by Leigh, Ember
He doesn’t move, though I think I catch a trace of panic in him. Or maybe I want it to be that way.
“You’re the only realtor in town,” Gray counters.
“Not true. There’s a very capable though vastly underutilized real estate agency down the street,” I remind him. It’s Cabanas Real Estate, run by the Cabana family. They’re nice people, but I already know why Grayson can’t go there. The Dalys and the Cabanas have been at each other’s throats for nigh on twenty-five years. What started as boat-dock neighbor friendliness turned into a cheating scandal turned into active resentment. There’s a Romeo and Juliet-style feud simmering between these families. God help any Daly son that goes after a Cabana girl.
“Hazel,” he says, as though reminding me of my name will help his case. I send him a pretty smile instead. “Come on.”
“Not sure what you want me to do. All clients are at my discretion.” I lean forward, grabbing my elbows, pushing up my already-pushed-up breasts. Just to give him a luscious glimpse of cleavage. I don’t know if he ever thinks about me anymore or if he’s wondered what I became since he jilted me right before senior prom.
But in case he has thought about me, in case he’s ever wondered what became of nerdy little Hazel, the girl he set out to make miserable, to beat in every way possible?
Well, here’s his answer.
Hazel wins.
Chapter 2
GRAYSON
It would be wrong to say I’ve hated Bayshore my entire life.
Rather, my disdain for my hometown was a slowly simmering stew. It started with a few inputs—long, boring winters, frustration as a teen with the lack of things to do—and then once I hit my late teens, it thickened into something more. A true, richly layered distaste.
But you know what has lasted my entire life?
Competition with Hazel.
I storm out of her office, opening the door as forcefully as I can. The bells jingle wildly, like Santa’s sleigh crashing into a house, and I don’t spare another glance as I head for my car. I should have known better than to even try with that woman. I’d done it as a favor to my mother, who just lost her mother—my grandmother, sweet little Grammy Ethel. I should be doing anything I can for my mom right now.
And I tried. Even agreeing to set foot in Hazel Homes took a lot of internal pep-talking. Hazel and I don’t have the best history. Its equal parts idyllic childhood mixed with the fiercest brand of competition most people have never heard of. The second she opened her mouth, I knew she was back to her old ways. Trying to win against me.
It’s not our fault, really. We had the bad luck of being born on the same day, so all of our newborn pictures have each other in them. As a result, people thought this meant we’d get married, which the general populace of Bayshore made sure to tell us to our faces all the damn time.
But Hazel and I have something you might call a problem with authority. One thing in common, at least. So all of the encouragement to be together backfired and bred something entirely different. Entirely opposite, actually.
I thought ten years apart might have allowed things to cool.
But with Hazel, there’s no cooling allowed. She kicks me right back up to a boil with one glance.
In every way possible.
I yank open my car door and slump inside, heaving a sigh. I take a moment in the cool, leather-scented air to remember who the fuck I am and what this is all about. I can’t get Hazel’s heels out of my head. The image of her feet propped on her desk, cream silk legs on display, vixen red lips parting as she laid eyes on me…fuck. Made me want to rip those heels off her and toss them across the room. Tell her we could spend some time catching up on the past ten years.
My cock is throbbing. Not a good sign. I haven’t gotten laid in a long time, so it’s understandable. It’s a totally normal reaction to seeing an attractive woman. My eyes can’t be blamed for still finding Hazel attractive and sending the message to my dick that the collective unit of Grayson would like to bang her. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just science.
I work my jaw back and forth as I dig my phone out of my pocket. I brush my cock. Now I’m fully hard. Thinking about Hazel is not a good plan. I would fuck her brains out if she’d let me, I’ll be honest. The nerdy Hazel I fell for in high school has turned into a woman I wasn’t prepared to behold today. I didn’t know what to expect.
My mom warned me she’d blossomed, but she’d failed to mention that she’d turned into a rose bush. Gorgeous, sweetly scented, bursting with beauty, and prickly as fuck. I’m probably bleeding somewhere right now.
“Mom?” I can’t keep the irritation out of my voice once she picks up. “Just stopped in to see Hazel.”
“How did it go? What does she think of the house?”
I pinch my eyes shut. I’ve been in town for less than twenty-four hours. There are a helluva lot of details to see to when someone passes. “Uh, didn’t go too well. She flat out refused to sell the house for me. Looks like I’m going to have to go elsewhere.”
My mom tuts, and then comes a long, murmuring train of, “Ohh no, no, no. That won’t do.”
“Sorry, Mom.” I look out the windshield at the long shoreline road stretching ahead of me. Summer in Bayshore is almost in full swing, but some lilac bushes lining the road still have their blooms. This is the best time of year to be here. Even in my quest to move on, move out, and make all the money in the world, I never could deny how magical Bayshore was in the summer. “I’ll sell it on my own or something. I’ll figure it out.”
“Honey, you will have Hazel sell that house,” my mom says, her voice oddly stern. “Make no bones about it.”
“Make no—” I stop myself, drawing a slow breath. “Mom. She said no. It’s her discretion. She said it herself.”
“Go back there and talk to her.”
“She’ll probably stab me in the eye with her evil heels,” I say. Except the heels aren’t evil. The heels are perfectly fine. Too fine.
“It’s a risk you need to take,” Mom says. “The alternatives are not alternatives.” The cryptic statement makes sense to me. The other main agency in town is owned by the Cabana family, and they’re still on Mom and Dad’s shit list from something that happened in the 80s.
I start my car, mulling over my options. I’m quiet so long my mom snaps, “Gray? Do you hear me?”
I grit my teeth. And like I always do when backed into a corner by my loyalty and devotion, I murmur, “Yes, Mother.”
“Let’s go see the house now. I’ll meet you there.”
Her idea leaves no room for question. She’s been wanting to go through the house with me. My newest possession. It’s weird, to think that now I suddenly own property in Bayshore. It’s a little absurd, really. If it weren’t for Mom and Dad, I’d never come around here. As it is, I barely do. There are a few reasons why. But mostly, it’s a place I’ve left in the dust. And in life, there’s no time for going backward or getting smaller. There’s only room for better. For higher. For more.
Bayshore just isn’t big enough for my ambitions.
My mind wanders to Hazel as I drive past the boat basin. The sky is that color of blue that seems cartoonish. Like the only source was from an artist’s palate. A few sailboats are slipping out of the docks, and the lake looks calm, almost serene.
The early summer breeze filling my car is intoxicating. It reminds me of so many things. Lazy mornings at my grandma’s house, playing hide and seek with my brothers while she hung laundry in the backyard. It reminds me of staring out at the brilliant day while Mrs. Larchmere finished up her lecture on Chaucer in English class junior year.
It reminds me of that blissful period when Hazel and I called a truce at the end of junior year. How we’d play fierce bouts of tennis, pushing each other hard, only to dissolve into secretive, juicy make out sessions in the corner of the court.
I push the nostalgia away once I get to my grandma’s old house. Clarity and compartmentalization are my frien
d now. I’ve got a lot of emotions to beat back, and hell if I’m going to let sentimentality win so early in my visit home.
My mom is grinning at me as I pull into the driveway, wearing cat eye sunglasses with a light shawl billowing out behind her as she holds out her arms before I’ve parked the car. Like she’s already hugging me in her mind. I can’t help but smile as I get out of the car and wrap her in a big hug.
“You just saw me this morning,” I remind her.
“I know, honey,” she murmurs, patting my back. “I know.”
I don’t come around enough. I get it. We both look at grandma’s old house. She and Grandpa originally lived in Maine, then moved this way because of Grandpa’s job with the railroad. They’d started in this little house, then bought a bigger, second one for their growing family. And honestly, I don’t get why Grammy left me the most sentimental part of her history. The place where it all started.
“I haven’t been here in years,” I mutter, stuffing my hands in my pockets. Mom leads the way up to the front door over the small, uneven, brick path. Untended daisies grow in thick clusters along the side. Bushes are overgrown onto the path and look better fit for the outside of a haunted house. The place needs a lot of work, but despite the hint of abandonment, it’s really cute.
Yet all I can think of is how a place like this would fetch millions in the New York City market. If I could somehow teleport this property to Brooklyn or the Rockaways and sell in that market, hell, I’d be well on my way to investing myself toward billionaire status. There’s a little start-up I’m ready to invest in. A social media site that looks promising, like Facebook without all the privacy issues and guilt. I want to be an early investor, because I’ve made it my mission to be the richest Daly by age thirty. And this investment will pay off.
I’m just a little short on the initial money. And the funds from selling this house will go directly to that start-up.
Floorboards creak as we start a slow, nostalgic stroll through the house. There’s no furniture, and most everything is dusty. It smells like some combination of childhood and neglect inside, pure moth balls and sunbaked wood. Mom alternates between thoughtful sighs and clucking her tongue. The walk down memory lane is noisy.
“It still looks great,” I say once we’ve made it to the master bedroom upstairs. It’s about a thousand square feet, which to me, after a decade in NYC, feels like a mansion. I peer out the bay window, which overlooks the tiny front yard and the narrow street leading toward the water. The bay sparkles teal and choppy; my skin itches wanting to head to the beach. Aside from all the sad stuff coming up, I need to treat this visit like a vacation. Which means getting in the water, ASAP.
“You should really consider keeping it,” Mom says, her gaze drifting out toward the bay. You can barely see the wall of rocks separating the bay from where it opens into Lake Erie. Head north on the water, and you’ll make it to Canada. As a young boy, I used to think it was close enough to swim to. My older brother, Dominic, dared me to try once, and I did. I about died that day, and he only laughed as I went to the ER. One of many reasons we’ve barely spoken throughout the years.
Once we hit high school and started thinking about the future, Dom turned into a mega dick. Even worse than when we were younger. And sure, a lot of it had to do with Dad. The way he always pushed us to aim high bred a fierce competition between us all, but worst of all between Connor, Dom, and me.
And that just widened the chasm between me and my brothers. Made me even more determined to fly the coop and show Dom and Connor that I could be the best. Show Dad that I wouldn’t just be successful, I’d be more successful than he was as the CEO of the Bayshore Hospital. Which meant that New York was the only fit place for me, and six was the minimum number of zeroes I planned to have trailing my bank account by age thirty.
“I have no reason to keep it.” I scan the neighbors’ houses from this vantage point, what I can see of them through the trees, at least. Most of the houses in this neighborhood were built in the 1930s, but the neighborhood has since become a vacation-rental hot spot. The bay sits a block away. The sandy beach is a two-minute walk from me right now. It’s impossible to find a better place in Ohio.
“You have plenty of reasons to,” Mom insists, folding her arms. Here we go. “First of all, it would be nice to see you more than once every other year.”
“We video chat all the time.”
“And your brothers? Do any of you realize anymore that you have siblings?”
I stay silent, searching the neighborhood for something of interest to change the subject. I don’t need to confirm what she already knows—that I barely talk to most of my brothers. I’m ashamed of it, though I don’t really know why. Dom and I never got along, so not talking to him isn’t a big deal. Connor and I text a lot, and we’ve met up a couple times on work trips. But the others?
My gaze is snagged by a lady in a black pencil skirt and high heels. Gleaming, chestnut brown hair is pulled back into a low bun. My gut cinches.
“Oh, hell,” I mutter, leaning forward to confirm. It’s Hazel. It has to be Hazel. I’d recognize those creamy calves from any distance. I’m momentarily mesmerized by the sashaying of her ass.
“Look! It’s Hazel.” Mom sounds way too pleased.
“Yeah. What’s she doing here?”
“She’s on her break.” Mom sends me an annoying grin. “She drives home, has lunch, and then walks the block every day on her break.”
“In those heels?” I ask, which was dumb. My gaze goes straight to them. I scowl, as though this might help convince my heart rate to resume a normal speed.
“Our Hazel is the star of the neighborhood.” Mom’s voice is wispy now, like Hazel has gone on to Hollywood, or perhaps the Great Beyond. “The star of Bayshore, actually.”
“Why? All she does is sell houses.” I can’t look away from her retreating figure. She hangs a right onto the road hugging the shore, and in just a few seconds I lose sight of her. I blink a few times. The fog lifts. I can think again. “It’s not that difficult. I could go get my realtor’s license tomorrow and do the same thing. And probably sell more than she does.”
My mom laughs and shakes her head.
“I’m serious,” I insist.
“Then do it!” Mom counters. “It’ll keep you around here.”
I grunt, turning away from the window. “I can’t. It would be too easy.”
“Always competing,” Mom says quietly. And she’s not wrong. “Though maybe the two of you at each other’s throats your entire lives made you who you are today. You, my big city boy, and Hazel, the small-town queen.”
“If Hazel gets the title of queen, then I should be the king.”
“You’d have to marry her to get that title,” Mom says, squeezing my arm.
I let out a sarcastic, “Ha ha.” Marriage is something I’d like to dabble in someday, but not now, and never with someone like Hazel. No matter how perky those ass cheeks are, no matter how bad I want to run my fingertips up the porcelain arc of her calves, Hazel is out of the question.
“She would sooner spear me with her ten-inch heel than let me get down on one knee in front of her.” Again, very dumb. More thoughts about those heels. But I barrel on. “I don’t know what it is about this city that thinks Hazel and I are long-lost soul mates, but I’m pretty sure we’ve been proving to you all for approximately twenty-eight years how wrong you all are.”
Mom smiles wistfully, wandering toward the hallway, totally ignoring me. “Did you see the billboard on your way into town? On Route 2?”
I follow her out of the master bedroom. Our footsteps thud down the stairs as I try to place what she’s talking about. “There’s about three hundred billboards within city limits, Mom.”
“Hazel’s billboard,” she says, and then my gut cinches and I remember. Fuck. Yeah, I did see it. Saw it a little too well. Hazel’s trademark figure, leaning ass-to-siding against a cute little cottage. In big bold letters, the ad says,
“Ask Hazel.” That’s it. Sexy woman hinting at real estate. I didn’t put two and two together until I saw her in her office earlier.
The woman’s branding game is fire. And I sorta love it.
“Yep,” I admit glumly. Ask Hazel. Of course she was the number one real estate agent in the area. Bachelors probably clamored to sell houses they didn’t own. Putting Dad’s old house up for sale while he was taking a shower. Convincing Uncle Jack to go halfsies on selling a duplex only to buy it right back. I could see men doing crazy things for a chance to be near that barbed-wire bombshell. “Didn’t really stand out to me. Was kind of…cryptic, honestly.”
“Don’t be a smart-ass,” Mom warns.
“I’m not being a smart-ass,” I lie. “It was confusing. ‘Ask Hazel.’ About what? About how much my vacation rental is going to languish in the long Ohio winter? About what a fat cut she’s taking of my house sale simply because she knows how to wear red lipstick?”
Mom sighs, long and drawn out.
“You’re being a little mean,” Mom says gently, patting my back as we wind through the 70s-styled kitchen. Golden rod, burnt orange, and checkered floors galore. It needs a facelift badly. Hopefully it won’t hurt the resale value.
“Just honest,” I say, but she’s right. I’m being mean. Old habits die hard. “Besides, she was pretty mean to me today when I asked her to sell the house.” Mean and sexy and a huge turn-on. “So let’s call it even.”
“There’s never been an ‘even’ with you two. Or with you and Dom,” Mom murmurs, lowering her sunglasses as she steps through the front door and into the brilliant, mid-day sun. Smiling back at me, she holds out her hand, beckoning me to join her, as she did throughout my childhood. “Now, let’s go have some lunch with your father and your brothers. I have you all in one place, and I intend to force my five boys to like each other for as long as I can.”
