I shiver at the loss of body heat, and Van slides off the bed. He tugs the sheets down on his side and pats the mattress, and I roll into his spot, sliding my legs under the quilt that was most definitely made by Bee.
“I’ll be right back.” He pulls it up to my chin and disappears down the hall.
I glance around the room, really taking in the space. I’ve been in Bee’s place plenty of times over the years, but mostly in her kitchen or living room. A couple of times I changed light bulbs for her in her bedroom, but this room I’ve only seen in passing on the way to the bathroom.
I picture a teenage Van sleeping in here, the one who came to buy hot dogs at the food truck, back before life took us in different directions and then threw us both curveballs that forced our paths to cross again.
He returns a minute later, still totally naked but now holding two glasses of water. He sets one on the nightstand and hands the other one to me. I sit up, the quilt falling to my waist, and his gaze moves over me in a slow, heated sweep. I like the way he looks at me, as though he’s hungry and I’m exactly what he needs.
After a few seconds he gives his head a quick shake and turns to the dresser. He finds a pair of boxer briefs and tugs them up his thighs, covering his glorious, sculpted butt. He also grabs a T-shirt. “Want this?”
“Sure. Thanks.” I hold my hands up in a catcher’s pose, and he tosses it to me.
It’s a college T-shirt, the logo faded and the fabric soft from wear. I pull it over my head and inhale the scent of Van’s laundry detergent mixed with the familiar smell of Bee’s clove and citrus candles. He crosses over to the end of the bed, a furrow forming between his brows.
Bending, he picks up the picture that fell off the wall thanks to our aggressive sex. “What the heck,” he mutters.
I set my mostly empty glass on the nightstand and lean forward so I can see what he sees.
The framed picture shows the lake, taken before all the monster cottages and homes went up. But that’s not what has Van looking all confused. It’s the confetti of twenty-dollar bills scattered across the floor, along with the ones clutched in his fist.
He waves the stack around. “Is this real?”
“It’s likely, yeah.” I consider all the things I know about Bee and her unconventional way of managing her finances.
The furrow in Van’s brow deepens. “Why don’t you look surprised?”
“Because it’s pretty typical of Bee to hide money in places people aren’t likely to look. Have you started cleaning out any of the rooms in the house?” A pang of worry hits me, because it would be awful if he’s been throwing stuff out in here without realizing there might be treasure hiding inside.
“No. I’ve been focusing my efforts on the garage.”
My shoulders come down from my ears. “Okay. Phew. That’s good.”
“I don’t get it. Why is that good?”
“It’s better if I show you.”
“Show me what?”
I roll out of his bed and hold out my hand. “Come with me.”
He laces his fingers with mine, still clutching the stack of money in his other hand.
We pad down the hall together, to the living room. I stop in front of the hutch, coated in a layer of dust that tells me it likely hasn’t been touched since Bee passed. She dusted every day when I was a teenager.
I pick up an old canister. It’s metal and dented, with a lid on it. Something from another era that held candies. I let go of Van’s hand so I can open it and then peek inside. I lift the piece of paper and reveal a roll of bills, secured with an elastic band, and hold it out to Van.
His eyes flare as he takes it from me, tipping the can over and catching the roll in his palm. A one-dollar bill is wrapped around the outside, but I unfold the note on top and show him the number 5,001 scrawled in Bee’s familiar writing.
“There’s five grand in here? That can’t be possible.” Van tugs on the elastic securing the bills, and it breaks apart, pieces falling to the floor as he pulls the dollar bill free to reveal a hundred-dollar bill underneath. “Holy shit.” He unfurls the rest of the roll, which matches the hundred. He looks around the cottage, maybe seeing it with very different eyes for the first time in his life. “How much money does she have hidden around the cottage? Is it just the cottage? Or the garage too?”
“Just the cottage. At least that I know of. And I don’t know how much, but there’s probably a lot.”
“Holy fuckballs. Why would she do this? Why not keep it in the bank?”
For a moment I worry that I’ve made a mistake in telling him, but I realize I was going to have to eventually and probably should have long before now. I shrug. “She didn’t always trust the bank, and she wanted to have cash on hand just in case.”
“In case of what?”
“Another world war? An apocalypse? Her estate getting tied up with red tape? Take your pick of options, I guess. At first it was a few stashes here and there, but over time she kept adding to it, almost like a game? An Easter egg hunt, but with money instead of chocolate.” I found out about it when I once helped Bee dust and dropped one of her many trinkets. A roll of bills had fallen out. She hadn’t made a big deal of it. Just winked and said sometimes it was good to have a little cash hidden around the house, for emergencies.
I move to the wall of framed family photos and pick up one of her with Van when he was a kid, playing in the water down by the beach. I flip it over and push the pegs out of the way so I can remove the backing. Between it and the photo are two envelopes. One has a small stack of twenties, the other fifties. Each one includes a small slip of paper with the amount in each envelope.
“There could be tens of thousands of dollars in here. Maybe even hundreds,” Van muses.
I nod my agreement. “It’s certainly possible.” And, based on how much we’ve found just by looking in three places, I’d hazard a guess that it’s probable.
“You’ve known about this the entire time.” It’s not a question.
I nod. “I would have told you sooner, but I wasn’t sure I could trust you at first. Or if you were even the right grandson. I should have said something right away, though.”
“You could have taken money anytime you wanted,” Van says softly.
“I would never do that.” I take a step back. “Bee trusted me, and I would never take what wasn’t mine.”
Van holds up a hand. “That’s not how I meant it. I’m not accusing you, Dillion. I’m just . . . I don’t know. I’m kind of blown away.” He runs a hand through his hair and grips it at the crown. “It’s kind of a mindfuck for me. You know?”
I drop my arms and nod, the tension in my shoulders easing. “Bee did so much for me. She helped me with college. I earned scholarships to pay for tuition, and Bee helped me apply for a bunch of grants so I wouldn’t end up with huge loans to pay back. She helped me with all of it.” I bite the inside of my cheek and decide to tell him the entire truth, even the things I’ve never shared with my own family. “But it was more than that, Van. She sent me money every month to help with groceries and stuff. She never said it was her, but once I asked my dad about it, thinking it was him, and he had no idea. So of course I asked Bee, right? Because who else would it be?”
“Let me guess—she wouldn’t admit it was her.” A hint of a smile pulls up the corner of his mouth.
“Nope. Gave me her big old innocent doe eyes and told me she didn’t know what I was talking about. She suggested that maybe there was a grant I applied for and didn’t realize I’d been awarded it, but it had to be her because there wasn’t anyone else who would do that for me.” I hold up a finger. “Wait. That’s not true. If my parents had the money, they would have given it to me, but it just wasn’t there. So I kept track of every single deposit she made, and when I finished school and got a job, I tried to pay her back, but she refused to take the money. It was so frustrating, because I wanted to give her back what I owed, but every time I tried, she’d find a way to give
it right back to me, so when she needed someone to help with her will, I stepped up. She asked me to be the executor.”
“I wonder why she never asked me to do it.” The question is laced with threads of hurt.
“I know the answer to that. She was worried your dad would step in and try to take over. She knew that he hadn’t been smart with his finances after your mom passed. She’d even loaned him money a bunch of times to help with things, like your education.” It’s uncomfortable to tell him things like this. When I was young, I always felt like a bit of a voyeur when it came to Van and his family.
“I didn’t realize that. I mean, I guess it makes sense. I came out of college loan-free, but I assumed my parents had set money aside for it.”
“I think they had.”
“But my dad spent it.” Van drops his head and rubs the back of his neck.
I slip my arm around his waist and squeeze. “I’m sorry. This must be hard to hear.”
“It’s nothing I didn’t already suspect. I just didn’t realize it was this bad, or that my dad had been borrowing money from Grammy Bee.”
“I don’t know everything, Van, but I do know that Bee worried about what would happen to this place when she was gone, and she wanted you to have it because you valued it. So I went with her to Bernie’s, and I promised I would make sure it was you who got the cottage and the property. Bee treated me like I was one of her own, and to me she was family, so there’s no way I would ever touch what’s hers. Or what was hers. It was never mine to take.”
“You realize most people wouldn’t even think twice about skimming, even a little.”
“Oh, absolutely. But the thing is, when things got tight, I’d suddenly find money in my account that hadn’t been there. It’s like she knew before it even happened.” I pick another framed photo off the wall, this time one of Bee with her husband.
Van steps in closer, his chest brushing my shoulder. “This was taken on Grampy’s birthday. I think he turned sixty-five?”
“He passed away a couple of years later.” I flip the picture over and slide the backing out to reveal yet another envelope. I hand it to Van before I slide the backing into place again.
Van peeks inside the envelope and shakes his head, but he’s still smiling. “This was his favorite outfit that my grandmother wore. Didn’t matter that it was ten years out of style; he freaking loved it when she wore it.”
“Back in the day when shoulder pads were an in thing.”
“She used to wear it every year on his birthday. I always tried to be here for that after he passed away, but it wasn’t easy once I started working full time. Getting a day off in the middle of the week could be a pain in the ass, so sometimes I’d have to come here after work.”
“And go back the same night so you could be at work the next morning.”
Van’s gaze shifts from the photo to me, his expression quizzical. “Yeah.”
“She told me about that. I’d always call and have my mom bring her—”
“—an apple pie,” Van finishes for me.
“From Boones,” we say at the same time.
“I could’ve eaten the entire thing in one sitting if I’d been allowed to.”
“But Bee liked to savor it, and you know how she was about sweets: loved them but hated them at the same time, because she didn’t have a ton of restraint when it came to moderation.”
“She’d portion the rest of the pieces out and put half of it in the freezer.” Van chuckles. “Except it didn’t work, and she’d end up digging them right back out the very next day.”
“I really miss her,” I whisper.
“Me too. More than I ever thought possible.” Van’s smile turns sad.
I wrap my arms around his waist, wishing that we didn’t have matching Bee-shaped holes in our hearts. He returns the embrace, strong arms circling my shoulders. He drops his head, lips pressing against the side of my neck. “Why didn’t I know you better when we were teenagers?”
“Because I was too busy with Tucker and trying to cut my roots so I could fly.” I tip my head up. “We were young. We weren’t supposed to know each other back then. And I just wanted something different than what I knew, so I went to the most opposite place I could.”
And in doing so, I left everything that was comfortable behind and tried to build a new life, with new people who were more refined, shinier, and polished. Although now I’m starting to see that the shiny veneer is just that. Underneath the layers of polish are regular people, with the same problems as everyone else; they just have prettier masks to hide behind.
CHAPTER 16
BLEEDING HEART
Dillion
My alarm goes off at what would be a reasonable time the next morning if I hadn’t stayed up until stupid o’clock. My dad and I have a meeting with a homeowner named something Kingston who’s looking to renovate his kitchen this fall. He’s one of the Bowmans’ friends who also happens to be a former NHL hockey player. There seem to be more and more of those guys popping up on the lake.
I roll over and grab the device, silencing the alarm. Before I can slide out of bed, a strong arm wraps around my waist and pulls me back across the mattress.
“Where are you going this early?” Van’s raspy voice sends a shiver down my spine. Last night, after I showed him where Bee had hidden pieces of her fortune, he took me back to bed, and we got naked again. It was even more intense than the first time and absolutely worth the very limited hours of sleep I clocked as a result.
“I have a meeting at nine thirty.”
“On a Sunday?” I can practically feel his frown and the furrow in his brow against my neck.
“Unfortunately, yes.” I shift so I can face him.
His dark hair is a tousled mess, he has sleep lines etched into his face, and his lips are gloriously puffy, probably from all the kissing. His dark eyes roam my face, hot and searching, and he brushes an errant curl away from my face. It springs right back into place. It must be a terrible rat’s nest.
“Is it a long meeting?” His tongue peeks out, dragging across his top lip.
“I’m not sure.” Sometimes they’re short; sometimes they go on for hours. One thing the people on the other side of the lake seem to have is oodles of time. Decisions on things like paint colors and countertops can end up as long discussions on what colors and materials work best together. And when you’re spending half a million on a renovation, I can understand why it’s not a five-minute decision.
“Hmm.” Van tips his head. “Would you like to have dinner with me tonight?”
“You mean here?”
“Or we can go somewhere. It’s up to you.”
“Like a date?” The words are out before I can consider them. And I immediately want to stuff them back in and swallow them down.
But a small smile pulls at the corners of his mouth until it makes his eyes crinkle with mirth. “Yes, like a date.”
I don’t know why I’m shocked. After all the revelations last night, I probably should have expected something like this from Van. “Um, sure, okay. Yes. But there aren’t many restaurants in town, and if we go out together, people are going to talk.”
“I’m okay with that if you are. I promise I’m not into excessive PDAs.”
“What do you consider excessive?”
“Sharing a plate of pasta like Lady and the Tramp, under-the-table handies, quickies in public bathrooms—you know, excessive stuff.” I’m not sure whether I should laugh until a huge smile breaks across his face and he chuckles. “Relax, Dillion. I won’t try any of those things, especially not on a first date.”
I push on his chest. “Oh my gosh, you’re too much.”
“Last night it seemed like you couldn’t get enough.”
I try to wiggle out of his arms, but he rolls us over so he’s on top of me. “Six o’clock. No overt displays of affection. I won’t even try to hold your hand. I’ll leave two feet of space between us at all times. Unless we see Tucker the Fucke
r. Then all bets are off.”
I roll my eyes.
“I’m taking that as a yes. I can’t wait to not touch you in a public place later.” He flops over beside me and tucks his hands behind his head, grinning like a loon.
“I bet you don’t last more than twenty minutes before you put your hands on me.”
“That sounds like a dare.” He winks. “Careful, Dillion. I’m a fan of a challenge.”
I leave Bee’s cottage with a spring in my step and a smile on my face; despite the fact that I haven’t slept much, nothing can get me down.
At least not until I step inside my trailer and find the place is a huge mess, thanks to last night’s storm. I left the windows unzipped, and I was obviously too busy getting busy to remember to close them, so my sheets are soaked, and I’m betting so is my mattress. The floor has several puddles, and the paperwork I was going over on my table is scattered across the floor, the ink bleeding across the pages. I’m lucky my laptop is at work and not on the table where I usually leave it, since there’s a very prominent leak there, based on the shallow pool that a few dead bugs and pine needles are floating in.
The rain has stopped, but the damage is already done, and there isn’t anything I can do other than throw everything I can in the wash and put all the cushions out to dry in the sun for the day. I don’t have time to tackle the rest of the mess, so I do what I can, then rush into the house and have a quick shower.
I’m grateful that most of my clothes are stored inside the house; otherwise, I’d probably be struggling to find a clean, dry outfit that doesn’t smell like old wet trailer. My dad and I spend the next four hours at a huge, gorgeous five-thousand-square-foot “cottage” that has not one, but three kitchens: one on the main floor, one in the walk-out basement (which functions like a fully outfitted apartment), and a third outside.
It’s amazing and lavish and probably one of the most beautiful homes I’ve ever been in. I’ve never had so much kitchen envy in my life. I’ve lived with secondhand, renovated kitchens or the kind you get when you live in a small apartment in the city—tiny, functional, and not very exciting. So helping someone else decide on the cabinets, counters, floors, and lighting for a kitchen that is literally my own personal version of heaven is both wonderful and painful.
Love Next Door Page 16
