by Ariel Tachna
“That’s okay. I’ll take the one you mentioned so we can make sure it’s the right series, and then we can get the rest.”
Owen walked back to the Teen Fiction section and searched the shelves until he found the book Brent was looking for. “I just have the one. If it’s what Akshat is looking for, I can order the others. Just let me know. You don’t have to come back in. Just call and tell Mel or me that you want the rest of the series.”
“Will do. Can I go through and say hi to Derek?”
“Sure, if you want to.” Owen trailed behind Brent as he walked into the kitchen. Derek reappeared from the basement and smiled when he saw Brent—not the professional smile he’d given Owen when they met or the appreciative one from downstairs, but a real one.
“Brent, what are you doing here?”
“I wouldn’t shop for books anywhere else,” Brent replied. “I hear you’re going to do a remodel for Owen.”
“We’re going to put together a bid,” Derek demurred.
Owen appreciated him not taking Owen’s business for granted, but with Brent’s endorsement ringing in his ears, he’d have to be seriously impressed with someone else to accept a different offer. Although he could deal without having the distracting Derek Jackson around all the time. He’d never be lucky enough for Derek to be gay, and even if he was, he’d never look twice at shy little Owen Hensley.
Chapter Two
OWEN walked Derek to the door. “Thank you again for coming out so quickly and spending so much time listening both to what I need and what I want. Not everyone would be as willing to take the time you have.”
“All part of the service,” Derek replied with that confounded smile that melted Owen’s insides. “We’ll be in touch in a day or two with the estimates.”
Derek offered Owen his hand. Owen braced himself for the contact and shook it, grip firm but not bone-crushing. He knew what people expected from him when they saw his hair and his choice of clothes. They pegged him as queer and expected some limp-wristed, fingers-only handshake, but Owen knew how to shake hands. Derek returned it with an equally firm grip but no contest of wills, just a smile and a nod and a casual bye tossed over his shoulder as he walked out the door. It swung shut behind him as Owen sagged against the nearest bookcase.
“Owen? You okay there?”
He looked up at Mel, sure his expression gave away his internal turmoil. “I don’t know.”
Mel snorted. “You’re funny. He was nice.”
Far too nice for Owen’s peace of mind. “He was, and Brent couldn’t recommend his company highly enough, which means we’ll probably be seeing a lot of him this summer. What am I going to do?”
“Enjoy the eye candy?” Mel proposed.
Owen laughed. “Thank you. I needed that.”
“Seriously, though, I don’t know as many people as Brent does, but I’ve never heard anyone complain about Dalton Construction, and they’re a local company, which is one of your big things. The owner got married not too long ago. They had a big party at Enoteca. Darian told me all about it.”
“I hope he and his wife are very happy,” Owen said automatically.
Mel’s grin widened. “You mean he and his husband.”
Owen blinked a couple of times. “Wait, husband? You’re telling me the owner of Dalton Construction is gay?”
“I don’t know if he’s gay or bi—I’ve never met him—but he’s definitely married to a man,” Mel replied. “If nothing else, you know Derek’s no homophobe, or he wouldn’t be the foreman there.”
That hadn’t really been Owen’s concern after the looks he’d caught Derek giving him once or twice, but it was still good to know. “We’re assuming Derek will be the one overseeing the job if I decide to take their bid.”
“Even if he’s not, the same thing applies. A man who’s comfortable enough with himself to marry another man isn’t going to employ people who are homophobic, which means if you do go with Dalton Construction, you don’t have to worry about anyone being stupid or making a scene.”
It was an intangible, but Owen didn’t discount those. He’d spent enough time uncomfortable around others because of his sexuality. He didn’t want to feel that way in his own shop. One more reason to seriously consider the bid from Dalton Construction.
DEREK tossed the folder onto Thane’s desk and flopped down into the chair. “I swear to God I’d kill for a fucking cool front. It was miserable out there today, and tomorrow’s supposed to be even worse.”
“Then this will be good news,” Thane said. “We got the contract for Hensley’s Books. You can work in the air-conditioned comfort of his bookstore for a while.”
“Which bid did he take? The minimum one or the wish-list one?” Derek asked.
“The wish-list one.”
“Interesting,” Derek replied. “He told me price was a definite consideration, so I didn’t expect him to go with the full bid. Not that I’m complaining. Can we spare a team from the apartment rehab long enough for the wish-list bid?”
“I told him it would be a multistage process until we finish another contract and can give you a bigger team. He wasn’t thrilled, but he understood.”
“He’s not a pushover, but he’s not what I expected either. He’s young to be a business owner, and—” He searched for the right word. “—shy, almost. How do you own your own retail business and stay shy?”
“You pick something you love enough that you’ll deal with strangers to do it. You wanna take the boys with you? They’re usually pretty good at drawing people out of their shells,” Thane offered.
“Just warn them not to imitate his fashion sense? I know they’re theater kids, but there is such a thing as too out-there,” Derek said with a smile at the thought of Owen’s style. He still didn’t know how Owen had made that particular color combination work.
“They’re old enough and established enough to make those decisions for themselves. It’s not like they haven’t dealt with bullies before.”
“There’s dealing with bullies, and then there’s inviting negative attention. You’ve managed to keep them from getting the reputations we had.”
“You mean Blake’s managed to keep them from it,” Thane replied.
“Fine, Blake has managed it, but there’s no reason to tempt fate now. They have one year left before they graduate.”
“They still need something to do this summer. Are you going to take them with you, or should I keep them on my team?”
“We can share them, depending on whether I have anything they can help with. A lot of the stuff will be one- or two-man jobs.”
“There you go. Two men.”
Derek rolled his eyes. “You just don’t want to listen to Kit talk about his new boyfriend all summer.”
“If Hensley is worried about our attitude, Kit is the perfect way to smooth that over. And if not, then he’s still a good pair of hands with the grunt work. And Phillip can do pretty much anything but the electrical work.”
It was a damn good thing Derek liked Thane. Otherwise he’d accuse Thane of foisting his problems off on him.
DEREK’S phone vibrated on his belt. He glanced at the number to see his brother Brian calling. He hesitated for a moment before answering. He loved his brother, but he really wasn’t in the mood for the family drama that accompanied a call from him. Then again, it was listen to it now or listen to it later compounded by not being there now.
“Hi, Bri.”
“Fucking hell, Derek. This is the last straw.”
“What did the wicked witch do this time?” Derek’s parents had divorced when he was ten, and his father had remarried almost before the ink on the divorce decree was dry. Marlene, his stepmother, had his father wrapped around her little finger, but she’d made his and his brother’s lives hell from the moment she moved in.
“She ran Paula off.”
Derek sank back against the cushions of his couch with a smothered groan. Family drama, check.
“I though
t you two were getting pretty serious.”
“So did I. I wouldn’t have made her meet Marlene otherwise. I figure if it’s not serious, it’s not worth dealing with her, but anyone who’s going to stick around is going to meet her eventually.”
Derek understood. He didn’t have the best track record with relationships—his father certainly wasn’t the role model he intended to follow—but he’d learned a long time ago that no one he brought home, male or female, would ever meet Marlene’s standards. “What did she do?”
“What didn’t she do? From the moment we walked in the door, it was all ‘What an… interesting color’ and ‘That’s quite a lot of cleavage for a family gathering’ and ‘You do know Brian is just a car salesman’ and ‘Oh, you’re a preschool teacher, and you wear clothes like that.’ God, she is such a bitch. I make a perfectly good living, and Paula is amazing with her kids, and what she wears on a date has nothing to do with what she wears to work.”
“She could be the president of her own company and Marlene would find a way to nitpick. Then it would be something about how she could do so much better than you. You know better than to put any stock in anything she says.”
“I know, and you know, but Paula isn’t used to that kind of shit. She was in tears by the time we left. Before dinner. I offered to take her out somewhere nice instead, but she just made me take her home and wouldn’t let me come up with her.”
“Give her some time. Let her calm down and sleep on it. Call her tomorrow and talk to her then. Marlene’s opinion doesn’t make any difference to us. You know that. Tell her you won’t be able to get out of a few family gatherings a year, but she doesn’t have to come, and the rest of the time it’s just you two and maybe me on occasion. I promise I won’t act like Marlene.”
Brian choked back a laugh, but that had been Derek’s goal, so he smiled as he waited for Brian to relax.
“Of all the things I might worry about, you acting like her is not one of them. Thanks, Derek. I’ll call Paula tomorrow and hopefully things will be better.”
“Better to know now how much Paula can take. As long as Dad is alive, we’re stuck with her.”
“We won’t get rid of her even then. She’ll use Preston as a reason to keep fucking with us.”
Their younger half brother was the apple of Marlene’s eye. And Derek’s father had instilled enough sense of responsibility in Derek and Brian where Preston was concerned that walking away from him completely would end up feeling like a betrayal of what family meant.
“Fuck.”
“Pretty much.”
“Call Paula tomorrow and let me know how it goes.”
“It’d go better if you bring someone home and distract Marlene.”
Derek snorted. “I’d have to meet someone first.” A vision of Owen flitted across his mind, but he pushed it aside. Owen was a customer, and even if he wasn’t, he wouldn’t be interested in someone like Derek. He’d want someone closer to his own age and education level. Derek wasn’t ashamed of what he and Thane had built, but he’d heard enough diatribes from Marlene to know how his lack of higher education looked to others.
“Better get on that, then. Bring a guy home again. That’ll fuck with her good.”
“I’m not going to subject some poor guy to Marlene just to take the heat off you and Paula. If I meet someone, guy or girl, I’ll think about it, but for now, you’re on your own.”
“Fuck you very much,” Brian said with a laugh.
Derek would take it. If he was laughing, he wasn’t crying into his beer. “Call me after you talk with Paula and let me know how it goes?”
“I will. Bye, Derek.”
“Bye, Brian.”
Derek set his phone down on the cushions next to him and tried not to think about Brian or Marlene or the mess that was his family life. At least he could retreat to Thane’s when he needed a little normalcy. He snorted at what Marlene would say about Blake and Thane and normal. He almost wished he had a reason to introduce her to Blake. She might actually meet her match in him, except Derek liked him too much to subject him to Marlene’s brand of passive-aggressiveness. He dragged himself off the couch and into the shower. He needed to sleep tonight because tomorrow they started at the bookstore.
He was tempted to jerk off while he was in the shower, but he didn’t trust his thoughts, and no way he was going in to the bookstore for the first day of a new project with the memory of jerking off to images of Owen Hensley. He’d rather deal with blue balls.
Chapter Three
DEREK pounded on the door of Thane’s house at six o’clock the next morning. He wasn’t worried about waking Thane, and Blake was out of town at a conference. Kit opened the door a moment later, looking only half-awake. “Do we really have to leave this early?”
“We have to go by Congleton to pick up lumber and Chevy Chase Hardware to get all the plumbing and wires we’ll need to start the project, and Hensley expects us at the bookstore at a reasonable time to start working so he can get us inside and going before he opens for business.”
“We could meet you there.”
“Nope, you’re a part of this team, which means you go to work when I do and come home when I’m done.”
Kit grumbled under his breath as he pulled on his work boots and shouted for Phillip to hurry his ass up. Derek bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling. Even if he hadn’t known Blake wasn’t home, that would have been a dead giveaway. The boys never cussed when Blake could hear them.
Derek headed back out to his truck. They’d join him in a minute, and while he was waiting, he could gulp down some more coffee. He might have accepted the early mornings as part of the job, but that didn’t mean he liked them any more than the boys did. A few minutes later, they came stumbling out the door, looking like a pair of puppies tripping over feet too big for their bodies. Derek kept expecting them to catch up with their growth, but they hadn’t stopped yet. They’d be taller than Thane in a matter of months. They’d passed Blake a year ago.
“How are you with plumbing, Phillip?” Derek asked when they piled into the truck.
Phillip groaned. “Please don’t make me do plumbing. I’ll lay tile or frame walls or hang drywall, but I hate plumbing.”
Derek laughed. “How about I teach you how to string electrical wires instead? They won’t be live, so it’s perfectly safe, and you can get a sense of the connections. I know Thane said you hadn’t started with wiring yet, but there’s no reason you can’t learn now.”
“We talked about electrical conductivity and circuits and stuff in physics last year,” Kit chimed in. “This’ll be awesome.”
Derek laughed despite himself. When he’d first met Thane’s boys, he’d pegged Kit as the artistic one and Phillip as the more down-to-earth one, but Kit had surprised them with his knack for all things scientific. Phillip would undoubtedly take over Dalton Construction one day, but for Kit, the sky was the limit as long as science was involved.
They picked up their orders at Congleton Lumber and Chevy Chase Hardware with minimal fuss and arrived at the bookstore a little before eight. Kit bounded ahead of them to knock on the door. Derek shook his head. Thane might have been right. Kit’s enthusiasm for life could win over even the coldest fish. Owen didn’t stand a chance.
“Hi, I’m Kit Parkins. We’re here for the rehab.”
Derek smothered a grin at Owen’s confused look. Kit had that effect on people.
“We’ve got lumber and other supplies to unload,” Derek said, taking pity on Owen. “Should we pull around back and bring it in through the garage?”
“Yes, that would be fine.”
Derek tossed Phillip his keys. “Pull the truck around, Phillip. I’ll be down in a minute to help you unload. Kit, go around back and help your brother.”
“Sure thing, Derek,” Kit chirruped and bounced back down the front steps to where Phillip was waiting next to the truck.
Derek shook his head and walked up onto the porch, taking
in Owen’s floral print shirt, although it was paired with almost boring khakis today. Almost, because they were a little too tailored to be plain. Damn, Owen pushed Derek’s buttons. Thane teased him about liking twinks, but Derek didn’t want to be anyone’s sugar daddy. He wanted a self-reliant adult. He just wouldn’t complain if his male lovers tended toward willowy. Exactly like Owen Hensley.
“Are they legal?”
“Kit is seventeen, and Phillip just turned eighteen. They’re Dalton’s nephews, and he has legal guardianship of them. They’re young and enthusiastic, but they’re perfectly capable of the work. I wouldn’t have them on a jobsite otherwise. They’ve been working with us for two years since they came to live with Thane.”
“You would know best,” Owen said. “They just seem so… young.”
Derek snorted. “That’s one word for them. Don’t worry. I’ll keep them too busy to bother you while you’re working. They’re the only grunt labor I have for the time being.”
“So what’s the plan?”
“Until we can get more hands to make things go faster, we’ll have to take it in stages. The boys and I will get the basement done so you can move down there. Then we can start upstairs. That’ll leave the current business space untouched for as long as possible. When we’re done up there, we can look at how to rearrange customer flow so we affect your regular business as little as possible.”
“That’s….” Owen trailed off. “Thank you. I was afraid I’d end up having to close for some portion of the renovation time, but your plan sounds like it might actually work.”