“Your dad’s dead, baby.”

She stared at him a second, not one thing washing through her features, before she fell forward and did a face plant in his chest again.

Jake wrapped both arms around her.

Conner walked in with a snifter of purple liquid and Jake watched, his boy’s eyes locked on Josie, as his son walked directly to the coffee table, sat his ass on it, set the glass aside and reached out to curl his fingers around Josie’s knee.

Christ, he was a good kid.

“Kids on their way?” he asked his son.

“Yep,” Conner answered. “Amber’s all over it.

“Thanks, bud,” he whispered.

Conner said nothing, just jerked up his chin.

Josie leaned away, gave Conner a small smile she totally didn’t commit to and looked to Jake.

“I need to make up beds for the kids.”

“We’ll see to that when Amber and Eath get here,” he replied.

“But—”

“Take a drink, Slick, relax. We got this covered.”

Something shifted in her eyes before her lips formed the words, “You got this covered.”

“Yeah,” he confirmed.

She stared at him.

Conner let her go to grab her glass and he offered it to her.

Jake unwrapped one arm so she could turn and take it.

“Stuff smells crap,” Conner muttered as she lifted it to her mouth and took a sip.

It was at that, finally, when Josie smiled and it was genuine this time.

There it was.

He was right.

They had this covered.

* * * * *

“Mickey said and word was you got in there, but Jesus Christ,” Coert stated, his eyes to the front door of Lavender House.

Coert and Jake had just left Josie after Coert and one of his deputies moved the stubbornly lingering group of assholes off Josie’s property. He’d reported to the owner that he’d dealt with the situation and he’d done this with two things on his agenda. Reporting to the owner that he’d dealt with it and getting a look at Josie.

“Pure class, even rattled,” Coert noted, looked to Jake and grinned, something Jake could see since he turned on the outside lights when Coert arrived in his cruiser. “How’d you get in there?”

“She thinks I’m the shit,” Jake told him, grinning back.

Coert kept handing him crap. “So you’ve brainwashed her.”

Jake kept grinning but his grin died when he asked, “You know I like taking your shit, Coert, but gotta know. Until shit gets sorted with the will, she got a genuine threat from her uncle?”

Coert’s face also got serious. “Judge’ll have to make that decision, Jake. Until that time, assets will probably be frozen. If you mean can the old guy make her let him in or even make her let him stay, again, judge’ll have to handle that. But until the will is assessed and judgment made, if things are acrimonious, Josie’s already here so she’ll likely be ordered not to sell anything, they’ll let her stay and he might be allowed to get in and look around but other than that, he’ll be ordered to steer clear.”

“So she’s good,” Jake said.

“If she’s got her own assets to live on, yeah,” Coert confirmed.

She did. She’d told him. So that was at least one thing they didn’t have to worry about.

They still had two more.

“You know if Terry Baginski is invested in Stone Incorporated?” Jake asked.

“Lotta local folks are investors in Stone Incorporated,” Coert answered.

“I’m takin’ your non-answer as a no, you don’t know.”

“Yeah. I don’t know for certain but I wouldn’t be surprised,” Coert replied and his voice got lower when he went on, “Be less surprised she’s in on this just to piss you off.”

Jake shook his head. “Banged her between number two and number three which was a long time ago,” he pointed out. “She was the worst lay I’d ever had, bar none. Been years. I’m not her favorite person but actively tryin’ to piss me off…” he trailed off disbelievingly.

“Women do a lot of crazy shit, they get it in their minds to do it,” Coert noted and Jake thought he was not wrong, his earlier conversation with Donna being proof of that. Then Coert changed the subject to ask, “Stone after Lavender House?”

“He was,” Jake answered. “Then he got a look at Josie and decided he preferred her. She wasn’t interested, tried to be cool about lettin’ him know that, but she heard him talkin’ smack about her. She leveled him and clearly he didn’t like that much.”

Coert’s brows shot up. “No shit? This is retaliation for a crash and burn?”

“More like a detonation, but yeah. Guy’s dick is microscopic.”

At this, Coert got closer and warned, “He’s your threat, Jake. If he’s bankrolling that old asshole for a shot at Lavender House, this could get ugly. Lotta folks in this town will stand up for Lydia Malone and say it straight she was all there until the day she died. But Stone’s got the money to drag it out if that option’s to be had.”

This was not good news.

“She gave Josie to me in her will,” Jake confided and he saw Coert’s brows draw together.

“Say again?”

“Lydie,” Jake explained. “She gave Josie to me in her will.”

“Josie…the person?” Coert asked, his brows now shooting up.

“Yep,” Jake answered.

Coert stared at him a beat before he burst out laughing.

Jake let him but crossed his arms on his chest while he did it.

When Coert got it under control, he stated, “That does it. Clearly Lydia had lost it before she passed, leavin’ her girl to you.”

“Bite me,” Jake muttered good-naturedly but tensed when he saw Coert suddenly get serious.

“Thought the world of you,” he said quietly. “Your kids. Everyone knew it. You were the son she never had. The son she always wanted. Your kids the grandkids she never got outside your girl in there. Straight up, man, after you scraped off Sloane, lots of talk in this town, wondering why Lydia didn’t fix you up with her girl when she was around, seein’ as she was around often enough. Anyone who knows her would not be surprised Lydia wanted that as her final wish. You could get a hundred folks in a courtroom to say that same thing and do it under oath. I am not kidding.”

Jake could say nothing. Coert’s words about him being the son Lydie never had were stuck in his throat, making it prickle.

When Jake was silent, Coert kept speaking.

“And I only moved here fifteen years ago but think it says a fuckuva lot that I only got a decade and a half under my belt in Magdalene and the specter of Davis and Chester Malone still haunts this burg and those two little motherfuckers didn’t even live here. Just caused mayhem whenever they visited their grandparents, the kind it was hard for a lot of people to forget. Including how they took treatin’ their mom to new and unprecedented piss-poor levels.” He took in a breath and concluded, “What I’m sayin’ is, you guys hunker down, it’s all gonna work out. You need me in the meantime, call. I figure you got some pains in the ass to deal with for a while but in the end, this will go away.”

Jake nodded and murmured, “Thanks, man.”

“You still owe me,” Coert noted.

“You didn’t tape the game?” Jake asked.

“You know it sucks not seein’ live,” Coert returned.

“Hardly. You get to go home and fast forward through the commercials. Figure we livened up your night and you owe me.”

“You’d figure wrong,” Coert replied. “I want one of Tom’s omelets and I wanna eat it with you buyin’ it and bringin’ your woman along with you.”

At that, Jake grinned. “No way you got a shot. Ask Mick. She’s into me.”

“Man can still look.”

Jake shook his head.

Coert extended his hand.

Jake uncrossed his arms to shake it. “Appreciate it, Coert.”

“My job, not a problem,” Coert murmured, let Jake go and gave a low wave as he moved to his cruiser.

His deputy was already gone.

Jake didn’t wait to watch him pull out. He went into the house, locked the door behind him and went to the family room where he’d left Josie with his kids, Ethan trying to pretend he wasn’t freaked for Josie but doing this sitting close to his woman, Amber shocking the shit out of him and hustling around the house to get beds made without anyone asking.

But when he got to the family room, only his kids were there.

“Josie got a call, Dad,” Conner informed him immediately. “She went to the light room to take it.”

Jake nodded once, turned on his boot to retrace his steps and hit the light room.

A call could be anything. The last two weeks, after Gagnon fired her, her phone rang all the time.

And it could be something bad if Stone, Terry or Josie’s uncle had her number.

But when he made it up to the light room, he saw from the single light she’d turned on that she was in the window seat, her gaze to the sea and she was not on the phone.

Her eyes came to him and he saw her face still blank.

He didn’t like that. Not only because it was not Josie but because he couldn’t read it and he needed to know where her head was at.

He moved to her, sat behind her and arranged them so he had her between his legs up on the window seat, arm around her chest, the other around her ribs, her back to his torso.

He felt better when she rested her head on his shoulder and her arms over his.

“Amond called. He’s going to be here Tuesday,” she shared once she’d relaxed into him.

Fucking fantastic. Just what they needed. A protective, internationally known hip-hop artist showing up to pass judgment on Jake.

He did not share these thoughts.

He said, “Good you got that visit to look forward to.”