by Con Riley
Jon leaves him to his pep talk and crosses the street. There’s no one in at the house, which is as he expected, so he opens the garage doors before looking back at the pizzeria. Now Carl firmly has his whole team’s attention, and he points down the street where the strip mall extends. Then he points across at the rundown house opposite. He ends his talk while pointing Jon’s way and then leads the way toward him.
“So,” he concludes, once he has his whole team’s attention again. “Anthony Nelson’s team is focused on out-of-town sites.” He glances Jon’s way with a glint in his eye like he’s recalling getting caught sneaking photos. “That’s why we’ll take a leaf out of Mr. Fournier here’s book and take a look at the kind of potential right here on his doorstep.”
It’s good to see the whole team finally pay attention. Carl stands a couple of steps up the stairway and speaks. “But before we find a location of our own like this one, we have to learn to work together, because this next part is important.” He draws in a deep breath.
“If you want to pull a neighborhood apart for profit, first you need to know how to put one back together.”
JON IS wrestling a loose plank of wood that edges one of the raised vegetable beds when the backdoor opens. It overhangs the pathway at a perfect angle to trip someone, but it also keeps slipping out of his grip before he can secure it with a hammer and nail. He struggles to hold it in position, so focused on the task that he misses the slam of the backdoor. It’s not until Tyler calls out, “Hey,” that Jon looks up and the plank slips from his hands again. “Hey, yourself,” he grumbles, frustrated, and still on his knees when Tyler reaches him.
“It’s eleven o’clock, Jon. What the heck are you doing here?” he asks and then drops to a crouch beside him. “Here, let me—”
It’s so much easier to hammer the board into place with Tyler’s assistance. Jon gives the nail one last, hard knock and then sits back on his heels. “There.”
“Yeah. Good job, hotshot.” Tyler brushes dirt from his palms and dips in for a quick kiss. “It’s not that I’m unhappy to see you, but your fancy company didn’t send you all the way to Seattle to get your hands dirty while on their clock. So what are you doing here?”
It has to be strange for Tyler to find him home in the morning, let alone in an old pair of shorts and a T-shirt instead of the suit he left that morning wearing. He doesn’t mention that it’s not only him who came home early; Carl and his team will be back any minute from the diner where they’re having a planning meeting over pie and coffee. “I’m taking care of this before Peggy gets home.” He wipes sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. “Seemed like it might get Lorna off her case if this place is….” He stands and swivels from side to side a few times to pop the kinks in his back. Trip hazards still lie in every direction he looks, from the many hoses snaking between beds to the uneven paving under his feet. “Well, I figured it couldn’t hurt to make a start dealing with some of the worst issues.”
The sun’s hot this close to noon, and the sky’s clear. The bright summer light highlights Tyler’s expression, which skitters between frustrated and helpless. “You think hammering a couple of boards out of the way will make any difference?”
“It can’t hurt,” Jon simply repeats. It’s all that he has to offer right now. There’s no computer model he knows that can plot outcomes after one old woman’s stumble, and there’s no analysis in existence that could’ve predicted Lorna’s response. “If it’s trip hazards she’s worried about, we can make a start, at least.”
“Yeah, but….” Tyler glances over his shoulder at the house. “I can’t fix all of that.” When he looks back, he wears the same hollow-eyed expression Jon last saw when Danny walked into the diner.
Tyler’s expecting to hear that nothing he does matters.
He already thinks it’s coming, and what’s worse—much worse, to Jon’s mind—is that he thinks he has to take it.
Jon’s voice comes out gruff. “You don’t have to fix it, Ty. Not on your own, anyhow.”
“But you can’t take more time off work like this.” Tyler holds up a hand. “No. You really can’t, Jon. You have your own stuff to deal with. Like writing that report you keep avoiding. How’re you going to get that done as well as everything around here?” He looks down rather than holding Jon’s gaze. “Besides, even if you could, no way can Peggy afford the cost of repairs.” His eyelashes cast shadows as spiky as his reaction when Jon takes a step toward him. “And we both know why that is.”
Jon keeps moving until Tyler’s raised hand is flat against his chest. He ignores his flinch when he covers that hand with his own. “Then let me help.”
They’re interrupted before Tyler gets a chance to turn Jon down flat. The garage door creaks, and Tyler takes a step back. “Peggy’s not getting out of the hospital until later, and Lorna said she’d text when they were on the way home. So who the hell can that be?”
Carl leads his team out into the backyard and has what looks like one of the most confident team meetings that Jon’s ever witnessed. He raises a hand their way in greeting but is quickly engrossed in fielding questions. Compared to the attitudes Jon witnessed just a while ago in the parking lot, these could be different people. They stand close to listen now when Carl issues orders and nod when he allocates tasks.
“What?” Tyler takes a step forward right when a loud horn honks from out front. “Jon, what’s he doing?”
At this point, Tyler’s guess is about as good as his. He hoped Carl would give him some advice—maybe show him how to fix the most pressing issues. He also wondered if seeing Carl in a new environment might help his team trust his leadership back at the office. What he hadn’t quite expected was Carl treating this like a brand-new project he’d manage from start to finish. That determination to see the whole task through is right there in the way he greets the contractors who arrive wearing scuffed work boots and tool belts. It’s also evident as he assigns someone from his team to each of the new arrivals. “You want to see what we have planned?” he finally calls out their way.
Jon nods, but he’s mostly watching Tyler, whose frown lightens as he realizes how much this many people might accomplish in a short time, but then it deepens again as Carl approaches. They shake hands, but the first thing Tyler says is, “I can’t let you do all this work for nothing.”
“It’s not exactly for nothing, son.” Carl inclines his head at the contractors. “I worked with these guys for years. They’ll do anything for a couple of hours if free pizza is offered, so you’re welcome to chip in later if that makes you feel any better.”
“Sure, I can do that.” Tyler’s frown is almost gone.
It dissipates completely when Carl adds, “I should be paying you, to be honest. Took me years to learn how real projects work from start to finish. Doing this will give my guys insight about working on restorations. They’ll come out of today understanding that some older locations only need some love and renovation. That’s the kind of development project I like best. The other team can stick to brand new projects. They’ll find out soon enough that market’s about saturated.”
“The other team?” Tyler asks, bemused like none of what Carl said makes a lick of sense.
“Yeah.” Carl nods Jon’s way. “Didn’t Jonathan tell you about Anthony Nelson?”
Tyler shakes his head. “No.” Then his eyes narrow. “Not by name, anyhow.”
“Huh. Is that so?” It’s only now that he’s gotten to know Carl better that Jon knows his leg’s about to get pulled. “Funny. He sure spends a lot of time with him at work. In fact they spent so much time together when Jonathan first got in that I thought he was playing favorites.”
“Is that so?” Tyler’s gaze slides his way for a moment, speculative before it lightens. “I can’t say Jon’s mentioned his name to me. Not even once. So why don’t you go ahead and tell me all about him.”
If Jon didn’t need Carl’s help right now, he’d tell him to shut his mouth.
Fuck telling him to shut his mouth. He’ll go right ahead and kill him.
Carl continues even as Jon draws a finger slowly over his throat just out of Tyler’s eye line.
“Anthony is who I’m up against to keep my job,” he explains. “His team is shit hot whereas mine—” He pauses to intervene when one of his guys looks down the barrel of the nail gun he’s holding. He’s shaking his head when he comes back. “Well, let’s just say it’s good to have somewhere they get to practice working together like this. They have to learn to collaborate, somehow, instead of trying to work on their own.” He drops his head for a moment and rubs at the back of his neck, another clue that he’s about to tell the complete truth. “Working on my own hasn’t worked out too well lately for me either.”
“So this is a team bonding deal?”
“Yes,” Jon butts in before Carl can do any more teasing damage, and he guides Tyler away, both his hands firmly on his shoulders. “That’s exactly why they’re here, so let’s leave the experts to it. We should go check the house before Peggy gets back. Take a look for any more trip hazards inside.” He lets out a sigh of relief as soon as they’re alone in the kitchen.
Tyler has him backed up, braced against the sink before he knows it, a full press of his body that Jon doesn’t even try to squirm away from. “Anthony Nelson, eh? That the guy who asked you out?” Tyler asks, as he runs his palms up Jon’s forearms, thumbs pressing into each elbow so he almost buckles. “Tell me, Jon.” Tyler’s voice is low when he leans in, breath warm against the shell of his ear. It’s a deadly spot for Jon that mainlines sensation southward, and that leaves him helpless. That powerlessness only gets worse at the touch of the tip of Tyler’s tongue. “Is he hot?”
Jon lets go of the edge of the counter behind him and holds Tyler’s head exactly where it is. “Yes?” he says, like his answer is a question. Tyler rewards his honesty with another huff of warm air. It’s risky to get a hard-on like this in full view of the backyard, but desire rockets through him, accelerating beyond reason when Tyler murmurs, “Does that mean you want him?”
“N-No.” There’s no question in his response this time at all, just a stutter when Tyler sucks at the skin at the side of his throat. His mouth is so hot, and the temperature only increases when he nips like he doesn’t believe him. “I mean it,” Jon insists. “When I thought about it, about me and him, I couldn’t get you out of my head.”
“Yeah?” Tyler leans back. His lips already plump and reddened like they’ve been kissing for hours, and oh God, Jon really wants that.
“Yeah. I thought about you.” He kisses Tyler to a soundtrack of hammer strikes and power tools from outside. “Couldn’t stop even when the sight of you annoyed me.”
“Did he want to get in your pants, Jon?” Tyler asks with a straight face while grazing the front of Jon’s shorts with the palm of his hand.
No way that light touch is accidental.
“Maybe.” He grits his teeth when Tyler’s soft touch turns purposeful. He’s half hard with a dozen people right outside and Peggy due home any moment. “I want to get in yours so much more.” It’s wonderful and awful at the same time to see Tyler’s lips curl into a smile so that his sole dimple deepens when Jon doesn’t have time to do more than quickly kiss it. His mouth is dry when he says, “We can’t right now.”
Tyler actually tsks like he’s said something ridiculous. “Of course we can’t.” He lifts his hand from Jon’s dick but slides it around to his ass, which he squeezes. “I’m just marking my place.” He squeezes one more time and then takes a half step sideways. “Look,” he orders, and Jon faces the same way so he looks out over the backyard too. It’s a view he’s seen so many times since early summer, only right now its full of people. “Look,” Tyler repeats. “Look what you made happen.”
Outside men make repairs that have been a long time coming. There’s a clunk as someone raises a ladder to an upstairs rotten window and the roar of a chainsaw as a leaning tree is cut back. Beyond that he sees Carl crouching next to the spigot that’s leaked from the first day. Two of his team kneel with him, and he watches Carl back off to let them solve the problem. His expression is relaxed for once as he rolls up hoses into neat coils. It’s a sight that constricts Jon’s throat like those same coils now wind round it instead. He’s choked that such a simple task is finally getting dealt with.
“What is it they’re doing by the greenhouse?”
Jon swallows before he can speak. “They’re lifting the old pavers.” He looked up online how to fix it up himself. It’s stunning to see how fast a group can level the ground and re-lay all those stone slabs. “See where they pegged out lengths of string? That’s a guide to make sure they’re laid level this time.”
“So Peggy won’t be able to trip out there again?”
“She’d have to try a whole lot harder.” It’s exactly like he drew for Carl back in the office—a plan of all the pinch points where accidents might happen. Seeing each one addressed like this only a few hours later does something to him.
“Hey. You okay there?” Tyler’s voice is neutral, but his fingers steal around Jon’s wrist. It’s another tie that binds him, like the tightness lingering around his throat—a grounding point of pressure that he likes more than he could’ve ever guessed.
“I’m good.”
“Yes you are.” Tyler’s quietly emphatic. “You are so good at this shit, Jon. I thought your job was the biggest pile of bullshit I ever heard of, but I can see why people pay for your time now. I could hardly sleep because of worrying until you said you had this. You said it, and then you made this happen. No wonder people trust your judgment.”
A car horn toots outside, and Tyler slowly loosens his grip like he doesn’t want to let go. “That’ll be Lorna back with Peggy.” He takes one more look over the garden before leaving the kitchen. “At least now there’s a whole lot of problems she can check off her list. She’ll have fewer reasons to take Peggy away, so we can all stay together for—” He stutters before finishing, “for the summer, at least.”
The calendar on the back of the kitchen door swings when the door closes behind him, acting as a visual reminder Jon could’ve lived without seeing right then.
Peggy’s home, and Tyler’s a whole lot happier, but there’s no way to deny that summer’s nearly over.
Chapter 24
IT TAKES a while for Lorna to say what she thinks after she gets home with Peggy. Jon tries to guess the conclusions she might come to based on her body language alone, and she doesn’t make that easy. Her face is a blank mask of politeness that makes reading her impossible. That, coupled with the way she makes him wait before speaking, is excruciating.
He’d bet everything he has at this moment that she’s a killer in negotiations.
She’s still silent as she surveys the work under construction from the kitchen window, and she says nothing at all when Peggy insists on going out right away. She only watches Tyler guide her—carefully, oh, so carefully—out across the backyard. The bright pink headscarf she wears over her dressing today is tied into a huge bow. It’s a vivid spot of color that the breeze tries to play with, and it’s as bright as Peggy’s smile that’s visible all the way from where they both stand.
Jon cracks first. “She looks good.” And she does. So much better than only forty-eight hours before when he wondered if she’d come home at all.
Lorna still says nothing.
“I-I mean,” he flounders for something to crack her veneer. “I mean, she looks so much better. It’s probably coming home that’s done it. She loves—”
“I’m well aware of what Peggy loves.” Lorna’s tone is abrupt, but it’s the first time she’s used the diminutive Peggy goes by instead of her full name. “Not sure there’s a doctor or nurse left in Washington State
that hasn’t heard about it.”
Beyond them, that pink bow bobs and flutters, harnessing almost all of his attention. He admits, “She’s not quiet about how much she loves her home.”
Lorna’s mask almost slips for a moment. “Oh, she didn’t talk about this place at all.” It finally does slide when she reaches into her bag and removes the wig that Peggy had clung onto. Lorna’s brow creases, and she looks every bit of her fifty plus years when she turns it inside out. Despite being cleaned, the residual bloodstain inside is frighteningly large. “No, she didn’t talk about this place. She only talked about not leaving ‘her boy.’” Her glance his way is the first time he’s seen her without some kind of guard up. He can almost hear the roll of her eyes.
Jon smiles, remembering his own reaction to those same words.
“So I spent the whole night worrying about how to make sure this”—she prods at the faint stain—“doesn’t happen again if she stays here long-term.”
“You’re having second thoughts about moving her closer to you?” Jesus, he’d lose his job in an instant if anyone at Bettman ever heard the naked hope in his voice. Talk about a negotiation killer—he’d give anything right now to encourage that line of thinking, and she has to know it.
Maybe she’s not entirely a hard-hearted hotshot either; instead of homing in on his weakness, she simply keeps on talking. “This is what happened, Jon. I worried all night, and then I met with someone from Aging and Disability Services, who talked me through her options. Peggy’s fully able to make her own decisions right now, but they helped me review some options just in case that changes.” This time it’s her turn to show some honest emotion. There’s guilt in her voice as she asks, “I had to take a close look at her budget. How has she managed for this long on so little? She barely has a dime in savings. It’s not right when Mom left me so much.” She shakes her head. “I know they had a falling out. But I also know my mom’s heart. She was proud, and Lord knows she could bear a grudge longer than anyone else on the planet, but there’s no way she’d want her sister to live somewhere that’s falling down around her ears on such a tiny income.”