Chapter 6 Caleb
Caleb
“Check this out.” Hazel shoulderchecked me, sliding over her phone.
She had Star Falls’s Instagram account up, loaded with pictures from last night’s gala. “Shit.” I tried to hand the phone back, but she wouldn’t take it.
“Look,” she demanded. She was a bossy little thing, probably thanks to growing up with boys.
With her slight frame and golden-red hair—and the temperament to go with it—she’d had to work her ass off to prove herself more than just a pretty face.
Given her gruff attitude ever since she’d been back, she still believed she had to.
But she’d long ago proved herself to me.
Tired of waiting on me, she leaned in and scrolled for me.
I took in the pics with a groan and lowered my head, banging my forehead to my kitchen table a few times.
“Trying to give yourself a migraine?” Hazel asked mildly from across the table, sipping the cup of coffee I’d made her.
It was dawn, and I wanted to still be in bed, especially since I hadn’t been able to fall asleep until a few hours ago. Fantasizing about a woman I’d once wanted to strangle was a mindfuck. “Why are there pictures?”
Hazel looked at me as if I were a very dim bulb. “A hot local celebrity in a tux at a fancy philanthropic gala giving the keynote and making three hundred and fifty people laugh and fork out tens of thousands of dollars for charity? Of course there are pictures.”
The two of us had a standing weekly breakfast, which we’d started when she’d come back to Star Falls earlier in the year. We usually had it at my house, because of the two of us, I was the one who made the better coffee and enjoyed cooking breakfast.
Hazel leaned back in her chair and eyed my kitchen. “Love this little place,” she said quietly. “It suits you.”
I’d bought the house last year, a small but proud beacon of rustic charm, nestled between a bunch of vineyards and ranches.
Its gray-and-white exterior that had been softened by time and the elements was contrasted by the vibrant green rolling hills that stretched out in every direction.
The wide wraparound porch, where I sometimes sat with a beer in hand after a long day, ran the length of the house.
And just beside it sat a weathered windmill, left over from a long-ago owner before he’d sold off the bulk of his land.
It stood guard over the house, blades slowly turning in the breeze.
It was my first real home of my own, and I loved it ridiculously.
But because it was still dark oh thirty, I couldn’t stop yawning.
Calvin and Klein, lying at our feet, yawned too, Klein adding a dramatic yowl at the end just to make sure we all knew he was there, under the table, waiting for scraps.
“Stop, all of you.” Hazel fought a yawn and lost. “It’s contagious.”
“I’m exhausted.”
“Oh, is dancing all night hard then?”
“I didn’t dance all night.”
After snatching her phone back, she swiped through the pics, before stopping on one of me on the dance floor.
With Emma.
“Aw, look at you, smitten as a kitten,” she teased.
Smitten. That was one way of putting it. Somehow, the more Emma Sumner aggravated me, the more attracted I got.
I’d clearly lost my mind.
“Who is she?” Hazel asked.
“Emma Sumner. Went to college with her. She’s the architect liaison for the Henderson project.”
“Small world.”
I lifted a shoulder.
“You going to fall in love and walk into walls the way Ry does now every time Penny looks his way?”
I choked on my coffee.
Hazel cackled and slid to sit on the floor to hug my ridiculous dogs, who both tried to crawl into her lap. “I’m going to enjoy watching you fall on your face with this Emma.”
I shook my head. “You’re mean in the mornings.”
She shrugged unapologetically. “My coffee hasn’t hit yet.”
“You ever going to tell me why you’re back?”
“You know why. My dad had a heart attack,” she said.
“A very minor one, months and months ago, and he’s good now.” I nudged her. “Admit it—you missed us. That’s why you’re sticking around.”
The tomboy rolled her eyes, then concentrated on stroking my dogs into two puddles of melted pleasure. “I’m…working on some issues,” she said softly. She lifted her head to look at me. “You could, too, you know. Work on your issues.”
“I don’t have any issues.”
She laughed. And okay, so did I. Then she nudged my dogs off her lap and went to the counter to add another two heaping spoonfuls of sugar to her coffee. “Okay,” she said. “Maybe I’m not all the way ready to deal with my issues.”
“You okay?”
“Sure.” She shrugged. “Just, you know, living the life.”
“Haze.”
There was an awkward silence that had never existed between us before. “I’m sorry we didn’t hire you for the Henderson job,” I said.
She shrugged again. “It’s fine. I get it. I burned a lot of bridges with the way I left.”
“Not with me, you didn’t. You’re family, no matter how much time goes by without a word.”
She winced, and I quickly said, “I didn’t mean that as a diss—”
“I know, and you’re family to me too. And I get why you didn’t hire me. No hard feelings.”
“It wasn’t about you. It was—”
“Ry’s promise to my mom. My and my dad’s inability to get along. I get it.” She shrugged. “I’d probably have done the same thing.”
“If it were up to me—”
She turned to face me, gratitude in her eyes. “I know. I also heard that you guys hired Ricky Herman yesterday to do the finish carpentry. But seriously? We went to school with that asshole.”
“Yeah, and he’s still an asshole.” We’d used him before, and he was a true master of the craft, but he was also derisive and always spread his bad attitude around. “Unfortunately, we were between a rock and a hard place, and his price was right.”
“Welp…” She gave me a bright smile. “Maybe next time then.”
“I’ll be fighting for you. Maybe you could help the cause and get along with Bill, yeah?”
She shrugged, then smiled, and it was closer to her real smile. She grabbed her purse and lifted her mug. “I’m stealing this.”
“Just add it to your collection.”
She laughed, because we both knew she had nearly all my mugs by now.
I walked her to the door. “Same time next week?”
“Unless a better offer comes along,” she said.
I tugged on her hair like I’d been doing since we were teens, and she did as she’d been doing forever—slugged me in the arm. Since I’d been the one to teach her how to hit, I manfully sucked it up and didn’t so much as wince.
Hank appeared in the kitchen doorway, thankfully not in his birthday suit, as he liked to be. I was pretty sure he did it just to wig me out. It was working. Somehow he’d gotten his pants on. His shirt was inside out, but I was still stunned. “Nice.”
He seemed mighty proud of himself as he turned and smiled at Hazel.
One of the few people who knew the hell of my childhood, she didn’t smile back. “Hello, Hank.” She held his gaze for a long beat, then went up on tiptoes to kiss me on the cheek before leaving.
Hank gave me a tough crowd look, and I almost laughed. Better than getting mired down in the memories I’d buried deep. “We gotta go. Nell’s got some breakfast-for-seniors thing going on at her house, and she wants you there.”
Twenty minutes later, I pulled up in front of Nell’s house to find her outside, chatting with Ryder and Penny, who were practically glowing like someone had cranked up the sunshine and threw glitter on them.
Ry had a dopey, lovestruck grin plastered on his face, the kind you usually see only on a puppy chasing its tail.
Penny was all wide-eyed and smiley. They were practically shooting heart-shaped laser beams out of their eyeballs.
Seeing Ryder truly happy for the first time in his life was worth everything. Their connection was easy, comfortable. Real. And deep, deep down, where I usually keep my sarcasm, I wanted what they had—a ride-or-die. I wanted it bad.