Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
AUSTIN
My surf rod bent in a familiar, satisfying arc, the braided line hissing through the guides as the lure sailed out over the breakers.
I worked the shoreline behind my house, the wet sand cold and firm beneath my bare feet, my movements a practiced, meditative rhythm.
This wasn’t work. This was church. Out here, with the sky beginning to blush from indigo to a soft, promising lavender, I wasn’t Captain Coleridge.
I was just Austin.
When nothing bit, I reeled my line in and cast again. And again. It wasn't about the catch. It was the nervous flicker of baitfish in the shallows, the gentle tug of the current on the line. A conversation with the ocean that settled my mind and scoured away the week’s tensions.
When the sun was fully clear of the horizon, throwing a glittering path of gold across the water, I reeled in for the last time. An easy, private smile touched my lips. The hook was bare, but my head was clear. A fair trade.
I walked back toward my house, the peace of the morning a comfortable weight on my shoulders.
It was only as I was rinsing salt and sand from my gear at the outdoor spigot that I saw it.
As if materialized out of pure nerve, a plate was propped on my porch swing, covered with a familiar faded floral napkin, a folded note beside it.
Frowning, I stowed my gear and wiped my hands as I strolled toward the patio. Hints of cinnamon carried on the breeze.
Holloway.
Iris.
Whatever.
A mix of resignation and, dammit, a flicker of reluctant anticipation settled in my gut.
What culinary weapon had she deployed this time?
Another batch of those surprisingly tasty cookies?
Or had she branched out? Experimented? That thought was vaguely alarming, given her track record with other forms of experimentation.
I picked up the note with a sigh that felt older than my thirty-four years. Her handwriting was a loopy, enthusiastic script, the kind that probably dotted its i’s with little circles or hearts.
Austin,
I was experimenting in the kitchen again and ended up making waaaay too much of this coffee cake. Enough to feed a very hungry army. You’d be doing me a huge favor if you could help me eat some of it, so it doesn’t go to waste. Hope you like cinnamon!
Iris
P.S. No sprinklers were harmed in the making of this cake.
“Made too much. Right.”
I arched a brow at her use of my first name, unable to decide whether that was progress or presumption, then narrowed my eyes at the plate.
As if I didn’t know a strategic pastry deployment when I saw one.
The woman was relentless. But the excuse, the sheer, transparently well-intentioned ridiculousness of it, was so…
Iris. And the postscript coaxed a rough sound from my throat that might have been a laugh. If I were a different kind of man.
I took the plate inside, the scent of cinnamon and baked apples already teasing my nostrils. When I lifted the napkin, the coffee cake looked surprisingly professional, a generous slab with a crumbly, golden-brown topping. I poured some coffee and cut myself a slice.
As if on cue, the first discordant sounds of battle erupted from next door. The guttural roar of a generator followed swiftly by the whining screech of a power saw.
My jaw tightened. “Damn it, woman.”
The coffee cake, however, was undeniably edible.
Okay, pretty good. Well-spiced, with chunks of apple and topped with a buttery, cinnamon-laced crumble.
Blocking out the noise, I chewed slowly, savoring the taste despite myself.
It was a damn pity she couldn’t manage a construction crew or basic plumbing with the same competence.
After finishing, I returned outside, ostensibly to inspect the new growth on my still-recovering hibiscus hedge. I glanced at my watch, confirming I didn’t need to be on the boat for another hour. But my attention, as it often did these days, was drawn inexorably toward the racket next door.
The foreman, Mick Riley, was a talker. His booming, overly confident voice carried to my porch as he directed—or rather, gestured loosely toward—the work being done by his two-man crew.
They looked like they’d rather be anywhere else, their movements slow and imprecise.
Riley himself had a habit of propping one dusty boot on whatever was handy to survey the scene like a king overseeing a particularly tedious royal duty.
I studied him for a few minutes, my professional hackles on alert. They were prepping a section of the massive back wall for new siding. Riley gestured toward a roll of moisture barrier.
“Make sure that wrap is tight,” he called out. “Don’t want any waves in that new siding when it goes up.”
The words were right. But then, Riley pulled out his phone, facing away from the wall as he launched into a loud conversation about someone’s terrible golf game.
I narrowed my eyes. The instructions were sound, but the problem lay in the execution.
Old places like Heron House didn’t forgive shortcuts.
They hoarded them, magnified them, then presented you with a horribly expensive bill later.
She has no idea what she’s dealing with, I thought, a familiar sense of distaste and something uncomfortably like concern stirring in my gut. Riley might talk a good game, but if he decides not to follow through…
“Not my circus, not my monkeys,” I told myself as I turned back toward my property. It was none of my business. If Iris Holloway wanted to employ a human question mark to further butcher her inherited money pit, that was her prerogative.
Then I turned around and stared at Heron House. It stood there, an overambitious, romantic notion that a broken thing could be made whole again with just enough stubbornness and hope.
Just like Mom.
The thought landed with an uncomfortable thud.
I remembered the look on my mother’s face in the years after Dad left. She’d been in over her head, too. And all of us stepped up because that was the right thing to do. You didn’t let someone drown just because they were too proud to ask for a life raft.
Iris had that same look sometimes. That mix of bright-eyed ambition and the quiet panic of someone who knows they’re one bad step from disaster. She was clueless, but she didn’t deserve to have that grand old house fall down around her ears because of a hack like Mick Riley.
With a heavy sigh, I headed over to thank her for the coffee cake. It was a legitimate excuse.
Mostly.
I found Iris outside, conferring with Riley near the section of wall they were working on. She glanced up as I approached, her eyes widening. Riley, when he saw me, straightened, his expression shifting from bored indifference to a practiced, professional smile.
“Iris,” I said, my voice neutral. “The, uh, coffee cake was pretty good.”
Her face lit up with unguarded pleasure. “Oh! You liked it? I’m so glad! I was worried the apples might be a bit tart.”
“It was fine.” I nodded toward Riley, my gaze hardening. “Riley. Didn’t expect to see you working on a project of this scale.”
Riley’s smile faltered for a fraction of a second. “Austin. Been a while. Good to see you, man. Yeah, Heron House is a big job, but Miz Holloway here knows quality when she sees it.” He clapped a hand on a nearby ladder.
Before I could offer my unvarnished opinion on that statement, Iris jumped in. “Oh, he’s been great so far, Austin! Mick and his crew have been here bright and early every single day, and they’re making such good progress. Really, it’s been a relief after some of the stories you hear.”
My internal alarm bells, already jangling softly, now clanged with the urgency of a four-alarm fire.
Bright and early doesn’t mean doing it right, Iris.
Just then, as if summoned by the god of good timing, Riley’s phone blared a jaunty ringtone. He fumbled it out of his pocket, glanced at the screen, and held up a hand with an apologetic grimace that didn’t hide the relief in his eyes. “Gotta take this, folks. Talk to you later.”
He winked, then strode off, already deep in another conversation.
Which left Iris and me standing in a pocket of unexpected, and for me, deeply uncomfortable, silence.
I studied her for a moment. The late morning sun caught the gold in her blonde hair, a line deepening between her brows.
She looked hopeful, determined, and completely out of her depth.
For some damn reason, the thought of Riley taking advantage of that earnest optimism set my teeth on edge.
“Iris,” I began, the use of her first name still feeling a little foreign on my tongue. “About Riley.”
She turned to me, eyes wide. “What about him? Is there something I should know?”
I hesitated. It wasn’t my place. Not my problem. But for some reason, I couldn’t stay quiet.
“He’s got a history,” I said carefully, choosing my words. “Sometimes he does good work. Sometimes, not so much.”
Her brow furrowed. “Oh. He’s been very dependable so far. And he told his crew exactly how to put up that moisture barrier this morning. I heard him.”
“Telling them is one thing. Making sure they do it and do it right, that’s another.
” My gaze drifted over the ancient manse, appreciating the potential but not negating the very real problems. “My brother-in-law, Chase, is an architect. He’s told me these old houses are full of surprises, and I know a thing or two about that too.
Rotted wood where you least expect it, plumbing that makes no sense, foundations that have settled in ways that defy gravity.
You don’t want your contractor to be another one of those surprises. ”
Iris chewed on her lower lip, her gaze drifting toward Riley, who was now laughing into his phone. When she looked back at me, there was a new unease in her eyes.
“Well, shit,” she muttered, then clapped a hand over her mouth, her cheeks flushing a delightful shade of pink. “Sugar! Professionalism, Iris. I meant… Oh, son of a biscuit!” She looked utterly exasperated with herself.
I stared at her, my mouth open. The absurdity of her self-correction in the face of a potential structural disaster was so profoundly Iris that a strange sound escaped me. It might have been a laugh. I quickly suppressed it, turning it into a cough.
“Yeah,” I said, my voice carefully neutral, though the image of her invoking biscuits in a moment of stress was going to stick with me. “Well.”
She saw my reaction. “I’m, uh, trying to decrease my swearing.” Her voice dropped a little, as if sharing a profound secret. “For the B&B, you know. When I become an official hostess, I’ll need to use less salty language.” She offered an almost apologetic smile.
I just blinked at her. The woman was trying to stop swearing while renovating a certifiable money pit with a dubious contractor. I mentally added talks like a deranged kindergarten teacher when annoyed to my ever-expanding list of baffling things about Iris Holloway.
“Anyway,” she continued, clearly wanting to steer the conversation away from Riley and her bizarre linguistic choices.
“Mick says they’ll be moving the majority of the work inside soon.
Starting on the en-suite bathrooms for the guest rooms. So hopefully that will mean less noise for you.
” She offered me another of those hopeful, slightly anxious smiles.
En-suites. In that old wreck.
Ambitious didn’t even begin to cover it.
“Right. Bathrooms.” The image of tangled, ancient plumbing lines and rotted floor joists flashed through my mind. “Well. Just… keep an eye on things.”
“I will,” she said, her voice firm. “Thank you, Austin. For the heads-up.”
The sincerity in her tone, the way she stared at me then, not with fear but with a kind of reluctant gratitude, did something strange to the usual knot in my gut.
It didn’t exactly loosen it, but it shifted.
Made it feel less like anger and more like…
Hell, I didn’t know what. And I wasn’t about to stop swearing.
I just nodded, a curt dip of my chin. “Thanks for the coffee cake. Gotta get to work.”
Then I turned and walked back toward my property. A final glance revealed her standing there, her expression thoughtful and a little worried as the distant laughter of Mick Riley echoed across the yard.