2. Nova
9 lives . . . Friskey’s . . . Cat Chow . . .
“Nature’s Love,” I murmur to myself, scanning the back of the bag over the list of ingredients like I have any clue what half the words mean. “Hmm . . . Could be a strong contender.”
The lady down at the other end of the aisle—Mrs. Frank—side eyes me like I’m speaking in tongues and I’ve grown a second head.
“Sorry,” I wave, shaking the small bag of cat food at her. “Trying to decide which one will taste the best.”
Her eyes widen in horror and a second later, she just pushes her cart away, staring at me with concern over her shoulder.
Well, shit.
And . . . now she thinks I eat cat food. Good job, Nova.
“He’s a stray cat, Nova. Buy the cheap bag.” I start to grab the off-brand, but in the end, I roll my eyes with a huff and pick up the one that said it was all-natural.
Damn cat’s going to drain my wallet.
Creamsicle, as I’ve dubbed him because he’s a light orange, is one of the stray cats that lives behind my grandparents’ inn. He’s elusive and an asshole, but I want nothing more than to hold him.
So, I’m baiting him in the off chance I can catch him unguarded.
We don’t get a lot of stray animals on the island, but the ones we do get multiply. Before long, we’re swimming in cats and dogs with no end in sight. It’ll be cold in a couple months and I don’t want to think about Creamsicle outside all night while I’m inside, all nice and warm. He’s had a hard life. His ear is damaged and he’s got a scar above his cat eyebrow.
Just makes me sad.
I carry my tiny bag of cat food up to the cash register and, of course, there’s a line. In a small village like this, everyone goes to the same place to do all their grocery shopping. It’s an hour ferry ride back to the mainland, so unless it’s something you really, really can’t live without, we mostly just go to the local Quick Mart.
I know most people on the island. I just moved here, officially, six months ago, to help Gran and Pap run the inn., but I spent most of my summers here, growing up. They’re older now, and they can’t keep up with things like they used to. Mom and Dad thought I was crazy, leaving my life in Portland to come out to Port Nova, they refuse to help, so . . . here I am.
Not sure which is worse. No help at all or my help.
I’ll get back to you on that.
“That’ll be twenty-four-ninety-five.”
I stare at the teen cashier, almost not registering what she said.
“Ma’am.”
“Sorry.” I shake myself, reaching in my bag for my wallet. “I was taking a nap, I guess.”
Where the hell is it?
I rifle through various art supplies, random gum wrappers, a hairbrush, even though I can’t brush my wild hair while it’s dry . . . a freaking screwdriver. But . . . my wallet’s not in the conglomerate of bullshit thrown in my purse.
“Sorry, it must be buried.”
My cheeks flame as I hunt the wallet down, but just as I find it, a big, strong arm comes out of nowhere, handing over a fifty.
“These, too,” a gruff voice sounds entirely too close to my back.
I pause, both mortified and exhilarated as the I stare at the man who must have gotten tired of waiting on me. He’s tall—a giant compared to my normal person height.
And handsome.
He’s impossibly handsome.
Holy shit.
“You don’t have to do that,” I stammer, before I can control myself.
One of these days, Nova, you’re going to learn how to interact with other humans. Especially hot ones.
“I’m paying you back,” I declare, attempting to open my wallet.
It’s then the man fixes me with the full weight of his stare. His chocolate eyes bore into me as if he can reach into my mind and read every single thought I’ve ever had. I swallow, the sting on my cheeks from how hard I’m blushing making me hot.
He’s terrifying. Almost feral in the way his black hair is tousled. Like a sexy lumberjack that part-times as an underwear model for chainsaws. Is that even a thing?
Should be.
He has a stubble on his face that tells me he doesn’t shave a lot, and a scar across his cheek that looks like it probably really freaking hurt when it happened.
He probably didn’t even notice it.
The way those brown eyes flash, as if he’s calculating something, makes my heart beat a little faster.
I don’t know this man, which means he’s a newcomer.
He also reeks of shellfish.
He’s a lobsterman.
“It’s fine,” he grumbles, looking down at my pitiful wallet, dirty from years of abuse and covered in llamas.
It was a phase, okay?
The girl rings up the man’s stuff and tells him the total, but even though I should totally leave, I stick around because . . . well, I don’t know. To thank him properly?
“Well, you’ll be making a bunch of stray cats very, very happy,” I say, my words coming out rushed due to the weird electricity coursing through me.
It’s strange . . . I don’t know this man, yet, for the first time in years, my body seems to remember it can find another person attractive.
Oh, what a fine time for this to happen.
He nods once, as if dismissing me. “Happy to be of service to you and your cats.”
Great. He probably thinks I’m some crazy cat woman, surrounded in my home by litter boxes and hair balls.
“Can you two flirt somewhere else?” Mr. Roberts—an old, crotchety man snaps from behind us and I jump, quickly grabbing the bag and hauling it up to me.
I was not flirting.
I turn to thank the mystery man again, but he’s already pushing past me, toothbrush in tow. I hurry after him, hoisting my cat food up in my arms and overworking my legs to keep up with him, but he doesn’t slow.
“I didn’t get to say thank you,” I pant, slightly out of breath because who the hell can run with a giant bag of cat food and not feel a thing? It’s only thirty pounds, but it may as well be three hundred. He probably wouldn’t even bat an eye, having grown used to lifting heavy lobster traps out of the Atlantic.
“You did.”
Did I?
“You shouldn’t feed the stray cats.”
“Oh, so they can’t be hungry, too?”
“You feed them, they make more. Then everyone else has to deal with your mess.”
Okay . . . he may be hot, but he’s an asshole.
“So? They can kill the mice.”
He raises a brow at me. “So, cats matter, but mice don’t?”
My temper flares and for a split-second, I debate throwing the bag of cat food at him and stalking off, badass movie heroine style, but I don’t. I need this cat food if I want to help Creamsicle. “Are you always this rude, or is today a special day?”
“Just pointing out the flaws in your line of thought.”
We reach the inn and I wonder if he’s staying here, but before I can find out, I’m spotted by Beth and beckoned to come around to the back.
Great. Our shipment from the mainland is probably here.
“Well, thanks again for the cat food,” I tell him because I know he’s getting annoyed with my thanking him. He stops, turning back to me with that same indifferent look, but those dark eyes remain. Almost like he’s . . . haunted by something.
“Maybe next time, you can insult my grandmother while you’re at it.”
Then, I turn and leave him standing on the sidewalk out in front of the inn. I have things to do that involve not getting berated by hot strangers.
He wants to be a flaming asshole.
Fine.
Two can play at that game.
“No, Gran. They were out of pistachios.”
“Well, Pap won’t like that.”
“Just tell him all the nuts are stuck on a boat in Portland, so we’re waiting on them.”
Gran sighs. I swear my grandmother has gotten more melodramatic in her older age.
Not that I envy her. I wouldn’t tell Pap his prized pistachios won’t be arriving until next week, either.
I swear, he eats so many, he’s in danger of turning into one.
“Let me tell him,” I offer, but she shakes her head, accepting her grim defeat.
“No, I’ll tell him. You just know how he is.”
“Old and cranky?” Manto, our cook chuckles from the grill and Gran nods enthusiastically.
“You married him,” I point out, chuckling as I mash up more mashed potatoes.
“I sure did.”
“Nova!” Tara, Manto’s fiancé calls from the kitchen door of the inn restaurant where I’m attempting to help Manto catch up for the night.
Mark my words, the moment we get the funds, we’re hiring a second evening cook.
Maybe.
“We need help at the bar,” Tara chimes, her face flushed and her black hair shiny in her ponytail. It’s hot and while Gran is in a sweater and sweatpants, we’re all running around like walking heat strokes.
Internally, I want to scream because I hate Friday nights at the inn. Well . . . I love them because I love this place, but I hate how I can never seem to catch up. It’s like the entire town flocks to the restaurant and bar attached to the rest of the building and everyone brings their extended family along for the ride. I’ve been running non-stop since four when I dropped the cat food off in Pap’s office and took over for Beth, the morning manager.
Life of an heiress of an old inn on a tiny island in the Atlantic. Never glamorous. Not easy. Sometimes, fun.
Honestly, though, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. It’s home. Always
The Port Nova Inn has been a center for the community since Pappap and Gran bought it when they were my age. Mom grew up here. I spent nearly every summer here. It’s my family’s entire legacy and I’m due to inherit it when Gran and Pap think I’m ready.
Too bad I don’t feel like I’ll ever be ready. With Pap getting older, the building is starting to fall into disrepair. We do a pretty good job of keeping it hidden, but the place is in desperate need of some TLC.
Unfortunately, I have no idea how to replace busted floorboards. How to fix busted electrical sockets or the broken furnace that needs repaired before the winter.
Guess I’ll just add it to the list of things that keep me up at night.
“On it,” I tell Tara. She nods quickly, disappearing out the door she came from with a tray of food.
“Go,” Manto says, giving me a smile. “I’ve got this.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m the best chef this town has ever seen. Of course, I do.”
I can’t help but laugh. As far as patience goes, Manto is a saint. He’s never stressed about being busy. He’s never too tired to push through. He’s steady and that’s something Tara needs after a life of really unsteady men.
“Thank you,” I breathe, moving towards the door.
“And drink some water,” he calls after me. “You’re flushed.”
I’m more than flushed. I’m hot. It’s been a scorching month on the island. Luckily, the breeze coming off the Atlantic helps to cool it down, but it doesn’t do any good in the inn. I think the AC is broken, but unfortunately, I don’t have an HVAC certificate that tells me what the hell to do with it.
The internet will only get you so far.
Out in the restaurant, the place is packed. It’s dinner rush and everyone’s laughing, eating, drinking. One thing I will say about the Port Nova Inn— what we lack in décor and working air conditioning, we make up for with the food and cheer.
Burgers, sea food, chocolate cake that came straight from Gran’s Gran’s recipe. I’m sure I gain twenty pounds every night, only to sweat it out by the time my shift is over.
“Okay, Matt. What can I help with?”
Matt is our bartender. He’s young, probably in his thirties and he came to the island a couple years ago. No one really knows Matt’s story, other than he just showed up and asked for a job, one day. Pappap was looking for a new bartender and Matt fit the bill. Now, he’s here.
“I need a smoke.”
“Go. Take a break.” I can tell he’s tired judging by the line of customers at the bar. Every seat in the building is full, tonight.
“You’re the best.”
“Don’t forget it,” I call as he hurries away.
Part of running the inn is knowing how to do every position. I’m a bartender. A cook. An accountant. A waitress. A housekeeper. A painter. A carpenter. The list goes on.
Trust me.
“You feed that cat?”
I freeze, the voice I haven’t forgotten ringing in my ear.
Oh, no.
Slowly, like I’m about to face a firing squad, I turn taking in those chocolate eyes boring into mine with the heat of a thousand suns. He doesn’t smile, but he doesn’t look away from me, either.
That gaze could burn civilizations to the ground.
When my eyes land on his hands, dancing over the sweat from his bottle of beer, the bottom falls out of my stomach and every moral I have runs away to hide.
Unfortunately, so do I.
“Nova,” Tara snaps, having followed me to the back. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Hiding under the kitchen window. What’s it look like I’m doing.”
“Nova Leigh, stop acting like a crazy person. We’ve got customers.”
“I can’t go back to the bar. I can’t Tara and if you make me do it, you’re a horrible friend.” My mouth moves faster than my mind and I replay every painstaking millisecond of me just making a fool of myself and darting away like my ass was on fire.
“Nova,” Tara orders, voice low. “Speak.”
“Hot cat food guy is here.”
Her eyes light up. “Where? I want to see him.” She cranes her neck to peer over the kitchen window to the restaurant beyond, so I tug her back. “Stop ogling him. He’ll know we’re talking about him.”
“Nova, why the hell are you hiding under the window like the FBI’s here to get you?” Katelyn, another waitress and a friend of mine who moved here around the time I did, pops into the kitchen, empty tray in hand.
“She’s got a crush on the hot guy at the bar.”
“What hot guy?” Manto asks and I swear, if my cheeks get any warmer, they’ll melt off.
“Everyone shut up,” I grit and Tara laughs.
“Get up. He probably thinks your cute. What’s the problem.”
“That’s exactly the problem,” I snap. “I look like I just climbed out of the sewer to steal a child in the dead of night.” Not to mention, he practically told me I was the scum of the earth for buying hungry kittens food. I mean, what kind of monster?
“Come on,” Tara says, pulling me from my hiding place and towards the door. She reaches up, smoothing my frizzy hair down in its bun. “You’re still cute. You’re hot. Literally and figuratively. Men like a little sweat.”
“I have the pit stains of an oil rig worker.” “Oh, you do not,” Tara laughs. She swats my ass and practically shoves me towards the hall to go back to the front. “Just be friendly. He’s a guest.”
“He’s a nuisance.”
Friends. I have a hard enough time making friends with the cats out back.
“I’m never forgiving you for this,” I murmur, shooting daggers at her over my shoulder.
“Have fun,” she giggles.
I return to the dining room, meeting his darkly amused eyes with a roll of my own.
“Come to lecture me about the moral discrepancies with feeding hungry wildlife?”
He cocks a brow, but otherwise, his expression doesn’t change.
“I came to enjoy a beer and decent company, but it seems all I could find was you.”
“Okay . . . rude . . .”
He doesn’t seem to care, but I didn’t expect anything less. I mean, who is this guy? He comes in out of nowhere, stays at my family’s inn and he has the audacity to insult me.
“Maybe we got off on the wrong foot.”
“Do you have any right ones?”
My mouth falls open and I start to tell him just how big of an asshole he is when that devil may care smirk comes to his face.
Oh.
Oh . . .
“I don’t like you.”
“Good.”
Okay?
I stand there, staring at him like an idiot.
“Anything else?” he asks, that indifference in his tone something that gets under my skin.
“Yeah,” I say. “As a matter of fact, you don’t deserve a cat’s affection.”
He tips his beer back and I struggle to keep my eyes from following the bob of his Adam’s apple. I swear, he makes even the smallest act of taking a drink look like a live porno.
“You speak to all your guests like this?”
“No, just the rude ones.”
He chuckles darkly and the hair on the back of my neck stands up.
Suddenly, the inn is a sweltering temperature mirroring the center of the sun.
“I take it this inn is yours.”
“It will be.” And just because I don’t have anything to do with my hands, I put another beer on the bar in front of him. “It’s my family’s.” Something about that must be amusing to him because he smirks, swallowing half his beer. If I did that, I’d be so drunk I’d forget my name in no time.
I fill a couple orders, all the while avoiding that gaze of his and finally, Matt steps back into the bar and I feel the cooling sense of relief wash over me.
It’s also the same time Mr. I hate cats decides it’s time to go, too.
Without a word, he slowly rises from the bar, pulling out his wallet. I have half a mind to apologize for the way I acted— I don’t speak to people that way, but with an amused smirk he tosses a couple twenties down on the bar, tips his hat and makes his way towards the exit.
I want to say something, but Katelyn interrupts to tell me the old washer in the basement is on the fritz again.
So, I just stare as he walks away like a crazed maniac. That is, until he pauses at the doorway of the bar, turning back to throw a wink at me over his shoulder before disappearing out to the inn.
“God, he is hot,” Katelyn murmurs, her cheeks as flushed as mine.
He is. He’s also an ass.
“You alright, Nova?” she asks, narrowing her eyes on me when I don’t respond.
“Yeah,” I murmur, brushing off the lingering feeling near heat stroke from that single wink. “I’m going to check the washer.”
I make my way into the inn’s old basement, complete with creepy crawlies and a portal to hell, but it’s not the darkness of the back corner that stops me. It’s the strange, eerie lightness in my stomach making my veins feel like they’re strapped to an electric fence.
The mysterious fisherman. I don’t even know his name. Something about that is amusing.
Whoever said fixing drywall was easy is an asshole.
It’s not easy.
In fact, it sucks and I hate it.
I mix the goop, slather it on the wall, only it just falls right through the hole in one of our bedrooms on the second floor. It’s been unoccupied since a family stayed back in May because their kids threw something at the wall and the drywall crumbled.
“I need a damned maintenance man,” I grumble, searching for the instructions I printed off this morning to read them over for the hundredth time.
Yep. Mix, slather, repeat.
“I did that,” I grit, tossing the paper aside.
“That’s not going to work.”
I practically jump through the ceiling when the voice chimes behind me. I whip around fast enough to make myself dizzy to see the mysterious cat-food hero standing in the doorway.
He’s got that same look on his face—indifference, but he’s also looking at me like I’m an idiot.
I certainly feel like one right now.
“I can handle it.”
He shakes his head, stepping forward and ignoring my scowl. He steps up to the hole, swiping his finger through the leftover gray slop that didn’t fall through the hole as if it’s icing on a cake.
“You need sheetrock. You’re wasting your time.”
I cross my arms over my chest. He may be hot, but he’s not very polite.
Jokes on him, I don’t even know what sheetrock is. “Excuse me?”
“Drywall. A sheet of drywall?” He looks at me like I’m from another planet.
Maybe it’s the way his shirt hugs his shoulders or maybe it’s the dark look in his eyes. Maybe I’m just crazy, but there’s something about this man that sets me on edge. Like a fairground ride you’re not sure is completely safe to ride, but you do it anyway because it draws you in with its hot butt and impeccable face scruff.
Okay, I’m getting off track.
With a deep, disappointed sigh, he steps over, mixing around my concoction with the scraper.
“This is too thin, too. Who taught you how to do this?”
The internet.
“Who said I know how?”
“So, your plan was what? Keep going until you filled the hole from the ground up?”
What. An. Ass.
“Actually, the plan was to pretend to be illiterate until the nearest narcissist comes to my rescue.”
He goes quiet for a moment, eyes narrowed on me, and we stand there in a kind of face-off.
He started it.
“Guess you better pretend a little longer, then.”
Without another glance, he turns and strides out of the room. I roll my eyes at his exit, but then the hole in the wall catches my eye and panic spirals through me.
If I can’t get this fixed, we can’t rent out the room. If we can’t rent out the rooms, the inn will be closed. If it’s closed, Gran and Pappap—
“Wait!” I hurry out into the hall, but he’s nowhere to be seen. “Well, dammit.”
A throat clears behind me and for the second time in five minutes, I nearly have a heart attack.
I turn around and he’s standing there, leaning against the wall beside the room with a subtle smirk hiding behind that cold exterior.
“Do you have a truck?”