The knock at the door was unexpected, Tim went to answer it knowing that Jeannie was already in town at the realtor's. They had talked about it quietly at length, Tim had expressed doubts that Raylan would even think about accepting, but Jeannie was adamant that her brother wasn't going to live in another cheap, shoddy apartment, doing favors for bar owners on the down low to keep the rent affordable.
She was living with Tim, and while she fully intended to help Tim with his mortgage, she was going to use a chunk of money from the sale of her New York City apartment to buy her brother somewhere suitable to live. She was freelancing as an editor, and she didn't need the cash.
Having realised that the woman he had fallen for was every bit as stubborn as her brother, Tim wisely put up his hands in surrender and left Jeannie to get on with it. That was one fight he had no intention of getting in the middle of.
Sighing quietly to himself, Tim peered through the spyhole, pinned a smile on his face and opened the door. "Mr Warsovski."
The old man held out something. Something with legs. And a head, big piece of lettuce clenched in the jaws. "Timothy, I believe this creature is yours." Tim could feel his own jaw clenching, and resisted the urge to roll his eyes, Mr Warsovski had this sad-sounding voice which always added a little extra pathos to his complaints.
Spike's legs waved a little, as Tim took back the tortoise and tried to think of a suitable apology. "I'm so sorry, Mr Warsovski, I didn't see him get out, he must have done it when I put the trash out."
"Third time I find him in my lettuces. Fourth time… I put him over fence."
Tim shook his head, "please don't do that Mr Warsovski, my girlfriend would be devastated, she really loves her tortoise." The one thing guaranteed to soften the old man was a hint of romance, so Tim laid it on a bit heavily.
Several minutes spent soothing Mr Warsovski, complimenting him on his lettuces and all his other vegetables, explaining that he and Jeannie were a couple but they had only known each other a few weeks, so it was too early to say if there would be wedding bells or not, and that the tall man who was always parked out front, sometimes blocking Mr Warsovski's parking was Jeannie's brother and also a marshal…
Tim had just shut the front door, when a glance at his watch said he was late. "Dammit." He looked the tortoise straight in his beady little eyes. Spike stared back, Tim could have sworn there was a grin on his leathery little face. "What the hell was I thinking? You're a Givens!" Tim put the tortoise down into the little temporary pen that he'd thrown together for while they were out, switched on Spike's heat lamp, "stay!".
They'd been together five weeks, and he was already talking to the tortoise.
Raylan was still a little touchy, as though he expected Tim to break his sister's heart at any second, but he had come round a lot quicker than Tim had thought the cowboy would. It was an adjustment for all three of them.
Tim tried to picture life with Raylan Givens as his brother in law. One thing was certain, it would never be dull. Thankfully, Jeannie was less inclined to shoot people.
That wasn't to say she didn't have her own strange quirks. Tim shuddered slightly at the memory of Jeannie's impromptu dancing, it was weird, and sexy as hell, and…
He was late for work.
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Raylan was tired and tense and wishing vehemently that he had controlled his tongue when in Winona's presence. Pissing off his ex-wife was a very bad move if he wanted to be an equal part of his baby girl's life.
Somehow his evil genius inspired him to open his mouth and say exactly the wrong thing.
The sad and pathetic part was that Winona and Gayle were right. Raylan's ratty cubby hole above the noisy student bar was completely unsuitable as somewhere to raise his daughter.
Everyone said it. Art had described his living conditions as akin to living in a dumpster. Gayle had said the same, with some nasty additions about the blonde barracuda behind the bar. Though how the hell she knew anything about that living over in Louisville, Raylan did not want to speculate. Winona had sighed, and given Raylan to understand that she was deeply disappointed. Again!
It hadn't helped that Raylan had spent the last two nights on Tim and Jeannie's couch.
When it came right down to it, Raylan did not have a home to go to.
Then Jeannie came into the office and dragged him out to lunch, with a conspiratorial nod to Tim on the way. That alone raised Raylan's hackles. Then this plan of hers, this time Raylan was certain that Tim was being dragged along in the wake of the bulldozer that was Raejeanne Givens. This had all the hallmarks of a Jeannie plan.
It was on the tip of Raylan's tongue to mention the last time he'd fallen in with a Jeannie plan, but that particular story was something he preferred to forget.
That did not mean he was going to go down without a fight.
"You will come and look at these places with me, Raylan Givens, if I have to get Tim to handcuff you and drag you along."
Raylan had snorted. Even though he was uncomfortably aware that the sniper was younger than him, possibly stronger than him, it was obvious that the younger man lifted a fair amount of weight if Tim's thickly muscled forearms and powerful biceps were anything of an indicator, and he also had some mad skills from Army training.
"I ain't promising anything." He growled at his sister.
"Y'can't live in that flea pit if y'wanna be part of y'daughter's life." Jeannie's carefully cultivated New York accent cracked, and the head rush of memories, of being eight years old and holding this perfect little being in his arms had Raylan mentally reeling.
Jeannie. The baby sister he had sworn to protect. Raylan nodded.
She didn't miss a thing, not the way his jaw tensed, or the muscle that jumped in his cheek, or the way his brown eyes widened.
It had been the Tommy Bucks thing that had decided her, back when she still had a job, but somehow the weeks had gone by and she had done nothing about it. Seeing her brother on the news, came as a shock. She knew he was a marshal, but beyond that she was just happy he'd gotten the hell out of Kentucky.
Then she was downsized, and before she really knew it she had sold her apartment, her furniture, packed up Cheri with her clothes and the books and personal items she was keeping, stuck Spike in a box with some hay and headed down to Miami to find her brother.
Finding that Dan Grant, her brother's boss, had transferred Raylan back into hell, Jeannie had barely restrained herself from slapping the man. Even though it was likely that Grant did not know, could not have known the truth about the treatment that her brother received as a child.
One lousy file did not a case make. And it sure didn't cover truth.
So Jeannie had jumped back into Cheri and headed north again. To find her brother, the only family she acknowledged that she had.