Page 58 of Lush Curves

“Well… yes.” Sam stared at his hands. “I mean… it’s not what I thought I wanted, but now that it’s here, I don’t see how I can refuse it. And honestly, Vic? It’sgreat. She’s a sweet, funny, smart little kid, and Iwantto be around her, and I mean as much of the time as I can. She’s just… she’s like a little ray of sunshine, and I look forward to seeing her every day. Ilikeher living with me.”

“Oh, shit, kid.” Scars shook his dark head, the kitchen light making the scars on his face glow very white. “You got problems.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“There’smore?”

“There’s a woman. An amazing woman, a woman that I love.”

“Awww, crap.” Scars reached for the bottle, decided it was time to break out the triples. Maybe even start swigging straight from the bottle neck. “You seeing someone?”

“I was, untilthishappened.”

“She dumped you?”

“Pretty much.” Sam rubbed his eyes again. “I mean, Annie says that she doesn’t want to get in the way.”

“Wouldshe be in the way?”

“She’s convinced that she would be. She has kids of her own, thought they’re adults now, so shegetsthe whole parenthood thing. When I called her this morning and told her that the DNA test was positive, she said that she’s stepping aside for me to get to know my daughter. Said that the most important person here is Cindy, and Annie thinks that she’d just be a big distraction and attention-grabber. Also, she told me that it would be confusing for Cindy to see Annie coming and going from the house that she and her Mom live in.”

“But if you got them their own place, then surely you and Annie could keep seeing each other?”

“But that goes back to me not really wanting Cindy to leave.”

“Oh, right.” Scars rolled his broad shoulders. “Shit, kid. When you make a mess, you go for broke.”

“Me?”

“You know what I mean.” Scars gentled his voice. “Is Annie at least talking to you? Keeping the lines of communication open?”

“No. Took time off work, slammed the doors, bolted the windows, cut the phone cords, dug a moat around her house and tossed in a few alligators to make the point. She is completely and totally out of my reach.”

“Give it some time, Sam. It’s all new, everything is still up in the air, nothing’s settled. Figure things out, get to know Cindy, sort Kathleen with living arrangements and expectations, sign all the legal stuff that surelyhasto be made official. Then, who knows? Maybe you guys can make it work. People do every single goddamn day, after divorces and separations and deaths and cheating and kids born out of wedlock. You’re a pretty smart guy, most of the time. You’ll figure it out if you really want to, and if you and Annie are meant to be in it for the long haul, then that’s how it’ll all play out.”

“I didn’t know you were such a romantic.”

“Through and through,” Scars growled. “Besides, I want you to be happy. If being a Dad to Cindy makes you happy, then I want you to have her. If being with Annie makes you happy, then I wantthatto work. And if Kathleen being eaten by alligators makes you happy, I’ll shove her into Annie’s moat. Make it look like an accident, though averyfortunately-timed one.”

Sam laughed aloud, knowing full well that although ferocious Scars Innis, VP of the Road Devils MC, was capable of many many things, murdering an innocent – albeit annoying and awful – woman waswayoff the table. Not even for his younger brother’s peace of mind.

Scars grinned back, worried as hell despite his devil-may-care attitude. He knew Sam, felt him in his bones and blood, and he knew that the kid was hurting. Hurting bad. Scars also knew that besides pouring whisky like water and throwing it down Sam’s throat, there was nothing that he could do to help ease all that hurt.

No, this was one of those life problems that even a badass big brother could do nothing much about. Nothing except listen, give hugs, and keep his scarred fingers crossed that Sam would find his way.

Scars couldn’t do any of it for him, but he sure as hell was going to have his brother’s back while he did it for himself. It was all hecoulddo, so he was going to do it until it was done.

However it all turned out.

**

Annie was slumped on the sofa, mindlessly watching some horrific TV nightmare, something about crazy rich housewives in McMansions who all hated each other. Idly, she noticed they were all very orange.

She reached for the carton of ice cream that Jax had brought over the day before, and was shocked to see that it was empty. She’d actually horfed down two entire family-sized tubs of Oreo cookie ice cream in one day, along with far too many diet Cokes, which made zero sense, now that she stopped and thought about it.

Weird that she was still hungry, though. She was living off take-out, naturally, since she’d decided to launch her plan of never leaving the house again, the one that she’d formulated in Sam’s car that first night and which she now realized, far too late, that she should have gone ahead with back then. She flipped through a few flyers scattered on the floor, settled on the pizza place six blocks over. Yeah, they’d just been there the day before, but what the hell.

She was just trying to locate the phone under her mound of blankets, to call for the meat-lover’s-heart-attack-on-a-plate, when there was a knock on her front door. Right away, she ducked down and despite the TV blaring with some catfight between two of the orange women, pretended not to be home.

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