could boss the Mallick men around?" I asked.
She smiled at that as Lea turned to me. "So now that you're retiring, what are you planning to do? Because, ah, we just lost another girl to maternity leave. I mean, you're cool with telling men their itty-bitty baby-cocks are the most pathetic thing you've ever seen and not worthy of your pretty pink va-gay-gay, right?"
"Lea!" Dusty snapped, blushing for me.
But I couldn't help it, I was laughing. "Oh yeah, totally. I say that all the time."
"Actually," Fee said, eyes dancing. "Those brothers of yours... all of them will be needing jobs, right?"
"They're all straight," I said, shrugging.
"Yeah, no. Get this. We have had a growing amount of female callers calling in and asking if we had any men working. I never realized there was even a market for it, but apparently it is big and growing. I was thinking of trying to branch out into that, but I have no idea where to find men who would be willing to dirty talk lonely women all night." She gave me a shrug. "I don't know your brothers, but if any of them would be interested, send them my way."
I couldn't see Kingston, Nixon, or Atlas being into it, but for a strange reason, I thought maybe Rush would find it interesting. Maybe I would mention it. He was the one I was most worried about. I knew King would land on his feet. Nixon and Atlas would likely flounder for a little while, but find their way as well. But because Rush was such a good wheel man, there was definite concern that he might look to using that skill, rent himself out to any of the other seemingly endless amounts of criminals in Navesink Bank. He was young enough that it might have still appealed to him. And the money, well, let's just say that since the wheel man is the one who kept you out of jail, they were paid well.
It would be tempting for him to go down that road once he realized the restrictions on income that came from going straight and having very little traditional work history.
I didn't want that to happen.
So if he needed to dirty talk women home alone with their cats, well then, so be it.
"I might have one to send your way actually."
"Awesome. That's a load-off. Now if Lea would change her damn mind about quitting," she said, small eyeing Lea who just shook her head at her. "She was the only one of my girls who knew what a 'snowmobile' was when a guy called in. The kinky bitch."
"And welcome to the Mallick family," Dusty announced, cheeks the slightest bit pink. "There don't seem to be a whole heck of a lot of boundaries they won't cross. You get used to it. Sort of," she said with a somewhat shy smile.
"Don't let her fool you with her sweetness," Fee declared, giving Dusty a shoulder-shove. "When we took her to the toy store, she stocked up. In fact, did I see a pair of..."
She lost the rest of her sentence as Dusty slammed her hand across her mouth. "A pair of safe sex pamphlets. That was totally what she was going to say."
"Of course," I agreed, laughing. "I totally pick up safe-sex pamphlets in pairs... you know... along with my handcuffs," I finished, smiling huge when her cheeks went fully red.
They were going to be fun.
It never occurred to me to think about sisters much. I was usually too busy with my brothers. I had been a tomboy. I enjoyed doing the things they liked. And I had always had my mother through my teenage years to do all the girly stuff with. But, I realized as I stood there and listened to them taking turns teasing on
e another, I had been missing out on the female connection for way too long. There was just a completely different dynamic with women than with men. You could flow from talk about the weather to hair care products to cock rings in a way that didn't seem weird or uncomfortable.
I hadn't been able to discuss sex with someone... well... ever.
My mom had died before I had lost my virginity and you did not, ever, talk about sex with your brothers.
Ew.
So I had missed out on all those talks, those belly-aching laugh moments, like the one that would take place twenty minutes later as we all started swapping stories.
"No... so..." Lea was trying to explain, but laughing so hard that she had to stop every few seconds because Fee kept cutting into her 'cherry-popping' story with hilariously raunchy commentary. "He, oh my God, stop Fee," she said, shoving her hand into the other woman who stumbled back into a Dusty who was laughing too. "No, he was trying to dirty-talk me, and he ended up asking me if I liked his doggy-dick instead of, I think, donkey-dick. Which is equally as terrible, but I laughed in his face because, well, come on! And he got all pissy, soft, and pulled out, yanked his pants on, and stormed off. And that, my dear ladies, was my glorious first time," she finished, spinning a hand in the air as she took a bow.
"Alright, alright. We had my kinda sad story," Fee said, shrugging it off. "And we had Dusty's kinda sweet story. And Lea's ridiculous story. What was your first-time story?"
"Not hilarious or sweet or sad," I admitted, shrugging. "I was just a little over eighteen, and he was nineteen I think. He got me in the backseat, yanked up my skirt, gave me a solid... thirty seconds. And voila- I wasn't a virgin anymore."
"Boo! Boring," Fee heckled, tossing invisible popcorn at me.
"Trust me, I know," I admitted, laughing.
"Fee," Mark's voice interrupted, almost startling me because I had been so wrapped up in girl-land that I had maybe momentarily forgotten he was even there. "Your hell beasts are trying to convince their grandfather that you totally let them watch Family Guy."
Mark (The Mallick Brothers #3) Page 15