Full Hart

It’s nearly Christmas and the Hart brothers and their families are getting ready for another loud, crazy and wonderful holiday. But when they show up at their mother’s house with a freshly cut tree in tow, they’re in for a surprise nobody ever expected.

After losing her husband thirty years ago, Joy Hart raised her four sons on her own, got her doctorate, and became an accomplished sex and relationship therapist. As much as she loves being a nana, a mom, and a mother-in-law, she’s far from dead and wants more in her life. For a long time, she pretended she was satisfied with the flings she had while away at conferences. Love was not on her radar. But a chance meeting with a dashing man has opened this Hart’s heart to new possibilities.

Too bad her sons aren’t on board with the new man in their mother’s life. They’re giving Grant the gears and think he’s all wrong for their mother—for their family. He has no place at their Christmas dinner table, and the Harty Boys are determined to get the dirt on Grant before the timer on the oven says the turkey is done.

Will Brock, Chase, Rex and Heath take things too far and ruin Christmas for everyone with their stubborn, meddling, alpha ways? Or will Grant save the day, save Christmas and prove to everyone that Joy deserves a happily ever after just like the rest of them?

Trigger warning: miscarriage

POV: All (Brock, Krista, Chase, Stacey, Rex, Lydia, Heath, Pasha, Joy and Grant)

**Note: This is the fifth book in the Harty Boys Series. It’s highly recommended to read the Harty Boys quartet first. But not every Hart found their soulmate, so I thought why not give Joy the happily ever after she deserves too? So grab your rum and eggnog, put your fuzzy slippers up, get cozy by the fire and dive into a fun, read featuring your favorite family at Christmas time.


**Note: The political views represented in this book do not necessarily reflect those of the author. This is fiction and characters are given their own thoughts, ideas, morals, ethics, religious and political opinions to make them seem more realistic.

“The most well-endowed brother gets the biggest tree, right?” Heath asked with a smirk as he hauled his one-and-a-half-year-old son out of his car seat and propped him on his hip.

Brock rolled his eyes at his youngest, cockiest brother. “We didn’t cut down a sapling short enough to resemble your Vienna sausage, little brother.” He dropped the tailgate of his truck as his wife, Krista, helped their children out of the back of the cab. Rex wandered up, his wife and daughter behind him, while Chase, Stacey, and their two kids, who had parked the farthest up the road, were making their way down the sidewalk.

“Ah,” Heath said, chortling, “we all know who the biggest brother is. He might not be the oldest, but he’s the biggest.” He elbowed his wife, then Rex’s wife. “If you know what I mean?”

More eyes rolled as they all stood outside their mother’s house on December fifteenth, their breath forming puffs in front of their faces with each exhale.

Heath wasn’t discouraged at all. He tossed his blond hair off his face with a flick of his head. “I say we go by size. Biggest brother gets the biggest tree, and we work our way down that way. Mum gets the smallest one because—”

“She doesn’t have a dick?” Lydia asked, adjusting ten-month-old Maeve on her hip. “Seems like if she had one, it’d be bigger than all of yours. We all know her cojones are the size of grapefruits.”

Krista, Pasha, and Stacey all nodded and went “mhmm.”

The last to slide out of Heath’s truck, with a baby in her arms, was Pasha’s sister Rayma, she had Heath and Pasha’s one-month-old daughter Eve leaned up against her shoulder. “What’s this about cojones?”

“Just saying that Joy has the biggest of all them. Of all of us,” Pasha informed her sister.

Rayma nodded, her golden-brown eyes sparkling. “Not gonna argue there. Nana Joy’s ovaries are the size of bowling balls. Not sure how that tiny woman can walk, but—”

Brock cleared his throat. “Enough chit-chat. It’s cold out here.” He heaved the smallest tree—which still stood nearly six feet tall—out from the back of his truck and over his shoulder. Rex went to help him, but Brock grunted him off. “Can do it myself.”

More eyes rolled.

Ever since women started joining their family, eventually to outnumber the men, eyes seemed to always be rolling. And it was usually at Brock or one of his brothers.

But they weren’t just brothers by blood, they were partners in an elite security and surveillance company as well. His wife had named it, and although Brock’s own eyes had rolled at the time, now he kind of liked it. Harty Boys Security. It worked, even if it was a little cheesy.

“How come Nana couldn’t come to get a tree with us?” Brock’s seven-year-old daughter Zoe asked, skipping next to him, her curly red hair bouncing in twin ponytails that sprung out from the side of her head.

“Because Nana had a hair appointment,” Krista said, holding their three-year-old son Zane by the hand as they all approached their mother’s front door. “But her car is in the driveway, so she’s home now.”

“Someone else is here, too,” Chase murmured from behind Brock. “Anyone recognize the SUV?”

Heads shook.

It was a light gray Ford Explorer, a new model and with a hefty set of snow tires on it. A glance in through the driver’s side window yielded no further information as to who might be visiting their mother.

“Zane want to ring the bell,” Brock’s son said, having recently entered the stage of his speech where he referred to himself in the third person.

“I’ll help him,” Zoe said as they all fell in line on the path that ran below the living-room window up to the front door. She went up to her younger brother, hoisted him up around the waist, with his back to her front.

“No need,” Brock said, pushing past his kids. “It’s Nana’s house. We can just walk right in.” He turned the knob, but it was locked.

He grunted in confusion.

“I have a key,” Krista said, elbowing through her husband and children and fishing her keys out of her pocket. Her blue eyes glittered in amusement as she slipped the key into the hole and turned it. Her cheeks nearly matched her fiery red hair, which was spilling out of her knit cap. She turned the knob and held the door open for everyone to step inside.

“Nana!” Zoe called out.

“Nana!” Zane echoed.

Eight-year-old Connor, Chase and Stacey’s oldest, raced through the legs of the adults to meet up with his cousins, then joined in on the call. “Nana!”

“Nana!” Thea, Chase and Stacey’s youngest, cried out, pushing out of her mother’s arms to join her brother on the ground.

“Where is she?” Chase murmured, the curiosity and unease in his tone mirroring what Brock felt in his gut.

Something wasn’t right.

The house was quiet.

Dark.

Cold.

Those were three things it never was when his mother was home. Even if she didn’t turn the furnace on, when she was home, there was warmth. And she was almost always humming some tune or puttering in the kitchen making noise. And she never drew the blinds to the picture window in the living room, and yet right now they were closed up tight, making the entire house feel like it was enveloped in a shadow.

“Mum!” Heath called out, shoving past all of them, seventeen-month-old Raze still on his hip. “Mum, where are you?”

A clunk and a “shit” from down the hall rumbled through the house like thunder.

They all paused.

Then whispers followed. Two voices.

What the hell?

“Mum?” Brock barked louder than the rest of them.

“Anybody packing?” Rex asked.

One by one, they all shook their heads. All of them except Krista. “I have my Glock in the safety box in the truck,” she said. “Want me to run and get it?”

Brock nodded but didn’t glance at his cop wife.

She nodded and disappeared.

“Get the women and children outside,” he said to no one in particular.

Heath turned to his wife and murmured something to her, passing her Raze.

Against the children’s wishes, they all started to file back out just as Krista arrived back inside.

The click of a bedroom door had them all pausing, including everyone on the threshold.

Brock watched the knob turn and the door open.

His heart was in his throat.

Making gimme fingers to his wife, he asked for the gun.

“I’m a better shot than you are,” she muttered, elbowing him out of the way.

Holding his breath and not blinking, he kept his gaze focused on where his mother’s bedroom door was and the whispers filtering out of it. It was two people. He knew that now.

“Mum?” he barked, making his wife in front of him jump, glance at him over her shoulder, and glare.

A head poked out from the doorway, and his mother’s brows furrowed.

Sighs echoed through all of them.

“What the hell are you doing with that, Krista? Put that away right now,” his mother ordered, stepping into the hallway, all four feet eleven inches of her.

“Sorry,” Krista murmured, stowing the gun in the holster clipped to her belt.

Their mother approached. “What is going on?”

“I’d like to ask you the same question,” Brock said, realizing he was still holding the damn tree on his shoulder. He leaned it up against the wall. “Why didn’t you answer us? Why is the house cold, dark, and quiet? Why are the curtains pulled? Whose truck is that?”

Color burned in his mother’s cheeks.

“Yes,” Krista said in what sounded like a hiss. Her smile grew mischievously wide.

Yes?

Brock took in his mother’s appearance for a moment.

She was wearing a pair of dark wash jeans and a long-sleeved button-up blouse of some light shade of pink. But the buttons were askew, not fastened properly. The shirt was also wrinkled. Her hair was disheveled, too.

Which was so unlike Joy Hart.

The woman was always put together.

For as long as Brock could remember, his mother had tucked her hair up into a no-nonsense bun on the back of her head and rarely was a hair ever out of place. But the bun on the top of her head now looked like it’d been tossed up in haste.

Her lips were also puffy.

And there was a red rash or something on her cheeks.

A throat cleared down the hallway, and Brock lifted his head.

He could hear his mother swallow as he watched a man about the same height and build as himself walk down the hall, buttoning his shirt.

“What the fuc—”

“Watch it,” his mother said.

“Holy crap,” Rayma murmured behind Brock. “Have him stripped, bathed, and brought directly to my tent.”

Jesus fucking Christ.

“He’s old enough to be your dad,” Heath scolded her.