Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10

KYLE

" W hoa there, boss man," Zeus taunts as I shut off the engine on my bike and dismount. "What's the occasion?"

"What do you mean, Z?" I pull my helmet off, hanging it on the handlebar, and carelessly run my hands through my hair. It's getting a bit longer than I usually wear it, so I should probably get a trim before Frogger tries to take a pair of snips to it.

"The bike!" Zeus throws an arm toward it, looking it over appreciatively. "Got a hot date after work or something?"

"Let me answer your question with a question," I reply as I do a triple-check.

Yes, I'm fully on Kathy's side of the property line.

Yes, Dani has two full parking spots in front of her house.

Yes, I'm fully aware of my client giving me the stink-eye through her front window despite her hiding behind the curtains.

Perfect. And exactly why I rode my motorcycle today.

"What sort of woman is gonna climb on my bike eight hours from now, after I've been working like a mule all day? And smell like one too."

"A total keeper, of course!" Zeus grins, nodding like the twenty-one-year-old wise sage he wishes he were. "A girl who wants me when I come home smelling like sweat, burned metal, dirt, and diesel fumes? I'mma marry that chick quick, fast, and in a hurry."

"That all it takes to get you to the altar?" I pose the question seriously. Zeus is more than one of my crew. He's a good friend, and I worry about him. He's na?ve in a lot of ways, and the last thing he needs is a woman who sees an opportunity at a golden ticket in his kindness.

He stops, considering the question more deeply. "Well, I might not go that far… yet, but… one day, maybe." Then, with an even bigger grin, he adds, "Of course, it'd help if she's smoking hot, can cook more than Hot Pockets because that's the extent of my culinary skills, and I'd totally award bonus points if she reads those smutty books from TikTok. Those girls are fah-reak-eey." He mimes smacking ass, though there's no one in front of him, thankfully. "That sort of girl's worth an extra bar of Irish Spring after work, know what I mean?"

"Maybe expand your wish list a little," I suggest. "Keep your head down and your standards high, and you'll find the one when the time's right."

"Like you?" He raises a brow and cuts dancing eyes toward Dani's house.

I grit my teeth, then force out, "Don't know what you're talking about." I stride past him, done with this conversation now that it's about me.

"Oh, I thought you and her were…" He trails off before switching gears. "Hey, if you're not into her, you think she'd give me a chance? I like older women. How old ya think she is?"

Look at her the wrong way just once, and I'll drag you behind my bike. Touch her, and I'll bury you beneath Kathy Wilson's pool face-up so your ghost has to see her ass floating above you.

Whoa.

I'm not usually a Neanderthal type. But the idea of Zeus getting remotely close to Dani sends unexpected fire scorching through my veins.

Taking a deep breath, I force a chuckle. "Too old for you," I declare firmly. I glance back over my shoulder to make sure he hears me loud and clear. I bet Dani's only a handful of years older than Zeus, but their ages have nothing to do with why she's completely off-limits to him.

He laughs good-naturedly, and I belatedly realize he played me like a fucking fiddle.

"Get to work, Preston ," I deadpan, heading toward the back yard.

Behind me, I hear him whine, "Aw man, you don't have to go that far with it. I was just fucking around with ya."

The day goes as well as it can, given we're laying the last of the grid for the concrete before our morning break and moving on to installing filtration plumbing by lunch.

While Zeus and I work in the shallow end, laying wire grid before using a spot welder to tack the pieces together, Wayne and Frogger are down in the deep end, carefully carving out the space for the plumbing.

Or at least, they should be careful about it.

"Oh, yeah, my favorite part of the job," Frogger declares as he positions a two-inch-wide length of PVC pipe in the trench they've dug. "Laying long, thick pipe."

"This pipe takes it in, not blows it out," Wayne reminds him. "You saying you like taking big, wet loads?"

All of us stop and look at Frogger with matching grins as we wait for his response.

He rolls his eyes, huffing out a laugh as he smack talks Wayne right back. "Don't get too excited, old man. We know you haven't had a big, wet load in ages. It's more like… pffft ." Frogger sticks his tongue out, blowing a half-assed raspberry, while flicking his fingers like he's got a few, teeny-tiny water droplets on them. It's definitely not complimentary to Wayne's supposed ejaculation power or volume.

Wayne grumbles, "At least I know where to put it, unlike you young ‘uns, making a mess every damn where." He weakly smacks at his face, his chest, and then his saggy jeans-covered, flat butt.

"I'll put it anywhere that keeps me away from child support court." Frogger makes an X with his arms and hisses like a cat as if that's the worst thing he can imagine.

"Maybe try a rag, then," Wayne suggests, giving Frogger a Disappointed Dad look.

The day's not all shit-talking and jokes, though, and by quitting time, we're one hundred percent prepped for concrete. The guys throw me a wave as they leave, piling into Wayne's truck for the drive home.

I head to Kathy's back door to give her the update, but after a couple of knocks, she doesn't answer. "Huh, I thought she was here all day," I muse aloud, looking up at the windows of the house. There's no movement behind any of the curtains now, and I decide to take not-dealing with Kathy as the gift that it is.

Truthfully, I don't know what's been happening around here today. We were in the hole, out of sight and unaware of whatever activity was going on above our five-to-thirteen-foot-deep station, when accounting for slope and plumbing. I heard the trucks coming and going at Dani's all day, and the music playing this afternoon, but there wasn't a single chance to climb up and see for myself how things were going. Hopefully, my parking adjustment helped Dani a bit.

Only one way to find out for sure.

I hop the fence, going up to Dani's back door again. Yesterday, I did it as a way to check on her before announcing my presence after seeing a new and out-of-place vehicle in her driveway. Today, I do it because it makes me feel like there's something more between us than temporary proximity. Like maybe we could be friends. Or like maybe that kiss wasn't a mistake of epic proportions.

Instead of knocking, I call through the screen door, "Knock, knock, Daniela."

I hear her sigh from inside. "Come in."

Grinning at her already-annoyed tone, I go in to find her standing at the kitchen sink. She's gorgeous, as always—her face covered with the slight sheen of sweat, her bun slightly off-center on the top of her head, her blue tank top spotted with water drops, her strong legs covered in swirly print yoga pants, and her hands and lower arms covered in rubber gloves, which seems like a good choice given the hard scrub down she's giving to the pan in front of her.

"Anybody here I need to know about?" I tease, scanning the kitchen where it's only the two of us, leaning over to peer into the living room, and even picking up the lid from the pot on the stove to look inside.

"Hey! Put that back," Dani says. "It's soaking so I don't have to work so hard to clean it."

I let the lid fall into place with a clatter. "Want some help?"

She stops scrubbing and pins me with a wary look. "Why?"

She makes it sound like my offer comes with not only strings, but full-blown restraints and restrictions, plus some clauses and addendums. I shrug. "Wanted to ask how your visit with your brother went, and standing here while you work is rude."

"Oh," she utters, sounding surprised, though I don't understand why. "Sure, I guess that's fine. Here."

She sets her steel wool scrubber down, takes off her gloves, and hands them to me. I squeeze them on—she's got a lot smaller set of hands than me—before popping the cuff like a surgeon in the operating room and taking up my position in front of the sink. It's full of spoons of various sizes and a few spatulas, but I start with the pot she was working on, scrubbing it in long strokes the same way she was. I might not be a chef, but I know people are particular about their cookware, so I'm not gonna do anything that could destroy the tools of Dani's trade.

Dani stares at me like I'm an alien for a moment, but then she moves to a drawer. I can't see what she's doing at first, but she turns around with a large meat cleaver in her hand.

"Fuck, just tell me to get out," I balk, holding my glove-covered hands up in surrender. But I'm grinning because I'm mostly sure she's not about to dice me into chunks for tomorrow's lunches.

"Har-har," she deadpans before explaining, "I need to sharpen my knives."

"Scaring the shit outta me is a solid bonus, though, right?" I joke with a big grin. She tries to hide her answering smile unsuccessfully, and I know I'm right.

I go back to scrubbing while she sets up at the kitchen table, soaking a well-used whetstone in a bowl of water and lining up the cleaver as well as a handful of thankfully smaller knives.

"What's your brother sell?" I ask, starting easy. I want to know everything about Daniela Becerra, but like me, she doesn't share readily, so dancing around the questions I really want to ask is the best way to learn anything about the short-tempered, sexy spitfire.

Dani looks at me in surprise. "How'd you know he's in sales?"

"I can smell 'em a mile away." I take a sniff of the air, scrunching up my nose like something smells rank. When she doesn't laugh, I answer honestly. "His pants were designer, he was wearing a flashy watch to grab attention and communicate success, and his shoes had a fresh polish. All that, but his shirt was straight outta Tar-jay. Most customers wouldn't notice. They'd be too wowed by the Rolex to question the shirt's thread count. I'm guessing life insurance or cars. Am I right?"

Dani blinks rapidly, her jaw dropped open. "How did you…?" she mutters. I raise my brows expectantly. "Cars," she answers with a shake of her head.

I meant to learn about her, but my spot-on assessment of Xavier has definitely revealed more about myself than I intended. Truthfully, I could name the designer of his pants, the style of his Rolex, and the year of his BMW, but Dani doesn't need to know that. My knowledge of expensive displays of success isn't something I want to explain. Not because I think she'll care, but because I don't want to talk about my family. I want to talk about Dani's.

"You sound like you don't approve."

"My family's complicated," Dani says as she watches the little bubbles rise from the soaking stone.

"Most peoples' are."

Fuck, if only she knew the mess my family is, starting with yours truly. I'm the black sheep of my siblings, a role I take seriously and enjoy thoroughly, constantly striving to find new ways to piss off my Dad. In my defense, he totally deserves it and I take extraordinary delight when I can make the vein in his forehead bulge dangerously.

"I guess," she says, not sounding like she truly agrees. "For a really long time, we had a restaurant. Papa was the head chef, Mama ran the counter, and I did whatever was needed. I learned how to cook from them. Nothing fancy, but it was sort of the first incarnation of my business." She looks around her kitchen like she's not seeing it, but rather the restaurant's. "It was mostly lunch take-out too, with a grand total of six ‘booths' for the guys to sit at while they waited for their food, or for the few who couldn't eat at work. Our customers were the same people I serve now."

I hold up the pot I've been scrubbing for approval, and she nods. I set it aside to dry and continue with the sinkful of spoons as she takes the sharpening stone from the water and lines it up in a wooden tray. Picking up her long, almost machete-like cleaver, she starts running it along the stone, the raspy whisper filling the room.

"What about your brother? Can't help but notice he wasn't on that list of employees and responsibilities."

"Xavier always hated the restaurant," Dani says, making another stroke of the steel on the stone. "Probably because Papa had him doing the shit work. Dishes," she says, looking at me like I'm an alien again. "Mopping the floors, taking out the garbage, cleaning the bathroom, stuff like that. I mean, I did my share too, but Papa always kept the real nasty stuff for Xavier. One day, he had enough. The toilet was clogged, which happened way too often, and Papa sent Xavier in with a plunger. I don't know what he did, but there's was a big whoosh sound and when he came out, there was actual shit all over his apron. He said he was done, right then and there. Threw his apron on the floor, walked out the back door, and never came back. He got a job at a car dealership, first as a porter, and then working his way up through the sales department. He's really good at it—one of their top salesmen now."

She sounds proud of her brother, but there's obviously something deeper going on because she talks about the restaurant in past tense.

"What happened to your parents' place? How'd you end up cooking in your kitchen?"

She shrugs. "After Xavier left, I thought Papa would finally see me. Maybe even realize that I'd been the one running the place at his side all along. I mean, Xavier could never make barbacoa for shit." Dani smiles a little as she insults her brother's skills, and I like that little flash of her fire. "And fucking up barbacoa is a criminal offense in my book."

"But?" I prompt, and she sighs.

"But Papa got sick. Lung cancer, even though he never smoked a single cigarette." She laughs a bitter laugh. "But he grew up dirt-dirt poor, in the sort of house where they had to burn whatever they could get their hands on to keep warm in the winter, sometimes to cook too. God knows what he inhaled." She swallows as if she's the one who can't catch her breath. "He was able to get treatment, but it wasn't cheap. Thankfully, Xavier was able to help with that, but Papa couldn't run the restaurant any more. I wanted to keep it going, keep money coming in for them, but Papa wouldn't hear of it." I look at her in surprise, and she explains, "He's old school. Thinks that in the house, cooking and cleaning are women's work. But if you slap a sign out front and start charging people money for the same damn recipes that get served to the family? Oh, that's clearly a man's job."

I say nothing, because it sounds like Dani's venting a pain that's been weighing on her for a long time. So I keep washing, letting her continue, though I kinda want to tell her that her dad's an idiot, a sentiment I don't think she'd appreciate despite her own feelings on the matter.

"I argued my ass off," Dani finally says, setting the cleaver aside and picking up a chef's knife.

Atta girl , I think. I bet she argued loud and long and with everything she has.

"And if Mama had been on my side, maybe he would've listened. Even if was just temporary, you know? But they were united. Only Xavier could take over the restaurant. But he was never going to do that. He already had a wife, a baby, and a job that paid enough to support them and help Mama and Papa with the medical bills." She pauses for a long time, so long that I think that's the end of her story. But finally, she says, "They closed it down rather than let me do it."

"Dayum," I hiss.

"Yeah," Dani says, her voice barely a whisper. She goes back to sharpening, the knife sweeping back and forth across the stone. "Luckily, I was able to keep some of the equipment. The pots, the pans, the knives. One of the older gas burners. The smoker out back, since it was a handmade job welded up by a friend of Papa's as a trade for two weeks' worth of lunches for his crew. Those things wouldn't fetch shit when it came to resale, and they thought I could use them when I got married." She scoffs, and I think that's an entirely different scab she's trying to heal. "Anyway, I told the customers I was going to figure something out, and I did. Now, they come to me for lunch."

Dani goes quiet, her hands never stopping even though she's lost in her thoughts. I don't think she ever quits moving, working, struggling, fighting to prove something to herself and her parents.

I keep washing, my own mind whirling. "I think we're more alike than you'd expect," I say. I'm not gonna deep dive into my own family shit with her, as neither of us needs that, but I do feel some sense of similarity with her—both of us disappointing our families because we're not what they want us to be.

Dani's brows climb her forehead. "Yeah, you come to that conclusion after seeing my thirty-thousand-dollar Harley sitting out front?" she asks snarkily.

I laugh, not mad at her assessment when it's the truth.

"Lucille cost more than that," I admit, "seeing as she's custom. And you liked riding with me." She huffs out in feigned annoyance, and I continue, seeing the interest in her eyes. "But in some ways, I'm trying to prove something to my family too."

"What're they like?"

I try to think about how best to describe my family. We've gone through a lot in the last few years. My oldest brother, Cameron, lost his wife and never fully recovered. My second oldest brother, Carter, left the family business in a blaze of glory. Two of my brothers, Chance and Cole, told Dad to fuck off a long time ago in their own very different ways. And my sister, Kayla, somehow expertly straddles Dad's world at work while being Mom's right-hand woman the rest of the time. And then there's me.

"Perfect, other than me," I confess. "They all fit some sort of mold my dad has, either working for him or striking out on their own in ways that make him proud."

"Your dad's not proud of you?"

Damn, she clued on to that fucking fast. And no, he's not, which pisses me off. And hurts. But I cover the hurt up by annoying the hell out of Dad so he's pissed off too. Just two angry assholes, me and him.

That's not what I tell Dani, though. Nope, I fix a smile on my face and let out a deep chuckle. "I don't think he is or isn't. I'm not something he thinks about, unless it's to curse my existence, which I give him cause to do regularly." Dani frowns, and I explain, "With as many siblings as I have, life was always crisis management as we grew up. Who needed to be where and when, mostly. I was the baby, so Mom hauled me along to everyone's games, awards, tutoring, or whatever, or I got left with a babysitter. Dad was there for the big stuff, like holidays or family dinners, but I was basically an afterthought. But there's one sure-fire way to get distracted people to pay attention to you," I tease, genuinely grinning as I recall some of the antics I've pulled.

"I'm afraid to ask." Dani's cringing as if she's already imagining the worst.

"Be a pain in their ass," I answer, proud of myself even if no one else has bothered to be proud of me.

She laughs at my unexpected answer. "Well, you've definitely perfected the art of that," she surmises.

" Pretty sure my dad would agree," I gloat.

Is bad behavior the best way to get attention? Of course not, but if the choice is that or no attention, I think most people would start doing some stupid shit. And it's not as if I make a habit out of my bad behavior now. I've left most of the truly horrifying stuff in my sordid past and live a pretty boring life for the most part—working, playing with my dog, and hanging out with my siblings, who I've learned maybe aren't as bad as I always thought they were when I was growing up.

But as far as Dad's concerned? Yeah, that's when I act out, act up, and act a fool. It's family tradition at this point.

"You've definitely been a pain in mine," Dani teases, but her grin says she's not as mad about that fact now. "I noticed your parking job today. Thank you. It helped… a lot."

"Glad it made a difference. What's next?" I don't want to dwell on the parking deal that's been such a thorn in both our sides, so I move on quickly, letting us both off that particular hook. Plus, I really have made it through the stack of dishes, pots and pans, and all the silverware.

She looks around the kitchen in surprise, as if she didn't realize how much progress we've both made. The dishes are dried and piled up neatly so they're ready to go in the morning, her knives are all sharpened, and the countertop and table are clean, save the whetstone that's sitting out on the windowsill to dry in the evening air.

I see the moment she realizes that we did it all… together. I don't think it's something she's used to—having someone at her side to make the hard stuff a little easier.

Not that dishes are hard. But they're a constant, a fact of daily life for Dani, and taking that off her to-do list for even one night seems like a big deal to her, even if it's something I would gladly do every day to make her smile.

"Kyle… thank you," she whispers, her voice husky.

"Anytime. I know you can handle it all yourself. Hell, you're walking around with the weight of the world on your shoulders like it's nothing. But I don't have to be the enemy. If you'll let me, I might even be… a friend?"

It's a weird word. Certainly an unusual description for what I want Dani to be, which is beneath me, in front of me, or riding me. I'm not picky. But as much as I want her and think she wants me, I think both of us need something else from each other more.

Friendship.

So I don't push. I don't ask if she's thought about my offer the way I have, imagining her coming over and over on my fingers, tongue, and dick. I don't ask if she's replayed that kiss in her mind to the point of insanity like I've been doing.