“Stop. I have a sister in college who loves me and a mother in Vegas who hates me and they both need money to live. Just let it alone.”
I nodded.
Lazlo’s smile was seriously something, the way it made his dimples pop and curled his lip. Sexy wasn’t a good enough word. Breathtaking was a better one, though my Mike could give him a run for his money.
“Who wants to have a drink to my restraining order at The Lighthouse?”
“I’m buying,” Kelly announced, then started asking Lazlo about a custom-made wind chime for a customer.
We started down the street, back toward the seashore where most of the bars were, and I was enjoying listening to the two of them discuss what Kelly thought he wanted to install for a customer, when it hit me.
What had I thought?
What had crossed my mind?
It had been so fast, so fleeting, but still, the thought had been mine.
I was on the back patio of The Lighthouse when I had to grab hold of the railing for dear life.
“Wait,” Kelly said, chuckling. “I think someone is having second thoughts about a drink.”
“Oh man, I was only kidding.” Lazlo snickered. “I can’t drink in the middle of the day. I meant let’s have some ice tea or something.”
“Yeah, me neither,” Kelly teased. “It’s okay, lightweight; it’s actually just about the company, not the alcohol.”
What had I thought?
“Hutch?” Lazlo said gently. “Are you okay?”
“You look weird,” Kelly confirmed. “Well, weirder than usual.”
Had I thought…. My Mike?
“Maybe you should sit down,” Kelly offered.
“I think he might need some water,” Lazlo threw out, and then because we were all now standing at an outdoor bar, he yelled, “Can we get some water over here?”
My Mike? My Mike?! When had Mike Rojas become mine? And when had he gotten better-looking than Lazlo Maguire?
“You’re turning gray,” Kelly said worriedly.
I was going to hyperventilate.
“I think he needs to put his head between his legs,” Lazlo suggested.
I let Kelly lower me into a chair and bend me in half as I thought about Mike. When was the last time I had thought of him as separate from me? Why was I really bothered about all the women coming and going out of my guesthouse? And it wasn’t actually my guesthouse anymore, it was his residence? Mike’s residence, and had been so for quite some time, so why was I still thinking about it as mine? Yes, it was on my property, but if I rented it out, it would still be on my property, and in the past when I’d had other tenants, I didn’t think of it as mine, so what made it different now? What made the guesthouse mine again?
“Hutch?”
Unless the man inside of it was mine, and so therefore, so was the guesthouse.
“Shit,” I whimpered, feeling my face flush at the same time I got goose bumps from a sudden chill.
I could not be in love with my very straight friend.
“Hutch?”
Standing up suddenly, I made a quick excuse that I was nauseated from lunch, then brushed off their concern—and their hands—and was halfway down the street headed for home when I heard someone yelling my name.
When I turned, I found Mrs. Evanston of the town council charging toward me with her assistant, Emily Chapel. Both women looked distressed.
“A word, Mr. Crowley,” Mrs. Evanston called out.
I stood there, waiting, as the two of them reached me.
When people asked, I always described Mrs. Evanston as having the exterior of a sweet Southern matriarch and the personality of a Rottweiler. She was simply terrifying. In contrast, Emily Chapel only ever wore pink in various shades and even had carnation-colored cat’s-eye sunglasses with fuchsia lenses—glasses she had on at the moment.
“Good afternoon,” I greeted them, and Emily gave me a quick shake of her head to let me know that, without question, this was not going to be pleasant.
“What can I do for you?”
“Mr. Crowley,” Mrs. Evanston began, “I regret to inform you that I’m calling an emergency meeting of the board today on the grounds of fraud.”
“Fraud?”
“Yes, fraud.”
I sighed. “And what does this have to do with me?”
“Well, I can promise you that directly after our meeting you will be removed from the community center project.”
It was the fifth time they’d tried.
The first time they’d tried to remove me was because they said I didn’t have the correct building permits. It turned out that some more fees paid directly to the town council budget cleared that up.
The second time they tried to remove me was because large trucks were not permitted downtown in the middle of the day because it messed with traffic. What traffic, was my question, but whatever, I complied.
The third time was because I violated the noise ordinance by having the trucks move before nine in the morning. I got around that by waiting until one in the afternoon and having my guys work into the night. After the second week of the klieg lights turning night into day and the sound of workmen until eleven every night, they went back to letting me move the trucks in the morning. Better to annoy people waking up in the morning than during romantic beach dinners, strolls along the beach, and other various nighttime pursuits. Everyone on the town council had a service business they didn’t want impaired.
The fourth time, they didn’t think my construction manager was actually licensed in the state of Florida. Leya’s credentials shut them up.
So this was their fifth try. It was annoying to say the least, and I wished, as I did on occasion, that I had left the headache of building a community rec center to someone else. I’d gotten nothing but grief from the beginning. Since at this point, the outside was all built and we were at the putting in walls and toilets stage, there was no way for me to simply walk away.
I tried not to sound too exasperated. “I can’t be removed from the project, Mrs. Evanston; I’m the only one with any money.”
She huffed. “You can’t promise free food to the rec center, Mr. Crowley.”
I swear the woman was going to make me bald. Emily groaned as I raked my fingers through my hair, pushing it back out of my face and taking hold of it.
“Did you hear me?”
“I did, but I’m not really following you.”
“Mr. Timmons explained to us that you would supply the rec center with free food once it was built, and as such, people would know where the food came from and would take a very favorable view of you, so that when it came time for you to either run for mayor yourself or endorse a candidate, people would be easily swayed to your side. Mr. Timmons does not take kindly to that sort of fraudulent do-gooding and neither do we!”
I was going to kill Blake Timmons. “You realize, Mrs. Evanston, that the good doctor actually wants to be mayor.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Mr. Crowley, but I will tell you right now that I’m calling an emergency meeting of the board, and I plan to have you removed!”
“And if you have me removed, since I’m the one who financed the goddamn build in the first place, who precisely will take over?”
“I’m sure the mayor would be more than happy to—”
“You’d have to pay me for everything I’ve done up to this point, if you could even prove fraud to begin with, and—”
“Oh, I will! I won’t let you just ramrod your way into being mayor, Mr. Crowley! You may think you can bribe the good people of this town, but I’m not going to let you!”
“I’ll see you in court, you old bat,” I yelled.
Her eyes got so big I thought they were going to pop right out of her head. Emily started coughing really loudly.
“Well, I never!”
I growled and turned away from the two women, then headed over to the practice of Timmons and Hammond, the two pediatricians in town. We also had two internal medicine guys, one ob-gyn, three nurse-practitioners, four midwives, and a chiropractor. I was always hoping we’d get a dentist to move into town, but so far no luck; everyone still had to drive to Destin for that as well as any and all adult mental health issues. Child psychiatrist, we had that covered, as well as lots of lawyers. It surprised me how many we actually had: six in all. But one of them was Cosimo Renaldi’s sister, Mia, and I knew she’d love to help me sue the town council. But first, I was going to go beat the crap out of Blake Timmons.
He shared an office with Roark Hammond in a converted barn, and where the hay loft used to be, they’d installed a play area for kids, complete with a giant slide that curved around and dumped kids off into a giant sandbox. It was a beautiful, pristine white structure that kids and their parents enjoyed. That was lucky because there was always a wait… for Roark. Everyone in town loved Roark, who had moved to town from Detroit four years ago. No one, as far as I could tell, liked Blake, who was a legacy in town since his father, Sidney, practiced for more than forty years before him. The thing was, everyone knew Blake was a nozzle, and so no one went to see him. A town that should have been his had turned its back on him. It was so busy on Roark’s side that he had just hired another doctor to assist him. He’d tried coaching Blake into being nicer; we’d had many conversations about it when we used to be fuck buddies, back before Mike moved into my guesthouse. Then it became weird to be running off to get laid when Mike was home, alone, and needing a friend.
As I charged up the wide whitewashed steps to the enormous wraparound porch that was filled with rocking chairs and an outdoor checkers set, various people greeted me before I walked in. Blake was out front, eating an apple and leaning on the reception desk, when I slammed the door behind me.
He did the jolt of recognition thing and ran.
“You ass!” I yelled, bolting after him.
I slid around the corner—the polished oak floors were slippery and I was wearing wingtips—and had to grab at the archway molding to not go careening into the other room.
“Hutch?” Roark said as he walked out of his office with a patient.
I ignored him in favor of racing after Blake, grabbing hold of the banister to help launch me up the stairs after him, following him down the hall to his office, and then wedging my foot into the doorway before he could slam the door shut.
“You se-seem upset,” Blake stammered through the three inches of space my foot was allowing between us.
“You fuck!” I roared. “How dare you try and screw with my building! I’m doing this for the community, you selfish piece of shit!”
“Hutch!” Roark shouted from behind me as I leveraged my weight against the door, trying to get in, while Blake pushed with both hands, trying to keep me out.
“Stay out of this, Roark,” I barked. “It’s between me and your gutless partner!”
But he was suddenly there beside me anyway. “How does it look, you, a pillar of our community, trying to beat the crap out of a doctor?”
“I don’t really give a shit,” I snarled, shoving the door open wider, wedging my shoulder through the crack. “He’s putting my community center at risk with his petty bullshit!”
“Listen,” Roark soothed, hand on my side, stroking over my hip. “Why don’t we—”
“You’re acting like a child, Hutch!” Blake shouted from the other side of the door. “Think about how this must look.”
“You started it,” I growled back, giving a hard push that almost knocked him free.
“Hutch,” Roark said softly, hands on my sides. “Let go of the door, and I’ll have him come out and talk to you.”
I stopped pushing and Blake stopped resisting.
“I promise he’ll be right here.”
Straightening from my leveraged stance, I took a quick breath to try to calm down. “Let go so I can pull myself free,” I ordered roughly, the anger still vibrating in my voice.
“Okay,” he agreed from the opposite side of the door.
It opened just wide enough so I could step back, and then it closed delicately in front of me.
“There,” Roark said, smiling, turning me around so he could see my face. “See? Diplomacy works.”
I wasn’t convinced.
“You look good, by the way,” he said, his gaze roaming all over me.
Roark was pretty much stunning, himself, but I was not there for him and I was too annoyed to flirt as I stepped sideways and kicked the door. “Come out here, Blake, so we can settle this. I expect you to go talk to the council.”
I clearly heard the slide of a window opening.
“Sonofabitch!” I bellowed before I kicked the door open and saw Blake’s foot disappear outside. The bougainvillea trellis went from the second story to the ground, but I certainly wasn’t following him down that way.
Yanking free of Roark, I darted back to the top of the stairs and took them by threes. At the front door, I nearly collided with Essien.
“Hutch,” he said, surprised, automatically reaching for me.
“Hold on to him!” Roark called from behind me, but I guessed Essien thought he knew me better than Roark, so he let me go. I ran out onto the porch and leaned over it.
Blake hit the ground and started running.
“You better stop!” I threatened.
He didn’t even hesitate, just ran, which looked odd in his white coat, and I bolted by Ivy on the way down the steps.
“Do you need help?” she called after me.
“No, baby, I’m fine,” I answered before I took off in a sprint after Blake.
I could only imagine what the two of us looked like. How often, unless you were watching some kind of law enforcement drama, did you see a grown man chasing another down the street?
“Calm down, Hutch!” Blake called back over his shoulder.
I growled at him and he ran faster, trying to put more distance between us, but I was stronger and so started to close. We ran across town, behind buildings, down alleys, through backyards, around pools, through a cute house people were moving into, and finally, down the boardwalk.
I knew at that point that he was trying to reach city hall, but he swerved at the last moment to go to the police station. Since I didn’t want to be arrested, I leaped and caught him in a flying tackle. We flipped over the railing and fell hard down into the sand ten feet below.
I was winded, he was winded, and so we both lay there and tried to push air through our lungs. Soon after, I became aware of all the people above us and groaned.