Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
DELANEY
KAK-WEEEEE! KAK-WEEEE!
My eyes shot open at an unholy sound piercing the peaceful cocoon of sleep… and piercing my eardrums in the process. For a single, disorienting moment, I had no idea where I was, only that I was warm… and naked… and wrapped in blankets on a hard surface that was definitely not my bed.
“What the fu—” I started, then froze as my elbow connected with something solid—humanly solid—beside me.
Brewer. The sledgehammer. The wall. The kiss. The… everything else.
KAK-WEEEE!
“What the—?” Brewer mumbled, his voice thick with sleep. When he rolled over, the sleeping bag slid down to reveal his bare chest, and the sight made saliva pool in my mouth. His dark hair stood up in approximately seventeen different directions, and there was a suck-bruise on his shoulder that might or might not carry the DNA of a local journalist.
He looked just as good in the cold light of morning as he had in the glow of the firelight, which seemed unfair on a fundamental level.
“Hey.” He smiled warmly at me for a moment, then frowned. “Is something on fire?”
“Doorbell,” I croaked, tearing my gaze away. “Someone’s at the door.”
As if on cue, the bell rang again, followed by sharp rapping on the door. “Delaney? Brewer? Are you in there?” a woman’s voice called from outside.
Eyes wide and head throbbing, I caught bits and pieces of several voices having a lower, more muffled conversation.
“No way anybody’d sleep through that racket?—”
“Brew’s not answering his phone, but Reed said?—”
“The power’s back, so maybe they’re?—”
“…ain’t leavin’ ’til I give ’em croissants?—”
“And poor Delaney, without a shovel!” the woman wailed.
Oh. My. God.
I scrabbled around on the floor for my glasses, nearly face-planting when the blanket tangled around my ankles. “People,” I whisper-hissed, shoving the glasses on my nose. “Multiple people! There are multiple people outside my house, Brewer!”
Brewer, who’d risen with considerably more grace, simply stretched and yawned. The sight of his naked body—all of it, because apparently, morning was his, er, happiest and most confident time—momentarily short-circuited my panic.
“Relax,” he said, reaching for his jeans. “It’s probably just some neighbors checking on you because of the power outage and snow.” He nodded toward the window where the morning sun glinted off at least a foot of pristine white stuff.
Hen’s leg, it seemed, had been vindicated.
“ Just neighbors?” I dived for my pajama shorts. “Just neighbors who are about to find us naked? Together? With—” I gestured wildly at the rumpled sleeping bag, the haphazard pile of pillows, and the empty wine bottles that clearly told the tale of our night together.
A face appeared at the window, and I yelped, diving behind the couch like a cartoon character.
“Put on some clothes!” I whisper-shouted to Brewer, who was moving with infuriating calm as he stepped into his jeans.
“What do you think I’m doing?” The thread of amusement in his voice said he was enjoying my panic way too much.
I crawled across the floor, grabbing whatever clothes I could find—which happened to be my pajama shorts and Brewer’s sweatshirt. I yanked the shirt over my head just as the doorbell rang again.
“I’ll take Teeny out the back for a bathroom break,” Brewer said. A glance over my shoulder showed he was mercifully now wearing his jeans and henley from last night. “ You handle the welcoming committee.”
He whistled softly, and Teeny, who’d been watching our frantic dressing routine with judgment in her doggy eyes, rose and padded after him.
“Thanks a lot!” I called after him. My head throbbed harder as I stumbled to the door, trying to finger-comb my hair into something that didn’t scream I’ve just been thoroughly ravished by a hot contractor .
I pulled the door open, wincing at the blast of cold air—and found myself face-to-face with what appeared to be the entire winter sports section of an REI catalog.
“Delaney! Finally!” Janice Plum cried, her cornucopia hat now replaced with an aggressively pink ski cap with a pom-pom the size of a cantaloupe. “Thank goodness you’re alright! We were so worried when you didn’t answer the door.”
Behind her stood Hen in a blinding blue parka, along with Brewer’s cousin Hayes and my Kitchen Couriers delivery guy, who wore matching neon green snowsuits that made them look like human highlighters.
“You were?” I shivered and rubbed my bare legs together. “Sorry, did I miss a memo about a neighborhood… snow ritual or something?”
“Silly Delaney. We’re here to THWAC you!” Janice declared, throwing her arms wide with such enthusiasm that her pom-pom nearly took out Hen’s eye.
“ Thwack me?” The morning sun reflecting off approximately three trillion snowflakes made my eyes water, and for half a second, I felt like I had, indeed, been thwacked. Hard. Either that, or I was still asleep and having some kind of strange wine-induced nightmare.
“T-H-W-A-C,” Hayes supplied. “As in, The Helpful Wintertime Association of Coppertians.”
Hen shrugged and muttered, “Janice came up with the name.”
“We shovel snow for folks who can’t do it themselves for whatever reason,” Kel said proudly. “And for people who, like, don’t have shovels.” He gave me a sympathetic look.
“Oh. Well. That’s… that’s very nice.” I said. But I wasn’t sure what to say after that. Was I supposed to pay them? Or invite them inside for refreshments I didn’t have? Or, fuck, offer to help them with my nonexistent shovel? I fussed awkwardly with the cuffs of my sweatshirt.
Hayes caught the motion and gave my shirt an up-down look, and then his whole face brightened. “Nice outfit,” he said.
I glanced down and realized that my chest was emblazoned with “Portland Builders Convention 2018.”
My face went nuclear. “Oh, this? This is… I, ah…” I folded my arms over my chest as though I could belatedly stop them from noticing. “Funny story, actually.”
“Really? I love a funny story.” Hayes grinned.
“Heh. Yeah. Maybe Brewer could help you tell it?” Kel’s shit-eating grin was the mirror of Hayes’s. “We tried calling his phone like fifty times?—”
“We were asleep until two minutes ago!” Their grins widened, and I felt my face go impossibly hotter. “I mean, I was asleep, and he was asleep. Independently. Just two people… sleeping. And then he had to take Teeny out?—”
Hen’s eyebrows went up.
“I assume,” I added quickly. “Though I would obviously have no way of knowing.”
Hayes nodded. “Since you were sleeping independently.”
Kel snorted into his glove.
“Well!” Janice chirped, completely oblivious to the subtext. “We brought provisions!” She held up a large thermos. “I made coffee! And Hen got you something at the bakery?—”
“Strawberry croissants,” Hen said gruffly, holding up a small plastic container. He didn’t quite meet my eyes. “Heard you like ’em.”
I blinked, even more overwhelmed by this gesture than by the arrival of a brigade of snow warriors…
Which was the only excuse for my delayed reaction—and failure to block the doorway with my body—when the THWAC crew cheerfully pushed past me into the house.
“We were at the Hive when Brew left last night,” Kel announced, unzipping the top of his suit. “Man, he couldn’t get out of there fast enough once he saw how heavy the snow was. Reed said Brew was super worried about getting back to you.”
“Getting back to me ?” I repeated, my hungover brain processing this information with the speed of cold molasses.
Hayes nodded, stripping down the top of his own snowsuit with the same practiced efficiency to reveal a thermal undershirt below. “Yeah, once he realized how bad the storm was getting, he was like, ‘Gotta get home to Delaney!’ We teased him, but he just got all serious.”
“That’s not… We don’t… Wait, really?”
“Kitchen’s this way, eh?” Hen interrupted, saving me from having to form a coherent sentence. He was already halfway down the hall, carrying the croissants.
“No, hang on, don’t—” I lunged after him, but it was too late.
“Holy crap!” Hen’s exclamation echoed through the house. “What happened here?”
The rest of the THWAC crew converged on the kitchen like vultures to roadkill, and I had no choice but to follow, my stomach sinking.
In the harsh morning light, the destruction looked even worse. The demolished cabinets littered the floor, and the gaping hole in the wall seemed even larger. Plaster dust coated every surface, undisturbed except for two sets of footprints and—oh God—what were clearly handprints on the wall, marking the spot where I’d jumped Brewer.
“Whoa,” Hayes breathed, eyes as wide as dinner plates. “Who did this?”
I cleared my throat. “I did. It’s kind of hard to explain. It was an accident, sort of. I?—”
“Dude!” Kel said, peering at the hole with the enthusiasm of a kid at a science museum. “You straight-up murdered your kitchen!”
“Did you and Brew have some kind of fight?” Janice asked, concern pinching her features beneath that ridiculous hat. “Was this like…” She lowered her voice. “The camper?”
“No!” I said, too quickly and too loudly, making my own head throb. “No, we just decided, um, that the cabinets weren’t working. It was a spur-of-the-moment renovation decision.” I spoke with as much dignity as I could muster while wearing another man’s sweatshirt and sporting sex hair.
Hayes snorted. “Yeah, I bet there was a lot of renovation happening.”
I was saved from responding—or possibly committing murder; the jury was still out—by the back door opening and Brewer entering with Teeny. He’d added a flannel over his henley and boots on his feet, making him look irritatingly put together… while I still resembled something the dog had played with and then abandoned.
“Morning, everyone,” he said casually, as if finding the house invaded by Coppertians was a normal weekday event. “I see you’ve discovered our midnight redesign.”
“ Your redesign?” Hen asked thoughtfully, eyebrows climbing his forehead. “This was you ?”
“Sure. Both of us, really. It’s Delaney’s house, after all.” Brewer moved to stand beside me—close enough to present a united front but with a careful inch of space between us. “And we should probably get back to it.”
“But…” Janice brandished her thermos again. “We brought provisions.”
“And Hen plowed your driveway, but we need to finish clearing a path to the porch,” Kel argued.
“Plus, I thought maybe Kel and I could stick around and clear a spot where we could take Teeny out to run around without getting too snowy,” Hayes said. “From a distance,” he amended with an eye roll when Brewer and Kel both gave him concerned looks. “I do remember that I’m allergic.”
Brewer’s face softened. “I appreciate the thought. But I— we ,” he said with a nod at me, “can handle the rest of the snow removal later. Right now, Delaney and I have to clean up our mess.”
I forced a smile despite my nagging hangover headache. “We do,” I agreed.
More than one, in fact, if you counted what happened last night… which made the kitchen seem like the easier prospect by far.
Hayes smirked. “Which mess are we talking, cousin?” he asked, as if reading my mind. “This—” He nodded at the mangled cabinets. “—or the one in the living room?”
I choked on air, my cheeks burning hotter than the fire that had warmed our naked bodies just hours ago.
Shit . Of course he’d seen that.
Brewer’s expression didn’t change, but something in his eyes cooled several degrees.
“Hayes,” he said, and just that—his cousin’s name, in a tone that could have frozen boiling water—made Hayes’s smirk falter. “You can catch up with my dog later. Right now, my priority is handling this renovation and ensuring there’s no structural damage to the wall,” Brewer went on in a measured, professional voice.
As if choreographed, the others turned as one to examine the hole I’d made.
And when their backs were turned, Brewer caught my eye and gave me the briefest, smallest wink.
My heart pounded like I’d just finished the treadmill sprints at Barry’s Bootcamp.
“Huh,” Hen said, turning back to us with an approving smile. “Pretty deep space you uncovered, boys. Looks like it was a jam cupboard, once upon a time.”
I tried to focus on the conversation and not the possible interpretations of that wink. “Jam cupboard?” I repeated. “What’s a jam cupboard?”
“Just exactly what it sounds like.” Hen stroked his mustache. “Lotsa houses around here have these odd little nooks and crannies that were once used for storage. In more recent years, some folks walled ’em off ’cause they decided they’d rather have a nice long, unbroken run of cabinets and countertops.” He shrugged. “But I always did love a jam cupboard, myself.”
“Hey, look! There’s stuff in here. Old newspapers, looks like,” Kel said excitedly.
Janice clasped her thermos to her chest excitedly. “Oh, this could be just like that National Treasure movie! Brewer, we can?—”
“I promise you, Janice,” Brewer said in that same no-nonsense voice. “I’ve found plenty of hidden nooks over the years, and not one of them has led to a secret underground city made of gold. If this one does, the Council for Historical Happenings will be the first folks we call.”
Janice sighed dejectedly. “I suppose you’re right. As usual.”
I snorted and tried to cover it with a cough, but the amused look Brewer shot me said he wasn’t fooled.
“There are lots of Coppertians out there who need THWAC’s help this morning,” Janice reminded her crew. “We have a sacred duty. But first…” She brandished the thermos yet again. “Coffee?”
I desperately wanted coffee, but I was even more desperate to talk to Brewer and figure out what was going on.
“We should let you…” I began, trying to think of a way to say, “Get the hell out,” without sounding rude.
“Yes,” Brewer said, heading for the laundry room and the cups there. “I’d love some.”
Five minutes later, I stood against the wall, nursing my coffee, as Brewer efficiently managed the THWAC invasion.
He ate a croissant and drank coffee but managed to politely evade all their questions about our plans for the kitchen by asking them about the origins of THWAC and volunteering his services for the next storm.
When Janice offered to help him find a new camper, Brewer redirected her, and soon she was talking about some art exhibition she was setting up.
When Hayes asked him over to play video games—after making a snarky comment about the dusty handprint on my/Brewer’s sweatshirt perfectly placed over my ass—Brewer somehow steered the conversation into a discussion of the tournament Hayes and Kel were having without committing to playing video games one way or the other.
He was so freaking good at handling them—at being firm but kind, friendly but not too friendly—I wondered if they even realized how little information he gave them.
And I wondered why .
Twenty minutes later, he had them all bundled back into their rainbow snow gear and stood beside me at the door, waving them off to tackle other unsuspecting driveways. As the door closed behind them, I let out a breath I felt like I’d been holding since the doorbell first rang.
“Well,” I said, turning to him, “I guess we should probably?—”
But Brewer was already moving back toward the kitchen.
“Get this cleaned up?” he called over his shoulder. “On it. You probably have your own work to do, huh?”
I frowned. “Yes. Always. But I can help you first,” I said, trailing behind him. “I was the one who caused the damage, after all?—”
Brewer stopped and turned, forcing me to stop, too. “Hauling out cabinets is a one-man job.” He gave me a stilted smile. “Why don’t you grab a shower? Not sure when the power came back, but I’ll bet the water heater’s kicked back on, too.”
This felt like a dismissal, and it stung more than it should have.
“Sure,” I said, striving for the same casual tone. “Sounds good.”
I stood in the shower a few minutes later, letting the hot water pour over me, trying to make sense of what had just happened.
Last night, Brewer and I had shared something incredible. Something that had felt passionate, and raw, and honest, and, well, profound , not that I’d spit that sort of purple prose out loud. I felt like I’d been swept off the precipice I’d been clinging to and into something new. Something Brewer and I might explore together.
But the distance Brewer had put between us after everyone left had made it clear that I was flying solo.
“Good job,” I muttered to my dick while scrubbing shampoo through my hair with more force than necessary. “You’ve picked another winner.”
After dressing in jeans and a sweater, I headed straight to my office rather than the kitchen. I couldn’t face Brewer while my head was still spinning. I needed to ground myself in something familiar, something that was entirely mine.
Work . I would focus on work .
I opened my laptop and pulled up the Empire Ridge files. I’d been digging into this story for weeks, but in the past few days, I’d stalled. Some evidence was there, as I’d told Tam, but not nearly enough to make a compelling case, an award-winning case.
I’d conducted interviews with Anthony’s second-in-command, as well as a couple of other people who’d been friends with Anthony for years and, predictably, corroborated his story. I’d contacted the people at Empire Ridge for a comment, and they’d referred me to their website, where I’d found lots of glamour shots of the cookie-cutter River Bend housing development and a single press release denying all knowledge of the incident.
In other words, nothing helpful at all.
I went to close the website when an aerial map of the development caught my eye, and I clicked to enlarge it. The development was divided into several smaller cul-de-sacs interspersed with pools, tennis courts, a clubhouse, an elementary school, and even a community theater. I wondered which part of the property had been Anthony’s property, so I looked for the firehouse… but I didn’t see it.
Confused, I pulled up the website for Southbourne, New York—the town where the development had been built—to find the address of the new firehouse, but their website was so outdated I gave up in disgust. I emailed Anthony Harmon, asking if he could point me in the right direction.
Then I reviewed the notes I’d made for the seventeenth time, hoping some fresh line of inquiry would pop out at me.
Spoiler: it didn’t.
A knock on my open office door a moment later startled me more than it should have. I glanced up to find Brewer leaning against the doorjamb. At some point, he’d changed into different clothes—a dark green henley hugged his broad shoulders this time, and his jeans clung to his thighs in all the best ways.
He looked unfairly good for a man who’d spent the night on a hardwood floor.
“Hey,” Brewer said in that same professional, neutral tone from before. “Didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“You’re not.” I closed my computer. “You’re saving me from chucking this laptop out the window.”
He chuckled, low and intimate… or maybe that was just how I wanted to hear it.
“Story not going well, I take it? Not easy making things fair and right?” His tone was teasing but surprisingly sincere.
Or maybe not so surprisingly, after our conversation last night.
“It’s not.” I pushed up my glasses and rubbed my eyes. Some of us were not meant to sleep on floors, and it showed. “I’d really appreciate it if the bad guys could just twirl their mustaches, or wear T-shirts that say ‘Bad Guy,’ and/or have little manifestos on their websites about being bad. Who can I send a strongly worded letter to about this?”
Brewer laughed. “If it was that easy to tell who the bad guy was, wouldn’t you be out of a job? Or were you thinking of taking up sledgehammering professionally?”
I laughed, too—which I hadn’t thought was possible, given how frustrated I was. Then I adjusted my glasses. “Did you need something?”
“If you’ve got a minute. I finished cleaning up and started looking at the jam cupboard… and I think we might have a mystery on our hands.” He bounced his eyebrows.
I sat back in my chair. “What kind of mystery?”
“The mysterious kind. Come see,” he said, tilting his head toward the kitchen.
Curiosity piqued, I followed him down the hall.
The space had been mostly cleared of debris, the cabinets Hen had authorized us to return were stacked neatly, and the hole in the wall was more defined now, like Brewer had removed the loose plaster around the edges.
I moved closer, peering into the opening.
At first, all I could see was what the others had seen—bare wood, dust, and scraps of yellowed newspaper. But as my eyes adjusted, I saw that at the back of the visible space, there appeared to be a set of shelves holding several flat parcels.
“Oh my gosh. What are those?” I demanded, pointing.
“If I knew, it wouldn’t be a mystery, would it?” Brewer shrugged. “I didn’t want to look any further without you.”
I turned to face him. “That might just be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, Brewer,” I said seriously.
He snorted. “Yeah, well. I swear to Christ, whatever they are better not lead us on some Nicolas Cage treasure hunt?—”
“Aw, Brewer.” I looked up at him with a lazy smile. “If Janice could hear you now, she’d be crushed.”
Brewer’s grin hit fast and crooked, like he hadn’t meant to let it loose, and the air between us tightened, humming with something that felt a lot like inevitability?—
Or maybe not so inevitable since a second later, Brewer stepped back.
“We should… get to work widening the opening,” he told the floor. “Take off the rest of the plaster in this section so you can see what’s in there.”
I folded my arms over my chest and nodded. “Weren’t we going to have to do that anyway? I mean, we uncovered a jam cupboard. We can’t just cover it up again.”
Brewer darted a look at me, his lips tilting up in that hooked smile. “Well, we could. Jam cupboard’s just another word for a plain, old pantry, so if you’d rather have counter space than storage?—”
“ Bup bup bup. Did you just insult my jam cupboard by calling it a pantry?” I demanded. “My vintage, hidden, ye oldey-fashionedey jam cupboard?”
He shook his head, still smiling. “Right. I’ll grab my tools.”
“The sledgehammer?” I asked hopefully.
“Not unless you feel the need to hit things again,” he called, already heading for the garage.
Frankly, when Brewer had refused to look at me, I’d felt very much like hitting something.
But when he came back with a pry bar, he also handed me a pair of work gloves and showed me how to remove sections of the plaster without damaging whatever might be behind it, which was almost—but not quite—as good.
Our hands brushed occasionally, sending jolts of awareness through me that I tried desperately to ignore. After about twenty minutes, the opening was wide enough for me to step inside.
“Wow,” I said when I did. Brewer was partly correct—the space we unearthed was basically a dusty closet paneled in rough wood and with shelves hung at regular intervals along one side, but it was not a “plain old” anything. The space smelled like cedar chips, and on the shelves sat at least a dozen stacked rectangular packages wrapped in butcher paper. Scrolls of tightly wrapped papers stood in one corner, too.
I gently pulled the top package off the stack, brought it out to the kitchen, and set it on the floor to open it.
“Is that…?” Brewer’s voice trailed off.
“A painting,” I finished, turning it toward the light.
The unframed canvas was small—maybe eight by ten inches—but exquisitely detailed. It was a landscape of Copper Lake in the fall, when the maple and oak trees were lit up in crimson, amber, and gold. At the water’s edge, a woman stood in profile, gazing out over the water with a secret smile on her face. A long-forgotten breeze caught at her burgundy dress and sent strands of dark hair curling like ribbons toward the water.
“E. Winters,” Brewer read. “1977.”
“It’s beautiful,” I said. “Grab another.”
The second canvas showed a different view of the lake. In this one, it was clearly winter since all the trees were bare, and early morning light bathed everything in a crystalline glow. In the background, the Observatory House—the Copper County landmark where Theo and Bennett lived—was in the early stages of construction, with scaffolding visible on one side. In the foreground, the same dark-haired woman, this time in a navy blue coat, stood with her back toward the artist, one red-gloved hand shielding her eyes as she looked toward the rising sun.
All in all, there were more than a dozen paintings, most of the lake or the woods surrounding it. All of them were signed E. Winters and dated from 1970 to 1983. All of them featured the same woman.
“Who is the woman in the pictures?” I wondered.
“And who’s E. Winters?” Brewer asked. “And why were they hidden away?”
Our shoulders nearly touched as Brewer crouched beside me on the plywood floor and we leaned over the paintings. The bergamot-and-Brewer scent was more powerful than ever, but I fought the Pavlovian Dick Response with all my might.
I forced a laugh. “Good God. We actually found a treasure,” I muttered. “Does this mean I have to call Janice for real?”
Brewer laughed, too. “Probably. And you could ask Samuel Purchase.”
I turned my head and frowned. “The guy from the Gazette ? The guy with… Admiral Barkington?”
Brewer nodded. “Sam knows a lot about the history of the area. Really smart guy. Funny, too. I redid his bathroom a couple years back, and we’ve had dinner together a few times.” Brewer’s mouth quirked into a half smile. “Apparently, the Admiral insisted.”
“Oh. Well. That’s… that’s great for you.” I sat back on the floor, fighting an unexpected twinge of something like jealousy. If I recalled correctly, Samuel was pushing retirement age, but maybe that was Brewer’s thing . “And for him.”
“What’s that mean?” Brewer asked, catching my expression.
“Nothing,” I said quickly. “Just… you seem to know everyone in town pretty well.”
“Not well .” He shrugged. “But when you’ve lived here a few years, you can’t not get to know most of them, at least a little. They won’t let you,” he joked darkly.
I nodded, striving for Brewer’s casual tone. “And do you make it a habit of getting to know all your clients… thoroughly?”
The moment the words left my mouth, I regretted them. Brewer’s eyes widened slightly before his expression shuttered.
“No,” he said firmly. “I fucking do not . This job’s a first for me in that regard.”
Our eyes locked, and I saw nothing but sincerity in his gaze.
My shoulders slumped. “Brewer,” I began. “Look, about last night?—”
He shifted, twisting on his boots. “Delaney, last night was…” He shook his head and smiled slightly. “I don’t have to tell you how good it was. You were there.” He ran a hand over his stubbled jaw. “But this… you and me… it’s a bad idea. I’m your contractor, and you’re my client. And if people in town found out we slept together—which they would, since lots of ’em already suspect it—then I become known as the guy who sleeps with his clients instead of the man who does the best restorations in the area.”
“Okay, but?—”
“I’ve got a job to finish,” he continued, holding up a hand to keep me from interrupting. “And I want— need —to do it well. Barnum Restorations is my life, Delaney. It’s what I love and how I honor everything my grandfather taught me about this work.”
“Your grandfather?” I frowned. “Did he start Barnum Restorations? I didn’t realize it was a family business.”
Brewer shook his head. “It’s not. I told you last night I don’t have much to do with my family aside from Hayes. My father…” He hesitated. “He’s not a good man. He gave away something that was mine, and I’ve never forgiven him for it. But my grandfather… he was amazing. He taught me restoration work by letting me help him restore his own house one room at a time. And he taught me about the importance of integrity. He used to say, ‘A craftsman leaves two things behind, Brewer. The work of his hands and the weight of his reputation. We’re only as good as the promises we keep.’”
I leaned back, watching as he ran a hand through his hair, his massive shoulders tense under his T-shirt. A traitorous part of my brain couldn’t help but remember how those shoulders had felt under my palms last night, solid and warm.
But I also recognized how important this was to him.
“That’s beautiful,” I said softly.
“It’s true ,” Brewer corrected. “The houses I work on aren’t just jobs to me. They’re… promises.” His voice softened. “I promised you a renovation, Delaney. Not complications.”
I swallowed. “And last night was a… a complication.” I tried to keep the hurt from my voice but failed, and my chest tightened with embarrassment.
Of course Brewer was being pragmatic about this. I should do the same.
Brewer’s eyes met mine, and something in them made my breath catch. “Last night wasn’t a complication, Delaney, it was a goddamn hurricane. And I…” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Fuck. Hayes is right. I don’t know how to talk about this stuff.”
“About complications?”
“About… feelings.” He looked up. “About… starting something with you.”
“Oh.” The single syllable escaped me like it had been punched from my lungs.
The very idea of “starting something” with Brewer was knee-knockingly terrifying. All wrong for the life I led. For the person I’d always thought I was. My track record with relationships was objectively terrible, and the common denominator was me.
Besides, what kind of something were we even talking about?
“Oh?” he repeated wryly. “That’s profound. Aren’t you the one of us who’s supposed to be brilliant with words?”
I nodded, then shook my head, then nodded again. “I am, but I’m not… I don’t…” I looked away, pressing my lips together, and admitted, “I’m starting to think I might be better at telling other people’s stories than my own.”
He laughed out loud. “Well, then… sounds like we’re both in over our heads, baby.”
I laughed, too, though it came out a little shaky. I couldn’t remember anyone calling me baby before. I sure as fuck couldn’t remember wanting them to. “So… what do we do now?” I asked softly.
“Now…” He shrugged. “I finish your renovation. You finish your article and solve our Jam Cupboard Mystery.” Brewer gave me a half smile. He lifted one huge hand to my face and brushed something—plaster dust, probably—off my cheek with the gentlest caress. Then he adjusted my glasses. “And then you go to your next big story, and I go to Reed and Chris’s kitchen renovation.”
I wanted to argue, to push, to demand more… but I could tell he’d made up his mind. The rejection was sharp and brutal.
“Right,” I said. I cleared my throat. “Yes. Good. Because I do have a very important trip to Costa Rica coming up. Tourists are disappearing, and I need to find out why.”
“Sounds exciting,” Brewer said easily.
“It is. It is exciting,” I insisted. “Very. My career and my reputation are very important to me, too, you know.”
He nodded. “So, then… friends, sort of?”
I smiled. “Friends, sort of,” I echoed, the word feeling hollow in my mouth.
After all, what else could we be?
I had a mystery to solve, an article to write, and a whole fucking life to figure out… and Brewer had promises to keep.
But first, it seemed like the hurricane wasn’t done with either one of us.