Chapter Four

"Damn it." Dev shut off the welding torch and ripped off his helmet, taking some of his hair along with it. Fuck. On top of everything else, I need a haircut. He shucked off his gloves and tossed them aside, along with his apron, and strode for the stairs.

How had he forgotten that Sylvia's student was arriving and that Dev was supposed to greet him like a civilized person? He'd only gotten a glimpse before the man had run. From what he could tell, given the dim and distorted view through the welding helmet, the guy was probably about Kenny's size—five-ten or so and slender, with a mop of wavy hair.

Dev had caught the wide-eyed shock, though. He needed to catch up with the guy before he ran all the way back to wherever he'd come from. Sylvia needed the income, and frankly, so did Dev.

When he reached the stairs, his boot heel slid on something. Was that… Yes, it was. He picked up the crushed lilac spray, his heart constricting. The guy had obviously been having a moment, enjoying the house, enjoying the town, enjoying Dev's home, and Dev had spoiled it, just like he'd spoiled these flowers.

And since he'd spoiled it, he needed to fix it. Pronto.

He set the broken blooms aside gently, took the bulkhead stairs two at a time, and burst into the sunlight. He glanced sharply right and left, shielding his eyes with one hand. The summer kitchen door was closed. Had the student taken refuge there? Dev hesitated, but pivoted and took off in the other direction. If the guy was hiding out in the kitchen, he'd still be there after Dev circled the house. But if he was already in his car and burning rubber on his way out of town, Dev needed to head him off at the pass.

Fuck. He was hot and sweaty and covered with metal shavings. He knew from experience that when a guy his size barreled toward someone, people tended to jump to the wrong conclusions. So he slowed down and stopped, shielded from view by the white lilac bush.

He listened carefully—he didn't hear a car engine, although the sound of Pete's mower drifted from further down the street. He waved a bee away, but then scratched his head, staring at the flowers. Lilacs. Dev had scared the poor dude into dropping the ones he'd picked, so maybe offering up a bouquet would be a way to defuse the situation. Besides, who tried to stage an assault when they were carrying an armful of lilacs?

He pulled out his pocketknife and cut several sprays, then tucked the knife away, plastered a smile on his face, and rounded the corner to face…

…Absolutely nobody.

The lawn was empty and no car stood in the drive. He was too late, after all. "Shit." Sylvia would be devastated.

He let the hand clutching the flowers drop to his side, thumping them on his thigh for good measure and sending a cascade of white petals onto his work boots. Head down, he trudged toward the porch steps, and then froze when he caught something out of the corner of his eye.

Suitcases.

He hurried forward. Two suitcases and a messenger bag, with a faded red hoodie draped over the largest one. The knot in Dev's belly unraveled. Maybe it wasn't too late after all.

Although… Where was the guy's car? No flatlander Dev had ever met wanted to be stuck in Home with no means of escaping to marginally more cosmopolitan Merrilton. All of Sylvia's previous students had arrived in laden vehicles, from vintage MGs to minivans. True, Pete's Uber-slash-Lyft business made people a little more mobile, but fuck. If it meant holding on to the sole student, Dev would drive the guy around himself.

"It'd be a break from staring at the damn budget all day," he muttered.

Voices drifted through Harrison House's screen door, followed by a burst of recognizable laughter.

Kenny. Dev heaved a relieved breath. If anyone could talk somebody off the ledge—any ledge—it was Kenny Li. He'd been doing it from the time they were kids, his sunny nature and nonjudgmental inclusion de-escalating more playground squabbles than all the school guidance counselors put together.

Dev suspected Kenny had helped his best friend, Mitch, figure out his sexuality when they were in high school. Neither one of them had ever said anything about it, but right after graduation, Mitch had taken off for college and his career as an openly gay geotechnical engineer who specialized in working in developing countries. Kenny had stayed in Home, taking over his family's fix-it shop, Make It Do, when his parents had retired to Arizona.

Since Dev didn't want to undo Kenny's work and scare the student—the only student—again, he eased up the steps as quietly as his size fourteen boots allowed, wincing at the creak he hadn't managed to fix in the top step.

When the voices inside didn't stop suddenly, he crept across the porch, straining his ears to hear the conversation. Yeah, maybe eavesdroppers rarely heard anything good about themselves, but he needed more ammunition if he expected to encourage the guy to stay for the entire Summer Kitchen session.

Students had bailed before, either because they found the curriculum too grueling—Summer Kitchen was a serious training school, not a carefree way to pass the time, drinking mimosas with friends while you gossiped over the pastry. Sometimes, Sylvia had expelled them, although that had happened more often in the early days when students were still vying for one of the limited spots.

Dev angled himself so he could peer through the screen door without being too visible from inside. He couldn't see the student from this angle, only Kenny, standing next to an angular knee-high object that must be the new nightstand.

"Really?" Kenny asked between his signature chuckles.

"I'm sorry to say that it's true." The other man's voice was light and pleasant—a tenor—and held an undercurrent of amusement. "I mean, I'm not totally divorced from reality. I knew it couldn't really be the Iron Giant."

"I expect it was Dev in his welding gear."

"Dev?"

"Devondre Harrison. He's—" Kenny caught sight of Dev lurking outside the screen, his eyes widening comically behind his tortoiseshell glasses. "How about that? Here he is now."

After that intro, Dev could scarcely refuse to come inside. He opened the screen and stepped onto the entry's weathered oak floorboards, somehow recovering the smile he'd lost when he thought he'd scared the guy away.

"Dev, this is Casey Friel," Kenny said. "I was just telling him that you don't commonly keep robots or monsters in the basement to scare away the flatlanders, but I'm not sure he believed me."

Dev tried to make a comeback to Kenny's snark—he'd had plenty of practice over the years—but somehow he couldn't make words. Because Casey Friel had to be the absolute embodiment of Dev's perfect man.

His impression of somebody Kenny's size was correct. Casey was the same height, and like Kenny, his body was wiry rather than muscled. While Casey had soft brown curls to Kenny's shiny, board-straight black hair, they both wore it a little overlong and shaggy rather than close-cropped like Dev's usual style.

But Dev had never felt the least stirring of lust for Kenny, maybe because they were practically brothers, growing up together as they had. Casey, though…

Dev belatedly shifted the lilacs to in front of his waist like a fucking bridal bouquet, because something about Casey's wide, guileless hazel eyes, the spray of freckles across his nose, the quirk of his mouth that made one side of his lips tilt up higher than the other… Well, Dev definitely needed the groin camouflage.

Casey's crooked smile faded—no!—and Dev realized he'd been holding out his hand for Dev to shake while Dev had been juggling lilacs and indulging in insta-fantasies. Casey started to drop his hand, but Dev lunged forward to catch it in his own.

"Hey. Hi. Welcome home." Dev grimaced. "I mean to Home. Welcome to Home."

Casey's smile returned, although it was a little shaky. "Thank you." He cut a sidelong glance at Kenny.

Shit. Was I too weird? I was too weird.Dev thrust out the lilacs. "I cut some flowers. For you." As Casey gazed at the lilacs, and Kenny gave Dev a what is wrong with you? stare, one of the clusters fell off its stem and dropped onto the floor at Casey's feet. "They, um, looked better a couple of minutes ago. They had an unfortunate encounter with my leg."

"Yes," Kenny drawled, amusement dancing in his dark eyes. "I always pick flowers with my feet too."

Dev glared at Kenny. "My leg. Not my feet."

"Contrary to what you might think, Dev, that doesn't sound any less ridiculous." He turned to Casey. "I promise that Dev is ordinarily much more lucid." He grinned at Dev. "Welding mask too tight, Dev? Bring it down to Make It Do and I'll adjust it so it's not squeezing your brain."

Dev did not glare at Kenny, although he sent him a mental shut the fuck up. "Sorry. Got a lot on my mind at the moment." Like what Casey's ass might look like when he turned around.

"No worries. It was really nice of you to pick these for me, considering I did kinda barge in on you. I'm sorry about that, by the way. But what can I say?" He spread his hands, palms up. "I'm nosy, and since nobody was here to tell me I couldn't, I decided to explore."

"No, I'm sorry about that. Sylvia asked me to look out for you, but she also needed a shelf repaired in the summer kitchen—"

"A repair?" Kenny frowned. "Why didn't she ask me to do it?"

"Maybe because it's in my house?" Dev said dryly, "and I'm not totally incompetent? Besides, you fix movable things. Not buildings."

Kenny wrinkled his nose, causing his glasses to rise toward his eyebrows. "Technically, a shelf is a thing, even if it's attached to the wall, but I'll concede that you know your way around a hammer."

"I decided to fabricate a metal unit, anyway." He glanced at Casey. "That's why I was in my welding gear. I'm sorry I frightened you."

Casey chuckled, a warm, infectious sound that made Dev want to join in. "If I hadn't already been feeling guilty about snooping, I doubt I'd have fled the way I did." He reached out and took the flowers. "Thanks for these. I confess I picked one of the magenta ones, but I dropped it." He lowered his face to the blooms and inhaled, his eyes fluttering closed. And really, was it legal to have eyelashes that long? "They smell heavenly." He looked up, grinning. "Way better than the average Manhattan stairwell."

Dev returned the grin. "Anything would be better than that. Although I understand some city folk actually prefer it."

"Don't say anything," Kenny said with a shudder. "Remember when the wind shifted right after that faux-organic farm over the border in Massachusetts spread a load of fresh manure on their forty-acre field?"

Casey's eyes widened. "Is that, er, something that happens often?"

Kenny shook his head, his smile sly. "No. Our town manager"—he made a gesture to Dev worthy of a game show host—"had a little chat with them about alternative fertilizers and we haven't had a recurrence."

Casey's smile dawned again. "You're the town manager? Wait… Dev Harrison. As in Harrison House?"

"Guilty," Dev said. "And for the rest of the summer, mi casa es su casa."

Casey's sigh could only be described as delighted. "I love this house." His smile faded and his eyebrows pinched together. "I should ask, though. Are there places that are off-limits? I warned you I was nosy, but I'm capable of respecting boundaries, too."

"Everything in Harrison House is fair game to anyone residing here."

"But what about your room? Shouldn't that be private?"

Dev shook his head. "I don't live in the house. I live in a cottage on the other side of the back meadow, behind that stand of birch and maple. I've got an office here in the house, but unless you're fascinated by very depressing spreadsheets, you won't find anything interesting there."

The smile that lit Casey's face was kid-at-Christmas worthy. "This whole house to myself for three whole months? Outstanding!"

"I should warn you that the place has been mostly shut up for a while. My brother had plans for some major renovations, so the third floor is basically gutted, and unless you're a fan of spiders, you probably should steer clear. But the common areas on the first floor are habitable, as are the second floor bedrooms for the most part. Laundry facilities in the basement"—Dev grinned—"accessed from the kitchen stairs, not the bulkhead. The bedroom you'll be staying in is in pretty good shape, except it needed a new nightstand."

"Which I have right here." Kenny patted the satiny top of the two-drawer Shaker-style unit next to him.

Dev studied it, eyes narrowing. "Kenny," he growled.

"What?" Kenny's innocent tone wouldn't fool anybody. The flush along his cheekbones was a giveaway, too.

"That is not the nightstand we agreed on."

"We never agreed on anything, Dev. Agreeing presupposes a conversation and a mutually accepted conclusion. You just pointed me to a website and said, ‘This one.'"

"Which this definitely is not."

"No, it isn't. Seriously, Dev. IKEA? I have standards, you know."

Dev ran a hand through his hair. No way could he afford this, not with the specter of Port-a-Potties looming over his head. "Kenny."

Kenny ignored Dev and turned to smile at Casey. "I spotted it at an estate sale and knew it would be a great fit for Harrison House."

"An estate sale? Really?" Casey traced a swirl in the wood grain on the nightstand's top. "It's so perfect that it looks brand new."

Kenny cleared his throat. "Well, that's kind of my business. My grandparents named the shop Make It Do because of that old New Englander motto: Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without."

"This isn't just making something do," Dev said, pointing at the little chest of drawers. "It's beautiful. Way too good for Harrison House."

Kenny rallied, propping his hands on his hips. "Are you saying it's too good for Casey's bedroom?"

Dev retreated a step. "N-n-no. Of course not. Nothing's too good for Casey's bedroom. I mean, for our guests."

Casey shook his head, chuckling again, and Dev was reminded of water running over the stones in the creek behind his cottage. "You don't have to make much effort for me. I'm not that hard to please. Although I think you're wrong about it being too good for Harrison House." His eyes widened and he flailed, scattering lilac florets on the floor. "I'm not saying that the nightstand isn't gorgeous, because it is. I'm just saying that this house deserves all the love anyone can throw at it."

Kenny held out both hands in a see there? gesture. "What have I told you? You see Harrison House through the eyes of familiarity, Dev. But other people see it as the remarkable thing it is." Kenny stuck his nose in the air. "So suck it up. You're getting a nightstand upgrade."

Dev grimaced. "There's a reason I asked for that specific unit, Kenny. There's no way my budget can stretch to anything this nice."

Kenny waved Dev's protest away. "Same price as the soulless IKEA kit."

Dev shared a conspiratorial glance with Casey. "He never charges people enough."

Kenny glared at him. "My rates are perfectly fine."

"They were fine for your grandparents. Your parents should have raised them years ago."

"Let's not talk about that. Make yourself useful, Iron Giant—"

"Oh, don't," Casey cried.

"—and carry the nightstand up to Casey's room."

"I can do that." Dev glanced through the screen door at the luggage still sitting at the foot of the porch stairs. "I'll haul your bags up too."

"You don't have to do that. I mean, I can't ask the town manager to carry my beater suitcases."

"I don't mind."

And I need to get my head on straight. Because as attractive as Dev found Casey, he had enough on his plate without adding a time-boxed relationship to the mix. In fact, the more distance he kept between them, the better. As of tomorrow, Casey would be Sylvia's responsibility. Best begin as he meant to go on.

"Kenny, why don't you take Casey with you and show him the sights of Home?"

"All two of them, you mean?"

"I mean, give him the nickel tour. Show him the Market. Your place. Ty's clinic."

"The shuttered Inn?"

Dev lowered his chin and glared at Kenny from under his lowered brows. "Kenny. Behave."

"Right, right." He gestured to Casey. "Step right up for the official Home tour. Don't worry. You'll be back in ten minutes."

Casey glanced from Dev to Kenny. "Are you sure?"

Dev smiled at him as he hefted the nightstand, which was—oof—heavier than it looked. The damn thing must be solid oak. "I'm sure. I probably won't be around when you get back, but make yourself at home." He nodded at the stairwell. "Your room is the first on the left at the top of the first flight."

"Okay," Casey said, sounding doubtful. "Thank you very much."

"No problem. And Kenny? If you see Randolph Scott around, Ty's looking for him."

Kenny scrunched up his face. "Let me guess. Vaccinations?"

Dev nodded. "Rabies."

"Well, with all the rodents Randolph Scott massacres, we can't skip that, now, can we? I'll keep my eyes open for him."

"Thanks, man." Dev nodded at Casey. "See you around."

Despite his arms shaking with the weight of the nightstand, Dev waited at the foot of the stairs until Kenny and Casey walked out the door, and as a result, had a perfect view of Casey's backside.

His ass was just as perfect as Dev had imagined.

I am in deep shit.