Sultry Sunset

by Mary Calmes

  SULTRY SUNSET

  By Mary Calmes

  Mangrove Stories

  Hutch Crowley is well-liked in the small resort town of Mangrove—he’s got friends in his new neighbors, he’s the owner of the town grocery, and he’s building a community center—but he’s still unlucky at love. Every man he’s attracted to is either taken or simply not interested, including his best friend, Mike Rojas.

  When Mike came to Mangrove two years ago, Hutch gave him a job and a place to stay in his guesthouse, where Mike has remained ever since. Despite the rumors circulating about them, Hutch knows Mike is straight and looking for the right woman. But his friends disagree, and after some hints to the contrary, even Hutch finally has to admit that maybe the rest of the town sees something he’s been missing. If Hutch wants to spend each sultry sunset with the man of his dreams, it might be time to figure out what’s going on with his best friend’s heart.

  Chapter One

  IT WAS always beautiful in Mangrove. Even on gray, overcast days when it rained cats and dogs, even when the wind whipped through the trees and you could hear chimes ringing up and down the street, and even when nothing moved or stirred and it was simply a hot, sticky, humid mess, no one could look around and say the view wasn’t stunning. Having grown up in International Falls, Minnesota—before I moved to Boston for school and then to Buffalo to work—I appreciated the entirety of Florida but loved the sleepy little coastal town I called home. The days were warm, the nights were filled with stars, and I made sure to make time to watch the sun go down. Being outside should have made anyone happy, so hearing crying when I walked out my back door caught my attention.

  Peeking over the side of the fence that separated my backyard from my new neighbors’, I checked to see who was doing all the bawling, and it was then that I saw the girl. She was sitting on her back steps, face in her hands, with sobs absolutely racking her slight body.

  I didn’t want to be nosy, but when I turned away, she did the staccato breathing thing and began all over again. There had to be more from me than walking away. One did not leave a weeping, obviously needy angel.

  “Hey,” I called over to her.

  Her head snapped up and she almost choked on how much water she was producing.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, her voice thick with tears. “I didn’t mean to bother you.”

  She was adorable. Huge brown eyes, cute little button nose, dimples, and even though I couldn’t see it at the moment, I knew when she smiled that her face would light up rooms.

  “Honey, you’re not bothering me,” I soothed. “I just wanted to make sure you were all right, is all.”

  She nodded quickly.

  I smiled. “Anything I can do?”

  Quick shake of her head.

  “No?”

  “No, but thank you,” she said, which was nice.

  “Are you sure?”

  She bit her bottom lip.

  “Could I try, maybe?”

  She thought about it for a moment.

  “You can tell me whatever it is, I promise.”

  She took a deep, shaky breath, deciding all at once. “Okay, so… my dad’s in Miami closing up his office all this week; my cousin Debbie who was supposed to be watching me until he got here just left because she got a part in a TV pilot in Los Angeles; my aunt Genevieve who Debbie thinks was on her way here to take her place is actually in London on business; my mother died six months ago; and I think I just started my period.”

  Oh dear God.

  She hiccupped.

  I would not show any outward sign of concern, which would be no help at all, and now was not the time for sympathy. Crisis mode was needed. “Okay.”

  “So—” She started crying again. “I don’t know what to do and I can’t even get in the stupid house ’cause Debbie closed the door on accident but she was in such a hurry to leave that she forgot to give me the key and… I have no money and”—she sobbed—“I have no idea what I’m supposed to do about the blood!”

  But I, youngest of four with only sisters, that part I knew all about. After hopping the low fence easily, I started across her overgrown backyard with Benny, my black Labrador, trailing after me.

  Upon seeing the dog, she instantly caught her breath.

  “Oh,” I said, stopping, and Benny froze with me. “Do you not like dogs?”

  She sniffled and shook her head, wiping at her leaking eyes. “No, I love them. My dog, Rounder, he died last year.”

  Jesus Christ on a cracker. Poor kid was getting screwed coming and going.

  I reached her, held out my hand, and she instantly took hold. “My name’s Hutch Crowley.”

  “I’m Ivy Dodd.”

  “Nice to meet you, Ivy Dodd,” I said, smiling at her.

  She tried to smile for me, calming just a little.

  “So I live right there, as you probably guessed,” I said, pointing to my back porch, which she could easily see. “And did you notice that you have a dog door?”

  It was an odd change of topic, so she visibly had to process for a moment, but once she did, she whipped her head around and stood up so she could see the back door of the Craftsman bungalow.

  Most of the homes in Mangrove were the same except for a few Victorians, summer cottage styles; some Tidewater designed ones; and one or two like mine that were Spanish colonials. So whereas Ivy’s home was a single story, mine was two.

  “Oh yeah, I saw that when we moved in. My dad said we could get a dog first thing as soon as he got back.”

  I waited for her to get it.

  “What?”

  “It’s a big-ass dog door, right?”

  She nodded.

  “Mrs. Colby, who used to live there, had a Saint Bernard.”

  She still wasn’t following me.

  “His name was Chowder and I never really got that. Mike said it was because the dog was always eating, but that seems rude.”

  Apparently she was no longer listening. She reached out for my dog, and Benny—a slave to any and all kinds of affection—bolted forward, up into her arms so she could pet him and hug him and he could shove his wet nose into her eye socket, under her chin, and into her ear. The giggling was instantaneous and made me smile.

  “So?” I prodded as she leaned her head on my dog and just stood there, savoring the contact.

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you wanna maybe use the doggy door?”

  She still wasn’t getting it and probably because she’d never had to crawl into a house by way of one of them, drunk, at 3:00 a.m. I did not have that luxury.

  I arched an eyebrow for her. I knew I did it well because my brows had a natural tilt to them to begin with, which I always got lots of comments about. People just assumed I was a smartass.

  “Benny,” I addressed my pet.

  He stopped mauling my new friend and looked up at me.

  “Go inside.”

  After slipping around the girl, he bounded up the stairs and entered the house through the dog door. I did a slow pan to her.

  “Oh.” She drawled out the word. “Duh, I see.”

  “Okay,” I said as Benny came loping back since neither of us was in the house and he bored easily. “This is what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna go inside, wash your face, change your clothes, grab some paper towels, and make a pad out of them.”

  She was listening intently, which was kind of cute.

  “Then you shove that in your underwear, come back out here, and I’ll walk you to my store and we’ll get you what you need, all right?”

  Her brows furrowed.

  “Now, if you want, I’ll call the police, and one of the two deputies will come over and either follow us in their car or walk with u
s. I don’t want you to be scared, but again, I am your neighbor and my dog just slobbered all over you.”

  “Yeah, he did.”

  “And I’m saying we’ll go for a walk; I didn’t invite you over.”

  She nodded.

  “I don’t want you in my house anyway.”

  “Why not?” She sounded a bit offended.

  “’Cause it’s a mess right now,” I said honestly. “My cleaning lady only comes Monday and Thursday.”

  She seemed surprised. “You’re a grown man—you can’t clean your house by yourself?”

  “I could,” I assured her. “I just don’t want to.”

  “That’s a little bit lazy, isn’t it?”

  “Why don’t you mind your own business?”

  “You didn’t mind yours.”

  She had a point.

  “Okay, so, what, are you coming or not?”

  “Yeah, okay,” she agreed, getting up.

  “Don’t do me any favors,” I groused.

  “Aww, c’mon. I didn’t mean it.”

  I grunted. “So do you want Benny to go with you back in the house?”

  She gave me a real smile. “How come you named him Benny? That’s not a dog’s name.”

  “People always say that kind of stuff to me. Like pets are supposed to have names like Fluffy and Spot and crap like that. But tell me Benny doesn’t look like a Benny.”

  She scrutinized my dog, and he tipped his head sideways because she stared so long without doing anything else. When she laughed, he barked and I felt my chest untighten.

  “Yeah, he looks like a Benny.”

  “Told you.”

  They crawled through the doggy door one after the other, and once they were inside, I heard her scolding him. First there was “Ohmygod, Benny, don’t eat that!” followed quickly by a command for him to get off her bed, and “Put that pillow down!” They were going to be friends, I could tell already.

  I waited, and fifteen minutes later she came back outside in jean capris, a Lionel Messi T-shirt, and white Keds.

  “I like him too,” I mentioned, gesturing at her shirt as she met me on the stairs.

  “Yeah? You watch soccer?”

  “I watched the World Cup,” I told her. “My best friend, Mike, is really into it, and he made me sit there with him day after day and explained the rules.”

  “It’s different when you get it, huh?”

  “Yeah, it really is,” I agreed. “So I find myself turning it on all the time now. Is he your favorite? Messi?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. Most of my friends are all about Ronaldo, but I like Messi better.”

  “Do you play?”

  “I used to, back in Detroit, but I couldn’t get on the team at my new school in Miami and now that we had to move again—I mean, does Mangrove even have a girls’ soccer team?”

  “Of course,” I told her. “What kind of backwater burg do you think this is?”

  She gasped. “That was so patronizing.”

  “Oooh, big word.”

  And she laughed.

  It was a good sound.

  I WALKED her the fast way to my store, the Green Grocer, and gave her a quick rundown, promising to take her back by Cuppa Joe for an iced latte after we picked up her supplies.

  “Mike always just has coffee in there. Don’t you think that’s weird? Like the people who stand in line at Starbucks just to have regular coffee?”

  “You’re such a snob.”

  “What?”

  “And who’s Mike? You talk about him a lot.”

  I did not. “I do not.”

  “You said you guys watched the World Cup together.”

  “So what?”

  “And you smiled when you were talking about him.”

  “Hardly.”

  “No, not hardly,” she corrected, “like really. You smiled.”

  “Yeah, so what? Talking about your best friend, thinking of them, should make you happy. Don’t you get that way when you talk about yours?”

  She thought about it for a moment. “Yeah, okay, I guess that’s sound logic.”

  “Well, I’m so glad my thinking meets with your approval.”

  “Kinda sarcastic, aren’tcha?”

  I ignored the question.

  “And for the record, I’m a girl, and I don’t talk about my best friend as much as you talk about yours. Just so we’re clear.”

  “I’m liking you less and less,” I assured her, but the sound of her scoffing made me chuckle.

  “Doesn’t matter, you’re stuck with me now.”

  The confidence was good.

  I showed her Wick and Wand, the store where she could get special teas, tarot cards, and spells and amulets.

  “I think I might need to cleanse the house of Debbie,” she told me.

  “We’ll pick up some sage to burn,” I promised.

  She was excited over that idea, as evidenced by the way she took hold of my hand and squeezed it. I was surprised when she didn’t let go.

  “So what does your dad do?” I asked, to make conversation.

  “My father’s a fireman,” she explained. “Your chief retired and my dad is taking over.”

  I squinted at her. “Your father was a fireman in Detroit?”

  “He was a lieutenant and he had his own firehouse.”

  I nodded.

  “I know what you’re thinking.”

  I chuckled. “Do you?”

  “You’re thinking, ‘What is her big-time father doing in this tiny town?’”

  “Pretty much.”

  She sighed deeply. “My parents were divorced for three years before my mom died, but when she got sick, he moved back in with us to help take care of her.”

  “That’s really nice,” I murmured. “They must have been very good friends.”

  “They were. Even after she told him he was gay, they were all right.”

  I stumbled, and she turned to look at me, though she didn’t let go of my hand.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah, fine, good.”

  She nodded before continuing. “Dad had a really nice boyfriend for a while, his name was Seth. But he didn’t like that Dad wouldn’t tell people they were together, and then when Dad moved back in with us, he left.”

  Her father would kill her if he knew she was sharing his life story with me.

  “I felt bad because I could tell my dad really liked him, but I mean, if he loved him, he would have told people about him, right?”

  I cleared my throat. “I can’t speak for your father, sweetie.”

  Her face lifted. “What should I do?”

  “About what?”

  “Everything,” she whimpered. “Did you even listen to what I told you before?”

  “Well, yeah,” I said, making sure I was condescending, for her benefit. “Dad’s stuck, cousin’s MIA, aunt is late, Mom’s dead, and you just got welcomed to womanhood. I was listening. I always listen.”

  She stopped walking and just stood there staring at me for a long moment.

  “Should we maybe get to my store so we can take care of at least one of your issues?” I asked as I started walking away.

  “Yeah,” she agreed, moving quickly to remain at my side, slipping her hand in mine again. I would guess that normally, being as she was a teenager, hand-holding with an adult was not her deal, but at the moment, she needed comfort.

  As we turned onto Sunset, she let out a snort of laughter.

  “Yes?”

  “What kind of name is Sunset for a street?”

  “I think it’s pretty good. Ever hear of the Sunset Strip?”

  “Well, yeah, of course, but this ain’t that,” she said snidely.

  “How do you know? It could be just as exciting.”

  She scoffed. “Yeah, right.”

  “You’re awfully cynical for, what, thirteen?”

  “Fourteen,” she corrected. “And wouldn’t you be?”

  “Yeah, okay,” I admitte
d. “Now come on, let’s get in there.”

  “So which store… is… holy cow!”

  She, like most people, figured that a town like Mangrove, with a year-round population of only 11,200 people, was too small to have the supermarket I’d made. “You thought what? That I was taking you to a farmer’s market or something?”

  “Well, yeah,” she said, clearly in awe as the automatic doors whooshed open and we entered a tropical rainforest. She did a slow turn and then walked forward, deeper into the floral department, where one of my employees greeted her and welcomed her to the Green Grocer.

  “Thank you,” she murmured, clearly amazed.

  After the walk in from the parking lot, the floral department at the front of the store offered cool air for your skin and a treat for your nose. All the flowers smelled fantastic. When I’d redesigned the space after I bought it, it was one of the first things I’d changed.

  As we moved through the produce section, she took off her oversized bedazzled sunglasses and put them on top of her head. I loved the scalp-trimmed black hair; it looked great on her, made her resemble a pixie. “This place is amazing, Hutch,” she sighed. “You’ve got a soup bar and a hot bar and sandwich depot—how cute is that—and ohmygod, cheese!”

  We passed by the olive bar/olive oil station, the fresh-made hummus in every flavor you could want, the meat section with the fresh catch of the day, and the salad bar that was simply ridiculous. It ran the length of an entire aisle.

  “I’m a vegan,” she squealed happily. “This is fantastic.”

  I chuckled as I pointed out the bakery.

  “That whole thing is the bakery?”

  It was.

  “Is that cherry?” Her voice wobbled as she looked in the case. “My mom made cherry.”

  I tugged on her hand to get her moving, not wanting any more tears.

  “Is it okay if Benny is in here?”

  “Benny’s my dog,” I explained. “I allow Benny and service animals. It says so on the sign outside.”

  “It does not say Benny.” She laughed.

  “Oh yes it does. I’ll show you when we leave.”

  She beamed at me. “That’s awesome.”

  I pointed to the health and beauty aids. “Now you go get what you need, the bathroom’s in the back, and—”

  “How do I know what to get?”