“Hello, Chase,” she said, doing a good job of not looking taken off guard.
“I apologize that I don’t have flowers for you or anything. This was a last-minute invite. Shayla was dropping me at the airport on her way over here but my flight got delayed.”
“Well, I don’t need flowers, but I’ll take a hug.” Her mom wrapped her arms around Chase, who smiled, but his brow furrowed a little. Shayla remembered that his mother was dead and her heart ached for him. Her mom pulled away. “Can I get you a glass of iced tea?”
“Yes ma’am, thank you.”
“I hope you like it sweet,” Shayla said.
He smiled down at her. “Just like me.”
Her heart couldn’t help a flutter as she gave him a look and then turned to the window where she found Bo outside chasing their nephews around with a red, plastic gun. “Might as well get this over with. Mama, we’re going outside.”
“I’ll bring you both a tea out there.”
“Thank you,” Chase and Shayla said in unison.
Shayla led them out the back door, and the slamming screen got Bo’s attention. He stopped and looked at them both like they were a math problem he was trying to solve. “Hey,” he said, and then headed their way. He stopped in front of them, staring them both down, gun still in hand.
“I don’t get a hug?” Chase asked.
Bo eyed him and then went for Shayla, wrapping her up in his arms. “What’s going on?” he asked, a little bit shy of conversational.
“Just coming for dinner,” Shayla said.
Bo looked between the two of them. “Mmm hmm.” He held out his hand to Chase and he took it. “I hear you’re shacking up with my sister,” Bo said.
“That’s about the size of it,” Chase said.
Bo lowered his chin and pointed at Chase. “We’re about to talk.”
“I’ll talk to you all damn day.”
Shayla liked this side of Chase…telling her brother to fuck off, basically. She could get into that.
“Shayla,” came a voice from somewhere to her left. She turned to find Maya coming out of the screened-in porch where Shayla’s sister-in-law and Dale were sitting with her dad, all holding up a hand in greeting but none bothering to rise.
“Hey,” Shayla said, holding out a hand. She probably should have offered a hug.
Maya shook her hand. “So good to see you again.”
Shayla turned to Bo. “How are you even here? I talked to you yesterday.”
“We were on the road when you called. I wanted to surprise Mama. I’m leaving Maya here for interviews and taking Blake back with me to get everything moved.”
“Good luck on your interviews,” Shayla said.
“I’ll need it. I haven’t interviewed in a decade.”
“I wanted to grab my truck, give you back that piece of shit,” Bo said.
“You think I enjoy hauling that big rig around everywhere I go?”
“You two are fun to be around,” Chase said, looking over at Maya, who was smiling like a sixteen-year-old with a crush.
Bo brought her in to him and kissed her while her face turned beet red. “Bo,” she whispered, glancing over at the screened-in porch where the rest of the family was sitting.
“You’re gonna have to get over that, darlin’. I can’t be expected to go a whole night without kissing you.”
“Damn,” Chase said. “Between the two of you and Blake and Seanna, this town is turning soft.”
Bo looked like he wanted to make a joke but Maya’s wide eyes stopped him. The only other time Shayla had been around her brother and Maya was when she was puking her guts out into his commode, and they were supposedly broken up at that point. Shayla had not seen him happy like this since he was in college, before he met Angela who had screwed up his life for the better part of a decade. Maya couldn’t be more opposite from that nightmare if she tried.
Bo nudged Maya in the side, and she looked down at her left hand, her smile so big she looked like she’d just won the lottery.
Shayla blinked and met Bo’s proud gaze. “You’re engaged?” she asked.
Maya nodded, pressing a knuckle against her eye like she was stopping a tear.
Chase absorbed Bo into a hug. “Congratulations, man.”
Shayla had been expecting this eventually, but just not right that moment. She shook off the shock and pulled Maya in for a hug, then Bo when he became available.
“When did this happen?” Shayla asked.
“Last night,” Maya said. “We stayed at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville on our way down. He did it by the dancing fountains.”
Shayla smiled at her cheesy, beaming brother. She guessed one of the two of them needed to be the hopeless romantic.
“When did you get the ring?” Chase asked.
Bo’s cheeks turned red.
“He’d had it for weeks,” Maya said. “He was waiting for the right moment.”
He brought her in to his chest. “I don’t know. I wanted us to be official before we got back here. I wanted to bring her home with me as my fiancée.”
The two of them gazed into each other’s eyes and then put their foreheads together, closing their eyes like they were physically connecting with one another. Shayla was happy for them, but Jesus Christ, this was a lot to take.
“So when’s the wedding?” Shayla asked.
“Three weeks from yesterday?” Maya said like she was asking permission. “Are you available?” Shayla looked at Bo for confirmation and he shrugged. “I know it’s soon, but that’s the only day we can get the venue for months, and we really didn’t want to put it off till next year,” Maya said.
“What venue?” Shayla asked.
“Harley West Botanical Gardens,” Bo said. He took Maya into his arms. “I took her there on our first official date.”
“I was on your first official date, and we didn’t go there,” Chase said.
“Our first official alone date,” Bo said, and then kissed Maya like they were the only two people on the planet. She grinned at him, and then nuzzled her head into his neck. They were about as disgusting as roadkill.
Maya pulled away. “So do you think you have that weekend available?”
Shayla had all her weekends available. “Of course.”
“I’m available, too, if it matters to anyone,” Chase said.
Maya smiled. “Good. You’ll need to be there as well.”
Shayla pointed to the fenced-in porch. “I’m going to say hi to Dad and them.”
“I’ll go help your mom,” Chase said, and Shayla loved that he was independent.
“I will, too,” Maya said with a smile. “Um, but Shayla, can we talk a little later?”
Shayla gave her an easy smile. “Of course.”
Maya nodded and followed Chase to the kitchen.
Shayla started over to the screened-in porch, but Bo grabbed her by the arm. “Hold up.” She turned toward him with a warning glance, and he let go. “I want to talk to you a second.”
“If it’s about me moving into Chase’s pool house you can save your breath.”
“It’s not, really. I just hate that you felt like you had to get out of my house so fast. I hope you didn’t leave on Maya’s account, because she’d be thrilled to have you there. Hell, she hasn’t quit talking about you since I’ve been up there these past two months. She thinks she’s hit the sister-in-law lottery and she doesn’t even know you yet.”
Shayla exhaled a breath. “That’s kind, but I don’t need to be living with my baby brother at age thirty-six. It was fine for me to stay there while you were gone and I was in transition, but I honestly don’t have a desire to live with you and your fiancée, no offense to Maya. She seems sweet.”
He smiled at the kitchen window. “She is.”
“Good,” Shayla said, and then walked toward the porch.
“Hang on,” Bo said, and she turned back to him with an exhausted look. He glanced over at the porch and then tugged on her sleeve.
“Take a walk with me to my truck.”
“Why?”
“‘Cause I want a second of privacy without kids and family around.”
“Nobody’s listening to us.”
He let out a deep breath and then he gave her a serious look. “Is there something you want to tell me?”
Her pulse only picked up slightly. Surely this was something about Chase. “Uh, no?”
He stared her down, and then finally lifted his hand like a stop sign. “All right, don’t be pissed.”
She immediately got pissed…and afraid. “What?”
“We stopped in Franklin this morning, only because that exit you live off of has lots of good restaurants and we were hungry.”
Her heartbeat went faster. “Okay.”
He narrowed his gaze. “You’ve never lied to me before, not about anything important, have you?”
She swallowed hard. “No, of course not.”
“Then why did you tell me your house was for sale?”
Her chest constricted as her ears heated up. She pointed at his chest. “I told you not to go by my house.”
“I told Maya you lived off that exit, and she asked if we could drive by. I swear to God.” He looked her up and down. “I didn’t realize I wasn’t allowed to drive down your street.”
“Did you see anyone there?”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Want to take that walk to my truck now?”
She glanced around, paranoid now. But if Bo knew everything, he would be going through the roof, not acting this relaxed about it all. She glared at him and started walking. He opened the truck door for her just like their mom had always made him do when they were growing up. She’d stick her tongue out at him as a thank you. She’d do it now as a joke if she had any humor in her at all these days.
He got in the driver’s side and gripped the wheel. “Goddamn I missed this truck.”
He definitely didn’t know the whole story, or he wouldn’t be focused on his truck. “So?” Shayla said.
He exhaled a deep breath. “So I talked to Brian.”
She remained calm. She would have to. “Okay.”
“He told me everything, Shayla.”
There was no way that was true, but clearly they’d talked and Brian had told him something. “What did he tell you?” she asked through gritted teeth.
“He told me you made him go to rehab.”
She breathed again. That was harmless enough, considering. “I didn’t make him do anything.”
“Poor choice of words on my part. He said you asked him to go.” She just looked at him, waiting for his point. “Why didn’t you tell me he had a drinking problem?”
“Am I required to tell you everything about guys I date?”
“That particular problem, yeah, you goddamned are, and you know it.”
“Well, sorry,” she said, and opened the door.
“Will you quit running away from me? What the fuck is up with that? Since when can we not have a conversation, especially when I haven’t seen you in two months?”
She closed the door. “Go on, then.”
“You’ve changed, Shayla.”
There was that Sherlock Holmes brother of hers. “Fuck you,” she said, because she was mature like that.
“You’ve been different since the day you came back here, but I’ve been too caught up in Maya to take the time to see it. I kept telling myself it was because you’d just been through a breakup, which you told me was amicable, by the way.”
“It was,” she lied.
“Then why did Brian tell me he’d give his left nut to have you back?”
Those were Bo’s words, not Brian’s. She didn’t answer, just bit on her thumbnail.
“You made it sound like the two of you parted ways with no issue, and all the while he was sitting there in rehab. Now you can’t tell me the road that led to that was smooth.”
“Maybe this was just something I needed to deal with on my own.”
“Really? After all we went through with this same exact shit together when we were little. It never occurred to you that I might understand what you were going through?”
She turned away from him, the weight of his words bearing down on her shoulders. They’d protected each other through their father’s alcoholic fits of rage as children. He’d never hit either one of them or anyone else in the family as far as Shayla knew, but at least with a hit, you knew the end was near. She knew that now.
“And what about the nine years of Angela that you talked me through? I never hesitated to call you when I was at my limit.” He put his hand on her arm. “Shayla, I need to know, did he ever hurt you?”
Her stomach gave a queasy roll, and she swallowed. “No.”
“Shayla, look at me.”
She forced herself to look into her brother’s eyes, so full of honesty all the goddamned time. “I said no.” Her own lie stung her like a wasp.
He lifted his chin. “I didn’t think so, but I had to ask.”
Why didn’t he think so? Had Brian won him over, or did he just want so desperately for it not to be so? Because she knew that even though he was four hundred miles away when it was happening, he’d somehow find a way to blame himself for allowing it to happen on his watch. And then he’d also have to drive back to Nashville and kill Brian, and Bo had a wedding to plan.
She looked out the window. “I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you.”
“I don’t need your apology, Shayla. Shit. I just need you to know I’m here. I’m always here. And the fact that I’m getting married doesn’t change a goddamn thing. Now listen to me. Maya and I would like for you to stay with us, just for a while.”
“Bo—”
“Just please hear me out. There’s more going on with you and Brian that I clearly don’t know about, and I respect that. But I don’t want you to be alone right now. You’ve been alone for two months dealing with this shit. It’s time to let your baby brother do his job and take care of you.”
She met his gaze, unable to help a small smile. It must be bad for him to call himself her baby brother. She couldn’t remember him ever doing that. That was her name for him. He’d never complained about it, not since they were adults, but he’d also never owned it.
“Thank you, baby brother,” she said. “But I’m fine, really.”
“Just for a few months. Then you can move into any pool house in South Walton. Let me help you. Do it as a favor to me.” She huffed a laugh and rolled her eyes. “And I know I would need to curtail the PDA with Maya. Trust me, she’ll be happy to hear that. It drives her nuts when I do that.” He nudged her. “So come on. Will you stay with us for a while, just while we get this thing with you and Brian figured out?”
“There’s nothing to figure out. It’s over.”
“If it’s over, then what’s going on with your house?”
She exhaled a deep breath. “Nothing’s going on with the house. I just, I couldn’t evict him while he was in rehab. I wanted to give him time to get out and get back to work and find another place. The market is so hot in Nashville right now that I know it will sell as soon as I put it on, especially in that neighborhood. I’m just letting things sit for a minute.”
He narrowed his gaze. “Are you sure you’re not leaving the door open for reconciliation?”
“No,” she said, probably too quickly.
“I’m not just asking this to be nosy. I need to know if you’re going to head back to Nashville, for our business.”
“What about the business?” she asked.
“That’s another thing I want us to talk about.”
“What?”
“I have some ideas, for another time. We’ve probably left them in there too long. Mama’s gonna be pulling out baby pictures if we don’t go back inside.”
“Can I get a hint?” she asked.
He met her gaze, dead serious. “I want us to be partners.”
“In your pool business?”
“Our business.”
“It’s more involved than what you think. I want you to help me grow it. I have ideas I’ve been working on these past few months. Stuff I should have been doing for years. Being with Maya has given me the shot in the pants I’ve needed these past few years. This business should be a whole lot bigger than it is by this point. I should be to the level Chase is at. Look at him. He’s building goddamn hospitals. He’s got investment groups and all kinds of shit. I don’t have to be small town. I’m ready to take this shit to the next level. But I can’t do it alone. And the saddest thing on the planet is for someone like you to be wasting their talents in a shitty little office in PCB.”
“There’s nothing wrong with PCB,” Shayla said.
“There is something wrong with the shitty little office though.”
“It’s not shitty at all. It’s nice.”
“You know what I mean. Come on. Let’s go see Dad. I haven’t even really said hello to him yet. Just introduced Maya then the boys had me chasing them.”
“All right.” She considered him. “So did Brian win you over?”
“Fuck no. If he’s even got a whiff of alcoholism in him, I don’t want you near him. I don’t want either of us to relive our childhood through relationships.”
She breathed a sigh of relief and nodded, wishing she knew what all they talked about, but she wanted to get off this subject as soon as possible. She needed to know one more thing. “Did you tell him you were getting married?”
“Yeah, it came up.”
“You told him when and where?”
He thought about it. “Yeah, I guess we did. I’d actually just hung up with Harley when we pulled off on that exit, so it was fresh on my mind. He was actually the first person we knew to see Maya’s ring. You don’t think he’d show up without being invited, do you?”
She did her best to hide her sinking stomach. “No, of course not. I was just wondering if he knew.”
He eyed her, and she hoped like hell he wouldn’t ask more questions. “So you’ll move back in?” Bo asked.
Shayla considered him. “Thank you, baby brother. But I’m good.”
He let out a defeated breath, and then met her gaze. “Just promise me that you can handle Chase.”
“Who do you think you’re dealing with here?”
Seagrove Secrets (Love Along Hwy 30A) Page 8
