Crazy on You (Bliss Brothers Book 4)

by Amelia Wilde

A dance party.

  You can’t keep me away from a dance party, not that anyone wanted to keep me away. Nobody seemed to find it out of the ordinary that I showed up, got a drink from the bar, and waded into the middle of the dance floor. It might not have strictly been within the rules—I have no idea what the rules are here—but after a long day in airports and on planes, I needed to shake it out.

  Well, now I have shaken it out. I have slept and arisen once more, participated vigorously in a workout video I can play from an app on my phone, and showered. I have donned a pair of harem pants and a tank top. I am ready to survey my new surroundings in detail. The kitchen is a neutral place to start.

  The cabinets themselves tell me very little. They’re nice enough cabinets, freshly painted. Did she pay someone to come in here and paint? Why did my aunt never mention this place to me or anyone else? My mother, her own sister, was as surprised as I was when she found out about the letter, and the inheritance.

  “Leta, I love you, so don’t take this the wrong way, but…why?” She’d read the letter twice and still couldn’t quite wrap her mind around it. “Why you?”

  “Because I’m the best of the nieces?” My aunt had no children of her own, my mom had me, and their brother had two sons and a daughter who quite frankly suck. “I don’t know, Mom. I didn’t know she had a place in Ruby Bay.”

  “We vacationed there a few summers, but I didn’t know she loved it that much. She never really talked about it, and I didn’t think to ask.” There was a long silence.

  “Mom. You can cry. It doesn’t bother me at all. But it’s not your fault she didn’t tell you about the house.”

  Breast cancer is a bitch. I’ll leave it at that.

  “I know,” she sniffed. “But I’m her sister.” Her tone shifted to another level of bewilderment. “She had a house in Ruby Bay and I never knew.”

  “You could come out here, if—”

  “No,” she said, too quickly. “That’s—it’s yours, honey. Just—”

  “I’ll let you know if I find anything.”

  I’m going to find a ton. That’s already guaranteed by the size of the house. But there’s clearly a lot we didn’t know about Aunt Mari, short for Marigold, who I thought was a quiet woman. She was happy to take me to the painting classes they had at the community center, but even when they added wine to compete with the paint and sip studios that popped up downtown, she never got wild.

  Not that I knew of.

  Anyway, now that I’m here, there are…emotions. More emotions than I would have thought, considering how much I danced last night. We were close, I think, as far as aunts and nieces go, but not too close. I didn’t call her crying with all my teenage problems, but we could sit at lunch together and talk.

  Plus…it’s Ruby Bay.

  It’s the Bliss Resort.

  I have…a history with one Charlie Bliss. A strange, coincidental history that I never expected to turn into anything more.

  I also never expected it to end, but it did, and life moved on, and now…

  Now I’m in my aunt’s secret kitchen, half hoping that Charlie Bliss from Ruby Bay moved on to more serious business than his family resort.

  The speaker system switches to the next track by Pilot Five, which has a club beat element that makes my hips sway, then pop, then shimmy.

  The kitchen should be the least difficult thing to tackle, because if there are big family secrets hidden in this house, they probably won’t be tucked between coffee mugs and dinner plates.

  …probably.

  Should I make a list? I should make a list. I haven’t firmed up my plans for the property yet. There’s some part of me that thinks I should sell it and use the money to reinvest in my tiny, tiny studio and gallery back in California.

  The other part of me only knows the first thing about real estate, which is that the value of this house, nestled by Ruby Bay and in a gated club, will be in the zillions by the time I’m ready to retire. Or sell the studio. Or…any number of things.

  God, Wilder Felix has a hell of a voice. I’ll see right through you, right through you, he sings.

  “I’m going to sell the studio, the studio,” I sing back. Doesn’t sound half-bad.

  I create a note on my phone, write kitchen at the top, and open the first cupboard.

  …and gasp.

  I’d pinned her for the kind of woman who’d get matching white plates, or some other somber color, but this is a rainbow collection. The dinnerware itself isn’t rainbow hued, but there are five different colors across the set. “Why are there so many bowls in this rainbow,” I sing, “and what’s on the other side?” I lift the bowl on the top of the stack, a cherry red, and cradle it in my hands. There’s nothing on the other side but the back of the cupboard. A bright red bowl. Who’d have thought?

  I write 12 bowls, 12 plates, 12 mugs (‘bow hued) in my note.

  The next cupboard is a narrow one, full of spices in neat rows. The first one expired a year ago. She’s been gone six months and she was in California for her treatment. When was the last time Mari was back here?

  I find a roll of garbage bags under the sink and open it with a flick of my wrist and a crackle of plastic. In go the expired spices, leaving me with one bare, narrow cabinet. If I’m going to cook anything, I’ll need to replace the spices.

  “Sell the studio,” I sing with Wilder. “I’m going to sell the studio.”

  The third cabinet is kitchen equipment, which brings up some questions. What should I do with all of this? The kitchen was supposed to be the easiest part of the house, but now I’m looking at a mini KitchenAid mixer in coral—cute—an electric can opener, a coffee grinder, and one of those pour-over stovetop kettles you use for individual cups of coffee. I saw my aunt make it many times at her house in California, only that kettle was bigger. This one looks like it would fit exactly enough water for a single mug.

  I can’t take it all back to California with me when I go. The shipping would be outrageous and I’m flying back with a carryon in two weeks. Plus, I have a can opener.

  There are some things I don’t have, like the mixer, but that’s because I don’t keep a lot in my little apartment. I spend most of my time in the studio, which is also small. Rent in California is not cheap, but I’ve managed.

  KitchenAid mixer (coral), coffee grinder, electric can opener, pour over thing

  I work through three more cupboards before I decide to take a break.

  Assorted kitchen stuff

  At the front door, a notepad hangs by the door. It’s one of the ones with long sheets of paper, a watercolor theme…and my aunt’s handwriting.

  It’s a list of phone numbers, and other notes. I tear it off the pad. She’s got a single wicker chair out on the front porch—my destination.

  But the moment I step outside the front door, an early September breeze curls around the front of the house and neatly snatches the paper from my hand. It swoops up and away, crossing the street.

  I sprint for it. Of course I do. Down the front steps, across the cement walk, and—

  “Oof.”

  The collision is with someone undeniably tall, male, and moving fast.

  “Apologies!” I shout. “I can’t lose that paper to time and wind! Out of the way!”

  I check for cars, dart across the street, and grab the paper up from where it’s settled against the trunk of a tree.

  It’s only when I straighten up that I see who I’ve run into.

  Charlie fucking Bliss.

  3

  Charlie

  I’ve lost it.

  That’s the only reasonable explanation for what’s just happened, which is Leta Quinn body-checking me on the sidewalk one block down and one block over from my own house. The act itself doesn’t make any sense in the context of the Club side—nobody moves that fast around here. Nobody has…pink hair. Pink hair somehow layered on top of chestnut.

  She stares at me from across the street, that pink hair shining in
the September light like she’s an angel of the autumn. Whatever that means—angel of the autumn. I’ve always loved the fall more than any other season. Beau always thought I was an idiot for this, and probably still does. But I still feel the same sense of possibility I did at the beginning of every fall. That possibility seems to have manifested itself into a full-blown hallucination of Leta.

  I don’t feel like I should be hallucinating. I’m tired, yes, but anyone would be tired after a midnight run followed by a targeted weightlifting session. I got up at my usual time.

  Could it have been the eggs?

  I just bought the eggs on Wednesday, so…the odds are slim.

  It’s only that the odds are astronomical that she’d be standing on the sidewalk now.

  I must be miscalculating the effect of the general stress from the Mystery of the Missing Money. God, I wish I could stop thinking of it like that. I don’t like cutesy mystery titles. Beau was the one who read all the Nancy Drew books.

  Fine. I read one or two.

  The only solution to this is to exercise more. I’ll focus harder during the day, if that’s possible, and once I leave the office I’ll need a new routine. Something that can help offload what’s clearly becoming unmanageable stress.

  How did it creep up on me so quickly?

  “Not today,” I tell Mirage Leta and turn away. If the sidewalk could swallow me whole right now, that would be ideal. I never should have said anything out loud. If Beau is sauntering around here with one of his fake cocktails I’ll never hear the end of it.

  “What do you mean?” she calls after me. There’s a scuffle and a scoot behind me—flip-flopped feet hurrying to catch up. The footsteps sound undeniably real. “Charlie. Hey. It’s me.” Leta jogs up next to me in her harem pants and a tank top that fits her like…for lack of a better word, like a glove. If gloves covered people’s breasts in a way that made certain other people’s nerve centers light up like Christmas trees. “What are you doing here?”

  I stop in the middle of the sidewalk and face her.

  It’s her. It’s one hundred percent her. Nobody else would have hair that particular shade of pink, and blue eyes the color of the ocean shallows, light and sparkling and clear. I haven’t seen her in…what, six years? Maybe seven? The years have subtly changed her shape.

  “I…live here. I work here.” Why am I explaining myself? “I think the better question is, why are you here?”

  “I have a house here.” She grips the slip of paper between her fingers. “It’s kind of a recent development.”

  “How recent?”

  “Got in last night.” Leta lifts her free hand to her hair and runs her fingers through it. It settles back down in perfect waves, brushing against her shoulders. I want to run my own hands over it to see if it’s real. “I crashed a party on the beach. I’m assuming you had something to do with that.”

  “The party on the beach? No. No. That’s Beau’s province.”

  “That’s right. Your brother, Beau.” She’d always thought it was funny to be dating a twin. What would you do if I mixed the two of you up? She’d asked me that once, tipsy from fireside beers. You would never mix us up. Leta had risen on tiptoe, pressing her lips against mine and teasing my bottom lip with her tongue. You’re right. I would know you by how you taste. “You have a lot of brothers.”

  “And you don’t have any siblings.”

  She snaps her fingers and points at me. “Bingo.”

  This—this is what’s insane. I can feel my brain rearranging itself to accept her presence at the club, as if this was meant to be.

  It was not meant to be.

  I don’t know what was meant to be with Leta because she ended things. We ended things, and we walked away, and that was that. I closed the door on that relationship and locked it. The fact that I know where I’ve kept the metaphorical key is beside the point.

  The breeze kicks up around us, rustling the leaves in the trees, and I take a deep breath. The scent is summery, tinged with the onset of fall, and it works its way down into my muscles. If this season is filled with possibility, that possibility does not include Leta. It can’t. Everybody knows what happens at the end of the fall—the winter. And you might as well shut yourself inside and bury yourself under books in the winter, when it’s soulless and cold. That’s what I intend to do, especially if I haven’t solved our financial conundrum yet. If I haven’t fixed it by then…

  We’re going to be screwed.

  “So,” Leta says, in the particular way she has of speaking like there’s been an ongoing conversation even though you broke up and never talked to each other again until this very moment, “where are you headed? I’m assuming it must be—”

  “Work.” I stand up tall, look her in her blue eyes, and nod definitively. “I’m going to work. We won’t see each other again.”

  Leta blinks, surprise melting into confusion. “I mean, I wasn’t following you here. I didn’t know you still worked here. When all of it happened, I—”

  “No. Nope.”

  I sound like a fucking idiot, but I can’t do this.

  We can’t do this.

  She can’t tackle me like a linebacker on the street and settle back into chatting like everything is fine. It wasn’t fine when we broke up, and it’s never been fine since, and I will be damned if I admit that to her now. Or ever.

  “Nope?” Leta echoes. “That doesn’t sound like you, Charlie.”

  “Nope.” Christ. “How would you even—” I straighten up and give her the kind of smile I’d give any random guest. It’s not worth it to got here with her. I don’t sound the same as I did when I was in college. I sound a thousand times dumber, clearly. “Welcome to the Bliss Resort & Club. Let us know if you need anything.

  I turn on my heel and walk away.

  Leta

  So, that happened.

  Charlie walks away down the gentle slope of the street, right in the middle of the road.

  “You’re in the middle of the road.” The words are aimed in the general direction of his back, but it’s anyone’s guess if he’s heard me because he doesn’t react at all. “I’m in the middle of the road.”

  I’m out here because the slip of paper with Aunt Mari’s handwriting blew into the street like the feather from Forrest Gump. She’s the kind of woman who would hold her head up gracefully and walk away from this without ever letting the sting in her heart show.

  I don’t have anyone to show it to, necessarily, but I feel it. His dismissal—welcome to the Bliss Resort—as if he didn’t know me at all, and never knew me at all, cut deep.

  Like, ouch.

  I’m more than a little struck by how sexy he is. I thought he was something else when we were in college, but the intervening years—not many of them, not in the scheme of things—have gently kissed his cheeks and probably licked his abs. He looks good. He looks so good that it reaches into my chests and squeezes the shit out of my heart.

  It’s probably a good idea to get out of street, even though the traffic here is so reduced as to be almost nonexistent. Either people here don’t need to drive much, or they prefer to walk if they leave their houses. Win for the environment, right? Yet standing around in the middle of the road can’t be the status quo.

  I look both ways and dart back across the street, taking the path in front of my aunt’s house to the porch. The wicker chair awaits. It creaks underneath me as I sink into it. This may not have been as romantic a destination as I originally thought.

  The slip of paper from the front-door notepad is slightly crumped on one side from my vigorous snatching, but otherwise unharmed. I flatten it out between my thumb and forefinger and settle in to read my aunt’s list. My heart aches at the familiar curls of her handwriting, which graced many a birthday card in my time.

  Fix the fucking toilet upstairs

  The first ha explodes out of my chest like a firework, followed by a belly laugh that rattles my entire skeleton. Fix the fucking toilet upstairs
is not something I can imagine Aunt Mari saying. Not because she was old—she wasn’t. She was four years younger than my mom. But because when we were together, she was…measured. She wasn’t prone to road road rage, or getting wild at the Paint & Sip, or wearing loud patterns.

  Could she have been that different here? I guess so.

  Numbers—

  The next item on the list, complete with a helpful dash next to it.

  Bliss Maintenance, (518) 555-2547

  Pizza, (518) 555-9023

  Below the first two numbers is one more, crossed out so heavily that I can’t make it out, even if I hold the paper up to the sun. The sun has no effect, and I don’t know why it would. Mari didn’t block it out with something like permanent marker. She scribbled over it, with heavy loops.

  After that, there’s a gap of about an inch, then one final entry on the list:

  Will

  It’s bizarre.

  I let it settle down into my lap and survey the street. It’s serene here. Calm. The houses are meticulously maintained. They can’t all be freshly painted, but they seem that way. Every yard is carefully mowed, and it’s quiet. So quiet. Except for the occasional echoing noise. The vestigial shouts must be coming from the beach, or the pool, even though it’s September. But then…so what if it’s September? People vacation in September. I’m here in September, though this is not what I’d call a vacation, exactly.

  I crane my neck to look in the direction of where Charlie came from, my heart leaping back into my throat. If he’s my next-door neighbor, I’ll die.

  Because there’s no way.

  He was not overjoyed to see me.

  With a groan, I let my head fall back against the wicker chair. A piece of it cracks off and stabs me in the skull.

  Very nice.

  I don’t want to dwell on what happened at the end of college. I really don’t. And maybe I’m the idiot for coming here, knowing that this is his family resort, and expecting not to run into him. I honestly pictured it as something more…sprawling. More corporate. The kind of place where you can go days without seeing the same person twice.