Chapter Three #2
All right, that was a decent reaction. I really should give Gran more credit. Her mind wasn’t always on matchmaking.
Although, to be fair, Jeannie Whitley had been an actress back in her day. She could fake it if she wanted to.
Leo frowned, clearly just as perplexed by her blasé comment as I was.
Thankfully, no one mentioned Allison or my outing with her for the rest of the day, although by the looks Maddox, Leo, and Gabe gave me, they did want to give me shit about it. I appreciated that they held their tongues.
I left the house early in the afternoon, as I was picking Allison up at five.
On the way, I decided I’d call Hugo. Initially, when I brought this all up, he’d asked me a few details about Allison, like what her job was and other information.
He had enough to go on, but I put the two of them in contact, as he needed more details.
Now I wanted to know if he’d made any progress.
He was excellent at what he did, but he was also swamped with work. I wanted to make sure he was able to stay on top of this, friend or not. Thankfully, he answered after several rings.
“Hey, Nick.”
“Hey. Sorry to call you on a Saturday. Figured I’d have better odds at reaching you.”
“I suppose you want an update on the whole Allison thing?” he said.
“Did she send you all her information?”
“Yes. She was very open about it and eager to cooperate, which is always helpful.”
“So, how does it look?”
“I’d like to know a bit more about the in-laws, but…”
I didn’t like that pause.
He sighed. “Grandparents usually have a good fighting chance.”
“But Nora and Jim specifically wanted Allison to look after the twins. They put that in the will.”
“Wills can always be contested. They can try and prove they’re better candidates. That’s why I said from the get-go that you can’t dismiss it. Several things are taken into account, of course, such as their age and income.”
“They’re around fifty-five. They had Jim very young.”
“All right, so that won’t be an impediment. Do you know anything about the financial situation?”
“They’re well off, from what I know. They put Jim through college, so he didn’t need a loan. They even helped with the down payment on the house he and Nora owned,” I explained.
“Right. I’ll investigate this a bit more before making a recommendation.”
“When will that be?”
“Sometime next week. I promise that I’m on top of this case.”
“Look, no offense—” I began.
“Nick, what do you know about me? I don’t overpromise or underdeliver. I told you I can see Allison through this. At the very least, I’ll come up with some recommendations. Can you give me the in-laws’ full names and as much as you know about them? I’ll look them up. I have people who do that.”
“Excellent,” I said, rattling off their names. “Thank you, Hugo.”
“No problem.”
I didn’t have a good feeling about this. I’d assume this would be a slam dunk, and he would simply tell Allison that if she did A, B, and C, she was going to keep custody for sure.
I decided to push the issue to the back of my mind for now. I was fucking excited about going out with Allison.
My phone rang again. I figured maybe Hugo wanted to add something, but then I saw it was Maddox. I answered right away.
“You’ve been keeping secrets, brother. I’m with Cami and Leo,” he said without further ado. It was silent in the background, which meant he wasn’t at Gran’s house anymore.
“About what?”
“Allison.”
“Hey, you’re going on a date,” Cami, his fiancée, said. “That’s huge news.”
I groaned. “No, we’re not. Jesus, that’s what everyone thinks?”
“Uh, yeah,” Leo said.
“That’s not what this is at all. I’m just literally taking her out. I figured she could use it.”
“Really?” he asked. “She couldn’t just go out by herself?”
“If she’d wanted that, she would have done it already,” I pointed out.
“I see. So that’s the solution you came up with.” His tone was laced with amusement. “Could have offered to just watch the kids so she could go meet a friend or something.”
He had a point. It never even crossed my mind. “Please tell me that you didn’t give Gran any ammunition to harass me.”
Cami laughed. “Nick, you know your gran. She doesn’t need anyone to give her ammunition. She finds it by herself. She was over the moon after you left.”
“You’re all making too much of this.”
“No, we’re not,” Leo said. “Maybe you don’t see it, but we do. This is a huge deal for you. Actually, so are all the things you’ve done since Jim passed away, especially going to Allison’s house.”
“I care about those kids. Don’t be a jackass.”
“I wasn’t implying that you didn’t. But I think that’s not the only reason you keep dropping by.”
“Right. Well, I’m at Allison’s house now, so I need to hang up.”
Technically, I was still two streets away, but I needed to end the conversation. It was making me question myself, and I didn’t like that. I wasn’t prone to introspection or whatever it was called.
After hanging up, I couldn’t help but wonder. Why did I offer to take her out?
Oh, for fuck’s sake, Nick. Get your shit together.
And I did.
I parked right in front of the house. When I got out of the car, Allison’s voice filtered through the windows. I looked up. She was on the second floor, moving around and… singing?
This woman was something else.
My imagination immediately went haywire. I could imagine her nipples peeking through the fabric of her shirt. Or was it a dress?
I realized on the spot that Leo was right. I hadn’t just offered to take her out for her own benefit. It was self-serving as well.