Me, not so much.
In fact, I fucking hated it.
I only stayed long enough to graduate from high school before I took off to Georgetown University. I never liked Nebraska. The second I was able, I left and never returned.
Of course, I stupidly thought going away to school would give me the freedom I so desperately craved but I was wrong. My granny had no fucking problem calling or popping in unannounced just to remind me that I had a little brother at home who needed me.
I may have run away from Nebraska, but there was no way in hell I could escape Granny.
The woman was a veritable force of nature.
It didn’t matter where I ran off to. The stubborn woman always tracked me down and never let me forget that I still had family in this world. Which I thought funny, ’cause my brother and I hardly ever got along. Frankie was just different. Unlike me, who had too many friends to count, a girlfriend whenever I wanted, and played on every sports team I could find.
Frankie, well Frankie was a nerd. Always quiet, shy, barely said two fucking words and preferred his imaginary world of make-believe to the cold hard fact that we were orphans.
Of course, to look at my little brother today, you’d probably call me a liar, but it’s true. My little brother Frankie was once a skinny, wheezing nerd who preferred to play cops and robbers with his dog Bark, than live in the real world. Now, Frank was bigger than me and a brother in the Sons of Hell Motorcycle Club with a beautiful wife and three kids still in diapers.
Groaning, I rubbed my hands down my face.
“You know she only wants the best for you, right?”
Turning, I smiled. “I know.”
“She really likes Josephine.”
“What about you?”
Fiona shrugged. “Doesn’t matter what I think. It’s you that will have to live with the decision for the rest of your life.”
Fiona Mitchell came to our family a little over a year ago when Frankie and his woman Lidi were fighting for custody of their son Charlie. Now, here was where it got interesting. Charlie’s birth mother was Fiona. The young girl grew up in the foster care system after her parents died. Bouncing from foster family to foster family, Fiona found herself pregnant by a boy who supposedly told her he loved her.
Shocker. The fucker lied.
To make things more interesting, the bio-dad was nineteen to Fiona’s fifteen. Anyhoo, Fiona ran away and found herselfhere in Rosewood, where she gave birth to Charlie on the streets. Now, Fiona did everything she could for Charlie but knew she couldn’t raise him, so she hand-picked the best mother she could find, Dr. Claudia James and the sister to Eugene James, also known as Enigma.
Now, Claudia being the good-natured sweetheart she was, flat out refused to let Fiona return to the foster care system, even going as far as to offer to take the girl in herself. Only that never happened, because that’s where Granny stepped in.
I honestly didn’t know what to call Fiona. Was she my aunt, my sister, niece? In the end it didn’t matter ’cause whenever I looked at her all I saw was my little sister who I loved dearly. There wasn’t a damn thing on the planet I wouldn’t do for Fiona, nor Frank, for that matter.
“You know I care what you think, Fi. Just tell me.”
She looked down at her hands and whispered, “I think you better fix things with Josephine before someone else shows up and takes what you’ve unknowingly had all along.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
Fiona smirked. “You’re smart, Georgie. Figure it out.”
I had just closed a file when Jessica barged into my office.
“George!”
Smiling up at the beautiful, feisty woman, I leaned back in my chair and asked, “Aren’t you supposed to be on maternity leave?”
Jess huffed as she plopped her ass into a chair. For a woman who had recently given birth to a bouncing baby girl, Jess looked remarkably well. Not that I would ever say anything about theten extra pounds of baby weight that still lingered around her hips and midsection.
Nope, it wasn’t my place.
However, I was pretty damn sure Savage would know best how to work off that extra baby weight. Which reminded me, I needed to schedule her for a pregnancy test when she came in for her last postpartum checkup.
