"Longer than it should've, and only after I spent a fair while scrubbing loos," Rex admitted, cracking a smile. "Reckon you'll break me of it soon enough."
"Long as you don't pop up in dress uniform, I reckon you're all right. Got some steel caps? We'll go have a look."
Kitted out in a combination of his brothers' clothes and his own, Rex and Mitch went on something of a tour of the current building sites. There were two builds, one overseen by each of Mitch's sons—one in his thirties and still suffering under the nickname of Mitch Junior; the other a year or two older than Rex, whom he vaguely remembered from high school—and another site that was in the "knockdown" phase of a knockdown-rebuild. Many of Mitch's workers were familiar to Rex from years previously, either from his summers working with them or just due to living in Shepherd's Creek, but the carpenter Rex would be assisting was not among them. A stocky man with a shock of orange hair and a beard that reached his chest, he took a long look at Rex with one eye slightly squinted then extended his hand to greet him.
"Cameron."
"Rex. Uh, Castlereagh."
"Mitch says it's been a while for you. Hope ya don't think I'm training you from the ground." His voice was like gravel, and his beady gaze didn't miss a thing as it scanned Rex from top to toe, noting his ill-fitting clothes and dusty boots. "Ditched the last bloke because he couldn't hack it. If ya can't keep up, I speak to Mitch, and you move along."
"Understood." Rex had to hold back another "sir".
Another long look and a brisk nod that seemed to indicate Rex had passed muster. "Steady hands. 'S good. See ya tomorrow." With another nod to Mitch, the man turned back to his work.
"You did good," Mitch informed Rex once they were out of earshot, inspecting the wooden skeleton that his team would turn into a home. "Jamie doesn't warm up like that to everyone."
"That was warm?"
"Man wouldn't talk to you at all if he didn't like the look of you."
Rex looked down at the tatty clothes he'd borrowed from his brothers. It was a different uniform to the one he'd worn for eight years but a uniform nonetheless, and he was wearing it poorly. Nate's shoulders were broader than Rex's, the boots he'd borrowed from Jared were too small, and Eric's pants were an inch or two too big in the waist. He felt like he was playing dress-up, and he didn't like it. Though, apparently, even people who had known him since he was five could no longer tell how uncomfortable he felt in his own skin.
He hadn't expected to immediately slot back into the flow of life in Shepherd's Creek, but he was slightly disappointed that the adjustment period so many of Rex's ex-military friends had described was not, in fact, a hoax designed to keep people in the forces. It would be a while before he got used to being home, but it might also take time for home to get used to him again.
After their tour of Mitch's worksites, the older man brought Rex back to his cramped office and, shifting the morning's half-empty cup of coffee to act as a paperweight, started brewing them a fresh pot. "Just paperwork bullshit now, mate, shouldn't take too long."
So carefully casual that it was clearly a gossip-mongering mission Leila had masterminded, Mitch managed to turn the conversation to Rex's service. "Hear you spent time as a desk jockey over there for a bit."
"Something like that."
"Don't look like you've been pushing pencils."
"Not much to do in your downtime over in the sand box other than work out. Anyway, I wasn't actually behind a desk much. My lieutenant liked me to know the lay of the land so I could be useful in planning, tactics, that sort of thing."
Mitch gave a low whistle. "How'd a boy from Shepherd's Creek wind up talking tactics with a lieutenant?"
"He reckoned I saved his life, sir. Wouldn't let me get too far away in case I had some kind of insight that did it again." Rex hadn't been able to tell his mother much of the details, but the woman had a way of worming information out of people and that applied doubly to her offspring. Clearly, Gina had taken it upon herself to spread the news of Rex's "heroism" around town.
"Explain that sentence to me, mate." Mitch handed Rex a sheaf of papers and a pen, and he was glad of the reason to avoid eye contact as he tried to corral the parts of the story he could tell into some kind of order.
"Training exercise. One of my first. Myself and a couple of other guys, we'd been watching some horror movie or something, psyching ourselves up. Maybe psyching ourselves out a bit much. It freaked me out more than I'd admit at the time, and I had my eyes peeled like never before as we were moving. Maybe there was some kind of clue I took in subconsciously or something, I don't know, but I moved before I realised what I was doing.
"There were a bunch of them out there, rigging the area with some serious fuckin' fireworks, enough that we'd be lucky to be red mist if they didn't take their own legs off first. Clearly had no idea we'd be out that night, so they were using the dark to seed the area we usually used for day manoeuvres. I yelled, and the lieutenant looked around to chew me out for it. God help me if there'd been nothing there, I'd still be scrubbing toilets today. Turned out I was right. Few more steps and he'd have been toast—they'd already got to the area we were about to walk through. Fuckers were hiding out, just waiting for someone to appear the next day, so they could blow 'em sky high. Lt. Cooper almost went up with the fireworks.
"Some of the folks over there are superstitious, Mitch, like you wouldn't believe—you find something you think will bring you home alive, you cling to it. So, Cooper decides I can think like an insurgent, or maybe that I'm just a lucky charm or some shit, and he kept me around."
"Must've been all right at it; they kept you for eight years."
Rex looked up from the paperwork with a grin. "Growing up with my brothers, you had to learn to think like the enemy. Eric's a grouchy bastard when his team loses, and he's never backed a winner in his damn life."
Most of the time, Alannah loved her job. Her work was interesting and rewarding, and it was deeply satisfying to come up with a Tetris-style solution to the ever-present problem of space. Few things made her prouder than seeing her designs brought to life. Most of her work was building or remodelling houses in Shepherd's Creek, though she'd also helped with shops and even a few historical preservation projects. More recently, she'd assisted with a number of larger projects, including a few industrial and corporate refits—which was probably why, when she'd been referred to the Mansfield project, her bid to take on the challenge had been accepted. Working with her firm—a small but diverse group of architects who worked in and around Shepherd's Creek—meant she was exposed to, and asked to consult on, other projects too. Perhaps the best part of her job was that she could do much of her work from her drawing room at home.
The only problem with designing for the people of her hometown was that they tended toward eccentric and pleasing them could be hard. Offices were simple; you worked toward a specific goal—aesthetics, productivity, open space or enclosed offices, natural versus artificial light, etcetera—and more often than not, the client was happy to at least listen to your suggestions. Back home, designing for people who had known her since she'd picked up a pencil, Alannah's degree and skill seemed to give her significantly less clout.
After the Highgraves' house plans had been approved, Alannah had opened her door one morning to find a handwritten neighbourhood petition insisting that an asymmetric "modern" roofline would ruin the entire street, was probably an insult to the discipline of architecture, and might well herald the coming of the apocalypse. When Alannah tried to work with the neighbours to ascertain what about her design was so offensive, one of them insisted that she was concerned the modern design was too severe a departure from the classical style of the rest of the street. She then confided in Al that she was actually concerned about birds flying into the floor-to-ceiling windows.
No one who wanted their office reconfigured argued when Al drew large windows into their designs. Hell, the more natural light she brought in, the happier they were, anything to avoid the dr
eaded bullpen-style cubicle spaces of years past. When she drew up designs for a block of apartments in Broderick, they couldn't get enough of her canny ability to fit in unconventionally shaped windows in unexpected places. At home in Shepherd's Creek, she was expected to alter her plans in case the local birds were too stupid to avoid slamming themselves into a glass barrier.
She loved birds, really. It was just the spirit of the thing.
Still, even taking into account arguments and petitions and keeping all the neighbours happy, Al loved the work she got to do in Shepherd's Creek. Less so today, of course, because she was frazzled from her restless night. She'd tossed and turned, still so caught up in the heady eroticism of the moment Rex Castlereagh touched her body that her skin felt sensitised. Her visceral reaction to him was unprecedented, and the ache deep inside her had set up a blockade between her and sleep. Never before had thoughts of a man's touch kept her awake at night. Not even Harry, not even in the beginning, when everything was exciting. She'd enjoyed his touch, the careful way he treated each exploration of her body like the first time, but the thought hadn't had her squirming until her sheets tangled around her body.
Around four in the morning, making tea in the vague hope that it would put her to sleep, Al had decided her response to Rex was due to misplaced nostalgia. She'd had a crush on him when she was eleven, hadn't she? Must be romantic wishful thinking, looking to rekindle the embers of juvenile feelings that had never been returned. Or maybe she had always been attracted to men the size of small mountains, but never had one on which to focus before. Harry was fit, but nothing like the slab of muscle that was Rex. Then again, wasn't she looking for something different to Harry? Something to light a fire in her, something—someone—who got her so hot, she ached too much to sleep? Something more?
"Earth to Alannah," Kayla called, tapping Al's arm gently to avoid spilling the tea Alannah must have been staring at for several minutes now.
"Sorry? What was the question?"
"I just said hi. Are you okay?"
Al smiled, feeling the fatigue that lay heavy over her face. "Not much sleep. I'm dozing with my eyes open."
They had met in the café at the building where Kayla worked, because Alannah was working from home that day. Their pot of tea sat between them, and apparently, Al had been staring at it for some time.
Kayla barely looked away from Al as she spooned sugar into her own mug. "Kind of ridiculous that you can do that with this noise. Do you need to go home?" As if on cue, the buzz of the café swelled as the basketball game on TV came down to a tie.
"No, I'm trying to come up with something new for an office building in Broderick. It's a sloping block with tall buildings on either side, and they want to cut into the ground to maximise their floor space but need some way of getting natural light into the bottom storey."
"Don't push yourself too hard." Kayla was not only one of Alannah's closest friends, she was also a chronic motherer. When her boyfriend Sam was away, Kayla became even more protective of those around her. In an average Sam-less week, Kayla would invite Al over at least four nights.
"When does Sam get back?" Al asked. "Next week, right?"
Kayla looked away as if to hide the small, intimate smile that lit up her whole face. "Day after tomorrow. He changed his flight."
"Missed you that much, hmm?"
"Something like that." She leaned close. "Don't tell anyone I said this, but, Al, I think he might be working up to proposing."
Alannah's mouth dropped open. "Holy shit! That's amazing!" She paused, seeing Kayla focused on her fingers holding her tea in a white-knuckled grip. "That is amazing, right?"
"Right. Yes." Kayla glanced back up, and Al was horrified by the sheen of tears in her friend's eyes. "God, Al, it's just so big. What if he wants something from me that I don't know how to give? What if I'm just not capable of holding on to something like this?"
Kayla was twisting her hands together on the table. Al laid her own hands over them and stilled her fingers.
"Hey. How long have you two been together?"
Half of Kayla's mouth tilted up in a bitter smile. "I know what you're going to say, Al, and you're right—I should have more faith by now. But it's different, something like this, different even than living together. And it was a long time before I said yes to moving in with him. Marriage is… it would be so much more. He wants to tie everything to me. Forever. What if I'm not… enough?"
"Hey, hey," Al found herself crooning. "How long have you been storing this up?"
Half of Kayla's mouth quirked up grimly again. "A while, I guess."
"Sam's a smart man, Kayla. Since you guys got together, he's kept so close to you, it's a surprise he hasn't attempted to graft you to his side. You really think you're sneaky enough that he could do that without realising you have some enormous deal-breaking flaw? Do you think he doesn't know by now whether you're inherently unable to provide something he needs from you?"
Kayla's smile softened a little, and she went sheepish.
"He knows you, Kayla. He knows even all the bits of you that you don't like, and he still worships the ground you bloody walk on."
"I know that," Kayla said.
"Then why would you doubt him?"
Kayla shrugged. "Intellectually, I know all that. It's just scary."
"Of course, it's scary. It's a big step. But really, how different would it be to what you guys are doing now? You live together. Everyone knows you're a couple, whether or not you're legally bound. You tell me how much you hate it every time he's gone. The man would give you the moon if he could, and don't even try to pretend you wouldn't do the same thing. Letting your fear win would not be saving him from you, it would just be robbing both of you of something beautiful."
Kayla snatched up a napkin and dabbed under her eyes. "You're going to make me cry."
"Wouldn't be the first time," Al joked.
"It's silly, isn't it? I just want to make him happy. And it's not like I found a ring or something. I don't even know for sure it's going to happen."
"Honestly, I'd be surprised if you were wrong. You two practically share a brain."
Kayla snorted. "Thanks."
"Hey, as long as you let me live vicariously through your successful love life." Al laughed.
Kayla's face dropped. "Oh, shit. I'm sorry, Al. I didn't even think of that. Shit, that was insensitive of me."
Alannah shrugged. "At least one of us is going to be getting some again."
"Speaking of which," Kayla said, clearly glad to be able to change the topic, "some of the gang are getting together at the Local next Friday. Apparently, some prodigal son of Shepherd's Creek has returned to the fold."
"Aren't we always at the Local on Fridays?"
"Yes, but this time it's an event. Apparently, the guy is cute, so…" She raised her eyebrows suggestively.
"His name is Rex," Al said. "We were friends as kids. His parents are Gina and Andrew Castlereagh, so he lived next door."
Kayla blinked a few times. "Well. All right. That changes things. I was going to suggest him as a nice easy rebound for you, but I guess not."
It was Al's turn to crack a smile, though she tried to cover it.
"Wait a second. Are you blushing?"
"What? No." Now she could feel the heat in her cheeks. Don't think about sleeping with him. Don't think about how hot it felt when he put his hands—
Kayla glanced at the group at the next table over, leaned close to Alannah and hissed, "Did you sleep together?"
"Of course not!" But I want to. "I mean, all the Castlereagh boys are good-looking, but we were just kids. I didn't think of him like that." She heaved in a breath. "Then I saw him yesterday, and—God, Kayla, he's like a regular person, only upsized by about a third. I didn't quite believe people actually had muscles like that, you know?" She took a sip of her tea, which only fuelled the heat in her cheeks.
"Al," Kayla said, one eyebrow quirked, a real smile now playing around her li
ps, "I know how you feel."
"It's way too soon, anyway," Al said. "I can't just jump out of a relationship and into, I don't know, a crush on the boy next door."
"Yes, you can," Kayla said reasonably. "That's why it's called a rebound."
"It's different in Shepherd's Creek, though. The town isn't big enough. It would be awkward afterward, and I'd have to make eye contact with his mother every day knowing she was judging me for jumping into bed with her son."
"You haven't even kissed the man yet, girl. No need to think quite that far ahead, I think."
Al dropped her head into her arms, her groan muffled by the table.
"You have?"
"No, I just—we had a moment yesterday, okay? That's all it was. I'm, like, ninety percent sure it was just a moment."
"Ninety percent?"
"Seventy. Forty. Ten? I've been over it so many times in my head that I'm not even sure anymore if it was real."
"And? What happened?"
Something like jealousy, a kind of hot possessiveness, surged in Alannah's belly. She didn't want to share the details of the moment they'd shared. She wanted to hold it to her chest and re-examine it another hundred times, let it be less unexpectedly emotionally loaded, before she allowed anyone else to see what happened. "It was nothing, really. Probably just hormones. But it was, like, attraction… times ten. Magnetic, like the laws of physics were trying to shove me up against him and rub us together to start a fire."
Kayla snorted.
"We didn't even kiss," Al admitted quietly. "I'm twenty-five, I've practically only ever had one boyfriend, and I can't even get up the balls to kiss a man in the middle of a magnetic attraction moment."
"Maybe it wasn't a moment," Kayla suggested.
"It was definitely a moment," Al said. "The worst part is I actually like him as a person. I could never just see him as a rebound. We were close when we were kids, but it's more than that. He's actually a really good guy, and he's funny and entertaining and kind. He loves his mum. I just can't get over how oddly emotionally charged this moment was, and it's the hottest thing that's ever happened to me."
He Comes Home Page 3
