Gray
Monday morning I drove by my bank, Old North Savings and Loan, and made a withdrawal and then drove on to the SBC offices. By the time I walked into the conference room for our weekly meeting, everyone else was already there.
I slid the money from my wallet and placed it on the table between Ash and Eli without a word and moved to pour myself a coffee before grabbing a chair. I wasn’t happy to lose the bet, but I wouldn’t say I was too upset either. I’d been trying to puzzle it out. What was so different about making love with Tessa? And it hit me. Until Tessa, I’d only had sex. Tessa was the first woman I’d made love to.
Ash raised an eyebrow at me while Eli ran his thumb along the corner of the stack of bills.
“So you’re out,” Eli said. “Care to offer us any details for corroboration?”
I shook my head. “Nope.”
“Eli, you idiot,” Ash said. “Why would he lie about it if it’s costing him a thousand dollars?”
“Whoa,” Beck said, looking surprised. “That’s a little steep for a bet, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” Eli said. “But I didn’t think they’d agree”—Ash rolled his eyes next to him—“and it was supposed to give them incentive to stick to the sex-fast.”
“A sex fast?” Wyatt asked.
Ash simply shook his head. “Gray and I were trying to cure our flu.”
“With a sex fast?” Beck looked between us. “Did it work?”
“Not yet.” Ash frowned and looked across the table at me. “You?”
“No idea, but I feel pretty good right now.” Huh. I did. My chest didn’t have that crushing feeling that had been doggin’ me the last few months. It felt like I could get a full breath. I actually wanted to get out of bed this morning when my alarm went off at five.
Wyatt cleared his throat. “That might not be from the fast—if you know what I mean.”
“Can we be done talking about sex, please?” Ash asked, his voice clipped. “I know Wyatt’s not getting any because all he does is work and study, which was why we didn’t even invite you to join the bet, Wy. And I’m pretty sure Eli is saving himself for his granola-eating soul mate when she magically appears riding in on a rainbow unicorn, so the bet wasn’t a big deal to him. But even with my man flu, I’m on the edge here. So stop.”
“Seconded,” I said. The last thing I wanted was for them to get around to bugging me for details. Or figuring out I slept with a client. Although, technically…
“Motion granted. Our big item is that the King job was a success. So thanks to everyone. Especially for picking up my slack. My schedule should return to normal, which means, Gray, I’m back to handling the sales appointments.”
“Thank fucking God.” I ran a hand through my hair. “You have all my respect. I’ll stick with production and design, thank you.”
“Good timing,” Wyatt said. “We’ve seen a forty percent increase in requested estimates from the extra visibility we got from the King job.”
“Good to hear. Moving on to our open jobs. Any problems to talk about?” Beck looked at me. “I almost hate to ask, but how’s the Madigan job?”
I smiled ear to ear. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but fine. Eli and Wyatt helped me demo the kitchen. That kept us on schedule. We’ll have her new kitchen in within two weeks. It’s pretty straightforward. I think I’ll have design schematics and a proposal ready for her to look at this week for the rest of the house. Should have a signed contract for her house renovation soon.”
“Good job sticking it out, Gray,” Beck said. “Talk about a turn-around. From crazy client to success story.”
Ash locked his eyes on mine and deadpanned. “I’m going to guess it all came down to good communication.”
Right. Like he didn’t play a part pimping me out. I mean, I’m not complaining with the way it turned out, but no, not biting on that one.
“Either way, keep at it.”
“You bet.”
* * * *
The next afternoon we were taking a break out back at our batting cage when the big bombshell dropped.
“Hey, Beck!” Wyatt stood at the back door of our office building. “Jack Sinclair’s here!”
I watched Beck’s jaw go tight and felt my own muscles tense up. The relaxed mood shifted as we all straightened right up with the tension.
“Who’s Jack Sinclair?” Sam asked, looking around at us all with a frown on her face.
“The private investigator I hired to track down Ryker,” Beck said.
He’d mentioned Sinclair had a new lead, and we’d been waiting impatiently to hear it. We filed into the building and into Wyatt’s office in record time.
Beck had said Sinclair was former Special Forces, and the man looked the part. More ripped than Ash and dangerous. I wouldn’t want to meet him in a back alley.
Sinclair and Beck shook hands and introductions were made all around, since this was the first time the rest of us were meeting him. And then, thank God, Beck got right to the point.
“Where’s Ryker?” Beck asked, staring into Sinclair’s silvery eyes, but the man looked like he could out poker-face the devil.
“I don’t know. I had a location on him—”
“Which didn’t pan out,” I said. Another of Sinclair’s frustrating leads. A lead which, once again, led fucking nowhere. Every time another lead turned up empty, I swear to God, it was like losing Ryker all over again.
“Because we lost him just as quickly. As soon as I had him located in Texas, he went overseas and disappeared.” His voice came out clipped and terse, sounding more than a little pissed at that situation.
Ash and I locked gazes because what the fuck was this joker doing? Surely he was stringing Beck along knowing Beck was desperate to bring Ryker home. He blamed himself. I didn’t have the guts to admit it was all on me.
“So then why are you here, Sinclair?” Ash asked.
“To let you know you have another sibling. Well, probably a half-sibling.”
Shit if that didn’t get everyone’s attention quicker than a mad rattlesnake in heat.
“Explain,” Beck demanded.
“It’s simple. Turns out your mother was pregnant when she left. Only it’s probable it wasn’t your father’s.”
“Who and where?” Ash asked on a growl.
“I don’t have all the details yet. Your mom changed her name after the baby’s birth and left the state shortly after. But my lead points to Arizona.”
“Fuck. He’s been alone out there all this time,” Eli said, catching our gazes. We were all shell-shocked.
“She. You have a sister. Hope Daniels.”
A sister. We had a little sister named Hope.
We all agreed that Sinclair would head out to Arizona and try to reach out to her. If it checked out, the plan was to convince her to come to North Carolina to meet us.
“This still feels surreal. Nothing like hiring a P.I. to find our missing brother and turning up a sister we never even knew about instead,” Wyatt said.
Once the shock wore off, the weird thing was I had the urge to call Tessa and tell her my news. And this was a problem. Because I’d blurred the line between client and friend. Hell, I’d fuckin’ blown through it with a blow torch. My head told me to get back to my side of the line, keep it professional between us from here on out.
But there were other parts of my body with a completely different opinion and willing to commit mutiny to get what they wanted. And what they wanted was more time with Tessa not talking about her reno. And if that time happened to be done while naked and horizontal, all the better.
In an effort to regain my professionalism, I began making my visits to Tessa’s jobsite—correction, to the Madigan jobsite—during the time I knew she volunteered at Meadowbrook. Apparently, Joe, the Uber driver, picked her up at exactly eleven on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. With her kitchen gutted, I had electric, plumbing, and drywall all set up to rotate through. Then tile, flooring, and painting. Her new appliances would be delivered and could sit in one of the extra bedrooms until we were ready for installation.
* * * *
Life seemed to be heading back to normal, if normal meant I went to work, went home, didn’t sleep and got up and did it all again the next day. Shit. Pretty sure I was turning into my brother Wyatt. All work and no play.
That didn’t seem right, so I called up Eli on Friday night and met him over at Big Eddie’s. Ash met us after his game. We played a couple games of pool, drank a few beers, and I couldn’t drum up interest in a single woman trying to make a love connection. Ash ignored the banker looking guy in the corner giving him the eye, so it sure looked like neither of us had achieved normal. Although he and Eli still had the bet going.
“You guys want to watch a movie at my place?”
“Yes,” Ash said. “As long as Eli doesn’t pick the movie.”
“Fuck no. I rented a movie Tessa was watching the other day. She said she watches it all the time. Supposed to be a classic. I thought we could preview it and maybe show it to the kids.”
Here’s the deal about movies. When we were kids, we never got to watch them. We had one TV in the house and it belonged to Dad. No one else touched it. So we Thorne brothers had a giant black hole from our childhood. Popular TV shows, movies, cartoons. We had no exposure to any of it. We also never owned a book, and rarely got to go to the library.
So, as grown men, we were making up for it. I had a floor-to-ceiling bookcase that took up the whole wall in my family room. And I stuffed it full of books and movies and old TV shows. I knew Ash and Beck did the same. Wyatt was too busy studying for his architect’s exam and Eli couldn’t stay sitting long enough to get into movies.
Anyway, that explains how Ash, Eli, and I all ended up watching Old Yeller at my place on a Friday night.
The movie started out good. It hit us right in the chest too, because having a pet was one of the things we would’ve given an arm for growing up. The first hour was great. Who wouldn’t want to be a pioneer kid with a dog? But then it stopped being great.
“Oh, fuck no, not a wolf.” First a bear, then a wild boar, and now a wolf. How much did this poor heroic dog have to take on, dammit?
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Ash said.
“That’s the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.” Eli sniffed.
“I’d don’t like where this is heading. I swear to God, Gray, if Yeller dies, I will kill you,” Ash threatened.
I got it. Because watching the dog throw himself at the wolf to protect the little girl had my own eyes burning. I picked up my phone and dialed Tessa’s number. I didn’t even say hello. “Does the dog get rabies?”
“What? Gray? It’s after midnight. What’s wrong? Why do I hear crying in the background?”
Fuck. I hadn’t been paying attention to the time, but the dog was in the fence now, and crying pitifully, and I didn’t think any of us could take it if it ended badly. Eli was already crying and if Ash clenched his jaw any tighter he’d break it. “Does Old Yeller get rabies and die in the end? Please answer quickly.”
“Are you watching Old Yeller?”
“Yeah,” I said, my eyes glued to the brave dog and the crying boy. “Me, Ash, and Eli.”
“Gray…turn off the movie. Turn it off now,” she said.
I lifted the remote and shut it off.
“Now, here’s what happens. Just when it looks like Travis has to shoot Old Yeller because of the rabies, a brand new veterinarian happens upon their cabin. And he’s got this new medicine from the east. And he gives Old Yeller a shot, and he gets better, and Old Yeller and Travis live long happy lives.”
“’Kay, hold on.”—I lowered the phone from my mouth but kept it at my ear—“Tessa says a veterinarian arrives at their cabin with a new medicine from back east, gives Old Yeller the shot in the nick of time, he gets better and the kid and the dog live long, happy lives.”
Ash and Eli both stared at me with narrowed eyes, deciding whether or not to believe that bullshit story.
After a beat Ash said, “That’s what I figured.”
“Lucky timing.” Eli nodded, satisfied.
“No fucking way we’re letting the kids watch it,” Ash grumbled.
Hell no, we weren’t.
I was going to cling to Tessa’s ending too, so I could get some sleep tonight. When she’d said she watched the movie whenever she needed a good cry, I figured she meant a happy cry. What was wrong with her?
* * * *
The next week at work was busy. The Madigan kitchen was wrapping up, and then we could begin the rest of her house. I’d put the finishing touches on the proposal for Tessa’s house renovation, but I’d handed the wrap-up of her kitchen off to Eli. She’d been taking up too much space in my head, and I still needed a bit more separation.
I also handled product selections for two different clients, and even talked a client down from the edge after she’d found out her mother-in-law had tried to change her renovation plans. Which was why I’d called her and left her a message when the mother-in-law had sent me the email.
One of the highlights of the week was selecting our very first winner for the “Pay It Forward” grant, our way of helping a needy startup by providing free office space for a year. We had a small office on the far side of the building that was sitting empty. It wasn’t costing a thing to let someone use it.
After Beck narrowed all the applicants down to three equally qualified candidates, we ended up making the final decision based on who we’d want hanging around our offices for the next year. We selected Rhia Hollis with her startup event planning business. She presented as nice, calm, and on the quiet side. Beck made the phone call and she was scheduled to move in the next week.
Funny story: the nice, calm, quiet Pay It Forward grantee, Rhia Hollis, moved into our offices and it turned out while she was nice—she wasn’t very calm or quiet. Which wouldn’t have been a big deal, except we had to do a quick office shuffle at the last minute and she ended up having to share Wyatt’s office.
It was fun at first, for everyone except Wyatt. By that I mean Wyatt was serious, quiet, and needed to have control of everything in his universe. Possibly bordering on OCD. If Wyatt was a color he’d be beige. His new officemate was his exact opposite. Rhia was lively, loud, free-spirited, and spontaneous. If Rhia was a color she’d be neon tie-dye.
Talk about fireworks. Like I said it was fun watching the clash, until that clash turned to sparks of the sexual variety, and then it wasn’t as fun. Because it reminded me of what I didn’t have in my life. Tessa. And I realized I felt even worse than when I was sure I had the man flu a few months back.
Yet, through all this craziness, I was able to maintain a professional relationship with Tessa, and I felt good about that. Not “good” good. Personally, I felt antsy, frustrated, and like I wanted to howl at the moon. But professionally, good. It wasn’t easy, but I knew it was the right thing to do.
Until one morning, about three weeks after losing the bet—three weeks after successfully pulling back from Tessa—I woke up to an all-day rain, and I worried about Tessa and her pain. Before I could even think about it, I found myself driving over to her house. Conscientious contractors double-checked our subcontractors’ work all the time. Sometimes even triple-checked. SBC had handed over her finished kitchen, so it was only right to follow-up and make sure there were no issues. That’s all it was. And then while I was there, I could check on Tessa.