LITMIR.BIZ

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barely stay away from her from the first moment he set eyes on her. My brother the police officer officially became a stalker. I was worried about you, bro. I’m glad Minerva made an honest man out of you and gave you a legal reason to hang around her all the time.” Patrick joined in Joel’s laughter.

      “Now both of y’all got jokes, huh? I’ll tell you what. How about you get to whatever—” Lawrence’s ringing cell phone stopped him midsentence.

      “Hey, baby…” Lawrence’s normally tough-guy tone went down a few octaves and Patrick immediately knew who was on the other end of the line. If the loving tone of voice didn’t give it away, then the ear-to-ear grin certainly did. It had to be Minerva. And whatever she said had to be bad because his brother’s grin fell into a deep frown and he cut Patrick a glaring look.

      “That’s cool, baby. You have fun with the girls. I’ll see you when we both get home. I can just pick up something quick from the diner.” Lawrence gave Patrick another angry scowl.

      Food! How did Patrick know Lawrence’s sour mood had something to do with food? Because Lawrence’s mood could always change when it came down to him getting a good home-cooked meal.

      Lawrence hung up his cell. “You owe me big-time, man. What do you have to eat in this dump? Apparently, Mom and Dad decided they wanted to spend some quality time with all their grandchildren and this freed Samantha and Penny to kidnap my wife and take her shopping for all the ‘cute little maternity clothes she’s going to need.”’ Lawrence mimicked the high-pitched, gleeful sound his sisters-in-law made when they talked about clothes and shoe shopping. “So the wonderful home-cooked meal that my wife was going to make for me is no more and you have to feed me.”

      The doorbell rang and Patrick shook his head as he went to answer it. “Joel, order a pizza and some wings for your always hungry brother while I let baby bro in.”

      The pizza and wings came and they sat in the living room with a basketball game on the flat screen as white noise.

      They didn’t get a chance to hang out nearly as much as they used to before his younger brothers all got hitched. Patrick missed that sometimes, but what he got in return—with wonderful sister-in-laws, a niece, two nephews and a new baby on the way—more than made up for the male bonding time he was missing with his brothers. Still it was moments like these when they did hang out that made him happy to have them.

      “So.” Lawrence leaned back, rubbing his now full stomach, content for the moment, with a hint of a smile even. “What was so important that we all had to get over here tonight?”

      “I think I know what it is.” Jason shook his head. “Aw…man…did you find out that Courtney was moving back to Paterson?”

      His ex-wife? Moving back to Paterson? Say what?

      “What you talking ’bout, Jason?” Joel laughed at his own impression of Gary Coleman and everyone else just stared at him before turning back to Jason.

      Patrick rubbed his chin as he waited for the anger and hurt to surface. It had been ten years since he had found Courtney in bed with another man. Patrick had come down with a severe case of the flu and he’d had to be relieved from his shift at the fire station. He had come home expecting his stay-at-home wife to pamper him and make him feel better.

      Instead, flu or no flu, he had ended up opening up a can of whup-ass on the no good lawyer and church deacon he had found in bed with his wife. She begged forgiveness and wanted them to try counseling, but there was just no coming back from that as far as he was concerned. They had only been married for four years. He had hung up his player status at twenty-six to marry a woman he thought was true. And for many years he wondered if she had been cheating the entire time.

      When the bad feelings didn’t surface, he shrugged. “I hadn’t heard she was moving back permanently and it really doesn’t matter. It is ironic that she would pick now to move back, though.”

      “It wasn’t like she had moved far away anyway. The chick was only in Trenton and she was in town often hanging out with her sorority sisters and having her monthly lunch with Aunt Sophie. She should have moved a whole lot farther away and she should have had the good taste to stay gone,” Joel said.

      Patrick sighed. He had figured out intricate ways to avoid running into his ex-wife through the years, stealth-spy ways. And he needed them because from the time the ink dried on the divorce papers, his Aunt Sophie had been trying to get him to take Courtney back.

      He hadn’t seen Courtney in at least six months, and that had only been in passing. Even his best avoidance skills were no match for two schemers on a mission. So he figured out a way to deal with seeing her and as the years went by, it bothered him less and less.

      “Anyway, none of that is important. And it has nothing to do with why I asked to see you three knuckleheads. I need to pick your brains about the moment you knew that your wives were the one.”

      Jason tilted his head and put on his police detective inquisitive stare.

      Joel’s mouth dropped open and his eyes widened. He started laughing almost immediately.

      Lawrence rubbed his chin and his signature know-it-all smirk graced his face.

      Too late to turn back now…

      “I mean, I know that Jason was pretty much a goner for Penny from the time he was a kid. Poor sap didn’t stand a chance. And Joel, you walked around with that silly grin on your face all the time. We didn’t think we would ever see you smile again after your accident and then one meeting with your physical therapist, Samantha, and you were sprung. And Lawrence, you took one look at Minerva and you turned into a stalker—”

      “I wasn’t a stalker!” Lawrence interrupted in a huff.

      “Dude, you were damn close to it. I was worried I would have to arrest my own brother.” Jason chuckled and Lawrence glared at him.

      “Anyway, I wanted to find out from you guys—how did it feel? I realized that none of you had a clue you had just met the love of your life. You were too slow to see what the rest of us could tell just from looking at you. But—”

      “Wait a damn minute! For somebody who obviously wants our help, you are being a little too free with the put-downs. I know that’s how you are all the time. But if you want my help, you’re going to have to be nicer.” Joel folded his arms across his chest. “And for the record, I did not walk around with a silly grin on my face. And I realized that Samantha was the love of my life fairly quickly and put her on notice, as well. I was much quicker than the stalker cop over there.”

      “I was not stalking her! I was doing my job,” Lawrence snapped.

      “Anyway.” Jason shook his head at Lawrence. “I’m with Joel. Big bro needs to be a little nicer if he wants our help. And he’s going to have to come clean about why he wants our help. I don’t know about y’all, but I need some more details.”

      “I need some more details, too,” Joel said.

      “Oh, I definitely need some more details,” Lawrence offered gruffly.

      Patrick eyed each of his brothers cautiously. He should have known these three jokers wouldn’t have made this easy. He probably should have toned down his comments, since they had apparently gotten them all riled up.

      He leaned forward. “I met a woman—”

      “Oh, snap!” Joel stared at him with glee and mirth as he interrupted. “Samantha said that when the love bug bit your surly, grumpy behind it was going to take you down hard and fast. But this is ridiculous. You met her today and she’s already got you calling for council from your younger, smarter, better-looking—”

      “All right, can I finish? And tell my sister-in-law to stop talking about me. Anyway, I met a woman today, a kindergarten teacher who brought her class to visit the firehouse—”

      “I used to love giving tours to the little kiddies. That was a fun part of the job. The kids really

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