I grab my duffel and bring it to the spare bedroom I slept in when I spent time here in the summer as a teenager. I need to get my head around what I’m facing. And a shower. And probably a bottle of bourbon. I make my way to the bathroom and hope like hell the hot water is still working.
A text from Bradley comes through right before I get in the shower: I hear you just got three million richer. Share the wealth bro.
Of course my brother is making a joke about this. It’s just like him to not take anything seriously. Twenty minutes later I’m still standing under the pounding spray of water. It’s a great distraction from the shitstorm that has suddenly become my life. Fast and hard, the water pelts my back like a freaking jet stream. A few years back, when I was working on a project in college, I tested out some new plumbing options. Grammy Bee’s water pressure was terrible, as sometimes happens when the pump bringing the water up from the lake isn’t strong enough. Seems like maybe I overcompensated. I add it to my to-do list, which, based on what I’ve seen so far, is going to take the entire summer to get through. On the upside, it looks like I’ll have nothing but time to take care of all the home improvements.
I’m in the middle of rinsing off when I swear I hear someone’s voice. A female someone.
I step out from under the spray and listen. And there it is again. Faint, but there—a voice that belongs to a woman. It would be like Grammy Bee to start haunting my ass while I’m in the middle of a shower, on what’s turning out to be one of the worst days of my life. Considering how morose I am, I should think about dying my hair black and putting on some of Grammy Bee’s old Cure albums.
After a few seconds of silence, I decide I’m probably hearing things, and it’s more likely that this place has a raccoon problem, not an issue with undead visitors. Still, I’m sufficiently creeped out, so I turn off the shower and grab a towel. I scrub it over my face and grimace as soon as the dampness hits the fabric, bringing out a mild funk. The last thing I want is to dry myself off with a towel that smells like it sat in the washing machine too long, so my only option is to drip dry.
I make a mental note to see how ancient the washing machine is and whether it needs to be replaced. I have a feeling that list is going to be just as long as the to-do list.
I open the bathroom door and step into the hall. I have to cross the living room to get to the spare bedroom—no way am I sleeping in my deceased grandmother’s bed—and I manage to make it halfway across the living room before a banshee-level scream scares the crap out of me.
It’s not the undead coming to haunt me, though. It’s a woman. An attractive one. Her sandy-blonde hair falls in chaotic spirals to her shoulders. Her ocean-green eyes are wide, lashes coated with mascara, full lips parted in shock. She’s wearing a buttery yellow shirt that almost matches her hair and skinny jeans that highlight her curvy hips and athletic legs. She’s also wearing very impractical heels my sister would probably approve of. My gaze springs back to her still-shocked face. There’s something familiar about her, but I can’t put my finger on it.
“Who the hell are you, and how did you get in here?” I shout at the woman standing between me and the bedroom, where my clothes are. I’m not in the mood for guests or being nice, apparently, based on my volume and my tone.
Her wide-eyed gaze dips down and then springs back up, her cheeks flushing red. “Who the hell are you, and why are you naked?” she yells back.
She doesn’t bother to turn around. Instead she stands there, eyes bouncing between my face and my nakedness. As if I need to be objectified after the hellish day I’ve had.
“Seriously? Are you checking out my junk?”
“It’s right there! How am I not supposed to check it out?” She’s still yelling and turning even redder. At least her face has the decency to show her embarrassment. That still doesn’t explain who she is or what she’s doing here.
I drop a hand to shield my stupid penis, who has decided, regardless of the fact that this woman has broken into my grandmother’s cottage, that we still find her attractive and would like to give her the one-eyed salute. Maybe it’s an anger hard-on. “You could turn around!”
“You could put some clothes on!”
“I can’t! You’re blocking my way to the bedroom!” I bellow.
“Oh. Sorry.” She steps aside, obviously flustered, and finally raises her hand in front of her face.
I stalk past her and notice the gap between her fingers. “Are you still checking me out?”
“You still haven’t told me who you are! For all I know you’re some perv who likes to break into deceased women’s cottages and jerk off in their showers.”
I make a gagging sound and point aggressively at her. “I’m Bee’s grandson, and you’d better not move while I’m putting clothes on, or I’m calling the police.”
“What if I am the police?” she calls after me.
I’m tempted to yell something about showing me her badge, but based on the heels she’s wearing, I’m going to go out on a limb and say she isn’t the police. Besides, if she was, the first thing she would have done was show me her badge. For a moment I consider that I could end up going to jail for stealing money I didn’t take. This day keeps going from bad to worse.
I grab the first pair of shorts I can find—screw the boxers—and jab my feet through the legs. I do up the button and nab a shirt, pulling it over my head as I walk down the hall. I’m still wet, so everything sticks to my skin, but I’m not leaving a random stranger in my grandmother’s living room unattended any longer than necessary. I should have ushered her out the door and made her wait on the porch, but I didn’t want to get that close to her while I was free-balling it and risk getting kicked in the nuts.
When I return to the living room, she’s not standing in the middle of it anymore. Instead she’s over by the credenza, rolling one of my grandmother’s knickknacks between her fingers.
“Hey, that’s not yours to touch. Put it down,” I bark.
She nearly drops it because I startled her, but she manages to recover and sets it down carefully. When she turns to me, her arms are crossed and her eyes are narrowed. Despite her ire, she’s still frustratingly attractive. “You said you were Bee’s grandson. Which one are you?”
I raise a hand in the air, because seriously, who does this woman think she is? Also, I’m done with people being assholes today. “I’m not answering any of your questions until you answer mine. Who are you, and how did you get in here?”
“I’m Bee’s neighbor, and I used a key.” She dangles one from her ring finger. It’s hooked onto a tiny needlepoint chain, which is definitely something Bee would’ve used to keep track of her keys.
“First of all, ‘Bee’s neighbor’ is not a name. And secondly, that could be any key. Maybe you picked the lock. Maybe it should be me threatening to call the cops on you, since you’re the one breaking into my grandmother’s house.” Hell, she could be the reason I’m in so much trouble. The only reason I’m not calling the cops is because I already have enough going on without getting local law enforcement involved.
“Bee called me Lynnie. And you can call the cops if you want, but they’re probably on break, since there are only three in the whole of Pearl Lake and they’re friends of my family. I live over there.” She thumbs over her shoulder. “I’ve known Bee my whole life. Knew her,” she says, correcting herself, and then looks away, rubbing at her lips with her thumb. “So which grandson are you?”
Well, that explains why she’s so familiar. I used to see her all the time, but usually from a distance, through the barrier of trees that separates her property from my grandmother’s. She worked at the food truck one summer. They served the worst hot dogs. “I’m Van.”
“Van?”
“Donovan,” I say in frustration. My grandmother only shortened my name when she was talking to family.
Her eyes flare, and this time not because I’m flashing her. “Donovan? Firestone?”
“Yeah. That�
�s me.”
“Oh.” She blinks a few times, and her expression goes stony. Or stonier than it already was, anyway. “We’ve been emailing.” She motions between us.
“Huh?” Today has been a cluster, and I’m about ready to throw in the towel.
Her lip curls up in a half sneer. “About Bee’s estate. We’ve been emailing back and forth for months.”
I give my head a shake and drag my gaze away from her mouth. “Nope. I’ve been emailing with some dude named Dillion.”
“Not some dude—me. I’m Dillion. Dillion Stitch.” She crosses her arms, eyes narrowed in distrust.
“I thought you said your name was Lynnie.” I rub my temple; my brain hurts from the crap I’ve been through over the past couple of hours, and this sure isn’t helping.
“No. I said Bee called me Lynnie. My actual name is Dillion.” She pokes at her cheek with her tongue, gaze flitting from my mouth to my eyes and back again.
I rub my lip self-consciously. “Do you have any other names you go by that I should know about?”
“Nope, that covers it.”
“Why did Bee call you Lynnie?” I don’t know why I’m entertaining this. For all I know she’s lying about who she is. I hate how paranoid I suddenly am.
“Because Bee thought Dillion was a boy’s name, so she dropped the first half. I don’t know why she added the i-e to the end, though. I never asked, and she never offered.” She blows out a breath and looks around the cabin, eyes suddenly soft. “Not that that matters. Anyway, I’m guessing you’re here to put the will into probate. You must be here to have the place appraised so you can sell it to developers or whatever. Good luck on getting the lot divided, by the way. Parceling off the land will never happen. Besides, the zoning laws on this side are different, so whatever plan you’re probably hatching isn’t going to work. You might get a fair price for the land, but I’m not sure whoever buys it is gonna get much love from their neighbors.”
“Right. Okay.” I have no idea what she’s talking about, or why she’s so damn hostile. “I can’t sell right now anyway, so chill out.” As of this moment, this is the only place I have to go while I’m figuring out what my next steps will be. And I love this place, so I have no plans to sell—not that it’s any of her business.
She frowns, her eyes narrowing. “But you’ll sell eventually.”
“What’s it to you if I do?” I’ve had it with people today.
“You might be able to sell, but you’ll never get them to agree to subdivide the lot.”
“Good to know.” And I’m about done with this conversation.
“I’m keeping an eye on you.” She points her index and middle fingers at her own eyes and then jabs them in my direction. “Both of them, actually.”
And with that she storms out.
The screen door hits the side of the cottage and bangs shut but then bounces open again. I watch as she nearly loses her footing on a loose board. “You should have that fixed before someone breaks an ankle!” she shouts as she stalks across the gravel driveway.
“Maybe you should consider wearing different shoes!” I call after her. “Or you could stay off my property from now on!”
She bats at the trees as she stomps her way through the bushes. There’s another small cottage-style house beyond the brush, but that isn’t where she goes. Instead she heads for the rusted trailer almost completely hidden by the trees. A few seconds later a door slams shut.
So much for a peaceful vacation in Pearl Lake.
CHAPTER 5
FAMILY BIZ
Dillion
I’ve been working for the family business, a.k.a. Footprint Renovations and Home Maintenance, all weekend, and now it’s Monday. In that time, I’ve discovered how lackadaisical they’ve been about the bookkeeping and contract management. I have my work cut out for me, but I can already see a bunch of ways they can be more organized, reduce costs, and save me time. Starting with their filing system, which seems to be several piles stacked around the office and on top of the cabinets instead of in them.
I’m currently sitting cross-legged on the floor with a stack of file folders in front of me, trying to arrange them in some kind of logical order. What I really want to do is take them down to South Beach and start a bonfire. Especially the file I found citing a dispute between Footprint and a north side client who called some of the charges into question. It looks like it’s been resolved, but it’s something that shouldn’t have happened at all.
“You all right, Darlin’?”
“Totally fine.” I flip the folder open and sift through the contents. The file is fourteen years old. They only need to be kept for seven years, so I move the folder to the shred stack. It’s substantial at this point.
A coffee appears in front of my face, my dad’s thick, scar-riddled, and callused fingers wrapped around it.
“Oh, bless you and the coffee gods. I needed this more than you can know.” I cradle it between my hands and take a tentative sip, humming contentedly. “This is from Boones, isn’t it? Did you get apple fritters too?” I finally lift my gaze to find my dad smiling down at me, a greasy paper bag dangling from his other hand.
I try to snatch the bag, but he lifts it out of reach. “You can only have one if you take a break.”
“Do I look like I have time for a break?” I motion to the mountain of file folders.
“You’ll be more effective if you stop for ten minutes and eat something. You didn’t come in for breakfast this morning, and unless you’re grocery shopping on the sly, the only thing in the trailer fridge is beer.”
I ate half a bag of stale salt-and-vinegar chips this morning, and that was hours ago. We start early, and my neighbor apparently likes to stay up late working on construction projects and listening to music. He also likes to burn crap in Bee’s firepit. The worst part is that the firepit is close to my trailer, so I not only get to listen to his music and his hammering, but everything I own now smells like campfire. The charred aroma is embedded in my hair, so I’ve given up on wearing it down and instead keep it in a ponytail. Even still, every once in a while I get a solid whiff, and it’s highly unpleasant.
My dad is still standing in front of me, waiting. So I give in, partly because he has a point and also because there is nothing more delicious than one of Boones’s apple fritters. I step over the maze of stacked files and follow him into the break room, where my uncle John and one of their employees, Aaron Saunders, are seated around the small table, both cupping take-out coffees. Aaron and my brother were friends in high school, but Aaron disappeared for a few years after graduation. No one knows where he went or why he came back, but when he returned to Pearl Lake, he immediately started working for Footprint.
“Hey, guys, how’s it going?” I cross over to the cupboards and grab plates and napkins for the fritters. Normally the guys shove their filthy mitts into the bag and get sugar flakes and crumbs all over the table, which no one bothers to clean up. In the three days since I’ve been here, I’ve begun the process of encouraging basic table manners. So far, I’m not having much success.
“Good, good. How’s file Jenga?” Aaron asks.
I don’t have to turn around to see his smirk. Yesterday I was in a mood over the number of ancient, misfiled documents. It’s a pain in my ass to go through everything, but once I’m done, they’ll have a much more streamlined, organized system.
“It’s a work in progress.” I pass out plates and napkins and snatch the bag from my dad before he can pass it around to the guys. I use a pair of tongs to distribute the fritters before I dump the rest on a communal plate and take a seat.
Conversation ceases, replaced by the sound of chewing and humming. I take a bite of my own fritter, teeth sinking into the sweet, light dough, past the apple center. These aren’t like normal fritters from regular doughnut shops, where they cut the apples into chunks. These are made with an entire ring of apple, dipped in lemon juice and cinnamon sugar and then again in fresh batter, fried
in batches, and then coated in a sweet icing sugar glaze or another round of lemon and cinnamon sugar. They’re sweet, decadent, and delicious. I polish off the first one and reach for a second, aware they won’t last long. This one I savor.
“How’s the McMansion reno going?” I ask between bites.
“You know how it is over there. The owners always hover,” Uncle John grumbles.
“At least they’re keeping us busy,” my dad says. I found out that they lost a couple of big contracts after Billy’s accident. There were rumors that he showed up to work high and drunk on more than one occasion, and people were worried about the liability. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I have to hope that the gossip dies so that the business doesn’t take a hit. “And this one isn’t making it any easier to get things done.” Dad nods to Aaron.
Back in high school, Aaron played on the school football team. He was a sophomore when I was a senior, but that didn’t stop the girls from trailing him, starry eyed and desperate for his attention. I doubt much has changed. He’s grown up, his soft boyish features sharpening into a rugged jawline and a full-lipped smile. Not to mention that he’s filled out, thanks to his athletic history and his current job.
“Mowing lawns shirtless these days?”
Aaron shrugs and grins. “Might as well work on my tan while I’m grooming lawns.”
I roll my eyes at the thinly veiled innuendo my dad and uncle miss. I have no doubt that Aaron is grooming more than the lawns on the other side of the lake. With his chiseled features, ridiculous body, and the tattoos he’s added over the years, he’s every rich girl’s idea of a bad boy they want to tame.
“I hope you’re following safety protocol while you’re mowing all those lawns.”
“Don’t worry, I always protect what matters.” He knocks on the side of his head, but we both know which one he’s actually referring to. “And I love that you’re still looking out for me, Dee. It’s just like old times.”
I snicker and shake my head. Aaron was notorious for asking me to grab him a handful of condoms every time I went to the birth control clinic to have my prescription filled back in high school. The last thing I wanted was to end up a teen mom. No judgment, but there were enough of those around here.
Love Next Door Page 5
