Got it Bad

by Christi Barth

  The microphone snapped and crackled as Floyd practically deep-throated it. Talk about a disturbing image. “We want to thank Mr. Maguire for volunteering his time to modernize our look.”

  Kellan had redone the text while he watched a Mariners game. This thing took no time. He enjoyed making words flow together. And it checked off his third of Delaney’s community service requirement for the Maguires.

  He flipped to the back and pointed to the tabs marching across the page. “I broke everything out into individual pages, so people can search for vendors, or the band lineup more easily for the whole weekend. There’s a page with hotel and restaurant links, too.”

  Jacinta, the high school sophomore who maintained the website but had zero talent for turning an elegant phrase, piped up. “Website traffic has spiked since this went live three days ago. By spiked, I mean quadrupled over this time last year. And my mom said that she got seven reservations at the Face Rock Motel just this morning for Festival weekend.”

  A murmur of praise spread around the room as people burst into applause. That praise made Kellan itchy. They were making a big deal out of nothing. At least, nothing was the sum total of effort he’d put into it. So he didn’t deserve this.

  “See, Floyd?” Rafe’s unlikely friend Mick, an ex-Marine colonel, whipped off his USMC cap as he stood and pointed with it. “I’ve told you for years to loosen your death grip on every damned aspect of the festival. We bring in new blood, new ideas, and it’s already going better.”

  “I’m always open to new ideas. If they’re good,” Floyd said stiffly.

  “That’s a bunch of baloney. You hold this thing closer to your chest than I used to hold my rifle.” Mick sat down in the seat next to Rafe and muttered, “How soon can I get you to run for mayor against this blowhard?”

  Rafe snorted. Which turned into a full-out chortle. “I’m not the kind of guy people would elect to office.”

  Wasn’t that the truth.

  Hell, if the good folks of Bandon knew there were two ex-mobsters living here, they’d probably run them out of town on a rail.

  Although . . . aside from the whole former poor career choice issue, Kellan had to admit that Rafe would be a great mayor. The kind of guy who looked out for everyone, not just his own agenda. One who wouldn’t put up with bullshit jockeying and politicking.

  He’d probably been a great second-in-command to McGinty.

  Not that anyone would ever know.

  His phone vibrated.

  D: As your personal handler, I can’t wait to hear all the details tomorrow of how you heroically held back from calling Floyd an idiot. From what Rafe says, he deserves a swift kick in the ass.

  K: Small town bureaucracy at its clichéd best.

  D: Speaking of small towns, any hints on our mystery date? Like how I should dress?

  K: Casual sexy

  D: So . . . naked?

  Why wasn’t there an emoji for a fist pump/victory dance combo?

  Resentment at being called out dripped off Floyd’s every facial feature. “This has the potential to significantly increase our revenue. Good work, Mr. Maguire.” Floyd held up his ever-present clipboard to start another round of applause. “Now we’ll take a quick coffee and cookie break before diving into discussion of the selection process for the Cranberry Court.”

  How was this his life?

  The thought hit Kellan with the force of a meteor to the gut. Like it did every week or so, with the same force every time.

  How had Rafe’s actions brought them to a meeting with midafternoon cookie breaks on a summer Saturday? Sure, Kellan was all for scarfing down two oatmeal raisins. But in what freaking universe was he qualified to sit there and decide how to choose a high school senior to be queen of a festival?

  Instead of spending a Saturday—as had been the original plan for, oh, the last ten years—prepping for a trial. Writing up motions. Researching case law. Stretching his legs with a run along Lake Michigan and then hitting a club to find a pretty woman who’d warm his sheets a few hours later.

  Kellan was trying to make the best of fitting into Bandon because he didn’t have a fucking choice.

  Sure, he liked hanging with Lucien. Really, truly wanted to nail his interview and get the job as a deputy. Not to mention all the interesting . . . developments . . . with Delaney. So he wasn’t saying that his life sucked.

  Just that it wasn’t the life he’d chosen. A dissatisfaction he’d never, ah, fully expressed to his brothers. For fear that once he started, it’d have to end with him balling his fists and turning it into a knockdown, drag out fight. He could either let it all out, or keep it all buttoned up.

  Letting it all out would hurt Rafe and Flynn, and he loved his brothers, no matter how much fucking resentment built up at what they’d done to him.

  Kellan couldn’t tell them. Which was so damned hard. They weren’t just his brothers. They were his best friends. They told each other everything.

  Or so he’d thought.

  But Kellan was liking this new alternative—letting it all out to Delaney. She’d been a great listener on their date two days ago. It’d felt as refreshing as a cold shower on a sticky day.

  Still, times like these, his annoyance at Rafe crept out from behind the steel cage where he kept it locked most days.

  “This is great.” Rafe thwacked the paper with the back of his hand. A huge, proud smile took up residence on his face.

  It was the same smile he wore every time Kellan had brought home an all A report card. When he won a debate. Or showed up with magna cum laude cords draped over his graduation gown.

  “Did you hear how much people liked your redesign? They weren’t being polite. They sounded really impressed by what you’ve done.” Rafe gave a light punch to his shoulder, as though Kellan wasn’t paying enough attention. “Hey, maybe that could be your new job. Your escape hatch from the cranberry plant. You could go into PR/Marketing.”

  Oh, for fuck’s sake. Like he’d let Rafe steamroll him into anything else, ever again. Voice low, Kellan ordered, “Stop right there.”

  “We get the marshal to jazz up your fake résumé a little, you could slide into a PR job no problem.” Rafe clapped and shot guns with both index fingers. “I’ll bet firms all up and down the coast would get in line to hire you.”

  He could practically hear the pedestal Rafe dragged out for him to stand on. Passing the LSAT didn’t make him a certified genius. Writing interesting content for one freaking website didn’t make him a marketing guru. His brothers constantly smothered him under this cloak of purported perfection.

  Kellan hated it.

  “I said stop, Rafe.” He crumpled up the paper and tossed it under the seats in front of them. “This was no big deal. That’s not false modesty. That’s my telling you I’m nothing special when it comes to finessing a website. When will you stop seeing me as perfect?”

  “I don’t. Not after you burned the shit out of your last attempt at making pizza so bad that we had to throw the pan out.”

  Oh, yeah. That had been, well, not just bad. A certifiable kitchen disaster. How was deep dish pizza so hard to make? Maybe he should give up on trying to recreate their favorite Chicago foods.

  “Look, I’m nothing special. Especially here in Bandon, working at the cranberry plant. I need you to dial back the over-the-top praise.”

  Confusion drew together dark brows that were a mirror image of his own. “But I’m proud of you.”

  Yup. Rafe and Flynn practically gave Kellan a standing ovation for getting out of bed in the morning.

  He knew why.

  He knew it was because everything he did was untainted by crime or violence. But being good wasn’t supposed to be such a huge damn deal. It was supposed to be normal.

  “Not for the right reasons.”

  “You’ve got that giant brain. Not to mention muscles and coordination almost as good as Flynn’s. You do a lot of things right.”

  “Not anymore. Because there
’s been fucking nothing for me to do for months. Ever since we left Chicago.”

  Rafe’s head practically whipped around like an owl’s, checking to see if anyone overheard. “Christ, K. Don’t say that out loud!”

  Funny how he’d been paranoid like that for so long, and his brothers had been so casual about dropping references to their old life whenever they decided it was safe. “This auditorium is empty. The lure of cookies cleared the place out. I could recite your old address and nobody would give two shits.”

  Stroking a hand down his chin, Rafe asked, “What’s wrong with you?” And those eyes two shades darker than his peered closer, like he was trying to see past Kellan’s walls.

  Guess he’d let a little of that bitterness out of the vault after all. Of course Rafe wouldn’t understand where this flare of temper originated. Because Kellan never, ever let him see the depth of his resentment.

  It wouldn’t be fair to Rafe and Flynn. Not when they’d stayed in the mob to help give him a good life. A perfect life.

  One that he now resented the fuck out of.

  “Sorry. Listening to Floyd is really as bad as you guys warned me.” Kellan pulled a crazy face, crossing his eyes and twerking his mouth to the side. Rafe wouldn’t see past his lighthearted antics. He never did. “Guess he just annoyed me.”

  “He’s a trip. And by that, I mean a bad trip. Like one you’d get on that kitchen cleanser they used to sell as fake heroin on Clark Street.”

  Flynn and Rafe barely ever interjected stories from their old profession. But when they did, it never failed to shock Kellan. To knock him back with the force of exactly how bad that organization had been. How lucky they were to have gotten out alive with all its inherent dangers.

  “How do you know that? I thought you guys stayed clear of drugs?”

  “We did. But we were in the fucking mob, K. Not everyone was clean. Not by a long shot.” Rafe clapped him on the shoulder in commiseration. “Let’s go grab some cookies. Because you’re sure as shit not ready to try baking ’em for us anytime soon.”

  They barely made it under the exit sign before Lucien saw them and waved from the other end of the hall. Or rather, he managed to wave and smile at Kellan while shooting his usual stink-eye at Rafe.

  It only took a few steps in polished loafers for Lucien to reach them. “Hey, I saw you on the driving range this morning. You looked good. Not as good as me, of course.”

  It’d felt great to wrap his hands around a club again. Even a borrowed one. Like he’d reclaimed some small piece of his old life. Kellan grinned and shook his hand. “Well, you shot out of the womb with your umbilical cord wrapped around a nine iron. You’ve got an advantage.” Then he coughed out the word privileged.

  “We’re still on for Monday?” He mimed taking a swing.

  Hell, yes. Kellan used to golf with his friends all the time. The single-minded focus required to sink a twenty-foot putt didn’t leave any room for case law to crowd his brain. It’d been a great stress reliever. And he hadn’t found a replacement for that mix of friendship and competition and relaxation here.

  “As soon as I get off my shift,” Kellan promised. Even though he didn’t like his job screening cranberries for detritus and stacking crates, he wouldn’t blow it off. That’d be wrong. Kellan was already pushing the karmic limits of doing wrong by dating Delaney. “It should stay light long enough for us to get in at least nine holes.”

  Rafe elbowed Kellan in the ribs. “Are you going to wear those stupid plaid golf knickers?”

  “No.” Lucien shot him a dirty look. Or, as Kellan had noticed, pretty much the only kind of look he ever aimed at his oldest brother. The guy was—hilariously—still not okay with Rafe dating his best friend. “Because it’s not Scotland, and oh, it isn’t 1937.”

  Realizing his joke had fallen flatter than Wisconsin farmland, Rafe held up his hands and backed up. “Hey, you own the club. Figured you might make your own rules.”

  “My father owns the club.” Lucien’s reply was terse. And a little bit on the wrong side of spoiling for a fight. “I just work like a dog at it, ten hours a day.”

  Kellan pulled out the big guns to make them stop. “You know Mollie would be pissed, no, disappointed if she heard you two fighting. All she wants is for you two to get along.”

  “I’m friends with the good Maguire brother. That oughtta cover me. See you Monday.” Lucien cut sideways past Rafe.

  The good brother. Fuck. Lucien didn’t even know about Rafe and Flynn being bad in their former lives. Yet he still somehow managed to peg Kellan with the one adjective he was trying desperately to shake.

  Rafe gave him so side-eye so sharp it made Kellan wince. “Since when are you friendly with Lucien?”

  Seriously? They lived in a town with fewer people in it than Kellan’s undergrad class. Options for friends were far from vast. And yet Rafe was copping a ’tude? Rafe, who’d spent the past two months lecturing him and Flynn on making friends and fitting in?

  This was bullshit.

  But, as usual, Kellan swallowed his annoyance. Swallowed harder past the lump of Rafe’s hypocrisy. Because rocking the boat, fighting with Rafe, might escalate into Kellan actually spilling how he felt.

  About everything. Starting with how Rafe and Flynn had known their parents were fucking murdered by the mob and kept it from Kellan.

  He headed for the water fountain and took a long slurp. “We hung out the other night. Lucien’s a good guy. He’s letting me borrow a set of clubs.” Friendly and generous. Yet Rafe still acted like Lucien was worse than Dr. Evil. And Doc Oc. Combined.

  “What’s his motive?”

  It was getting harder to fake playing cool about all this. Kellan spun on his heel to confront Rafe. “Uh, I’m a fun guy? A good sportsman?”

  That outburst just earned him a raised eyebrow from his oldest brother. “What are you up to?”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake.” He was done with this interrogation. Bad coffee and the cookies in the lobby sounded like heaven. Kellan marched down the hallway, yelling over his shoulder, “Which is it? Is Lucien up to something, or am I?”

  “You tell me, K.”

  Kellen knew what he damn well wouldn’t tell Rafe. Anything about the poker game which had bumped him into Lucien in the first place. Or his interview next week with Mateo.

  Come to think of it, he definitely wouldn’t tell him about what was going on with Delaney, either. No way, no how. Not since he and Delaney were breaking a rule big enough to get them tossed out of the program. Rafe would lose his shit if he found out. Flynn, too.

  They’d make him call it off with Delaney.

  Which was not, under any circumstance, an option. Not when he’d finally cracked through her knee-jerk iciness and discovered how well matched they were.

  It felt fucking amazing to have his own secrets for once. And that little nugget was something he intended to tell Delaney when they FaceTimed later. When he hoped to start pulling a few secrets out of her. Fair was fair.

  Kellan leaned his ass against the metal bar across the middle of the door. “Look, you and Flynn have better lives now. Great. Hooray for love. Yippy-fucking-skippy that you like your new jobs, rev 5.0. But me? I’m so bored I could chart my ass hairs into constellations. So the only thing that’s going on is me trying to find my way. A place to belong. People that understand me.”

  He banged open the door with a swift shove, not waiting for a response. Because whatever Rafe said, it wouldn’t be right. Wouldn’t be enough.

  It wouldn’t be I’m sorry for not trusting you enough to tell you the truth.

  Which was all Kellan wanted to hear.

  Chapter Seven

  Delaney’s email notification pinged on her phone for about the tenth time since meeting Kellan in the parking lot in Florence. Whoops.

  Before she could pull it from her jeans pocket, Kellan nipped it out, adding a firm squeeze to her ass as he did so. He raised it in the air, way above her reach. “Nope. We�
�re done with this.”

  “Kellan.” It was useless to try and jump for it, so Delaney crossed her arms and tried to look stern. She’d glared at him hundreds of times since November. The look, however, was super hard to conjure up with the feel of his palm still heating her skin. “That’s government property. And I’m on the government dime. Hand it over.”

  “You’re not on the government dime right now. It’s Sunday. Long established as a rest day through centuries and, oh, the entire world.”

  “Not for me.” Guilt surged through her—also for about the tenth time today. Because she’d thought about canceling, oh, twenty times since agreeing to this second date. “People’s lives literally depend on my doing my job. Expertly. Just showing up, nine-to-five isn’t good enough. I have more free time on Sunday, so I usually do a workout that’s twice as long. Followed up by extra target practice.”

  “I’ll make sure you get a workout, Laney.” Those bedroom eyes of his shuttered halfway as his voice dropped to a low growl. “It won’t be conventional, but I guarantee it’ll leave you hot and sweaty.”

  Delaney wasn’t sure if heat flooded through her at the obviously naughty suggestion, or the way Kellan shortened her name. The intimacy it conveyed, the connection, touched her heart in a way nobody ever had before. Probably because she never risked letting down her guard around men.

  That’s what happened when you had a role model of a mother who threw away her entire life to love the wrong man. You swore never to let the same thing happen to you. Never to let that kind of intimacy, that kind of dependency, happen to you. So nobody saw Delaney as a nickname kind of woman. An ass-kicker, a hard worker, but not a playful “Laney.”

  Until Kellan.

  And the surprise was that she really, really liked it.

  “The generosity of that unselfish offer is duly noted,” she said, tongue in cheek. “However, I really am torn about being here with you.”

  “Is there anything you need to do about this string of emails? I mean, it’s all out of your control, right? You said it’s all just chatter.”