by Julia London
Things had been better since they’d moved to East Beach. She’d found out about this village one day when she’d happened to run into Trace, a guy she knew from US Fitness. She had been living in Queens at the time and had gone into the city to have lunch with Brandi on a rare day she had off and Ruby was at day care.
She and Trace had stood on the street corner, catching up. “How’s it going with the baby?” he’d asked.
“The baby is six now.” Kyra laughed. “We’re hanging in there.”
“Where are you working?”
“At a day care. For free day care.” She laughed self-consciously. She definitely wasn’t one of the players anymore. “It’s been tough financially, to be honest.”
“That sucks,” he said. “Hey, I’ve got a great idea. I’m just back from East Beach. You know East Beach, right?”
Kyra shook her head. She didn’t know anything that didn’t involve McDonald’s or Dora the Explorer.
“Sure you do. Lake Haven,” he clarified. “We did that great shoot there a few years ago, remember?”
Kyra suddenly remembered. She definitely knew Lake Haven—everyone on the East Coast knew Lake Haven. That’s where rich people hung out in the summer. “Right, I remember,” she said.
“So I had dinner at Lakeside Bistro—they have a great chef there, excellent food. They have some openings for waitstaff, I heard. You could make some serious scratch, Kyra.”
Kyra snorted.
“I’m not kidding. I dated a girl who worked there last summer. You can make some great money in the summer months,” he’d said. “All the fat cats come up from the city to their vacation homes. They drink a lot, they eat a lot, and they tip a lot. You should totally do it. It’s not that far out of the city. The girl I dated said you could rent for pretty cheap, too.”
When she told Brandi about her chance meeting with Trace, Brandi’s eyes lit up. “You should totally do it. A small town would be better for Ruby than your part of Queens.”
That was true. And cheap rent sounded really good to Kyra. Brandi was right—Ruby would be starting school soon, and Kyra was leery of their rough neighborhood. Maybe she was wrong, but Kyra guessed that a school district with money like they probably had in East Beach would be better than the impoverished school district where they lived now.
The more Kyra thought about it, the more she agreed—she should totally do it. So one Saturday she’d found a babysitter. She’d taken the train up to Black Springs, paid an outrageous amount for a cab to East Beach, and applied at the Lakeside Bistro.
“Thank goodness you came in,” said Randa Lassiter, who, along with her husband, owned the bistro. “We can’t find anyone to work the day shift. Everyone wants nights, because that’s where the real money is. If you can work days, I can throw a few night shifts your way, and if something opens up there, I’ll move you to nights.”
She’d explained to Kyra what she could expect to make, and Kyra hardly had to think about it—she’d taken the job on the spot, then had packed up Ruby, who had tearfully said good-bye to her best friend at day care, Taleesha, and had moved to East Beach.
Things were better. But Kyra was determined to make things even better for her and her daughter.
She stood up and returned to the fridge to study its contents. Unfortunately, there was nothing in the fridge that looked even remotely appetizing at this late hour. She glanced at the apples as if they’d hurled a personal insult at her and shut the fridge door. She moved on to the pantry, where she discovered that her package of Oreo cookies had been decimated. She kept them on the very top shelf so Ruby couldn’t find them, but there were only two left. Damn babysitter. She removed the package from the pantry, grabbed the last two cookies, then walked across the kitchen to toss the package into the bin beneath the sink. As she stood back up and stuffed a cookie into her mouth, a movement outside caught her eye. She leaned forward to look out the window and saw her neighbor carrying what looked like a small table on his shoulder. He put it in the bed of his truck, then walked back to his cottage, his dog enthusiastically trotting behind.
As Kyra munched on her Oreo, her neighbor appeared again with another, identical table on his shoulder. He had one of those firefighter physiques—strong and built for physical work. Not like the guys at US Fitness—some of them had been so puffed up they’d looked like a bunch of Michelin men walking around the offices. No, this guy was more natural in his strength, and Kyra found that far more appealing.
He placed the table next to the other one, then went about strapping the two together and securing them with nylon rope. Was he moving? That would be ideal—that dog was too tempting for Ruby. But then again, someone else would take his place, and if they had kids, or a cat, or a parakeet, or floats for the lake, Ruby would be just as excited. And it wasn’t hurting Kyra’s feelings any to have a bit of eye candy living next door, even if he walked a little on the weird side. That’s about as close as Kyra got to sex these days—checking guys out through the kitchen window.
She stuffed the second cookie in her mouth—whole thing, wasting no time—pondering her neighbor when he suddenly looked up and directly at her. Crap, had he seen her watching him? Worse, could he see her with a mouth full of cookie? She suddenly ducked down, then bent over and darted out of sight. Note to self—don’t stand at the kitchen window in plain sight while you ogle the guy next door. The last thing she needed was complications with the neighbor.
Chapter Three
The next morning, with his latest creations secured in the bed of his truck, Dax backed down the drive of Number Two. He glanced at Number Three as he turned onto the main road. There was no pickup this morning, no slamming of doors. The Subaru was sitting in the drive, the loose books he’d placed on its hood still there. There was no sign of life in that cottage, which, in the short time the Coconuts had been there, seemed unusual. Dax wondered if he ought to be concerned, then thought the better of it. If he was concerned, he’d need to have a look. If he had a look, either Ruby Coconuts or her unacceptably attractive mother would come to the door, and there would go his day.
So Dax drove on to East Beach and to the Green Bean coffee shop, where he had a morning joe and a bear claw as he perused the local paper. To say there wasn’t much happening in East Beach would be an understatement. This town was supposed to be the place to be in the summer. There were a lot of summer people milling about, but it was Deadsville. And that was just the way Dax liked it. He didn’t like traffic or festivals or anything else that brought people down to his beach to leave their trash lying around.
When he finished his breakfast, he headed over to John Beverly Home Interiors and Landscape Design on the main drag. He pulled around back to the service entrance, hopped out of his truck, and rang the bell.
A moment later the door opened and Wallace Pogue appeared. Wallace liked to dress in trendy outfits. Today, he’d rolled his pants up to showcase his bare ankles and wore boat shoes that looked as if he might have found them in the trash heap, dusted them off, and donned them. His pants were so tight and rode so low on his hips it was a wonder he’d managed to tuck in the floral shirt he was wearing. He’d turned the cuffs of the sleeves of said shirt in perfect symmetry, just below the elbows.
“Well, well, well, if it isn’t my favorite tall drink of water,” Wallace purred and leaned up against the door frame, his arms folded, smiling saucily through red rectangular glasses like Dax was an ice cream sundae.
“Hi, Wallace.”
“What do you have for us today, darling?” he asked and pushed away from the door to walk out and peer into the back of Dax’s truck.
“End tables,” Dax said. He unleashed them, then set them carefully on the drive for Wallace to inspect. He’d made them from wood reclaimed from a demolished train depot and the twisted wrought iron he’d found at a salvage yard.
“Spec-tacular,” Wallace said, nodding approvingly. “You never cease to amaze me.” He winked at Dax, imbuing more meaning i
nto that remark than was necessary.
“Cut it out, Wallace,” Dax said dispassionately. They both understood that Wallace had earned the right to flirt with him—and he didn’t seem to care that Dax didn’t lean that way—because Wallace had almost single-handedly brought him into the custom furniture business.
“You’re such a square, Dax,” Wallace complained. “You never let me have any fun.”
“Square? What is this, the fifties?”
“If anyone is stuck in the fifties, it’s you. Whoever would have guessed there were so many black T-shirts to be had on the East Coast?”
Dax glanced down at his T-shirt.
“All right, stand aside, let me have a look,” Wallace said, waving his hand at Dax to step back. He squatted down to examine the tables.
Making custom furniture was not an occupation to which Dax had ever aspired. It had been a hobby of his, nothing more. But after his wife had confessed she was leaving him for someone else, and Dax hadn’t known how to process that stunning bit of news, he’d turned to his hobby with a vengeance, filling long, bleak hours by making unique pieces. It did not take the pain away, but it did restore his world to an upright and locked position.
Eventually he’d made so many items that he began to show up at weekend craft shows around the tristate area. He’d hoped to unload some of the stuff he’d made and make room for more. And it was something to do on the endless weekends. It kept him out of the house, away from reminders of Ashley and everything that had been between them for twelve long years.
He’d been surprised when his pieces sold quickly. He thought maybe he wasn’t charging enough, and upped the prices. They still sold quickly. He began to get requests. Dax had resisted at first—he was a full-time paramedic and didn’t have time to make custom orders.
But then he’d met Wallace.
He hadn’t known at the time that Wallace was a designer of some repute, working on high-end vacation homes around Lake Haven and tony Manhattan apartments. He was just a guy in a pink blazer who had gushed over a dresser Dax had built, distressed, and painted.
Wallace began to seek him out at those weekend craft shows, always looking for a piece to accent his showcase designs, showing him pictures of luxury penthouses where he’d placed something Dax had made. Dax was kind of blown away by it—he’d never imagined anyone would really like the things he made.
Wallace had even suggested to Dax how to improve his custom designs. “Too big,” he’d say, shaking his head. “The average New York apartment needs that very thing but on a much smaller scale. Aren’t you from New York?”
“New Jersey,” he’d said. That wasn’t entirely true. That was the last place Dax had lived, but he’d come out of the army by way of Arizona. He had no particular affinity for Arizona, either—that just happened to be the place his family had ended up after years of relocating, following his father’s corporate promotions for a national company. Ashley was the one who’d wanted to move to New York—she’d had that dream since she’d been a kid, had fond memories of visiting an aunt there. But the rents in New York City were out of the question for them—they couldn’t afford a closet in that town. Teaneck was a quiet part of a bustling New Jersey, just across the George Washington Bridge from Harlem, where Dax had gotten a job as a paramedic. Ashley had found work at a health food shop. They’d stumbled into a great deal on a single-family, four-bedroom, two-bath house with a detached garage and an unfinished basement. It had plenty of room for swing sets and sandboxes.
Everything had looked rosy as far as Dax was concerned. He was ready to start a family, ready to be a father. More than ready—he’d wanted children in the worst way. Squads of them. Ashley wasn’t up for squads of them, but she was open to at least one, and once they’d felt settled, they’d begun to try for their one. When the natural way didn’t work, they’d started the long, grueling process of in vitro fertilization.
What was that saying about the best-laid plans?
Anyway, Wallace was the one who’d suggested that maybe Dax ought to consider moving to East Beach and making furniture full-time. “Trust me, I have clients up and down the East Coast who adore this kind of thing,” he’d said when he’d bought a hutch Dax had made. “I could keep you busy year-round.”
“East Beach,” Dax had repeated.
“Oh, honey, surely you’ve heard of Lake Haven,” Wallace had said and had hitched his arm around the waist of the young man in his company who stood so loosely that Dax kept waiting for him to slide onto the ground.
“Heard of it,” Dax had said with an insouciant shrug. “But I’m not that kind of person.”
“Excuse me? And what kind of person would that be?” Wallace had asked, getting all prickly on him. “And before you answer, please keep in mind that I call East Beach home.”
“Rich,” Dax had clarified. “I’m not rich.”
Wallace had blinked. And then he’d laughed with delight. “The people who live year-round in East Beach aren’t rich, darling. It’s the summer people who come out to their lake houses to sip mimosas on their decks who are rich, and trust me, your chances of mixing with them are quite slim.”
Dax hadn’t been sure how to take that. He’d shrugged again. “Nah,” he’d said. He’d had enough going on in his life without thinking of a move.
“Well, think about it. We could put your pieces in the shop. God knows Beverly could use some quality custom pieces,” he’d said with a roll of his eyes, and his companion had laughed. Dax had wondered if he was supposed to know who Beverly was.
“I’m not kidding around here,” Wallace had said. “The things you make? They’d sell like hotcakes. You’d not believe the sort of money those rich bitches will spend on their lake houses.” He’d handed Dax his card and said, “Call me,” using his little finger and thumb to mimic a phone at his ear.
Well, Dax had thought about it. He’d believed there was no way in hell he’d leave Teaneck to move to East Beach. But then the undercurrent at work had begun to eat at him.
It was a vibe he couldn’t quite get a handle on, couldn’t quite figure out how to combat . . . until he began to understand that he’d become the laughingstock to a bunch of guys he’d once considered his closest friends. It boiled down to a couple of unwritten rules in the guy code: when someone’s wife left him for another man, everyone sympathized. The wife was always the guilty party in that scenario—a slut, a no-good woman who deserved what she got. But when a man’s wife left him for another woman, which Ashley had done, it got a little stickier. And when a man’s wife left him for another woman who just happened to be a fellow paramedic and coworker, the one person on the team Dax had never really gotten on with, somehow Dax became the problem.
More guy code: if a guy lost his wife to a woman, then there was obviously something wrong with him.
Dax didn’t buy into that. He’d tried to understand Ashley’s point of view, to understand how she had slept with him for all those years when supposedly she’d wanted a completely different set of equipment. He didn’t understand it, and he sure as hell wished that she’d landed on some other woman besides Stephanie. Ashley’s lover, if you wanted to put a word to it. The sharp-tongued prickly pear in his unit.
The worst of it was that Stephanie kept working beside him. They worked accident scenes and suicides and gunshot wounds, and Dax was so flummoxed by this, so flabbergasted that Steph had no shame, that he didn’t know what to do. Had it been another man, he would have known how to settle it—he’d have decked the asshole. But it was Steph, and he couldn’t very well haul off and hit her, no matter how desperately she deserved it.
Their awkward working situation soon had guys drifting away from Dax. Some of them sniggered behind his back. A few called him a pussy for continuing to work alongside Stephanie and then proceeded to treat him like one.
And yet Dax stayed strong. He’d given up his wife, but he wasn’t giving up his job, too, and they could all go fuck themselves if they thought Ash
ley and Stephanie could chase him out of town.
But then his poor old heart splatted right at rock bottom the day Ashley called to tell him she was pregnant. She’d continued her in vitro appointments, she’d said. She still wanted one. And she and Stephanie were going to be parents to—surprise!—a baby she’d made with his goddamn sperm.
Ashley knew how badly he wanted children. She knew how hard it had been for him to go into some plain office and produce sperm so they could try to have a baby. She knew he would not be happy that she’d left him and was taking that part of him with her.
And really, what was he supposed to do with that? Dax didn’t know, but he couldn’t look at Stephanie’s face one more day, couldn’t bear the thought that she’d be sitting in for him when his baby was born.
Dax had called Wallace one night half-drunk, wholly miserable, nearly crying in his beer.
“Sweetie, you come to East Beach. I know where you can rent some space.” So yeah, Wallace had earned the right to touch Dax’s shirt buttons every once in a while and call him darling.
And Dax?
He’d been a grump ever since.
He couldn’t seem to shake his disgust and disappointment with the world. All he wanted to do was make furniture and take his dog down to the lake for a swim. He didn’t want people complicating his existence. He wanted to be left the hell alone.
“This is divine,” Wallace said, running his fingers over the artfully twisted wrought iron legs that Dax had fashioned into a tripod. “I honestly don’t know how you do it, Dax. We’ll take them.” He stood up, dusting his hands together. “Well, come in, love of my life, and I’ll write a check. Oh, and by the way, I’ve got a custom design job if you’re interested.”
“I’m interested,” Dax said and followed him inside.
“It’s a dining table,” Wallace was saying over his shoulder. “They want a farm table with carved legs. They have the wood, too. Naturally, it comes from a barn on the property that was quite historic, but in the way of the pool they had to have, even though there is a lake not one hundred feet from their door. What better way to preserve history than to destroy it and make it into a table?” he drawled. “Summer people,” he added with a shake of his head. “Anyway, it must seat twelve. Do you have room to build it?”