Page 14 of Bonus Daddy
He was also handsome and sweet and a tiny bit awkward, just like the brilliant boy I’d fallen for during poli-sci study sessions.
“It’s fine.” Thinking about Brian was bad. I’d been working my hardest to avoid it. But he kept popping into my brain. Present-day handsome, confident lawyer Brian interspersed with long-forgotten memories of college Brian.
“Totally professional,” I babbled, trying to convince myself as much as my brother, who, based on his silence, wasn’t buying it.
“What have you been up to?” I asked, mentally kicking myself for even bringing up Brian.
“I’ve been working on the guest cottage. Put up crown molding to fancy things up a bit. Tore out the old porch and built a new one. And I ordered new appliances for the kitchen.”
“Josh.” I groaned. “We talked about this.”
He ignored me, talking instead about his plan for putting up the giant tire swing Greta had requested during our visit at Christmas.
“I’m not even sure I can move yet,” I reminded him. “And you work so hard already. Don’t add to your never-ending list.”
“You know I like projects,” he said softly.
I did. Josh needed to keep his hands and his mind busy. It was the most effective way he’d found to manage the anxiety that had already stolen so much from him.
My brother didn’t worry about money. He’d made a lot of it on Wall Street before our lives fell apart. Then he used his MBA and investment skills to turn the farm from failing to profitable. He worked from sunup to sundown, even though at this point in his life, he could probably afford to live on a beach on some island taxhaven.
But that was not him. If there was a job to do, Josh was on it.
Even as a kid, he constantly tinkered, rooting out problems before we even realized they existed and fixing them with the type of skill only professionals typically possessed. Broken fences, leaky faucets, weeds in the vegetable garden. He had this sense about him. He knew where he was at all times and could sense the condition of each person, place, or thing around him. Of the four of us, it made the most sense for him to take over the farm. Jas helped between his shifts as a firefighter and EMT, but Josh ran the show.
“Seen Jenn recently?” I asked, eager to change the subject.
“’Course. I see her every morning, and she and Liz never let me skip Sunday dinner, no matter how hard I try to avoid it.”
I let out a laugh. That tracked. Jenn had always possessed a heaping dose of firstborn energy. She’d bossed us all around as kids, and that hadn’t changed once we migrated into adulthood.
“And Jas?”
“He gets out of dinner sometimes because of work. Or because he sweet-talks Jenn.”
A soft smile crept over my face. “Still living in his childhood bedroom?”
“When he actually sleeps here, yes.” Josh sighed. “But you know him. He’s always moving, that kid.”
Like Josh was one to talk.
And Jas wasn’t actually a kid. He had recently turned thirty, but as the baby of the family and my parents’ unabashed favorite, he had youngest-kid energy to spare. He had Jenn, who was twelve when he was born, wrapped around his finger. She’d always been like a second mom to him, going out of her way, even now, to take care of him. Leaving Josh and me to deal with the messes he made.
“So Jenn is actually taking Sundays off during the tourist season?” My sister and her wife, Mel, owned the coffee shop in town, Been There, Sipped That. And she was also in possession of the dominant family trait: an inability to slow down.
“Shockingly, yes. The college kids are home for the summer, sothey’ve got all kinds of extra help. For the first time ever, she’s actually been working reasonable hours.”
I snorted. The Lawrence kids had never been known for their work-life balance.
“And Elijah is working there now.”
“No.” I gasped. “Not possible.” Elijah, my oldest nephew, had definitely hit a growth spurt this year, but he was still a kid.
My brother chuckled lightly. “He’s starting high school in the fall.”
“Damn, we’re old.”
“You’re old. I’m still on the right side of forty.”
