Calliope snorted. “No, but he did approve my business loan.”
Dosia lifted an eyebrow. Calliope was setting her up with abanker? Not that Dosia had anything against bankers, but it still seemed odd. “If he’s so ‘special’,” she added air-quotes, “why don’tyougo out with him?”
Calliope shrugged easily, like she was answering an elementary math question. “Because he’s not meant for me.”
Fuck. Dosia didn’t doubt that. She still had no idea who the biker at the bakery was, though it was nearly time for Calliope to head that way. What she doubted, or rather, what shehopedwasn’t true was that Bart the Banker was meantfor her.
Dosia wasn’t a nun. She’d dated over the years. A few of them had ended in a single night in the bedroom while others went on for some time before they went their separate ways. The one constant, though? There wasn’t a single one she would have introduced to her daughter. Not one of them. She couldn’t risk JJ getting attached to any of them, nor did she want to have a man around JJ until she knew she could trust him.
None of them passed muster. She doubted Bart the Banker would either.
Putting the feather duster down, Dosia rubbed her temples. When had she become so negative? She didn’t used to be so. She was once fun and carefree, thinking of the world outside her small town as a great, big adventure. Hell, most days she felt like she was twenty-seven going on ninety. She was tired, and frankly, she was lonely.
As much as she hated being back in Mount Grove itself, she loved that she was once more surrounded by her family. Her brother was even talking about moving closer too, even though he was only in Johnstown. She’d taken a chance with the bookstore, seizing the opportunity to bring her dream to fruition.
She trusted Calliope, and while she wasn’t really in the dating mood, clearly there was something about Bart the Banker that Calliope was getting a feeling about.
“Fine,” she grumbled. “Tell me about him.” As Calliope clapped out her excitement and started talking about what she knew of Bart the Banker, Dosia tried to ignore the twisted feeling in her gut. She really did not want to be so pessimistic about life. So then why did it feellike she’d just mentally agreed to get a colonoscopy and a pap smear at the same time?
“I still can’t believeher audacity!”
Pumpkin gave an offhanded shrug. “Desperate people do desperate things.” It wasn’t an excuse, but it was more logical than anything else he could come up with.
Frankie shook her head, her eyes never leaving the road in front of her.
They were on their way back to Mount Grove after spending the day at the zoo. SJ was in the back of the SUV with his new stuffed koala, making excited baby babble noises. It was fucking adorable, but after pushing himself around all day in the wheelchair, he was too sore to twist and take a video. He got an awkward angle in selfie-mode a few minutes ago, but it wasn’t the same.
“I try not to judge people, I really do, but I have a hard time with that woman. It’s one thing to hang around a biker gang like the Black Pythons when you’re young, dumb, and single. But the second she became a mom? Toraiseyour son in that atmosphere?” Frankie cringed. “I just keep thinking, ‘poor Ollie’. She was hismomand she failed him, plain and simple.”
“Based on Dixie Gilbert’s current age, she’d been a teenager when she had Ollie.”
“Which is heartbreaking,” Frankie argued. “It means her parents, or adults and society in general, failed her just as much as she failed Ollie. And I can’t imagine being a teenage girl around a club like that. Which is where the whole ‘not judging’ thing comes in,” she grumbled. “Or is trying to come in.”
“No, I agree with you. It’s a shit situation,” Pumpkin said.
“And she wanted to see Ollie? How did she even know how to find him?”
Pumpkin wiped a hand down his face. “That is the question. Wedon’t know that one. When we, uh, dropped her off at rehab, she was too strung out to know us, and I highly doubt she would have remembered. It wasn’t like we left a business card with her.”
It was definitely a mystery that Keys was working to solve. Dixie Gilbert shouldn’t have been able to track or find Ollie. Since Ollie didn’t have a legal birth certificate or any record that he even existed, Keys had made his identity up. It was beyond unlikely that DixieGoogled‘Oliver Duncan’ to find Ollie’s address, because she wouldn’t have known Steel and Jenna’s last name or that they’d adopted Ollie.
“I agree with Steel. He was right to refuse her entry and to keep her from seeing Ollie.”
Pumpkin agreed with Steel’s decision too. He wasn’t sure if they’d told Ollie his bio mom had shown up at the entry gate or not. Since it wasn’t like Ollie was forbidden to leave property, chances were that he could run into his mom in town. Therefore, Pumpkin assumed he’d been warned. Dixie Gilbert had not been happy to be denied entry to see her son, and Pumpkin doubted she was going to let the matter drop anytime soon. It was likely that Steel would assign Ollie a bodyguard for a bit too, though it wasn’t like Aaron, Cage’s son and Ollie’s boyfriend, was going to let anything bad happen to Ollie. Aaron was a football player, a big guy like his father, and he’d been training with some of the club members in anticipation of joining the Army after high school.
“Do you think she’s going to try to blackmail Jenna and Steel for money or something?”
Pumpkin shrugged. “Anything’s possible, but she won’t succeed.” Steel wouldn’t let her, though that wasn’t something he was going to go into detail on with Frankie. Steel had been generous to allow Dixie to live after she’d abandoned Ollie and had even gotten her into rehab. He wasn’t likely to give her a second chance, nor was he going to allow the woman to cause Jenna a modicum of stress.
Frankie shook her head, her expression sad. “Poor Ollie. He finally gets parents and now his bitch of a mother is going to try to cause problems.”
Pumpkin’s eyebrows touched his hairline. “Francine Penelope Archer, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you curse before.”
Her cheeks flushed. “Ollie deserves happiness.”
Pumpkin agreed wholeheartedly. If the world was a better place,allchildren would be happy and healthy. Humanscoulddo it. They had the brains and the capability, but they were too selfish to even try.
“Are you hungry?” Frankie asked before Pumpkin could respond. He had a feeling she was deliberately changing the subject.
