Chapter 5
SERANA
“Roscoe! I’m here!” I called out as I walked through the front door.
When he didn’t answer, I stopped and looked around, waiting for him to answer.
Instead, I heard men’s laughter and then the sound of a power tool whining from outside.
I immediately got excited, knowing that Roscoe’s friends were here to start construction on the additions he had planned to his house and yard.
I hung my backpack on the hook Roscoe had installed behind the swinging kitchen door and grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator on my way through the kitchen.
I was parched after the two-mile walk to get here.
I was usually able to find a ride, and on the days I couldn’t, I pretended to welcome the exercise.
Today, I didn’t have to pretend. It was a gorgeous fall day and a little warmer than usual for Rojo at this time of year. And since it was more than eighty degrees, I was wearing shorts and a T-shirt with my running shoes, and that meant that the men in the yard were dressed much the same.
However, their T-shirts looked a lot better than mine - probably because they were covering bulging muscles on sweaty men.
Oh, damn. If I wasn’t such a chicken, I’d pull my phone out and take a picture so I could share it with the girls and laugh at their responses.
I threw caution to the wind and impulsively grabbed my phone as I set my water bottle on the window sill with the other.
I covertly snapped a few pictures and then looked them over before I sent them to the group text thread that included Farrah, Moe, Fiona, Taylor, and Ginger.
My phone started buzzing with responses within just a few seconds. I can’t exactly say I was shocked to see that the majority of them were downright filthy and included orders for me to make them strip their shirts off and different suggestions for how I could get that accomplished.
This wasn’t the first time I’d sent the girls some teaser pics of Roscoe and his friends. Since I’d started going to his place to cook dinner or just hang out, I’d had several opportunities to catch the guys unaware and get a few snapshots.
I scrolled through the pics I’d sent and found a few others I’d taken. I’d gotten one month before last when I went with Roscoe to a friend’s for a cookout and then I’d taken a great shot of him and his brother while they moved some furniture for his sister Holly.
In the three months that I’d been hanging out with Roscoe outside of our weekly grocery store visits, I’d met all of his siblings as well as his brother-in-law, nieces, and nephews.
I had yet to meet his dads, even though I’d heard a million stories and was already half in love with them.
Roscoe’s sisters had been very welcoming and never even questioned my friendship with their brother, which kind of made me wonder if it was normal for him to bring women around.
When Holly mentioned that I was the first of Roscoe’s girlfriends to come to her house for dinner, Tati smiled at me and quickly assured me, “She means that in a platonic way, of course.”
The look on her face told me that she knew Roscoe wanted more from our relationship, something he hadn’t mentioned since that first day in the truck on the way to his house.
I often wondered if he’d changed his mind.
His actions told me that he hadn’t, though.
Roscoe was friendly, funny, chivalrous, and kind to me all the time, but occasionally, I’d find him watching me with a look I couldn’t quite decipher.
And, of course, I found myself watching him a lot too. Even though I had specified that we were only friends and had explained why our relationship couldn’t go any further than that, I couldn’t stop myself from daydreaming about how things might be if I would just give him a chance.
The daydreams weren’t nearly as graphic as the thoughts I had about him when I was in bed alone at night, usually right after he sent me the last text of the day wishing me a good night’s rest and assuring me that he’d talk to me in the morning.
Those thoughts weren’t filled with romance and laughter.
No, they were raunchy and wild, and set my blood on fire.
And they seemed to be happening more and more lately. The better I got to know Roscoe Hamilton, the more I liked him. The thought of not talking to him every day gave me a pain in my chest that I didn’t want to put a label on.
“Hey, darlin’,” a man said from behind me.
I spun around as I let out a shout and found a drop dead gorgeous man standing in the doorway.
The fact that he was holding a toddler didn’t register at first, not until the little girl squealed and lunged toward me.
The man pulled her back as he asked, “Where’s the boy? ”
“What boy?” I asked a split second before I realized what a stupid question that was. “Do you mean Roscoe?”
“Yeah. That one.”
“He’s in the backyard with some of his friends,” I explained.
The man walked into the room and smiled in a way that made the best part of me melt before he stuck his hand out and said, “I’m his Uncle Lout.
I was in the neighborhood visiting my daughter and thought I’d stop by to see if they’d made any progress today or if they were still standing around overthinking things. ”
“I haven’t been outside to check things out yet.”
“Emerald and I have a bet going, and . . .”
“Emerald as in Dr. Hamilton?”
“That’s my daughter,” he said proudly.
“But she’s . . . and he’s . . . I just . . .”
“You haven’t met anyone else in his family yet?” he asked.
“I’ve met his siblings, but I had no idea he was related to Dr. Hamilton.”
“He probably didn’t mention it because he thought everyone knew,” Lout said with a grin. “As much as she likes to pretend she doesn’t know him, she is definitely his cousin.”
“Why would she pretend she doesn’t know him?” I asked curiously.
“They’ve had beef ever since he ratted her out for sneaking out of the house back when she was fifteen.
” I burst out laughing, and the little girl in his arms joined in before she lunged toward me again.
Without thinking, I put my hands out and took her from the man before I set her on my hip and smiled at her.
“Serana, let me introduce you to Aurora. She just so happens to be Emerald’s daughter. ”
“Oh, you’re a sweet one, aren’t you?” I asked, my voice automatically softening at the feel of the adorable little girl in my arms. She smiled up at me, and I was enthralled.
When her chubby hand patted my cheek, my heart turned into goo.
When she pushed her fat little finger as far up my nose as it would go, it hurt like hell.
I let out a garbled shriek and tried to yank my head away, but her grip on my hair wouldn’t let me move.
“Aurora! No!” Lout ordered as he pulled her finger out of my nose. “Why do you keep doing that?”
He pulled her out of my arms and walked toward the sink, inadvertently yanking me with him since she still had a fist full of my hair. I was so focused on the pain of my nose and scalp that I didn’t realize how off-balance I was until a blinding pain in my head surpassed all the others.
◆◆◆
ROSCOE
“Should we call 911?”
I looked up at my uncle in confusion and asked, “You do remember I’m a doctor, right?”
“Yeah, but you work on the other end of things.”
I patted Serana’s cheek as I ordered, “Josh, get me a cold washcloth. Did anyone see what happened when she hit her head?”
“She smacked it on the edge of the counter and then just crumbled.”
“Why is her nose bleeding?” I asked.
“Aurora has a fascination with noses lately and was inspecting your friend’s before she . . .”
“She stuffs her finger as far up any nose she gets close to,” Adam, Aurora’s father, explained.
My cousins and I had been wild when we were kids, and so were the kids in our extended club family; it only made sense that the children born to them were just as wild. However, a few of them surpassed all expectations and took things to the extreme.
“Lout, take the demon spawn back to the crevice she crawled out of and tell Satan that she’s racked up another victim. I need that today, Josh!” I yelled. I kept patting Serana’s cheek and said, “Wake up, sweetie.”
“My Rora is not a demon spawn,” Lout insisted. “She’s a sweet angel who is occasionally misguided by things that are out of her control.”
“Mainly DNA,” Heath, Adam and Josh’s brother, said helpfully.
“What the fuck?” Serana mumbled before she started moving.
“Be still, sweetheart. You bumped your head, and it knocked you out. I want to make sure you didn’t injure your neck.”
Her eyes fluttered open, and she asked, “Did I just get my ass kicked by a baby?”
“It happens all the time in our family,” I replied. “You met my nieces and nephews, and they’re probably the most normal kids we know.”
Serana raised her eyebrows, and I knew she was remembering how Jada and Jianna had gotten into a hair-pulling brawl in the middle of the living room while arguing about who was going to pick up the remote Papa had dropped beside his chair.
It didn’t help that ten minutes later, Tati and Holly started bickering about something that happened years ago as Ranger and Noble egged them on.
Poor Damien and Serana just sat there, visibly uncomfortable, as if they were waiting on the women to start throwing punches like the kids had.
“I’m sure she didn’t mean to hurt me,” Serana said weakly as she brought her hand to her head.
“Is that where you hit?” I asked, moving her hand out of the way to feel a sizable goose egg right above her ear. “It didn’t break the skin, so you won’t need stitches, but I’d like to sit you up and make sure your neck is okay.”
“I’m fine, just a little woozy,” Serana insisted as she rolled to her side and pushed herself up to a sitting position. She blinked a few times and then squinted up at Aurora before she asked, “You didn’t mean to hurt me did you, sweet girl?”