Killian
Some guys drink when they're pissed off. Some guys get into fights. Me? I build shit.
So in the past few days since Lily fired me – more importantly, since I kissed her in the back of the store – I built a fucking porch. Or, to be more accurate, I'm almost finished building a fucking porch. I'm in the process of putting up railing on the sides. It wraps around the front of the cabin, following the entire length, which is pretty damn impressive for a weekend of work, if I do say so myself.
That says a lot about how pissed off I am.
Or about the giant case of blue balls I have, thanks to that girl.
I definitely should let this thing with Lily go. There are a million reasons to let it go: she has baggage, I don't even fucking know her, the whole kid thing. . .
Lots of reasons.
I chug a glass of water and survey my work from the side of the porch. Maybe I should build a deck behind the house too when this is finished. That will take my mind off of things. Things like the taste of her lips when I kissed her, or the moaning sound she made, low and primal, as she melted into me.
I hear a car headed up the road, the crunch of tires on gravel and dirt. Hardly anyone comes up this far, so I pause to watch the truck come into view.
Luke climbs out of the truck, a six-pack in hand. "Thought you might need some help."
"How'd you know what I was doing?"
Luke shrugs. "Just figured you were working on the cabin. Autumn has Olivia on a play date over at June's, so I was just hanging out. You need to get a phone up here."
"I like the quiet."
"You want help or not?" Luke asks. He pops the top of one of the bottles with an opener on his key ring and passes it to me.
"If you want."
We drink our beer in silence for a while, moving around the porch as we work on the railing until Luke finally speaks as he pounds a nail into the wood. "I saw that thing in the Gazette."
I groan. "You drove all the way up here to get on me about that?"
"Nope. I mean, well, yeah, obviously. They quoted some girl who said she was going to make the coffee shop her new study spot so she could study the guy working behind the counter."
I shrug. "What can I say? I've always been the good-looking one in the family."
Luke laughs because he's the one who's always been the one women fall all over themselves for. Even back when we were teenagers, Luke had a way of picking up the popular girls in school who wanted to slum it with someone from the other side of the tracks. I've always been as far from that as you could get. People in this town were always afraid of me. And women don't ogle me.
"Are you going to tell me what the fuck the deal is with you working there?"
"Nope." I take a long drag of my beer. "And I'm not working there anymore, so there's nothing to tell."
Luke hits a few more nails into one of the railing pieces. "I went in there Saturday."
"Yeah?"
"Yep. The owner was working."
"Oh yeah?" My voice sounds less than nonchalant.
"Cute girl," Luke says.
I shrug. "Didn't really notice."
Luke laughs. "Sure you didn't. It was pretty busy in there, you know. She looked like she could use some help."
"Yeah?" I take another drag on the bottle. "I'm sure she'll hire someone."
Luke grabs another piece of lumber and, for a few minutes, the only sound is the two of us hammering. "It would probably be good for her business if that someone she hired was you."
I grunt my response. It might be good for her business, but hell if it's good for her. I'm not the kind of man she needs, some guy living up in the woods by himself in a cabin. The problem is that I have to fight with every ounce of willpower within me to stay away from her. That's not something I've ever had to do with a woman before.
Which is why I'm building a fucking porch instead. And a deck. Hell, at this rate I might even build another cabin.
"Did you come all the way up the mountain to grill me about working at the bakery?" I ask. "You're worse than the old women in this town."
Luke laughs and sips his beer. "Are you fucking with me? I wouldn't come all the way up here for something as stupid as that. I came up here to talk to you."
"Talk to me? You're not dying, are you?"
"Fuck. No, I'm not dying, thanks for your concern."
"I didn't say I hoped you were dying. I just asked if you were."
"I'm going to ask Autumn to marry me."
"Cool."
"That's all you've got to say?"
"Obviously, congratulations. I thought you'd already asked her."
Luke sighs. "No, I haven't fucking asked her," he says. "It's a big deal."
"I just thought, since you're living together and all, and there's the baby. Hell, I didn't know you hadn't asked her yet."
"I'm not doing it yet," Luke says. "It'll be a few weeks until the ring gets here."
"Okay." Why did my brother drive all the way up here to tell me this now?
"I'm going to do it with everyone there. You and Elias and Silas and River and Tempest."
"You that concerned she's going to say no, so you want us as witnesses?"
Luke laughs. "No. I want you there. Even though you're a morose asshole, you're still my brother. And Autumn is tight with River and Tempest."
"Uh-huh."
"You've been avoiding people since you got back."
"By people, you mean Elias and Silas?"
"We've gotten together three times in the last two months for dinners and you've missed all of them."
"So they sent you up here to guilt trip me?" I shake my head as I take a swig of beer. "Do you see this place? I've been busy. And I have been to dinner with them since I've been back."
"Yeah, when you and Elias were sniping at each other," Luke says.
"That's how it's always been with the fucking twins. We get over it."
"So now you get over it," Luke says, "because tomorrow, we're going to Elias' house and you're going too."
I groan inwardly. "Alright, alright. Enough with the guilt. I'll be there."
"How is the cabin coming along?" River asks. She's perched on the edge of the sofa, looking…well, like a movie star. There's no hiding that, no matter how down to earth she is. She's beautiful, but it's not her looks that set her apart from the rest of us. It's the way she carries herself. Regal almost.
"Good." I nod. "It's good. Everything's good."
"You've said 'good' three times now," River points out.
"We invited Cade and June too." Elias walks over to join us. "You met them before. They have a couple of kids."
Great. More kids. Autumn and Luke's kid is tearing around River's place like a miniature wrecking ball. So far, all I've learned about kids is that they don't like it when you play fetch and they're basically like tiny tornadoes that destroy anything in their path.
"So you're staying here," Silas says, his eyebrows raised. "Permanently."
I shrug. Why am I getting the fifth degree here? I'm sitting on the sofa starting to feel like I've been set up on one of those intervention shows or something. Killian Saint, we're beginning to be concerned about your lack of interaction with other humans. We've arranged for you to go to spend time being nice to people all day long.
That would be my own personal hell.
"We're all back in West Bend for good," Silas notes. "Who the hell would have thought that would happen?" He puts his arm around Tempest and she practically beams at him.
Then June and Cade arrive with their kids, and all hell breaks loose as the kids noisily tear into toys on the floor. It's loud and chaotic as Luke brings out plate after plate of food while we're seated around a big farmhouse table in River and Elias' dining room.
"Who would have thought the Saint boys, West Bend pariahs and assholes extraordinaire, would have landed such awesome women?" Elias asks, raising his beer bottle in a mock toast.
"Language," River wa
rns, glancing at the kids at their small table a few feet away.
"I'll drink to that," Silas agrees, "but Tempest landed me, so it's really the other way around. I was the catch."
Tempest slaps him on the arm.
Looking around at everyone laughing and talking, I get that same pang of something that I got before at Luke and Autumn's place a faint sense of longing for what I've been missing.
I've never had anything like they have. Even Luke, who's always been a runaround, seems perfectly content with Autumn. They're all living normal lives with people they care about. I thought I was smart, keeping people at arm's length. Maybe I'm the stupid one here and they're the ones who have it all figured out.
Then June's boy walks over and grins up at me.
"He likes you," June says.
"Obviously his sense of judgment is impaired," Elias jokes.
"Hey, kid." He squints, apparently scrutinizing my beard. Alright, maybe this kid thing isn't so bad after all. Then the kid gets a weird look on his face.
And vomits all over my lap.
"Oh, shit." June rushes over.
Never mind. The whole no-kid no-wife solitary lifestyle is definitely a win. And vomit-free.
16
Lily
"Mommy isn't upset, Chloe," I reassure her as I turn down Main Street toward the bakery. "I'm just trying to think of all the things we have to do."
"You're frowning. When you're upset, you get those lines in your forehead."
"What?" I glance in the rearview mirror. Oh God, she's right. When did I get so old? There are lines in my forehead the depth of canyons. I should get some face cream or stop worrying about the bakery all the time. Either one would probably work. "I'm not upset. I'm just concentrating really hard."
"Okay, mom. I don't look upset when I concentrate."
Touché.
There's a lot to be stressed out about when it comes to the bakery. It hasn't been doing badly. Our numbers are steadily improving, but those rough couple of months when we started means I maxed out both of my credit cards to keep us afloat. And that's not counting the small business loan I took when I bought this place.
Nobody said running a business was easy, but that freezer is the most recent of my problems, since that little noise it was making turned into a bigger noise yesterday afternoon. As of last night, it was still running when the handyman stopped by to look at it. His diagnosis was that it was old and I needed a new one as if I have extra cash lying around the bakery for a new freezer.
My heart skips a beat when I pull into an empty space in front of the store, because I recognize the truck parked outside. When I test the bakery door, it's already unlocked. Opal and Killian's voices drift from the back, clear as day.
"Miss Opal! Hey Miss Opal, I want to tell you about the caterpillar I found yesterday!" Chloe bounces through the front of the store and disappears into the kitchen, the door swinging on its hinges behind her.
Even though I know Killian is here, I still stop short when I reach the kitchen and see him. He's wearing a jeans, work boots, and white t-shirt, sweat causing it to cling to his muscles in places. Basically, he looks like he stepped off the pages of Super-Hot Repairmen Magazine. That explains the surge of heat that rushes through me at the mere sight of him.
Opal clears her throat. "Before you say anything –"
My gaze lands on the tools in Killian's hand. And the freezer door that's off its hinges and propped up against the far wall. I look back and forth between Killian and Opal in disbelief.
"Now, Mr. Saint is fixing the freezer," Opal says, "because he's kind and generous with his time and came down here to help out." She speaks each word slowly and carefully like she's speaking to a child, her eyes boring into me, her message telegraphed loud and clear: don't yell at him.
Chloe directs her attention to Killian. "I beat East doing my math problems in school the other day, even though he said I wasn't going to beat him because I was too slow. Just so you know . . . because you didn't think I could do those math problems."
"Well, shoot." Killian winks at me. "You sure proved me wrong, didn't you?"
"I did," Chloe says, matter-of-fact. She holds out her empty palm and looks at Killian expectantly.
Killian looks up at the ceiling, pretending not to remember their bet, before sliding his hand into his pocket and retrieving his wallet. He hands Chloe a dollar bill. "It's all I've got. That's worth four quarters. Now you owe me some more math problems – if you can handle it."
"I can handle it for sure," Chloe says, her voice firm. "Miss Opal, I found a caterpillar in its cocoon today. Mom helped me get a stick and put it in a jar so we could watch it. It's going to change into a butterfly, you know."
"Is it really?" Opal asks. "Why don't you come out to the front and we'll have a tea party and you can tell me all about it?"
"I will tell you all about it. Mom, can I have cookies?"
"You can have cookies and juice. No soda."
"Mo-om," Chloe whines. "It's pretend champagne. Because we're fancy."
"You shouldn't be drinking pretend champagne at a tea party anyway." I glare at Opal. "Opal, no fake champagne. Or soda."
Opal shakes her head as she rounds the corner from the refrigerator, a plate of cookies in her hand. "You know, in my day, they used to give children soda. Said it was good for them."
I cock my head to the side. "I didn't know they had soda in Paleolithic times."
"Burn," Killian says.
"Paleolithic means dinosaurs, right?" Chloe asks. "Miss Opal wasn't alive when dinosaurs were on the earth. Were you? Humans weren't alive then."
"Your mother is making a joke," Opal explains. "Unfortunately, her sense of humor isn't that well-developed. Now, make sure to eat a bunch of cookies before you go home, so you have lots of energy for your mom. And we'll see what soda we can find. The extra-sugary kind, I think."
"Opal!" I yell as she whisks Chloe out to the front of the store. Then I stand there, alone with Killian.
"Opal called me," Killian says, his voice gruff. The sound of his voice, low and gravelly, sends goose bumps along my arms.
"Opal called you and you just dropped everything and came here?"
Not more than a minute after she left, Opal pokes her head back through the kitchen entrance. "I popped my head back in here to tell you I'm taking your child to my house. She decided she'd rather do a real tea party. I didn't hear any screaming yet so I