CHAPTER TWO
Deacon
“Where the hell have you been?” Sebastian roars as soon as I walk through the door of Levi’s house.
All the happy goodness I’d been feeling after spending an hour at my cousins’ sanctuary farm evaporates in a cloud of bristling annoyance.
Sebastian is such a dick. But I stuff that feeling down, because the last thing I need in my life right now is a shouting match with my most annoying brother. “I was at the Weston farm,” I say. “How can I help you?” I bow low, arm out like some sort of fancy butler.
Sebastian’s growl indicates he’s less than amused. “You didn’t answer your phone.”
I pull it out of my back pocket and have no luck turning it on. “It’s dead. What’s up?”
“I needed an estimate for the Brockman job. They’ve been up my ass all day about when you’re going to be done in their kitchen.”
As a finish carpenter, the guy who handles the details like molding, flooring, and custom kitchen cabinets, I don’t like to call a job finished until it’s perfect.
Sebastian, who handles demo and framing, finds details annoying.
“I’ll be done by early next week. I could be done sooner if we hire a crew to help with the Endicott job. ”
“Cash claims he can’t find anyone up to our exacting standards,” Sebastian says.
“We need another Stanley.” In Aspen Cove, where we lived before we moved to Catalpa Creek, Stanley was our office manager.
She kept things running smoothly and was never bothered by Sebastian’s chronic grumpiness.
We weren’t able to convince her to move with us since her kids and grandkids all live in Aspen Cove.
Sebastian glares at me. “Cash is looking for a Stanley. Can’t find one. Help him.”
I cross my arms over my chest. I hate being told what to do. Especially by my obnoxious older brother. “Should I do that before or after I finish the moldings in the Endicott’s new den and the cabinets in the Brockman’s kitchen?”
If you ask me, we took on jobs too quickly after moving here. We should have staffed up and gotten an office. We definitely should have found places to live rather than all of us moving in with our brother, Levi. He moved back here first to try to get away from us all. We followed him.
Sebastian steps up, towering over me. I’m tall, at six-two, but he’s got a good two inches on me and he’s all brawny muscle, while I’m lean like the runner I am. I don’t back down.
“You’re not doing anything now,” Sebastian says. “Go help Cash.”
“Fine. But not because you’re asking me to do it, you hulking asshat, but because Cash’s been more stressed out than usual. You know he hates to be stressed out.”
Sebastian shakes his head like I’ve disappointed him and lumbers back over to sit at the dining room table behind his laptop.
The table is covered with paperwork and, judging by the way Seb is glaring at the laptop screen, it’s clear he’s struggling with the computer scheduling system Stanley set up.
Sebastian’s an asshole, but he’s genuinely freaking out about our business doing well here in Catalpa Creek.
“We should have family dinner here next week like we used to have in Aspen Cove,” I say, because he loves that family togetherness shit.
Sebastian doesn’t look up at me or do anything but grunt. I smile. That was his grunt of reluctant agreement.
Cash is in the bedroom we’re sharing until we can find our own homes here in Catalpa Creek, and the bed he’s sitting on looks a lot like the table Sebastian’s sitting at downstairs.
“People still send in paper resumes?” I ask, flipping through the ten or so he’s got spread out next to him.
“I guess so.” Cash rubs his eyes. I suspect he needs glasses, but he’s vain as fuck and won’t admit it. “Sebastian put up flyers around town with our corporate PO box as the only place to send resumes.”
“How is he only eight years older than me? It’s like he’s stuck in the Dark Ages.”
Cash shrugs. “We weren’t getting anything through the online hiring platforms, so we didn’t have much choice.
I’ve been staring at all of these for hours trying to figure out how we can make any of these people a part of our crew, but I’m not having any luck.
Seb is going to lose his fucking mind if I can’t come up with at least one hire. ”
I clear a space and sit on the edge of his bed, picking up a few resumes and glancing over them. “He needs to relax. Our savings are strong. We have time to get a feel for this place. We aren’t going to have what we had in Aspen Cove here in Catalpa Creek in just a couple of months.”
Cash falls back onto the bed. “You aren’t kidding.
I tried to convince him to call the Westons and organize a family fun day.
I even offered to let him choose the games.
But he said we need to focus on the business right now.
I don’t know what focusing more is going to do for us.
We already have more jobs than we can keep up with. ”
“We need to find a way to distract him.” I drop the resumes on the bed. We can figure those out later. “We could get a dog.”
Cash snorts. “Get your own dog, Deacon. No one else wants it.”
I wave a hand. “I’m not ready to be a parent. Besides, everyone in this family loves the fluffy breeds. They’d love a dog, and it would chill everyone out.”
“What Sebastian needs is to get laid,” Cash says, throwing an arm over his face. “He hasn’t been with anyone since he and Skyler broke up last year.”
“She broke his heart. The last thing he needs is meaningless sex with someone who’ll just remind him of what he’s lost.”
Cash snorts and sits up. “The whole reason he and Skyler broke up is because he chose work over her. I hardly think he’s brokenhearted.”
“You don’t know that.” I get up and pace the small room stepping on dirty socks and worn jeans. Cash is a freaking slob. I really need to get my own place. “Maybe what he needs is to fall in love.”
“Right. That’ll make the big guy all soft and mooshy.” He laughs. “Sebastian isn’t going to change.”
“Maybe. But remember how he was when he was dating Skyler? He wasn’t suddenly nice, but he was around less. There was a hell of a lot less micromanaging.”
“Huh,” Cash says. “You aren’t wrong. But Skyler’s dating someone else in Aspen Cove. No way we can convince her to give Seb another chance.”
I stop and stare at my brother. “How do you know that?”
“I follow her on the socials. We chat about interior design. She just got a new place. That little cottage on Wayfare Boulevard and—”
I’ve stopped listening. “We need to find him someone new. What was that dating site Ryland was talking about?”
“Mate Match. But Seb’s never going to agree to join a dating site, man. He hates the internet.”
I sit next to my brother, papers crinkling under my ass. “So maybe we do the legwork for him. We can set up an account pretending to be him and find him the perfect girl.”
Cash rubs his scruffy chin, considering. He’s putting on a show. I can tell by the light in his eyes that he’s already into this plan. "We should get Levi to do it.”
“Set up the account? I don’t think it takes high-level computer skills to create a love match account.”
“No.” Cash flops back onto his back. “We should get Levi to pretend to be Sebastian and talk to the matches. He’s got that sad unrequited love thing going on with Gentry, so he definitely won’t decide to date all the matches himself.
Plus, when Seb finds out what we’ve done, we can blame Levi for everything. ”
I pull up the site on my phone and, with Cash’s help, we get an account set up for Sebastian. “It would help if we knew more about our sweet brother,” I say.
Cash snorts. “There’s nothing more to know. All he does is work and watch reality television.”
“What is up with that?” I ask. “He’s obsessed with that shit.”
“I think he enjoys seeing people fail. I’ve heard him mutter about the contestants on that one show where they stick everyone in the wilderness with, like, a toothpick or whatever. He calls them freaking idiots and chuckles to himself.”
“Ah,” I say. “Schadenfreude. I doubt that will win him any interest from normal women, but maybe he doesn’t need a normal woman.” I squint at my phone, trying to read the fine print, but the screen’s too small. “Let’s borrow Levi’s laptop to finish this up.”
Cash gathers up his papers and follows me across the hall and into Levi’s room, where he spreads out on Levi’s bed, while I sit at the desk in front of Levi’s laptop.
Downstairs, an argument between Sebastian and Ryland is raging, but that’s not unusual. They’re always arguing about something. Ryland just goes quiet and glares while Sebastian yells. The fact that Ryland doesn’t yell back just seems to make Sebastian angrier.
I navigate to the match website and get to work setting up Levi as the contact. I’m just finishing when boots creak on the hardwood floor behind me.
“You know that’s a Murphy bed, right?” Levi asks.
I focus on the screen, trying to get everything done before Levi realizes what I’m doing.
“If I fold it up, where am I going to work?” Cash asks.
“I don’t know. How about anywhere other than my bed?”
“Sebastian says he’s going to look for office space today,” Cash says, his sympathy for Levi clear in his tone. “You’ll get your house back soon, baby brother.”
“I need my computer, Deac,” Levi says, still on the other side of the room.
I keep typing, not even looking up. I’m so close to having this all set up.
“When you abandoned us last year, I learned how to do all this business crap, Levi. I’m working.
” I didn’t, and I don’t. Levi handled all that stuff remotely, but I don’t have a better excuse.
It’s possible there’s some business stuff I took care of that he doesn’t know about.
“Leave him be, Levi,” Cash says. “It’ll be worth it.”