Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
The road trip across the country turned out to be as painful as Myles anticipated.
Shelly couldn’t sit still. Jet had forgotten how to smile sometime in the first year of being a teenager.
Myles’s bad hip ached by the end of the first day of driving, making every day after that both feel longer and actually be a shorter drive than he would have hoped.
The five-day trip he’d planned took them eight, and he could not get away from the kids fast enough when he pulled into Griffon’s Elbow. In fact, he didn’t even take the time to find the parking lot of the Oaks B and B, but pulled up on the street at the foot of its front walk.
Guilt brewed, thick and chunky in his gut as he shut off the car, making him wish he hadn’t downed that last extra-large double-double as he’d passed around the northern edges of the city.
He’d stopped at an ONroute, and then, in a last-minute fit of cowardice, deaked around the outskirts rather than turn south towards the city center.
Of course, Jet had been furious. It was the one part of the extended car trip he’d been on board with—a trip into the city to the Eaton Centre, and, for a little while, get himself lost in the press of people after more than a week of being cooped up with his sister and uncle.
He hadn’t spoken to Myles since realizing he wasn’t going to get the chance to visit the shopping mecca after all.
That had been going on four hours ago, because when Myles deviated from his planned route, he’d gotten turned around and driven for over a half hour in the wrong direction, unable to easily correct on the divided highway.
“You two stay here while I go figure this out,” he said, opening his door.
“But Uncle My-my!” Shelly snapped off her belt, then wriggled over the side of her booster seat to stand on the car’s leather upholstery in her hard-soled sandals. “I wanna—”
“Stay,” Myles barked. “I’ll be back. And sit down before you mark up the seats.”
She plopped onto her ass and crossed her arms over her little chest, bottom lip stuck out.
“This is bullshit,” Jet muttered.
Myles ignored him and crawled out of the car.
Just putting his foot on the ground was enough to tell him he wasn’t getting across the sidewalk without his cane.
Not after eight straight days of driving.
Pushing his head back into the car, he reached over the console to get it from the passenger seat.
“You going to let us take the dog for a pee?” Jet asked, voice lead-lined and heavy with resentment.
Myles growled at him, saying neither yes nor no as he pulled out of the car and slammed his door.
Way to meet the teenager on his level.
Stumping towards the front of the house, Myles grumbled to himself as he psyched himself up to take the steps to the porch.
He’d only just reached the top when the door flew open.
“You’re here!” Lucky stepped out, arms open wide. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d changed your mind and just hadn’t worked out how to tell me.”
“Couldn’t stay away from my people,” Myles admitted. “With a teenager who hates my guts and a six-year-old who I think might be possessed by an art demon of some sort.” He bent and wrapped his arms around Lucky’s thin torso with a grunt. “I forgot how short you are.”
“Ha-ha.” Lucky squeezed him tight. “I’m not short. You’re a beanstalk.”
“Missed you,” Myles whispered.
“Same.”
“Thank you for picking up that call. Thought I would never get here.”
“You’re here now.” A deep rumble behind Lucky made Myles lift his eyes. His gaze met with a broad expanse of red-and-black plaid, then, further up, a bushy mass of red beard, and finally, twinkling blue eyes.
“You must be Kreed.” Myles straightened and held out a hand. “Myles McCreevy.”
“Very alliterate. Yes, I am Kreed. Albert Kreed, but my people call me Kreed.”
“Your people.” Myles nodded.
Lucky smacked his bicep. “That’s you, dummy.
Come inside.” He glanced over Myles’s shoulder to where the kids had exited the car, despite his instructions, and now stood behind him.
“You guys, too.” He’d half turned when a streak of fur zoomed past him, the screen door yawning wide to accommodate the awkward knee-high missile.
The dog jumped at Myles, fully expecting to be caught out of mid-air.
And normally, that wouldn’t be unreasonable.
But Myles wasn’t prepared, and his cane left him one-handed.
He dropped the stick, caught the dog, but knew, even before he felt his hip give out, they were both going over backwards down the steps.
There was no hope.
Shelly’s shriek was truly awful.
Worse was Jet’s horrified shout of his name and the abject terror in the boy’s voice.
Hands impacted his back, then a sharp shoulder, and one meaty paw fisted around the cotton of his hoodie.
Between Jet’s frantic attempt to catch him from behind and Kreed, moving way faster than a guy that size should be able to and grabbing his sweatshirt, the fall was at least guided onto the grass so he didn’t crack his skull open on the paved walkway.
Still, he had the air knocked out of him. The dog standing on his chest licking his face did not help.
“Scratch!” A high-pitched, panicked voice called from the porch as a skinny, all-knees-and-elbows figure hurtled down the steps. “Oh my God. Are you okay? I am so sorry! Lucky, I’m sorry. I didn’t—”
“Stop.” Kreed’s growly voice overrode the kid’s panic to silence them.
“I shouldn’t have brought him here,” the kid whispered. “I’m so sorry. But we couldn’t leave him alone.”
Myles struggled to sit up, pushing the dog off him, though that didn’t dampen the dog’s enthusiasm for licking every part of Myles he could reach.
“It’s okay,” Myles panted. “I’m fine. Just winded, thanks to Jet.” He turned his full attention to the dog. Dog’s a PITA, though. Aren’t you, Scratch? How are you, buddy? Doing all right, I can see.” He patted Scratch’s sleek side, ran a hand over shiny fur. “You are fine, when you clean up, huh?”
“You—you know him?” The kid—maybe not exactly a kid, judging by the light fuzz coating an upper lip and the straggle of hairs across the chin—knelt on the grass next to Scratch and gripped his collar.
“Know him? Of course. He’s my dog.”
The kid’s eyes got wide, and new, bone-deep panic invaded the soft brown.
“Or was,” Myles quickly amended. “I left him with a friend who needed him more.” He scratched behind his beloved dog’s ears. “And I see that he’s now passed him on to the next person who needs him, yeah?”
“We started out looking after him for Ozzy. But Ozzy said it wasn’t safe for him on the construction site, so we… sort of… kept him.”
“Looks like he’s in good hands, then.”
“Just, I had to bring him to work, right? Since he can’t stay on his own.”
“He doesn’t like to be alone, no. I know.”
“He’s usually perfect, though.”
“It’s been a minute since he saw me is all.
I wasn’t ready to catch him.” He glanced around, trying not to make it obvious he was looking for his cane.
The hip, which had been throbbing when he got out of the car, sent sharp, stabby pains down his leg and up under his ribs. He had to get it straightened out.
“Here.” Jet’s sullen whisper came from slightly behind him, and the smooth wood of his stick landed next to the hand he had clenched in the grass.
Concentrating on the blinding pain of his hip—so he didn’t have to think about the streaks of dirt on his palms or the light coating of oil from the dog’s fur on his fingertips—Myles gripped the cane, shifted his other foot to take most of his weight, then braced himself to get up.
He reached for the hand Kreed offered, but Jet slapped Kreed’s help away and bent to wedge his shoulder into Myles’s armpit. Bracing on legs stronger than they looked, he straightened slowly enough Myles could get his balance, his stick, and his good leg all lined up enough to stand.
Once he was upright, he expected Jet to back off, but his nephew stayed where he was. Hair, dyed blood red, dripped in front of his made-up eyes, and he tweaked a lip ring in his bottom lip with his teeth. The arm around Myles’s waist clamped almost painfully tight.
On Myles’s other side, Shelly moved in, patting his waist, then leaning in, copying Jet’s stance, though she wrapped her arm around his leg and clutched MJ’s leash with her other hand.
“Thank you,” Myles told them, stroking a hand over Shelly’s hair.
Jet grunted but still didn’t move.
“This is my nephew, Jet,” Myles said finally, turning to Lucky. “And my niece, Shelly. Guys, this is Lucky, his partner, Kreed, and the asshole that used to be my dog is Scratch.” He looked at the youth standing off to one side. “Who I guess is your dog, now? You must be Rod, then.”
“Yes, sir. Tris’s brother.”
“Lucky told me you were doing a short apprenticeship here or something?”
“I work here a few days of the week so Kreed can teach me what I need to know to run a kitchen. My real job is at the Egg Basket in the city. Oh! Um—” Rod glanced at Kreed. “I just meant—”
Kreed chuckled. “We get it. Small town B and B. Not your jam.”
“But I am learning a lot,” Rod said quickly.
“Glad to hear it. Now take that animal back inside and get back to making the order, please. Has to be in before five today or we miss out on the tarts and the good muffins for the morning rush.”
“Yes, sir.” Rod tugged at the fur on the back of Scratch’s neck. “C’mon, asshole,” he muttered, and the dog abruptly turned and walked back into the house, side occasionally brushing against Rod’s legs, not a backward glance at Myles.
“Dog always was an ingrate,” Myles remarked.
“You sure you’re okay?” Lucky asked. “That was a pretty spectacular fall.”
“I’m good. Could have been worse.” He very briefly squeezed Jet’s shoulders. “Thanks to these guys, I’m still in one piece. Or at least in the same number of pieces I was when I got here.”
Again, Jet grunted, and this time, he did disengage, but carefully, making sure Myles would stay upright without him.
“Shells, I’d better take the dog.” He held out a hand for the leash as he shot a dark glare at the door of the B and B, like it was the pit of hell and Scratch the three-headed guardian of the underworld.
He scooped MJ up, then took Shelly’s hand and led her up the steps.
He didn’t look back, either, though Shelly did glance over her shoulder.
“Go on with your brother, sweetheart. I’ll be right behind you. Jet, get both of you something to eat. Something healthy.”
Jet waved but didn’t look at him.
The B and B door swung open, as though on a sensor, to let them in, then closed gently behind them.
“Didn’t know you could get a screen door that opens automatically like that,” he commented as he picked his way back up the steps.
“Oh, it’s not that sophisticated,” Kreed said.
“Isn’t it, though?” Lucky asked.
Kreed frowned at him.
“What did I miss?” Myles asked, directing his question to Lucky.
“You missed nothing. In fact, you saw more than most people do.”
Which made no sense, but before Myles could ask, Lucky grinned wide at something past Myles’s shoulder, then lifted an arm and waved. “Hey, Steven. Okay?”
Myles turned to see a man standing on his porch across the street. Both hands gripped the porch railing and the man leaned out, as if he wanted to jump the railing but didn’t quite dare. White-blond hair tossed in an errant breeze, and the man, Steven, shook it out of his eyes.
“Who…?” Myles stared, breath taken by that same breeze as Steven smiled and waved back.
“Not hurt?” Steven called.
“No.” The word was a faint croak, caught behind Myles’s trapped breath. He cleared his throat. “No. I’m good.” He nodded, waved his cane in a vague gesture of he didn’t even know what, and swallowed hard. He turned abruptly to Lucky. “Sorry. Who is that?”
A calculating expression swept off Lucky’s face as Myles focused back on him, replaced by a generic host expression. “Steven Barrow. He owns that used bookstore. Hey, you read, right?”
“What?”
“You read.” Lucky took his arm and turned him towards the front door. “So you should check out his place. Come on.” He tugged slightly, and Myles fell into step alongside him, his skewed balance having nothing to do with his bad hip.
Then a deep, all too familiar rumble of laughter inside the house distracted him before he could further grill Lucky on his neighbour.
He stopped abruptly on the porch, suddenly hesitant to go inside. “Ozzy’s here? Now?”
“He knows you’re coming,” Lucky said, a hand on Myles’s back. “He’s okay with it.”
“Am I?” Myles asked.
Lucky’s brows drew down.
“Rhetorical,” Myles assured him. “I knew he lives here.”
“You guys both got here by your own roads,” Lucky reminded him. “You don’t need each other anymore.”
Myles drew in a breath, nodded, then moved forward again.
He’d known from the day he stepped out his door in Calgary that Ozzy would be at the end of this trip.
He’d made the choice to come anyway. He and the kids all needed some time away from that city, his sister’s house, everything, and there was no better place than here, where Lucky would have his back.
The screen door, when he approached, opened smoothly to the soft tinkle of bells, though he saw no sign of an automatic opening mechanism, or of bells.
Since no one else thought that strange, he pretended he hadn’t noticed and followed Lucky inside.