by Mary Calmes
“So Mia’s the one who’ll be giving you your grandchildren,” Emmett chimed in.
Her slow pan to him was confusing, I could tell from the look on his face. His brows furrowed and he leaned in close. “I like you ever so much,” she said softly, smiling at him. “But darling, do you honestly believe what you just said, or did you simply speak without thinking?”
He sat back and was quiet as he took a moment and reviewed what he’d said.
You couldn’t beat Annalise Renaldi, originally Annalise Sherwood, from Savannah, Georgia. She was a sweet-tempered, iron-willed Southern debutante who after one meeting with Agosto Renaldi—at a fair when she was eighteen—walked away from her life and into his. She immediately married the Italian transplant who was only a year older than her, with zero prospects and no money. They moved to Chicago where she waitressed and he got a job as a plumber’s assistant. Nine months later, Miranda—Mia for short—was born, and a year later, Cosimo. While Agosto moved up, first becoming a journeyman and then joining the union, Annalise went to school at night and followed her dream of becoming a teacher. It was, by all accounts, a match made in heaven. When they were fed up with the city and the cold, they moved the family to Mangrove to start over. That they wouldn’t grow old side by side was never an eventuality either considered, but stomach cancer had come along and blindsided them.
After she lost Agosto, Annalise devoted her life to her children and carried his spirit with her into everything she did. So when one of them told her he was gay, she decided to keep on loving him even though it wasn’t the path she would have chosen. When that same son brought home his gay friend, I became to her merely another child to love. I would be forever grateful to Annalise for accepting me into the fold, for giving me a family to replace the one that rejected me when I came out to my biologicals, and for raising a son who would become my best friend in the world. I was part of the Renaldi family and that was, so far, my greatest blessing.
“Oh,” Emmett said softly, bringing my attention back to him. “I see. You’re wondering if I thought that Cosimo and Kelly, being gay, can’t be fathers.”
She nodded.
“Oh, no, of course not,” he assured her, taking her hand in his. “I wasn’t thinking—thank you for pointing that out. It was a silly thing to say. Both your sons can give you grandchildren, my dear.”
She was very pleased with him. I could tell by the way her eyes brightened, and she gently squeezed his hand before she leaned sideways and kissed his cheek. Emmett’s face glowed in response. They were very sweet together.
“And now,” Emmett announced, giving me his attention, “let’s hear about this Britton fellow. Why on Earth would you run from this man?”
All eyes on me and all of a sudden I was nervous. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Mia says he’s a nice, smart man,” Annalise reminded me. “So why are you running from him? That seems odd.”
“I—”
She prodded her daughter. “Is he a good man or not?”
“He is,” Mia promised her. “A very good man.”
“And is he out to his family?”
“Yeah, see, that’s the thing,” she replied with a burp. “I had no idea he was gay, and he was married, like I said.”
“So he’s bi, then,” Coz offered.
“I actually thought he was straight.”
“Oh, well, I see the issue now,” Annalise surmised, glancing around the table. “That’s why you ran from him, because he’s not out and proud.”
“Mom, he might not even identify as bi or gay,” Coz explained.
Mia squinted at me. “I still don’t get why you’d run from Britton. The thing between you two was ages ago.”
“Running implies that I was scared, and I’m not,” I defended. “I was more circumventing him to avoid any unpleasantness.”
From the looks on all their faces, no one was buying my explanation, including Emmett, who didn’t even know me well enough to judge.
“He probably doesn’t even remember me.”
“Because you’re so forgettable?” Annalise smirked.
“You just think everyone will fall in love with me because you love me.”
“No,” she countered, “it’s because you’re beautiful inside and out.”
“Oh, I’m gonna throw up,” Coz commented.
“We were young,” I explained, ignoring him.
“What does that have to do with anything? Youth is no excuse.”
Annalise wasn’t going to let it go. “I just mean, he invited me to go to Boston with him, and then the day we were supposed to go, he never showed up.”
“Pardon me?”
“That’s what happened.”
“Oh!” She was horrified and turned on Mia. “Your friend broke Kelly’s heart. You certainly can’t go into business with such a man.”
“Mom––”
“For heaven’s sake, Mia.” She was aghast. “The man’s a cad.”
Mia made a pained sound. “We already settled this. Were you even listening?”
Her mother tsked in that judgmental way she had.
“Stop looking at me like that,” Mia muttered.
“I don’t like him.”
“Mother!”
“Don’t ever bring him to my house!”
“Oh, that’s just great,” Mia mumbled as I smirked at her. “How do you know he didn’t have a phenomenal explanation for ditching Kel?”
“Like?”
“I don’t know,” Mia said dejectedly.
“Dead,” Annalise said flatly. “I would accept dead.”
Mia threw up her hands.
“Maybe he does have a good excuse,” Coz said to me, yawning. “And maybe you’d get to actually hear that reason if you ever allowed him to see you.”
“No thank you,” I replied petulantly.
“Oh yeah, no, of course not,” Coz returned snidely. “Then you’d have to, like, have closure or something.” He shivered dramatically for my benefit as he shoveled food into his mouth. “That sounds horrible.”
“Leave him alone,” Mia defended before her gaze slid to meet mine. “It’s hard to know things sometimes. You want to and you don’t, all at the same time.”
And she was right. While half of me wanted to hear why Britton Lassiter had not shown up, the rest of me didn’t want to know.
She shrugged. “Maybe you just let sleeping dogs lie.”
“Or,” Coz said, clearly annoyed with both of us, “you walk your ass over to where he’s staying and ask if he remembers you, and if so, inquire as to the explanation of his whereabouts on the day in question, which was what—ten years ago now?”
“Oh God,” I whined, thunking my head down on the table again. “I need to drink more.”
“I think y’all have drunk enough,” Annalise stated. “Let’s go into the living room and I can tell you about the nude beach Emmett and I went to.”
“Where’s the rest of the vodka?” Mia asked her brother.
Chapter Three
I SERIOUSLY could hear the grass growing, and even with a baseball cap on and my dark-lensed aviators, too much light was still getting to my eyes. When I staggered in through the back door of Blue Days, a bed and breakfast toward the end of the beachfront property, one of the two owners was in the kitchen.
“Oh,” Dwyer Knolls said softly, scrutinizing me. “Are you all right?”
He was a nice guy; he and his partner had been some of my first customers, the first people to put faith in me and back it up with money, so I always made certain their property looked fantastic. Dwyer’s partner, Hiroyuki Takeo, did most of the watering, and he’d had the idea to take out the fence on the north side of the property and put in bamboo as a barrier. I hadn’t been sold on the idea, but it had turned out gorgeous, and now with how thick and lush the bamboo was, no one could see through it to the back patio. That had been Takeo’s whole plan: he wanted that area for him and his husband alone.
“K
elly?”
I lifted my head so I could see him without opening my eyes any wider. “Yeah?”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Because you’re actually gray.”
I staggered over to the kitchen table and sat down.
“Dwyer, do you—oh,” Takeo said as he breezed into the room. “Kelly-san, good morning.”
“He’s hungover,” Dwyer explained, reaching for Takeo, who moved quickly to his side and pressed in close. They were just gorgeous together, and seeing the love wafting around them normally put a smile on my face. But I had nothing in my stomach, my head was pounding because the Tylenol also hadn’t stayed down, and I knew I was dehydrated.
And all Takeo and Dwyer were doing at present was reminding me that I had no one to take care of me but a surly policeman who was as hungover as me.
“I see,” Takeo said, smiling kindly at me. “I will make you some ginger tea, and Dwyer will make you some eggs.”
“I’m making eggs now?”
“Yes,” Takeo answered him dryly.
“Why am I doing this?”
“Obviously, he needs the protein.”
I made a retching sound. “I can’t eat any eggs.”
“You can,” Takeo replied cheerfully. “You’ll see.”
I wasn’t convinced, but I did as I was directed, and the ginger tea, with some honey in it, did actually kill the nausea. He put a few drops of peppermint oil on a cool washcloth and pressed that to my forehead as he gave me a banana to eat. The fluffy eggs and plain toast—no meat, no grease—filled my stomach, and the water after that hydrated me. On my way out, Takeo gave me a fruit punch Gatorade and what I thought was a painkiller but turned out to be a B12 vitamin.
“Hydrate,” Takeo ordered as he retreated into the house.
“I actually came over here to check on the yard,” I told Dwyer as we stood together on the front porch.
“It’s okay,” he said affably. “I can promise you that he enjoyed that more than talking about the flowers.”
“He’s a natural caretaker, huh?”
“He is, yes. But you should go before he remembers that he wants to grill you about the new lawyer in town.”
I coughed, which hurt. “Why would he think I would know anything about him?”
“Because he’s the new partner of your best friend’s sister,” Dwyer explained slowly, likely in deference to my depleted state.
“Oh yeah.” I groaned. Takeo truly enjoyed playing matchmaker, and so far in Mangrove, he had two successful marriages under his belt: one straight and one gay. “So what, he’s gonna find the new guy a mate?”
He shrugged. “You never know.”
“Ask him to find a guy for Coz; he needs the help more.” The look I got was odd, like I was talking out of my ass or something. “What’s with—”
“The officer is not on Takeo’s radar at all. His latest vic—project,” he corrected himself, chuckling, “is Hutch Crowley.”
“I think Takeo should hook him up with Coz,” I said to make conversation, because truly, the idea of my beautiful friend with the sexy grocer made my stomach flip over with anxiety and it was finally feeling a little better. The only one Coz belonged with was… me. But since that wasn’t in the cards, it was useless for me to worry about it.
We were friends, brothers almost. To throw that away because I wanted him, however desperately, was the worst idea ever. He was so beautiful, tall and dark, and he haunted my dreams. Always it was us, together, in bed, and he was insistent, demanding, and I was gentle like I never was, and giving and…. but what was the point of that? In dreaming? In wanting? Because in the daylight hours, I longed to be closer to him, and if that desire turned to anger and eventually bitterness, it would become this wall between us. I feared that more than anything. It was better for me to pretend to be happy for him, to urge him to date, because if I actually saw him happy, I could be happy for him. I loved him more than myself, so I was almost certain I wouldn’t come unglued at his wedding and make the scene of the century. Mostly sure.
Dwyer scoffed. “No, the grocer has no designs on your policeman.”
“What?”
He turned to me. “Were you even listening? What did I say?”
“Yeah, I heard… but, you know he’s not my—”
“Of course he is,” he said dismissively. “Don’t be stupid.”
“I—”
“So apparently Hutch has confided in Takeo, now that they’re friends,” he barreled on, ignoring my protests, “that he’s tired of fucking anything in a tight pair of jeans and is ready to settle down.”
God, what was it with all the honesty about sex in the last twenty-four hours? “When,” I began after clearing my throat, “weren’t Takeo and Hutch friends?”
“When Takeo thought Hutch was interested in me.”
It made sense. Anyone in their right mind would be interested in Dwyer Knolls. He was tall, golden god perfection, but how in the hell anyone would ever extricate him from his even more breathtaking partner was beyond me. “And when was that?”
“When we first came here.”
“Which was right before me,” I said, smiling—but I stopped because it hurt.
“Yes.”
I had to know. “So Takeo is interested in the new lawyer for Hutch Crowley?”
“That’s my theory, yes, but this is Takeo we’re talking about. I could be completely misreading him. He said something about Mike Rojas the other day, too, but I wasn’t listening.”
“Huh.”
“What?”
“No, nothing.”
He studied me a moment before he smiled. “Try to stay somewhat in the shade today, and please, remember to hydrate.”
I thanked him again before I headed for my ancient rolltop Jeep. I was about to start my girl up when I heard the blare of a siren behind me. Looking over my shoulder, I was surprised to find Chief of Police Farley Porter parked behind me. Waiting as he got out and walked over to me, I twisted around in my seat to face him.
“Chief.”
His smile was warm as he stopped in front of me. “I need a favor.”
This was new. “Name it.”
“I need you to stop pissing off my officer and telling him to quit!” he barked, his demeanor changing instantly.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
He crossed his arms. “You and I both know that this town is not as sleepy and tiny as people tend to think. I need Renaldi because he’s military-trained and people respect him.”
“Yeah, but—”
“And I need Hadjian because he’s loyal and approachable. I need my men to complement each other, and they do now, but not if you keep screwing with my monolith.”
I sighed heavily. “He can’t get shot. Think of his mother.”
“I can’t promise he won’t, but he’s safer with me and Arad than he’d be anywhere else.”
That was true.
“But when you say something to him, he takes it to heart like he doesn’t with anyone else.”
“Oh, that’s such crap,” I groused.
He put a hand on my shoulder. “You have no idea.”
I leaned back in the seat. “I don’t want him to get hurt—I can’t live through him being hurt again.”
Coz had been lying in the shell of an exploded humvee bleeding to death, and I’d crawled through what I figured hell looked like to reach him. I hadn’t thought of the others as I did it, didn’t visualize the remains of men as being friends of mine at the time. Only later, in the hospital, holding his hand, barfing and hyperventilating in rapid succession, had my mind made that connection. Only then had I realized that the blood on me was not only Coz’s and mine.
“He needs to be good, do you understand me?” I rasped, my voice gravelly and low, the memories thick around me. I had visited each of the homes of my fallen friends before I returned to Coz’s side in Mangrove. First, before anything, when I got back to the
world, I had paid my respects to their families. Small tokens that I had from all of them—knickknacks, insignificant things, a bookmark, a keychain, whatever it was—had been joyously, graciously received.
“Kelly?”
“Do you get it?” I pressed, because it wasn’t only important, it was vital that he understood.
“I do, son.”
“Oh, don’t fuckin’ son me,” I growled. “Just—make sure. Have Arad be sure. Both of you—our family doesn’t work without Coz.”
He nodded like he was actually hearing me.
It was hard to explain, but I felt it whenever I was around Coz and Mia and their mother. I had never met Mr. Renaldi, but Agosto had been there long enough and had loved hard enough that they all carried him with them and their hearts were bigger because of it. But if they lost Coz, if Mia and her mother faced going on without him… I wasn’t sure they could.
“Or you.”
“What?”
He sighed. “The family doesn’t work without you either.”
“No, you––”
“Coz always says how important you are to all of them, especially him. You should give yourself more credit for what you did. You saved his life in more ways than just the one,” the chief insisted. “Coz never forgets to tell people that.”
“Well, he shouldn’t. He was the one who was—”
“He should,” the chief asserted. “He says, without you he was screwed over there. You had his back the whole time, and all he had to do was look at you and he’d know everything would be all right.”
“That’s a crock of shit.”
He shrugged. “What does it matter, as long as he believed it?”
I couldn’t argue with that.
“And it’s the same way now, which is why your opinion is the most important. What you think about what he does has the most weight. Do you understand?”
“I guess.”
“So can you lay off my officer?”
“Maybe.”
“I’ll take that.”
If you went in for ruggedly handsome men who, at first, you missed were hot but who, upon second and third meeting, you noticed had great veins in their forearms, crooked smiles, and hard, heavy muscle covering their bodies, then the chief was the man for you.
