Chapter 9

A shelfful of joy

"Just look at how inviting everything looks when it isn't sitting on metal," Archer declared as he stepped back from the first row of products to admire them.

Maddox just shot him a look and went right back to unpacking boxes. "You've made your point, now drop it before you start pissing me off. It's one thing to accept a gracious pat on the back for good ideas and accomplishments, it's another to keep crowing about it until someone slingshots a bolder at your ass."

"Man, you're grumpy today," Archer complained. "I'd have thought you'd be happy that we were a whole day ahead of schedule."

"I will be happy at the ribbon cutting and grand opening," Maddox admitted. "Right now, I'm just relieved that the last permit came through this morning, leaving scheduling the inspection as the only thing left to do besides get this place stocked."

Archer's heavy sign was filled with attitude and impatience, neither of which Maddox was in the mood to deal with right now. Not when he'd been informed by his insurance company bright and early this morning that there was no way to prove his claim about the damage to his bike unless a witness came forward with a firsthand account of what had taken place. And of course, there were no cameras on the street where he'd parked, there were no cameras on any of the streets in Foggy Basin. The only camera anywhere near the incident was the one in the bank and it was focused on what was taking place inside the building, not out on the street.

Fortunately, Archer got wise and fell silent, though every now and again he'd glare over at the smart speaker Maddox had refused to allow him to turn on and once he'd grumbled beneath his breath about wishing he'd brought his headphones, but that was too damned bad. Leaving Archer in charge of the playlist was like letting a kindergarten class loose in a candy store. The genres ping-ponged all over the place and all of it was loud and screeching.

Yes, he was aware that the very thought was likely the same one his old man had about heavy metal music when he'd been growing up, but he was not in the mood to acknowledge that bit of hypocrisy or give Archer permission to break up the monotony of the day with songs.

Now over at the shop, the only thing Haven played was a beautiful array of hard rock, heavy metal and classic alternative. No more perfect blend existed, at least not to Maddox's way of thinking. He'd die on that hill before he spent another afternoon listening to something that sounded like it had been recorded by the Teletubbies.

"Umm, we've got a problem."

"I reject that outright," Maddox declared.

"Okay, but what do you want me to do with this?" Archer asked as he turned the box towards him to show that just damn near every bar of the CBD and lavender infused goatmilk soap was in pieces.

"Fuck!" Maddox snarled, tilting the box further his way.

Despite the padding designed to keep the bars from shifting around and banging into one another, the contents were a complete and absolute mess. For the life of him, he couldn't understand what had happened, but they were unusable. Thinking back, he tried to recall if he'd done anything different when making that last batch, but it was all a blur. Between scrambling to get new inventory packed up and a constant production process that often had him up well into the night, he'd been in constant motion. By the time he'd arrived at the bank to set up the accounts, he'd been in desperate need of wind therapy, his mind on the rolling hills just outside of town and seeing how his baby handled them.

How long would it be before he had that?

Growling, the levels of frustration ratcheted up from ten to seventeen the moment Archer presented him with another box of crumbled soap bits. The chamomile and CBD this time, fuck. He hadn't had batches this bad since he'd first been working out the ratios and that's when it hit him.

He'd been in the middle of both batches when a blast from his past had sauntered in and leaned a cocky hip against the worktable where Maddox's materials had been laid out. The flirty little brat had done everything but drop to his knees to get Maddox to take him back, and he'd probably have resorted to that had someone not buzzed Maddox to the front to deal with an issue regarding a delivery.

Shit.

No wonder the soap was fucked up.

He'd probably forgotten to check off a step and doubled up on something, resulting in the hard, crumbly mess.

"Pitch-um," Maddox said as he nudged the box back towards him. "Guess I'll be setting up the kitchens sooner rather than later."

"I'll stay and help." Archer offered.

Now that prompted a raised eyebrow. "Really? I'd have thought you'd be in a hurry to tear ass out of here to get back to whoever has been leaving scratches and hickeys all over you."

"She's got something to do tonight," Archer explained. "As for who she is, Mindy was my girl before I left. We ran into each other at The Blue Star Diner when I was grabbing steaks and mashed potatoes, and sort of picked up where we left off."

"Wasn't that the day we got here?"

Archer blushed and squirmed a little when Maddox narrowed his eyes at him, an action that was so reminiscent of his brother, Haven, that Maddox was left to wonder if Archer was the one he'd picked it up from.

"Yeah," Archer finally responded. "But we're both in way better places than we were the last time we were hooking up."

"I should hope so, though I'm not sure how you'd know that when it looks like the only conversations going on are the ones that involve bodily fluids."

The stubborn, bullish look that crossed Archer's face was reminiscent of the muleheaded young man he'd been when Maddox had first been trying to teach him the ins and outs of the business.

"We talk," Archer muttered.

"Uh-huh," Maddox chuckled, leaving it at that.

While Archer had matured in the business realm over the past five years, his relationships tended to take off with all the electricity of a lightning storm only to fizzle out a short time later, leaving him moping around playing every emo song in existence. Not that Maddox had room to judge. He tended to gravitate towards the eager fuckboys who purred when he broke into Daddy Dom mode and preened whenever he paid the slightest bit of attention to them. Easy boys always up for a good time but interested in little else.

It wasn't what his soul longed for, but it was what he knew, and he was damned good at it. The problem was that his attitude and intensity tended to scare off the kind of boy he truly longed for. The ones who wanted to sit in his lap and just cuddle or have him read them a story while he stroked their hair. The kind of boy he could dress in cute onesies and spoil with ice cream sundaes and cartoons. He could picture it in his head, but when it came to practical execution…

Those weren't the kinds of boys he ever wanted to fail and for that reason alone he'd never pursued things when one scurried away from him. Especially not when he'd been precariously balanced on the razers edge between his old life and the new one he'd been trying to make for himself. Falling back into the trap of survival by any means necessary would have been an easy thing in the early days of establishing his business. A few times he had crossed back over the line just to keep the lights on. Once things had taken off, it had been easy to finish severing ties with that lifestyle, but here he had the chance for something different.

Something new.

But for fuck's sake he really needed to figure out what had sparked such an instant attraction to Archer's brother before it caused problems between them. Haven wasn't a topic of conversation that came up often, nor had Archer ever mentioned what he'd gone away for. There was a story there, Maddox knew there was, and he knew he'd have to take care not to trample on whatever his mentee was feeling about the situation.

How badly had Haven hurt his brother? Had it been what had led to Archer leaving home and taking so long to reconnect with his siblings? Accident or intentional? Had it been an act of teenage rebellion that had spiraled out of control into something more, or did the man he'd witnessed carefully going over the wires on his Harley harbor a dark side to rivel Maddox's own?

"I need you to be straight up with me," Maddox said wanting to get this shit out in the open, so he'd quit dwelling on it. "What did your brother get locked up for?"

At first, Archer said nothing. Then he blew out a long breath and started dusting a shelf that didn't goddamned need dusting. When he still said nothing, Maddox reached over and plucked the yellow duster from his hand, then stood staring at him until Archer finally answered the question.

"Aggravated assault resulting in permanent injury," Archer finally muttered.

Maddox let out a long whistle after hearing that. "So, he has a temper?"

"Rarely," Archer huffed.

"Did he hurt you too, during one of those rare displays of temper?" Maddox pointblank came out and asked.

The way Archer's eyes widened, and he vehemently shook his head, made it easy to believe him. "Haven would never."

"And yet he did , to someone," Maddox pointed out, stunned when Archer's only response was to mutter yeah, duck his head, and go back to rearranging the shelf he'd been working on.

Maddox considered himself to be an astute man and he'd seen his fair share of shit. Something about that reaction bugged him, though he couldn't put his finger on what it was. It sure seemed like all the truth hadn't come to light yet.

"Did his bullshit have anything to do with why you left here?" Maddox asked.

"I had shit of my own to work out, so it seemed like a good time to get out of dodge before I wound up in the cell beside him."

Okay, now that was new. Maddox was left to hope that being back here wouldn't trigger Archer to backslide into something that would undo all the effort he'd made to make a legitimate businessman out of himself. Again, he found himself wondering if he'd jumped too fast at the opportunity to move to Foggy Basin and left some key things unexplored before making that decision. Looking at the man across from him, he reminded himself that Archer had never once done anything to shake Maddox's faith in him. Whatever these issues were, he doubted they could be worse than the skeletons Maddox had in his own closet. The one difference was that Maddox wasn't about to voluntarily return to the site of his darkest days and put himself in a position to fall into old traps all over again. This Mindy and whatever it was that could have gotten Archer arrested was to be watched closely until Maddox was certain neither would come back to bite them in the ass.

"What made you ask about Haven?" Archer suddenly asked once half the shelf was set up to his liking.

"Wanted to make sure there wasn't going to be a threat to my investment in having my name assassinated with his," Maddox admitted, though that certainly wasn't the only reason.

He wasn't about tell Archer that he'd developed a bit of an unhealthy curiosity about the man after spending the last four nights having dinner with him before they worked on his bike.

"I wouldn't have suggested a partnership with the dispensary if it was going to be an issue," Archer insisted.

"And what I'm confused about is how you knew it wouldn't be an issue if you two hadn't seen each other since you left home," Maddox pointed out. "How can you be so certain your brother has changed his ways? The way your siblings keep people from going back into the shop might lead someone to think there's some back-alley bullshit going on that they're trying to keep people from finding out about."

"The only thing going on at the shop is Haven fixing the broken vehicles people bring to him."

"And you can say that with one hundred percent certainty?"

"I can say it with a thousand percent certainty," Archer replied, meeting his gaze and holding steady eye contact until Maddox gave a slow nod.

"I'm going to hold you to that."

"You always do. That's how I learned how to be a better man than the one I was on the path to becoming."

"I can appreciate that," Maddox said, feeling a measure of pride when he thought back on all the ways Archer had matured since coming to work for him.

Back then, every correction Maddox had attempted to make had been met with opposition and argument as Archer had insisted that he hadn't been fucking up. It had taken time, and a level of patience Maddox hadn't thought himself capable of, to make him see that Maddox's displeasure wasn't about Archer as a person, but the quality of Archer's work. Once he'd learned to temper those corrections with praise for the things the young man had caught on to quickly and was doing right, he'd really seen Archer start to thrive. From there he'd come to see that encouragement went a long way when it came to getting the best work out of Archer. When they'd evolved from employee/employer to business partners, it had been a proud day for him to accept the bank check Archer had handed over as his official buy-in.

Maybe it was time to dial back his nightly visits to the shop and settle for telephone updates on the progress of his bike. That way he could put his focus where it needed to be, on getting this shop up and running in time to capitalize on all the holiday shopping that would kick off in a couple of weeks.

Only the voice in the back of his head didn't like that idea any more than it did the current lack of wind therapy. There was something about Haven, his shy looks and the way he'd responded when Maddox had an arm around him, that left him longing to do it again. Until he could decide if that was a good thing, he needed to back off a little and think about where he wanted things to go between them and what he was willing to sacrifice to get to that place.