Page 29 of Guy (House of Frazier #4)

“She’s upset about everything that has to do with Uncle Robert and especially my aunt Cindy.

She’s misremembering what my childhood was like and taking credit for the way I turned out.

If not for the help of my uncle and aunt, I might well have been just like my mom and critical of everything.

” She looked away before speaking again.

“I sometimes wonder why I was never liked by my mom. She’s been nothing but mean to me since I can remember.

My dad was never in the picture, so I’m glad that I had my uncle around all the time.

He was a great influence on me when I was growing up. ”

After getting things squared away with Sen, he made his way home, telling her that he had a few more things to look into about the estate.

He wasn’t going to do a background check like he might well have done beforehand, but told her that he’d take her advice on the couple and they’d go from there.

Whatever happened, it was going to be a good thing, he predicted, and he was happiest for the young woman.

He and Ivan were going to hang out tonight as the last of the Fraizer men that wasn’t married and have a good time.

He was to meet him at six at his house, and then they were going to go bar hopping from there.

It was something that neither of them did, and they were going to enjoy it as much as they could.

“You smell weird.” He thanked his brother, then punched him in the shoulder.

“I’m not kidding. You smell like…well, I was going to say sunshine, but we’ve not had much of that lately, so I wouldn’t know.

” He said that he’d had lunch with a young woman today.

Maybe that was it. “You were dressed like you are now? Not too professional of you, now, is it?”

They both laughed, and he told his brother that he’d worn a suit, so that couldn’t be right.

After a few more minutes of teasing him, Ivan seemed to have had enough and changed the subject.

He was glad; he didn’t want to be pissed off at his brother before they were out the door.

Instead, he told him of the puppy he’d seen today.

“Usually I don’t get to see just one puppy, but a whole litter.

This little guy looked to be a bit of everything.

But the little boy who had him assured me that he was going to be a little dog.

However, I know better. Whatever the boy said, he had paws big enough to hold onto a basketball if he was so inclined.

” Devlin asked him why the boy thought it was going to be small.

“His mom said he couldn’t have a big dog.

I was worried about that when he told me.

What would she do if the dog were big, but she seemed all right when I pointed out that he had huge paws.

She either didn’t know the old saying or she didn’t care.

Whichever it was, I hope they have plenty of money for dog food. ”

They were on their second bar when they both decided that this whole thing wasn’t what they wanted to do.

Getting into a pizza shop that sold beers, the two of them shared two large pizzas along with the salad bar and sat around and talked.

The place wasn’t all that busy for a Friday night, so they didn’t feel bad for taking up a table that could have been turned over to others coming in.

“Did you hear about Guy and Amber’s home?

They have it finished up, and it looks great.

I don’t think that it’s going to be hard for them to have guests want to stay with them over Lica and Brandy’s home.

It’s really nice.” Ivan told him that he’d spent a couple of nights with them, too, when the weather was bad.

“Then you’ve met their cook? She can cook for me if I thought that I could steal her away from them.

Her blueberry lemon loaf is to die for. And she has just enough icing on it to make you drool. ”

They both had houses thanks to Brandy having money for it, but they didn’t neither of them care for their home.

Ivan liked his a little better than he did, but he wished he’d gone bigger rather than smaller when he’d been looking.

The bigger houses seemed to suit his brother, and that was the route that he wished he’d taken.

They both regretted buying the first one that they came across.

“Did I tell you that I ordered myself a new Jeep? It’s one of the larger ones that I’ve wanted since I learned to drive.

It’s supposed to be coming in next week.

I got it without all the bells and whistles on it and spent the money having it with nice seats rather than the cloth ones that it usually had on it.

” Ivan congratulated him. “Thanks. This one has four-wheel drive, which I’m looking forward to.

I told you that I got stuck in the snow three times this year so far.

I love the cold, but not when I have to drive in it. ”

Ivan had purchased his clinic from the man who had been vet before.

It was a nice little place, but it had a great list of clientele.

Not that anybody who met Ivan didn’t like him immediately, but it was nice having a practice where you were busy all the time and had a built-in client list. He had started out on his own with his practice, but he’d had Brandy’s help.

And with the way things were going for her and Lica, he’d never be out of work for two of them.

They had billions of dollars and more businesses around the world than anyone he’d ever met before.

When the pizza place closed up, they left too.

It was still early, only ten o’clock, and they weren’t finished hanging out together.

So instead of finding them another bar, which they didn’t want to do, the two of them ended up at Devlin’s place to watch some television and have a good night.

And if they ended up staying in the same house for the night, that was fine too.

The two of them were as close as brothers could get.

They talked about the upcoming reading of the will and how the mother of the woman was a fruitcake. Then he changed that to mean that she was just too critical about everything. He told Ivan about the salad that she’d ordered.

“You know how I feel about salads.” Ivan laughed and said that everyone knew about his salad preferences.

“She orders a salad and tells the waiter that she doesn’t want yellow cheese on it and that they have to take out the croutons.

Then she lists off other things that she doesn’t want in her salad, like cucumbers, onions, and spinach.

That’s practically the whole thing. She might well have been better off ordering just a lettuce salad and been done with it.

But she had him repeat it back to her three times, what she wanted out of it.

And here I am waiting for my turn to order just a chef salad without any changes.

I think that I wouldn’t have had any changes for the man by the time she was finished, even if I had to pick things out for myself.

” They both laughed. “Then she wants things in it, like asparagus and scallops. I’m glad she wasn’t seated next to me when she got it.

That does not sound like a good combination at all. ”

They talked about their days to each other.

It was nice having someone to talk to all the time, and even when they weren’t together, Devlin was forever making a mental list of things that he wanted to talk to Ivan about.

They were the youngest of their parents and had suffered badly at their hands.

Even now, there were scars on both of them, both mentally and physically, that they both wore, and it had shaped them into the men that they were.

Lica had gotten the worst from their parents when growing up because, for some reason, they hated him even more.

When their mother had shot and killed their father, she’d wanted Lica to be the one to go to prison because she needed to be out to take care of the rest of them.

Whatever that meant. But since the police were there when the shooting had taken place, they knew that she’d been lying when she told them that Lica had attacked and killed their father.

To this day, she still says that it was all on him.

The six of them had grown up in an abusive home.

It was brutal, really. For days on end, they’d be chained to the tree in their backyard without food or drink.

Sometimes they’d have to get loose on their own rather than wait for them to remember they had children.

If not for the Wilkins, they might have thought that all families were the same growing up.

He surely did miss the two of them a great deal since he passed away, and Mrs. Wilkins had gone to live with her daughter a couple of states over.

By midnight, the two of them were yawning a great deal.

Knowing that at least one of them had to get up early in the morning, they decided to get to bed.

Sharing a room with Ivan wasn’t that big of a deal.

It had been the six of them sharing a single room when they were growing up, so this wasn’t much different.

In fact, it was kinda nice having someone like his brother so close.

~*~

Guy was deep into his writing when he saw something move out of the corner of his eye.

He didn’t acknowledge the ghost standing there but continued what he’d been doing since he’d been interrupted.

The man seemed to be looking at the items on his bookshelf and didn’t turn when he started talking, presumably to himself.

“Used to have me a set of these when I was alive. I wonder which mongrel got them when I passed.” He didn’t seem to require an answer, so he let him continue to look at the nice chess set he’d gotten for Christmas from his brother Ayden. “Probably Paul. He always was the shiftiest of the lot.”