Full Hart, page 1
FULL HART
A Harty Boys Christmas
WHITLEY COX
Whitley Cox
Copyright © 2021 by Whitley Cox
All rights reserved.
No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
Cover Design: Fantasia Frog
Editing: SkyDiary Productions
For my cousin Paula Labelle!
A HUGE fan and one of my biggest supporters.
Thank you so much for loving my books so hard
and bragging about them to all your friends.
You're amazing and I should have dedicated a book to you sooner.
Thank you again from the bottom of my heart.
xoxo
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A few other books by Whitley Cox
The
Single Dads of Seattle
Grab book 1 here
https://books2read.com/HBTSD-SDS
*
The Quick Billionaires
Grab book 1 here
Quick & Dirty
https://books2read.com/QDirty-QBS
*
The Harty Boys
Grab book 1 here
Hard Hart
https://books2read.com/HH-HB
*
The Young Sisters
Grab book 1 here
Not Over You
https://books2read.com/not-over-you
*
Doctor Smug
https://books2read.com/DoctorSmug
*
Hot Dad
https://books2read.com/Hot-Dad
*
Snowed In & Set Up
https://books2read.com/SISU
*
Love to Hate You
https://books2read.com/Love2HateYou
Contents
1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3
4. Chapter 4
5. Chapter 5
6. Chapter 6
7. Chapter 7
8. Chapter 8
9. Chapter 9
10. Chapter 10
11. Chapter 11
12. Chapter 12
13. Chapter 13
14. Chapter 14
15. Chapter 15
16. Chapter 16
17. Chapter 17
18. Chapter 18
19. Chapter 19
20. Chapter 20
21. Chapter 21
22. Chapter 22
23. Chapter 23
24. Chapter 24
25. Chapter 25
Epilogue
SNEAK PEEK OF RAYMA'S BOOK
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chapter 1
Brock & Krista
“The most well-endowed brother gets the biggest tree, right?” Heath asked with a smirk as he hauled his one-and-a-half-year-old son out of his car seat and propped him on his hip.
Brock rolled his eyes at his youngest, cockiest brother. “We didn’t cut down a sapling short enough to resemble your Vienna sausage, little brother.” He dropped the tailgate of his truck as his wife, Krista, helped their children out of the back of the cab. Rex wandered up, his wife and daughter behind him, while Chase, Stacey, and their two kids, who had parked the farthest up the road, were making their way down the sidewalk.
“Ah,” Heath said, chortling, “we all know who the biggest brother is. He might not be the oldest, but he’s the biggest.” He elbowed his wife, then Rex’s wife. “If you know what I mean?”
More eyes rolled as they all stood outside their mother’s house on December fifteenth, their breath forming puffs in front of their faces with each exhale.
Heath wasn’t discouraged at all. He tossed his blond hair off his face with a flick of his head. “I say we go by size. Biggest brother gets the biggest tree, and we work our way down that way. Mum gets the smallest one because—”
“She doesn’t have a dick?” Lydia asked, adjusting ten-month-old Maeve on her hip. “Seems like if she had one, it’d be bigger than all of yours. We all know her cojones are the size of grapefruits.”
Krista, Pasha, and Stacey all nodded and went “mhmm.”
The last to slide out of Heath’s truck, with a baby in her arms, was Pasha’s sister Rayma, she had Heath and Pasha’s one-month-old daughter Eve leaned up against her shoulder. “What’s this about cojones?”
“Just saying that Joy has the biggest of all them. Of all of us,” Pasha informed her sister.
Rayma nodded, her golden-brown eyes sparkling. “Not gonna argue there. Nana Joy’s ovaries are the size of bowling balls. Not sure how that tiny woman can walk, but—”
Brock cleared his throat. “Enough chit-chat. It’s cold out here.” He heaved the smallest tree—which still stood nearly six feet tall—out from the back of his truck and over his shoulder. Rex went to help him, but Brock grunted him off. “Can do it myself.”
More eyes rolled.
Ever since women started joining their family, eventually to outnumber the men, eyes seemed to always be rolling. And it was usually at Brock or one of his brothers.
But they weren’t just brothers by blood, they were partners in an elite security and surveillance company as well. His wife had named it, and although Brock’s own eyes had rolled at the time, now he kind of liked it. Harty Boys Security. It worked, even if it was a little cheesy.
“How come Nana couldn’t come to get a tree with us?” Brock’s seven-year-old daughter Zoe asked, skipping next to him, her curly red hair bouncing in twin ponytails that sprung out from the side of her head.
“Because Nana had a hair appointment,” Krista said, holding their three-year-old son Zane by the hand as they all approached their mother’s front door. “But her car is in the driveway, so she’s home now.”
“Someone else is here, too,” Chase murmured from behind Brock. “Anyone recognize the SUV?”
Heads shook.
It was a light gray Ford Explorer, a new model and with a hefty set of snow tires on it. A glance in through the driver’s side window yielded no further information as to who might be visiting their mother.
“Zane want to ring the bell,” Brock’s son said, having recently entered the stage of his speech where he referred to himself in the third person.
“I’ll help him,” Zoe said as they all fell in line on the path that ran below the living-room window up to the front door. She went up to her younger brother, hoisted him up around the waist, with his back to her front.
“No need,” Brock said, pushing past his kids. “It’s Nana’s house. We can just walk right in.” He turned the knob, but it was locked.
He grunted in confusion.
“I have a key,” Krista said, elbowing through her husband and children and fishing her keys out of her pocket. Her blue eyes glittered in amusement as she slipped the key into the hole and turned it. Her cheeks nearly matched her fiery red hair, which was spilling out of her knit cap. She turned the knob and held the door open for everyone to step inside.
“Nana!” Zoe called out.
“Nana!” Zane echoed.
Eight-year-old Connor, Chase and Stacey’s oldest, raced through the legs of the adults to meet up with his cousins, then joined in on the call. “Nana!”
“Nana!” Thea, Chase and Stacey’s youngest, cried out, pushing out of her mother’s arms to join her brother on the ground.
“Where is she?” Chase murmured, the curiosity and unease in his tone mirroring what Brock felt in his gut.
Something wasn’t right.
The house was quiet.
Dark.
Cold.
Those were three things it never was when his mother was home. Even if she didn’t turn the furnace on, when she was home, there was warmth. And she was almost always humming some tune or puttering in the kitchen making noise. And she never drew the blinds to the picture window in the living room, and yet right now they were closed up tight, making the entire house feel like it was enveloped in a shadow.
“Mum!” Heath called out, shoving past all of them, seventeen-month-old Raze still on his hip. “Mum, where are you?”
A clunk and a “shit” from down the hall rumbled through the house like thunder.
They all paused.
Then whispers followed. Two voices.
What the hell?
“Mum?” Brock barked louder than the rest of them.
“Anybody packing?” Rex asked.
One by one, they all shook their heads. All of them except Krista. “I have my Glock in the safety box in the truck,” she said. “Want me to run and get it?”
Brock nodded but didn’t glance at his cop wife.
She nodded and disappeared.
“Get the women and children outside,” he said to no one in particular.
Heath turned to his wife and murmured something to her, passing her Raze.
Against the children’s wishes, they all started to file back out just as Krista arrived back inside.
The click of a bedroom door had them all pausing, including everyone on the threshold.
Brock watched the
His heart was in his throat.
Making gimme fingers to his wife, he asked for the gun.
“I’m a better shot than you are,” she muttered, elbowing him out of the way.
Holding his breath and not blinking, he kept his gaze focused on where his mother’s bedroom door was and the whispers filtering out of it. It was two people. He knew that now.
“Mum?” he barked, making his wife in front of him jump, glance at him over her shoulder, and glare.
A head poked out from the doorway, and his mother’s brows furrowed.
Sighs echoed through all of them.
“What the hell are you doing with that, Krista? Put that away right now,” his mother ordered, stepping into the hallway, all four feet eleven inches of her.
“Sorry,” Krista murmured, stowing the gun in the holster clipped to her belt.
Their mother approached. “What is going on?”
“I’d like to ask you the same question,” Brock said, realizing he was still holding the damn tree on his shoulder. He leaned it up against the wall. “Why didn’t you answer us? Why is the house cold, dark, and quiet? Why are the curtains pulled? Whose truck is that?”
Color burned in his mother’s cheeks.
“Yes,” Krista said in what sounded like a hiss. Her smile grew mischievously wide.
Yes?
Brock took in his mother’s appearance for a moment.
She was wearing a pair of dark wash jeans and a long-sleeved button-up blouse of some light shade of pink. But the buttons were askew, not fastened properly. The shirt was also wrinkled. Her hair was disheveled, too.
Which was so unlike Joy Hart.
The woman was always put together.
For as long as Brock could remember, his mother had tucked her hair up into a no-nonsense bun on the back of her head and rarely was a hair ever out of place. But the bun on the top of her head now looked like it’d been tossed up in haste.
Her lips were also puffy.
And there was a red rash or something on her cheeks.
A throat cleared down the hallway, and Brock lifted his head.
He could hear his mother swallow as he watched a man about the same height and build as himself walk down the hall, buttoning his shirt.
“What the fuc—”
“Watch it,” his mother said.
“Holy crap,” Rayma murmured behind Brock. “Have him stripped, bathed, and brought directly to my tent.”
Jesus fucking Christ.
“He’s old enough to be your dad,” Heath scolded her.
“And I’m sure he could help me work through any daddy issues I may have,” Rayma retorted. “And for the record, all y’all burly Harty Boys are old enough to be my father. Hasn’t stopped the fantasies during the dry spells.”
“Rayma!” Pasha admonished, nearly dropping her son as she gaped at her twenty-something sister. “That’s my husband.”
Brock noticed Rayma’s indifferent shrug. “I know, and I’m respectful. It’s not like in my fantasies we’re cheating. You’ve been dead a respectable amount of time, and I’m there for Heath to help him raise the children on his own.”
“You kill me?” Pasha practically screamed.
“This just keeps getting better,” Lydia, Rex’s wife, said with a chuckle.
The man from the hallway with the dark, close-cropped hair, facial scruff, and light gray eyes came up suspiciously close behind Brock’s mother and rested his hand on her shoulder.
Brock’s body turned molten hot.
He heard his brothers grunt and suck in breaths beside and behind him.
Their mother glanced at the man behind her, smiled, and turned back to the rest of them. “Everyone, I’d like you to meet Grant.”
As happy as she was to see that her mother-in-law was finally getting a little something-something, Krista’s thoughts were on her husband and the frightening vein that popped out on the side of his neck as he stared unblinkingly at the man who rested his hand on Joy’s shoulder.
“Nana Joy’s getting her groove back,” Rayma whispered. “And with a freaking demigod, no less.”
“Shhh,” Pasha whispered. “If I could ground your ass, I would. Having fantasies about killing me. That’s some messed-up shit right there.”
“I don’t fantasize about killing you. I fantasize that you’re already dead, then I bone your husband as we bond in our grief.”
Dear lord, the drama behind her was almost as tantalizing as the potential drama in front of her. Krista wanted to give both her equal attention.
But alas, making sure her husband didn’t pop a blood vessel in his eye was her main priority. She slid her hand into his and curled her fingers around his. “You going to say anything, honey?”
Finally, he blinked and cleared his throat.
The man Joy had introduced as Grant thrust his free hand out. “Heard a lot about you kids. Nice to finally meet you.”
Oh shit.
Brock was going all alpha.
If she didn’t do something to defuse the situation and fast, her husband might whip his dick out and start peeing all over shit.
She was having a hard enough time keeping pants and training underwear on her son; she didn’t need him getting any ideas from his he-man, Neanderthal father.
Brock stared at Grant’s hand but didn’t take it.
For crap’s sake.
Not bothering to elbow her husband, because she already knew it wouldn’t do much good, she took Grant’s hand and gave it a firm shake. “Nice to meet you, Grant. I’m—”
“Krista,” he said with a smile. “Joy has told me a lot about you. It’s nice to finally meet the fearless cop and Mama Bear.”
Well, that made her blush. Heat wormed its way through her, and she fought off the girlie giggle that threatened to bubble up from the depths of her throat. She released Grant’s hand and glanced up at her husband.
Brock was glaring down at her.
Crap.
“I’m Stacey, Chase’s wife,” Stacey said, elbowing her way through and taking Grant’s hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”
One by one, the rest of Krista’s sisters-in-law came forward to shake Grant’s hand, followed lastly by the young, horny, and filter-free Rayma.
The girl was a great babysitter and had a good head on her shoulders, but she was also young and not quiet about her appreciation for a nice set of dimples or abs.
Krista could certainly hear the young woman sigh when she finally took Grant’s hand and introduced herself.
Down, girl.
“How long have you two been seeing each other?” Krista asked, frustrated with her husband and his brothers and the statue status they had all adopted. They were just standing there like big, sexy idiots staring at the man behind their mother.
Joy’s blue eyes glittered as she glanced back up at Grant and smiled. “About six months.”
“Six months!” Chase croaked out.
Joy’s gaze flared, and she fixed her stare on Chase. “Yes, we met this summer at the pool. We were double-booked in a lane for swimming laps and—”
“Decided to share,” Grant finished, squeezing Joy’s shoulder. “Then I asked her to grab a coffee after our swim.”
“And coffee turned into lunch, which turned into a walk on the beach, which turned into dinner …” Joy went on, clearly twitterpated while glancing back at Grant.
“And we’ve been together ever since,” Grant said with a smile that was quite panty-melting.
If Krista were to guess, she’d probably put Grant around sixty years old. Though the man could easily be younger, because even through his white button-up shirt, she could see muscle and definition. He took care of himself. But the lines around his eyes and wisdom behind the light gray of his irises spoke of years of experience, and also … tragedy. This man had seen some shit.
Was he former law enforcement?
Retired military, perhaps?
Krista only saw eyes like that on people who had experienced more trauma and hardship in their lives than the average Joe. She was part of a family of those people and was married to a man like that. But the majority of the world didn’t have eyes so filled with grief.
Grant did.
“And you’re just now introducing us to him?” Brock asked, his voice tight, lips barely moving.
