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“Serial killer? Binx!”
“Oh. Didn’t I mention that yet?”
Sel held up both hands and whispered, “Let me start from the beginning.”
Chapter Four
It was five full minutes of explaining, with Binx chiming in, but once he was through, Lonnie smiled. “You met Binxie at the most perfect time you could have met him.”
Binx giggled and confessed, “I am the supreme authority on hijinks, my Sirs tell me.”
“He is,” Lonnie agreed. “I get you want to do this, but Selestino, really, your parents are just worried about you. If my kids wanted to go where a serial killer was running around, I’d lock them in a closet.”
Sel knew he wouldn’t get anywhere with Lonnie, being Lonnie was a father, but Binx came to his rescue. “Lon, we’ve done a lot of stuff. We’ve had a lot of problems here. You never shrunk from trouble. In fact, you ran into it, remember?”
“Binx…”
“Wait, wait,” Sel said, waving both hands. “What trouble?”
Before Lonnie could hush him, Binx told their story. “When Lonnie and Travis first got together, Travis’s father freaked. He hated that his big, brawny son was gay. He tried a lot to break them up, then he tried to kill Lonnie. Shoot, the entire town. He had a guy plant a bomb in the local diner.”
“Wait, that diner we passed to get here?”
“Sure. The Dyn-O-Mite Cafe. They renamed it when they rebuilt it. Lonnie found the bomb, got everyone out of there as he ran with it to the walk-in freezer. He barely got it inside before it blew. Lonnie almost didn’t make it,” he said with tears in his eyes.
“Lonnie, that’s terrible.”
“I almost died a few times. I get it. I get not wanting to be stuck, protected, watched over like…like you’re a child, but as the father of children now, I see what I put my family through. My Uncle Dennis still worries over me as much as I worry over my kids.”
“I swear to you, to you both, I’m not going there to hunt this guy down and corner him. I’m going to learn from my uncle, see how a business can be built from the ground up. I know I’ll still be watched over, maybe worse, but I feel like if I don’t do this I’ll go crazy.”
Binx set his hand over Lonnie’s. “Maybe just for a couple weeks, if anything? Who knows? He might be bored to death there after a week.”
“Let me call Dante. Maybe we can do this without the sneaking around.”
Dante set his phone back in his pocket as Blaine sat down on the couch next to him, that tablet of his clutched tightly in his fist. “Now, can I show you the samples for the flooring in the hall?”
“Don’t you want to know what Tony and Selena said?”
“I know what they said. They’re forcing you to watch his every move and not to ever let him out of your sight. Which, of course, will be impossible, but you promised anyway, and somehow think you can pull it off.”
“How the hell did you know that?”
“I have been with this family for long enough to know you and your brother cave to the people you love the most. I have you wrapped around my fingers, but Sel does too, and he has his parents wrapped as well.”
“Smart ass.”
Blaine set the tablet on Dante’s lap and said, “Pick.”
Dante loved the stuff. Decorating a house was like choosing a wardrobe for his home. He looked seriously at the samples, then chose three he liked and used the software Blaine had gotten to place it in pictures of their actual hallway. “First, why not match the hall to the living and dining room?”
“Tile in the dining room and kitchen, Dante. It could match the living room, I suppose, when I decide what to place in the living room.”
Dante looked at each in the hall and chose the teak. “That is light, like the walls, and you said you wanted a clear coat on the pine and oak furniture. They are light woods.”
“I haven’t decided on the furniture.”
Dante sighed in frustration. “My darling, you chose the wood for the furniture yesterday.”
