It's Always Complicated (Her Billionaires Book 4) (4 page)

And not whether her mother’s private parts were trending on Twitter?

Josie held up one finger to Meribeth. If only life were so simple. Pause it, recover from the emotional shock, then resume the world.

“We got a problem. The authorities here in Portland insisted on taking her in.”

“Damn it,” Josie muttered. She and Alex were saving for a down payment on a condo on the Fenway in Boston a quick hop to the hospitals where he worked. Was a good chunk of that savings going to be used to bail her mother out of jail after Marlene screwed two hockey players on a plane?

Since w
hen did her life’s vocabulary include th
o
se sentences?

“I’m so sorry, Josie. I am. But your mom needs to get out. Calvin will sign his house as collateral for the bail bondsman, but if you could—”

“Calvin
what
?” The florist’s cooler began to spin.

“Josie!” Meribeth said sharply, her hand grasping Josie’s forearm, the warm flesh contrasting with the chilly air in the ice-cold chamber. “You’ve turned whiter than your dress. Come sit down.” The order was motherly and professional. Meribeth was a psychologist. How she managed to be both maternal and authoritative without being mean always confused Josie.

Josie listened and walked out of the cooler, guided by her future mother-in-law, who gently pried the phone from her fingers.

“Hello?” Meribeth said pleasantly. “This is Alex’s mother. Who am I speaking with?”

And just like that, Meribeth made magic out of a steaming pile of manure. She spoke with Cathy, the conversation quickly shifting from a wariness on Aunt Cathy’s part to an earthy bonding over the foibles of family. Josie collected the pieces of herself
that had
splintered into a thousand toothpick pieces and listened as the only other person in the world who loved Alex as much as she did navigated a complex mess for her.

For Josie.

Why?

An accident of fate made Josie meet Alex. Love made her stay. Fear almost ruined what had turned out to be the best relationship she could possibly have imagined having.

And now
his
mother dove right into
her
insane, messy, vulgar chaos cloud of a mother’s drama and...was
fixing
it?

Meribeth got off the phone with Cathy and said nothing to Josie, just placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. She tapped out a number, reciting it from memory as if she’d just been given it, and her voice changed as someone answered the phone.

Within twenty minutes, Josie learned
that
Meribeth was one kickass human being. Not that she didn’t already know it, but she managed to call the jail authorities, give her credentials as a clinical psychologist in Massachusetts, give background information on Marlene that Aunt Cathy must have provided her, and—

Now Meribeth was finishing up a conversation with Aunt Cathy in which it was clear that the jail problem with Josie’s mother was going to be far easier.

Meribeth handed her the phone and Josie pressed it against her ear with as much enthusiasm as she had for hugging a dead raccoon.

“Cathy?” she asked, afraid of what she was about to hear. She stared at Meribeth like she was Glinda the Good Witch. Meribeth ran her fingertips along the edges of the roses, her expression serene, as if she hadn’t just called incarceration authorities to help her future daughter-in-law’s trashy mother get out of a threesome exhibitionist mess.

“You won the damn mother-in-law lottery for sure, Josephine,” Aunt Cathy said with a tone of disbelieving wonder tinged with bitterness. “That woman just done more to help save your mother’s ass than anyone I know. I’ll call you back in a few hours and we might not need any money from you for Marlene. I’ll let you know what happens when I know. Have fun flower shopping!”

Click.

There wasn’t enough wine in the world to manage the next few hours.

Tears tightened the back of her throat, making her neck spasm. No.
No, no, no
. She was not going to cry now. Not in front of Meribeth, who had just untangled a giant ball of Marlene string like she was Mary Poppins with a PhD.

No.

Ok,
yes
. Damn it.

Apparently she had no choice over the crying thing. It was happening, like it or not, so Josie curled into a little ball and let it happen. The bench she was sitting on had giant planters filled with orchids, the room moist and warm in contrast to the cooler, and as she fell apart at least she was surrounded by the delightful scents of fresh flowers.

It could be worse. She could be crying in a jail waiting room that smelled like pine deodorizer and pee.

Meribeth, to her surprise, said nothing. She expected the usual questions, like,
Why didn’t you explain about your mother?
or
Has she been like this for a long time?
or
What is wrong with your mother?

Maybe Alex had warned her. The trip to Ohio for Aunt Cathy’s wedding a while ago had given him a thorough taste of her relatives, and especially of her mother. Between being hit on by her and watching her try to become the adult entertainment at Calvin’s bachelor party, there really wasn’t any secret left to hide from Alex about Marlene at this point.

Josie buried her face in her hands and inhaled deeply.

“You’re not her, Josie,” Meribeth finally said.

Josie jolted.

“No.”

And with that, Meribeth folded herself into the small space on the bench next to Josie, wrapped her arms around her, and said no more.

Alex

“Your mom is the Ohio equivalent of Florida Man,” Darla declared, telling Josie something she didn’t need to hear. They were at the hotel in Portland, Maine now, Darla and her guys in the room next door. The entire Ohio family was here, sprinkled throughout the hotel—her mother tranquilized by a mix of pills she carried in an old allergy-med
s
bottle in a giant, fake-leather bag imprinted with pink, white and black leopard patterns.

The physician in Alex shuddered at the bottle’s appearance. Once Marlene started snoring and Alex could feel the strong, steady pulse, he was grateful.

Asleep, Josie’s mom was harmless.

Awake, she was a walking disaster.

“Dare I ask?” Josie said with a sigh, giving Alex an arched eyebrow. He could tell she only had one nerve left, and Darla was twanging it like a guitar string in the hands of an unruly four-year-old. Darla was digging through a two-pound bag of warehouse club-size potato chips like she was Indiana Jones looking for the Holy Grail.

“You don’t know what Florida Man is?” Darla marveled, her mouth crammed with food. Manners were never high on her list of cultivated priorities. Alex liked her, though. Darla was a refreshing breeze of reality in a stifling world.

He just shrugged. Alex knew better than to get himself caught in the middle of anything between Darla and Josie. He wasn’t stupid. He had an M.D., but more importantly, he’d been with Josie now for nearly four years. In this relationship, he’d earned an honorary Ph.D. in Estrogen with a minor in Sarcasm.

“Oh, I’ll bite,” Josie said. “What’s ‘Florida Man’?”

Darla grinned like a Cheshire Cat. “‘Florida Man’ is a website where people talk about all the worst news stories that always seem to start with the words ‘Florida Man.’ You know, like ‘Florida Man found feeding his penis to shark tank at Sea World’ or ‘Florida Man sticks fire cracker up his nose and—”

“And how, exactly, is my mother like ‘Florida Man’?” Josie asked, her face sour with a simmer Alex took as a warning, but that Darla misread as genuine interest.

“We can just start a website called ‘Ohio Woman.’” Darla’s level of excitement was way too high. Alex’s suspicion meter started to send out an alert. Where were Trevor and Joe, Darla’s boyfriends? He needed to text them.

Rescue texts came in many, many forms.

“Mmmm hmmmm?” Josie intoned. Uh oh. He knew that tone.
Set shields to maximum strength, Commander!
He reached for his phone and pulled up Trevor’s number, typing fast.

“We could put all kinds of web ads on it. You’d get that sucker picked up by
Buzzfeed
and
Reddit
and—”

Alex could tell by the way Josie was clutching her steak knife that Darla needed to stop talking. Like, yesterday.

“My mother is not an Internet meme,” Josie growled.

“Uh, actually, she is.” The words came out of his own mouth as if projected, like a ventriloquist’s dummy surprised to discover it’s a real boy. He winced, the realization that Josie hadn’t seen the pictures all over social media sinking in.

She hadn’t seen them because she’d been busy with wedding preparations, burying herself in the very same details she’d declared stupid and insipid a few days ago.

Before.

Before her mother became more popular, in pictures, than that poor
Erm
ah
gerd!
girl.

Reaching toward him, Josie held out her open palm. “Phone.” Hers was charging on the desk in the hotel room.

He handed it to her. She looked at the screen.

“‘Josie is about to kill Darla with the phone directory and a coffee stirrer,’” she read aloud.

Damn it. He hadn’t closed the text window.

Darla was nonplussed, munching away. “If anyone could turn those two items into lethal weapons, it’s Josie,” she agreed.

Big, angry, brown eyes met his, attached to a little more than five feet of vibrating rage in body form. “You’re warning her boyfriends about me? She’s the one calling my mom an Internet meme! You texted Trevor because I’m angry?”

“Look!” Darla said, shaking her head slowly, handing off her own phone, the picture of Marlene wearing a luggage tag on her nipple superimposed with words Alex couldn’t quite read, but he was pretty sure there was a strong chance the word ‘fuck’ or ‘cougar’ was one of them.

Bang bang bang

“DARLA!” a man’s voice shouted from the hallway.

“HELP!” Darla screamed, potato chips flying out of her mouth. “JOSIE’S KILLING ME WITH THE FREE HOTEL PEN.”

Bang bang bang

Darla really,
really
didn’t know how close that was to being the truth. Alex got up, gave her a look that was pointless, because she thought she was hilarious, and opened the door to find blond Trevor and dark Joe standing there, red-faced and worried, looking nervously over his shoulder.

“Darla okay?”

“She’s just pissing Josie off,” Alex explained, giving Trevor the fist bump he offered. Joe’s frown eased.

“And that’s different from...?” Joe asked, his tight mouth twisting into a smile. Alex gave them a once-over, surprised to see them dressed in business casual outfits, button-down shirts different colors but the pants the same dark navy. Accustomed to seeing them in ratty jeans, concert t-shirts, and flip-flops, the change in attire made
Alex
look down at his own body.

Where he found himself wearing ratty old jeans, a concert t-shirt, and flip-flops.

“Darla,” Trevor said, walking into the room and giving Josie a half-wave. “Quit bugging Josie and Alex. They’re getting married in a couple of days. Besides, your mom’s looking for you.” He was clean-shaven and smelled like a popular men’s cologne that was familiar to Alex.

Unease set in. Was he supposed to be more formal? Were there unspoken expectations Alex wasn’t meeting? Josie hadn’t said a word about his appearance. He’d gotten a haircut back in Boston and planned to shave and, as she ever-so-delicately put it, “manscape” himself before the wedding, a process that was far simpler than it sounded. The beard trimmer setting on his electric razor, applied to dark nether regions, produced sufficient results. It had not occurred to him that business casual was the dress code for the pre-nuptial days, however.

In other words, Trevor and Joe were upstaging him with Josie’s Ohio family.

“Why does Mama need me?” Darla shoved another catcher’s-mitt’s-worth of potato chips in her mouth. One look at her and Alex unclenched. Darla wore a hoodie that said, “I’m the Hot Writer They Warned You About,” with the word “Hot” buried within the longer word “psycHOTic.”

Compared to that, he looked downright courtly.

Trevor shrugged. “I didn’t ask. She just said to go find you.”

Darla rolled her eyes but stood up, thankfully. Alex watched Josie watching her, the eyes following but her face slack with the kind of unexpressed rage he knew would all-too-soon be expressed, like a pressure cooker left plugged in and turned on too long. His appearance was trivial, he realized, the flash of insight hitting him.

Josie was a nervous wreck over her mother.

And he’d been too caught up in the final push to the wedding to realize it.

Some message passed between him, Trevor and Joe as the guys collected Darla, who left with vague assurances of coming back to talk about bridesmaid details, the heavy metal door to the hotel room clanging shut like a prison cell door.

Josie, like Alex, had decided not to have a best ‘person’ at the altar. He didn’t have a best friend; the closest person was his old roommate, who had recently moved to California for his
medical
residency. When the pre-wedding planning had taken on a life of its own, the lack of a best friend had revealed itself, insidious and disturbing. Josie had Laura and Darla. Trevor and Joe had each other. Mike and Dylan, too. There had never been time for Alex to find a friend, between pre-med studies, med school, and now the hundred-hour weeks of internship and residency.

He’d relied on himself, his extended family, and now Josie, to meet that need.

A pang of jealousy hit him in the solar plexus as he thought of the easy companionship between Trevor and Joe, and Mike and Dylan. Maybe, someday, he’d find a friend. Hadn’t missed that kind of connection until now.

Josie’s sob jerked him out of his distractions, his legs moving him to her before he could consciously think to comfort her, arms around her fast and unquestioning.

“My mom did it!” she bellowed, her mouth vibrating against his breast bone. “She found a way to get arrested and become an Internet meme, all in the space of one flight, Alex! Who does that?”