by Locklyn Marx
“Fine,” she said, glaring at him. “Knock yourself out.”
He cocked his head, giving her a smile. “That’s all I get?”
She stared at him. “What?”
“I come over here, offer to repair your fence out of the goodness of my heart, and you don’t even invite me in? That’s not very neighborly.”
He moved forward so that he was dangerously close to stepping into the house.
She stood in front of the doorway, blocking him. He was so close she could feel the heat coming off his body. He smelled like a delicious mixture of outdoors and hot man.
“Yeah, well, it’s not very neighborly to bring someone’s garbage back over, either.”
“That was yesterday,” he said, like it was ten years ago. He moved even closer.
“No way. You can fix the fence, but you’re not coming in.”
“Why not?” He looked her up and down, his eyes lingering over her body. She was thankful that this time, he wasn’t getting much of a show. Her yoga pants and sweatshirt weren’t exactly made for ogling.
“Because.”
“Because you’re afraid of what’s going to happen.” It was a statement, not a question.
Lindsay shook her head and opened her mouth to protest, but he put a finger to her lips. His gaze locked on hers, and he shook his head like he was amused. “Oh, Lindsay,” he said, sighing like he didn’t know what to do with her. “Always afraid of something.”
It was the first indication he’d given that they had a history.
He moved his lips toward hers, and she held her breath, waiting for the kiss. But at the last moment, he turned around and hopped down the stairs. “If you’re not going to let me in,” he called over his shoulder as he headed for the yard, “at least bring me a lemonade.”
Chapter Three
Lindsay didn’t have any lemonade. It had too many calories, and besides, lemonade was a summer drink. All she had was a few bottles of water, and so after she’d forced herself to write for an hour, she grabbed two and headed out to the backyard. This time, she was dressed in jeans and a cream-colored cable knit sweater, her hair brushed and pulled back into a ponytail. Her boots crunched through the leaves as she made her way over to the fence.
Chace was dismantling the old fence, taking the huge pieces of rotting wood and stacking them up against the side of the house.
“Oh,” Lindsay said as she got closer. “I thought you were just going to make some repairs. I didn’t know you were going to build a whole new one.”
“’Never fix something when you have the knowledge and wherewithal to build something new,’” Chace recited. He took a bottle of water out of her hand and unscrewed the top. “I just came up with that right now.” He tilted his head, thinking about it. “But feel free to use it in one of your books. I won’t be mad.”
“How generous of you,” Lindsay said, rolling her eyes and wondering how much a whole new fence was going to cost. The closing costs and down payment for this house had pretty much wiped out her savings. Her plan had been to do the repairs and renovations little by little. But a fence seemed like a big purchase to be making right off the bat.
“How much does a new fence cost?” she asked.
He took his time answering, taking a long sip of water from the bottle. The leather jacket had been tossed over one of the fence posts, and sweat clung to his thin white tshirt. Every muscle, every line of his chest was outlined.
A second later, Chace grabbed the bottom of his shirt and pulled it off. He rolled it into a ball, then used it to mop his forehead.
Lindsay looked away, embarrassed. But not before she got an eyeful of shirtless man. His biceps were cut and defined, his chest smooth and tan with just the right amount of hair. A six pack completed the package, and she started to feel slightly dizzy.
“So?” she asked, “how much is this going to cost?”
“Why? You worried about money?”
“No,” she lied. “Just wondering how much it’s going to cost.”
He cocked his head, thought about it. She forced herself to keep her eyes on his face, to not let her gaze slide down his body. The cool air was doing nothing to keep her body temperature down, and she hoped her cheeks weren’t red.
“I’m sure we can work out something out,” he said. He took a step closer to her.
“A payment plan, a barter system, something.”
“A barter system?”
He moved closer still, until he was so close she could see the tiny scar he had on his chin.
“Your hair,” he said. “It’s different.” He reached up and touched her ponytail.
The gesture was so intimate, so soft, that her breath caught. “Yeah,” she said. “I put it up.”
“I like it down.” Before she knew what was happening, he’d loosened her ponytail, letting her hair spill down around her shoulders. His hands brushed out the strands, his fingers running through the tangles. There was a hunger in his eyes, lust mixed with something else. Something dark.
“Chace,” she whispered. She was screwing up the courage to ask him what had happened last year, why he’d disappeared like that, why he’d kissed her last night if he wanted nothing to do with her that way she’d been telling herself.
But something in her tone must have alerted him to the fact that she was about to ask a question he didn’t want to deal with. And so he stepped away from her.
“I’ll be working for a couple more hours,” he said, “and then I’ll start again tomorrow.” He turned his back to her, began loosening another fence post.
She watched him work for a moment, swallowing her disappointment and hoping he would turn around again. But he didn’t.
“That sounds fine,” she said finally.
And then she walked back to the house.
***
By the time Chace was done clearing one side of the old, broken down fence, he had just enough time to shower before it was time to head to work at his restaurant.
He tossed his t-shirt over his shoulder and headed for home. The physical labor had given his body something to focus on, but now that he was slowing down, he couldn’t stop thinking about Lindsay. The way her curves had felt under his hands last night, how soft her hair had been in his fingers as he undid her ponytail.
He knew she was confused by what he was doing. Hell, it confused him, too. But when he’d woken up this morning, he needed to see her.
The girl from last night had been a mistake. He hadn’t been able to concentrate on what he was doing, hadn’t even been excited by the fact that she was in his bed.
They’d made out a little before just falling asleep. The whole time he’d been with Michelle, all he could think about was seeing Lindsay. And the fence had been as convenient an excuse as any.
He stripped for the shower, doing his best to ignore his erection, cursing his stupidity for bringing that girl home with him last night. If it hadn’t been for her, he would have had Lindsay last night, right there on her kitchen table. The thought got him going again, his cock hardening even more. He turned the shower spray to cold.
It had been an error in judgment, him going over there today. All it did was serve to confuse her, and to get him all worked up. He would never be able to get close to her again without explaining what had happened last year, and that’s something he wasn’t going to talk about. Ever.
He would finish the fence – he owed her that much — and then he would stay far, far away from her. No matter how hard it was.
This settled, he turned off the shower, then dressed and got ready to head into town.
***
The thing Chace hated the most about going into town was the stares. He hated the way people looked at him, hated the way they would give him sympathetic smiles before turning away because they didn’t know what to say. He didn’t want their pity, or their questions about how he was doing, or their home-baked casseroles that they’d force into his hands or leave on his doorstep.
It had been a disaster pretty much from the beginning, and at one point, Bo had taken him aside and asked Chace if it might not be better to sell the place. That was the first and only time in their fifteen-year friendship that Chace had thought he actually might hit Bo. The intervention had been one thing, but to insinuate Chace should give up The Trib was another thing all together.
The Trib had been his father’s life. And after what Chace had done, he didn’t care if he needed to mortgage his house or work here twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. He was going to make the restaurant a success.
“Hey, man,” Chace said to the cook, Chuck, as he walked into the kitchen.
“What’s going on?”
“Same old,” Chuck said. He was wiping down the grill, getting ready for what would hopefully be a busy lunch session.
“Where’s Dolores?” Chace asked.
Dolores was the lunch waitress, a woman in her sixties with bleached blonde hair and a horrible attitude. Dolores been loyal to Chace’s father, had worked there since before Chace had even been born, a fact she liked to throw in his face any chance she could get.
Chuck shrugged. “Dunno. She’s not here yet.”
Chace glanced at the clock. It was ten o’clock, an hour until lunch. Dolores would need that time to set the tables, wipe down the menus, and make sure the salt and pepper shakers were filled.
Technically all those things were supposed to be taken care of at night, but the night waitress, a bratty eighteen-year-old named Marcela, had begged off early last night.
She said it was because she had studying to do, but Chace had seen her later outside Bo’s bar, dressed in a short dress and heels so high she could hardly walk, getting into Garrett McGillicutty’s truck. So unless her schoolwork had to do with blow jobs, she’d been lying.
Chace sighed and got to work filling the salt and pepper shakers himself. He’d gotten through most of the big tables and was just about to start on the booths when Chuck poked his head out of the kitchen.
“Hey, boss,” he said. “You got a phone call.”
“Who is it?”
“Some lady.”
Well, that narrowed it down. It was probably the produce vendor, expecting payment. He followed Chuck back into the kitchen and picked up the phone.
“Hello?” he barked. Being rude to vendors probably wasn’t a good idea, but Chace was cranky. Dolores still wasn’t here and he needed to get back out to the dining room.
“Hello?” the woman on the other end of the line said. “Hello, yes, is this the person in charge of The Tributary restaurant?”
“Supposedly.”
“Oh, wonderful!” the caller said, obviously not getting the sarcasm. “My name is Martha Miller, and I am wondering if you would be willing to host the luncheon for The Boston Ladies for the Preservation of Cape Cod today at one o’clock.”
“We don’t take reservations,” Chace said.
“Yes, I see that right here on your website,” Martha said, her tone clipped. “But we have a party of fifty, and I wanted to make sure that would be okay. We’ve just decided to add a once a month luncheon to our roster of activities.”
Now she had his attention. A monthly luncheon of fifty people would add a lot to their bottom line. And maybe word would get around that The Trib was the place to be for… what did she say they were? The Ladies for the Preservation of something? Being the hot spot for conservation groups wasn’t something that necessarily appealed to him, but maybe people would see that the parking lot was full again and infer that The Trib was being restored to its former glory.
“That should be fine,” he said. “I can give you my email address if you’d like to pick your entrees beforehand and send me your selections.”
“That would be lovely!” Martha exclaimed. “We had another restaurant all lined up, but at the last minute we found out they didn’t offer any gluten free options. You offer some wonderful gluten free options, I see here on your menu.”
“Yes,” Chace said. “I had.. I have… my stepmother doesn’t eat gluten, so we wanted to make sure there were things here she could eat.” Saying the words out loud made his throat close, but he hid the emotion down where all the other emotions about his family resided — in some dark, poisonous box deep in his soul.
“Gluten is a real nasty character,” Martha said, as if it were a live being, instead of just a food protein. “I look forward to seeing you at one. Now, let me write down your email address, Mr….”
“Davenport. Chace Davenport.”
“Chace Davenport,” she mumbled. “You wouldn’t be any relation to Cole Davenport, would you?”
“He’s my father,” he said, hoping she wouldn’t press further. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Chuck watching him.
“Oh!” Martha exclaimed. “How wonderful! I knew your father at Yale!”
“Yes,” Chace said. “Yes, he was at Yale.” He wasn’t surprised that she remembered his father. That’s how Cole Davenport had been – even if you’d had only a slight interaction with him, no matter how long ago, you remembered. His father could work a room like nobody else. “Now if you want to grab a pen and take down my email address…”
“Yes, yes, of course.” He could hear her rummaging around on the other end of the line. “What’s your father up to these days? Something amazing, no doubt. He was always running around at Yale, advising people not to take jobs in the financial sector.
He said no one was really passionate about stocks.” She chuckled at the memory.
“He opened this restaurant,” Chace said, being deliberately vague. His pulse pounded in his ears.
“Wonderful!” she said. “Will he be there when I come in?”
“No.”
“Oh.” She sounded defeated for a moment, but then she rallied. “Well, maybe you could make sure he’s there for next month? If it works out, I mean, with us setting up our monthly luncheon there.”
“Ma’am,” Chace said. “My father died last fall.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” Martha exclaimed. She sounded sincere, which made it worse. Her voice softened. “Was it the cancer?”
“No,” Chace said. “No, it wasn’t.” He said it firmly, in the kind of tone that didn’t invite any more questions, a tone he’d practiced almost daily after his father had first passed away.
“Oh.” Martha cleared her throat and there was an awkward pause that she was obviously waiting for Chace to fill. But he stayed quiet. “Well, I’m ready for that email address now.”
Chace recited it, said his goodbyes, and then hung up the phone.
He glanced at the clock. 10:15. They had less than three hours to prepare a meal for fifty women. Fifty women who were, no doubt, used to getting what they wanted, and would come with all kind of special requests. Dolores still wasn’t there yet.
“Brace yourself, Chuck,” Chace said as he picked up the phone to dial Dolores and figure out where the hell she was. “Things are about to get crazy.”
***
Lindsay had taken a break from writing and was making a list for the hardware store. Her kitchen sink was leaking a little, nothing major, and according to the internet, it was an easy fix. But not without tools.
Wrench, she wrote. How much did a wrench cost? If she was going to be spending a lot of money on supplies, it might be cheaper to just call a plumber. Of course, tools were an investment…
He cell phone rang.
Her mother.
“How’s it going?” her mother asked when Lindsay picked up. “How’s the new house?”
Sylvia Benson had been intentionally kept out of the moving process, mostly because Lindsay
knew her mother would just make everything more stressful.
Everything was a big production with Sylvia. She wouldn’t have let Lindsay and Jamie put their trash into Chace’s garbage bin, for example. She would have forced them to take it down to the dump, and then once there, she would have made them fill out all kinds of forms for a dump pass or whatever it was you needed, then brought them home and made them sign up for a regular garbage pick up on top of it.
In addition to her tendency to make a big deal out of things, Sylvia could also be critical. Lindsay didn’t want to hear about how there were no switch plates on the light switches, and how the whole house needed to be painted, or oh, by the way, was Lindsay really considering keeping that ugly tan carpet in the living room? No, it was better to keep her mom out of things until she could show her the finished product.
“Everything’s going great,” Lindsay said cheerfully. “Just getting all settled in.”
“Have you met the new neighbor?”
“Yup,” Lindsay said, keeping her voice cheerful. “And he’s super nice. He’s building me a new fence.”
“That’s nice,” her mother said. “So, listen, I thought I’d take a ride down to the Cape today, maybe pick up some of that candy your aunt loves. It’s her birthday on Friday, you know.”
Lindsay sighed. “Mom, I told you, I don’t want you to see the house until it’s all
–”
“Did I say anything about coming to see the house?” Her mother sounded wounded.
“No, but –”
“I just want to spend time with my daughter, is that too much to ask?”
“No,” Lindsay said, even though it kind of was. Lindsay had work to do, writing that needed to be accomplished before she could just take off and do whatever she wanted. People were always thinking she could drop everything at a moment’s notice, could just put everything aside whenever the mood struck her. They never took her job seriously, and her mother was no exception.
“Good,” her mother said. “So it’s all settled. We’ll have lunch. Shall I come pick you up?”
“Sure,” Lindsay said, sighing. “Can you give me a couple hours?”
***