The fact that Madison was the former fiancée of a Hollywood superstar had made them that much more nervous. At least until they’d met her. Seeing the love between the two had set everyone’s mind at ease.
Then, of course, Rafe had come home for Christmas with a woman they all remembered he’d dated years ago, but had believed was out of his life for good. Uh-uh. Rafe and Ellie were engaged, planning to wed when Rafe rotated stateside later this year.
His brothers were settling down as rapidly as his cousins had a few years ago, tipping over, one after another, like pins in a bowling alley.
“How’s it goin’?” he asked Leo through the screen, already knowing the answer to that question.
“Fantastic. Wanna see a picture of the baby?”
“Isn’t she still cooking?”
“Yeah, but these sonograms, you just can’t believe the detail!”
Mike’s instant message notifier dinged. He clicked over and opened the fuzzy image his brother had just sent him, with the vague shape of a kidney bean in the middle. Leaning closer, he was able to distinguish head from feet, but not much more than that.
“Nice,” he murmured, looking into the camera again.
“I know, right? So how’s life treating you?”
He shrugged. “Same.”
“Ready to bail and come home yet?”
“I’m not a quitter.”
“Never believed you were. I meant, have you booked your trip home the day after your six months are up?”
Laughing, Mike shook his head. “Don’t think so. I intend to make this work. Chicago P.D.’s not an option anymore.”
Leo nodded, his good humor fading as he frowned in concern. “Are you okay? Everything healed up?”
Mike rubbed his fingers against the scar on his neck. It was still red, but the tenderness had faded...physically, at least. Emotionally, he wasn’t sure it ever would. “Yeah. I’m fine. I guess I just haven’t quite figured out what I wanna do when I grow up.”
“Well, there are a couple of people who might have some options for you to consider.”
His interest piqued, Mike raised a curious brow. “Who?”
“The twins.”
“Mark and Nick?” His cousins were a little older, so growing up, he, Leo and Rafe had looked up to all five of the boys on that branch of the Santori family tree.
“Yeah. They called Mama the other day and got your contact info. Sounds like they want to talk to you about some kind of business idea.”
Hmm. Interesting.
Mark was a cop, so Mike had crossed paths with him a lot at work, though they’d been at different precincts. Nick was in security, having gotten out of the Marines and become a bouncer at a strip club where his wife, Izzie, had headlined. Weird. But they made it work.
“I’m open to hearing their idea,” he admitted.
“We’d love to have you back in Chi-town, man. It’s gonna suck doing the daddy thing without Uncle Mikey around to lend a hand. Who’s gonna scare off all the boys who start coming around when my baby girl hits puberty?”
“I think you’re more than capable of that,” he said with a dry chuckle.
“I’m a lover, not a fighter. Madison says I’m going to be the first human-shape marshmallow when the kid gets big enough to start wrapping me around her little finger.”
Probably true. With his huge heart, Leo was the nicest of the brothers, so generous and easygoing. Rafe...well, he was a bit of a hard-ass and sure didn’t have Leo’s breezy outlook on life. After so many years in Afghanistan, that was probably understandable. Ellie, however, seemed to have softened him some.
Then there was him, Mike. The youngest, the cop, the one who had never seen an abused animal he didn’t want to take in, or met a bully he hadn’t ended up punching out.
That was probably why he’d joined the force to begin with.
It was also probably why he’d left.
There was only so much head-banging-against-the-wall he could reasonably do. He’d never been able to really make a difference, and nearly losing his life while failing at his job just didn’t mesh with his genetic code.
He and Leo BS’d a little while longer, then his parents came into the room and waved from the background. His mom raised her voice to shouting level, as if she feared she wasn’t being picked up by the microphone, and Mike pushed his seat away from the speakers just to get a little relief.
Damn, how he missed his family. All of them. Parents, siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles. He had thought when he’d left Chicago that going to a place where there were no other Santoris would be good for him, a welcome change. He’d wanted to figure things out in a place where he had to stand completely on his own and would be by himself to think.