Chapter 28

CHAPTER 28

KYLE

T hat night when I send the guys home, I go to Dani's door, ready for a bitch session where we share our thoughts on how awful Kathy is and pretend-plot some awful ways to get back at her.

I'm leaning toward posting a fake estate sale at her house that starts at six a.m. with a note to please ring the bell repeatedly because the sale holder is hearing-impaired. I'm picturing a line full of the dedicated, hardcore buyers lined up on her precious front yard, ringing her bell over and over, and then yelling at her when she opens the door so that she can ‘hear' them. And then, they'll yell even more when they find out the sale is a fake.

Am I gonna do that? No. Not because it's wrong, but because it involves the shoppers and it's not their fault Kathy's a bitch.

Is it fun to imagine? Fuck, yeah.

But Dani's front door is closed. I knock, but instead of Dani answering the door, I hear the music turn up louder inside.

This is what we're doing?

I'm surprised at Dani. If she's mad, especially at me, I would fully expect her to come at me with both barrels firing. Conflict avoidance doesn't seem like her style. Conflict provocation is more how she rolls.

So I go around to the side door, the one that opens up to the patio in dispute. But it's closed too. And when I peer in the window, I can't see Dani.

I bang even harder there. But she doesn't come to the door.

I text her… Open the door, Daniela.

I get the notification that she's seen the message, but she leaves me on read. Three little dots don't appear like she's considering answering me, and the door doesn't so much as rattle.

My anger renewed now, and directed more at myself and Dani than Kathy for the moment, I stomp to my truck and climb inside. I slam my palm to the steering wheel, glance at her house one more time, and then drive away, going too fast but not giving a fuck.

"You sure about this?" Wayne asks me for the third time.

I sigh heavily, wishing there were some other way, but there's not and believe me, I spent all night thinking about it after roaring away from Dani's house yesterday. "Yeah, take it down. Let's get this over with."

Zeus and Frogger walk along the chain link with snips, cutting the wire connectors that hold the sections of fencing to the top rail. But they keep one eye on their work and one eye on Dani's back door.

We're all expecting her wrath.

And though she comes outside, her mere presence causing Zeus and Frogger to scurry over and hide behind me and Wayne, she doesn't say a single word to us. She just sends a narrow-eyed glare at each of us individually, though mine is a special delivery with a bonus snarl. I'm almost disappointed I don't get a fuck-you finger or two.

She goes back inside, and Frogger shivers like he's freezing cold, though we're working in the hot morning sun. "Fuck, that chick is scary as hell." He laughs as he says it, but I whirl, grabbing his shirt and clutching it in my fist as I hold him nose to nose with me.

"Do not ever speak about her like that again. She's not a chick," I grit out.

Frogger grins, his hands out placatingly. "Just teasing, man. Sorry ." I toss him away, and he wipes his hands over his shirt, smoothing it, and then shakes out his mullet like it might've gotten mussed too. I think he's done, but then he looks up at me through his lashes and whispers, "Fine, she's not a chick. But you didn't deny the scary part."

I make a lunging step toward him and he flinches. He thinks this is our usual shit-talking and teasing, the same as any other time we've given each other a hard time, but it's different this time. Because it's about Dani.

"Frogger, if you have a lick of self-preservation, shut the fuck up," Wayne advises, reading my mood better than anyone.

But Zeus is getting involved now, albeit more earnestly. "Did you tell her the fence thing isn't your fault?" he asks. "She has to understand that, right?" The full display of his youthful innocence would be cute any other time. Right now, it's one more reminder that when the shit hits the fan, Dani goes to war with the world alone. No matter whether she has people in her corner or not. She'll shut them out and handle things herself because she thinks she has to, or feels like she needs to, to prove herself.

"She wouldn't answer the door."

" Ooh ," they sing in unison, all cringing.

"That's bad, Bossman." Zeus's offered analysis is the same as my own, but I don't acknowledge that. "Too bad, she was just getting to be nice and fun." I give him a pointed look, and he corrects, "To us, I mean. Like she fed us the other day and let us sit beneath the tree. I'm sure she's been nice and fun to you for a while…" He trails off at the murderous look I'm giving him.

"And again—shut. The fuck. Up," Wayne says, telling Zeus this time.

"Fence has to be completed today, so get to work," I tell them both, and they rush to get back to the relative safety of the fence, moving on to undoing the bolts for the vertical post connections.

I walk over to the trailer that has the new metal posts and composite fence panels and start counting them, even though I know exactly how many are carefully stacked up because I inventoried the order when I picked it up this morning.

I want to be left alone, but Wayne never gives a shit what I want anyway so he follows me. "She mad at you for this whole deal?"

I don't look his way, keeping my gaze firmly locked on the top panel for no good reason other than not wanting to get into this with Wayne, or anyone else. Except Dani.

"Apparently," I huff. Wayne chuckles, and I cut my eyes over at him. "You're laughing about this?"

He shrugs, his face an expression of ‘fuck yes, I am.' "I don't know Dani, not like you do, but does she seem like the type that gets knocked down and gets all up in her feels about it? Do you think she was in there, crying her eyes out in her pillow and whining about why the world is always against her?"

I laugh at that. "No. Telling the world to fuck off is more like it."

"That's what I figured. How do you think a woman gets that way? A soft, easy life or a rough, hard one?"

We both know the answer.

"So you have to decide if you're gonna be the one all up in your feels" —he makes a crybaby face, frowning and rubbing his balled-up fists in front of his eyes— "or man the fuck up and help her." He slaps his chest, the sound a wake-up thud in my ears.

His piece said, he walks away, leaving me to my thoughts. And apparently, all up in my feels.

By the end of the day, we've got the old fence taken down, the new fence installed, and I've got a plan in action. Best of all, with all the dirty looks Dani has thrown at me all day, I don't think she's caught on to my scheming.

There's only one little-bitty hiccup.

"Are you seriously just leaving?" the hiccup, a.k.a. Dani, snaps as I open my truck door and climb into the cab. She's fired up—eyes flashing, hands on her hips, and lips pressed into a thin line.

One foot on the floorboard and one on the ground, I sigh. "I don't want to fight. I'm fucking exhausted from hauling those heavy-ass panels all day, and I know you're as mad at me as you are at Kathy, but I really don't want to fight, okay?"

"Do you understand what she's done?" Dani demands. "What you've done?"

"I didn't do a fucking thing except what I was hired to do. If it hadn't been me, it would've been someone else putting that fence in, and the end result would be the same. It was probably Kathy's plan all along."

I don't know that for a fact, but I wouldn't put it past the woman who dragged me around the whole yard, alternating between talking about flower beds and her pool at length and bitching about Dani. I'd finally had to tell her that I wasn't getting involved in neighbor disputes and demanded she stick to project questions, concerns, and plans only. Kathy had been pissed as a hornet at that, giving me a piece of her mind that included such hits as ‘if I'm paying you, you'll do whatever I want you to' and ‘well, I never', but eventually, she'd stomped off when I'd refused to engage in any anti-Dani discussion.

"It would've been better if it hadn't been you," she spits out.

She's right in a way, because if it wasn't me, we wouldn't be having this argument. But also, if it wasn't me, I would've never met Dani, and whatever fuck stick Kathy hired would've definitely made Dani's life harder because Kathy all but offered me a flat-out bribe to put the fence a few more inches over Zach's precise line. Anyone else might've taken it, but I have too much integrity to consider a bribe, period. Especially in a situation where Dani's involved.

"Well, it's too late for that," I declare. She sputters like she's not sure what to say to that. "Is there anything I can do to help you this weekend? Send a Costco order or anything?"

Dani sneers, "I don't need help. I'll figure it out on my own."

She spins on her toe, marching back to her house.

If things go my way, she won't have to figure anything out, but I keep that part on mute. For now.

"Thanks for coming, guys," I tell the gathered group.

"We ain't here for you. We're here for Dani," a young guy whose name I don't know scoffs.

I give him a hard-eyed glance, then spread the wealth to everyone, turning a glare on every man as I snap, "If you're here because you think doing this is gonna get you in Dani's pants, get the fuck out now. In case you hadn't noticed, I've been seeing her" —I stare back at Mr. Here-for-Dani specifically— "and fucking her, and none of you are gonna get that honor. Ever."

"So you're saying she's yours?" someone asks, but I don't catch who, even though I jerk my head toward the voice.

"I'm saying Dani's her own woman and doesn't belong to anyone. But I'm hers and I'll do anything for her, including fucking up your shit if need be." There's a murmur of disappointment in the group, but ultimately, they quiet down. "Good, now that that's out of the way, here's the deal…"

As I tell the men what's been going on with Kathy and her fence, their anger grows. They like Dani, and I think everyone here has had some sort of run-in with Kathy or someone like her, and a chance to stand up for what's right has us all ready to work. In Dani's honor.

"What's our timeline?" an older man with a toothpick in his mouth asks.

"She leaves around eleven to take food to her parents. As soon as she's out, we're in. We'll have three to four hours at most before she gets home to do her prep work for the week. Think it's doable?"

The guys look at each other, mumbling under their breath about how impossible this is and how crazy I am, so I remind them, "It's for Dani."

That gets them nodding their heads.

Right on time, too, because I get a text from Frogger… Demon has departed.

Any other time, calling Dani a demon would have me throwing hands. Right now, I'm focused and rally the team. "Let's go. Clock's ticking."

We swarm for our trucks, pulling out of the parking lot we pre-gamed at in one long, messy line, with the younger guys volleying for position like it's a race. And maybe it is… but if so, I'm gonna be the winner.

Or at least I hope I am.

I'm in Wayne's truck with him because we did the supply run this morning together, grabbing Zeus along the way. He leans forward from the backseat. "We've got the yard work handled. You can trust us on that. So you focus on the door," Zeus tells me, sounding like he's in charge of this operation.

I press my lips together, hiding my grin. "That's the plan," I agree.

Wayne lifts a brow, glancing at me out of the side of his eye as his attention stays on the truck in front of us. "We've got you, Kyle."

We swarm at Dani's house like a pack of busy bees. Trucks park all along the roadway, men climb out of cabs and beds, and we march to Dani's back yard with tools in hand, ready to work. We have a lot to accomplish and not a lot of time to do it. Fast and hard is the name of the game.

The guys need to scalp the lawn at the back of the house, right behind the kitchen, and then dig down several inches until they get to the packed, hard ground that can support a slab of concrete. They'll need to check that it's level, compact the dirt down even more with steel tampers, and then fill in the base layer to the proper grade. That's when Zeus will go for the heavy equipment, carrying oversized concrete pavers from the trailer out front. We had to do prefabricated ones because poured concrete would take too long to set and this has to be done today so that Dani's ready to work like usual tomorrow.

While that crew gets rolling with all that, I approach the door on the side of the house, the one that previously looked right into Kathy's yard and now looks out on a solid fence. A pretty, well-installed one, but a fence, nonetheless.

"You sure about this part?" Wayne questions.

This part is the only sketchy bit of my plan.

Because Dani's side door goes from her kitchen to her patio, she can work efficiently. By moving her patio and cook stations to the back to meet fire code, I'm adding about fifteen extra steps each way to her trips. She'd do it, but there's the whole ‘step outside and get reminded of Kathy's bullshit' angle that sucks too. So I came up with an idea—which is genius, if I say so myself—to move her outside door access. It'll be perfect in her kitchen, giving her more room for a work table with storage and still let her step from kitchen to patio directly.

The guy at my side—Marco, I think he said his name is—cocks his head. "You talk to her about this?"

I level him with a look. "Nope."

He chuckles. "She's gonna kill you."

I nod but shrug as if I'm unconcerned with that possibility. "Maybe, maybe not."

He frowns, staring at me as if he's seeing me for the first time. I think he's reassessing me, and maybe this whole scheme. He claps his hands. "Your funeral, man. You do the illegal breaking and entering part, and my guys will take care of the rest."

He stands back, giving his guys a signal to stand down, and I step up to the door. Dani thinks she has to do everything on her own, but I'm going to remind her that I'm here, right beside her, willing to do whatever she needs whether she wants me to or not. One steadying breath, and I shoulder my way through the door, coming to stand in Daniela Becerra's kitchen without her permission.

I smile, thinking I might be a dead man.