Except this was no boy. The person standing below us was all man. Easily over six feet tall, his thick, dark beard was cropped close to his jaw, setting off a pair of full lips that were currently turned down in a slight frown. Muscular, flannel-clad arms were crossed over his broad chest while his feet were braced shoulder-width apart. The whole Vermont lumberjack vibe didn’t usually do it for me, but I would have been lying if I said he wasn’t the sexiest damn man I’d ever laid eyes on. It was no wonder I was standing there with my jaw hanging open, collecting flies.
“You said he was young,” I blurted.
She chuckled, and he shuffled on his feet. He looked desperate to be anywhere but here. I couldn’t entirely blame him. “It’s a figure of speech, Rosie. Everyone is young compared to me.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, inadvertently mimicking his stance. Realizing what I’d done, I quickly dropped them down to my sides and balled my hands into tight fists. “From the way you described him, I assumed he was nineteen or twenty. That—” I pointed accusingly in his direction “—is a grown-ass man.”
I heard a muffled chuckle that was abruptly covered by the rumbling of him clearing his throat. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the slight lifting of his lips before I turned my glare back on my mother.
She brushed my comment aside for the second time in as many minutes. “Of course he’s a man, dear. And you’re in luck, because he’s a strong one, too.”
Before I could respond to that, she turned toward him. “Will you be a dear and help Rosalie bring the rest of her stuff inside?” She gestured toward my beat-up Volvo. I’d brought my large suitcase and a few smaller weekender bags inside, but had left the five or six boxes I’d haphazardly packed in the back hatch of the car.
“Sure thing.” Preston swiped his hand over his jaw, but not before I saw the traces of an amused grin split his lips. I was glad he thought this was funny, because I certainly didn’t.
Although I also wasn’t quite sure why I was so damn annoyed.
What did it matter if he was closer to thirty-two than twenty-two? I tried to tell myself his age had no bearing whatsoever on my life. He was my mother’s renter and sometime handyman, nothing more.
But if I was going to be honest with myself, I was bothered for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, when I’d decided to flee California, it had been with the idea that I’d be venturing to a man-free zone. I needed the warmth and safety of a testosterone-free home, the mother-daughter haven that would nurture my wounded soul. Not that a young guy like the one I’d pictured wasn’t still a guy, of course, but there was something about someone at that age that felt inherently harmless.
And that brought me to the second reason. Casting my gaze over Preston, I felt deep in my bones that this man was anything but harmless. Frankly, he terrified me. It had been far too long since I’d felt a frisson of sexual awareness toward anyone—let alone a man I’d just met—but that first look we’d shared had rattled something loose inside of me and thrown open the rusted latch on the door I’d locked my emotions behind for all these years.
I knew it was ridiculous, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that Preston was about to upend my life. Well, upend it more so than I already had. And while a part of me wanted that small frisson of awareness to ignite into a full-fledged spark so that I could remember what it felt like to actually crave a man’s touch again, I was afraid that wasn’t where it would end. I hadn’t been in many relationships, but the ones I had been in followed a familiar pattern: I fell fast, and I fell hard. Neither of which, I vowed, was going to happen here.
You’re being an idiot, I scolded myself as I made my way down the steps to join the hot lumberjack.
We worked side-by-side for the next twenty minutes, exchanging only the barest of words when one of us would inadvertently bump into the other going up or coming down the stairs. Every so often, I’d catch him casting furtive glances my way, but that was only because I was doing the same to him. With lips flattened into a hard line, I got the impression he wasn’t happy helping me out like this, but I didn’t know why. Worse, I was too chicken to ask.
When he’d finally placed the last of my boxes on the upstairs landing, I followed him down the stairs and back out onto the porch.
“Thanks for helping,” I said, trying my best to catch his eye, but he seemed intent on looking anywhere but at me.
“Yeah, no worries.” He glanced quickly toward his house, the very picture of a man planning his escape. “If that’s all, I’m going to just—” He gestured over his shoulder with his thumb.
“Oh. Right. Yes, of course.”
Before I’d even finished speaking, he was halfway down the stairs. When he reached the midway point between our homes, he lifted his hand in silent goodnight. I waited to see if he’d turn back around, and when he didn’t, I went inside, safely closing the door on … whatever that was.
3
Preston
Bzzz. Bzzz. Bzzz. I groaned and reached toward my nightstand where my phone vibrated with an incoming call. I opened my right eye and stared at the clock on my bedside table. Unless this was a life or death situation, it was far too early for someone to be calling me on a Saturday morning.
Especially since I hadn’t gotten much sleep last night.
All night long, I’d tossed and turned, my dreams a strange mixture of real-life experiences I’d had with Margaux, but with Rosalie in the starring role instead. I figured it was my subconscious’s way of warning me off my beautiful new neighbor. Not that it was necessary. I wasn’t about to leap into anything, even if my first impression had been way off.
Margaux aside, I liked to think I was a good judge of character, and nothing about the slight, haunted-looking woman who I’d met the evening before reminded me of my former fiancée anymore. Rosalie might have looked the part in the pictures Gloria had shared with me, but the woman whose car I’d helped unload was as far as you could get from the pampered, spoiled princess I’d initially mistaken her for.
But speaking of spoiled princesses …
“Hello, brother,” my sister Mackenna said when I answered with a grunt of acknowledgment.
“Do you know what time it is?” I asked, plopping my head back down onto my pillow and staring up at the ceiling.
“Please. Some of us have been up for two hours already.”
“Good for you, Mackenna, but some of us like to sleep in on the weekends. You know, the only two days of the week that I’m not out the door before sunrise.”
She sighed. “Fine. You’re right. I’m sorry.”
I could tell she was not, in fact, sorry. “What’s up?” I asked, wanting to move the conversation along.
“Did you see today’s Globe?”
I assumed she meant the paper, not an actual model of Earth. “Can’t say that I have. You know I don’t live in Boston anymore, right?”
“But you do have the internet out there in the wilds of Vermont. The paper’s available online,” she explained like I was six years old and didn’t understand how the internet worked.
I blew out a breath. I loved my sister—really, I did—but she had a dramatic streak a mile wide that I did my level best to steer clear of. “Look, Mack, I just woke up, so no, I haven’t seen today’s paper—print or digital. Why don’t you cut to the chase and tell me what you want me to have seen?”
She sighed. “Dad’s retiring. There was a big announcement in the business section.”
That was … not what I’d expected her to say. Truthfully, I’d assumed she was going to complain about having been photographed wearing the same dress as her sworn nemesis, Mathilda Barlowe. My sister was a smart, gifted businesswoman, but she tended to lose her damn mind when it came to Mathilda. They’d been trying to outdo one another since the third grade when the Barlowes had moved in across the street, and more than once I’d witnessed Mackenna throw an honest-to-goodness temper tantrum when Mathilda did something to raise her hackles.
But our dad calling it quits? That was news.
Assuming, of course, you believed it. Personally, I didn’t. For years, my dad had promised to let me take the reins of the historic preservation division of the company, but every single time we came within spitting distance of making it official, he’d find one reason or another to renege on our deal. So, yes, I was skeptical of him actually stepping down, despite the announcement saying he would. If that happened, he’d have to find someone to take over the whole damn company, and that wasn’t in my dad’s DNA. Unless our brother Colton had miraculously learned the ins and outs of the trade since I’d moved up here, there wasn’t anyone our dad trusted to take over—and that included Mackenna, his Chief Financial Officer, and the most astute business person in the family.
“Pres?”
“I’m here. Just … shocked, I guess. And slightly dubious, if I’m being honest.”
She growled in frustration, and I pictured her pushing her perfectly-manicured hands through her long reddish-brown hair, gripping a handful of it at the crown. “He’s threatening to leave the company to Randall.”
I chuckled under my breath. “Ha! That explains the wake-up call, then. You must be loving this.”
Randall Pike, Kelly Fine Homes’ Chief Marketing Officer, was the bane of my sister’s professional life. His flashy advertising campaigns and publicity stunts annoyed her even more than Mathilda’s constant one-upmanship. There was also the not-so-small issue of Randall and Mackenna’s many drunken hookups in college, something she wasn’t aware that I knew about. Ever since he came to work for the company, she’d been trying to find a way to get him to quit.
“If you were still here, this wouldn’t be happening.” Her voice was laced with frustration, condemnation, and not a little bit of desperation.
I understood why she was freaking out, but this wasn’t my problem. Not anymore. “That’s bullshit. Dad was never going to put me in charge, no matter how many times he said that was the plan.”
“Well, he needs to put someone in charge, and it absolutely cannot be Randall. You know what’ll happen if I have to work for that douchebag. I will go to jail. Jail, Preston. Murder by strangulation is definitely against the law.”
I chuckled. “Have you always been this dramatic?”
“Have you always been this selfish?”
Any pithy retort I’d been contemplating died on my tongue. You could say a lot of things about me, but this was where I drew the line. “I’m going to stop you right there, Mackenna. You can call me a hermit, or an asshole, or even an asshole hermit, but you do not get to call me selfish.”
She groaned. “I know. Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. We just really need you to come back.”
“I can’t do this with you right now, Mack.” I threw my legs over the side of the bed where they landed on a soft, worn sheepskin I’d picked up on a backpacking trip through Ireland the summer before my senior year of college. With a slight groan, I pushed to my feet, my spine popping in the process. Catching sight of myself in the mirror over my dresser, I did a quick double-take, momentarily taken aback by the face staring back at me. “Dad’s made it perfectly clear that I will never be in charge of his company,” I said, turning my head to and for to examine my reflection.
Since leaving Boston, so much about my life had changed, including my appearance. Gone were the expensive haircuts, the smooth shave, and the designer suits, and in their place was hair that saw the inside of a beanie more often than I cared to admit, a beard I didn’t hate, and a whole lot of flannel. I’d always been fit, but working for Kelly Fine Homes had meant being chained to a desk at least three days a week, my lean muscles the result of an expensive gym membership instead of hard, physical labor. For the past four years, I’d worked alongside my crew doing the heavy lifting, and I’d bulked up significantly as a result.
It wasn’t that I didn’t like what I saw; I just wasn’t used to it. Most of the time, I still expected to see the old Preston Kelly reflected back at me. That guy’s gone, I reminded myself with a final blink before stepping through my bedroom door. I headed downstairs, seeking the kitchen. It was too early to be having this sort of conversation without the benefit of copious amounts of caffeine coursing through my bloodstream.
I pressed the start button on the machine. “Besides,” I added, “work isn’t the only reason I left Boston, and you know it.”
Mackenna paused for a long moment, the unspoken elephant in the proverbial room hanging between us. “You said you’d moved on.”
“I did,” I answered. “To Vermont.”
Moving on wasn’t the same thing as forgetting, though. I could honestly handle breaking ties professionally with my family, but having to pretend I was okay with what Margaux and my brother Colton had done with my parents’ support was a step too far. The truth of it was, I didn’t even miss her or anything about our relationship, but I didn’t know if I’d ever get over the sense of betrayal I’d experienced watching my mother coo over Margaux’s engagement ring.
“So what?” Mackenna challenged. “You’re never coming back to Boston?”
“I mean, never say never. But I have no immediate plans to.”
“And there’s absolutely nothing I could say to convince you otherwise?” she asked, her tone going from familial to formal in the blink of an eye.
Unfortunately, I knew that voice. It was the one she used when she was negotiating a deal, which meant I needed to brace myself for the hard sell. Not that I expected to cave, mind you, but I couldn’t deny that I wasn’t curious to hear how she’d try to convince me otherwise.
“Not a thing,” I told her.
“Not even that mansion in Marblehead?” She drew the words out temptingly.
Oh, she was good. One of the last arguments I’d had with our dad before I’d quit had been about diversifying our project portfolio to include high-end luxury condos designed with a specific type of clientele in mind. While most of our projects had historically been single-family homes in affluent neighborhoods, the previous three years had seen Kelly Fine Homes add urban condominium projects to our roster as well. Unfortunately, they’d been the types of projects I hated: one hundred or more identical units tailored to what I’d dubbed the “my first finance job” crowd.
When I’d heard through the grapevine that a large, historic property in Marblehead was coming on the market, I’d lobbied for a chance to do something different with it. I’d even lined up a buyer for what I proposed to become the penthouse unit—a couple I’d met a few years before when I’d restored a different property for them—but it hadn’t been enough to convince our dad to sign off.
Being a thirty-year-old man who required his daddy’s permission to do something I really wanted to do had been the straw that broke the camel’s back … the push I’d needed to venture out on my own. Alas, by the time the bank had approved my construction loan to buy the property myself, it had gone pending, effectively putting an end to that particular dream. But instead of sitting around bemoaning how unfair it all was, I’d quickly regrouped and put together a new plan to start my own business. One where I called the shots and worked on the type of projects I’d long dreamed about. One project led to two, which led to even bigger ones, and now, four years later, I’d built up the type of business I could be proud of. And yet, that house had always felt a bit like the one that had gotten away.
And what did it say about me that I mourned the loss of a building more than the loss of a fiancée?
Mackenna must have really been desperate to go after that place and dangle in front of me. Even so, I wasn’t about to give up all that I’d worked to achieve for the chance to go backward in my career. “Sorry, Mack. But no. Not even for the Marblehead job,” I said as I made my way back upstairs to shower while I waited for my coffee to brew.
“Wow,” she breathed through the other end of the line. “If nothing else, I thought for sure you’d jump
at the chance to rub Dad’s nose in it.”
I huffed out a small, sad laugh, marveling just how little most of my family understood me. “Yeah, well,” I started to say, only to be distracted when I caught movement out the side of my eye as I passed through the upper landing. I took a step back and peered outside, trying to identify what had caught my attention.
“Promise me you’ll consider coming home for Christmas at least,” my sister continued.
My gaze swept over the yard and the house beyond, and that’s when I saw Rosalie standing at the window opposite me, her forehead pressed against the glass and her shoulders shaking. I turned away, uncomfortable with the idea of watching her in such a fragile, vulnerable state.
“I’ll think about it,” I answered distractedly, ending the call before she could reply. The truth was, I wouldn’t think about it, but if I’d said anything else it would have turned into a long, drawn-out discussion I didn’t have the energy to deal with right now.
When I reached the bathroom, I realized I’d left my new tube of toothpaste downstairs, so I turned back around and bounded down the stairs to retrieve it. Before I reached the table where it was still in its bag from the grocery store, there was a knock on my door. I crossed the room, grabbing a sweatshirt hanging on a peg by the door and pulling it down over my naked chest and torso. I didn’t bother peeping through the hole to see who was on the other side. Outside of Gloria, Mikey was the only one who ever came by, and it was far too early for him to have vacated whatever bed he’d warmed the night before. That left just my landlady.
“Morning, Gloria,” I said, pulling the door open to find her standing there in a pair of ratty, paint-splattered overalls.
“Right back atcha,” she beamed. “Have you eaten breakfast yet?”
By way of answer, my stomach let out a loud growl.
She chuckled. “I’ll take that as a no, then.”
Homecoming (Speakeasy) Page 2
