Brick House: Blue Collar Wolves #2 (Mating Season Collection) by Ronin Winters, Mating Season Collection

Chapter One
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    “Y eah Dad, I’m glad it’s just a sprain as well. You should tell Mom to quit panicking so quickly.” Melissa Harris took a sip of the too-sugary, too-milky coffee which was the usual start of her day and prayed to the gods of caffeine to hurry the eff up and start spiking through her system. With a night that included her son needing emergency care, the adrenaline rise and crash that came with getting that news, and then dealing with Danny’s ups and downs through the night as he dealt with the discomfort, sleep had been non-existent.
    Her Dad chuckled at the long-running joke. Her mother was not and would never be a picture of calm and rational. “She feels bad, sweetheart. We’ve been talking about that stair for awhile.”
    Dad didn’t say anything about feeling bad himself, but the self-disgust was evident in his voice. Her dad had bad knees and a bad back, and couldn’t fix their old house anymore, which meant every day was a new problem with never enough money to take care of it. If only she could wipe away the failure in her Dad’s voice, tell him he always did his best and the fact he couldn’t fix a step that ended up hurting his grandson didn’t lessen him, but it would be of no use. Her Dad had his pride, and the fact he couldn’t take care of her mother and his family like he used to was a blow to it.
    Danny wasn’t the only reason she wasn’t sleeping last night. Lately she’d been having too many stupid fucking sleepless nights, where there was too much to think on. Once the mental listing began, she couldn’t turn her traitor brain off. It had to keep the refrain going on everything crazy in her life right now.
    Dad, and how he and Mom were no longer getting old – they were old. Hopefully she had another thirty years with them, but they could no longer solely care for their house or for Danny.
    As much as her mom loved Danny and as wonderful as they were together, Mom didn’t have the energy to look after her grandson anymore. Which meant babysitters. Which meant more money on top of the stacks of bills she already had and she was going to accumulate, because she needed to get someone to do several handyman jobs around the house, including that fucking stair. Yeah, Dad was going to take that well.
    Brick and House, and how they were turning everything around inside her, bringing forth long-buried yearnings, making her wet and making her want.
    They were always there, in reach. If she moved her hand only a little, covered only the distance of the bar, she would have skin against skin, warm skin, always carrying the tinge of oil and sweat and forest, making her mouth water with the desire to suck on it, to see if the taste matched the smell.
    “It was nice of Brick and House to bring you last night.” To anyone who didn’t know him, Dad never sounded anything but relaxed and calm in most circumstances. It took years of living with the man to catch the nuance, and today’s was curiosity. In Dad speak, he was wondering about the wolves and where they fit in the overall picture. The timing of this talk was a bit weird considering her own headspace, but Dad has been eyeing Brick and House with his thinking look the last few times he’d been around the wolves, so it wasn’t unexpected.
    “They were in the bar.”
    “No surprise. They always seem to be in the bar when you’re working.” Yeah, when had the last time been when she’d been working til closing and they hadn’t been there? Not just one, but both of them, sitting together though rarely talking, and always right in front of her usual bar corner.
    Dad wasn’t as involved with the wolves as she was. After she had been attacked back in seventh grade, she told him what had happened, because it never occurred to her not to share with her father. He’d then gone to talk to Iron’s father, and when he came back, he told her she could still be friends with Iron and Steel. That had been the extent of it. He