by Violet Duke
In all fairness, none of it had been Carter’s idea. Nope, their winner of a father deserved all the credit for that one. Which was precisely why Jake was able to be so civil during these awkward-as-hell brotherly bonding times.
Cue his whistling the Jeopardy tune to fill the silence.
And the resulting tired, near-silent sigh on the other end of the phone line.
Instantly he felt like a jackass. Okay, so maybe his definition of civil needed some calibration. Lord knows on even a good day, Jake wasn’t exactly Mr. Rogers in the neighborhood.
Expelling his own weary sigh, Jake supposed he could engage in some small talk for a change. Ask how the weather was today in California or something. Maybe banter a bit more about that app again . . .
But before Jake could fully talk himself into attempting his magnanimous gesture, Carter went and asked the one question that never failed to just piss him the hell off.
“So . . . you doing anything today?”
Now Jake was back to wanting to be the douchiest of all douches.
Logically he knew Carter wasn’t trying to imply anything by asking if he had plans to be a functional member of society on a regular workday like the rest of the nonloser population in the world with things to do on a Monday morning. But hearing that innocuous question every two weeks for years on end was still damn effective at unmanning him all the same.
With the added bonus of reminding him of everything absent from his life.
Namely, the girl.
If he could add up every visceral memory from his childhood triggered by one of his five senses—every sweet victory that could compel a smile out of thin air, and every song lyric burned in his brain where algebra and history never took—the combined impact would still weigh in at just a fraction of the emotions he got hit with over a single, fleeting memory of her.
The girl next door he’d fallen half in love with before even learning her name.
Falling the rest of the way had happened just as easily.
Strangely, the older he got, the more frequently the flashbacks came. Fragmented memories of their daily talks every morning and every afternoon for nearly the entire month of June before his junior year, through the wooden fence separating their houses.
The flashbacks didn’t seem to care if he was in bed with another woman before striking. He could be fighting his nightly insomnia with one of the casual bar-bunny hookups he allowed himself once in a blue moon, and he’d be seized by the vivid memories of a cute-as-hell smile made sweeter by an infectious laugh he could almost hear in his memories whenever the nights got real muggy and quiet.
That he thought about her the most in the summers wasn’t a big surprise. God knew he’d dreamed of having her in his arms countless times that summer his family had moved into the house next to hers seemingly a lifetime ago.
But only the cruel and twisted universe knew why it had decided to be a real son of a bitch to him in the design of how it dictated that reality would finally come about.
The night he’d held his dream girl tight in his arms as he’d carried her out of her burning home—leaving her trapped, screaming, and scared little nine-year-old stepbrother behind to die—still haunted him to the core.
Still throat-punched him when he was least expecting it.
Still ripped him awake at night by hijacking the air from his lungs.
Still filled his chest with quick-dry cement whenever he saw a scruffy redheaded boy being doted on by his big sis . . . the same way she used to. God, she’d adored that kid.
Damn cruel, twisted universe.
He remembered the guys back in juvie who would take part in the religious programs the ministry folks ran twice a week. Jake used to envy them. Those dudes all knew they still wanted to be considered for heaven, for redemption. Whether they deserved it or not.
If only they’d had a Purgatory 101 class for the guys like him . . .
“Is it just me, or did I catch you before your second pot of coffee?” called out the voice in his ear, nearly identical but about ten times more refined than his own clipped, just-this-side-of-a-growl charm.
For most, that would be a teasing gibe. Not for Jake. “It’s just you. I’m actually starting my third pot.” He dragged himself out of his memories and poured another piping-hot mug of ulcer-inducing goodness before going back to sitting in silence to pointedly ignore Carter’s other rude-ass question altogether.
Not that he had any grand illusions it would get Carter to drop the interrogation. The man was more persistent than a bill collector on the topic of Jake’s current state of work. And about ten times more difficult to shake. To give credit where it was due, though, the pricklike sense of style Carter managed to infuse in his tenacity was, at times, rather impressive to behold.
Take this past holiday season, for example. Since it had been his leanest winter finance-wise in years, Jake had just plain dodged Carter’s call after Thanksgiving with a curt “traveling out of the country” voice mail recording. Seeing as how they both knew Jake didn’t possess a passport, let alone a remote desire to travel outside the Midwest, it was a blatantly transparent cover story to drive his point home that he didn’t want to talk about it.
Of course, the freaking paragon of patience just played along.
First came the jolly-ass Christmas e-card with a snowman in Jamaica in Jake’s in-box.
A week later? Daily e-gifts of language-translating apps for basically every European language imaginable, with follow-up e-mails written in those foreign languages.
The best one, however, was the vacation hold Carter later filled out online with the post office to stop all Jake’s mail temporarily. That one was actually pretty frickin’ funny.
After a month of Carter’s subtle guerrilla attacks on his sanity, Jake finally “returned” to town and started answering the tireless bastard’s calls again.
“Well, I have to say, your phone stalker breathing has gotten really good. You’ve been practicing—I can tell,” broke in Carter once more, prompting an almost-smile from Jake then. He’d already been partway there at the reminder of what a pain in the ass it’d been to unsubscribe from the mountain of travel magazines—to the most obscure countries he’d never heard of—that had been awaiting him at the post office when he’d gone to pick up his held mail.
This time Carter was the one whistling the Jeopardy tune in the silence.
Smart-ass. “Okay, I think that’s all the fun we have time for this week, folks. Sorry to cut your call short, but I’m pretty busy today.” He really was. The Burtons’ new doghouse wasn’t going to build itself.
The long pause on the other end of the line called him on his lie. “You’re home at nine a.m., Jake. We both know that means you’re in between jobs again.”
“I’m between contracts,” Jake growled back, annoyed that he cared one way or another what his brother thought. He knew Carter wasn’t trying to make him sound like an unemployed deadbeat. It still nettled.
While Jake loved being a carpenter, money wasn’t always steady. Which was depressing seeing as how he was damn good at custom woodwork. Catalog-worthy residential built-ins, along with intricate custom doors and creative artistic furniture, were his specialties, while the imagination-beating kids’ room pieces he created every chance he could felt more like a calling.
Sadly, though, he hardly got to do anything beyond rough carpentry and home repair jobs anymore. After having to strike out on his own after the mentor he’d worked with for years died a little while back, things had gone downhill fast. Thanks in large part to one home owner’s vilifying online post in a popular home improvement forum informing anyone who had access to a search engine that Rowan Carpentry was run by a man who’d once been found guilty of arson, and was thus probably a pyro waiting to strike again on their unsuspecting houses.
The cost of his always being 100 percent candid about his past.
Unlike a bunch of other guys he knew in the same boat, Jake never swept h
is time in juvie under the rug. It had been the worst eighteen months of his life for a reason. Not because he hadn’t been able to cut it or was overly scarred by it.
But because it hadn’t been enough.
Nothing Jake had gone through in that hellhole had felt like a bad enough, fair enough punishment for the reason he had been put in there. The fact that he hadn’t been the actual guilty party didn’t block the guilt. There was no justice served. And gaining freedom the minute he’d become an adult hadn’t felt like a pardon so much as the beginning of a new life sentence he still felt unworthy to be getting to live out.
So, yes, if it was important enough for a person to ask, if his reply regarding whether he’d ever been convicted of a crime was going to be the deciding factor on whether they trusted him enough to want to pay him, he figured they deserved an honest answer.
Unfortunately, bigger freelance work became practically nonexistent after that single inflammatory online comment. Power of the Internet.
Over the past few years, he’d thus been living off small, subcontracted on-call work with meager checks and cash jobs with general contractors who took the lion’s share and threw him a few under-the-table scraps.
Not that he was complaining. He had a roof over his head and a top-of-the-line king-size bed he’d splurged on—the only marginally extravagant thing he owned . . . one of the few material things he used to dream about back in juvie.
And food was never a problem. Most of the neighborhood folks he did odd jobs for paid him well with home-cooked meals he kept his freezer stocked with.
Admittedly, though, some months did get rough. That feeling of not knowing if the ATM was going to laugh in his face? Most de-balling gut kick ever.
To his knowledge, his brother had never once experienced that feeling.
Not that he resented Carter for that fact. Truly he didn’t. His brother worked hard for his wealth, and he was honestly a pretty decent guy. In fact, he’d offered to move Jake to California and line up some carpentry jobs with some of his rich friends. A bunch of times.
Truth was, if it had been their other brother, Daryn, asking, or even their baby sister, Haley, Jake probably would’ve said yes by now. He definitely could use the work.
But coming from Carter, it felt like overdue, guilt-laden restitution. For everything their father had screwed up between them. And that was the last thing Jake wanted from him. Especially since their old man had probably been . . . well, not “right” but at least smart in doing what he did.
Carter was a big deal now—cofounder of a cutting-edge company, exactly as their father had always forecast. And Jake had found a way to land on his feet, again, exactly as their father used to muster up as his biggest compliment of what Jake had going for him. Carter the success and Jake the survivor—the chips had fallen just as their dad intended.
Per usual, whenever he allowed himself to think any wayward thoughts about their dad’s expectations and hopes for his two oldest sons, Jake wondered how different their lives would be if he had been the older brother who had set off the fireworks that night, and Carter had been the one their father wanted to take the fall for it. Would Jake have ended up even a tenth as successful as Carter today? Or would a sacrifice like that for him have been a waste?
Truthfully he wasn’t sure.
One thing he did know, however, was that if their situations were reversed, he sure as hell wouldn’t call the guy on the fifteenth and thirtieth of every month. That was just overbearing big brothering at its most ruthless.
Sure, Carter never made the mistake of asking Jake outright if he needed money to tide him over to his next paycheck—the last and only time Carter had done that, Jake’s quiet promise of violence had been a clear-cut answer.
Still Carter was intentional in timing his calls when he did; Jake was certain of it. That was Carter’s style. To push in the way only family could . . . with brutal kindness.
Well intentioned or not, it was still sort of a dick move.
And, oddly, that was the only reason Jake continued to take these calls.
Every other thing about Carter was perfect. Annoyingly so. So the idea that his brother was capable of being a bit of a jerk was actually kind of nice. Heartwarming even.
Yes, their relationship was all kinds of unhealthy.
“Look, Carter, I need to get going. Why don’t we catch up some other—”
“I have a carpentry job lined up for you in Kansas,” cut in Carter.
Aaand it looked as though they weren’t anywhere near healthier horizons.
“No bullshit, Jake, this one is a hundred percent for me. A business purchase that I really need you to work on. You can start this week.”
Well, that was different. And the choice of Kansas for the dangling carrot this time was new, too. “I’m touched that you’ve branched out your little hire-an-ex-con outreach program, dude. Really. But last I checked, you didn’t have any SME Enterprises holdings out here.” California, New York, and Boston, yes. But not the Midwest. Not that Jake was keeping track like a proud brother or anything. “What possible business could you have in my state?”
“I bought a library.”
Sure, the go-to investment choice for every successful business guy in their early thirties.
“Why in the hell did you buy a library?”
“Is this you caring about my life, Jake? Because if so, I have to say, a little weird, bro. I draw the line at singing ‘Kumbaya’ in front of a fire—just saying.”
Jake wasn’t stupid; he knew Carter’s uncanny impersonation of something he would say was just a distraction. But holy hell was it effective. Jake dropped his question. Then he said shortly, “You know I don’t take commercial jobs. And besides, even if I did, nothing I build would fit in some big, stuffy university library that you slapped your name on anyhow.”
“It’s not a college library. It’s a small one in the town of Juniper Hills just a few hours south of you between Elk Falls and Flint Hills. I told the general contractor I hired that I wanted a modern rustic colonial renovation.”
Shit. That was exactly the kind of stuff Jake liked to create, and Carter clearly knew it.
“The contractor said none of the guys he subcontracts in the area were a good fit.”
Jake was fairly sure that was a lie, but seeing as how his fingers were itching to work with wood, and his mind was already coming up with designs he’d be flat-out pissed if he couldn’t get to build, he let the lie go. “I don’t know if your contractor would want to hire me.” Most weren’t bad about hiring ex-cons, but some tended to steer clear, especially when it came to finish carpentry, which required a lot of independent work without the general contractor or foreman on-site.
“Then it’s good you know the guy who is doing the hiring,” replied Carter matter-of-factly. “I won’t have you do a commercial employment form with that ‘ever been convicted of a crime’ box you’re so friggin’ fond of checking ‘yes’ to even though you don’t have to legally.”
Jeez, the man was swinging for the fences today. And did he really say friggin’ just now? Jake was pleased as punch to see he was rubbing off on the guy.
“Before you say no, just go see the library, man. I’ll text you the address. Call me later today with your decision. Whether you take the job or not, it’s going to get done. This isn’t a charity offer. The library is important to me. You’ll see why when you get over there.”
Click.
Jake stared at the address that appeared on his phone screen a moment later . . . sent with a GPS link that had a damned adorable little town in the image preview.
Ballsy ass.
Now for the big question—was this a fair ball or foul ball? Umpire’s ruling?
He grabbed the keys to his truck along with his coat.
This was a home freaking run, and they both knew it.
Chapter Three
Three hours later Jake was following his GPS through hands down the most unique town he’d
ever seen. He parked his pickup next to a converted cottage straight out of “Hansel and Gretel.” The hand-painted LIBRARY sign out front? Quite possibly done by a three-year-old.
Cripes. This wasn’t going to be a fair fight at all.
As far as little-town libraries went, with its all-original circular windows, storybook-shaped roof covered in ivy, and early-spring flower buds starting to sprout from its brick walls, the place was a hobbit house in the making. It was that darn cute. There was even an old round-top door weather distressed with so much character that Jake finally got what folks meant by the term wood porn. Seriously. The whole library was a carpenter’s historical restoration jackpot.
Right down to the hand-chopped and age-smoothed log benches in the courtyard. All constructed out of salvaged tree trunks in honor of the town’s namesake, of course.
Juniper Hills. He shook his head in wonder. Definitely a fitting description. He’d never seen so many Eastern redcedar trees and shrubs in one populated area before, at least not in the prairie regions, where controlled fires were set precisely to stop this sort of thing. As the only evergreen native to Kansas, the cedarlike juniper tree was common across the state. But since they were an ecosystem threat and a big wildfire hazard in flat grassland areas, lots of ranchers used prescribed blazes to burn down and control excessive growth on their pastures.
The town of Juniper Hills, on the other hand? Its citizens seemed to be in the “if you can’t beat ’em, go nuts” camp with all the juniper. Likely because the local geography didn’t necessitate its control. Or because they just really liked being different.
Sure, there were the familiar stretches of agricultural farms bordering the western edge of town, and, of course, tallgrass prairieland as far as the eye could see, but it was all draped over actual rolling hills and valleys, with earthy mineral boulders unlike the variety usually found in these parts, and pockets of equally atypical springs and shallow waterfalls.
Hell, he hadn’t even accepted the job yet and already he was thinking of a dozen ways to showcase these great town differences—from a pergola built entirely out of driftwood for the book-return box near the entrance, to arched juniper branches over the dirt walkway circling the building to mimic the effect of walking through a forest.
