by Avery Flynn
Chapter Seven
Silence wasn’t just golden, it was all Mateo wanted in the world—especially after he’d spent the past few days ducking Olivia, her tempting-as-hell lips, her flowery-smelling shampoo in his bathroom and her fundraiser plans. She’d left at first light with Luciana. Not that he was keeping track of her movements, it just made sense for him to stay in the know—not because of what that jackass Hawson, but because it made it easier to keep himself on guard.
Now he finally had all the silence he could want, but not for much longer. The soft breeze carried the sound of gravel being crunched under tires in through the open kitchen window. Steaming cup of coffee in one hand and conches blancas pastry in the other, he padded across the varnished oak floors to the large bay window overlooking his half-mile-long driveway.
The cabin sat at the peak of a long gravel drive and tall pine trees stood guard on the other three sides. Thanks to Mother Nature and the way sound carried up the hill, no one could get within two miles without him knowing.
The list of people he never wanted darkening his doorstep was a long one, but the man heading his way was near the very top. The mayor’s Cadillac barreled toward the house, spitting out gravel from beneath its tires and coming to a stop at the bend in the circular paved parking area big enough for six cars. Mateo finished off the pastry as he watched Hawson, jaw set in a determined line, hustle up to his door. The mayor was a man on a mission.
The pounding on the thick oak front door boomed through the cavernous foyer, echoing through the blessedly empty cabin. Mateo took a sip of coffee and waited. The mayor hammered on the door some more. Someone wasn’t going to be avoided today. Wasn’t that just his luck? Trouble dogged his feet more than that mangy mutt Luciana had taken off his hands this morning for some adoption event. He set his mug down on the granite kitchen counter. It could be worse. It could be Olivia.
He crossed the foyer in time with a third set of heavy-fisted raps from Salvation’s insistent mayor and jerked open the door. Hawson had one hand raised as if about to knock again and a blue piece of paper crumpled in the other.
“Have you seen this?” Hawson shoved the mangled paper in Mateo’s direction. “You were supposed to be keeping me updated.”
Mateo didn’t bother to answer as he took the paper from the mayor’s ham-fisted grip. Creased and beat up as it was, there was still no missing the message.
HELP RAISE A GLASS FOR THE SALVATION VETERANS’ CENTER AT THE SWEET SALVATION BREWERY — ALL PROCEEDS GO TOWARD REBUILDING THE CENTER. VOLUNTEERS, EXHIBITORS AND DONATIONS NEEDED! SIGN UP TODAY.
Part of him couldn’t help but be impressed. While he’d been doing everything he could to dodge her, she’d been working her hot little ass off. There just might be more to Olivia Sweet than what looked good on a magazine cover.
He neatly folded the fundraiser flyer in half and handed it back to the mayor. “I told you I’d keep an eye on her. I did. She’s not doing anything crazy.”
Hawson sputtered for a minute before any actual words came out. “She will. Believe you me, before this is over, the whole thing will be about her.” He balled up the flyer in his hand and winged it across the porch. The blue paper rolled to a stop in the corner, the only touch of bright color in the otherwise pristine gray stone porch. “She’ll use this as a springboard for her sorry-ass excuse of a career as a D-list celebrity. I thought you were on Salvation’s side. You have to stop it.”
Only years of Marine-conditioned discipline kept Mateo from scooping up the mayor and tossing him off the porch. The smart thing was to go along with the mayor’s scheme. What did he care about Olivia’s plans as long as the veterans’ center was rebuilt like Hawson had promised? She was a thorn he’d shoved into his side to remind him of everything he couldn’t have anymore.
“And how do you propose I stop her?”
“Any means necessary,” the mayor said.
He glanced over at the bright-blue paper ball sitting in the corner and then back at the Napoleon wannabe plotting his little sabotage on Mateo’s front porch. He’d always hated bullies. He’d agreed to keep an eye on Olivia’s activities, not sabotage the fundraiser.
“No.”
Hawson’s eyebrows shot up and the vein in his temple puffed out. “What do you mean, no?”
“Do I need to go grab a dictionary?”
“I thought you were a man, a Marine, that I could depend on.” Hawson delivered the insult with the flair of a carnival sideshow barker.
It had about the same effect on Mateo as the last time someone tried to get him to play one of those crooked games at the county fair. “Seems you were wrong.”
“From the stories I’ve heard about your last deployment, I’m not the only one. Thought you would have learned the danger of disregarding an order.”
Fire of shame and guilt ate its way up from his gut as fast and hot as the roadside explosion that had killed the rest of his four-Marine fire team in Afghanistan. “Get off my property before I dropkick your ass to the highway.”
Hawson puffed up like a posturing goose. “Don’t you threaten me, boy, unless you want to be out of a job.”
Mateo laughed and leaned against the doorframe. “I don’t make threats, just deliver on promises.”
The mayor’s round cheeks went crimson and his eyes bulged. If he didn’t calm the fuck down, he was going to have a heart attack on the front porch, and there was no way Mateo would be giving the asshole mouth to mouth.
Just when he thought his day couldn’t get any worse, Olivia’s ridiculous yellow Fiat sped up the driveway, kicking out gravel, followed by Luciana’s minivan. Some pop diva blared from the Fiat’s speakers and out of the open windows just barely louder than Olivia’s off-tune singing and the happy yaps of that damned mutt, both of whom were about as welcome during his breakfast as a cardboard-tasting veggie omelet in an MRE. He didn’t know when his place had turned into grand fucking central but it had.
Luciana and Olivia got out of their cars and that ugly excuse for a dog sprinted past them both, bounded up the stairs and sat down on Mateo’s right shoe.
“I see how it is.” The mayor’s beady eyes narrowed and he zeroed in on Olivia as she began to saunter toward them. “Good to know what kind of foxhole you’re really interested in.”
Even though his muscles twitched with the need to smack the smug look off the mayor’s face, Mateo took a deliberate step back so he wouldn’t be in striking distance. “You have five seconds.”
Hawson opened his mouth, but clamped it right back shut before any more bile could come out. He spun on his heel and clomped down the front steps, giving Olivia and Luciana a wide berth on the stairs before getting into his Cadillac and hightailing it off Burnett’s Hill.
In a perfect world, the dictatorial mayor would never darken his doorstep again, but Mateo had seen too much of the imperfect to ever believe that would happen—especially not when the personification of trouble stood not three feet away in a short skirt and sky-high heels.
Per usual, Luciana had taken over his kitchen, unloading groceries he hadn’t asked her to buy and stuffing homemade enchiladas in the fridge that he hadn’t asked her to make. Ever since he’d gotten out of the hospital, she’d made these weekly trips out to the cabin like he couldn’t fend for himself when she knew damn well he could microwave like nobody’s business.
“Would it kill you to buy some fresh fruit instead of stocking up on protein drinks and frozen food?” Luciana shut the refrigerator door with a disgusted snort. “So what did His Highness want?”
“The usual.” If being a pain in the butt counted as the usual, which, with Tyrell Hawson, it did.
“You have a ‘usual’ with the mayor?” Olivia plopped one last fresh flower into the vase she’d brought with her from the car and stood back to admire the totally unnecessary colorful bouquet taking up residence on the oversized island in his otherwise stark, mostly stainless-steel kitchen.
She glanced up at him with a sa
tisfied smile on her face that knocked the air out of his lungs. It was the kind of look that had made men throughout history start wars and conquer new territory just to impress a woman. Some men, but not him. He didn’t have room in his life for grocery-store flowers and women so beautiful it made his scars ache—no matter how good she felt in his arms or just how badly he wanted to touch her every damn time he saw her.
Clamping his teeth together, he shoved the wisp of possibility out of his mind and turned on his heel, nearly going down in a heap because of the constantly underfoot dog.
“So what’s with the mutt?” The canine’s tail thumped against his calf. “I thought he was getting adopted today.”
Luciana shrugged. “Ellen from The Kitchen Sink came by with a box of puppies. You know those cuties were going to go first.”
She immediately turned and squashed the plastic grocery bags into a ball and stuffed them in the recycling bin she’d brought on a previous visit. But Mateo wasn’t fooled. He knew how his sister worked. If he didn’t act quick, he was going to end up with the furry mutt forever.
“That doesn’t answer my question. Why is the dog here?”
“He sure does like you.” Olivia circled around the island and squatted down near his feet, nuzzling her cheek against the dog’s scruff.
Just the brush of Olivia’s bare shoulder against his hip sent his thoughts veering away from the problem at hand and to the feel of her silky skin faster than a Hellfire missile.
Get a grip, Garcia. He took a step back. The dog followed, but Olivia—thankfully—did not. He looked up at the custom tin ceiling and shoved his hands deep into his shorts pockets to keep from reaching out for her. When he dropped his gaze, his sister was looking right at him with a knowing smirk on her face that made his scar itch.
His sister had many faults, but being unobservant wasn’t one of them. She looked from him to the dog to Olivia and back again. If she got any crazy ideas, his life would go from peaceful to a shitstorm in a nanosecond and there wouldn’t be a damn thing he could do about it.
“Luciana.” He’d used that tone a thousand times on fresh recruits and seasoned Marines alike. With them it had gotten immediate results. With his sister, all it got him was a well-practiced eye roll.
She gave him an innocent smile that would have fooled anyone not blood-related. “It’s only until we find this little doggie a home.”
Oh no. His house—shit, his life wasn’t made to be shared. “I’m not a dog person. I’m not a cat person. I’m not even a people person.”
“Really?” Luciana rounded on him. “That is total news to everyone here. Maybe it’s time you got out of your comfort zone, stopped hiding in your own little private fortress and opened yourself up to new experiences.”
“I’m not hiding.” He looked at Olivia. “Anyway, I’m already helping with the fundraiser.”
“Speaking of which,” Olivia said. “We had an idea.”
With Olivia on his right and his sister on his left, Mateo was trapped. “I’m not going to like this.”
“Probably not.” Luciana grinned. “But you’ll get over that.”
“We want you to sing at the fundraiser,” Olivia said.
His blood went cold.
He used to sing all the time—so much so that his nickname in his unit had been Mic. It killed time between missions and broke up the monotony of life on a forward operating base in the middle of a country half a world away from home and everything familiar. Old Motown songs, those had been his specialty. But the last time he’d sung a note had been a week before the explosion that had torn the guys he’d fought with to shreds. He didn’t have to close his eyes to see the devastation his own mistake had caused; it was always with him—awake, asleep or in-between.
“I don’t sing anymore.”
“Why not?” Olivia asked.
Because he didn’t think he could hit the notes anymore. His singing voice, like everything else, had gotten shredded in the IED explosion. Luciana was wrong. He wasn’t hiding from the people in Salvation; he was protecting them from seeing what kind of man one of their own had become. But he wasn’t about to say that out loud.
“Have you seen me?” He gestured to the twisted mess that used to be the left side of his face. “Nobody wants to look at this under a spotlight.”
Olivia moved in close, her fingers brushing across the map of scars on his face before dropping her hand to her side. “You care a lot more about your scars than anyone else in town does.”
It was the first time anyone without medical initials after their name had touched his face.
Unable to process his reaction to that, he fell back on his best weapon: anger. “That’s rich, coming from someone who doesn’t just look like a model but used to be one.”
Her face smoothed out into a beautiful mask of imperviousness. “That was low.”
That’s where he’d aimed, and he always hit his target. Maybe if he did more of that, everyone would finally leave him the fuck alone.
“I’m sick and tired of everyone coming around trying to get me to do what they want,” he bellowed. “Hawson wants what he wants. You two want me to work on this fundraiser and sing in front of half the town—of course, that’s if anyone shows up to this thing. Wait. I take that back. Oh, they’ll show. If for no other reason than because the people in this town love to watch a train wreck.”
Olivia’s cheeks blazed and she sucked in a deep breath, but she held her ground when a lot of others would have gone running. “You’re a real asshole, Mateo Garcia.”
“Glad you noticed.” He grabbed his coffee mug from the counter and took a sip of the now-cold liquid. “Now, if you two don’t mind, I have things to do.”
“Come on, Olivia,” Luciana said. “Let’s get out of here.”
The two women got as far as the front door before he realized they’d left something behind. “You forgot your dog.”
“No we didn’t,” Olivia snapped. “Maybe it’s time for you to start remembering that there’s more to life than that massive chip you have welded to your shoulder.”
They were out the door before he could come up with a scathing comeback.
The dog gave a forlorn half howl, snagging Mateo’s attention. “You want to go with them? Good. Go.”
He hustled out the door, the dog close on his heels, but he wasn’t quick enough to catch Luciana before her minivan was halfway down the drive. Olivia was nowhere to be seen—no doubt she’d stormed off to her cabin.
Mateo stood on the front porch as the dog whined and nudged his leg.
“What the hell do you want?”
The dog whimpered, pulling at the few heartstrings Mateo had left. Now he was scaring a homeless dog. Shit. He really had turned into an asshole. He hunkered down on the top step. The dog must have taken it as an invitation because he crawled into his lap and shivered.
“Shhh, boy.” He leaned back to make his lap bigger and rubbed up and down the dog’s spine.
Still the mutt whimpered.
Mateo didn’t mean to sing. The notes just came out as he petted the dog’s newly washed fur.
“Sitting on the dock of the bay, watching the tide roll away.” The sound was rough and rusty, the notes broken in places where they shouldn’t be and sharp as a KA-BAR knife in others. Still, he sang to the shivering dog in his lap until the mutt relaxed…and for a good long time after his snores began.
Chapter Eight
Even the tallest shoes in Olivia’s still-unpacked suitcase weren’t going to make this day any better. The first annual Sweet Salvation Brewery Veterans’ Fundraiser volunteer informational meeting had disaster written all over it. With only a few minutes to go before it was set to kick off, Olivia had everything in place—except the volunteers.
“Just the little things,” Olivia mumbled to herself while glaring up at the fast-darkening sky as storm clouds rolled in from the West. Oh yeah, feel free to pile it on, Mother Nature.
For the fifth time,
she double-checked the tables to ensure each had a donation jar fashioned out of a beer growler to take back to town and set up at local businesses to collect donations; a stack of flyers featuring photos showing the damage to the center to post on church bulletin boards and at community gathering spots; and plenty of pens in case someone wanted to write a ginormous six-figure check. Wouldn’t that be nice? One fundraising volunteer meeting and they’d raise enough to fix the center and get the Sweet family into Salvation’s good graces months before her new niece or nephew arrived. Now that would be a win-win situation.
A fat drop of rain hit Olivia square in the middle of her forehead then rolled down the bridge of her nose before dripping off the tip. Lightning flashed in the distance. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Bang. There went the thunder.
Miranda rushed over, armed with an empty crate that would normally be filled with freshly bottled beer. “Looks like we’re moving this shindig indoors, unless you put a last-minute wet T-shirt contest on the schedule of events.”
That made Olivia laugh. “Maybe next year.”
Moving fast to dodge the ever-increasing raindrops, she and Miranda worked together to get all of the decorations inside to the tasting room as the thunder came sooner and sooner after the lightning bolts that lit up the sky. They carried in the last dripping crate load just as the skies opened up and dumped enough water to limit the visibility to a few feet outside the brewery’s front door.
Her stomach sank.
Miranda came and stood on her right side and Natalie on her left. They stood there like sentries watching the rain come down.
“I’m sure it’ll pass,” Miranda said, sounding about as convincing as a sinner begging for entry at the pearly gates. “People will come to volunteer.”
Okay. This sucked, but it could still work. The tasting room was set up for a good-sized crowd and she’d arranged it so it would look as it would for the fundraiser in two weeks. There was a stage at one end for the band and they could run the blind beer-tasting challenge from the large bar in the back corner. People cold line up, taste the beer and deposit their vote for best beer in a comment box at the end of the bar. That was if the other breweries agreed to participate in the fundraiser. “Any word from the other breweries about participating?”