It's in His Kiss by Jill Shalvis

instincts. She easily kept track of everyone, from their birthdays, to their coming and goings, to whom they were dating. She always knew if her little chicks were bored, happy, upset, or hurting.
    What she couldn’t ever seem to do was balance her own checkbook.
    Cole’s dad had passed away the previous year from a heart attack, and Sam had been doing the banking for Amelia, handling all her other finances as well. But the reality was, he’d been doing that for years anyway. She’d retired from her high school teaching job and was still doing okay, a feat she attributed entirely to Sam, always saying that she owed him.
    She didn’t owe him shit.
    Sam didn’t care how much money he’d made her in investments, he could never repay the debt of having her watch out for him and keep him on the straight and narrow.
    Or at least as straight and narrow as he got . . .
    He picked up the statements and looked at her. “It’s late. You okay?”
    “Yes. I just got held up watching
The Voice
.” A natural beauty, Amelia had turned fifty last year, but looked a decade younger. Cole had gotten all of his charm and easy charisma from her. She was barely five feet tall, of Irish descent, and had the temperament to go with it.
    And a backbone of pure steel.
    Sam handed her back the statements. “The English version is that you made a shitload of money this quarter, so no worries.”
    She nodded, but didn’t smile as he’d intended.
    “What?” he asked.
    “Nothing.” But she was clearly biting her tongue about something.
    He knew her well and braced himself, because that look meant she had something on her mind and there’d be no peace until it came out. “Just say it,” he said.
    “I heard that your father called you.” Her sweet blue gaze was filled with worry. “Is it true?”
    Well, shit. There was no love lost between Amelia and Mark, mostly because Amelia had always had to clean up Mark’s mess—that mess being Sam. It didn’t matter that he and his dad had lived in Seattle. She’d made the two-hour drive and claimed him whenever he’d needed her.
    “Sam,” she said. “Is it true? Did Mark call you?”
    “Listen, it’s late,” he said, trying to head off a discussion he didn’t want to have. “Let me walk you out—”
    “It’s a simple enough question, Samuel.”
    He grimaced at his full name, the one only
she
used. Pulling in the big guns. “Yeah, he called. I call him, too, you know that.”
    Her eyes went from worried mom to very serious mom. “Honey, I need you to tell me you weren’t stupid enough to give him another penny.”
    “You know, it lowers a person’s self-esteem to call them stupid,” he said with mock seriousness.
    “Damn it!” Amelia stalked to the door that led to a hallway and into the small kitchen.
    Against his better judgment, Sam followed, watching as she bypassed the fridge, going straight for the freezer, exclaiming wordlessly when she found it empty.
    “You used to always keep vodka around,” she muttered. “Where’s the vodka?” She turned to him, hands on hips. “Sometimes a woman needs a damn vodka, Sam.”
    He knew that. He also knew that sometimes a man needed a damn vodka. For a long time after Gil’s death, vodka had soothed his pain. Too much. When he’d realized that, he’d cut it off cold turkey. It’d sucked.
    These days, he stuck with the occasional beer and did his best not to think too much. “I’ve got soda,” he said. “Chips. Cookies. Name your poison.”
    “
Vodka
.”
    He sighed and strode over to her, shutting the freezer, pulling her from it and enveloping her in his arms. “I’m okay. You know that, right?”
    She tipped her head back to look up into his face. “Does it happen often?”
    “Me being okay? Yes.”
    She smacked him on the chest. “I meant your dad. Does he call you often then?”
    “I call him every week,” Sam said.
    Her gaze said she got the distinction, and the fact that Sam was usually the instigator