by Lucy Score
Before I could react, before I could demand that she turn the damn music down and have some respect for her neighbors, she had her hands on me. My shoulders to be precise. She planted and sprang, and I only had time to act on instinct.
I grabbed her by the waist as she hopped out of the bed of the truck. My arms reacted a little slower. I held her aloft and our eyes met. Sterling gray, wide, and sparkling. Was she laughing at me? Slowly, slowly, I lowered her to the ground, her body brushing mine every inch of the way down.
She was tiny, a West Virginian forest fairy that came to my chest.
“It’s about damn time you showed up.”
“Excuse me?” I managed to string two words together and congratulated myself.
She put her fingers in her mouth and let out a shrill whistle. “We can turn the music down now,” she yelled, or hollered, or whatever it was they did in this godforsaken town.
The volume immediately cut almost in half.
“Do I know you?” I asked, finally finding my words. I was quite certain there was no way this beer-swilling creature and I knew each other.
She ignored my question, grabbing my hand instead and pulling me to a trio of coolers halfway between the house and the bonfire. She bent and fished through the ice before producing two beers.
“Here,” she shoved one at me. “Everybody, this here’s Devlin McCallister. He’s Granny Louisa’s grandson.”
“Hey, Devlin,” the people circling the beer coolers chorused in an Appalachian twang.
Confused, off kilter, I glanced down at the beer in my hand and, with nothing better to do, twisted off the top. The music was down. Mission accomplished. I should go.
“C’mon,” she said jerking her head toward the crowd near the fire. “I’ll introduce you around.”
At this moment, I couldn’t think of anything I’d like less than being subjected to introductions. I just wanted to crawl back to Gran’s house and hide there until…
It was one thing when I was a state representative. A married man with a nice house and a five-year-to-D.C. plan. But now that I was a nearly divorced, newly disgraced lawmaker on leave? I wasn’t exactly in a hurry to start making small talk with anyone.
“Devlin, this is my brother Jameson,” she said, pointing her fresh beer bottle at a man in a gray t-shirt. His hands were shoved into his pockets, shoulders hunched, as if he too didn’t care to be here.
I nodded. He nodded back. I liked him immediately.
“And this here is my brother Gibson,” she said, laying a hand on the flannelled shoulder of a man quietly strumming a guitar.
He eyed me as if I were in a police lineup and grunted.
People sure were friendly ‘round these parts.
“And this is my brother Bowie,” she said, knocking shoulders with a guy in a waffle knit shirt holding a beer. The family genes were abundantly evident when all three of them were in close proximity. Scarlett, on the other hand, had finer features, and in the firelight, I could see more red than brown in her long hair.
“Hey, Devlin. What’s up?” Bowie offered his hand and a quick smile.
“Hey,” I parroted, apparently having lost the ability to perform during even the most casual of introductions. My Queen of All Social Etiquette mother would die of embarrassment if she could see me now.
“Granny Louisa’s asked that we all make Devlin feel right at home,” Scarlett said, giving Gibson a pointed look.
He snorted. “Whatever.”
Scarlett slapped him on the back of the head. “Be-have.” She said it like it was two words.
“Yeah, yeah,” Gibson grumbled and went back to his guitar.
“He’s the strong angry type,” Scarlett said by way of apology. “Jameson’s the artistic, leave-me-alone type. And Bowie just loves everybody. Don’t you Bowie?” She fluttered her lashes at him, and he gave her a glare.
“Don’t you start that bullshit again,” Bowie said, pointing a warning finger at her, but there was no heat behind his words.
Scarlett laughed, and it sounded like the twitter of birds on a sunny Sunday morning. The light in her laughter turned something on inside me.
“And you are?” I heard myself saying the words.
She gave me the side eye.
“Why, I’m Scarlett Bodine, of course.”
Someone turned the music up to head-throbbing levels again, and Scarlett let out a bred-in-bone whoop when she recognized the twangy song. It made me remember why I’d come in the first place.
“I’d appreciate it if you’d turn the music down,” I snapped.
“What?” she yelled.
I leaned down into her space, avoiding the arms she tossed in the air in time to the music. “Turn down the music!”
She laughed. “Devlin, it’s a Friday night. What do y’all expect?”
I’d expected the tomb-like quiet of a backwoods town whose residents were in bed by eight while I licked my wounds. I’d expected my wife to remain faithful. Hell, I’d expected my entire life to turn out differently.
“Not everyone likes a party,” I said, sounding like an old man who’d kick kids off his lawn. “Turn it down, or I’ll call the cops.”
“Well, excuuuuuuuse me. I didn’t realize that fun was illegal where you’re from,” Scarlett snipped.
“Causing a disturbance is illegal where everyone is from, and you’re disturbing me.”
“Well, bless your heart. Maybe y’all need to lighten up?” Scarlett suggested, batting her eye lashes with false sympathy.
I wasn’t sure of anything right now except for the fact that it had been a mistake to come here. Bootleg Springs was not a place to hide and heal.
“Just turn it down,” I muttered. I turned around and headed for the sanctity of the woods.
“Real nice meetin’ you,” she called after me. One more thing to be sure of. Scarlett Bodine was lying.
3
Scarlett
I broke the egg and let it dribble into the bowl with the others. “Dang it,” I muttered and fished a piece of shell out of the yolky mess. Finding a fork in the drawer next to the sink, I sloshed it around until the eggs were the appropriate soupy mess.
I nabbed the bacon from the pan one second before it turned to charcoal and tossed the slices onto a plate where they splintered into breakfast meat shrapnel.
“Just what the hell are you doing?”
Devlin was standing in the kitchen staring at me like I was some kind of common criminal. Granted, I had kinda broken into his house. But, in my defense, Granny Louisa asked me to.
I would have explained all that to him, but he’d appeared wearing only a pair of low-riding cotton pajama pants. I would have bet my best boots that he wasn’t wearing any kind of underwear either. With great reluctance, I dragged my gaze away from what promised to be a spectacular package and let it roam his naked torso.
He snapped his fingers. “Hello!”
“Hi,” I answered chipperly.
Devlin rolled his eyes and put his hands on his narrow hips. “What are you doing in my kitchen, Scarlett?”
“I’m making you breakfast.” Maybe the man just wasn’t very quick in the mornings. What the hell else would I be doing in his kitchen holding a plate of bacon?
“I mean, why are you making me breakfast? How did you get in here?”
I cocked my head to the side. “Granny Louisa asked me to look after you, and she always leaves the downstairs door open. I let myself in.”
“You broke into my house—”
“Granny Louisa’s house,” I corrected him.
“You broke in here to cook me breakfast?”
I was starting to wish I’d just ordered him a sticky bun for delivery and called it a day. He obviously didn’t know what an honor it was to have Scarlett Bodine cooking up a mess of scrambled eggs for him. Men fantasized about this exact moment, and here he was bitching about it. It was literally the only meal I knew how to make. I’d learn to cook. Eventually. But for no
w, I lived off of sandwiches, scrambled eggs, and diner food.
To be real honest, I doubted I was missing much. And none of the men I’d dated ever complained about me being better in the bedroom than the kitchen.
“You can’t just come into someone’s house,” Devlin began again. He acted like he was explaining 2+2 to a kindergartner.
“Sure, I can. We all do it. Just bein’ neighborly. Better get used to it,” I said, dumping the eggs into the pan.
“I don’t want to be neighborly.” He was gritting his teeth, and there was a sexy tic in his jaw. He was even better looking than Granny Louisa had told me. I was surprised because she wasn’t a woman to undersell anything.
“Well, you don’t much have a choice now,” I told him, swiping a spatula from the pitcher on the counter and flipping the eggs. “Coffee’s on,” I said, nodding in the direction of the coffeemaker. “Maybe you’ll feel better after you have some caffeine.”
He stared at me for almost a full minute before he finally moved toward the coffee. That I could make blindfolded with one arm tied behind my back.
“Scarlett, I don’t want you coming into this house uninvited,” he said after his first sip.
I plated up the eggs, threw a couple of slices of extra, extra crispy bacon on the side and handed it over to him. “Oh, you’re just sayin’ that.”
“I am saying that. But I’m also meaning that. I’m not here to make friends or be neighborly.”
“Then why are you here?” I asked. Who in their right mind would come to Bootleg Springs for solitude? Hell, we practically went door-to-door at the rentals just to introduce ourselves to our new tourist friends. Devlin was in for quite the rude awakening.
The doorbell rang, and I smirked. I’d installed it special for Granny Louisa. Instead of a bell ringing, it was Beethoven’s 5th. It never failed to put a smile on Granny Louisa and Estelle’s faces.
“Doorbell,” I announced in case he was too dimwitted to know what it was.
“I gathered that,” he said dryly and stalked to the front door. I helped myself to a cup of coffee and checked my schedule. I had another half hour before I had to leave for my first job of the day. I’d finally convinced Jimmy Bob to let me fix the gutters on The Rusty Tool. The hardware store’s façade was about twenty years past due for an update, and I was sick and tired of getting doused with overflow every time I walked by the store on my way to the diner.
After that, I had a maintenance call at one of my properties. This week’s renter somehow managed to deprogram the garage door. Then, I was popping in to change furnace filters for Sheriff and Nadine Tucker and giving their air conditioner the once over to make sure it was ready for summer. I planned to squeeze in a drive-by to get a look at the boat lift on EmmaLeigh and Ennis’s dock. EmmaLeigh texted this morning to tell me it was stuck in the up position.
I heard voices from the foyer, and then the door closed.
Devlin walked back into the kitchen staring down at the plate in his hand.
I peered through the plastic wrap. “Those Millie Waggle’s brownies?”
“I guess. I didn’t catch her name. She didn’t say much.”
Millie dressed like a Sunday school teacher and baked like a chocolate-loving sinner. She tended to get a bit tongue-tied around men higher on the scale than a five out of ten. I wished I would have seen her expression when disheveled Devlin opened the door shirtless. The poor girl probably wouldn’t speak for the rest of the day.
I helped myself to a brownie and took a bite. “Mmm, oh yeah. That’s a Waggle brownie. My lord, that woman is a sinful genius.”
Devlin was eyeing me with something unreadable in those brown eyes. Interest? Disgust? Both? He made it too much fun to push his buttons.
“Well, better eat before your eggs get any colder. What do you want for supper?” I asked, batting my lashes.
The tic was back in his jaw. My work here was done.
“I eat alone,” he insisted.
I grinned up at his grumpy, sexy-as-hell face. “We’ll see about that.”
He turned away from me and yanked open a drawer, the handle coming off in his hand. “This place is falling apart,” he muttered.
“I can fix that,” I promised Devlin. It was just a little knob for Pete’s sake. He acted like the entire house was crumbling around him.
He grabbed a slip of paper off the counter and scrawled something on it.
Curious, I snatched it off the counter the second he walked away. Sliders don’t slide, deck needs refinished, creaky stairs, ugly ass carpet, leaky upstairs sink, drawer hardware. I flipped it over and felt my eyebrows wing up.
“Well, I can definitely take care of the first list for you, but you might need professional help for the second.” The back of the paper was a list of apparently everything that was wrong with Devlin McCallister’s life. Starting at the top: married the wrong woman.
He grabbed it out of my hand.
“Thanks, but no thanks. I don’t need your help with anything. And I definitely don’t need you snooping around here pretending to fix things. I’ve got a list long enough for a handyman.”
“And just where will you find one of them?” I asked, tongue in cheek.
He stomped across the kitchen and glared at his granny’s bulletin board. He snatched a card off of it triumphantly. “I’ve got it covered,” he insisted.
“They’re pretty busy this time of year what with the tourist season startin’ up.”
Stubbornly, Devlin dialed.
My phone rang in my pocket, and I fished it out. “Bodine Home Services. Scarlett speaking. How can I help y’all?”
Devlin hung up on a growl.
4
Devlin
About two minutes after I threw Scarlett out of the house, my phone rang.
“Now why in heaven’s name would you go and kick Scarlett Bodine out of my house?” Gran demanded without preamble.
Great. My next-door neighbor was a tattle tale. “Hello to you, too. And how’s Rome?”
“Don’t you ‘how’s Rome’ me,” Gran said. “You’re my favorite grandson in the world, Devlin, and I know you’re going through a rough patch. But you can’t be rude to our neighbors.”
“Gran, she broke into your house and made me cold, runny eggs.” I scraped them into the trash and settled for more coffee. My appetite had deserted me months ago.
“That’s just Scarlett being friendly.”
“You live in a town where breaking and entering is considered friendly.”
“Do I need to remind you that you live in a world where your friends and family backstab you to get to the top of the food chain?”
“I think you’re being a little dramatic,” I said, smiling despite myself. Gran was vocal about her disinterest in the political world my parents and I moved within.
“Look, I want you to be nice to that Bodine girl. I understand that maybe you’re not looking for company, but her daddy just died last week, so I’d appreciate it if you’d at least make an effort to be polite.”
And just like that, I felt like the biggest asshole in Appalachia. I sank down on one of the dining room chairs. “I wasn’t aware of that.”
“Well, now you are. Do better.”
I looked down at the list on the counter. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Now, here’s Estelle. She wants to say hi.”
Gran handed me off to her girlfriend. “Hey, handsome,” Estelle said in her sing-song voice.
“Hey, Stell. How’s your European tour?” I asked glumly.
“Magnificent. We stayed up ‘til dawn yesterday drinking champagne with a bunch of old ladies from Denmark. But I’m worried about you.” Estelle and my grandmother had been together for the last ten years. It had been a complicated transition, even for my liberal parents, but now I couldn’t imagine my grandmother without her skinny, sassy counterpart.
“I’ll be just fine,” I lied.
“Bootleg is a good place for healing,” Estelle
said. “Make sure you do some of that and don’t hole yourself up like Henrietta VanSickle.”
“I hate to ask.”
“Henrietta VanSickle lives in a cabin in the mountains and comes down to town once a month for groceries. Rumor has it she took a vow of silence twenty years ago. Never broke it yet.”
Or maybe Henrietta Van Sickle was burnt out on real life and just wanted to be left alone, I projected.
A vow of silence and a remote cabin? I liked that idea enough to store it away as my official Plan B. I had no Plan A for getting my life back. But at least I knew I now had a backup.
“Listen, the tour bus is leaving for the naked cabaret. Do your gran and I a favor and get out once in a while. Maybe take Scarlett with you. No one has more life in her than that girl.”
I made a non-committal noise. “Have fun at the naked cabaret.”
We said our good-byes and disconnected. I stared at the phone in my hand and at the business card on the counter.
“Call me when y’all change your mind,” Scarlett had said chipperly as I hustled her out the front door.
“Fuck.” I muttered to myself.
“These steps need redone,” Scarlett said, writing more notes on her clipboard and studying the deck stairs. “And that window on the end is rotted out. I can replace it so the place is sealed tighter for winter.”
Twenty-four hours after I’d thrown her out, she was back at the house going over my list of shit that needed fixed and adding her own ideas to it.
I followed her wordlessly around the house wondering if she was this good at her job or if she saw an opportunity to make some money off of an out-of-town asshole.
“And, please for the love of all that’s holy, tell me you’re gonna let me rip out that cabbage rose carpeting upstairs.”
It really was an eyesore.
“You do carpet too?”
“I got a guy. But I can rip the old stuff out and save you some money. Me and that carpet have hated each other since your granny moved in.”
“Add it to the list.” It was one of the benefits of being partner in a family law firm. My paychecks kept coming, even after I’d potentially destroyed my reputation.
