by Lucy Score
“Absolutely, Thomas,” Eden promised with a quick smile. “I can actually let you pick the ones you like from our stash.” She had an entire walk-in closet on the second floor stocked with pillows of all sizes and smush-factors.
The front door bell tinkled and in strolled a grinning Bruce Oakleigh hefting two garbage bags.
“Bruce, I’ll be with you in a minute,” Eden said, turning back to Thomas.
“What’s the damage, chief?” Davis shuffled out into the lobby.
Everyone stopped and stared at the man bulging out of yoga pants. Eden’s t-shirt fit him like a second skin and showed a dusting of chest hair at the apex of the deep V. The socks only came up to his mid-shin.
Even dressed like a tall, built woman, the man had undeniable sex appeal. It pissed Eden off that she noticed.
“Thomas, did you get the pillows?” Letiticia, Thomas’s wife, shrilled from the stairway like an opera diva drawing everyone’s attention away from Davis and his pants-enhanced penis.
“Getting them now, sweet pea,” Thomas hollered back.
Sunny skipped into the lobby and ducked behind the front desk. She rested her elbows on the desk as if she were enjoying the show.
“Sunny, can you please show Thomas to the pillow collection?” Eden asked sweetly.
“Oh, sure! Right this way! You’re going to love our down alternative blends,” Sunny predicted.
“Thomas!”
“Coming, sweet pea!”
Eden turned back to the remaining bodies in her lobby. The chief hauled herself out of the chair. Eden could have sworn she saw a puff of yellow smoke rise with her. “Well, Davis. It’s not good news. A lot of damage. And worse, it looks suspicious.”
“Suspicious, like arson?” Davis asked and winced at the volume of his own words.
Bruce dropped his bags on the floor with a muffled thud. “I’m sure it wasn’t an intentional fire,” he insisted.
Eloisa rolled her shoulders. “That’s usually what ‘arson’ means. We found some kind of device in the corner of your kitchen. Looks like it fell into the trashcan. As far as I can tell, that’s where the fire originated.”
“What kind of device?” Davis leaned his weight on the desk and rubbed his forehead.
“Near as I can tell, it was some kind of mutant stink bomb,” Eloisa announced. “A deadly one.”
Bruce sputtered. “Well, if it was a stink bomb, obviously no one meant any harm! Maybe it was just a small, harmless accident?”
“Well, that small, harmless accident is gonna cost almost fifty grand in repairs,” Eloisa said, unimpressed with Bruce’s theories.
Davis looked pale.
“We can talk numbers later,” Eden cut in, hoping he wouldn’t pass out or throw up in her lobby. “Let’s talk about where he’s going to stay.”
Bruce slapped himself in the forehead and hefted the bags. “Of course! The whole reason I came here. Here you go, Davis. Mayva at Second Chances was happy to provide you a small wardrobe from the thrift store as your clothes are…”
“Disgusting fabric containers of stench?” Eloisa suggested.
“So, I can’t go home?” Davis reiterated. His fingers brushed over the bandage she’d stuck to his forehead. Eden felt a pang of sympathy for him. The man was essentially homeless.
“Not any time soon,” Eloisa said, zipping up her fleece jacket.
“But not to worry!” Bruce patted him on the arm and then dumped the garbage bags at Davis’s feet. “Eden generously offered to let you stay here. Isn’t that wonderful?”
“That’s not what I—”
“Oh, wonderful.” Eloisa perked up. “Listen, I’m going to go home and shower for about four hours. But I’ll be back tomorrow, Davis. We’ll talk more then. And Eden, I may need to ask you a few questions, too.”
Eden clenched her jaw so hard she thought it might shatter.
“It’s all routine. But given your history…” Eloisa let her thought trail off.
Their history. Would she never escape those five, fateful minutes fifteen years ago?
“Well, I’ll leave you in Eden’s hospitable hands,” Eloisa said, shuffling toward the door.
“Enjoy your time together,” Bruce said cheerfully, following the fire chief outside. “Is there such a thing as accidental arson?” he asked on their way out.
Silence descended as Eden and Davis eyed each other.
10
“It was that little firebug next door, wasn’t it?” Ferguson Gates shouted in his son’s ear from three-thousand miles away.
“Dad, calm down,” Davis cautioned his father and pulled another suit from the back of his closet. It was still in the dry cleaning bag. He gave it a cursory sniff and tossed it on the bed behind him in the Maybe pile.
“I am calm,” Ferguson yelled.
Two years ago, Ferguson Gates suffered a second heart attack and was ordered to cut out stress. Davis was called home from the west coast to finally take over winery operations while his father took a more “relaxed” role in the company. The “retirement” word was never uttered in Ferguson’s presence.
“I doubt very much that Eden had anything to do with this, Dad.” The woman was a saint as far as he was concerned. First, he’d stood her up, humiliating her in front of most of the town. Then she’d suffered the years-long fallout—gleefully fueled by his own parents—from an unfortunate accident. Despite all that, she’d stepped up, patched up his wounds, and given him a room at her inn when he needed a place to stay.
“How many times have I warned you?” Ferguson continued his rant. “The Moodys are our enemies. I knew it was only a matter of time before she sashayed across the property line to destroy everything we’ve built.”
Eden wasn’t the type to sashay, but he held back that comment. His father wasn’t exactly known for being level-headed when it came to the feud.
Davis heard a commotion on his father’s end while he pawed through his sock drawer. Salvaging clothing had become a top priority when he’d gone through the bags of second-and, in some cases, fourth-hand clothing Bruce delivered. Today, he was wearing an orange and red paisley button down and a pair of baby blue jeans that flared out over a pair of platform boots that were a size too small. Eden had spit her coffee out on the lace tablecloth when he’d shown his face at breakfast this morning.
The hideous outfit had been worth the reaction. Laughing adult Eden was even more compelling than he remembered the teenage version to be.
“Remember, Davis, I’ve entrusted the business to you. I’m counting on you to follow in my footsteps,” Ferguson said in his movie trailer guy voice.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake! Give me that phone, Ferguson, before you end up in the ER again,” came Bryson’s frustrated bellow on the other end. “Hi, honey,” his father’s husband said after wrestling the phone from Ferguson.
“Hey, Brys.”
“How are you feeling? How’s your head?”
Davis’s father had forgotten to ask about his health, his rage too focused on the Moody family to remember his son’s injury. But Bryson was the thoughtful, kind soul he’d been since joining the Gates family five years ago. They hadn’t managed to ruin him yet.
“Getting better,” Davis said. It still hurt like hell, but at least now he could look at his phone screen without getting dizzy. “Is Mom with you guys?”
“She took a little side trip to a winery in Washington State,” Bryson told him. Davis’s parents’ divorce had been so amicable that when his father came out and introduced them to Bryson, Tilly had claimed him for a friend. The three of them spent the better part of the year traveling wine country together.
“I’m calling Sheriff Cardona as soon as you hang up,” Ferguson yelled in the background.
His family could forgive his father for leaving, accept the fact that he was gay, and welcome his boyfriend into the family with open arms. But they could hold a grudge against the Moodys for generations of perceived slights.
In D
avis’s rarely voiced opinion on the matter, the Gates family had behaved worse than the Moodys over the years. For ten years, his mother had walked their dog seven blocks every night just to leave piles of dog shit in the Moodys’ front yard. The Gates’s side was not blameless.
“You take care of yourself,” Bryson ordered, ignoring Ferguson’s bellows in the background. “Where are you staying?”
Davis bagged the clothes he’d laid out on the bed. “I’m staying with… a friend. Just until I can come up with a more permanent solution,” he lied. There was no way he was telling his family that he’d spent the last two nights under Eden Moody’s roof.
“Mm-hmm,” Bryson hummed. “I hope your friend is a knockout.”
“You have no idea,” Davis grinned. He’d dutifully kept his distance from Eden in the two years since he’d returned to Blue Moon. She’d made it clear on his first day back that there would be no reconciliation or second chance to pick up where high school had left off. So he’d been left to admire her from afar.
“Tell him we can’t evict the tenants at the house,” Ferguson yelled. Davis’s parents rented out the house—that the three of them shared—in Blue Moon for the six or so months of the year they spent traveling.
“Of course not. That would ruin his rating,” Davis said, hitting on one of his father’s sore spots. Once, a guest had ranked his stay in the home a paltry four stars because he didn’t care for the special water metering shower faucet. Ferguson had banned the man from ever staying in another Gateses’ property… as if they had more than one.
“We can be on a plane in the next two hours,” Bryson reminded him.
“I’m fine, Brys. I can handle this. You guys enjoy your trip and I’ll keep you updated on the repairs.”
“Okay.” The way Bryson drew out the word, Davis knew his stepfather didn’t believe him that everything was fine.
“Listen, Brys. Don’t share anything you might see on Facebook with Mom and Dad. I didn’t get into details about the damage, and I don’t want them worrying over something they can’t do anything about.” He’d flat out lied to his father about the fire. A little smoke damage. Might need to replace some appliances… He didn’t need to add any more stress to the man who was already a ticking time bomb. Fortunately, in addition to being anti-Moody, Davis’s parents were also anti-social media, refusing to join the rest of the world online.
Bryson’s voice dropped. “I’ll do it if you send me pics.”
“Deal. Don’t freak out.”
“Honey, I’m not your parents. And I also want pics of your ‘friend.’”
“I’ll send them, but you have to swear to delete them. Both topics will probably push Mom and Dad headlong into a psychotic break.”
“Now, I definitely need pics.”
They both laughed. Ferguson and Tilly might be divorced, but they still shared a commitment to drama.
“Just keep them busy, okay? I’ve got to figure out a few things before I’m ready to tell them anything.”
“Fine by me. See you at Christmas. Make good choices!”
“I’ll do my best,” Davis chuckled and hung up. He hauled the pitiful pile of not-quite-destroyed clothing out into the narrow hallway. Poking his head into the tiny second bedroom, he sighed. His closet-sized man cave/art studio had sustained some smoke damage. He had a desk shoved into one corner where he worked on his father-not-approved winery plans. The rest of the room was dedicated to his painting hobby.
His barely begun canvas, an abstract in colors of the vineyard before harvest—greens, purples, browns—stared back at him.
Painting wasn’t exactly a secret. He just didn’t share it with anyone. Swirling acrylics across a canvas was how he relaxed, how he unwound at night or on his rare days off. Davis was well aware that too much of his time was spent on winery business, leaving him with precious few hours for anything but work. However, that was to be expected when charged with carrying on the family legacy.
He considered packing up some supplies and decided to stick with a sketchbook and charcoals. He’d love to coax Eden into posing for him. Not that she’d let him anywhere near her with a canvas and brush or charcoals. But still, the idea was worth fantasizing about.
How would he capture her forced scowl that was softened by blue eyes that were never quite cold? Eden was distractingly beautiful and painfully prickly. They’d spent an hour “negotiating” his room rate. She had stubbornly refused to take his “dirty Gates money” while he wasn’t interested in her “sanctimonious Moody charity.”
It was the most fun he’d had in months. He could have blamed the concussion, but Davis was smart enough to realize that that high school crush had never completely faded.
Davis sighed and gathered what he needed. Another distraction.
“We’re a family of entrepreneurs,” his father had reminded him a thousand times. Gateses didn’t do anything at the hobby level. They were too busy being successful.
Personally, Davis thought his father had committed too much of his life to proving his success to his own parents. They’d cut Ferguson off without a dime—besides the modest trust fund from his grandparents—when he’d announced he was opening a winery in New York with a wandering hippie he’d met hitchhiking, so the story went.
Every dollar they made, his father treated as a “fuck you” to his father. Nothing came between Ferguson Gates and his success. Especially not family.
He’d put that hard-headed, single-mindedness to work in other areas. Ferguson had embraced Blue Moon and Tilly’s family feud with the Moodys as if both had always been his own. The man was fiercely loyal and excessively stubborn. It was an occasionally obnoxious combination.
Davis lugged his loot downstairs to the breezy first floor. The place was certainly well-ventilated with the gaping hole where the kitchen used to be.
His phone rang in his pocket. And he lost his grip on the dry-cleaning bag followed by everything else in his arms. It all landed unceremoniously on the floor just inside the front door.
“This is Davis,” he answered.
“Mr. Gates, this is Lionel from the Bouffet Insurance Agency.” The man sounded as if he were pinching his nose shut while speaking.
“Ah, yes,” Davis said, wrestling his load back into his arms and sandwiching the phone between his shoulder and ear. “Thank you for returning my call.”
“I’m sorry to inform you that while the fire is still under investigation, we are exercising our right to withhold payment.”
This time when the suits and pants and shirts fell from his hand, Davis did nothing to stop them. “I’m sorry. I have a concussion. Could you repeat that? It sounded like you were saying you aren’t going to pay.”
Lionel was unfazed by Davis’s sarcasm. “Mr. Gates, it is Bouffet policy to withhold payment until a cause has been determined. Frankly, we have to make sure this isn’t some kind of insurance fraud attempt. As a business owner, I’m sure you understand.”
“You want me to prove that I didn’t set my own home on fire?”
“Precisely.”
“What do I do with the gaping hole in my house until then?” Davis demanded. Yelling made his head hurt.
“That’s up to you, Mr. Gates. Best of luck.” And with that meaningless platitude, Lionel of the Bouffet Insurance Agency hung up on him. Davis briefly considered hurling his phone into the stone fireplace in his currently unlivable living room. But he’d endured enough destruction in the last two days.
Hands on his hips, he stood knee deep in laundry and surveyed his home. It had originally housed a farmer and his family of five back when the land was all pastures and fields. The two floors were chopped up into little box-like rooms. When he’d returned to Blue Moon after his years in California wine country, he’d done a little work here and there to make it more livable. Of course it had been the kitchen addition that had been destroyed. It couldn’t have been the too-small master bedroom upstairs or the odd-shaped den that wasn’t quite wide e
nough for a chair.
He had to admit, having the space at the inn to rattle around in had been an unexpected pleasure. As was the chance to see Eden up close in her home and at work. She’d remained an enigma since that unfortunate night in history. After he’d escorted Taneisha to the dance, Eden had shut herself off from him for the remainder of his senior year, even going so far as to file for a separation in Household Management and Partnerships class.
And he couldn’t blame her for it. He’d caved under pressure. Something he’d become more and more familiar with doing. And that wasn’t the kind of man Eden Moody was interested in. But that didn’t do anything to alleviate the guilt he felt for hurting her.
They’d never spoken a word to each other in all the years since. He had, however, found small ways of pushing her buttons, forcing her into the occasional email correspondence. Discussing the paving of their shared drive, the trimming of trees that straddled the property line. She was always coldly polite. But every time he was lucky enough to be in the same room with her, well, there was nothing chilly about their shared glances.
It was interesting that they both preferred to live where they worked. He’d seen her in action these past forty-eight hours. The consummate hostess, the focused entrepreneur. She made her guests—himself included—feel as welcomed as if the inn were their home. He admired that.
He’d never imagined teenage rebel Eden Moody would settle down to a career like innkeeping. No, he would have pictured her as a tattoo artist or some other creative, adventurous profession like the folk rock marketing exec. But somehow this suited her, too. And she was damn good at it. Not that she’d let him tell her.
Davis felt rather than heard the knock at the front door in the base of his skull where the dull throb of trauma still radiated.