Mark (Mallick Brothers 3)

"Guys," Mark said, giving me a smile as he walked toward me. "This is Scotti. Scotti this is, well, everyone. But let's start with my parents. This is Helen and Charlie," he supplied, leading me over to an older version of himself and a gorgeous woman with way too nice a body to have popped out five giant sons.

"Nice to meet you," I said, shaking their hands when they were offered, feeling weird as hell about it the whole time.

"So you're in the..." Helen started, looking down at her granddaughters, then back up at me, "less than legal acquisitions trade."

If I had a drink in my mouth, this would have been a genuine spit-take moment.

"Breathe," a newly familiar voice called to me from across the room as the girls moved their game of fetch outside into the backyard. I turned my head over my shoulder to find Dusty curled up into Ryan's side, his arm possessively around her. "I was a shut-in who held a stash of drugs for a dealer friend of mine when Ryan first met me."

"And I was a phone-sex operator with a cutting problem and a fucked up - God it felt good to say fuck - " the other blonde, the one with a bunch of tattoos said, "childhood... when they first met me."

"And I was a phone-sex operator on the run from the MC I was raised in," the last woman said, a tall, leggy brunette who was just perhaps too damn pretty.

"The point being," Helen said with a smile, "I wasn't saying it as a judgment, just an observation. I always wondered what kind of woman could rein this whore in," she said, slapping the back of her son's head, but giving him a warm smile. "Now I know. Should have guessed it would be some badass, combat-boot-wearing armed robber. That sounds just his type."

"Thanks, Ma," Mark said, shaking his head, looking just a tiny bit bashful. "And she's going straight now," he added.

"And settling here." That was Charlie.

It wasn't a question, but I answered anyway. "It seems like a good place for a criminal to retire. Or, a whole group of them to be exact."

"Yes, we heard about the brothers," Helen said, nodding. "I have to look into expanding my dining room. Hunt is going to need to make me a much larger dining table too."

And that, that sentence right there, it reminded me of something I had almost long-forgotten.

See, we had been so busy avenging the bad treatment of our mother that we had started to forget the things we missed most about her. Motherhood. That huge, open heart. That willingness to open your arms and your table. That generous spirit I was convinced you only ever truly found in maternal figures.

There was Mark's mother, a woman who screamed 'badass' from her awesome hair to her heeled feet, who had only known me two minutes, who knew almost nothing about me, my life, or my brothers, but she was willing to entertain the idea of inviting all of us into her home, cooking for us, sharing dinner conversation with us.

I don't think I had ever felt more welcome in my life.

I didn't let myself often think about what I missed about my mother. Knowing, perhaps, that it would be everything from the way she opened up all the curtains first in the morning to let the sunlight in, to the way she would buy big tubs of ice cream when one of us had a hard day and would sit in front of the TV with us, eating it right out of the container, to the way she kept up the Santa charade well into our teens even though she damn well knew we all stopped believing by ten. I missed the French toast on Christmas morning and the stuffing she made from scratch for Thanksgiving. I missed having her non-judgmental ear, her love-me-despite-all-my-flaws heart, her terrible singing voice, and her determination to keep us all close. Maybe because she knew, as all parents did, that she would be gone someday and all we would have left is one another.

"You alright?" Mark asked as the girls came running back in, drawing everyone else's attention.

And because I felt it, because it hurt, because I knew that the only way to have any kind of relationship was by sharing that kind of thing, I leaned in closer, dropped my voice, and admitted, "I miss my mom."

His arms went around me, pulling me close, holding just a bit too tight as if to say he couldn't imagine, but he understood.

"You're welcome to share mine," he offered, giving me a squeeze before pulling back slightly.

Sure, I didn't know her. And, likely, she was nothing like my own mother. But regardless, that meant something to me. Some day, if things progressed, it would be nice to know there would be a maternal figure in my life again. Hell, even in my brothers' lives. Sure, I had been a makeshift stand-in. I did the laundry. I cleaned. I fretted over them when they were sick or hurt. I cooked on special occasions. But I knew it was nowhere near the same.