3. Chapter Three

Chapter Three

It had been another very long day.

Will was torn between being glad that Cherry's had really caught on with the locals and with the tourists filtering into town for the summer, and wishing that maybe they were a little less eager.

Maybe then his feet and the small of his back wouldn't be aching like this.

"Flip the sign," Will said to Mari.

She was currently wiping up tables, streaked with smears of chocolate and cherry pie filling and God only knew what else, but she skirted around one of them and flicked the switch that turned the curly-lettered open sign, executed in bright cherry pink, to off.

"We're gonna have to hire someone else. And consider staying open later, in the summer. Seven PM might not be late enough to take care of the crowds," Kate suggested as Will leaned against the counter and wondered if it was better or worse if his toes had gone numb. At least they'd stopped hurting for a second?

"Yeah." Will dragged a hand over his face.

Kate wasn't wrong, but that was a problem for Tomorrow Will.

"Especially," Mari chimed in as she went back to scrubbing a particularly stubborn stain off one of the tables, "on nights when there's events at the high school. They're all gonna want to come here. There's only the little diner at the edge of town that's open late enough for that crowd."

"Good point," Kate agreed with a nod. She turned to Will. "Boss?"

Will sighed. "I'll look into it tomorrow."

She gave him a bit of a shove. "You were here even earlier than me. You're exhausted. Go get some fresh air. I'll work on cleaning up back here."

Will almost asked her if she was sure, but he heard his mom's voice echoing in his head, if you hired her, why can't you trust her? It was even more annoying because he knew she was right.

"Alright, but I'll be back in a few, to help you guys finish up," Will said.

He pushed open the door. "Lock this behind me, yeah?" he said, motioning towards Mari, and she nodded.

It was still warm outside—Kate wasn't wrong, either; they needed to start staying open later, to take full advantage of the summer and its crowds—even though it was dusk now, bordering on full dark, stars emerging overhead, the streets mostly abandoned at this hour.

Will turned the corner and stopped in his tracks.

There was a man there.

Not just any man.

His back was to Will, as he stood, staring at the side of Will's building, wearing jeans and a T-shirt that fit him like a glove, hugging his long slender lines.

Will must've made a noise, because he turned around.

The front view was even better than the back. Tousled, curly dark hair that was a little too long matched the scruff on his jaw. Dusk had fallen, making it impossible to see the color of his eyes, but Will imagined they were just as dark brown as his hair. A deep, chocolate brown he could willingly drown in.

"Hey," Will said, wishing that he hadn't been working for the last twelve hours and probably smelled like it. Or that he didn't have at least half a banana split smeared across his white T-shirt.

Kate had teased him that he'd picked white for the Cherry's shirts because he looked hot in them, because they were terribly impractical otherwise.

But from the way the guy's gaze drifted across the white fabric, stained yes, but also stretched tight across his pecs and his biceps and hugging his stomach, Will decided it hadn't been such a bad idea, after all.

Then Will's eyes caught on what was behind the guy. A bag full of stuff. And he'd done something to Will's wall. There were paint marks on the wall he'd so meticulously cleaned up, scrubbing every bit of ugly graffiti off. Making sure each and every brick was restored. It had been hard, long, back-breaking work, and now this hot guy was doing what . . .painting some kind of bullshit back on it?

He could be hot, but Will wasn't going to let him get away with it.

He straightened up. "What are you doing?" he demanded.

"Excuse me?" the guy retorted. With anger flashing in those dark eyes, he was even hotter.

Will ignored the pull of him, the pulse of desire in his belly.

It had just been way too long since he'd been attracted to anyone—and even longer since he'd done something about it.

"I said, what are you doing? You have paint in that bag. I can see it. I can see it on the wall. Are you really gonna graffiti my building right in front of me?"

"Graffiti?" The guy's jaw dropped in surprise. "I don't paint graffiti ."

"Well, what the hell are you doing then?" Will crossed his arms over his chest, because he knew how intimidating that could look.

"It doesn't concern you."

Except it did. Because what Will thought what he was doing really freaking pissed him off.

"Somehow, that doesn't make me feel any better," Will said. "I spent days in all kinds of shitty weather scrubbing every last bit of paint off this wall. Do you have any idea how long that takes? How much elbow grease I wasted on this? Because I didn't want to pretend that the inside was all that counted."

Will craned his head as the hot guy stared at him, confusion pleating the skin between his dark eyebrows. Realized that he hadn't caught the guy before he'd done it, he'd caught him in the middle of defacing Will's building.

Anger surged inside him. "I don't care how hot you are," he said, "but you can't just come here and do this to my building."

" Your building?"

Will gave him a sharp nod. "Yes, this is my building, and I'll be damned if you paint all over it again, just for me to have to sweat out in the heat of summer to clean your bullshit off."

"My bullshit ?"

Will couldn't decide what was more annoying; that this asshole had begun to paint all over his building, or that he wouldn't actually admit it.

Especially when evidence was clear behind him. And not even anything interesting . Just a few swipes of different colors.

What was the point of that? Will decided he didn't give a crap; he just wanted it gone, and this guy was gonna be the one to remove it.

"Are you just gonna keep repeating every word I say or are you gonna clean this up?" Will asked archly.

The guy's shrug was mechanical and okay, he looked a little puzzled, too. Which confused Will.

Had he not realized what he was doing?

"I think there's been a misunderstanding," the guy said.

"You better believe it," Will said. His temper was maybe a little shorter than it might've been otherwise, but he was exhausted, and this asshole was defacing his building. The idea of having to come back here in the morning and not only find another employee and train them but figure out how to open even more hours, on top of scrubbing that paint off his building for the second fucking time, unwound all his niceness.

"What I mean," the guy said more gently, "is that the town's hired me to paint this wall. It's my job."

"Excuse me?"

The guy gave a short, humorless laugh. "I'm supposed to be here, painting your wall. I was checking some of my paints, seeing how the brick absorbed them, because sometimes brick's been sealed and I need to scrub it off first, before re-sealing it after the mural's done."

Something teased the back of Will's mind. "The mural?"

"Now it's your turn to look confused," the guy said. "I told you, there's been a big misunderstanding. I'm—"

"Enzo Moretti. You're Enzo Moretti." Will could see it now. The hair. The eyes. The handsome face, echoes of Giana and Luca and all those fabulous Moretti genes. He wasn't as built as Luca, shoulders narrower, but Will hadn't missed the hint of muscle under his clothes.

Kate was right; he was hot.

"That's me," Enzo said. Not sounding particularly pleased that it had taken Will all this time to catch up. "And you own this building?"

Will nodded sharply. "I sure do. And I didn't give permission for anyone to paint it, even the town's most famous son."

Only one thought was echoing through his head, repeating over and over. If this is Enzo Moretti, he sure doesn't need his mom's help getting dates.

That particular realization made him a little stupid, and more than a little slow.

"Well, at least you've heard of me." Enzo cracked a smile.

"Oh, I've heard of you." Will considered telling him how Giana had practically thrown him at Will, over and over again, but he didn't, because he was still stuck on the fact that apparently they'd hired Enzo Moretti to paint his building and yet nobody had fucking asked him .

"Great." Enzo shifted from one foot to the other. "So, we're all good then?"

"Just like that? We're all good then? No, you're not painting my building. In fact, you're going to take the paint you've already smeared all over my wall and remove it."

Enzo gaped at him. "Are you fucking kidding me?"

"No," Will said.

He thought Enzo might take more than a moment to recover from his clear shock, but no, he recovered almost instantly. The guy was not only hot, he was quick.

"You do realize that people are clamoring for me to paint their buildings in all fifty states, right? That I agreed to do this as a favor ? That I'm even waiving my fifty-thousand-dollar fee?"

The man made that much for every mural he did? Will might've been impressed, but he was too annoyed.

"I don't care if you're going to paint my wall in solid freaking gold," he said. "It's my wall and I worked hard to make it look that good and you're not ruining it."

"Ruining it?" Enzo's voice edged upwards, dangerously. His eyes flashed and he crossed his arms over his chest, and maybe he wasn't quite as broad as Will, but it was a damn fine look, all the same.

Yep, he was definitely even hotter when he was mad.

That doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if he's appealing, he's kind of an egotistical jerk. Looks or not, maybe his mom really does have to pimp him out to get dates.

"You're cleaning this up. Tonight. Or tomorrow. Take your pick." Will turned around and with that threat hanging in the air, marched back to sanity. Fumbled for his keys, but unlocked the front door to Cherry's and locked it behind him.

Knew he was trembling with fury. The freaking audacity of that guy.

To act like Will shouldn't be mad that nobody had even asked him. To act like he was doing Will a favor by painting a wall he didn't even want painted!

"You alright?" Kate asked. She eyed him up and down as he pushed the pass-through that let him behind the counter. "You don't look very relaxed."

"I just ran into Enzo Moretti," Will said through clenched teeth.

"Oh, so Giana was wrong. She's going to cry about that. Probably a lot."

"He's hot, she wasn't wrong about that. But he's also an egotistical jerk. He thought he could just waltz into town and decide because he's Enzo freaking Moretti and apparently people pay him way too much to paint pretty pictures on walls that he could paint my wall without even asking me. Without even consulting me."

"What?" Kate looked surprised. "Are you sure?"

"Pretty damn sure." Will clenched his fists and then tried to relax them. Keyword: tried .

"Huh. Are you sure this isn't another one of Giana's tricks?"

The moment Kate said it, Will knew she was probably right. And okay, yes, he had lost his temper, a little. He didn't do that normally, but he'd been so tired when he'd walked out there and the whole conversation had started out on totally the wrong foot when he'd assumed that Enzo was here to graffiti the wall he'd spent so much dang energy cleaning up in the first place.

"Ugh, probably," Will conceded.

Though it wasn't like Enzo, after they'd figured out the misunderstanding, had been particularly apologetic about it. He'd been smug and very sure of his own worth, positive that Will was going to fall all over himself to apologize and smooth the way.

But it was Will's wall. He didn't care who Enzo was, or how much he freaking charged to paint a goddamn mural. If he wanted his wall to be blank, that was his right. The deed in his safe in the back proved it.

"So you guys got into it. Lots of clenched teeth and straining muscles and barely concealed angry flirting, huh?" Kate said pointedly, shooting him a knowing grin.

"Something like that," Will muttered. He walked past her into the back, into the little office he'd carved out of the kitchen space. It was a cubbyhole, basically, just big enough for a desk big enough for his laptop and a charger for his phone. He took a deep breath and then another, trying to huff his way through the surge of frustration and anger he'd felt.

Because he could recognize now that he'd overreacted. A little. Only a little, though.

Enzo had been infuriating and provoking. He'd asked for at least some of Will's grievances by being so smug about him and his talent.

He picked up his phone from the desk and did the thing he'd told himself he would not do, every single time after Giana appeared, like the matchmaker from hell, and tried to give him her son's phone number.

He looked Enzo Moretti up on Instagram.

And felt the rest of his anger leave him in an unsteady rush.

The murals on his Instagram were stunning. Huge gorgeous things, evocative and colorful and full of details and emotion that Will wanted to dive right into.

It would've been a hell of a lot easier if he hadn't been as talented as he'd claimed, but if anything, he'd actually downplayed his skill.

Will didn't know whether he was more annoyed at himself or Enzo.

After scrolling through a dozen or so of Enzo's murals, he opened his texts and sent one to Luca.

Is it possible that your aunt suggested to your cousin that they paint the side of my building while he's here?

Luca didn't take long to respond. Don't tell me she didn't ask you—or even mention it to you?

Will let out another long sigh. His legs gave out and he collapsed onto the chair. Would that really surprise you?

No. Not as much as I hoped it might. I'm sorry, Will. We'll figure this out.

For a minute, Will almost wanted to let Luca handle it. After all, Luca was the de facto head of the Morettis, not only here in Indigo Bay, but all Morettis, everywhere . A responsibility that Will knew he didn't take lightly, because Oliver had mentioned, more than once, that it still weighed on him, sometimes.

No need. I've got it handled, Will sent back. This wasn't Luca's job, to rein in his aunt. Will owned this building. It would be his responsibility to take care of this.