Chapter 8 #2
Once the room was set up in his brothers office, he was jealous at the desk that had been delivered, he set to working on setting up the computer system.
It was a new one too and again he was slightly envious of the fact that they’d gotten such a good computer when they moved in.
After having it all set up, including the fax machine—something that he was going to keep in mind when he needed to fax something, he went into Sammy’s office to set her up as well.
Her desk was just as beautiful as his brothers had been but in a more feminine way.
She had suncatchers in her office windows as well.
He was just finishing up when someone mentioned food was going to be ordered and he’d not realized that he’d spend six hours just setting up the computers for his family. He was also starving again.
Instead of being pizzas and subs for them all there was massive amount of Chinese food delivered.
Even though he didn’t care for soup when he had his food, there were at least two gallons of hot sour as well as egg drop to enjoy.
There were dozens of egg rolls to eat, and his favorite, fried dumplings.
Since there were multiples of each thing, he didn’t worry about them running out of food before everyone got their fill.
Everything was finished at about eight-thirty.
Even the cardboard had been cut down into manageable strips that were going to be tossed in the recycling bins in town.
Nothing was missing, he’d been told, but one of the couches had a broken leg that was going to be replaced by the store in the morning.
The house for just being moved into looked like they’d been living in it for the past several years instead of less than twenty-four hours.
It was the finishing touches that made him realize that there were touches of both his brother and his mate in the house.
There were little things that had been bought in mind of their first home together.
In addition to the sun catchers in the dining room and her office, they’d managed to get comfy looking lap blankets for the back of couches as well as framed artwork that went with the rooms that they’d been bought for.
There were decisions that the two of them made together that made the house look like a home and that was what they had intended.
By the time he was at his own home that night, he found himself looking around his place and being slightly ashamed of it.
There was nothing personal in any of the rooms but for a picture of his parents together.
He didn’t have any lap blankets on the back of his one couch that had seen better days.
The kitchen looked like a single person lived there with his one plate, fork and spoon.
He didn’t even have a good set of knives to use when he did get around to cooking, which wasn’t all that often anymore.
His bathroom was more drab than any of the other rooms. There wasn’t any kind of a mess waiting for him but he really should have cleaned his sink off when he’d been in there this morning and now he had white toothpaste stains on the counter that looked out of place even for him.
He wasn’t a slob but if there wasn’t someone coming in once a week to clean up after him, he didn’t want to think about how badly the place would look.
He thought of his brother hiring a cook and staff, and wanted the same thing as he did.
But with his mate helping him level things out in a house that they picked out together.
Now all he had to do was meet her so that he could pick things out with her together.
So they’d be as happy as his brothers were.
It occurred to him that he was the last of them to find their mate, and he was sort of happy about that.
But mostly he was afraid. He wasn’t going to mess up like his brothers had, but be like Melbourne and go into it with an open mind and an equally open heart.
His life’s work was to make his mate happy and he was going to start that right now by being a better man than he’d been before.
He wanted to be someone that she came to easily and happily.
However he had a feeling that it was going to be nothing like his brothers were when they were mated and he was going to be left standing when she kicked his ass about something. Secretly he was happy about that too.
~*~
Belinda was to go before the judge in the morning to see when she could get out of the jail.
She’d been as nice as she could be, much like she’d been in the prison when she was around the cops.
They could make or break you when it came to having you in trouble with the judge and she wanted to be out to be free of all the curtailments that were driving her crazy by being locked up again.
She’d sworn when she got out of prison that she was never going to go back.
She supposed that everyone said that. But she didn’t like being in jail either.
The very nerve of Allen pressing charges against her had her spitting mad.
All she’d done was make a point about him giving her shit and knocked him down a few stairs.
Now she couldn’t find the slimy bastard.
When she’d stepped over him to leave the building, she had at least made sure he was breathing.
She, of course, had to kick him a few times to get him out of her way, but that in no way made her a terrible person.
She might well have fallen too if she’d tried to step around him he’d been laying at an awkward angle.
People just didn’t understand the relationship that they had between them.
She thought that she was smart in only knocking him down the stairs and not really hurting him while he was down.
“Stupid people. Where do they get off putting me in jail like this?” She watched as the officer from this morning came down the hall.
Usually, they made rounds about four times a day, more of them, she supposed, when she was sleeping.
When he stopped in front of her cell, she was told that she had a visitor. It was her daughter, Sammy.
“Sammy? I thought that she was too busy with her new house.” The officers here were very good at keeping her informed about the goings on with her family.
None of them knew anything much about her as she didn’t socialize much but they knew all there was to know about her soon to be husband.
He was rich as they came and they’d just bought them a house.
A big one too she found out. But she couldn’t get anything about her Allen.
Where he was nor how he was doing. He’d better be just fine or she was going to give him something to whine about, damn it.
“Did you want to meet her back here or in the commons rooms? There are a few visitors in the commons room right now so you’d have more privacy back here.
” The thought of getting out of the cell was too overwhelming for her to think about a few visitors hearing her story with her daughter.
“I’ll take you back but you’ll be chained up. That’s what Sammy requested.”
“Why?” He said that he didn’t know but that was her request. “She’d better have a really good reason is all I can say. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
Or so they thought. She did what she was told to do to get out of the cell.
They thought of her as a model prisoner and she was glad for that.
Tomorrow when the judge finally came to town, she was going to make sure that he had no reason to throw the book at her.
She’d heard from her parole officer that she might well end up in prison for another five years for breaking her parole when she’d been getting out.
She didn’t have a job nor did she had a good place to live.
All things that she was going to make her daughter get for her.
After being chained to the table, she wanted to slap the smile right off her daughters face.
Instead she sat there with what she hoped was her own smile so that she didn’t look like she was worried about anything.
The first thing out of her daughters mouth was to ask her why she’d pushed her father down the stairs.
“Is that what he thinks happened? I didn’t push him.
He was falling and I tried to reach out to grab him.
” She didn’t say anything and Belinda had plenty to say yet.
“He’s just looking for sympathy and I won’t have it.
I’ve been in this jail for far too long over him thinking that I’d try to kill him. ”
“But you see I know that’s what your plan was the entire time.
You might not have heard this but I’m married to a shifter.
And he’s been able to read your mind about a lot of things you were doing when you got out of prison.
I don’t think that anyone is going to be happy to know that you’ve been stealing food from the local grocery store.
Nor that you’ve been stealing mail out of peoples mail boxes.
Then there is the fact that you nearly killed Dad by pushing him down the stairs five days ago to make him do what you wanted. ”
“Lies. You don’t know what you’re talking about.
” She had a feeling that she was being watched again and turned to look in the corner of the room where the cameras were.
It wasn’t the camera that bothered her but the feeling that she was being watched by something other than that.
She looked at her daughter and forgot to hold onto her facade about being a victim of other people.
“You know something about me being followed around too. I’m sure of it.
That man, he has someone watching over me all the time.
Doesn’t he and don’t lie to me, I’ll kick your ass no matter how locked up I am. And you well know it too.”