Bringing Home the Bad Boy

by Jessica Lemmon

  He let her keep the vacation house in Evergreen Cove, and the Subaru they’d recently paid off. “I’d pay alimony if we were married,” he’d told her, assuaging his guilt. “The house at the Cove, the car, it’s the least I can do.”

  The very least, she thought bitterly at the time, but now she didn’t feel bitter. She considered herself blessed things had ended before she’d thrown good years after bad into a relationship doomed to fail.

  Russell was a software developer, a pragmatic thinker, and ten years older than Charlie. She met him at a wedding—prior to her photography career, so rather than the photographer, she’d been the bridesmaid at this particular event. A guest of the groom, Russell had sought her out, danced with her, and practically begged her to take his phone number.

  After several dates she learned he didn’t want to be married, and he didn’t want children. She had always wanted children and assumed children were the natural path following marriage. But when it became clear they were serious, she’d decided both marriage and children were things she could live without. With the right person, sacrifices were unavoidable. Forever would be worth it.

  But her relationship didn’t last forever, making the six-year compromise she’d made much harder to live with now.

  After the kitchen conversation over coffee, he’d arranged for movers to extricate her from the house and then Russell had eloped with a woman with three children. One going into college and twin boys in the sixth grade. He gave no explanation for what changed his mind, but she knew. The other woman, Darian.

  Darian had changed his mind.

  Which had the unpleasant side effect of making Charlie feel like she hadn’t been enough.

  She’d taken what was behind door number two and moved on as intact as she could. Some nights, the hurt and the fear of being alone lingered. The fact she’d been unable to achieve the seemingly simple goal of having a family and settling down had haunted her enough that on those nights she became practically nocturnal.

  Taking in a deep, humid breath, Charlie centered herself on the here and now. June was nearly July and the hot and sticky had both settled in at the Cove for the long haul. Sunlight danced on the surface of the lake, sending waves rippling in the wind. Behind the lake, in the sea of evergreens lining the hills, there were a few hidden homes, but that was too “deep woods” for her taste.

  From her coveted porch—yes, even her fancy neighbors with their large, enviable homes admitted to coveting her porch—a patch of grass gave way to shore and led into the water. Her aquatic neighbor, Earl, stepped out onto the deck of his beaten houseboat off to the left where it was anchored in the deep, and raised a hand to wave. She could make out his pipe, handlebar white mustache, and sunglasses from here. He was tanned and brawny and made the best clam chowder she’d ever tasted.

  Murmuring from the side of her house brought her to her feet as the smile spread her mouth.

  Finally!

  The voices grew louder as they closed in and she strode across the porch to meet them. She couldn’t make out the exact words, but she knew the boy’s voice as if he were her own.

  “Aunt Charlie!” Lyon appeared around the corner and burst into a run. Before she had a chance to take the three steps to the grass to meet him, he bounded up them and straight into her arms. She caught him against her, savoring how small he was, knowing it was a battle with time she’d lose, and bent to kiss his head. His tight curls had grown out some since she saw him last. They tickled her nose.

  Pulling away, she flattened his hair with both hands. It sprang up again, refusing to be tamed.

  “You need a haircut,” she teased.

  “I knoooooow.” He rolled his green-blue eyes. Lionel Downey was a stunning kid. He had Rae’s chocolate-brown skin, a touch lighter than hers had been, and her genuine, full smile. He had his father to thank for his eye color: ocean blue so striking against his dark features.

  “That’s a tired subject, if you can’t tell.”

  Her eyes went to Evan, who’d crossed his bare arms over his chest and leaned a hip into the column at the bottom of the steps to watch their interaction. His presence wasn’t overbearing or intimidating, but easy. Evan matched his laid-back, live-and-let-live attitude with a lazy swagger that was anything but. He’d worked hard his entire life and as a result, confidence oozed from every pore. The thinning pair of Levi’s, the casual T-shirt hugging his chest, his array of tattoos, and devil-may-care smile he showed to the world were him through and through, but Charlie knew Evan ran deeper than his outer layer.

  Her eyes tracked along the tattoos decorating his arms to the new one. His latest patch of artwork was a series of evergreen trees, their dark blue-black bases circling his wrist and branching up his arm, their tops almost reaching his elbow. Each tree was a different height, and knowing his attention to detail, each one had some significance. The whole of the pictorial on his arm had a big one.

  His moving to Evergreen Cove.

  Unable to keep it from happening, her heart reverted to the state it’d been in at age fifteen, somersaulting in the wrongest way imaginable. Before he was Rae’s, oh, how Charlie had pined for Evan Downey. Must have been seeing him back here, or maybe her earlier thoughts about her life, that caused the mini-backslide.

  But she couldn’t backslide. She’d made a vow to herself, to Rae’s silent body, to care for Lyon and Evan.

  “Did you guys eat?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Dairy Dreem,” Lyon confirmed.

  She knew it. She tilted her chin at Evan in reprimand. An accidentally sensual smirk crooked his mouth, surrounded in a one or two days’ worth of stubble.

  “We didn’t only get ice cream.”

  “Yeah, we had French fries,” Lyon added, earning a headshake from his dad.

  “No loyalty.” The smirk slid into a grin and if that didn’t cause her heart the subtlest flutter, the wink would. And there it was, one blue eye closing and opening again—a flutter in and of itself—the blue so bright, it was nearly electric.

  Was it any wonder he’d been on her radar when she was a vacationing teen visiting the Cove? There’d been three “bad boys” she and Rae had noticed whenever they sunbathed at the beach. Evan Downey, Donovan Pate, and Asher Knight. For Charlie, Evan stood out the most.

  Evan only had eyes for Rae.

  At first she was heartbroken, but Charlie had kept that fact to herself. Teenage crushes were a dime a dozen, and predictably, she outgrew it in a few summers. Rae and Evan had been designed for each other. By the time she stood at Rae’s side as her maid of honor, there wasn’t a bone in her body not overjoyed that her best friend had found the love of her life.

  After Rae’s death, Charlie had become a more consistent part of Evan’s and Lyon’s lives. Russell hadn’t liked it. More than once, she wondered if her decision to care for Rae’s family rather than prioritize him had ultimately led to their demise.

  Staying in touch with Evan had been easy when she and Russell lived close by. After the breakup and relocation, however, her trips to Columbus became less frequent. Once she was settled and had a job, Charlie did make an overnight trip down to visit, and she ended up babysitting for Lyon.

  She hadn’t minded the babysitting part. Not at all. But the fact that Evan had gone on a date with an incredibly beautiful blonde, then come home around three in the morning smelling of perfume and sex, had hurt her heart in a way she hadn’t known possible.

  When he’d passed her in the hallway, Charlie had ducked her face into her palm to stifle a sob. Evan abruptly turned on his heel to wrap her in his arms and comfort her, and she had just lost it.

  Him giving himself to a harlot who didn’t appreciate the things Rae had fallen in love with: his huge heart, his bottomless love for his family, was awful to witness.

  Rae and Evan were supposed to live happily ever after. Lyon was supposed to grow up, get married, and dance with his mom at the reception. And Charlie… well, her life hadn’t turned out the way s
he’d planned, either.

  Unable to voice the real reason for her crying jag, she’d blamed her emotions on her breakup with Russell, rather than the way it punched a hole in her chest to see the way she and Evan, Lyon, and Rae had all been shortchanged.

  Life didn’t heed plans and dates. Life went on, and left whomever it pleased behind in the wreckage.

  The memory caused her heart to ache, and her gut to yearn for what could have been. She flicked her eyes heavenward and sent up a mental, Sorry, Rae.

  “Can I go inside?” Lyon pulled away from her and grabbed the handle on her sliding door.

  “Knock yourself out,” she answered. “One more hug, though.” He acquiesced, giving her a halfhearted squeeze. She’d take what she could get. Soon, he’d be at an age where he wouldn’t snuggle with her any longer and she thought that might be the day she started crying and never stopped.

  Evan pushed out of his casual lean, uncrossed his inked arms, and stomped up the three steps separating her from him. “Missed you, Ace.”

  Him being close made her feel better instantly. “Missed you, too.”

  He slid the door aside and motioned for her to go in, but when he ran a hand through his shaggy, mussed bedhead, she felt her heart kick against her chest in the slightest show of appreciation.

  And for that, she should be ashamed.

  Sorry, Rae.

  CHAPTER TWO

  One week later, Evan’s new house was beginning to feel like home. No, better than home. Like the place he was supposed to be but never knew it.

  Floor-to-ceiling windows offered an amazing view of the hill of evergreens on the opposite side of the lake, and the lake herself.

  This house was nothing like the old one. That’d been the whole point in coming here. Its best feature being his art supplies were no longer stashed in a cramped back room barely holding his drawing desk and easel. The front room, formerly dance studio, also had floor-to-ceiling windows and was twenty times the size of his art corner on East Level Road. It held not only his desk, but three large easels, a stack of canvases—some full, some empty leaning against the wall—and a tall black shelf packed with supplies.

  The space may have been designed for a dancer but transformed perfectly for a former tattooist with a budding illustration career. The “former” part was in name only. He hadn’t been able to resist setting up his chair, table, and inks in the corner. He couldn’t completely trade out one passion for the other. Wasn’t the way he was built.

  The AC kicked on as he rounded the wall—the only privacy for his open loft bedroom—and took the stairs, laundry basket in hand. Lyon was on the floor in the living room, settled on a rug in front of a twenty-foot stone fireplace likely responsible for keeping this room cooler than the others.

  “Laundry, buddy.”

  Lyon sighed over the iPad where he played some battling clan game a magazine article recently claimed was “as addictive as meth.” Evan had laughed the claim off at first. Now he was beginning to see the signs.

  “In a minute,” Lyon responded in a zombie drone.

  He stood over his son and toed his ribs with one shoe. “Bud.”

  Lyon frowned up at him, miraculously tearing his eyes away from the game for two seconds to argue, “I’ll lose this battle if I stop now!”

  God. The look on his face. Evan’s heart clutched. Pulled brows, set mouth. He looked like Rae whenever he did that. Which was probably why he let the kid get away with murder.

  “After this battle. But right after. Do not play another or no more iPad today.”

  As a single parent, he’d dealt a lot with the issue of being too soft or too hard. Sometimes it was best for both of them if he rode the middle.

  Lyon ignored him, the yells and hollers coming from the game an annoying cacophony.

  Evan pushed his foot into Lyon’s side and rolled him over, wiggling his shoe into his son’s belly. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, Dad,” Lyon confirmed, smile intact, eyes returning to the screen.

  Bleary-eyed from a sleepless, and artless, night, Evan headed to the washer and dryer on the opposite side of the house and loaded in towels, sorting the whites from the colors and pulling the washer button on. Unlike everyone assumed, he didn’t have to learn how to do laundry after Rae died. He’d always done the laundry.

  He grunted a dry chuckle as he recalled why: early on, she had dyed every last one of his whites pink. Rae Lynn Downey. Epic in the kitchen, disaster in the laundry room.

  The memory of her face, smiling wide as she’d pressed his newly stained T-shirt to his chest, slammed into him, making his next breath impossible to draw.

  Last night, a dream, more memory than dream, shook him awake. Rae’s smiling face losing its light, his inability to bring her back. In a habit he wished he could shed, he’d reached for her side of the bed. Empty as expected, but worse because it wasn’t “her” side at all. When he moved, he’d replaced their bed.

  He told himself a second chance meant starting over, and bringing history into the new house wasn’t good juju. So, he’d dragged the old pillow-top, queen-size bed he and Rae had conceived their son on out to the curb and ordered a new mattress to be delivered the day after he arrived. And he’d been fine with that.

  Until last night.

  In the barren emptiness of three a.m., the massive king bed with a black iron headboard and plain white bedding, the bed he’d told himself would be a “blank canvas” for his life in Evergreen Cove, felt… wrong.

  Sheets soaked through with sweat, his hands shaking, and Rae’s blank, open eyes flashing in the forefront of his brain, a sick realization washed over him. No longer was she merely missing from his bed. He’d erased her entirely.

  Unable to sleep, he’d traipsed down to his studio, knowing what came out of his paintbrush would be the opposite of productive, but at least would get him through to morning.

  Demons exorcised, the images he’d created were like the others he painted in the wee hours. Dark, broody, and having no place in a children’s book.

  Evan dropped the lid of the washer as Lyon marched into the laundry room, dropped off his clothes, and started out again.

  “Bud. Sort.”

  “Daaaad.”

  His response was to point at the hamper.

  Lyon’s shoulders slumped until he resembled a melting Wicked Witch of the West, but at Evan’s silent stare, he finally obeyed and began to sort.

  The attitude was something he could live without, but at least the kid was doing his chore.

  Good enough.

  In the land of single parenthood, it was the national anthem.

  “Oatmeal or eggs?”

  “Eggs,” Lyon answered, exasperated.

  “You got it.” Evan tracked to the kitchen to fix his boy eggs, and reminded himself he was raising an independent man who would eventually care for himself. Since their small family had decreased by one member, it’d been Lyon and Evan as a unit. A team.

  Team Downey.

  That was how this was gonna work… the only way this was gonna work. Especially as they settled in to a new town, Lyon went to a new school, and Evan adjusted to his new career.

  A second chance. A fresh start.

  As he put the pan on the burner, Rae’s beautiful face flashed in his memory again. In the light of day it was easier to convince himself a blank canvas wasn’t a bad thing.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Shit.”

  Propping a hand on his thigh, Evan slouched on the wheeled wooden chair in his studio and stared down the fat, blank pad of newsprint. Like the tan, soft paper in front of him might have an answer for what to try next.

  Whenever he ran up against the equivalent of writer’s block for painters—artist’s block, if that was a thing—he refused to let it stop him. He drew through it. As a result, the floor was littered with sketches of farm animals. Fifteen, no—wait—sixteen if he counted the one he’d wadded up and tossed to the other side of the room.

&nbs
p; He scratched the scruff on his jaw. Defeated by a cartoon pig. He blew out a frustrated breath.

  When grief took him in the wee hours, he had no problem unleashing his creative instincts on canvas. But when it came to work—keeping food on the table, a roof over their heads—bam! Roadblock.

  Last summer, his agent, Gloria Shields, persuaded him to attend an immersion class with her other illustrator clients in Chicago. He had, leaving Lyon in the care of his oldest brother, Landon. Evan took the break and used it to focus on his art. Surprise, surprise, he’d tuned into a muse that didn’t solely lurk around in the dead of night.

  He came back home and life started up again, with its monotonous schedule and repetitive requirements like trash day, dental appointments, and grocery shopping, and that fresh-faced muse grew bitchy, donned fangs, and became nocturnal once again.

  If she showed up at all.

  Then he got a visit from another muse entirely—a real one, by the name of Asher Knight.

  Every year when he was a kid, his family vacationed in the same area of Evergreen Cove. A group of cabins lined the public beach, and though his parents hadn’t succeeded in getting the same cabin every year, they did manage to go the same week.

  They weren’t the only ones.

  The youngest in his family at age fourteen, Evan had been the rebel without a clue. Wasn’t any wonder he’d sought out trouble when he came here on vacation. His brother, Aiden, had been all about the girls; their sister, Angel, busy keeping her girlfriends away from Aiden; and Landon—well, hell, he was out of high school by then and didn’t associate with the “kids.”

  But that summer in particular, Evan had met two guys who had been more bad news than good. Donovan Pate was one of them, Asher Knight was the other, and arguably, both were still more bad news than good.

  Donovan was the scrappier of the two and enjoyed a good fistfight. The day Evan met the taller boy with ink-black hair and ghostly silver-blue eyes, Evan had stood his ground and earned the bump on his nose he still sported. They were still close. Go figure.