“So you haven’t offered him the job yet? Does that mean I have a shot?” I sounded desperate, but it’s not like I looked professional anyway in my grimy T-shirt and shorts.
“Well, no, we haven’t offered it to him yet, though he knows he’s the leading candidate. Chain of command, you know. Everybody has to sign off on the hire. In fact, it’s kind of a funny coincidence, but his dad used to own this place.”
I cocked my head at her.
Landon frowned. “Max Kantera Junior is your video wunderkind?”
“I thought he was in development?” I asked Landon.
“He used to be, anyway,” he said.
“Oh, he’s terrific,” Marla said. “I mean, if you’re curious, I can send you the link to his reel. I don’t want you to feel bad. You’re very talented, but you’ll see he has just the right kind of experience.”
My curiosity overtook my ego. “Yeah, that would be great.” I slid my business card out of my phone case and handed it to her, since my resume with my contact info was obviously at the bottom of her pile. “My email is on there.”
“OK. So. Great!” she said. “Let’s set up a meeting and talk about what we can do for the house. When are you available?”
We worked out a time to meet. Free publicity help was better than no help, I figured. And I sort of liked Marla’s giddy enthusiasm.
By the time she left, the sun was well and truly down, and the pink twilight was deepening to purple. The bug crew was finishing up its work, and Milkweed Mansion looked like a giant circus tent, ready for tomorrow’s fumigation.
And I was in the weird position again of spending all day with Landon and then spending all night with him.
Only not in that way.
Even though I kept thinking about him in that way.
“Want to grab a bite?” he asked as we wandered to our vehicles.
The question was casual, but for some reason, a spike of panic shot through me. Because being with Landon was becoming less and less casual. We were sharing intimate space, working together, talking more. He was no longer the annoying roommate I never saw. He was the guy who was helping me turn my life around, and that felt really weird, especially after the last guy I’d entrusted with my future had totally fucked me over.
“I’ve got to run over to my mom’s,” I lied.
Or maybe it wasn’t a lie, because I suddenly really needed to talk to her.
“OK,” Landon said with a smile. Only it wasn’t the Fireworks. Did he feel my unease? Did he have his own?
“Thanks, though,” I said.
“No biggie. I should check in with the guys anyway. They think I’ve dropped off the face of the earth.” Dropped off the Bohemia Bar Planet, you mean. I tried to imagine him doing the rounds, partying, hitting on all the girls, and my tummy flipped. Did he really do that, or was it all in my imagination? “Kayla? You OK?”
“Huh? Yeah.” I nodded emphatically. “Sure. See you later.”
“I’ll round up some tools tomorrow morning and maybe a few friends, and then I’ll meet you here. Time to tend the garden.”
There wasn’t anything less sexy than pulling weeds on a hot September day. Except, as he drove off and I got in my car, all I could think of was Landon in the garden, naked as Adam on the first day in Eden, beaming his smile at me like the first ray of sunshine.
Chapter 11
In the morning, I went to town with the loppers around the edge of the garden, about as far from the pipes of death as I could get, since the exterminators were well into their fumigation by the time I got to Milkweed Mansion. They were wrapping up and leaving me with the giant circus tent around the time Landon showed up.
“Hey,” he said casually, setting down a chainsaw, a shovel, a small handsaw and some other stuff. “You look like you’ve been rasslin’ porcupines in the holler.”
“Gee, thanks. And this is not a holler.” I made a couple of warning snips with the lopper.
“I take it back!” He grinned. “What have you gotten done so far?”
“You can’t tell, can you?” I looked around. “I actually whacked a ton of these vine things, but there are so many.”
“Cape honeysuckle. It’s terrific for the hummingbirds and butterflies, but it’s a total pain in the ass. Maybe we can just trim it back to the fence. We don’t have to eradicate the whole thing.”
“I’m pretty sure we can’t eradicate the whole thing unless we nuke the site from orbit.” I lopped off a few more stems. “I didn’t hear you come in last night.”
“That’s because I didn’t.”
“Oh.” I started clipping more aggressively, and small orange flowers fell around me. Snip. Snip. Snip. Where was Landon last night?
“Are you drinking water?” he asked. “It’s pretty hot out here already.”
“Of course.” Though I hadn’t been drinking much. I’d been too obsessed with making a dent. Maybe it was the power of suggestion, but the heat seemed to crank up a notch. A wave of dizziness hit me, and I swayed a bit.
“Whoa! Sit down. Here,” he said, grabbing my arm and leading me to a concrete bench that had somehow survived the years.
“I’m fine.” But I did feel kind of sick. Where did Landon spend the night?
He handed me my Wonder Woman water bottle, and I took a big drink.
“How’s your mom?” he asked.
“My mom?” Oh, yeah. I’d told him I was going to visit my mom. And I’d tried. “Turns out she took my grandma to bingo. I just missed them. So I hung out with my Aunt Ginny instead, and she hooked me up with the loppers.”
“Always good to have loppers, as long as you use their power for good and not for evil.” He shot me the Fireworks.
I laughed weakly and took another drink.
“Matter of fact, I got most of these garden tools from my dad’s personal shed,” Landon said. “I ended up just staying there last night after dinner. I was so damn tired, I fell asleep on the couch, and by the time I woke up, it was three in the morning. So I just stayed till morning since I didn’t want to wake you. I must’ve just missed you at the apartment.”
“Oh, yeah. You must have.” I was feeling a little better. “I thought you were going out with the guys last night?”
“School night. They all had work in the morning and didn’t feel like it, so I went to my folks’ instead.”
Funny. I was feeling a whole lot better now. I took another sip, stood and grabbed the loppers. “Hey, have you gotten those skeleton keys yet?”
“Not yet. Slow shipping. We should have them in a few days, about the time it’s safe to go back into the house.”
“Awesome. I really want to see what’s in that library closet.”
“So do I. Hey, I asked a tree guy to come out and look at that one leafless oak halfway between the house and the road. It doesn’t look very happy. I’m pretty sure he’s going to cut it down.”
“A dead tree might be atmospheric for the haunted house.”
“Not if it falls on your haunted house.”
“There’s that.” I frowned. “Isn’t it really expensive to cut down big trees?”
“They owe me one. I refer him business all the time. And he wants to be on the plaque.”
“We’re going to have to melt down the statue in Ponce de Leon Square to have enough brass for this plaque, I think.”
Landon laughed. “Hopefully not. Oh, look. The cavalry has arrived.”
I looked up, expecting to see a squad of Landon’s Known Guys or at least a tree expert, and instead I saw an unlikely crew of a woman and a man in their twenties in shorts and T-shirts, bearing garden tools. “Who’s that?”
Landon shot me an expression that suggested I might not like the answer.
“Hey, Landon!” The pretty blonde hugged him first. The guy just shook hands with him, and then they looked at me. “And you must be Kayla,” the blonde said warmly.
I began to realize who this was as Landon gestured to the pair. “I ran int
o Annabel on a job we’re doing with her company — ”
“Her dad’s company,” I said without emotion. My dad’s company.
“The family company.” Landon winced. “Anyway, we got to talking about Milkweed Mansion, and she said she wanted to meet you.”
“So did I,” Andy added. “I hope you don’t mind, but — honestly, we had no idea you existed until we read the will. And we want you to know — ”
“No hard feelings,” Annabel said. “Or rather, I hope you don’t have hard feelings, because we really would like to get to know you. I mean, you’re our sister.”
I was really, really tempted to sit down again, or maybe fake a faint, like one of those women in the historical romances I liked. But my curiosity somehow overpowered my shock and the years of bitterness that had made me hate my father and resent the other life that I knew, deep down, he must have had.
Here was a big part of that other life. My stepsiblings. Two of them, anyway.
“I — I’m — I’m not going to say I’ve never had hard feelings,” I admitted. “But I don’t have any hard feelings against you. How — how do you feel about all this?” I gestured to the circus tent and the oak-studded tropical jungle.
Annabel chuckled. “Bless your heart, Kayla, but I’m glad Dad left you something, and I’m glad you’re doing something with it. Honestly, I don’t think I’d have the fortitude.”
A half smile touched my lips. I liked Annabel’s forthrightness. “Well, that’s something. Are you really here to work on this? I thought you had a company to run.”
“I told Landon I’d like to help out. This might not be the best way I can help you — I can probably donate some skilled labor when you really get into the renovation — but for now, I thought this might be a nice way to meet.”
“And SpaceX owed me a day off,” Andy said. “I didn’t want to be left out.”
“Oh, cool. You work for them?” I asked.
“I’m an engineer. Love it, but it’s a ton of hours.”
“Rocket launches are one of the coolest things about living here, aren’t they?” I was genuinely excited.
Everyone agreed with me, and the ice thawed noticeably between us as we talked about launches we’d seen and how Andy got into the space business. After a few minutes, Landon got them going on clearing a couple of overgrown paths, and I went back to trying to train the honeysuckle into a hedge while Landon used the chainsaw to cut down small nuisance trees.
It was hard to talk during all the noise, so I got into my lopping. By the time Landon’s saw stopped, I’d drifted a ways away from my stepsiblings, and he wandered over to me.
“So where’s my other stepbrother?” I asked him in a low voice. “And why didn’t you tell me they were coming?”
“I hope you’re not angry, and I’m sorry for springing them on you, but they’re actually really cool people, and I wanted you to meet them. I thought it might be better this way. Anyway, it’s no surprise they’re cool if they’re related to you.”
“Ha. Flattery will get you everywhere.” I stopped lopping, wiped my brow with the back of my arm and squinted at him in the dappled sunlight. “I’m also related to Junior, who Gary said was a tool.”
“He is a tool,” Landon said, and I laughed. “Not sure if you want to hear this … ”
“What?”
“Max Junior is apparently pissed you got the house. He wanted it, once he found out you got it. Apparently none of them knew their dad even owned this place.”
“Why in the hell would Junior want this money-sucking black hole?”
“I think he’s the type who wants All The Things.”
“Well, he’s getting my job, apparently. The one I applied for.”
“Has Marla sent you his reel yet?” Landon asked.
“It wasn’t in my email this morning.” I shrugged. “Not that it matters.”
“It matters,” Landon said. “What you want matters. I’m mighty curious myself about his heretofore unknown video talents.”
“Oh my God,” I said, looking over Landon’s shoulder. “Is that him?”
We and my stepsiblings all looked up at the new arrival, a guy in a slick suit with a product-enhanced haircut who stepped out of a Porsche SUV and surveyed the grounds.
For the record, if I could ever afford a Porsche instead of my ancient Toyota, a hand-me-down from Aunt Ginny, it would be a goddamn sports car. A Porsche SUV? What’s the point of that?
Anyway, it was clear Max Junior was not dressed for gardening.
He strolled over, exchanged muted greetings with his siblings and Landon, then scanned me with an unmistakable look of judgment on his face.
“So you’re Daddy’s little love child,” he said.
Annabel gasped, and Andy said, “Max!”
I was too mad to be shocked. “I’m pretty sure love didn’t have much to do with it. I assume you’re Junior?”
“I go by Max,” he corrected me.
Which is why I called him Junior.
“If the will hadn’t been so clear,” he said, “I’d be challenging you in court for this place.”
“Stop it, Max,” Annabel said. “This is all Kayla got from Dad. We got decades of his love and time.”
I swallowed hard, wondering what that must have been like.
“Super,” Max said dryly. “Well, I just wanted to see for myself. And I’ve seen enough.”
With one last cold look at me, he spun on his heel and headed back to his Porsche.
Junior was completely absurd. Was his dad — my dad — that much of a jerk?
“Later, bro!” I shouted as Max got to his car. He glowered as he slipped behind the wheel.
Landon coughed, covering up a laugh. “I’m sorry, guys, but — ”
“I know,” Andy said. “I’m sorry, too.”
“He misses Dad.” Annabel was obviously more forgiving of Max’s contempt.
“It’s OK,” I said. “I can’t really get that wrung out over being dissed by your brother. My brother, I guess. I don’t know him. But I’m glad I’ve gotten to know you a little bit. And you’ve done a hell of a job clearing the path.”
“We’ll do more, I promise,” Annabel said. “This is crazy, but I’ve always wanted a sister. Please don’t be a stranger. I mean it.”
Her sincerity got to me a little, or maybe it was the pollen. But I sniffed and let her hug me, and I hugged her back. Andy shook my hand, and the siblings headed for their car while Landon wrapped an arm around my shoulders and squeezed.
“Are you upset?” he murmured as they drove off.
“Weirdly, no.” I leaned into him with a sigh. “It’s strange to just suddenly have relatives materialize out of thin air.”
“Like ghosts come to life?” I heard the smile in his voice.
“Yeah, kind of like that. Do you think Max is going to make trouble for us?”
“If he does, Annabel will kick him in the teeth. But we’ll have to keep an eye on him just the same.”
I sighed. “I was afraid you’d say that.”
Chapter 12
The house would be inaccessible for three days. The bug guys left generator-powered fans running to circulate the nasty stuff inside the house, which we heard dimly as we attacked the garden outside the circus tent. With the help of some of Landon’s Known Guys — a crew of real landscapers, not my stepsiblings — we managed to get the worst of the overgrowth under control.
Landon’s tree guy came, too, and using a crane and ropes and gymnastics worthy of Ringling Brothers, they took down the dead oak in pieces.
“That was a hell of a tree,” the crew’s leader, a grizzled guy who looked almost as old as the oak, told us after I’d thanked him profusely. “It probably would’ve lived another hundred years or so, except I think it got struck by lightning.”
“That’s a shame,” I said. “Look how wide the stump is!”
“Five feet at least,” he agreed. “We’re out of time today, but if you want us t
o grind it down, I have an opening next week.”
“Not yet,” I said. The remaining pillar of wood wasn’t just wide; it was at least four feet high. I glanced at Landon. “That might be a great base for some sort of Halloween structure for the haunted house. It could help us do something really big, don’t you think?”
He shook his head in amusement. “You’re more artistic than I am. Unleash your artist friends on it and see what they come up with.”
We didn’t plant anything new in the cleaned-up garden, but I asked the mowers to keep one particularly happy patch of milkweed and other wildflowers intact for the butterflies. I liked the idea of using native plants as much as possible. And this was Milkweed Mansion, after all.
That said, once we cleared the vines from the area outside the back door, I found the remnants of a patio and a rose garden. Tough bushes clung to life, and some even still bloomed. One of the landscapers showed me how to prune them properly, and I found myself with a new obsession. I wanted to figure out what kinds I had and which roses I could plant to fill the holes. So in the evenings, I spent what little energy I had left looking up antique rose varieties on my laptop while Landon zoned out watching sports on television. After being together all day, we were weirdly quiet in the evenings, but it was a companionable sort of quiet. I realized that even at night, this was the most I’d ever seen my roommate.
Friday, I checked my girlfriends’ online message group, and everyone was buzzing about the haunted house, thanks to Sloane. Ez was in there, too, along with Penelope, a fabulous costume designer; Millie, who ran an event-planning business; Cali, a photographer and Sloane’s cousin; and Thea, a graphic artist who made cool sculptures out of paper.
Ez: Can we paint the whole house black?
Me: Not an option. We wouldn’t have the time or money anyway.
Ez: But that would look cool.
Me: [eyeroll emoji]
Sloane: We need stuff that’s cool but also fast and low-budget. Ez, maybe you can be in charge of the music?
Bohemia Chills Page 7
