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I exhaled a relaxing breath as I admired the freshly organized tool box in front of me. Everything had its place, and that was extremely satisfying. I knew Calder would be here soon, to mess it up, but for now, I’d enjoy the perfection. Once he was here, I’d head into the office. There, I could cross off one more thing on my daily to-do list.
Grabbing my thermos of coffee from the workbench, I took a sip of the bitter black liquid. My chest hairs grew. Not that I had many there, but that was satisfying, too. Cream and sugar were a commodity I didn’t always have in the Army when deployed. I was used to black coffee now because of that, and I never went back to putting anything in it.
The shop was silent without my business partner, Calder. He had some errands to run this morning and would be here soon, so I headed for the car we needed to work on. My mind drifted while I popped the hood and zoned out. Replacing spark plugs was a mindless task for me and would take less than an hour.
By the time I was finished, the door to the shop slammed closed, and I didn’t have to look up to know who was headed toward me. Calder’s feet stomped, his heavy work boots shuffling against the concrete floor of the garage. Everything about him was a typical brooding disgruntled man. Even his walk was angry.
“Hey,” I said, not glancing up from the hood I was working under.
“What’s up, brother?” His hand clasped around my shoulder and he squeezed in greeting.
“Nothing, man. Business is slow today.” I closed the hood of the car. Then, I wiped my grease stained hands on a towel that was hanging on the rack next to me.
“Yeah.” He glanced around the shop, noticing the only other vehicle in here.
The parking lot was empty, too. Business had been slow the past month. It wasn’t a vast deal, considering we did well throughout the year. Plus Hendrix and Parker had a side gig buying old campers and restoring them. They had an entire lot of RVs that they rented out to families for road trips. They even had a few tiny homes they’d been working on flipping to resell.
Hendrix was a construction worker during the day while Parker did hiking tours with one of the local tourist shops. They both enjoyed their full-time positions. The RV thing was just something they did together to pass their time.
The income that came from the shop didn’t truly matter. Not when we were well enough off from our other endeavors.
“Someone closed on the bar today,” Calder said.
Yup. I already knew, because I’d just met the new owner about an hour ago. Thea. Black hair that swept well past her shoulder and chocolate eyes. She was in short shorts that barely covered her ass, sporting long legs. Her calves were strong and toned despite her thick thighs.
They were decadent, smooth thighs I wanted wrapped around my head while I went down on her. And she wasn’t the only thing making my dick hard today. That sixty-nine Stingray she was driving may have played a part in it.
Dream girl.
I sure as shit wasn’t telling Calder about her. He and the others were closer with each other than they were with me. They lived together a few miles away while I stayed here, holed up in the apartment above the shop. I preferred it this way. Besides, I didn’t like to share common space. My Army days were enough of that. Having to share a communal shower stall, sleeping in barracks with multiple men at a time, was the epitome of my own personal hell. I liked having my own space now. There was no one to move my shit out of place or bother me when I just wanted some peace and fucking quiet.
The fuckers were always hogging up the stove and hot water. They had a ‘what’s mine is ours’ philosophy in life, and that extended to the women they dated. But they weren’t getting their hands on Thea. I’d claim her before they could if I had to.
So, I refrained from telling him what I already knew about the girl next door. Instead, I feigned despair, despite my heart pounding fast inside my chest. It was from excitement, not unhappiness. I was eager to see what Thea did with the bar, to pop in there for a beer, while also getting a sneak of her smile after a long day of work. I was mostly dying to get my hands under the hood of her car.
I cleared my throat because that statement definitely had a hint of underlying meaning to it.
I scrubbed a hand down my face, letting out a false sigh of disappointment. “That sucks, man. We’ll figure something else out.”
We’d been talking about buying the property beside us to build a garage for the RVs. It would have been easy enough to demolish the abandoned building and do what he wanted to expand, including building a pole barn for storage. We’d been planning to create a new ops center underground, and the new build would have been the perfect distraction to cover up the construction.
Hendrix could do the underground stuff easily and go undetected.
Calder cleared his throat. “Maybe, but this would have made our lives easier. Now we’re about to have a busy bar on our hands. That’s attention we don’t need.”
The worry in his face hardened the lines around his eyes as he stared off into the distance. Calder still kept the military cut, blond shaved close to his head, and he didn’t have any scruff either, so every detail of harden jaw showed. Even the tick of the muscle that indicated his irritation.
I knew him well enough to know that this could cause him stress. That if I didn’t get his mind off the setback, he’d possibly go into a spiral. It was my job to know each of the men better than they knew themselves, and I took pride in that accomplishment.
“Cald,” I said, pulling his attention back to me and away from wherever his mind was going.
My tone was stern, and it did its job. He snapped his attention to me, making eye contact. “We’re good. I’ve got a backup in motion.”
“Yeah? What?” he asked. “This is the perfect location, Shane. We’ve got the tourists that come in, a sparse population of locals. And the one percent vacation here. Where else are we going to set up?” Calder huffed, resting his hands on his hips. He was contemplating chaos, his brown eyes churning with evil in them.
He turned to me. “I’m going to sabotage the fucker. He won’t be able to build if I hack in and deem the land off limits for business through the county.”
I rolled my eyes, already over his theatrics. “You’re not sabotaging a small business owner. That’s not what we’re about.”
