Once We Met Page 8

  A cool sense of relief spread through Avery’s lungs, and she smiled. She glanced out the window, spotting Dan waiting just beyond the doorway with the bags. “I don’t know. Something about it just feels like home.”

  Jen scanned her gaze for a flash, then grinned. “That’s a good reason.”

  Avery rejoined Dan outside, feeling as though she’d passed some sort of test. Or maybe she was making it all up.

  Avery fell in step with Dan, which was hard to do with his stride being so much longer than hers. Every person who Dan passed greeted him by name. By the time they reached the bikes, Avery studied him with curiosity. “Do you know everyone in this town?”

  He shrugged. “I know a fair amount of people. Kind of the nature of being a cop for a while.” Dan set the bags into the basket. “Plus, Brandywood isn’t that big.” Rather than climb on his bike, Dan pulled it out of the bike rack and started walking through the parking lot with it. Avery followed suit, walking beside him.

  “That’s one thing I’ve always loved about this place. How homey it feels. Every town I’ve ever lived in has been so metropolitan, and I’ve moved so many times by now that this is the only place that feels like home. The Serendipity has been the one constant in my life.”

  Avery felt a wave of nostalgia coming over her and pushed the feeling down and away. She was probably thinking about it thanks to Jen’s question, but she didn’t want to tell Dan and make him worry that Jen had asked anything out of line. “Your sister is nice.”

  “She’s great. Speaking of people in Brandywood knowing someone in my family—literally everyone knows her. And most love her. And then there are my other sisters, Laura and Sam. Laura owns and operates the Redding Cabins, which are these amazing family rentals. And Sam’s an internationally known photographer.”

  Avery raised her brows, but her heart warmed at the pride in his face. “Wow, your sisters sound intimidating.” Then she peered at him. “The cabins sound familiar. I think some of my guests are staying there for the wedding. Do you think your sister has any cabins available for rent this week that aren’t showing up online? It might be smart for us to stay somewhere else until you get some furniture.”

  “I sent her a text last night. Just in case. She said they’re full, unfortunately.”

  A hiss caught their attention, and Dan’s head rose sharply. They were in front of a Victorian house with a white picket fence, and Dan slowed. “Shit. Get on your bike.”

  “What?” Avery’s heart slammed into her ribs. “What is it?”

  “I’m serious. Get on, now!”

  But Avery froze, scanning the vicinity for trouble. A flash of black and white fur shot out from between the fence slats, a large raccoon heading right for them, teeth bared.

  Dan shoved Avery toward her bike, and she wobbled, climbing on as Dan tried to divert the attention to himself. The raccoon pawed at him, hissing as Dan shooed at it. As Avery pulled away from the curb on her bike, the raccoon took a flying leap toward Dan, missing him by inches.

  Dan yelped and grabbed a stick to keep it off him, trying to shake it off his tail as he went. Horrified, Avery hopped off her bike and clattered onto the street and against the curb. She rushed toward Dan’s bike, reached into the breakfast bag, and grabbed something wrapped in paper. “Here!” She waved the packet at Dan, chasing after him.

  Without stopping, Dan took a flying leap over the fence and sprinted toward the house.

  Avery tried to follow, but climbing the fence proved to be a bigger challenge than she’d expected, and her pants leg caught on the top of a post. The sound of fabric ripping followed as she fell, catching herself on the garden bed below. “Oomph!” Her cheek hit the dirt as thorns from a rosebush scratched her arms.

  She steadied herself, stems snapping as she raced toward Dan. The packet had opened to reveal a breakfast sandwich, which smelled amazing but was limply hanging out of the paper wrapping. Dan pounded on the front door of the house. “Mrs. Washington, open up! I need help with your cat!”

  He turned his back to the door, his eyes wide as the raccoon tried to pounce again, then ducked behind a hanging swing on the porch. “Get out of here!”

  Avery was on the porch now. “Here—” How the hell do you get a raccoon’s attention? “You miserable bastard. How about a sandwich?”

  The raccoon turned, teeth still bared, watching her intently with its dark, beady eyes, nose twitching.

  “You know you want this sandwich, you stupid raccoon. Come on,” Avery said in the softest singsong tone she could manage.

  She lowered the package to the floorboards of the porch, when a spray of water jetted at her from behind. It was icy cold, and the shock of it made Avery stiffen into an upright position, then jump. “Oh, my God!”

  “You kids get off my front porch!” an elderly lady hollered, spraying the hose at both Avery and Dan.

  Ten minutes, two hundred dollars in cash to cover the damaged rose bushes, and multiple apologies later, Avery and Dan got on their bikes once again. “You were saying how wonderful Brandywood is?” Dan muttered, pedaling.

  Avery let out a peal of laughter. She sucked on a scratch on the back of her knuckle, then started off beside him. “I’m still not sure what the hell just happened. Why on earth were you telling that lady to get her cat?”

  Dan glanced back at her and then slowed to be at her side. “Mrs. Washington took it upon herself to feed a local raccoon whom she named Jasper. She also thinks he’s a cat. Animal Control tried to take him, and she sued the city. And somehow won. Raccoons can’t be pets, but Jasper lives outside and is mostly pretty domesticated. But the critter hates me, so if he notices me around, things don’t go so well. This isn’t our first run-in.”

  Avery guffawed, unable to wipe the smile from her face. Her clothes were soaked through, her hair sticking to her cheek and neck, causing goose bumps on her arms as she rode through the warm summer breeze with the early morning sun on her face.

  Dan’s wet T-shirt clung to his skin, and Avery couldn’t help noticing the outline of muscles underneath. For years, she’d told Erika that her “type” was tall and lean, and she couldn’t help wondering if she’d just decided that after that summer with Dan—because that was how she remembered him. She might have to add muscular to that list.

  And that’s about enough thinking about Dan’s body. She demurred her gaze, but the grumpy expression on his face before she looked away made the corners of her mouth curl up.

  The entire experience had been equally terrifying and strangely ridiculous.

  And she hadn’t felt so free in ages.

  Chapter Ten

  The door to the storage unit wobbled as Dan stopped the Dremel tool, making one last cut. He handed the Dremel to Peyton, then pulled the broken lock free.

  Sweat poured down his temple, and he wiped his face with his shirt, too frustrated at the damned lock to feel like celebrating. The lock had been a disc lock, impossible to cut with bolt cutters. He hadn’t wanted to, but he’d had to resort to a Dremel and YouTube instructions and hope for the best.

  It had taken him an hour.

  “Goddamn, that took forever,” Peyton said, sipping a frozen slushie he’d gotten at the local convenience store. “Too bad we didn’t bring the angle grinder you have back at the lodge. That would have been so much faster. Takes just a couple of minutes with that.”

  Dan gave him a questioning look. “Angle grinder?” And why didn’t you say something sooner? He resisted the urge to throttle the kid.

  “Yeah, I saw one in your tool shed the other day when you wanted me to get the paint scraper. I only know because my buddy used to buy storage sheds at auction. Never made any money with it, but he did once get this whole unit of nothing but blow-up dolls.” Peyton snickered.

  Dan gave a dry, half-hearted chuckle to humor him, still stuck on the fact that he had failed to mention he had any experience with cutting disc locks.

  Well, that was fantastic. To be fair, he hadn
’t asked Peyton’s opinion of anything when he’d started doing this. And neither did he know what an angle grinder even was. He’d bought all the tools in the tool shed off Brenda Harrison, but unlike Ken, he didn’t know what most of them were. Maybe he’d have to ask Garrett to give him a quick lesson.

  Dan was thankful he hadn’t brought Avery and her friend to witness his embarrassing lack of skill. He’d left them at the lodge, pulling weeds.

  He held a smile back, thinking of the way Avery had looked after Mrs. Washington’s damned raccoon had chased them. He’d actively tried not to think of her all morning, especially how her wet shirt had been nearly transparent after the incident.

  The fact was, even after everything and so much time had passed, he was still physically attracted to her. There was no use denying that. But he certainly wouldn’t be acting on it. Avery would soon be married to another man—and then I’ll never have to wonder “what if” I had seen Avery again. That was a good thing, for both of them.

  He tossed the ruined lock on the pavement and then grabbed the handle to the door. Pushing the door up and open, he blinked into the dark space, and a sea of blue tarps caught his eye.

  Followed by a tidal wave of mildew.

  Peyton covered his nose. “What died in there?”

  Dan flipped a light switch and then yanked back a tarp from what looked like a couch. Colorful mold stained it all the way up to the top of the back cushions. He swore under his breath, feeling sick, both from the sight and the smell of the place. “My hopes and dreams?”

  He stepped back, loosening his jaw as he cupped his hands over his mouth. Was it just the couch? Or the other furniture as well?

  One by one, they peeled back the tarps to reveal ruined furniture. Without the tarps, the smell was substantially worse. And from the looks of it, not much had survived. Wood and other organic materials weren’t any match for this amount of mold. One thing was clear: the storage unit must have flooded. And in all likelihood, it had happened several months ago.

  Checking out the full extent of the damage would require pulling out enough furniture to make a path through the stacks of mattresses and bed frames, chairs, nightstands, and dressers—a task Dan hadn’t mentally prepared for. Or brought the manpower for. The ancient couches from the living room that Dan had thought to reupholster might be salvageable. Maybe. But they’d have to be re-stuffed at minimum.

  He dropped back to a squat, sitting on his heels as he pulled down one more tarp, revealing a water-stained mirror.

  What the hell, Brenda?

  Had she known the unit had flooded? Selling it to him in this condition would be beyond her, wouldn’t it? Even though Ken Harrison hadn’t ended up being the best boss in the world, he’d been an honest man. One that was well-liked in town. Brenda wouldn’t be such a shit-bag, would she?

  Dan pulled the collar of his shirt over his nose, sighing. Peyton waited just outside the storage unit door, catching his breath. “What’s the plan?” Peyton asked. “I vote for a bonfire.”

  “That’d be my preference, too, but only if you can do it here and not get caught.” He gritted his teeth as another realization struck him. Insurance wouldn’t cover this. They didn’t cover losses because of outside water.

  Maybe burning it is a good idea.

  Great, a few months out of the force, and he was thinking about arson.

  Dan’s fingers curled into fists. He grabbed a chair close to him and threw it into a pile of ruined mattresses. It bounced off and then landed on its side against some lamps, which fell over with a crash, ceramic bases shattering. Peyton flinched.

  Fantastic. The one thing that might have been salvageable.

  And this was why he needed to control his anger better.

  In twenty-four hours, his life had been completely upended. He hadn’t expected the transition into the hospitality industry to go without a hitch, but everything all at once?

  His frustration simmered at the surface of his skin, making his muscles ache. He’d been suckered into trying to help Avery as much by his resolution to be a better person as his hope to not have his business fail right out of the gate.

  But what had being a better person gotten him?

  A relationship with a woman like Melissa, who’d held his nuts in such a tight vise that he’d almost choked.

  At least when everyone in town just called him an asshole out loud, he didn’t have to pretend to be better. But he’d hurt his family, especially Jen and Colby, that way, and he was determined not to backslide.

  Still, he couldn’t help imagining taking a flamethrower to this whole storage unit. Or kicking things around like Chevy Chase when he finally loses it in that Christmas movie.

  He took a few deep breaths, the way they’d trained him to do in that class he’d been forced to take when he’d gotten in trouble for stalking Garrett Doyle a few years ago. Oxygen did help, and the more he forced those deep breaths, the calmer he felt.

  Sighing, he turned back to Peyton and stalked out of the unit. “Let’s close it up.”

  The door rattled as Peyton pulled it down. “Shouldn’t we put a lock back on it?”

  “Why? There’s nothing worth saving in there anyway.”

  The two men headed back to Dan’s truck, and Dan climbed in and slammed the door. He sank against the back of his seat, tapping his thumbs on the bottom of the steering wheel.

  “What are you going to do?” Peyton asked, grimacing. “Maybe you can clean some of it off with that power washer you got?”

  Is he serious? Dan squinted at him, unsure if Peyton could really be that dimwitted or was just trying and failing to be helpful. “I’m not sure more water will help the problem.” This wasn’t a simple issue of some mold anyway, even if he could take a risk of putting guests on mattresses that had been covered in mold spores—which he couldn’t. Everything was wrecked.

  He needed furniture—and fast. Outside of buying it, he didn’t have a ton of options. Except the best option involved going to visit one of the only people in this town who might hear about Avery and call Dan crazy for helping her: his former best friend, Corbin White.

  Dan put the car in Drive and pushed down on the gas pedal.

  What other choice is there?

  The exterior of the warehouse was nicer than Dan had expected—Corbin must have been doing well. Floor-to-ceiling display windows had been added to the front, along with a new electric sign that read “White’s Furniture Depot.” A separate door had been added for the retail area of the store, but the two large doors still led to the rental area, which was the bulk of the business that Corbin handled.

  Dan glanced over his shoulder at Peyton as they made their way inside. “Don’t touch anything,” Dan warned. The guy had an uncanny ability to break things.

  Peyton rolled his eyes. “Yes, Mom.”

  The sound of approaching footsteps made them look up. Corbin wore a suit that looked tailored—at least, Dan never could find a suit that fit him that well. When they’d been friends in high school, they occasionally showed up to school twinning. There was only so much to select from in the big and tall section of the local stores for teenage boys.

  Corbin faltered in his step just briefly, then smiled. “Well, look who it is. Dan Klein.”

  “Good to see you, Corbin.” Dan shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans, feeling the awkwardness of being in the company of someone he’d once felt he shared the bond of brotherhood with.

  Then again, there were plenty of people he’d feel awkward around these days.

  Corbin nodded, then held a hand back toward the display floor. “Why don’t we walk on back to my office?”

  They started toward the back of the warehouse. “It looks like things are going really well for you here,” Dan said. Why is it always so hard to string two words together with Corbin nearby?

  “Yeah, this summer has gone particularly well, thanks to Eli Parker. His production company has rented and bought a ton of stuff from me.” Cor
bin said it casually, but Dan caught the undercurrent. Corbin knew how much Dan had bickered with Eli and Garrett in school. But he had to know Dan and Garrett had buried the proverbial hatchet—didn’t he? Maybe he didn’t care enough to keep up with that sort of thing either.

  “Well, I’m happy for you. You deserve it.”

  “There’s a loaded word if I ever heard one. No one really gets what they deserve, do they?” Corbin’s dark face was shadowed, and Dan stopped short.

  If Corbin found out who I’m trying to help, he’d only hate me more, wouldn’t he?

  A crash sounded behind him. Dan whirled back to see Peyton straightening himself from the end table he’d tripped on. A decorative stack of antique books lay on the floor.

  Dan went over to Peyton and picked up the books, then placed them back on the table. He gave Peyton a nod toward the door. “Why don’t you wait for me in the truck?”

  He turned back to Corbin’s amused look. “Your protégé?”

  “More like my sole employee. And I was never that clumsy. Kid trips on his own feet.”

  “You were never that graceful either.” Corbin crossed his arms, looking every bit the polished businessman. Hell, he even smelled good, and Dan grew more conscious of the pit stains on his ratty T-shirt.

  “So I have a situation where I need to outfit the Serendipity Lodge for just a couple of weeks. There’s a wedding happening there the Saturday after next, and the bride needs her guests to have a place to sleep.”

  “Yeah, I heard you bought that old place.” Corbin’s eyes glittered. “Heard you’re remodeling it, too. Never knew you to swing a hammer. Unless it was into your own damn fingers.”

  “It’s a work in progress.” Dan hooked his thumbs into his belt loops. When they’d been in school together, Corbin had frequently laughed at Dan’s attempts in shop class. Dan had almost broken a finger with a hammer once. Not that reminiscing about those things felt easy and lighthearted now. Nothing had ever been the same with Corbin since that party twelve summers ago.