“Sorry, honey,” Brock said flatly. “That right there guarantees I pay zero attention at all to anything he has to say. And moms of ex-husbands don’t get a say either,” he interjected before she could do more than open her mouth in protest. “Mama bears respond to the cries of their babies, even long after said babies should have grown up to accept the consequences of their actions. And this Mama bear in particular did some pretty shitty things to you. I think I’d have a very hard time keeping a civil tongue around that woman, and I have yet to even meet her.”
Stace laughed awkwardly. “You won’t meet her. She’s six hours away, on the other side of the state from here.”
“That only makes it less complicated when it comes to hiring a lawyer to get your things back from her. What she did to you was criminal and if she thinks I won’t pay her a call, she can think again. And so can you.”
Sniffling, she pushed against the embrace of his arms until he relaxed his hold. Sitting up, she looked at him. “Why would you do that?”
Catching her by the chin, Brock forced her to hold his gaze. Her tummy blossomed, but she was getting used to how it did that. A look, a touch, even just thinking about something he might do was enough to make her insides flush hot and bring all these shivers and tingles, thumps and throbs to life inside her. When he cocked an eyebrow, she wrung at her fingers, incapable of looking away, caught somewhere between loving the way it made her feel when he took on this stern expression and hating it, because that tingling now sweeping across her backside warned a spanking might be coming. Brock could have a very hard hand when he wanted. His belt was even more ouchie.
“Because,” he said firmly, “Daddy’s are just as protective as Mama Bears, and there are reasons for why Mamas lead their cubs away from Daddies. Piss us off, and we won’t stop until our baby girls are safely out of danger. Right now, she thinks she’s won. She thinks she’s wounded you to the point you’ll never be a threat to her again. The problem is, the more I learn about you and the situation you escaped from, the more I see just how wounded you really are. Well, she’s had her say. Now I’m going to have mine.”
“It won’t do any good.”
His chin hiked. “And you say that, why?”
Wringing her hands, she haltingly told him, “B-because she has a lawyer.”
“Did they serve you with papers?”
Brow furrowing, she shook her head. “N-no, but... I only have a little money to get by. I was scared I’d lose all of it if I didn’t do what they said.”
“Do you know why they didn’t serve you with papers?” Brock asked.
She shook her head. “Because the law’s on their side and they knew they’d win?”
“Because they were buffaloing you. If you had gotten a lawyer, I can almost guarantee she’d have backed off, and I can definitely guarantee her lawyer would have wasted no time in telling Mama Bear to get over herself, because this is one case she’ll never win.”
“But Itriedto get a lawyer. Every time they heard her name, they told me they couldn’t accept my case.”
“Let’s see what Daddy’s lawyer has to say about this, hm? I’ll bet once he hears what’s happened to you, he’s going to laugh. Then he’s going to crack his knuckles, and take you on as his next client. I’ll be seriously surprised if it actually goes to court.”
“I don’t want to go to court.” Stace tried to look away, but his light grip on her chin tightened. He refused to let her look away. “I just want it to be over,” she pleaded. “It’s just stuff. I can replace it; I just need a job.”
“And a car,” Daddy Brock reminded. “And how about your clothes? Your dishes? Your furniture? She didn’t even let you take your bed.”
“They let me take everything I brought with me into the marriage,” she pointed out, but that was kind of sad. They really hadn’t even done that.
The look he gave her said he clearly didn’t believe it either. “Look me in the eyes, and tell me that everything you moved with was all you were entitled to.”
She couldn’t look away, not with his hand on her chin. She looked down instead. “Well... they might have got confused onone or two things. I mean, it’s hard enough to keep stuff straight when it’s your own. We were together almost five years.”
Brock didn’t look impressed.
“Married for two,” she offered.
“Everyone has a past,” Brock said. “How long you were with him, or how long you were married, means nothing to me. But everything that was bought during the marriage is something that should be divided evenly between you, and that includes material household items. Mama-Bear-in-law doesn’t get a say. She also doesn’t get to tell you you’re horrible when she’s stripping you of everything you own, and throwing you and her grandbaby out the door so she can have her little boy all to herself again. Got it?”
The furrow in her brow deepening, Stace nodded, but she could tell instantly that he didn’t believe her. To be honest, she wasn’t sure she believed herself, either. Brock meant well, she was sure. But he hadn’t been there, and she’d never really talked to him about it, not more than the snips and pieces she’d accidentally allowed to slip free before she caught herself. So while yes, it felt kind of good to be sitting in his lap like this while he got grumpy in defense of how she’d been treated, that didn’t automatically make her in-laws wrong or herself a good person.
It did, however, make Brock a good person, and she couldn’t help herself. Wrapping her arms around him, she leaned in to rest her head against his shoulder.
“Thank you,” she whispered. He wasn’t right, she decided, but his heart was the right place.
“For what?” he countered. “For telling you the truth? For holding you when you cry? For wanting to be the man that holds you every time you cry for the rest of our lives? I want to be with you, baby girl. I want to be your Daddy and watch you grow up into the proud, confident woman I see lurking beneath all this uncertainty. All I need to know from you, sweetie, is do you feelany drive at all to get to know me better? Because if you do, I’ll give you all the time in the world, but I need you to tell me we’re on the same page. If we’re on the same page.”
Hugging his neck, Stace stared into the side of his neck. She didn’t know what to say, how to respond. “I don’t know, Daddy.”
Except she did know, or at least, she knew enough to know she absolutely did want to get to know him better. But that was a double-edged sword. Getting to know him, meant he’d get to know her. And so far, she’d been lucky enough to spend this much time with him without his getting a good feel for the bad parts of her. The longer they were together, though, the less successful she’d be about hiding it. Sooner or later, he was going to see her in-laws had been right. Sooner or later, he was going to get tired of all her manipulations. He was going to find someone else, someone who didn’t have dependents, someone he could have sex with at the drop of a hat without having to worry about where to put the baby while they were screwing.
