Full Hart, page 4
Stacey just hummed louder to tune them all out.
Her husband had been ornery—well, more ornery than normal—since they’d returned home with their delicious-smelling tree.
She knew why, and she one hundred percent disagreed with it.
He’d made a few mutterings on the drive home about how, at his mother’s age, it didn’t seem right. And his father would be spinning in his grave if he had a grave and they hadn’t cremated him.
She’d remained silent.
She disagreed with his opinion but voicing that before she knew he would be receptive would just be a complete waste of time. She needed to wait until the children were in bed and Chase had food in his stomach and had started to unwind for the night.
It probably also wouldn’t hurt if she was drunk and horny and jumped his bones when she came home from the pub. He was always way more talkative after a good orgasm.
But she needed to talk to him, not only for his own sake but for the sake of her mother-in-law.
Joy Hart had welcomed Stacey into the family fold with open arms and so much love. Even when things between her and Chase were rocky, they were never rocky between Stacey and Joy, or Joy and the kids. She insisted they call her Nana Joy from day one, and the kids started doing it like it was just meant to be. Because it was.
But Stacey knew, even though Joy had never voiced it, that her mother-in-law was lonely. She was sixty-six, a successful sex and relationship therapist, incredibly educated and accomplished, but she lived alone and had been alone—intimately—since the boys were very young.
She needed—nay, she deserved—to have more in her life.
She deserved love and not just from her family.
She deserved intimacy and orgasms. Devotion and someone who, when all her sons and their families were busy, would keep her company and bring her a mug of tea in the evening while she knitted and watched television.
She deserved that more than any other woman Stacey could think of.
And yet, the way her sons reacted to Grant said they didn’t feel the same way. Stacey knew that it would be up to her and her sisters-in-law to convince the men otherwise. It sounded stupid to think it, so she certainly wouldn’t say it out loud, but with the news of Grant being invited for Christmas dinner, she knew that if they didn’t change the men’s minds about Grant before December twenty-fifth, their attitude could very well ruin Christmas.
So, to be cliché … it was up to Stacey and her sisters in crime to save Christmas.
A big warm palm grazed her butt as she sliced cucumbers and bell peppers into thin strips. “Those kids would give me gray hair if I had any hair to turn gray,” Chase murmured next to her ear, the rough timbre of his voice making a shiver race the length of her spine.
“Oh, you have hair to turn gray,” she teased. “Come to think of it, I found a few silver strands down there when I was—”
“Mama, I’m hungry!” Thea tugged on the hem of her shirt. “When’s supper?”
Chase’s hand slipped away from her butt cheek, and he scooped up Thea. “It’ll be when your mother calls you, you little turkey. Did you finish the decorations on your side of the tree?” He held her horizontally across his big, muscular arms and blew a raspberry on her belly when her shirt slipped up, causing their daughter to erupt into a fit of giggles.
“Yes, Daddy. I finished. But now I’m hungry. Decorating trees is hard work.”
Chase and Stacey both snorted.
“Go wash your hands. Dinner will be ready by the time you get back,” Stacey said, dishing up her family’s dinner into three individual plates: tortellini, sliced veggies, and homemade turkey apple meatballs that she pulled out of the freezer as soon as she got home and knew she was heading out for a girls’ night.
Chase was back behind her, closer than ever.
His scent and heat swarmed her, making her a little light-headed. “You getting drunk tonight?” he asked, his mouth next to her ear. His hand moved around to the front of her pants and between her legs. She spread them just enough for him to get better access, and with one finger, he pressed against her clit but over her pants.
Her breath hitched. “Do you want me to get drunk?”
“Up to you. But I do love tipsy Stacey and how adventurous and amorous she can be.” He double-tapped his finger on her clit again, and her knees wobbled.
Two heavy-footed children, bickering as children were known to do, entered the kitchen, and Chase’s hand once again slipped away.
“Connor took my stool away,” Thea whined. “Now my hands are all wet, ’cause I couldn’t reach the towel to dry them.”
Connor rolled his eyes as he sat down at the kitchen table. “I didn’t take the stool away; I just moved it over so I could wash my hands. I don’t need the stool because I can reach the sink without it. Then she started getting all whiny and refused to move the stool back.”
“I can’t reach the sink without the stool,” Thea continued to whine, taking a seat at the table across from her brother.
“Then move the stool back,” Connor said blandly.
Thea stuck her tongue out at her brother.
Stacey plopped two plates down at the same time in front of her offspring. “Eat up and stop bickering. There are ice cream sandwiches in the freezer for dessert, but only if your dad thinks you’ve both eaten enough dinner and you stop arguing.”
Chase came back up behind her, his hand once again finding her butt. “Don’t stay out too late,” he said, his voice a raspy purr next to her ear before he pecked her on the side of the head and sat down at the table between their children with his plate of food.
“What are you going to do while I’m gone and the kids are in bed?” she asked, beginning to tidy up the kitchen while her family ate.
“Brothers and I all recorded the hockey game and will do video chat and watch it once the kids are all in bed. Plus, I took a picture of Grant’s license plate, and I’m going to run it and see what kind of dirt I can dig up on the guy.”
“Is that guy Nana Joy’s boyfriend?” Connor asked, spearing a piece of tortellini and popping it into his mouth.
At the exact same time, Stacey said “yes” and Chase said “no.”
Connor’s brows furrowed.
“Which is it?” Thea asked.
Stacey glared at her husband. He glared back and shook his head.
Stacey rolled her eyes and fixed her attention on her children as she filled the sink up with hot, soapy water. “He is Nana Joy’s boyfriend, yes. And I happen to think that it’s wonderful that she has found someone she enjoys spending time with and who makes her happy. She said she’s inviting him for Christmas dinner, which should be a lot of fun.”
“Do they kiss?” Thea asked, scrunching up her face in disgust.
Stacey hedged a glance at her husband. The man’s entire face was getting redder by the second. Soon, steam would begin to seep from his ears.
“Probably,” Stacey said, turning her attention back to her children and away from her irrationally brooding husband.
“Gross,” Thea said with a giggle.
“Yeah, gross,” Connor agreed.
“It is gross,” Chase said, his fork making a horrendous noise on the plate as he plunged it into a piece of pasta.
Stacey shot him a look of irritation. “I don’t like the idea of you running a background check on your mother’s boyfriend. Don’t you think she would have asked you to do that if she wanted you to?”
“No,” he said, taking a sip of water. “And we’re doing it for her protection. She doesn’t know this guy’s history. Maybe he’s leading a double life—”
“Like Ted was?” she asked, cutting him off.
His anger deflated just a touch at the mention of her dead ex-husband and the biological father of her children. Ted had been leading a double life. When he met and married Stacey, he was already married to someone else in another city. But that didn’t stop him from having two children with Stacey and promising her a lifetime of happiness. She’d thought nothing of his two-weeks-on, two-weeks-off job. But now, in hindsight, she should have been more suspicious.
“Sorry,” Chase muttered.
She shook her head. “No, I get it. Do your background check. Though I doubt he has a second family at his age, but you never know. Just don’t go too deep. No medical or financial records, okay? That’s none of your business. Stick to the criminal background and work.”
The face he gave her said he wasn’t promising anything.
She took a deep breath in through her nose and pushed it out a moment later. “Don’t ruin Christmas with your antics. And that goes for all four of you. I know none of you are happy to see your mother in a relationship, but really, it’s about time, and she deserves to be happy. Do what you need to do—what you do best—to clear your conscience and be okay with your mother’s new boyfriend, but don’t dig so deep you’re all trapped in a hole you can’t climb out of.”
“Yeah, Daddy, don’t ruin Christmas,” Thea added. “Santa will put coal in your stocking and reindeer poop in your shoes.”
Stacey’s lips twitched. “She’s not wrong.”
Chase’s green gaze slid to his daughter, and his expression softened. “I won’t ruin Christmas, baby. I promise.”
That seemed to satisfy their daughter well enough, and she went back to eating her dinner.
Stacey’s phone vibrated on the counter, and she dried her hands on a dishtowel before grabbing it. It was Lydia, their designated driver. Five minutes away.
“That’s my ride,” Stacey said, pulling the plug in the sink to let the soapy water drain out. She walked up to each of the three people she loved most on Earth and planted a kiss on the top of each of their heads. “Be good. All of you. No monkey business. In bed at a reasonable time. Wash behind your ears and between your toes.”
“Yes, Mama,” all three of them said at the same time before exchanging snickers and smiles across the table.
With a grin, she headed out of the kitchen, but not before glancing once more over her shoulder and snagging Chase’s gaze. “Wait up for me?” She bobbed her brows.
His smile stretched clear across his face. “Planned on it.”
Chapter 5
Chase & Stacey
Chase pulled another beer out of the fridge, popped the cap, and carried it back to the living room. Being the tech genius that he was, he had the hockey game on the television, a secondary monitor with a camera on it perched on the coffee table with his brothers’ ugly mugs on it, then he had his laptop, which he was using to get dirt on Grant.
His regular laptop wasn’t going to do the trick though. He needed the untraceable computer that he bought through an anonymous third party paying only cash. This was the computer he used when he needed to go onto the dark web or hunt down the scum of the Earth. And when he couldn’t go sit in some restaurant and pilfer the free Wi-Fi off the café next door to keep his whereabouts a secret, he had to use a proxy server in order to hide his IP address and set up one of his many burner phones as a hot spot. It still wasn’t as secure as he would like, but he was home alone with his kids, so he had no other choice.
One thing was for sure though, no way in fuck was he using his home Wi-Fi on the dark web.
Luckily, for various things over the years, he had installed undetectable back doors into a lot of major government servers, which meant he didn’t even need to go onto the dark web or do any major hacking. Now it was just as easy as walking in the front door during business hours and unwrapping a hard candy from the bowl on the reception desk.
“Got anything yet?” Rex said, tipping back his beer. His blue gaze bounced back and forth between the television screen with the Canucks vs. Kings game and the computer where they all were.
Each brother was at home in his own houses with their sleeping children. The women were off at Mickey’s, because according to Brock, the four of them had “very important things to discuss” so as they sometimes did, they were on a four-way video chat, with the hockey game on in the background.
Chase nodded absentmindedly as he plunked the laptop back on the top of his thighs and settled his beer bottle down on the end table. “Grant Robert Wild. Born October fifth, 1960, to Sylvia and George Wild in Okotoks, Alberta. Two sisters, significantly older—like in their seventies. One is deceased. One is in a care home in Calgary.”
“Okay, but does he have any priors? Kids with priors? What does he do for work?”, Brock’s impatience could be felt through the computers. The man was tightly wound, and it came out in his clipped speech and body language. Chase could see his older brother’s thumb twitching against the label on his beer bottle and the paper shavings peeling off and landing on the black leather arm of Brock’s recliner.
“I’m still looking,” Chase murmured.
“There we go, little duck,” Heath murmured. “That better?”
Chase glanced up and focused on Heath’s square. He had his one-month-old daughter Eve in his arms and was feeding her a bottle.
“Thank God Pash pumped before she left and had a fresh bottle sitting in the warmer.” He pressed his lips to his daughter’s forehead as she blinked up at him and guzzled. “What did I miss?”
“Nothin’ yet,” Rex said. “Just that Grant’s younger than Mum and from Alberta. Nothing worth getting your panties in a bunch over—”
“Yet,” Brock grumbled.
“Looks like he was in the Canadian Air Force in Cold Lake, Alberta, for several years. Flew helicopters mostly. Became a helicopter mechanic, too. Moved here in ninety-seven, started his own business as a helicopter mechanic and a side hustle as a flight instructor.”
“Any kids? Wife?” Heath asked.
Chase was still clicking away on the computer. Stacey had asked him not to go into the man’s medical files, but since he’d already built himself a very pretty back door into the records of public health, it was only a few clicks until he was in. And ever since he was seven and had learned to read, it was an impossible skill to just turn off.
“No kids. No wife … wait a sec.”
“Don’t tell me she died of questionable causes. Like something that was ruled as suicide but we all know could just have easily been murder,” Rex murmured, shoving a handful of pretzels into his mouth.
“There was a Daphne Wild, but she passed away fifteen years ago,” Chase said.
“How?” Brock asked.
Chase clicked a few more times. “Esophageal cancer.”
Fuck.
“Jesus,” Heath said, taking the empty bottle from Eve’s lips, propping her upon his shoulder, and briskly patting her back to work out a burp.
“That fuckin’ sucks,” Rex breathed out.
Yeah, that did fucking suck.
“Okay, so he didn’t kill her. Moving on,” Brock said, not an ounce of empathy entering his veins after hearing about a poor woman’s battle with cancer.
Chase cleared his throat. “Looks like Grant had a brush with cancer himself a couple of years ago. Prostate. They removed it, and he’s now cancer-free.”
His brothers nodded. Brock merely grunted the way Brock was known to do.
“That’s why we go and get that lubed-up big man finger up our butts, right?” Heath said with an awkward chuckle.
Rex and Chase groaned at Heath’s bleak attempt at a joke.
“Address?” Brock grunted.
Unease wormed through Chase. He didn’t like the look in Brock’s eyes.
He knew how his big brother felt because he felt it, too.
They were looking out for their mother. For their family.
But the glint of almost desperation in Brock’s eyes told Chase he wasn’t so sure Brock having access to Grant’s address was the smartest idea.
“Address?!” Brock barked again.
Chase exhaled, exited the window that had Grant’s medical history and returned to the one with his address: “4325 Ellie Jean Drive.” He rubbed his palm over his bald head. “But don’t go snooping around. If Mum finds out …”
“You guys don’t give me enough credit,” Brock grumbled.
Chase exchanged glances with Rex and Heath through the computers and cameras. All three of them were thinking the same thing. They gave Brock a fuck-ton of credit. He was the leader—the patriarch—of their family and the head of their company. So him saying they didn’t give him enough credit wasn’t meant to convey that he wasn’t going to go to Grant’s. It meant that he was going to go; he just wasn’t going to get caught.
Chase glanced at Heath and Rex again.
“You know I can see you fuckers looking at each other,” Brock said with another grumble.
“So?” Heath said, kissing Eve on the side of the head. “You think Uncle Brock is a grumpy bugger, don’t you, Evie?” He held the baby’s tight little fist and tried to make her wave at the camera. “Yes, I do, Daddy. I also think that out of all the Hart brothers, you are the best-looking and the smartest and the funniest.” He brought his voice up several octaves until it was squeaky.
Chase and Rex both snorted and rolled their eyes.
“See, babies are the best judges of character, and even Evie thinks you’re being a grumpy bugger,” Heath said, kissing Eve again on the baby’s little bobblehead.
Surprise, surprise, Brock grunted again.
A car door slammed outside, and Chase stilled, his ears zeroing in on what was happening outside the house. He focused on the front door.
“What’s wrong?” Brock asked, sitting up from where he was in his lounger, already on high alert.
Chase’s brow dipped, and his lips twisted. “Stand down. Pretty sure it’s just Stacey home.”
Rex picked up his phone. “Makes sense. Lydia just texted me to say she was about twenty minutes from home. So she’s just dropping them all off.”
Brock visibly relaxed.
“You need to smoke some weed or have another beer or something, bro. You’re wound tight as a fucking top,” Heath said, resting Eve down on his thighs, her head toward his knees, and starting to do bicycle movements with her legs. Chase remembered having to do that with Thea when she would get gassy. It was amazing how easily you could work the farts out of them. It was also amazing how cute baby farts were.
