by Abby Brooks
“How was work today?” she asked. “Any better?”
“On a scale of one to exhausted, I’m too tired to pick a number and finish the joke.”
Fast food signs beckoned as I passed, but, remembering the accusations Nan’s stairs squealed that morning, I locked my gaze on the road ahead. The last thing I needed was another cheap hamburger. Even if they were delicious.
Mom let loose a hearty sigh. She hated how much time I dedicated to my job, probably because it was the one personality trait I got from my dad. “What you need is a house husband,” she said. “Someone waiting for you with a glass of wine and a bubble bath after a long day of saving the world. Shirtless, of course. With just the right amount of chest hair. Bonus points if he’s independently wealthy and skilled in the art of therapeutic massage. Oooh! And low-slung gray sweats that accent all the right places…”
With each addition to the description, I chuckled a little more. If I knew my mother, that particular daydream had more to do with her than me. “Why do I get the feeling you’ve spent more than the last ten seconds fantasizing about that list?”
“Can’t blame a woman for dreaming. Right?”
“I hate to burst your bubble, but that’s not how it works. Men are too selfish to be house husbands. Well, selfishness doesn’t honor gender lines, but you get my point.” I passed my favorite burger joint with the restraint of a saint. “I have no desire to let someone devour my life only for him to leave when things get real.”
Mom made a sound like she was coughing up a hairball. I tweaked the volume down another notch. “Just because it happened to me…”
“Not just you. Grandma Rosey, too. In fact, the only woman in our family it didn’t happen to is Nana Maxine, and that’s because Grandpa died when they still liked each other.”
That and she belonged to Dad’s side of the family so whatever curse Mom and I had hanging over our heads didn’t affect her.
The image of Captain Asshole staking out Nan’s place danced through my mind and my lady parts reacted with an inappropriate amount of glee. Who would have thought tall, dark, and creepy would do it for me? Not this strong, independent woman, capable of making healthy relationship choices. That was for sure.
Apparently, I’d been celibate too long. Not by choice. Not necessarily. Doctoring kept me busy, the state of the world kept me cynical, and the curse of my mom and grandma’s failed marriages hung over my head.
“Hey, Kiki…?” Mom’s voice was as soft as her hand brushing back my hair for a goodnight kiss. “I’m proud of you every day.”
I must have been more tired than I realized because I swallowed down a lump the size of my student loans.
“I take back everything I said about house husbands. You don’t need one. You’re strong and beautiful and totally rockin’ the socks off life.”
“Wow, Mom. You should have stopped with the pride statement. You’re laying it on so thick, I’m definitely sniffing out an ulterior motive here.”
“Shows what you know. Sometimes a mother can just call her daughter to shower her with praise and not expect anything in return.” Mom waited a beat. “Though, if you wanted to swing by The Twin Dragons and grab some takeout, I wouldn’t mind your company. We could open a bottle of wine and watch movies. I’m no house husband, but I am great company.”
Spending another night alone sounded about as exciting as my last patient’s battle with foot fungus. “I’m pretty pooped. Doubt I’d be much fun.”
“What if I told you I was less interested in the company and more interested in Chinese takeout?”
“We’re a match made in heaven, aren’t we?”
As Mom chortled her agreement, I tried not to cringe. So I was thirty years old and hanging out with my mother on a Tuesday night…
So maybe that was a little weird…
A touch boring…
Embracing the things that made me unusual also made me interesting. Besides, I was too tired to do more than drool in front of the television. If anyone was equipped to deal with that, it was the woman who’d wiped my bottom for the first two and a half years of my life.
Chapter Three
Joe
As I pulled up to a red light, I slipped my phone from my pocket and called Lucas Hutton—the Joey to my Chandler, if Joey was sarcastic, intense, and a combat vet.
“If it isn’t Captain Conscience,” he said as he answered. “How was your scouting expedition?”
“That’s a good one. Me. With a conscience.” The average person didn’t stand a chance against my disdain for the drama of human existence. Need advice about your bad day? No problem. I knew just the thing to say. Suck it up, buttercup.
Lucas scoffed. “Going out of your way to make sure you don’t take advantage of someone sounds like the definition of conscience to me.”
“Whatever, man. Maxine Monroe put her ad on a classified page on the internet, for fuck’s sake.” The light turned green and I gunned the engine. My dinosaur of a truck rattled forward at a snail’s pace. “Does she know how many serial killers stalk those kinds of websites? Is she aware how many con-artists would gladly move into that guesthouse and drain her cookie-baking soul of all it had left? I do. And it isn’t looking good for humanity as a whole. I might be an asshole, but I draw the line at taking advantage of an old woman lost in the modern world, trying to make it on her own.”
“I wonder what would happen if you saw yourself the way the rest of us do.”
Not interested in a self-esteem boosting pep talk from a grumpy Marine, I changed the topic. “I definitely think I can take the job, by the way. The backyard is a jungle and the place is a shithole, but man does it have potential. If all goes well tomorrow, I’ll be out of your hair by the end of the week.” I’d been staying at The Hutton Hotel—Lucas’ family business—for the last couple months while I figured out what to do with my life.
“Everyone said it’s hard to see your children grow up…” The fucker pretended to choke on emotion and sniffed loudly. “I just wasn’t prepared for the reality of it all.”
The renovations would test my knowledge of construction—rusty at best, though I was pretty good about a decade ago—but I could do the work. Which was exactly what I needed to know before I sat in front of a little old lady in need of protection from the vast criminal network of would-be internet killers.
The last thing I wanted was to stare into a pair of teddy bear eyes surrounded by a puff of white hair and find a way to say I couldn’t do the work. Because the chances were that I, with my one soft spot naked and vulnerable, would take the job even though I didn’t have the skill. That would suck for both of us. A major lose-lose.
As Lucas continued talking, Penny Dreadful stole my attention. She wasn’t my type, though considering my long string of strikeouts with women, maybe that was a good thing. Once you got past the fact that she thought I was a common criminal, of course. Too many people made snap judgements and I was tired of landing on the wrong side of that line.
For as much spark as she had, standing on that porch and threatening me like she meant it, she also proved herself to be completely typical. So I was dressed in black from head to toe and sneaking through a stranger’s yard—
“EARTH TO JOE.” Lucas used his Marine voice, inflicting permanent damage on my eardrum.
“You can’t see me right now, but I’m flipping you the bird.” I held the phone away from my face, gleefully grinning at my friend’s photo as I lifted my favorite finger.
The second time I came to Maxine Monroe’s house, I pulled into the driveway like a normal person. The Tushy Tickler watered flowers next door, catching my eyes and making an oddly sensual gesture with the hose.
Or maybe that was my imagination.
Please tell me it was my imagination.
I lifted a cautious hand and skedaddled up the stairs, hopping over the squeaky one. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice? I guess you’d have to call me Penny Dreadful, then, seeing how she
’d stepped on that stair twice in five minutes.
Last night, I’d laughed over the way she shrieked at the step more times than any decent human should. I’d even told Lucas about it over drinks. “She just stared and said ‘every time’ like she knew she was an idiot for stepping on it. Did I tell you her hair was the color of an old penny?”
He hadn’t been quite as amused as I’d been. I guess you had to be there.
I rapped my fist against the door. It rattled in a series of aftershocks that had me stepping back in case the whole structure collapsed. Maybe I’d been a tad too confident in my abilities, after all. The deadbolt ka-thunked out of place and the door ground open.
I’d drawn a picture of Maxine Monroe in my head. Helpless old lady. Voluminous floral mumu skating over her feet. A tuft of white curls. Kind eyes. Paper-thin skin and house slippers hissing along the floor.
The woman standing in front of me was not that.
At all.
She wore carpenter jeans rolled up at the ankle to show off trendy boots. Shoulder length gray hair sported a streak of purple sticking out behind her ear. Tortoise shell glasses perched on her nose, accenting warm brown eyes that skimmed over my face and body.
“That’s the one, Maxine!” Tushy Tickler called from her yard. “I was right, wasn’t I? He’s too tasty for a life of crime!”
In any other situation, I’d tell that woman exactly where she could go, but she had me by the balls. For one, she fell squarely into my soft spot zone, even if she was a horndog. And for two, I was already reeling from misjudging my future employer so completely. I held out my hand. “Tasty Joe Channing, at your service.”
“Maxine Monroe.” Her grip was firm and her smile genuine. “I’m sorry about Delores. She should come with a warning label. Come in and we can get down to business.” Maxine closed the door behind me, ramming it with her shoulder as she wrestled with the deadbolt. “If I don’t lock it up, the damn thing just swings open whenever it feels like.” She gave one last heave, then stepped back with a decisive nod.
For as non-helpless as its occupant appeared, the house was in surprisingly bad shape. My brain kept adding one plus one and coming up with fourteen. How could someone with full use of her faculties and the fashion sense of a twenty-something let her house fall down around her?
“Cookie?” Maxine held out a plate of baked goods burned into submission. The chocolate chips…? Raisins…? The brown bits looked like they’d crack a tooth.
I shoved my hands in my back pockets. “I had a big breakfast.”
“Wise choice. I thought they’d help me fit into the ‘sweet old lady’ category and play on your sympathies.” She put the plate down on a coffee table. One of the cookies slipped off the plate and clonked to the floor. It didn’t bounce. It didn’t roll. It didn’t so much as lose a crumb.
Maxine glanced from the cookie to me, quirking her head. “It’s not working, is it?”
“Not for a second.”
I already liked the woman. A lot.
“I’m assuming you were here yesterday to see what you’re getting yourself into, but just in case everything they say about strangers from the internet is true, you should know that I’m dating my Judo instructor. If I don’t put up a good enough fight, he’ll find you and finish you off.”
“Carl?”
Her eyes narrowed. “How’d you know that?”
“Your neighbor is—” I pictured the gleam in the Tushy Tickler’s eyes as she pretended to spray herself with the hose, tossing her hair and wiggling her shoulders as beads of water dripped onto her chest “—friendly.”
“Is that what you kids are calling it these days?”
Maxine took me on a tour of the house, and I fell in love. At least that’s what I assumed the strange fluttering in my heart might be. That, or breakfast wasn’t agreeing with me.
The place was falling apart. The hardwood floors needed replacing. The cabinets in the kitchen begged for updates. The stairs leading to the second floor were locked in an epic battle with the porch step over who delivered their lines with more gusto.
After a valiant skirmish with the front door, Maxine finally gave up without locking the deadbolt. “It’ll be wide open when we come back, but it’s not worth the fight.”
“That’ll be the first thing I fix, then.”
“If I hire you.” She tried to look fierce, but I was growing on her.
“Right, right. If you hire me,” I replied with as much deference as I could manage and we started on our trek through the jungle in the backyard.
“The guesthouse was my husband’s studio before he passed. He was always getting these crazy ideas. Never could sit still. He got it in his head that he needed to learn to paint. He was a terrible artist, but amazing with a hammer and nails, as you can see.” She pushed open the door to the guesthouse, a squat one-story building that proved Maxine’s point.
“He built this for our son, who spends a lot of time overseas and needed a place to stay when he’s stateside, which is pretty much never, hence it becoming George’s studio. There’s a bathroom and kitchenette hiding behind those boxes.” She waved her hand from the doorway, her feet firmly planted outside. “I couldn’t bear to throw his things away, so I just tossed it all in here.”
As we finished our tour, she grilled me on the basics.
Age? Thirty-one.
Experience? I apprenticed with a contractor a few years after high school.
Current employer? None.
Why did I want to move into a stranger’s house and work for free? It’s complicated.
My answers earned me a scathing look and I fully expected Maxine to show me the door…once she’d finished wrestling it open, anyway. She led me back to the front of the house, where said door had swung wide. “You know I’m going to need more than ‘it’s complicated’ before I feel comfortable letting you move into my home.”
“I hoped my charm and charisma would make up for the holes in my resume.” The blank years in my employment would be hard to explain, because A.) the story was unbelievable and B.) telling it put my brother’s privacy at risk.
“Where you convicted?”
I shook my head. “My record’s clean as a whistle.”
“I never did understand that saying.” Maxine grimaced. “Seems to me, there’s nothing clean about a whistle.”
She was onto something there, but before I could agree, she hurried on.
“Know this, Joe Channing. I adore this house. I raised my children in this house. I had a wonderful life with my husband in this house. Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I can still hear him laughing and no matter how much fun I have with Carl, I will never stop missing my George. I’m ashamed I let our home fall to pieces the way I have because every memory of our time together lives here with me. I’m opinionated. I’m hard to please. I don’t like to spend money and will fight you over every cent but if you can overlook all that, then I can overlook a complicated past.”
“When you put it that way, I think I’d rather eat one of your cookies than take the job.”
Maxine snorted a laugh and folded her arms over her chest.
I held up a hand. “Kidding. I’m kidding. I’m the last person to judge anyone for being hard-headed. I’d be honored to restore your house to its former glory.”
Maxine cocked her head, those sharp brown eyes narrowing as she peered into my soul. After an awkward minute, she gave a decisive nod. “Come on in, then. We’ll draw up a contract and hammer out the details.”
“Are you really dating your Judo instructor?” I asked as we stepped into the house.
“Why?” Maxine shut the door and moved toward the kitchen. “You want me to show you some of my moves?”
Chapter Four
Kennedy
A strange truck hunkered in Nan’s driveway. My heart wrung its hands as my brain flipped through a camera roll of all trucks seen in the recent past, then held up a picture of Captain Asshole climbing into a suspicio
usly similar vehicle after I scared him off the day before.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I pulled in behind him, effectively blocking his escape. Anxiety hummed a warning as I scanned the yard, then sounded a level ten alarm as my attention climbed up the stairs to the front porch.
Nan’s door hung open, revealing a gaping maw of the darkened interior.
With my phone in my hand and my heart in my throat, I killed the engine and barreled toward the house. A melodic bong, bong, bong coming from inside the Honda scolded me for not shutting the door.
Delores lifted a hand from her station on the porch. “He’s worth the rush! I promise!”
Ignoring her, I cleared the stairs leading up to the porch in one large step, congratulating myself on missing the screecher, then burst through the open entry.
Sounds of a struggle emanated from deeper in the house.
A masculine voice murmured something dark and sinister, and Nan loosed a breathy grunt.
“Not the throat.”
Her words were low.
Tight.
I imagined that asshole with his hands around her neck, squeezing the life out of my poor, defenseless grandmother. The kitchen table grated against tile. Something crashed to the floor.
“Nan!” I sprinted toward the ruckus.
Rounding the corner into the kitchen, my worst fears came true. Captain Asshole had her in a headlock, his thick forearm wrapped around her delicate throat. “Is this where you want it?” he rasped, breathless from effort. My Nan was a tough old bird, bless her heart. She’d put up quite a fight, but he was bigger. Stronger. Younger.
His eyes caught mine and he stilled, releasing his grip on Nana Maxine, whose hands flew to his wrist and yanked his arm back into place.
Lack of oxygen had taken its toll. Poor thing was confused.