Liam, his act apparently over, finally stood up. “Hey, bro,” he said, give me a chin nod. “Nice place you got here. You leasing it?” Liam refused to believe that I was actually more successful than he was. Before the D-Bags got big, he’d constantly rub it in my face how much money he made. But now that I was in the world’s biggest band, he may as well have picked his meager income from my ass crack. He was having a hard time adjusting to this new reality.
“Nah,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. It made my package more predominant, but I didn’t care. My package was worth the view. “I bought it outright.” I hadn’t, I still owed a shitload on this place, probably more than it was worth, since I was pretty sure I’d overpaid in my eagerness to live here, but Liam didn’t need to know any of that.
He frowned and sniffed in a haughty way that I hated. Liam liked to compare his looks to Brad Pitt, but I thought he looked more like the Sarlacc pit. Okay, maybe not that monstrous. He was a Hancock after all, and he did have our charm, trademark blond hair, and striking blue eyes, but even with all that, he was no A-list movie star.
“Oh,” he muttered. Trying to sound wise, he said, “You probably shouldn’t have sunk all your money into real estate. Diversification is the key to long-term wealth. Big mistake, bro. Big mistake.”
Looking him straight in the eye, I told him exactly what I felt about his opinion on my wealth. “Bite me.”
Just as Anna came back with some shorts for me, I heard my mom bellow from the van—“Gregory! Liam! These bags aren’t going to move themselves! Set your shit down and get your asses back here for the rest of the luggage!”
I smiled as I slipped the Superman shorts on. Good old Mom. As Dad and Liam scurried away to do her bidding, I turned to Anna. “I better help too. Mom can get nasty when she doesn’t get her way.”
Anna raised an eyebrow. “So can I. Why are they here so soon?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s cool though, huh? Now we have help for Gibson. You can rest more…” Sounded good to me. Ever since we’d come back from the tour she’d been complaining about being tired. I think she was still suffering from motion sickness, even though it had been a few days since we’d last been on a bus.
Her green eyes flashed in the sunlight as she thought about that small positive. Accepting the situation, since it was too late to change it, she let out a long sigh. “Oh well. At least it’s only twenty days. Too bad for them though, they’re missing out on time with Baby Hancock. They should have waited so they had more time with he/she.”
Smiling, I lifted a finger. “Actually, that wasn’t part of our negotiations.” Knowing this wasn’t going to go well, I started wading through the bags that Dad and Liam had left on the doorstep to go help Mom with the rest of their stuff.
From behind me, Anna snapped, “What? What are you talking about?” I looked back at her. She was still just in a bikini, but that wasn’t stopping her from following me to the driveway. Anna was about as self-conscious about her body as I was. I totally dug that about her.
“The deal was twenty days. Period,” she said. Her voice was firm, unyielding. Technically she was right, but there was one small flaw in the pact, and I fully planned on exploiting it.
I raised a finger at her. “No, the deal was that they could stay twenty days after the baby was born. That was what you put on the table. We never talked about how long they could stay before the baby was born, so these days leading up to it don’t count.”
Her jaw dropped and I hurried away from her. “You’re an ass,” she murmured, right on my heels. She could move quickly when she needed to.
She thwacked me across the backside right as we got to the car. I let out a tiny cry of pain just as Mom handed me a bag. Anna hadn’t held back, and my ass was probably bruised now. Mom loaded me up with three more bags, then patted my shoulder. “Good to see you, baby. Why don’t you put Chelsey’s bags in a room for her, then come back for Dawn and Della’s stuff.” From the way she said it, it was clear that helping my sister and her kids get settled wasn’t an option.
“Yeah, okay, Mom.” I turned to give one of the bags to Anna and Mom thumped me across the head. I rubbed the knot with a scowl on my face.
“Your pregnant wife does not need to be schlepping bags around. All she should be doing is resting.” Mom gently took Anna by the arm and Anna finally smiled. “Now come on, dear, let’s get you on the couch.” She glanced down at Anna’s nearly bare body and her lips pressed into a thin line. “Maybe dressed too.”
My sister was wrangling her kids when Mom walked off with Anna, but she paused in chasing them to smirk at me. “Nice shorts. Thanks for putting them on before the girls noticed.”
Annoyance twisted my features. “They’re four. They don’t know enough to care.” Both of my nieces had their hair in matching French braids; they looked like they could be the spokeschildren for Swiss Miss with their fair skin, pale eyes, and platinum hair. Chelsey’s husband was a burly, muscular dark-haired guy that I had affectionately nicknamed the Italian Stallion, or I.S. for short, since he reminded me of Rocky. The girls looked nothing like him. The Hancock genes were just too strong for Rock.
“Where’s I.S.?” I asked her, looking around for the mountain of a man. Was he still in the car? You’d think the bulging muscles would be easy to spot.