15. The Offer
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Offer
H e heard her before he saw her. Her boots crunched through the dry grass that had shot up sometime in the past week, yellowed even more recently. He admitted he was a little preoccupied, hadn’t noticed much about his land in the past few days.
Well, that was about to change.
She wasn’t using the path they’d inadvertently made over the summer, instead blazing her own. The result was not unlike a rhino charging towards him out of the brush when she finally emerged, looking wild-eyed and pissed as hell.
Okay, a baby rhino. He bit back a grin.
Paige charged up to him, her finger extended.
“You fixed my doorbell,” she accused, the finger waving in his face.
“No charge, ma’am, just doing my civic duty,” he said, the smile breaking free. His weight rested on a shovel he’d been using to tend to a small patch of land he wanted to turn into a fall vegetable garden.
“Sarcasm doesn’t become you,” she shot back, her hands on her hips. Now he let the smile take over, showing teeth and all. He liked needling her, couldn’t really say why, except she looked like hell and he thought he might know why.
“I disagree,” he said.
He flexed his pecs, his biceps, as he crossed his arms over his bare chest. The shovel fell to the ground with a light thud, but she didn’t flinch. Instead, her eyes never left his chest.
Owen knew he looked good, that the summer of hard work on even harder land had fleshed out his muscles, but to see it etched on her face, her jaw open while she unapologetically stared, was too much. He almost laughed aloud.
“You made it too loud, too… something,” she said, shaking her head, apparently recovering from his purposeful torture. She wasn’t looking at him anymore, instead stared at the ground like the pumpkin seeds he’d just planted had sprouted around her feet.
“I think what you meant to say was ‘thank you.’” She squirmed, crossed and uncrossed her arms, kicked at the dirt. “If you don’t mind, there’s some pumpkin embryos under there I don’t want messed with too much.”
“Sorry. Thank you. I meant to say that first, but you distracted me.” Was he right in thinking that her apology sounded a little like a growl?
“You’re welcome. And sorry for the distraction. I’m just working on my garden.”
He shrugged like it was no big deal, picked up the shovel and stuck it in the ground point first. She flushed crimson, no longer paying any attention to the gardening tools. He was moderately pleased at the inadvertent accident of running into Paige the first time after breaking up while he was wearing his tightest work shirt. It beat being caught in the sweats he’d worn the first full day.
“So, um, you’re growing pumpkins?” She was back to avoiding looking him in the eye. Or the chest. He bordered on smug as he watched her fidget.
“Yep. Spaghetti squash and kale. Ooh, and brussels sprouts.”
“Brussels sprouts, huh? I didn’t peg you for a veggie kinda guy,” Paige said. Her eyes raked over him now, a shy smile twitching the corner of her lips. Dammit if it didn’t remind him of her looking down at him like that, her small, strong legs straddling him, both of them naked and engaged in a tug-of-war of who’s-on-top.
He hoped he could pass off the color in his cheeks from the heat, but there wasn’t anything he could do about the bulge pressing against his jeans.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” he said, his voice just above a whisper. He hadn’t meant for it to come off so serious, but his chest constricted as he thought about all he’d lost. He’d wanted to share so much about himself for the first time, but now, he shoved all of that back into the corner of his brain under the sloppily scrawled heading of “forget-and-move-the-hell-on.”
“Owen,” Paige started, but he cut her off with a brusque clearing of his throat.
“Anyway, how’s your dad?”
“Fine, thanks. They’re keeping him overnight for observation again, but he should be released sometime tomorrow. He’ll be on light duty for a little while. Couple weeks most likely.”
“I’ll take care of the farm while he’s out of commission.”
“I don’t think anyone’s expecting that, Owen. We’ve got Brad, and…” She trailed off on her own this time and he wondered where she was going with that line of thought. There wasn’t anyone else. Farm life was hard on a good day, and most of the time folks could barely hold their own, let alone lend a hand when a neighboring farm needed one.
“Why is it so damn hard for you to just say ‘thank you’?” His hands settled back on his hips, but Owen had no intention of trying to draw attention to himself anymore. Now he was just pissed. What was it with this woman? Why was she so hell-bent in shoving people aside, him especially?
“I just don’t want you thinking you have to,” she sputtered. “Not after you and I, well, you know.”
Her voice trembled, and while a strong part of him wanted to reach out to her, soothe her, the other, more dominant part of him, didn’t care anymore. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. Guilt beat against his chest like a beast trying to break free.
“I don’t. Your dad’s done a lot to help me get on my feet and I’ve got the time this season. Not everything’s about you, Paige.” He yanked his shovel out of the ground, pulling so quickly and so strongly that it dislodged from the dry earth and half flung him back towards his house. He grunted and stormed off towards his patio. He no longer cared that it was just before noon.
He needed a beer, dammit.
“Thank you again for fixing my doorbell,” she called after him, her voice weak. It was the one part of her that he’d expected to bounce back immediately after the surgery, but it never had. He wasn’t sure how much of that was physiological and how much could be blamed on fear it would all come crashing down around her again.
He’d never know, would he? They’d always just be the hot fling she’d had on one of her trips home, followed by the neighbors that awkwardly waved at each other from their own land. The path that had worn down between them over the course of the summer would grow back, all but erasing their brief, but important to him, affair.
He threw up a hand, not wanting to turn around for fear that the heat pressing against the back of his eyelids would spill over. Like hell he wanted her to see him like that.
At his back door, though, he snuck a look in her direction, her head bent down, her chin to her chest, hands in her pockets. She still looked like a hot mess, but now it wrenched at his heart like it hadn’t back there. She looked sad, small. Like the disease she fought hadn’t left her unscathed.
Jesus, she was still killing him but there wasn’t any reward. What the hell kinda deal was that? He took off after her, cursing under his breath the whole way down the dirt path that led directly to her door. It was shut already, but he rang the bell, cringing when he heard the trill like he was standing under the goddamn dinner bell at basic training. Sheesh.
He’d set out to buy the most obnoxious ringtone the hardware store had on the shelf, and he’d doubled over with laughter when he’d tested it. But that was before he’d found out she was at the hospital with a drunk brother and an injured father.
Hearing it continue to build until he actually winced with pain at what it might sound like inside, he made up his mind. He’d replace it, dammit. He’d started out wanting to help her fix what she couldn’t, but he’d let his emotions get in the way. Again.
He rang it again when she didn’t come down—because where else could she be—but when he heard tires tearing through the gravel along the side of the house, he jogged over just in time to see the silver bumper of Paige’s mom’s car enveloped in a cloud of dust.
Shit. He threw up his hands in the air, waved them in his face, to keep the cloud of dust from his face.
Too late, per usual. He didn’t want to alienate her entirely, he just couldn’t be with her, not when she wasn’t sure she belonged in Banberry. Not when he was so sure he did. It was a recipe for disaster, but that didn’t mean he didn’t still care about Paige. In fact, he doubted that part of him would ever go away.
Ugh. He was toast. Apparently, not unlike Paige’s driveway, which he noticed had two deep ruts torn through when the dust settled.
Damn, they needed more rain. The valley hadn’t had any moisture since the day he and Paige’d gotten pinned down on the ridge. That was a long summer without water; it didn’t bode well for the upcoming fall or winter, either. He ran a hand through his hair, the dust from the day rough on his fingertips.
Owen made the quick trip down the path to his house to where he’d left the shovel, point down in the dry ground. He snatched it up and jogged back to Paige’s driveway, intent on at least making right what he could.
When he was done raking and shoveling the rocks Paige had ripped from their place in the drive, Owen didn’t stop there. Before he realized it, he’d been to town and back and the obnoxious doorbell hung from its guts. The one Owen bought to replace it had a nice, gentle sound, a trill that let the homeowner know they had a guest without alerting the whole neighborhood as well.
Honestly the first one was more Paige. Loud, obnoxious, really let the world know she was there. Not that he’d ever tell her that, though. He laughed, screwed in the cover plate over the new bell.
Thinking of the way her delicate fingers would touch the bell when she got home, he tested it himself. He could barely hear the chirp that might as well have been a songbird as an electronic gadget.
In that way, the new doorbell was as much Paige as the old one. She was complex, so many versions that all added up to the miraculous woman he couldn’t shake. For crying out loud, he still went out of his way to make her happy, even knowing there wasn’t a future for them.
He sighed, bending down to pick up the box, the old hardware from the ground. When he stood up, Owen’s eyes landed on the ladder that still lay prostrate next to the barn. He closed his eyes, imagining what it must have been like for Marge to see her husband working one minute, then laying on the ground, helpless, the next.
He flashed back to images of Paige falling off the horse, of her slide down the hill, of the hospital visit that changed all their lives—hers the most.
That moment, the one where he’d thought he’d lost her, flickered back and forth behind his eyes each time he blinked. In fact, it was the nightmare of almost losing Paige that had replaced those from Afghanistan now that she was gone, unable to help him stave off the demons. The irony was anything but humorous.
He understood the pain her mom must have experienced thinking she’d lost her husband.
Before he could think twice about it, Owen stood by the barn, then up on the ladder, inspecting where Alan might have been working before he fell. A screw bent half out or in its hole. Owen tilted his head back. What had Alan tried to do? The shutters and window lay on the ground. It seemed like Alan had a plan before he’d fallen, but he couldn’t figure out the damned puzzle.
He scratched his head, dry grass and a few pieces of dirt falling onto his shoulders.
It was a faulty shutter system, which was as simple as getting a new set of wood to screw into the siding. But it wasn’t that simple. The window and the siding didn’t fit right, either. He could replace the whole thing, but he doubted the old oak that faced the north slope of the farm could withstand the surgery it would take to make that happen. He’d have to replace the whole siding, and at that rate, he might as well level the barn and start over.
Again, Paige came to mind when he thought of the whole thing falling down around him so he could start over and fix it from the ground up.
He shook his head, walked faster.
Owen shot up the stairs into his closet to get his less-used tools, the ones he only took out when he needed to do a bigger project. He found a box with his drafting tools and some flat carpenter pencils and hoisted it from the back of his closet. Shit. He’d tweaked his back. He put his hand against the wall, his breath exacerbating the pain.
Dammit. He wheezed, unable to fill his lungs with oxygen and pressed his hand to the small of his back where the tweak pulsed. Same place as earlier in the summer. Same place as the first injury in Afghanistan.
Twisting back and forth twice, he was pretty sure that he’d be okay in a day or two. Though experience told him he’d need a couple Tylenol or his day was over. His hands brushed against a jacket as he righted himself. The fabric felt familiar, his brain whirring for reasons he couldn’t figure out yet. He laid the old tweed frock on the comforter, unbuttoning and tracing the seam on the right side.
His hand stopped when he got to the fold he knew was there. A few years earlier, the thread holding the silk together had to be sewn into a silk patch. The surrounding material was too weak to take the attempt at stitching the hole he’d made when he’d snagged the fabric on a nail. Since it had been his grandfather’s tweed jacket, leather patches on the elbows to boot, he wanted to take care of it, not just chuck it and start over. Hence the patch. He slid his finger the full way around the patch and back the other way. Something in his brain worked to figure out why this seemed important. The patch was so simple, so rudimentary. But it had worked.
Suddenly, Owen saw how to fix the faulty window and shutter. Alan had figured out the same thing himself, or something close to it.
With the jitters of a high school quarterback about to throw his first touchdown pass, sure only of his idea, wary still about the execution, a surge of excitement flowed through Owen’s blood.
Grabbing the phone from his pocket, he dialed Brad’s number, knowing full well he ran the risk of waking the poor guy up.
“Yo,” the person on the other line answered.
“Brad?” Since when did traditional and professional Brad answer the phone like a twenty-year-old rapper?
“Nope. Steve. Brad’s in the shower. I just checked him out of the hospital.”
“Wait, hospital? I thought his dad was the one laid up.”
“Yeah, turns out Brad’s our weakest link when it comes to holding down his liquor. Nurses checked him in the minute he let loose the contents of his night on the linoleum floor. For the third time.”
“Damn.” Maybe he should’ve dragged Brad home with him. But then again, Brad was a grown man who could make his own decisions, even when they proved not to be good ones. “He in any shape to help me out with a project at the barn you think? I could use you, too, if you’re free.”
“He could be with the right IV of coffee. I’ll get him there. Why? Whatcha got in mind?”
Owen filled Steve in on his idea to help out Alan while he was laid up, made his case for why it should only take a day or so to complete.
“We’re in. I’ll bring the coffee and donuts.”
“You sure?”
“Sounds like more fun than watching the Seahawks lose again. Plus, sweating out the liter of whiskey in my system might not be such a bad idea. We’ll be there in thirty.”
“That works. I’m gonna run into town and grab some supplies and meet you back here right about then. Make yourselves at home if I’m not there. Beer’s in the fridge.”
“Beer’s a four-letter word right now, man. But thanks. See you in a sec.”
“Thanks, Steve.”
“You bet.” The phone clicked and Owen got to work. There wasn’t much daylight left now that the sun set more to the south every night. They probably only had an hour or two once they got set up. Owen jogged to his truck, threw it in drive, and sped until he pulled up in front of Mitch’s Hardware store. A quick glance at his phone and the list he’d made himself in his Notes app told him he needed about thirty feet of lumber, some ring shank nails, and a whole helluva lot of paint. Shouldn’t be too bad. It would take some work, but with the three of them, it’d go fast.
With his order complete, Owen took off with the same roar of his engine, hoping to beat the guys to the house. He slowed as the light in front of him turned yellow, impatiently tapping his foot on the floorboards. He took advantage of the pause to glance around him, watching a few families headed to Jules and Verne’s, kids swinging from parents’ arms, and one couple that had to be in high school sharing a cone that looked about to topple on the girl’s shoes. A pang of jealousy shot through his chest, forcing him to look away. Yet another thing that had changed since he met Paige. He used to feel a sense of amusement when he saw couples cozied up together, but he’d never felt like he was missing out until now. Damn that woman. His impatience turned to frustration.
Finally, his gaze settled on the bus stop next to the stoplight and his sixth sense picked up with the breeze. A woman sat on the bench, bedazzled in bright colors that looked unnatural against the tan, brown, and olive background. She had the lightest chocolate-colored skin, flawless from what he could tell, and her long hair hung in braids that landed close to her hips. She was stunning, but to his surprise, that didn’t do anything except remind him of Paige.
Paige. He took another glance at the woman and did a double take as she turned to face him. It couldn’t be, could it?
A scowl settled on her face as she caught him open-mouthed and staring. She shook her head and mumbled something under her breath. Even angry, she was one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen. Definitely out of her element in Banberry.
A car honked behind him, alerting him to the change in traffic status, and without giving it a second thought, Owen swooped right and parked on the corner next to the bus stop. He jumped out of his truck and slammed the door shut in one fluid motion.
Guilt plagued him as he approached her and her disdain deepened the lines on a forehead that was otherwise as smooth as the coffee and creamer he drank every morning. She was scared of him. She clutched a small, red and yellow bag close to her chest, and used her knees to clamp tight to the suitcase between her legs, the latter strong and fit.
“You aren’t Aurelie, are you?” he asked. Her face changed instantly. He recognized the smile that looked like it would laugh right out of the only photo Paige had hanging in her room, a photo of herself and the woman now standing before him. It was the single oddest experience of his life when she walked over to him and threw her arms around his neck. She squeezed him tight.
“So that hussy didn’t believe me,” she said, standing back again. Her hands rested on her hips, her gaze appraising him from head to toe. A slight smile played over perfectly white teeth that resembled seashells against the tan sand. “It looks like she brought me a present as well, that sly girl.”
Her wink and second glance at his biceps turned Owen’s cheeks a fiery red.
“Oh, no, I mean, uh, no. She didn’t send me.”
Aurelie’s smile faded as quickly as it had arrived.
“That scamp. I knew you were too good to be true. How do you know me, then?”
“Your picture’s up at her apartment. The only picture up actually. I’m Owen.” He reached to shake her hand but Aurelie didn’t move. Her eyebrows tightened, and a single finger tapped her arm.
“You’re Owen,” Aurelie repeated, her cadence slower than his. He nodded, gulped. What had Page said about him that made this woman so nervous she wouldn’t even shake his hand?
“Was she supposed to pick you up?” he asked, desperate to change the topic off him.
“No. A mix-up,” Aurelie said, waving her hand in the air. “Not a problem.”
“I can give you a ride to her house if you’d like,” he offered. If she didn’t take it, that was her problem. He wished Paige hadn’t painted him in a bad light, but it seemed with each passing second that Aurelie stood there, arms crossed, brow furrowed, that wasn’t the case.
“Why isn’t she with you? Did you two have a spat?” Her accent spread over him like butter on warm bread, soft and sweet. He couldn’t help but smile, even as he pictured the very real “spat” he and Paige’d had. There wasn’t a chance he was getting into that on the side of the road with a perfect stranger, though.
“Well, her dad’s in the hospital, and if she’s not there with him now, I’m sure he’s on her mind. She’s missed you a lot, I know that much.”
“Hmm.” Aurelie’s gaze fell on his truck. “You can take me, but you’ll need to handle my bag. There is no way I am hoisting it up there.” She nodded to the bed of the truck which was nearly over her head.
He laughed.
“I can handle that, ma’am.” With a tip of his cap and a swing of his arm, her bag sat in the bed of the truck next to the lumber and Owen helped Aurelie up into the cab. This close, he inhaled the scent of coconuts, the same that had wafted off Paige when he’d first met her.
It was intoxicating.
They drove in silence for a bit, Aurelie’s face plastered to the window as they left the streets of the small town for the hills and dirt roads of the farmland.
“She was right, there isn’t much here, is there?”
Owen frowned.
“No, I guess there isn’t,” he said after a pause.
Aurelie turned to look at him, her pale blue eyes the color of the sea behind her in the photo he’d seen a hundred times. “There’s enough, though. I can see that.”
At that, Owen smiled. He liked this woman, her candidness. A compliment from her would be genuine, he could sense that much.
“How is her father?” Aurelie asked.
Owen sighed. “I guess he’ll be okay. It’s just a rough time of year to be out of commission with his harvest and shoring up for winter and all that.”
“What will he do, then? I don’t imagine Paige could be much help to him, can she? She’s tiny, yes? And healing still?”
Owen chuckled. All truths from this woman.
“No, she’s got her own recovery, that’s for sure. Plus, it doesn’t look like she’ll be here for long anyway. Brad, her brother, and I will help where we can. We’re gonna start with the barn this afternoon, actually.” Owen jerked his head back, gesturing to the bed of his truck filled with enough carpentry stuff to build half a shed.
“You’re a good man, Owen. I can see it.” Owen’s cheeks flushed again and he nodded a silent thanks.
“Owen, thank you for the ride. I don’t trust those giant buses that weave in and out of small streets. But can I trouble you for a rather large favor?”
“Of course.” He looked over at her, saw the determination etched on her face and understood exactly why she and Paige were friends. Aurelie’s distant stare, her furrowed brow, was the same look that frequently passed over Paige’s face when she worked through a problem.
“I need you to take me to the hospital.”
“Sure,” Owen said, his foot lifting off the pedal. “You mean now?”
“Please. I know it’s out of the way, but I’d like to start there.”
“You bet,” he said. “Just let me flip around and call the guys. I’m meeting Brad and his friend at the Connors’s farm to help fix the barn before Paige’s dad gets home.”
“Thank you, Owen. This is so kind of you.” With that, Aurelie fixed her gaze on the window again and didn’t say anything for the rest of the ride. He called Brad, filled him in, and made the ten-minute detour to the hospital in silence. When he pulled up outside the in-patient entrance, Aurelie rustled in her small bag and pulled out a bottle of Caribbean rum. “For your help,” she said, putting it on the seat between them.
Owen shook a hand at her, laughing. “No, really. Save it for Paige. It sounds like you’ve got quite a reunion ahead of you.”
“Oh, honey, I have plenty more where that came from,” Aurelie said, tossing her head back towards the bed of the truck. That’s why the bag felt heavy, even for him.
Owen chuckled. “Well in that case, I don’t mind if I do.” He jumped out. There was no way that petite woman was getting down without his help. When she was safe on the ground, Owen climbed the tire well and dug out her suitcase. “Thanks, and I’m sure I’ll see you around.”
“I think you can count on that,” Aurelie said, and with a sway of her hips she was through the hospital doors. What a crazy day it turned out to be. He wanted to tell Paige all about it, but she wasn’t his person anymore. Maybe she never had been.
Oh well. Time to get back to work.
It took about twenty minutes to get back to the farm. Paige’s car was back, and she’d come back much calmer than she’d left by the look of the driveway. On Alan and Marge’s side of the drive he could see Steve’s truck backed up to the barn, the two guys unloading some tools and boards. Owen backed his truck down beside Steve’s. He was actually excited about working on the shutter.
“Hey, Steve. Heard you guys really tied one on last night after I left.”
“That’s what they tell me.” Steve rubbed his temple, where Owen assumed more than a small headache brewed. Brad looked up, a wry smile on his face, which was paler than usual.
“You feeling okay?” Owen asked him.
Brad nodded then winced. “As long as I don’t move my head. Or talk. Talking hurts, too. Hell, breathing is a chore.” Brad patted the small farm dog that nipped at his heels, desperate for the attention of someone. Owen guessed Penske hadn’t gotten much love with his owners holed up in Butte. Maybe he’d take the pup to his house for the next few days, make sure he had what he needed while Marge tended to her husband.
He bent down and scratched Penske’s ears.
“I’ve been there, buddy. More than once.”
“The older I get, the longer it takes to recover,” Brad said, putting sunglasses on and grabbing a twelve-foot board from the back of Owen’s truck.
“Try being forty,” Steve said. “It’s a miracle I’m not hugging the porcelain bowl after a night like last night.”
“Yet you do them all the time,” Brad said.
“Well, they’re so much damn fun when you’re in the middle of them. I can’t help myself.” He grinned mischievously, threw on a pair of glasses as well, and followed Brad with a board from his truck. Penske tore off like a bolt of lightning down the driveway, along the fence that bordered the dirt road to town, barking like he chased the devil himself.
“What’s he after?” Owen asked, thumbing towards the dog as he barked his way towards the edge of the Connors’s property.
“The UPS truck. As long as it has an engine, he thinks it wants to play. Should have his name changed to ‘Motor.’”
Owen laughed. “You leave with that waitress?” he asked Steve, his arms full of the tools he’d collected from his barn.
“C’mon, man, you know I don’t kiss and tell.”
“That mean if you don’t tell, there was something to say?”
“Now you’re getting the idea,” Steve said, throwing the guys an exaggerated wink. “But enough about me, I think we all want to know about this mysterious woman you picked up at a bus stop,” Steve said.
“Nothing to tell. She’s Paige’s friend, Aurelie, from the islands. Nice enough, needed a ride. Seems your sister forgot she was coming,” Owen said.
“Is she hot?” Steve probed. He was like a kid in a candy store when he talked about women. Owen didn’t know how he did it. One was enough for him—too much, actually.
“She’s very nice looking,” Owen admitted, a smile creeping up the corners of his mouth. He liked shooting the shit with the guys again. He’d missed this part of the brotherhood of the service. Plus, it felt good to quit sulking about Paige.
*
“Nice. Banberry needs some new blood.”
“You say that because you’ve plowed your way through most of the eligible women already,” Brad chimed in.
“Don’t forget the ineligible ones,” Steve joked.
“You’re a dog,” Brad said, sitting down on the bench on the edge of the barn.
“That’s not saying much for canines,” Owen added. He patted a breathless Penske as he rejoined the men, also seemingly happy for the company.
“Touché,” Steve said, shaking his head, hoisting two twelve-footers overhead. He was a beast. Too bad he didn’t do the farm thing. He was built for it. “I’m just sayin’, if your sister chose Owen instead of me, maybe I have a shot with her friend.”
“Hopefully my sister’s friend has the same good taste to steer clear of you as Paige did,” Brad said. “You know if you ever dated Paige we’d have to settle this in the old-fashioned way, right?”
“Hey now, why’s she good enough for Owen and not for me?”
“She’s too good for you, man. Besides, she made her choice.”
Owen cleared his throat. “Yeah, apparently none of us made the cut.”
Brad sighed, patted Owen on the shoulder. Owen just smiled weakly, shook his head.
“Speaking of the women in our lives, have you heard anything from Julia since last night?”
Brad let out a slow exhale but didn’t make eye contact with either of them. “Nothing. Just a voicemail telling me if I wanted to stay out all night with the guys it was fine by her, but just not to bother coming home tonight either then.”
“Even with your dad?”
“Yup.”
Steve whistled. “That’s cruel, man.”
“Sure is.” Silence closed in around them, everything that needed to be said out there, swirling around them like the fall breeze.
Like the men he’d served with, Steve and Brad knew when it was time to put their personal issues behind them and buckle down. Also like the Marines, they did good, steady work with no further complaining about their hangovers or headaches, or the women that caused them.
The three men hammered and sawed to the sound of grunts as heavy loads dropped at their feet, to the squawks of the frequent flocks of ducks and geese starting their months-long trip south to warmer climates. They worked until the sun crept over the hillside, taking the heat of the day with it.
“It’s looking good,” Steve said, standing back to admire the work they’d accomplished so far. They were halfway through the brace Owen had envisioned and gotten approved from Brad. If the guys could pitch in again tomorrow, they could finish everything up.
“Thanks for your help, fellas,” Owen said, clapping them both on the back. “I couldn’t have done all this without you.”
“Nah. Thank you for helping out my old man. He’ll be so surprised to see this fixed, he’ll think he hit his head harder than he did.”
They all chuckled, faced the barn siding, and admired their work.
“Not bad, not bad at all,” Owen muttered, half to himself.
“See you tomorrow?” Steve asked.
“Can you spare another day at the shop?”
“Please. What good is it being the boss when you don’t get to call in a couple days to help a friend?”
“Thanks,” Owen said, and Brad echoed it.
“Can I at least help store this shit?” Steve said, gesturing to the scraps of wood and nails that littered the ground beneath them.
“Nah. Leave all this here—I’ll clean up what can’t afford to stay out tonight after I grab some dinner. Go nurse those headaches. See you all tomorrow around nine?”
“Yep. You’re a good man,” Steve said, motioning to Brad to load up. It was the second time that day Owen had heard that from someone close to Paige.
Not good enough.
“I’ll be there in a sec,” Brad told his friend. He turned to Owen. “I’m sorry about Paige. She means well, but this town has always gotten the best of her.”
“No apologies necessary. I’m a big boy. I knew the risks when I picked things up with her. I just hope it isn’t awkward here, you know, with us.”
“Not at all. She’s a big girl, too. She can handle us as friends, or she can keep her distance.”
Owen nodded in agreement. The last thing he wanted was her to keep her distance, but wouldn’t say as much to her brother.
“See you in the morning,” Owen said, heading home with the rum from Aurelie, avoiding the path he and Paige had made. He was torn about wanting it to grow over, erasing the summer from his memory and wanting to pave the damn thing so he never forgot it. He didn’t think he’d ever be able to put Paige fully from his thoughts, path or no path.
With that thought in mind, Owen went to the liquor cabinet, pulled a rocks glass from it, topped it with ice, and filled the glass to the brim. He settled on his porch, the chill of the fall air wrapping around him. Now that the weather had cooled, he’d start in on the deck with more than just half interest.
Time to start fixing his life.
The warmth of the liquor spread through him, down his throat first, then to his limbs, and he closed his eyes, imagining it was Paige’s warmth that surged through his blood instead. The smell of the coconut rum made his heart race and to keep himself from looking up at her window, Owen closed his eyes and succumbed to the darkness.