Two Family Home

by Sarah Title

  “Linds,” he said, brushing a curl behind her ear. “It’s pretty clear to me that you already have a plan for the fence, so why don’t you just go ahead and tell me.”

  Oh yeah. The fence. “Well . . . I was thinking.”

  “Mmm hmm.”

  “Since we already know a guy who knows how to fix stuff, maybe we could just call him?”

  “Who do we know?”

  “Jake Burdette.”

  “Okay, I’ll call him.”

  “Well . . .”

  “Let me guess. You already called him.”

  “I just thought, since you guys sort of knew each other already, that maybe it would be nice for you to work on the project together.”

  “You don’t think he would rather get paid to do it himself?”

  “I bought beer.”

  He looked at her, that little crease forming between his eyebrows. “Lindsey. Are you trying to set me up with Jake?”

  She shrugged. “Just as a friend. He’s really nice. And he likes to do dude stuff, and you like to do dude stuff, so I thought . . .”

  “We could do ‘dude stuff’ together?”

  “Yeah. Plus, Booger really likes him.”

  “You realize I’m straight, right?”

  She slapped his shoulder. “I just want you to have some friends, that’s all. You spend so much time alone.”

  “I like being alone.”

  She’d hurt his feelings. Real smooth, Lindsey. She knew nothing made Walker more defensive than challenging that Lone Wolf vibe he had going on. She leaned into him, resting her forehead on his. “I know.”

  He wrapped his arms around her waist. “Quit trying to make me make friends.”

  “Okay,” she said softly.

  “I don’t need friends.”

  “I know.”

  They sat there like that, wrapped up in each other, neither of them believing Walker for a second.

  “He’s still coming over to fix the fence,” she said. “I promised him beer. And that you’d help him.”

  Walker growled and stood, taking Lindsey with him. He tilted her back, and proceeded to compromise the structural integrity of her kitchen table.

  For a man who liked being alone, he sure was good at being with her.

  Walker’s stomach decided to do a round of somersaults when he saw Jake’s truck pull up the driveway.

  For god’s sake, he was just coming over to install a fence.

  This wasn’t a damn date.

  “Hey, man.” Jake climbed out of his truck. “I heard your escape artist got out again.”

  Walker looked toward the house, where Booger was looking pitifully out of the window at them. “Yeah. Thanks for dropping this off. You didn’t have to do that.”

  “It’s no problem.” He slapped Walker on the back. Jake seemed to be a bit of a back-slapper. Maybe that was some kind of ‘friends’ signal.

  Or maybe Walker was acting like a virgin on prom night.

  He’d had friends before. Jesus, Jake was his friend back in high school. There was no reason to feel pressure.

  “You can just unload it here if you want.”

  Jake tipped his eyebrow up at Walker. “I thought we were putting it up?”

  “Well, I don’t want to—”

  “And Lindsey said she had beer.”

  “Yeah, it’s inside.” He led the way inside, then handed Jake a bottle from the fridge.

  “Lindsey here?”

  “No, she had to go take care of some paperwork.”

  Jake took a swig. “You know, whenever I try to get Grace to work on a big project at home, she suddenly has to meet with a student or grade papers. It’s amazing.”

  “Oh, I think she really did have paperwork. She’s been bringing Booger to work with her, and she said she needed to catch up . . .”

  “Relax, man. I’m just joking.” He followed Walker and his beer out the front door. “Although I’m not joking about Grace. She hates home reno projects.”

  “That doesn’t bother you? That you do all the work?”

  Jake shrugged. “I love that woman, but if you saw her with a hammer, you’d want her to go grade papers, too. It’s actually easier if I do all the work. So, are we doing the whole yard, or what?”

  Walker walked Jake around the property, showed him where the holes were the worst. Jake declared the fence pretty shoddy—which happened when wood went untreated for twenty-odd years. “Not your fault,” he assured Walker. “It was probably not that much better when you bought the place.”

  “Yeah, but when I bought the house, I didn’t have a dog.”

  You still don’t have a dog, he reminded himself, as Booger scratched at the screen on the back door.

  Jake shook one of the sturdier-looking fence posts, which sent a ripple down the entire fence. “I don’t know, man. I think this whole thing has to go. That’s okay, there should be enough.” The two men walked to the front of the house again, then to the back of Jake’s truck, where he pulled a tarp off the bed.

  Walker looked at the fence Jake had salvaged from a finished job where it wasn’t needed. It was white. Walker supposed beggars couldn’t be choosers, but it looked very . . . wholesome. Did everything Lindsey touch turn to Pollyanna?

  “How long is this going to take?” Walker asked. “Not that I have anything better to do—I just want to know.”

  “That depends,” said Jake, hoisting the first piece of fence out of the truck. “How much beer you got?”

  WHAT WERE THEY DOING TO HIS YARD.

  Chapter 18

  Lindsey came home to two sweaty guys sitting on the back porch, drinking beer. She’d hoped to catch them earlier, preferably with their shirts off—with a mental note to apologize to Grace for ogling her very hot fiancé. Alas, Booger’s presence at Shady Grove really had put her behind on her work, and she’d spent a very air-conditioned day filling out forms and listening to Mae and Eugene sing old standards at the piano while Myron grumbled in the background.

  Jake’s chair was tilted back, Walker-style, and his hat was tipped low over his eyes. Walker wasn’t wearing a hat, and it looked like he had sunburn on the bridge of his nose.

  She wanted to kiss that sunburn. Poor guy.

  He reached into the cooler at his feet and handed her a beer. She took it gratefully, but, finding no bottle opener, stood there lamely, the sweet relief of a post-work beer taunting her with her lack of simple tools.

  Walker came to her rescue, though, and held out his hand. She gave him the beer and watched, appalled, as he opened it with his teeth.

  “You’re going to break your teeth!” She wasn’t scolding. She was just giving her opinion as a medical professional.

  Walker just handed back the beer. She smiled at him. He shook his head, but she saw him hide a smile behind his own bottle.

  She sat down on the top step and admired their properly fenced-in yard. “Looks great,” she told the guys. “I didn’t know you were going to do the front, too.” The white picket fencing ran all the way around the house, so the front and back became one giant yard. “How do you like it?” she asked Booger, who was lounging sleepily on Walker’s feet.

  “He’s been running laps for an hour or two,” said Jake. “I never saw a dog so happy to have a fence.”

  “No wonder he’s pooped. Aren’t you, boy?” She scooped Booger into her arms and let him snuffle around her neck. “Are you guys hungry? I’ll cook.” She was tired, but she hadn’t just set up a fence around an entire yard. She still felt like she owed them.

  “Sounds good, but I gotta get home to Grace. She’s making lasagna.”

  Lindsey’s stomach growled. Lasagna sounded good. Did she have the stuff to make lasagna?

  “I thought her lasagna was terrible?” Walker asked.

  “It is, but once she burns it, we’ll order a pizza.” Jake clinked his beer against Walker’s raised bottle.

  “You could just order the pizza to begin with. Save her the trouble,”
Lindsey said, feeling the need to stand up for the sisterhood.

  Jake shrugged. “She likes to try. And who knows? Maybe this lasagna will be amazing. You gotta be open to the possibility, you know?”

  “I like you, Jake,” Lindsey told him.

  “Of course you do. He’s a goddamn Pollyanna,” Walker mumbled.

  “What was that?” Lindsey asked, even though she heard him perfectly well. Spending so much time with Myron had greatly improved her mumble-deciphering skills.

  Walker just smiled at her, then drained his beer. “It’s a good thing you’re so cute, you know,” she told him. Jake snorted.

  “Well, I hate to leave this cozy scene,” he said, plonking the chair legs down and standing up. “But I’m afraid if I hang around too long, Lindsey’s going to come up with more work for me to do.”

  “Take me with you,” Walker pleaded. Ha ha, thought Lindsey. Some landlord.

  “See you later, man,” said Jake. Walker nodded, and Lindsey tried not to get too excited that maybe he and Walker were going to hang out on their own, and not just because she was making them perform manual labor together.

  “See you, Jake,” she said. “Thank you so much. I’ll bring you brownies.”

  “Bring them next week. Grace is going to see her sister for the weekend. Maybe I’ll actually get to eat one or two this time.”

  “How about I bring you some tomorrow and next week?”

  “Lindsey,” Jake said with a very serious look on his face, “I love you.”

  She laughed. “Good-bye, Jake.”

  “’Bye. Oh, Grace said to call her. Girl stuff.”

  She went inside when Jake’s truck pulled away, if only to hide the ridiculous smile she was sporting. Girl stuff. She had a girlfriend now, and Walker had a boyfriend now. If she and Walker were a couple, they would have a couple-friend.

  She stopped in the kitchen doorway.

  That was how it started. First the couple-friends, then all the friends that were part of a couple, then it was nothing but double dates and dinner parties and soon she would be just one part of Lindsey-and-Walker.

  Good thing they weren’t a couple.

  “Are you really cooking?”

  She jumped when she heard Walker’s voice right behind her. Then she blushed, but not because she was feeling guilty for trying to convince herself that she was not part of a couple with the man she was sleeping with practically every night.

  She was not actually sure why she was blushing.

  Probably just the beer.

  “Sure,” she said. “I can’t promise lasagna.” She rooted around in the fridge—definitely not lasagna. “How about pasta and vegetables?”

  “You got any meat in there?”

  She opened the freezer. “Chicken breast?”

  “Dammit, woman, I just did some hard labor. I need real meat.”

  She checked the fridge again. “Sliced turkey?”

  “Pathetic. Good thing I have steak.”

  “If you have steak, why are you digging around in my kitchen for dinner?”

  “Because if it comes from your kitchen, I don’t have to cook it.”

  She shook her head and shoved him, which was maybe just a little bit of an excuse to feel those rock-hard abs. “Let’s grill. You make the steak, I’ll grill the vegetables, and I’ll come up with something amazing for dessert.”

  “How amazing?”

  “I won’t know until you leave me alone so I can figure it out.”

  So he did, but not before he smacked her on the ass on his way out the door.

  Good thing he’s so cute, dammit.

  Walker said a silent thank you to Myron and his constant need for diversion. If he hadn’t insisted they try the new butcher in Hollow Bend, Walker would have nothing in his fridge. As it was, he had steak. Steak, a really old bottle of ketchup, and some mystery rice. Fortunately, the butcher also had some marinade, so he set the meat to soak it up, then went outside to turn the grill on.

  On his way out the door, he heard his phone beeping. Three missed calls from a number he didn’t recognize. Then, as if the number was waiting for him to be nearby, the phone rang again, the strange number blinking at him. “Hello?” he said as he navigated the screen door.

  “Walker?”

  And that just about put him off steak for good.

  “Red. You’re not calling collect?”

  “Is that any way to talk to your old man?”

  It probably wasn’t, so Walker kept his mouth shut.

  “You there, son?”

  He hated it when Red called him “son.” It just didn’t sound right. Even though, technically, biologically, it was. “Yeah.”

  “You know what today is?”

  Walker wracked his brain. Red’s birthday was on Christmas Eve—another in a long line of injustices he’d had to suffer—and Walker’s wasn’t until the fall. He really couldn’t think of another reason why his father would be calling.

  “I’m out, son. Parole board said I was good enough to reenter society.”

  “Great.” Walker thought about the mail from the Ohio correctional facility, sitting unopened in a drawer in his kitchen.

  “That’s it? No, congratulations for your old man? No, say, What can I do for you, Dad, now that you’ve paid your debt to society?”

  Walker didn’t say anything.

  “I don’t know what you’re mad about,” Red continued. “You’re not completely blameless in all this, you know.”

  Walker felt a rage bubble build in his gut. He took a deep breath before it could explode out of his mouth and into the phone. He had sworn he wouldn’t let his dad get to him, not ever again.

  But damn him. Red hadn’t changed at all. Nothing was his fault; nothing he did ever caused any damage.

  “I’ve paid my debt to society now. Can we move on, son?”

  If you quit calling me son, Walker thought.

  He heard Lindsey talking to him before he saw her, pushing her screen door open with her butt. She was still talking when she saw him on the phone, but she stopped and made an “oops . . . sorry” face. He waved off her apology and took the excuse she gave him to end the call.

  “Okay, well, thanks for calling.” And he hung up.

  “Sorry about that,” she said. “I didn’t hear you on the phone.”

  “It’s okay.” He started the grill, then went back inside for the steak. His phone rang again, but he silenced it, then shut it down. When he came back out, Lindsey was in the garden, pulling at tomatoes. “Do these look ripe to you?” she called, but he pretended not to hear her.

  Damn him. Damn Red Smith and his guilt trips. And damn me for falling for it, Walker said to himself.

  “Walker? You okay?”

  This was not what he needed. Dinner with Lindsey would mean an inquisition and he had already told her more about his dad than he wanted to. Red didn’t deserve the air Walker would use to tell the story, and Red didn’t deserve the space he took up in Lindsey’s brain, where she was no doubt trying to figure out a way to make it all okay. But as she walked up the stairs, holding a not-very-ripe-looking tomato, with that look of gentle concern on her face, he knew he couldn’t sit down with her and not spill his soul out at her feet.

  He needed that soul. He needed to keep it close, like he always did. “Uh . . . I lost my appetite, that’s all.”

  “Too much sun?” she asked, but the look on her face told him that she didn’t even believe herself.

  “Yeah. I think I’m just going to . . .” He didn’t even finish the sentence, just headed for the garage. His work was the only place he’d be able to completely lose himself, to keep Red far from his mind. Which was ironic, since Red’s forgery complicated Walker’s feelings about his own work. But even Red’s duplicity and scapegoating couldn’t take away the power Walker felt when he was in the grip of his artistic drive.

  He didn’t turn around, just shut the garage door quietly behind him.

  So much fo
r dinner.

  Lindsey watched Walker’s retreating back, noting the tension in his posture. Lost his appetite. Sure. Well, if he wanted to play the starving artist—literally—that was none of her concern.

  Even though his phone was sitting right there next to the grill, and it would be the easiest thing in the world to just swipe the screen to see who the last caller was . . .

  No. Sneaking into his phone was just as bad as sneaking into his studio. Worse, somehow. She was just going to have to sit on her hands while she ate dinner.

  Lindsey found she no longer had an appetite for steak, either. She took the plate of meat into Walker’s kitchen, wrapped it up, and stuck it in the fridge. Then she went back into her kitchen to mope. It hadn’t been her plan, but she’d been looking forward to dinner with Walker. She was just going to have to get used to the fact that she was sleeping with a moody, temperamental artist who needed his space before she’d be able to grill him about his problems.

  She’d also lost her appetite for cooking, and definitely had no appetite for eating alone. She thought about calling Grace, but then remembered Jake and the lasagna. Then she thought about Mary Beth, but she was probably doing something with Will and the baby. God, all of these couple friends. She finally called Helen, whom she didn’t know very well—she was single, surely she wouldn’t have any plans on a Saturday night.

  Helen answered the phone from the coffee shop downtown, where her date was apparently not going to show. Good, thought Lindsey, then immediately felt appropriately guilty because, well, it wasn’t very nice to be glad a friend was stood up. To be fair, Helen didn’t sound all that disappointed. So Lindsey quickly changed into a cute sundress with a matching sweater and headed out to meet Helen for margaritas and, if they felt like it, dinner.

  If she was gonna leave me, the least she could do is leave me in the garage with the big guy. Geez.

  Chapter 19

  Lindsey fumbled with her key before she finally got it right side up and then actually into the lock. She turned to wave good-bye to Helen and her friend, Henry, who had come to rescue them when they lost track of the number of margaritas each had consumed. Pitchers had probably not been the best idea. Well, one pitcher had been a fine idea. But then that one got empty somehow, and they had to get a new one.