Page 9 of Inked Persuasion

“You guys do not have to do anything. I promise. We talked it out…sort of. He’ll likely continue to hate me, but we’ll just deal with being neighbors. Not everybody has to like who lives next door.”

“He has no right to hate you,” Benjamin growled.

“No right,” Beckett repeated. “I’m going to kick his fucking ass. He treated you like shit after everything happened with Jonah. And it wasn’t your fault.”

I held up my hands, holding back tears. “I’m fine,” I said, my voice cracking.

“That’s it, now I’m going to kill him,” Archer said, rolling up his sleeves.

“Please, stop. We’re adults. We can handle this. Sure, it’s a lot of emotions. And none of us knows exactly what happened during everything that went down. None of us talked about what happened. Hell, in this family, we do an excellent job ofnottalking about the fact that I’m a widow.” They all went silent as they looked at me.

“Seriously. I lost my husband. Yes, he was my best friend, but he was my husband in the eyes of the law. That meant I had to go through the paperwork of death when it came to losing an eighteen-year-old to cystic fibrosis. I’ve dealt with that. I’ve dealt with my emotions, and I handled what I had to do with the rest of my life, trying to figure out how to grow up with part of the world watching me. I dealt with it. But we don’t ever speak about it. And that’s okay. We don’t have to discuss my past in excruciating detail. But ifwedon’t talk about it, you sure as hell know that Jacob and I have never talked about it. I don’t know how he feels about me, really. I don’t know exactly why he hates me, other than the fact that I took time with his brother away from him.”

“Jonah wanted an escape,” Benjamin said insightfully. “None of us were sure about you marrying a kid when you were a kid yourself, but we understood why you did it.”

I flinched at that, but knew he was right. “I know nobody wanted me to marry him—other than his parents and Jonah. But I did. I wanted to make Jonah happy.”

“And you did. He had happiness leading up to the wedding and the days you had left with him,” Paige whispered. “And I’m sorry Jacob was hurt, but he doesn’t get to treat you like shit.”

“You’re right. I told him he didn’t get to, and we’ll deal with it.”

“Are you still going up to see his parents?” Beckett asked, his gaze on mine. I shrugged.

“Yes. I eat there almost every Sunday. And you know with Kelley being sick, I just need to be there for them.”

“That’s why Jacob moved here,” Paige said, her eyes wide as it dawned on both of us.

“Damn,” I whispered. “They never mentioned it to me.”

“They’ve had a lot on their minds,” Archer said, wincing.

“Or they didn’t want to bother me with the fact that they knew their son hated me. Still does. It’s fine. I’ll deal with it. Jacob must be here to help his mom, and that is an admirable trait. He was always great for Jonah. So, yes, we will find a way to make it work. Now that it’s out in the open, nobody needs to go and kick anyone’s ass or castrate anyone.”

“What’s this about castration?”

I looked up at my father and groaned. “I swear, we need to close the door the next time we talk about this.”

“Or we can just not talk about it ever again,” Beckett said dryly.

I snorted. “Hi, Mom and Dad, come on in.”

“I take it you’re talking about something weird since your little assistant is out there hiding?” my dad said, and I grimaced.

“He’s the assistant project manager,” Beckett said through gritted teeth. “He’s not mylittle assistant.”

“Not that there’s anything wrong with an assistant,” Paige said. “But I prefer office manager.”

“Because that’s your title.” I shook my head.

As Clay walked into the room, we all got to work. Montgomery Builders was now in session. Montgomery Inc. was down in Denver, along with Montgomery Ink. The one with theKwas a tattoo shop that some of my Denver cousins ran. Another tattoo shop called Montgomery Ink Too was located in Colorado Springs. I figured once the next generation of Montgomerys aged, they would probably start popping up new Montgomery Inks and Incs all over the state and world. It would be nice. However, our family was none of that. We were Montgomery Builders, something that came from my dad’s Montgomery side, not my mother’s. When my parents got married, the family joke was that it was nice that my mother didn’t have to bother changing her name. They were not blood-related or cousins, even fifth removed. At least from what they could tell. But the union was still rife with family tension. My father did not like his brothers-in-law—my uncles.

Therefore, he did not like that there was another construction company in the family. Montgomery Builders did not work with Montgomery Inc., and had nothing to do with my uncle—or now my cousins—who ran it.

And that was all due to my father. I loved the man, but he could be a righteous asshole sometimes. Okay, most of the time. And since he was currently taking over the meeting during this project, this was one of those times. Officially, my mother and father didn’t have roles with Montgomery Builders. They oversaw everything we did and held the purse strings, but they’d handed the reins to us over time as we grew into our roles. We could have gone into any other field, but all of us had fallen in love with the family business and had followed our goals towards being part of it.

I was an architect and helped design every single project we worked on. Benjamin was our landscape architect and had a whole team for himself. Paige was our office manager and pretty much kept us running—and on our toes—while Archer, much to my father’s dismay, was our lead plumber. Dad had wanted my brother to be an electrician or maybe an architect or something, but Archer wanted to be a plumber. And that was what he had ended up going to school for, and what he worked his ass off doing now. Beckett was our construction project manager and currently butting heads with my father on yet another item.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “We’ve already decided what we’re doing on this line item,” I said. “Beckett’s right.”

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