Trials and Tiaras (Untouchable #7) - Heather Long Page 0,104
Colorado too. I just…I just want to be where you guys are and where we can do this together.”
Archie dipped his chin and nodded. “Then New York. If it’s what you want, we all said it was leading before.”
“What about you?”
“New York works,” Jake said. “And one of the schools you got was NYU, right?” The last he directed to Bubba.
“Yep,” he said, and he wore a small, very proud smile on his face, and I knew why. Frankie said when they recorded, not just him.
“All right, Arch, I guess you need to look at New York real estate, because we’re going to need an apartment that will take the cats.”
He laughed. “I think we got that covered.” When he pressed a kiss to Frankie’s forehead though, he wore a worried look and then brushed her hair back. “You want to put off the call to Wittaker and take a nap, babe? You’re still hot.”
“Well, I’ve been hot for a long time, according to you guys, don’t sound so surprised.”
That earned another round of laughs.
“And I don’t want to put it off. Too much has been put off, and we have plans to make.”
Fair enough. Jeremy brought up more drinks, including tea for Frankie, and some acetaminophen. He also took her temperature again. It had actually gone down some, so we settled in, and Archie called him. It was late, but the attorney had been waiting for us apparently.
“Well, I have good news and interesting news,” he said. “What would you like first?”
We all looked to Frankie. “Good news,” she said before taking a sip of her fresh tea.
“The good news is with the information provided by Mr. Standish and the sources he identified, we reached out to all three of the other possibilities. All of them agreed to the test, and the results are in.”
Oh boy.
“I have the name of your biological father, and he would like to arrange a time to speak to you, if you’re willing…”
Chapter Twenty-Two
That’s What Mamas Do
Jake
“She’s been sick, Mom,” I told her as I set the table. I swore it had to be the flu, but Jeremy hustled her off to a doctor on day two of her fever, and the doctor said it was just a cold. So, she’d basically been convalescing at Archie’s for three days, and we’d all taken turns looking after the cats and spending time with her.
Missing four days of school was not making her happy. If anything, it had made her crabbier. Which was so fucking cute, but we’d stopped telling her that after she threatened to bean Coop with a textbook. Still, we’d been bringing her homework, and I drilled her with G’s notes and teased her about getting out of essay practice. The fever finally broke the day before, and Archie said she slept like the dead. That gave her the rest of the weekend to convalesce.
Much to Jeremy’s chagrin, she insisted on going home. Coop had picked her up a few hours ago and promised to drop her off here for dinner with Mom. I’d offered to get her out of the dinner, but she’d said as long as she was feeling better, she wanted to come.
“Is she feeling better?” Mom paused in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room. “We could have rescheduled this.”
“Yeah, she’s doing a lot better. Just a little cranky, and she wouldn’t let me reschedule.” Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, none of us had gotten sick too. Frankie waxed back and forth between being happy she hadn’t made us ill, and grumpy that we got out of having to suffer.
See? Adorable.
Mom chuckled. “That girl works too hard.”
“Yes, she does.” Mom would get no argument from me. In fact, Coop was pretty sure that cold probably hit her so hard because she was so stressed, and after Wittaker told us about her biological father, including his name, she hadn’t brought up the subject again. At least not when I was there.
The man had waited almost eighteen years, so it hurt nothing to let it sit a few more days or weeks. I wasn’t sure what she wanted to do yet. But I wasn’t going to push it.
“Where are the girls?” I’d done deliveries all morning and into the early afternoon to sock away some cash because I’d been lightening my load in the evenings this week to help look after Frankie. We’d all done our NYU acceptances and gotten that process started.