Mine to Keep (NOLA Knights #3) - Rhenna Morgan Page 0,1
her brother had endured over the years. She’d bet his hands were jammed in the pockets of his jeans, a scowl on his face and his face flushed just like all the other ones before, too.
The irony of those lectures was that Dad was often just as guilty of doing whatever it was Kevin had done (and then some). Hence, the reason Kevin had to fight so hard to keep from blowing a gasket.
Ah, the joy of family.
She plopped onto the couch, unzipped her backpack and dug out the stack of medical bills she’d spent the last week juggling and pleading over. Might as well settle in and get her ducks in a row while the two of them duked out whatever needed duking. Better that than getting in between them. She’d learned that lesson the hard way shortly after her mom had died when she’d tried to referee a drunken fistfight.
“Enough!” Kevin’s shout was loud enough someone could’ve heard it from the street. “You can call me whatever the hell you want, but if you think Bonnie’s gonna have enough to bail you out with Pauley, you’re out of your mind.”
Bonnie’s head whipped up from the stack of bills in her lap so fast her spine cracked. Pauley? As in Pauley Mitchell?
She tossed the bills on top of all the other trash on the coffee table and stalked to her dad’s room. She hadn’t even fully reached the end of the hall before she jumped into their conversation. “Do not tell me you’re racking up another balance with that shark again. Do you have any idea how long it took me to get your last debt paid off?”
Both men whipped their attention toward Bonnie, eyes wide and jaws slack.
Translation: they were both guilty as hell about something.
Her dad recovered first, shook his head and took on that blustering bullshit demeanor he used whenever he wanted to sweep something under the rug. “Got nothin’ going on with Pauley you need to know about, little girl.” He aimed a warning look at Kevin, then waddled toward her in that painful looking gait that plagued him these days. He palmed her shoulder when he got close enough and steered her down the hall. “Come on. I’m so damned tired of this bedroom I can’t see straight. Let’s get you settled and you can tell me what you’re here for.”
As if he didn’t know. The only thing her brother and father wanted to talk to her about these days was money. Not surprising since she was the only one who could hold a job for more than a few months at a time. Or, in Bonnie’s case, two or three jobs.
Still, one didn’t throw snark in the face of a dying man, so she pretended to fall for the nicety and sat her ass back on the sofa.
Her dad wasn’t quite as quick getting settled, the swollen gut that came as a byproduct of his failing liver just one of the sad realities he had to face. “Now,” he said once he was in his recliner with his feet up. “Tell me what brings you here.”
Seriously? They were going to dance around this? Usually he was all get-in-and-get-out with money business so he could get back to sipping whiskey on the sly. “Um, bills?”
Her dad—or Buzz as his buddies called him since he was always on the search for a good high—waved her comment off and smiled. “No more with the bills. Those high-and-mighty assholes have already said they ain’t givin’ me a transplant. No point in either one of us bailing water with a thimble anymore if I’m just gonna kick it in the end. Now...tell me how that new job is coming.”
New job?
Which one? Answering phones at the TV station, or the dive bar where the owner had practically handed over managing everything? And how the heck he’d call either one of those new considering she’d been doing both for over six months was a stumper.
“Well, uh...” She dared a glance at Kevin, who’d lifted one of the blinds and stared out at the empty lot next to the house like all the answers to the universe were gonna roll in any second. “The TV station is good. I sit on my butt, answer the phone and don’t let crazy people through the front door. It’s easy money so long as I don’t lose my shit with anyone.”
Her dad laughed. Or tried to. It came out as a mix of a