Badd Daddy (The Badd Brothers Book 12) Read online

  “You can see the best in me, but not yourself.”

  I wasn’t falling for that bait. “Just listen to her, Liv. She’ll come to the right conclusion eventually. She may fuck up along the way, but that’s life, and she’s gotta learn that one way or another.”

  “I can’t protect her from getting hurt or screwing up, is what you’re saying.”

  I nodded. “Basically. And that you ain’t gonna do her any favors by trying, even though it may seem like it.”

  She stood up, fiddling with her phone before stuffing it into her purse, which she slung over a shoulder. “I enjoyed today.” She smiled up at me. “Tomorrow, we go furniture shopping.”

  “For what?” I asked. “I got a couch to sit on, a bed to sleep in, and a table to eat at. What else do I need?”

  She laughed, that merry tinkle of amusement sounded so much like a bell, like music. “Spoken like a man.”

  I snorted. “Well, I am one, so…”

  She smirked, her eyes raking over me almost as if she liked what she saw. “I’ve noticed. Believe me.”

  She seemed to falter, leaning forward as if to embrace me and then thinking better of it. “I…well. Tomorrow?”

  I wanted to hug her, hold her. See if her skin was as soft as it looked, if she smelled as sweet as I thought, if she would fit in my arms as neatly as I imagined.

  “Yeah,” I said, shoving my hands into my pockets. “Tomorrow. Furniture I don’t need.”

  She hesitated, eyes flicking back and forth as she gazed into mine, looking for…something. I wasn’t sure what. And then, perhaps seeing whatever she was looking for, she did lean forward. Into me. Her hands flattened against the backs of my shoulders, her arms stretching to reach around me. Her head fit under my chin, her small but taut frame pressing against mine; my hands splayed over her shoulders, and my hands had never felt so big, so unwieldy.

  She was that soft—that sweet smelling. More. I was dizzy, holding her like this. Smelling her, inhaling her scent. Her breasts were hard round bumps pressed against my chest, and I fought the erection I felt growing. This was not that—this was a hug between friends, and nothing else.

  She didn’t want that—not with me. She couldn’t, and shouldn’t.

  She was the first to back away, and I dropped my hands to my sides—I suddenly didn’t know what to do with them.

  “Bye,” she whispered.

  “See you tomorrow.” I watched her walk out the door of my condo, then went to the front window and watched her get into her truck. She slid behind the wheel, started the engine, settled her phone into a holder thing, and backed out; I saw her mouth moving as she reversed, and I knew she was talking to Poppy, her youngest daughter.

  I wondered if she would mention me, and then wondered why I should care if she did.

  Once she was gone, I made a spur of the moment decision, and my first action was to call Roman. I had to dig the ancient flip phone I kept around for emergencies out of the drawer in the kitchen, powered it on, and dialed Roman.

  “Hello? Dad, that you?”

  “Yep.”

  “I didn’t know you had a phone.”

  “It’s the oldest damn thing you ever saw, and I only use it for emergencies.”

  “You have an emergency?” I heard his voice go wary, worried.

  “Nothing like that, Rome. I’m fine, everything is fine. I just…I need your help.”

  “With what?” Still wary.

  I sighed. “It’s a long story. Come get me. I hate talking on this fuckin’ thing.”

  Roman laughed. “Me too. That’s why we text, Pops.”

  “Text? What kind of text?”

  He laughed again, harder. “Text messages, Dad.”

  “Heard of ’em, don’t know what the hell they are, though.”

  “You really are a fuckin’ dinosaur, aren’t you?” Roman laughed. “We gotta get you a real phone, teach you to text.”

  “One thing at a time, kiddo.”

  “What’s that mean?” he asked.

  I growled. “Just get your ass over here, okay?”

  “All right, all right,” he grumbled. “Don’t get your rumples in a stiltskin.”

  “The fuck is that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothin’. Just means keep your shirt on. I’ll be there in ten.”

  True to his word, Roman was stomping down the hall to my apartment in ten minutes. He let himself into my apartment and stopped dead in his tracks.

  “Holy fuck, Dad, you actually painted.” He stared around at the green walls, the drop cloth still on the floor, my meager furniture—couch, TV, third-hand TV stand—clustered in the middle of the room. “Green?”

  I shrugged. “It’s a nice shade. It’s called like palm frond verbena or some shit.”

  He stared hard at me. “You drinkin’ again, old man?”

  I was tempted to whip something at his thick skull, but I didn’t. It was a fair question, after all. “No,” I groused.

  He blinked at me. “You combed your hair and your beard. You painted. And you’re walking around without that cane you hate.” A slow, shit-eating grin spread across his face. “You got a girlfriend.”

  “Roman, do not fuck with me on this, okay?” I gave him as close to a pleading look as I was capable of bestowing. “Please?”

  “But there is a woman.”

  “You know anything else on this fuckin’ planet that could make me ask my own son for fuckin’ help?”

  He grinned. “Nope.” The grin faded, and he eyed me carefully. “So. What’s up, Dad? No more jokes, I promise.”

  I sighed. “I just…I…” I growled, raked my hand through my hair. “I’m a fuckin’ mess, Rome.”

  Roman wrinkled his nose. “You gotta crack a window, Pops. The paint fumes are making me dizzy.” He gestured at the door. “Let’s go grab a coffee and talk, all right?”

  I nodded, hobbling across the room to crack open a window, and then followed Roman out to his truck.

  “I hate not being able to drive,” I grumbled. “Fuckin’ sucks.”

  Roman clearly wanted to say something, but figured anything he would say would end up sounding snarky, so he just shrugged. “I bet it does,” he said eventually.

  I rubbed my jaw. “You don’t have to tiptoe around my feelings, Rome. Say what you mean. I figure I’ve earned it.”

  He glanced at me side eye. “She’s got you in a twist, don’t she?”

  I tilted my head backward and snarled. “Yes, she fuckin’ does.”

  He chuckled. “Women.”

  I huffed. “Women,” I agreed.

  We pulled into a parking spot on the street and went into a small coffee shop—I sat down at Rome’s insistence, and he brought two huge white porcelain mugs full of black coffee.

  “So,” he said. “What d’you need help with?”

  “This,” I said, patting my bad leg. “And this,” I said, patting my stomach.

  Roman grinned. “I can do that.”

  “I know you can. That’s why I asked, dumbass,” I said with a grin, making my insult affectionate.

  “So, before we work on your gut, we gotta get your leg back to full strength.” He hesitated. “You probably also oughta think about making some changes to the way you eat.” He said this warily, because he knew, in ages past, that I’d have snapped like a wounded bear if he had brought up the idea of dieting. “I know you don’t like to—”

  “Rome, don’t.” I sipped my coffee, and took a moment to think before I spoke. “Being in Ketchikan is fuckin’ hard, okay? Seeing you and your brothers here is hard, because the three of you are spitting images of me when I was in my prime, except you three are blond like your bitch of a mother…” I trailed off with a sigh. “Another thing I probably oughta address, is letting go of my hatred of that woman. Anyway. Being here is sorta forcing me to…face things. Like how bad I’ve let myself get. And then this friendship with Liv? Man, nothing’ll force you to take a long hard look at the man in the mirro
r like a good woman.”

  “Is she?” Roman asked. “Good?”

  I nodded. “Too good.” I cackled. “Too Goode.”

  Roman frowned. “What’s so funny?”

  “Her name is Goode,” I answered. “With an ‘E’ on the end. Olivia Goode.”

  “She painted your apartment for you, huh?” Roman surmised.

  “Nah, we both did it.”

  His eyebrows lifted. “Oh really?” he drawled. “Painting rooms together already?”

  I glared. “I told you not to fuck with me and I meant it, punk.”

  Roman held up both hands. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry.” He tilted his head, staring at me hard. “You said ‘friendship.’”

  I nodded. “Yep. That’s what it is. A friendship.”

  Roman’s eyes narrowed. “Friendship, huh? With a woman?”

  I shrugged. “I know. But there it is.”

  “In my experience, if there’s a woman in your life you consider a friend, you’re thinking of something else. At least a little bit, even if you’re trying not to.” Roman lifted a hand palm up. “But what do I know?”

  I growled. “She’s classy, beautiful—upper-class East Coast transplant. Fashionable, smart, successful. A good parent, and a good person.”

  Roman saw through me. “And you don’t think you’re in the same league as her.”

  I shifted uncomfortably. “This is a weird conversation to have with my son.”

  He leaned forward across the table. “You know, we don’t have to be just father and son, Dad. We can be friends.”

  I cleared my throat gruffly, coughed, growled. “I weren’t no—I wasn’t any good as a father when you guys were growing up. Maybe…maybe I could do better as a friend, now that you’re grown.”

  Roman sat back, grinning broadly. “I haven’t met her yet, but I think I already like this Olivia of yours.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “You don’t know how to quit, do you?”

  He just laughed. “Nope. Learned that from the best.”

  I couldn’t help laughing at that. “Can’t deny that.”

  Roman slugged back his coffee. “So. Step one, strengthen that knee of yours. You’ve been favoring it and hobbling around for long enough. Step two, eat better—no sugar, no refined carbs, and no more than one cheeseburger a week.” He was well acquainted with my weakness for burgers—I nearly burned down the trailer more than once in his childhood, trying to fry burgers on the stove while sauced out of my mind. “Step three, start lifting.”

  I frowned at him. “I just want to get rid of the gut, not bulk up.”

  Roman waved my protest away. “Best way to cut fat is to lift heavy. You could run around for fuckin’ days without stopping and you’d never really make much progress. Lift heavy, keep the rest times short, and eat right. You’ll be back in peak shape in no time.”

  “You make it sound easy.”

  He laughed. “Easy, no. Simple, yes.” He jutted his chin at my coffee. “Drink up, old man. We start now. I’m taking you grocery shopping.”

  “If you fill my fridge with lettuce, I’m disowning you.”

  Roman just cackled. “Do I look like a fuckin’ bunny rabbit to you, Dad?” He gestured at the massive, impressively muscled shoulders and arms. “You don’t get a body like this eating lettuce. Although, more salad is a good idea. But, no, not all salad. Just…better food. Real food. Lean meat like turkey and chicken, brown rice, salmon, sweet potatoes, stuff like that. Cut out the chips, fries, doughnuts, soda, all that garbage.”

  I nodded. “I mean, that’s simple enough. Like you said, maybe not easy, ’cause you know damn well I love that shit.”

  He nodded. “Oh, I know. I run a bar, Dad—I serve bacon cheeseburgers and chili fries and tater tots and Shepherd’s Pie and shit like that all day long. You think it’s easy staying on the healthy nutrition wagon when I serve up all that delicious crap all day long? I love that shit as much as you do. But my desire to stay shredded like a motherfuckin’ Adonis is stronger, so I keep my diet clean.” He glanced at me. “You may think about getting cleaned up. Haircut, beard trim. Make you look less like a hobo and more like…well, me, ” he said with a wink at me.

  I rolled my eyes at him. “Humble, you ain’t.”

  He just grinned, a wicked, shit-eating grin he learned from me. “No kidding, Pops. But look who my role model is.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “The fuck you say. I ain’t nobody’s role model.”

  Roman groaned, rubbing his face with both hands. “Dad, can you just get over yourself, already? Yeah, you were a drunk ass piece of shit for most of my life. Yeah, I spent a few years being pissed at you. But you know what? I’m here. I’m strong. I’m healthy, I’m happy, I’ve got a place I love, a woman I love, and work I enjoy, and my brothers are around me. And so are you. And you’ve been sober—what, a year, now?”

  I dug into my pocket, hauled out my wallet, and removed a bronze coin about the size of a poker chip; I set it spinning on the table, and Roman snatched it, examined it.

  “One year, one month, two weeks, and three days,” I said.

  Roman flipped the coin over a finger, his expression difficult to read. “I’m really proud of you, Dad.”

  I choked. “Hearing my fuckin’ son tell me he’s proud of me is…” I blinked hard, cleared my throat with a gruff growl. “Bittersweet.” I stood up, slammed the last of my coffee, burning my tongue and throat in the process. “Let’s go shopping for rabbit food.”

  6

  Liv

  “Charlie—listen, no—hold on, please, listen—”Charlie was on a tirade the likes of which I’d never heard from my eldest daughter.

  “—And he told me, can you believe this? He told me it was my fault! My fault! I’ve spent five years with the bastard, paying the lion’s share of our rent, buying most of the food, doing his laundry and my own, going to school full-time and then interning full-time and now working full-time, and all I ever asked of him was fidelity and affection. And did I get either one? NO! He was boinking my boss! You wanna know the funniest part of all this? My boss is fifty-five, she’s married with grandchildren, and hasn’t seen the underside of two hundred pounds since the nineties, and that’s being generous, considering she’s barely five feet tall.” She was silent a while. “I don’t know what to do, Mom.”

  “I’m sorry you’re going through this, Charlie,” I said. “What are your options?”

  She hummed a musing sound. “Well, I could stay here in Boston and continue working at Denoyer and Whitcomb. I’d need a new apartment because we’re both on the lease and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let him stick me with a four thousand dollar a month lease. I’ve loved working at the firm, but Vera Denoyer is now public enemy number one and I’ll be damned and double damned if I’ll work for her for another minute, the dirty old cuckolding slut.”

  “Charlie!” I snapped.

  “Mom, you know what—”

  I cut in. “Be very careful how you finish that, Charlotte Grace.” I kept my voice quiet and calm, but my tone was one she knew very well meant business.

  She restarted. “I don’t take it back. She’s a dirty old cuckolding slut. But I will apologize for my language.” Another huff. “Anyway, staying at the firm would mean requesting that I work for Isaac Whitcomb and, from what I know and what I’ve heard, he’s pretty aggressively handsy, but he’s old money and basically untouchable, and one of the most in-demand real estate attorneys on the entire East Coast.”

  “You wouldn’t last five minutes working for him, Charlie. He’d get handsy one time, you’d slap him so hard his dentures would fly out, and then you’d be fired and jailed for assault.”

  She sighed. “Exactly. So then my option becomes finding a new job and a new apartment. But I only moved to this city because this is where Glen wanted to be. I had great offers in DC and L.A. I only took the job in Boston because Glen wanted to get involved with the DNC here.”

  “Charlie, I don�
�t want to say it, but…”

  She groaned. “I know, I know, you warned me about taking a job because of Glen.” A heavy pause. “You warned me, and you were right.”

  “I didn’t want to be.”

  “Does it ever get annoying, always being right?”

  I laughed. “Yes, it does. People don’t want to believe me when I say I’m nearly always right about certain things, and then they resent me when it turns out I was right. It’s very annoying, as a matter of fact.”

  “So what do I do?”

  I laughed through a sigh. “Charlie, I can’t tell you that. Only you can decide what’s best for you.”

  “You were right then, and I didn’t listen. I’m ready to listen, now.”

  “I wish it worked that way, sweetheart.” I sighed. “You’re in a place in life where you need to figure this out for yourself. I’ll be here, and I’ll do whatever I can to help, but I can’t tell you what you should do.”

  “But I don’t know what to do.”

  I switched the phone to my other ear. “You should talk to Poppy.”

  “Why?” Her voice was skeptical. “What’s she got to do with this?”

  “She’s going through similar circumstances. Maybe if you two spend some time together talking things over, you’ll help each other come to some decisions.”

  “We will end up trying to kill each other within five seconds, Mom.”

  “Perhaps now is the time to resolve that. Try talking to her as a sister and friend instead of being the big sister.”

  “Gahhh, Mom! Getting a straight answer out of you is like talking to Yoda!”

  I chuckled. “Small and green I am not,” I said, in a terrible attempt at a Yoda voice.

  “Oh god, Mom. Don’t ever do that again.”

  “Talk to Poppy. Listen to her. Be her sister and her friend. You both need that, and who better to get advice from than your sister?”

  “She’s vague and irresponsible and naive.”

  “And you’re bossy and overbearing to an almost comical degree.”

  “Overbearing?”

  I laughed. “Yes, Charlie. You can be overbearing at times. And I’m your mother.”