Page 141 of The Woman By the Lake

Silver and pewter eyes came my way.

“Don’t mind me. I’m chartering a plane so I can fly you two to DC so you can do a training session on working together with Congress,” I quipped.

They both burst out laughing.

“Unless you want a beer and to sit out on the deck and shoot the shit, that’s all I got,” Storm said after he quit laughing.

“I got one more thing to talk about,” Riggs replied.

“Hit me,” Storm invited.

“Would it fuck your play if I got on my phone with her and lost my goddamned mind that bitch is bringing men home when our kids are there?”

Annnnnnnnnnnd…

There it was.

Storm seemed surprised. “You didn’t know?”

“No fuckin’ clue.”

“Ledge didn’t tell you?”

Oh boy.

Riggs shook his head.

“Protecting her,” Storm deduced on a mutter.

“Probably,” Riggs agreed.

“Gotta tell you, I’ve already shared my opinion on that, and she told me to suck her dick.” He looked at me. “Sorry about the language, Nadia.”

I shrugged and smiled to say I was unoffended.

“So she knows you know, and she knows we talk, so it won’t fuck your play I make my feelings clear about that,” Riggs stated.

“I don’t know, brother,” Storm said, visibly chewing on it, before giving it to us verbally. “Maybe being on the record as discussing it with her prior to hauling her ass in court and putting it in front of a judge is a good thing. Maybe not. Every interaction I have with her, I gotta write a whole brief and send it to my attorney so I got it on record. But she’s free to live her life the way she wants. She isn’t legally bound to either of us.”

“How often does this happen?” Riggs asked.

“I’ve known a couple of the guys, and they’re not assholes, but she’s got a reputation, considering.” He flicked a hand between them to indicate what she did to them both. “So most of them I don’t know, and my guess is, they don’t know us. But we both get that she’s a woman who measures her worth by how many dicks she can suck.” Again, to me, “I’ll repeat the apology.”

“Please, be real. This is important. Don’t mind me,” I replied.

He jerked up his chin.

Yeah.

Mountain man.

“To end, my issue is not about her getting herself some. And I don’t think it’s regular the men come to her place, but it happens. My issue is, one strange guy in the house with my kid, or Ledge, gives me the shivers. But also, she’s a mom and she needs to be home with her kids, not every second, but she’s at a bar nearly every damned night. If she wants to live her life unencumbered, she can give them up so they can have a parent around. I don’t want my son, when he isn’t with me, raised by a babysitter I also have no hand in picking,” Storm finished.

“You want me to give you a heads up if I lay my thoughts on her?”

Storm shook his head. “You do you. If we decide to team up when we take her to court, we’ll start sharing more closely.”

“That also works for me,” Riggs said as he stood. He stuck his hand out again, and Storm rose and took it as Riggs said, “Thanks for the offer of a beer. But I need to go get my boy so he can sort himself out to go to Dustin’s.”

---