Shift Happens (Providence Family Ties 2)

“Ryan and Sam’s daughter? Who are they?”

Sighing, he looked at the other guy on the couch for help.

‘Other guy’ was slightly brighter than Jackson’s twin, apparently. “Mom and Dad’s best friends, dickwad. We only saw them every weekend, though, so I can understand how you wouldn’t remember them.”

Ah, this must be another one of the brothers, and given that he was holding a baby, I’d be guessing it was Elijah.

“Hey, I’m Sadie,” the woman introduced herself, leaning over with her hand outstretched.

Shaking it, I smiled, loving her British accent. “That must be your baby, Bronte. I’ve heard a lot about her from her uncle.”

“Funny,” Marcus drawled, rubbing his jaw. “We haven’t been told a thing about you. Why is that, brother?”

Jackson had been in the middle of removing his niece from her father’s arms, and when he turned around with her head on his shoulder, his hand supporting her tiny bootie, I swear my ovaries whimpered.

Ovary whores.

“Let me see, from what I can remember of Sasha’s story—which we were told as kids, so you’re talking out of your ass—her dad’s desperately wanted to be parents. Because gay adoption wasn’t widely accepted in the US of A at the time, they found a surrogate who gave birth to her for them. No strings attached.” This was true.

“Because Sam’s part Russian, they decided to name her after his”—he looked questioningly at me—“grandmother?”

“That’s right.”

“Sam and Ryan brought her with them regularly, and we went to their house regularly, too. Until Sasha decided we were all a-holes, and began to use female problems to get out of seeing us.”

Sadie snorted and held her hand up for a high five. “I’d have done the same thing if I had to pal around with these guys when I was a kid. Well played.”

Meeting her high five, I smiled brightly at her. “If my dads paid any attention to what was going on, they’d have figured out I’d started doing it two years before I even got my period for the first time, and that I’d have had it every two weeks.”

“You didn’t want to hang around with us?” Marcus growled, his eyes narrowed on me.

Some people might have felt intimidated by the look, but I wasn’t some people. “You were kind of assholes, to be fair.”

“She had good reasons,” Jackson agreed. “And just to let you know, the reason you can’t get through to me on my phone is because it’s only holding a tiny amount of battery and dies before I can do anything on it. The hospital has my number to call us about appointments, and I didn’t want to risk using its rare useful moments up and missing one of their calls.”

“When I said, ‘we haven’t been told a thing about you,’ I meant why are you busted up and staying with this turd,” Marcus explained to me.

Then, turning to his twin, he mumbled, “Thanks for the recap. I knew she looked familiar, I just couldn’t figure it out. And you could at least have sent a fucking text.”

“Sasha had problems at her college, so she transferred here. When Mom found out, she asked me to check in on her, which I did, but she thought I was attacking her and punched me in the balls.”

“This old chestnut,” I sighed, leaning my head back on the couch and closing my eyes.

“You punched him in the balls?” Sadie wheezed, moving closer to where I was sitting.

Not opening my eyes or lifting my head, I muttered, “It was a reflex reaction,” making her laugh harder.

“Then her cat—”

“The fuck is up with that thing?” Elijah interrupted. “I swear, I can’t unsee those eyes. Did you know that when you move your finger around in front of them, they follow it like they’re glued together?”

Sadie was invested in the story of how we met, though, so there was a slapping noise—which I assumed was her trying to get him to shut up—and then she said, “What did her cat do?”

“Climbed my leg like a tree and stuck his claws in my…” He didn’t finish the sentence, but he didn’t need to.

Sadie burst out laughing, and I heard two deeper laughs join her. “Can we keep her? Please?”

Once they’d settled back down, Marcus asked, “Why the fuck’s she broken?”

That’s when I opened one eye and smiled at Jackson, who was cringing. “I hit her with my truck.”

Whoomph, there it is.

This time there was no humor in Sadie’s voice when she spoke. “You did what?”

“I felt bad, okay. After I checked on Sasha the first time, I felt bad that it hadn’t gone smoothly after everything she’d already been through. So I came back to apologize and give her my number.”

“By tapping it out in morse code with your truck?” Marcus hissed. “The only thing stopping me from slapping you around the head is the fact you’re holding our beautiful niece. What the hell is wrong with you?”