3. Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Mosby Leslie

" Fuck! " I stared at my phone as though the text message would change, though I knew it wouldn't.

We are unable to deliver to your current location. Your order may be picked up at our local locker at 333 Main Street, Foggy Basin, California. The locker number is twenty-three, and the combination is 014223. Thank you for your business .

I wanted to slam my phone against the exposed log wall at the far end of the kitchen, but a broken phone wasn't what I needed. I needed acrylic paints, brushes, cotton canvas, and plastic palettes since I was using acrylics instead of oil paints.

The list was long and tedious, and there were no art supply stores in town. I'd found what I needed without leaving the cabin, but now they couldn't—or wouldn't—come up the small mountain or tall hill to deliver the shit. Just fucking great.

Since I now had to go to town, I decided to inventory what I had on hand and make one big run. Grabbing a pad, I walked out to the barn where I had an extra freezer and storage shelves and started making a list of everything I needed—which was more than I'd anticipated.

I'd been holed up in the cabin my grandfather had given me after my parents died. Granddad had become my rock when my mom and dad died in a car accident. We got along very well until he passed away about three years ago. When he died, I was lost, once again. The cabin had become my safe haven after all the heartache I'd experienced, and I hated leaving it.

After Alistaire's death, I'd wanted to end my life. I'd been more broken than I believed possible, but being at the cabin surrounded by Granddad's things kept me from doing something I couldn't undo.

After arranging for Alistaire's body to be shipped from Chicago to a funeral home near his parents' home in Bel Air, I went to my studio with a bottle of vodka and drank. When that one was empty, I ordered a case. Then another, and then another.

Two weeks later, Alistaire's parents buried the man I'd been with for ten years. I didn't attend the family-only service, but I went to the cemetery and watched from afar, flask in hand.

I'd been attracted to Alistaire's unconventional spirit. He'd told me he didn't believe in marriage, and to a twenty-four-year-old kid, it wasn't a big deal. We'd bought a bungalow in WeHo and turned a back porch into a studio where we could work together.

Alistaire had been a writer. He'd been writing the next great American tome, and I was a painter working with oils. My art went relatively unnoticed—and unpurchased—so I gave drawing and painting classes at the West Hollywood Arts Center.

I was approached by the center director to rally some kids who attended the after-school program to create a kid-friendly mural to cover the graffiti on the back of the center. Natalie Wu, who later became my agent, saw the mural as we were painting it and stopped at the center to ask about the artist.

A month later, I had an agent, an advance to paint the mayor of West Hollywood's official portrait, and my career was on an upward trajectory. Alistaire's first novel was picked up by a publishing house in San Francisco around the same time, and he spent much of his time traveling between our little cottage in WeHo and the Bay area to work with his editor on changes to the manuscript to make a stand-alone novel into a three-book series that became a smashing success.

Funny story—once I'd moved to Foggy Basin, I stumbled into Books, Beans, and Buns for a coffee and decided to peruse the shelves. There, in the mystery section, were Alistaire's books, sending me into a spiral for a week.

Anyway, shortly after we were discovered, we moved into a larger house in Montecito where we had private studios and more rooms than we'd ever need. For the next several years, we were both insanely busy, traveling around the world for inspiration, often together but sometimes not. From the outside, it appeared as though we had the world by the ass, but the opposite was true.

Strange phone calls and text messages to Alistaire in the middle of the night should have been my first clue that all wasn't kosher between us, but I guess when one lodges their head so far up their own ass because they believe the sycophants around them, they deserve the shock of their lives to bring them back to reality. That was the way it happened to me, anyway.

Once I had my supply list together, I went out to Granddad's old Ford Bronco and put cloth grocery bags in the back seat. I wasn't a tree hugger—I just hated the plastic bags.

My pet squirrel, Barbara Bushy, sat on the rail of the back deck staring at me. I'd found her down by the gate that led to my driveway. She'd been injured, so I wrapped her in a towel and took her to Claws, Paws, and More, where the vet, Alex, checked the animal out and told me she was just stunned. She was a tough gal, just like the former first lady, thus the name, Barbara Bushy.

"I put your food out. I'll be back." I truly wondered if I was losing my mind. Talking to a squirrel that kept coming around because I'd taken it to a doctor and continued to put out food for wouldn't go over well in any mental health assessments.

I hopped into the Bronco and grinned when it started on the first try. I'd had a local mechanic install a new engine a month earlier because I didn't want to let it go. It was the most dependable thing in my life right now, and I couldn't let her die .

I made the thirty-minute drive down the mountain with the window down so the nice early spring breeze could cool the Bronco. The A/C had died a long time ago. It was a beautiful part of the country, and if I had to live like a hermit somewhere, Foggy Basin wasn't a bad spot.

My hair was out of control because I hadn't cut it or the beard in a year. The beard hid my face, which was exactly what I wanted. There had been a recent article in an online gossip rag about my disappearance from the LA art scene since the death of my long-term partner. The speculation was that I'd moved to Europe to escape the memories. My preference was let it stay that way.

I passed Lover's Butte, not surprised to see several cars parked there in the daylight. It was a great place to leave a vehicle while hiking in the area, and at night, it filled up with cars full of couples wanting to watch the sunset and get a little frisky if the mood struck. I was jealous of all of them.

When I braked at the stop sign leading to the small town, I grabbed a rubber band from the ashtray and secured the top of my hair to keep it out of my face before parking in the public lot across from the stores on Main Street.

I crossed the street and headed toward the post office where the package lockers were located. The nosy mailman was making his way down the street, so I wanted to hurry. He asked far too many questions for my liking.

I found locker twenty-three and punched in the code, hearing the tumblers turn before the door opened. Inside were two large boxes, so I pulled them out and carried them across the street to the Bronco. Once I had them in the back, I grabbed the grocery sacks and crossed the street again to go to the small grocery store across the alley from the hair salon on the corner.

For a split second I considered going in to get a haircut but abandoned that idea just as quickly. When I walked by the window with the fancy Shear Bliss sign painted in eggplant and silver, I saw just how damn scary I looked in my paint-splattered pants and hole-riddled T-shirt, and I laughed.

All my Armani suits and Gucci shoes were back in Montecito in the closet I'd once shared with Alistaire. His things had been sent to his family after I'd sobered up following news of his death. I bought out his half of the house and had his box-filled Ferrari Purosangue picked up and towed to his parents' estate in Bel Air.

Not dealing with the Scotts after Alistaire's death had been my goal. They blamed me for Alistaire not continuing his PhD. in literature and pursuing a profession more noble than fiction writing. However, I wouldn't have been able to live with myself if I hadn't told them their son had died. Even I wasn't that cold-hearted.

After I broke the news to them, they accused me of being responsible for Alistaire's suicide, though the authorities had changed the cause of death to an accident. I only discovered the change when I received updated copies of the death certificate to close out our joint accounts per the domestic partnership agreement we'd put in place when we bought the Montecito house.

Of course, the authorities were aware it wasn't an accident—they'd found the note in his pocket that said he was sorry, but he couldn't go on without the love of his life. He'd listed my name and number in the note as a contact, and they'd jumped to the conclusion it was me and we'd broken up, which was why I'd gotten the call. I had a feeling his parents pulled some strings to have the death certificate revised to keep their son's demise from becoming a scandal.

I only met the Scott's face-to-face once, and they hated me immediately. Because of that horrific birthday dinner gone wrong, Alistaire hadn't spoken to them for the rest of our time together before his death. If believing it was my fault Alistaire killed himself helped them find closure, so be it. Tariq Jackson would forever remain blameless .

"Excuse me." I turned to see a woman behind me, pointing to the row of shopping carts I was blocking. I recognized her as the woman who owned the salon. She had kind eyes.

I stepped aside and allowed her to take a cart. I'd once again been lost in my thoughts and had inconvenienced someone else.

"I'm sorry."

"No worries." She gave a friendly smile and went into the store. I grabbed a cart and followed behind.

My mind wandered back to my life before Foggy Basin. Every time I caught Alistaire cheating, he'd said I was an inconvenience because I believed in monogamy. When he met Tariq, and I learned about it after Alistaire's death, I wondered if he'd had a point.

I snapped out of it and went on with my shopping. I'd been missing fresh produce. I'd tried to plant a little garden patch the previous spring when I first arrived at the cabin, but the yard was too shady for it to take off. I couldn't justify cutting down a huge Arroyo Willow so I could plant a patch of vegetables. It seemed selfish.

I loaded the cart with tomatoes, carrots, corn on the cob, and other seasonal favorites. I'd taken an online canning course when I'd planted the garden last year, optimistically believing I'd be awash in fresh vegetables by the fall. That didn't happen, but if I could secure some canning jars and lids, I could can some of the fresh produce I was stacking in my cart and put the jars in the root cellar to have over the winter. It was more homestead-ish than I wanted to be, but if I wanted veggies later in the fall, it was an option.

I gathered all the supplies I needed for a couple of months and went to the checkout. The place was relatively deserted, which suited me just fine.

The clerk, a tall, older man with a pinched face and a pointy nose glared at me. "You got money to pay for this before I start ringing it?"

Yes, it was a large order, but fuck him. I reached into my pocket to get my wallet and found it missing.

"Crap. I'll be right back. I forgot my wallet in the truck."

I hurried out of the store and across the alley, winding up in front of the salon. I glanced through the picture window and came to a screeching halt. Inside, standing at the register and talking to a woman with long hair was a gorgeous young man.

I stared at him for a moment. When he glanced up, he smiled, which made my heart pound. He was more beautiful than I'd first thought, and his smile…? Magnificent.

My face flushed at being caught gawking, but hell, I'd never seen such a striking creature. I turned to hurry away before he came after me with a broom, and I caught the toe of my sneaker on something, taking me down to the sidewalk with a—