Bones E-Book

Kim Fielding

• Herausgeber: Dreamspinner Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 1041

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Skinny, quiet hipster Dylan Warner just wants to live a normal life—despite being a werewolf—but when he buys an isolated farmhouse, it comes with more adventure than he anticipated! In Good Bones, Dylan's sexy neighbor Chris Nock helps Dylan renovate the house, but how can Dylan reveal his furry secret? In Buried Bones, a brand-new relationship is hard enough to handle, but the appearance of a ghost and Chris's dad threaten to bring Dylan and Chris's relationship toppling. In The Gig, a chance encounter introduces Dylan and Chris to Drew Clifton and Travis Miller of Speechless. In Bone Dry, artist Ery Phillips is house-sitting for Dylan and Chris when a strange—and beautiful—man appears by the pond and inspires his muse.

Leseprobe

Bones

By Kim Fielding

Skinny, quiet hipster Dylan Warner just wants to live a normal life—despite being a werewolf—but when he buys an isolated farmhouse, it comes with more adventure than he anticipated! In Good Bones, Dylan’s sexy neighbor Chris Nock helps Dylan renovate the house, but how can Dylan reveal his furry secret? In Buried Bones, a brand-new relationship is hard enough to handle, but the appearance of a ghost and Chris’s dad threaten to bring Dylan and Chris’s relationship toppling. In The Gig, a chance encounter introduces Dylan and Chris to Drew Clifton and Travis Miller of Speechless. In Bone Dry, artist Ery Phillips is house-sitting for Dylan and Chris when a strange—and beautiful—man appears by the pond and inspires his muse.

Bones by Kim Fielding includes:

Bones: Book 1

Skinny, quiet hipster Dylan Warner was the kind of guy other men barely glanced at until an evening’s indiscretion with a handsome stranger turned him into a werewolf. Now, despite a slightly hairy handicap, he just wants to live an ordinary—if lonely—life as an architect. He tries to keep his wild impulses in check, but after one too many close calls, Dylan gives up his urban life and moves to the country, where he will be less likely to harm someone else. His new home is a dilapidated but promising house that comes with a former Christmas tree farm and a solitary neighbor: sexy, rustic Chris Nock.

Dylan hires Chris to help him renovate the farmhouse and quickly discovers his assumptions about his neighbor are inaccurate—and that he’d very much like Chris to become a permanent fixture in his life as well as his home. Between proving himself to his boss, coping with the seductive lure of his dangerous ex-lover, and his limited romantic experience, Dylan finds it hard enough to express himself—how can he bring up his monthly urge to howl at the moon?

Bones: Book 2

Sequel to Good Bones

Werewolves don’t have a how-to manual—nor do men embarking on a new life together.

It’s been a few weeks since Dylan Warner wolfed out and killed Andy, the crazed werewolf who originally turned him and later tried to murder Chris Nock. Architect Dylan and handyman Chris are still refurbishing Dylan’s old house as they work out the structure of their relationship. They come from very different backgrounds, and neither has had a long-term lover before, so negotiating their connections would be challenge enough even if Dylan didn’t turn into a beast once a month.

To make matters worse, Dylan’s house is haunted, and events from both men’s pasts are catching up with them. Dylan has to cope with the aftermath of killing Andy, and Chris continues to suffer the effects of a difficult childhood.

In his quest to get rid of the ghost, Dylan rekindles old friendships and faces new dangers. At the same time, Chris’s father makes a sudden reappearance, stirring up old emotions. If Dylan and Chris want to build a lasting relationship, they’ll have to meet these challenges head-on.

A Bones/Speechless Crossover

Sequel to Speechless

An accident in Drew Clifton’s past left the former novelist with aphasia, unable to communicate through either speech or writing. Through sheer strength of will, he built a quiet but lonely life for himself. But now he’s fallen in love with Travis Miller.

Travis has his own issues—a permanent eye injury and unemployment. But he’s determined to help Drew find ways to engage and succeed again in the wider world, and a guitar-playing gig at a local coffeehouse seems like a good start.

Dylan Warner and Chris Nock happen to be in the audience that evening, and they have a few niggling problems of their own. Perhaps a chance meeting will provide solutions that might benefit all of them.

Bones: Book 3

Sequel to Buried Bones

Ery Phillips’s muse is MIA. He’s pretty sure his job as a graphic designer is to blame, because let’s face it, what kind of muse wants to draw grocery store logos and catheterized penises?

When Ery’s friends Dylan and Chris head off on a European vacation, Ery jumps at the chance to stay on their farm, hoping a stint in the country will encourage his muse to reappear. To be sure, the farm has attracted a few oddities—Dylan is a werewolf and the place was recently haunted—but Ery isn’t canceling his plans just because his friends warn him that there’s something strange going on in their pond. What he doesn’t expect is Karl, a beautiful naked man who appears at the water’s edge.

With Karl as his inspiration, Ery creates amazing paintings and begins to achieve the success he had previously only dreamed of. But Karl comes with certain challenges, causing Ery to question his own goals. Creating the life of his dreams with an unusual beloved may be more challenge than Ery can handle.

Chapter 1

DYLAN KNEW right after lunch that today he’d be cutting it close. The day leading up to the full moon was not a time to have everything else go wrong. But already a meeting had run much longer than scheduled. A client was being difficult. The budget was tight. Blueprints had to be adjusted. Tempers were frayed. As a result, it was well past four o’clock when he finally escaped the architectural firm. He mumbled an excuse to the secretary about an art show opening as he fled out the door and into another of Portland’s overcast afternoons.

The situation still might have been under control, but Dylan made a stupid mistake, choosing the Hawthorne Bridge instead of the Marquam. Just as he came to the bridge, its red lights began flashing, and traffic stopped. He watched the center span rise at a glacial pace. The waiting cars were too tightly packed for Dylan to back up and take another route, so he waited, not listening to whatever was on National Public Radio, his fingers drumming impatiently on the steering wheel. He couldn’t see what sort of vessel was passing under the bridge or why the hell it was taking so long.

In the Chevy next to him, the driver was using one finger to carefully excavate his nose. Dylan’s windshield wipers swiped back and forth, swish-squeak, swish-squeak, each movement counting off more of his dwindling time. He took slow, deep breaths to quell his racing heart and jumpy nerves.

When he finally reached the other side of the river, Dylan was certain the sky was beginning to darken a little, although it was hard to tell for certain through the everlasting gloom of the clouds.

Fortunately, traffic on the west side was a bit lighter than usual, and Dylan drove as fast as he could, swerving around a bicyclist, running a light just changed to red, making pedestrians scowl. And then, just before he turned onto Jefferson, he got stuck behind a lumbering city bus with a seemingly narcoleptic driver. For several slow blocks, Dylan glared at the roaring tiger and trumpeting elephant emblazoned across the rear of the bus, but ultimately, he felt a certain sympathy for the wild denizens of the Oregon Zoo.

By the time he finally merged onto the freeway, the evening commute had begun in earnest, and traffic was crawling. Dylan tailgated and lane-switched and swore under his breath. His jaw ached, and his back was itching as if he were wearing a fur coat inside out. He gripped the steering wheel so tightly the plastic nearly cracked.

And then he came upon an accident. It wasn’t a bad one—just an ordinary fender bender. A tow truck had already arrived, and several people were standing there in the drizzle talking on cell phones. Both of the vehicles involved had managed to pull onto the narrow shoulder, so traffic should have been able to pass unimpeded. But everyone slowed down to gawk as if they had never seen such an amazing sight, so all three lanes were stop and go. And stop. And go.

Dylan’s nerves thrummed, and his skin felt too tight.

The one small grace was that his exit lane was open, so he shot down the off-ramp and zipped down the last mile of surface streets, silently praying that there were no police nearby, that no more impediments would appear. That he would make it on time. There was no question at all now; based on both his dashboard clock and the darkening sky, the sun was nearly set.

He parked his Prius in the driveway with a screech of brakes and ran for the front door. As he fumbled with the lock, his hand shook so wildly that he dropped the keys. No, no, no, a panicky part of his mind gibbered as he swooped up the keys and managed to get into the house. His bones were beginning to reshape themselves agonizingly, and his clothing was already ripping at the seams as he stumbled through the kitchen, down the hall, and into the spare bedroom. He growled through a lengthening jaw as he slammed the metal door closed. Without fingers to remove the remains of his clothing, his last coherent human thought through the blinding pain was that he’d ruined yet another pair of Diesel jeans.

HE AWOKE as unpleasantly as always in the spare bedroom. He was naked, cold, and ravenous. He ached from sleeping on the hardwood floor. Ugly bruises had formed on his shoulders—he must have spent a good part of the night throwing himself against the door. Worst of all, though, was the emotion that seemed to pervade every molecule of his body. He didn’t know a name for the feeling; maybe a name didn’t exist. The closest he could come was need or frustration, but neither of those approached the intensity of what he felt. It was a little like being incredibly horny, only with no hope of ever getting laid again—a situation that was also unhappily familiar.

He stood and stretched and groaned, and he glared down at his incongruously perky cock. It was always much more optimistic than the rest of him. As usual, he decided to let it subside in favor of his bladder, which couldn’t be ignored much longer. He resisted the urge to piss on one of the metal-sheathed walls and instead unfastened the complicated lock that he’d installed near the top of the door. The lock was too high for him to have reached during the night and too complex to be opened with teeth or claws. Opposable thumbs were handy things.

During his visit to the bathroom he couldn’t help but catch sight of himself in the mirror. He looked as bad as he felt: hazel eyes bloodshot, skin pale, sandy curls in wild snarls. He considered calling in sick, but he’d done that last month and the month before, and he was worried that someone might notice a pattern. Nobody would be suspicious if a woman felt miserable every twenty-eight days, but people might wonder about a guy.

Fine. Shower it was. He shaved too, removing the dark-blond bristles from his cheeks and neatening the little patch on his chin. Then he brushed his teeth and tamed his hair and wandered into his bedroom to dress. His bed was still made up neatly, of course, big and comfortable, covered in a cozy down duvet. It would have been a lot more comfortable than the hard floor of the spare room. He swallowed a sigh and pulled on briefs and Levis, a navy and yellow Decemberists tee, and a plaid button-down. Hooray for casual Friday, when the already loose dress code was abandoned. He wasn’t sure he could have survived a shirt and tie today, when his skin felt too tight and his bones felt too loose.

His now standard breakfast no longer horrified him: a package of wine-cured bacon, raw from the plastic and sort of gummy in his mouth; a half dozen cage-free eggs cracked into an oversized mug; a triple espresso with a teaspoon of sugar stirred in. He had once been vegan.

He pulled on socks and boots and his favorite gray hoodie and drove through the drizzle to work.

He probably looked hungover, or maybe stoned. The secretary raised her eyebrows at him but didn’t say anything. On the other hand, his office-mate, Matty, had no problem speaking her mind. “Wild night, Dylan?” she asked.

He had to suppress a desperate laugh. “Not really.”

She was sitting at her desk, squinting through glasses at her computer screen. She had a big cardboard cup from Stumptown cradled in one palm, and Dylan’s wolf-enhanced sense of smell registered the cranberry muffin she’d had for breakfast. Low-fat, no doubt. She wore her usual black blouse and gray cardigan, and although he couldn’t see her lower half, he knew there would be black slacks—and red flats because it was Friday. She smiled at him. “Come on. Give a girl a thrill. Spill.”

“Sorry, Matty,” he said with a shake of his head. She assumed that his social life was a lot more exciting than it really was. “I stayed home. Really.”

“You don’t look like a guy who stayed home.”

He held up a hand in a mock Boy Scout salute. “I solemnly swear I went straight home and didn’t leave again until this morning, when I came straight to work. Um, after the Starbucks drive-through.”

“Fine. You went straight home. With whom?”

“Just me. I know I look like hell today, but it’s not because I had fun last night. I feel a little under the weather.”

She gave him a skeptical look but then turned her attention back to her computer. Dylan sagged a little with relief and collapsed into his own chair.

It was hard to concentrate on work, but he tried. The Maywood Drive clients had decided they wanted five bedrooms instead of four, and that meant he had to make adjustments to the roofline and to the supports that would keep the house from toppling down the hill. He wasn’t happy with the way the balcony was wrapping around the southwestern edge of the house. And he’d really hoped to build a deck around a couple of stately Douglas firs, but now he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to pull that off without some pretty major adjustments.

He declined Matty’s offer to join her for lunch. Instead, he grabbed a sandwich and chips from the little deli across the street and ate them at his desk.

At 4:12, as he was congratulating himself on almost getting through the day, his phone rang.

“Hey, Dyldo.”

Dylan smiled at the nickname that had driven him crazy when he was younger. “Hey yourself, Dickhead.” His brother preferred to be called Rick. Where was the fun in that?

“Dinner tonight.”

“Thanks, but I think I’m gonna—”

“Wasn’t an invitation, kid—it’s an order. Seven o’clock, Hopworks.”

Dylan knew better than to waste time arguing. “Fine,” he sighed. “But is Kay gonna—”

“My better half will not be attending. Her sister’s coming over, and they’re going to make stuff for that craft fair they’re doing next weekend. I think it involves putting mustaches on drinking glasses… or something nuts like that.”

“Thus your dinner plans.”

“That and other reasons,” Rick said enigmatically. “Seven o’clock, Dyldo.”

Before Dylan had a chance to mumble a reply, his brother had hung up.

There wasn’t much point in driving all the way across town and then coming back, so Dylan stayed at the office, working on those plans. He waved at Matty when she left, refilled his mug from the coffeemaker in the corner, and by 6:40 he’d actually made some headway on the house.

The restaurant was crowded and noisy, but Rick had arrived early and snagged them a table, one of the tall ones with high seats. As soon as Dylan entered, Rick waved him over. Rick already had a plate of hummus and a pint of beer in front of him. “Organic IPA,” he said as Dylan took his chair. “Want one?”

Dylan shook his head, then scooped some hummus onto a little pita triangle. With his mouth full he replied, “Stout. And meat. Lots of meat.”

Rick’s bushy eyebrows drew together in a frown. “I forgot. It’s that time of the month again, isn’t it?”

“Last night. I’m good now.”

“You don’t look so good, Dyldo.”

“Fuck you.”

The waitress appeared at that moment. She was tall and lean and muscular with stars tattooed on her bicep. “What can I get you?” she asked. He ordered his drink and a burger as rare as they could get it, while Rick made a face and asked for a chicken wrap and another IPA.

“Two beers?” said Dylan with a smirk. “Really living it up tonight, huh?”

“Shut up. When’s the last time you went out with someone you weren’t related to?”

“Fuck you,” Dylan repeated.

Rick smiled and scooped hummus onto a pita. “I didn’t actually invite you here to nag about your social life, though.”

“Then why?”

A shrug. “Haven’t seen you in a while. Wanted to know how it’s going.”

“’M all right. Work’s busy. How about you and Kay?”

“Still trying on the baby thing.” He took a long swallow of his beer. “She’s got all these little charts. Man, it takes all the romance out of things when you gotta worry about ovulation cycles and the right position and all that shit.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Dylan replied, not without sympathy. He knew how badly Rick wanted a kid.

“Yeah, well, if it doesn’t work this month her doc says I gotta get tested. You know, jack off into a cup, see if the little swimmers know what the fuck they’re doing.”

“That sounds fun.”

“Remember back in high school? When me and Jessica had that scare?” He shook his head slowly. “Who knew that fifteen years later I’d be rooting for the other side?”

The waitress appeared with Dylan’s stout and Rick’s refill. Dylan took a grateful sip.

“You had another close one, didn’t you?”

Dylan didn’t realize he’d closed his eyes until Rick asked the question, and then Dylan looked at him sharply. “I’m fine.”

“No you’re not.”

“Look, Ricky….” That childhood name went way back, all the way to when Rick was Dylan’s god: the Big Kid who rode a bike without training wheels and wore a Spider-Man backpack to school and didn’t need a safety railing to keep him from tumbling out of bed at night. “It’s under control, really. Yesterday was a fluke. The meeting went late, and the bridge was up and—”

“How many flukes, Dyl? In the last six months, how many times have you just barely made it?”

Dylan didn’t answer. He looked away, over at the table next to them where a group of college students was laughing over a text message on someone’s phone. And Rick didn’t push it, so the brothers sat there drinking silently until the waitress came by with their dinners. Dylan’s burger was good, and he was hungrier than he’d realized. Before he knew it, his plate was empty except for a piece of wilted lettuce. He looked up at Rick, who was still toying with a strip of tortilla.

“I don’t know what you want me to do about it,” Dylan said quietly. “It’s not like I can hire a babysitter to make sure I’m locked up safely. Or… or a goddamn petsitter.”

“Move in with us. We can rig something in the basement.”

“Yeah? Are you really willing to trust me around Kay?”

“Kay knows the risks. She’s willing.”

Despite his despair, Dylan felt a touch of warmth for his sister-in-law. Poor thing didn’t have a clue what she was marrying into a couple of years ago, but she’d loyally stuck around. Too loyal, maybe, because it didn’t sound like she and Rick had thought through all the consequences. Dylan sighed. “And what happens when that baby finally appears?”

Rick winced a little and looked down at his plate. “That’s not gonna be for a while yet.”

“I know. But I’m not going to find a miraculous cure in the meantime.”

“But you can’t just go on like this, Dyl. Sooner or later you’re gonna be just a little too late, and then….” He didn’t finish his sentence, and he didn’t have to. Dylan knew what his brother was thinking: And then it’s going to be like the first time.

Dylan couldn’t argue because he knew Rick was right. In fact, he knew if he ever screwed up again, it was going to be a hell of a lot worse than the first time, because now Dylan was stronger. Hungrier. He dropped his head into the palms of his hands and rubbed at his brows. “Maybe I should move to the wilderness. Alaska or something. Somewhere… far.”

“You can’t live by yourself.”

“Well I can’t fucking live with anyone else!” Dylan replied, louder than he’d intended. People nearby turned to stare for a moment before looking away again. They all had normal problems, like cheating boyfriends or crappy bosses or cars that kept breaking down.

Rick, bless his stubborn hide, didn’t take offense. He knew that Dylan tended to react angrily when he was actually scared. “How would you even survive?” he asked reasonably. “I mean, I guess once a month you could, um, hunt. But what about the other twenty-seven days? Gonna take to designing igloos? I bet you’d make really cool ones. Green materials and energy efficient.”

Dylan snorted a small laugh and even managed a smile when the waitress came to take their empty plates. He’d worked his way through school as a barista, and he knew how shitty it was when customers took out their hard days on their servers. When she went away, he said, “Maybe I could telecommute from the North Pole.”

The grin left Rick’s face; he was suddenly all serious. “Could you really do that? Telecommute, I mean?”

“Sort of. I could probably pull off going into the office, like, twice a week. For meetings and stuff. But I don’t really see myself hopping on a plane from the Great White North twice a week.”

“You don’t have to!” Rick was bouncing up and down a little with excitement, so much like his younger self that Dylan had to smile. “There’s plenty of boonies around here, Dyl. Get yourself a cabin in the Coast Range or something—that drive wouldn’t be so bad a couple of times a week. Could you time it so you’d be out in the woods every twenty-eighth day?”

Dylan swallowed the last of his stout as he considered his brother’s idea. He’d never been a back-to-nature type—they’d lived in the ’burbs when he was a kid, and he lived there now, albeit in a somewhat more stylish and expensive incarnation. He’d always thought it might be kind of cool to live right downtown, but that was… before. He spent a few minutes imagining himself loping through ferns and leaping over downed tree trunks, snuffling at the feast of scents, maybe finding a flat spot where he could finally run full out, his muscles bunching and flexing as he flew over the ground. And then leaping, feeling his powerful jaws clamp down as hot blood filled his mouth—

He looked up at his brother guiltily, feeling absurdly like he’d been thinking about sex. “That’s an interesting idea, Dickhead.”

Rick grinned hugely. “I guess big brother’s still got it, Dyldo.”

The waitress came by with their bill, and Rick pointed her in Dylan’s direction. “My little brother’s got it.”

Dylan pulled out his wallet good-naturedly. “Is that all this was? A way to scrounge a free meal?”

“You owe me.”

As Dylan counted out the cash, Rick slid off his stool and stretched a little. “I’m gonna head home, see if the little woman needs some help with her mustaches.”

DYLAN WAS always restless for a night or two after he changed, so knowing he wouldn’t sleep anyway, he decided he might as well get some work done. On the way home from Hopworks he did a drive-through for a Venti latte with a quad shot of espresso. It was still hot enough to burn his tongue when he walked into his house. He set the coffee and laptop on the kitchen table and went into the bedroom to undress.

The house was as neat as always. The reinforced door to the spare bedroom was, as usual, tightly closed so the shredded clothes and new claw marks on the walls were safely hidden. He’d need to go in and clean in a day or two. In his bedroom, everything was in place. He always made sure of that on the day before he changed, as if having a couple of throw pillows on the bed and the dresser thoroughly dusted would help remind him that he was human and civilized. He liked to think that his bedroom—and most of the rest of the house, for that matter—looked like a magazine spread. Dwell, maybe, or Wallpaper. But tonight it suddenly struck him that what his rooms actually resembled was a boutique hotel: attractive and sort of hip, but devoid of life.

With a touch of defiance, he kicked his shoes randomly across the bedroom floor and left his jeans and shirts in a heap near the door. It didn’t help, though. Now it just looked like a slightly messy hotel room.

He tended to run hot this time of the month and padded back into the kitchen wearing only his low-rise briefs. He sat down at the table and sipped his coffee while his MacBook booted up.

He tried to answer a few e-mails from work and tweak his kitchen plans for the Maywood Drive project, but he couldn’t focus. “Fine,” he muttered to himself. He’d surf a few real estate sites instead. Maybe Rick’s idea wasn’t such a bad one.

Somehow, however, he found himself typing gay.com instead.

The photos varied: men in various states of undress posed in front of mirrors; men looking rugged beside waterfalls or atop boulders; men in suits and ties; men in plaid shirts, grinning, with their arms around their pals; men close up and smiling; men in black and white, striking models’ poses. Men with muscles and men with pudge; bulky men in leather and fey boys with eyeliner; men with forests of dark fur on their chests and men whose skin was bare and oiled. Young men and old. Men who looked scary and men who looked like tax attorneys. Handsome men. Plain men.

These men listed kinks aplenty: BDSM and cross-dressing and role-playing and spandex and exhibitionism and watersports and threesomes and medical play. There were some kinks Dylan had never heard of and a few others he hoped he’d never hear of again. But with all this variety—a rainbow of gayness—not a single man mentioned the one thing that mattered the most to Dylan: not one of them said a word about having a thing for werewolves.

His chest tight, Dylan slammed the laptop closed without shutting it down, ignored his cooled latte, and wandered into the living room to see if House Hunters was on.

Chapter 2

“YOU’RE GONNA love this one!”

The Realtor’s attempts at sounding positive and enthusiastic were becoming a little strained. Not surprising, considering that this was the tenth time they were driving way the hell into the middle of nowhere to view a property—the first nine tries had been complete failures. They had all been rural, but most had been nowhere near isolated enough for Dylan’s needs. They had looked at one place that had no neighbors for miles, but it turned out to be a falling-down shack halfway up the mountain, on a road that would be impassible part of the year, with no cell phone signal and no power supply other than a generator.

Dylan squirmed a little in his seat and grunted in reply. Matty had recommended Steve Nguyen, but it turned out that Steve usually specialized in high-rise condos and knew almost nothing about country living. Considering Steve’s bold attempts at flirting, Dylan suspected that Matty had something other than property acquisition in mind when she hooked them up. Dylan was going to have a little chat with her about how much he didn’t need a matchmaker.

But for now, he was stuck in a Honda Civic with Steve, a good hour from anything resembling civilization, with Steve looking at him nervously, as if he wasn’t sure whether to kiss Dylan or boot him out of the car. Dylan had turned slightly sullen after the seventh or eighth unproductive viewing.

Steve had already turned off the main highway onto a state road that twisted through farmland and trees, and now he turned onto gravel. “The county maintains this road, and the elevation is too low for snow,” he chirped. The Civic bumped along, sending up little sprays of mud.

“How big is the property?” Dylan asked.

“Almost thirty acres. Most of it’s too steep to grow anything, and there’s a pond covering part of it. It was once a Christmas tree farm, but I guess that’s all gone wild now.”

“Neighbors?”

“Just one. And the land backs up to state forest.”

That sounded promising at least, but Dylan didn’t get his hopes up. They were bouncing past a long, empty field edged by a steeply rising wooded slope. No livestock were visible in the area, which was also a relief. Dylan wasn’t at all sure he’d be able to resist the lure of beef on the hoof.

The road curved around a stand of firs, and Steve slowed to a halt. There were two houses there, with a long line of poplars between them. The sight of the house on the left got Dylan’s pulse racing—it was a two-story farmhouse, maybe a century old, with porches on the first and second floors and green and brown trim against white wooden siding. The paint was peeling a little, and even from the car Dylan could tell the house needed some major work, but he liked the shape of it, the way the two chimneys rose confidently above the steep roof, the many large windows that were pleasingly arranged. But the other house made him scowl. It was a tiny place, probably dating from the ’50s, and although most of it was hidden behind overgrown shrubs, the part he could see looked like it ought to be condemned.

“Tell me it’s the two-story,” Dylan said as they climbed out of the car.

“Yep! This was all one big farm, but a couple of generations back a pair of brothers had a falling out. One of ’em got the old house, and the other got all the usable land. I don’t know why he built his house so close to the other. Convenient to the power lines, maybe. Or maybe just spite.”

“Great. The old guys still live here?”

“No. Your house has been empty a while.” They walked across the gravel toward the front porch. “I think a grandson’s living in the other place.”

“I was really hoping for no neighbors at all.”

Steve huffed impatiently as he worked at unlocking the front door. “That’s pretty hard to find, Dylan. Unless you want to really go back to nature. Come on. This is hardly an urban jungle here. Why are you being so antisocial, anyway?”

The Realtor had been trying for days to figure out why Dylan wanted to live in the sticks, and Dylan had given evasive answers about needing peace and quiet to work. Dylan wondered if Steve was starting to suspect that he was running a criminal enterprise of some kind. Growing pot, maybe. Or serial killing. Dylan made a face; that last guess wouldn’t be so far from the truth.

But his mood lifted as they entered the house. Yeah, peeling wallpaper and hideous shag carpet, but the molding was original and miraculously unpainted, the ceilings were high, two of the rooms had huge fireplaces, and the windowpanes were slightly wavy old glass. The kitchen was cramped and a hideous mixture of ’50s and ’70s décor, but it would be easy to gut it and tear out the wall shared with the old dining room. That would still leave a living room downstairs, a bedroom he could convert to an office, and a half bath.

The upper floor had four bedrooms and two full baths. He’d probably combine two of the bedrooms into one and expand the master bathroom, and he’d have the enormous claw-foot tub re-surfaced. He could tuck in a window seat nicely along the south wall, where there was a view down a thickly overgrown hillside. The carpet was even more awful upstairs than down, but when he tugged a corner free, his suspicions were confirmed: decent hardwood underneath.

A narrow door in the hallway concealed a flight of stairs leading to the attic. Nothing up there but hints of mice and bats, barely any insulation at all, but there was no water damage, and the roof joists looked solid.

“Whaddaya think?” Steve asked, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

Dylan grunted noncommittally. “It’s in pretty rough shape.”

“Not really. Okay, yeah, it needs… cosmetic work. But it got rewired about ten years ago, and there’s a new furnace.” He patted a wall. “Good bones.”

Dylan was already wondering how hard it would be to wolf-proof a bedroom or maybe install a solid cage somewhere. But he pretended to be skeptical, poking at the chimney bricks and peering at a windowsill. Then he turned back to Steve. “Let me see the heating and electrical.”

Those turned out to be in the basement. It was a big basement, cool and dry, with another half bath tucked behind an area that must have once been a workshop. Tool shapes were still outlined on a wall-mounted pegboard. Another area was walled off and lined with shelves. It had probably once been used to store canned goods and the like, but with a heavily reinforced door it would serve pretty well as werewolf containment. There was even a tiny rectangle of window, too small and high for escape but adequate for a little welcome daylight the morning after.

The furnace needed cleaning but was otherwise in good shape, and the circuit breakers looked fine. The foundation looked solid too.

By the time they went outside to walk the property, Dylan’s heart was racing with excitement. But he tried to play it cool, stepping slowly around a leafless blackberry bramble as they made their way down a narrow dirt path. Even this early in the season, wildflowers were beginning to bloom. Hawks circled overhead, dark against the gray sky, and a jay called hoarsely from the poplar stand.

Steve’s spiffy shoes were getting muddy. “I guess you could bring in a Caterpillar and clear all this out,” he said, waving his arms vaguely.

“Why bother? Not like I’m gonna grow veggies or anything.” Dylan smiled evilly. “Besides, think of all the stuff you could hide in this jungle.”

The Realtor gave him an uncertain look, then seemed to decide that Dylan was joking—probably. But it was Dylan who led them down the hill to a pond that had been formed by a low earthen dam. Most of the pond bank was crowded with trees and ferns and was pretty inaccessible to humans, but something low and four-legged could likely make its way down there, maybe to slink around in search of creatures who came for a drink.

Steve said, “It’s big enough for a little boat, if you could get one down here. Kayak maybe.”

“You think there’s any fish?”

“Dunno. Maybe.”

After several minutes, they hiked uphill to explore the rest of the property. It was hard to form a clear picture due to the uneven topography, but Dylan figured that the parcel was roughly pie-shaped, with the house at the pointy end near the road, forest along one side and at the back, and the poplars and brother’s fields along the remaining side. The over-tall Christmas trees were there too, with the underbrush almost masking the evenly spaced rows.

“I wonder if there’s much wildlife,” Dylan said as nonchalantly as possible.

“Oh, I’m sure there is. Deer and coyotes for sure. Elk? I dunno—maybe even bears. And probably water things, like beavers or otters.”

I wonder what beaver tastes like, Dylan thought, and barely managed to stifle a laugh. Maybe he made a funny face, though, because Steve gave him another worried look.

There were a few outbuildings to inspect: a newer structure that could be used as a garage or small barn, a small pump house for the well, and a half-collapsed chicken coop. Dylan nodded at them all and wondered whether it was annoying to eat through feathers.

“So whaddaya think?” Steve asked as they returned to the porch. He was grinning again, maybe because for once Dylan hadn’t given him a flat-out no.

But Dylan scratched his neck thoughtfully. “I don’t know. The house needs all that work, and it’s more square footage than I need.”

“Maybe you’ll get a roommate one of these days,” Steven replied with a slight eyebrow waggle.

“Doubt it.”

Steve deflated only a little. It was clear that he smelled a commission in the air. “Well, close off the rooms you don’t need. Or you could find uses for ’em. Home gym, maybe. Media room. Hobby room? Maybe a man cave.”

Dylan rolled his eyes. “Who needs a man cave when he’s got the whole place to himself?”

Another eyebrow waggle with a leer added in. “Playroom?”

Dylan snorted. The truth was he wanted this place, more than he’d wanted anything in a long time. But he’d also learned—in life and in love—that wanting led to disappointment, so he tried to dampen his own enthusiasm.

“You know what else?” Steve asked. “This place is a steal. The family just wants to get rid of it. They’re tired of paying taxes on it, I guess. It’s too far off the beaten path to turn into a B&B, land’s no good for a hobby farm, and it’s been on the market a while. They’re asking four fifty, but I bet you could get it for under four.”

That was within Dylan’s budget, even figuring in the substantial amount he would have to put into remodeling the house. And he’d probably have to trade in the Prius for a pickup.

Up until this point he’d been considering the move to the country as a grim necessity, but it suddenly occurred to him that he might be happy out here—or some facsimile of happy. For the first time ever his blueprints would be for him. He could make his space personal, truly his. He could make it a home.

“I’m still not too sure about the neighbor,” he said. “That house is pretty close.”

“Yeah, but the trees are in between.”

“What about in winter?”

“They’re just starting to leaf out now, and you can barely see the place.”

“But from upstairs?”

Steve sighed melodramatically. “Why don’t you go up and take another look? I’ll wait down here. I got a couple calls to make.” He held up his Blackberry with a smile. “See? I even get four bars.”

Dylan walked back up the stairs, noting some squeaking treads and a loose banister along the way. The stairs took a turn halfway up, and the landing was roomy enough for a nice built-in bookcase with glass doors.

The best view of the neighboring property was from the smallest bedroom, a space with faded yellow walls and a hideous flowery wallpaper border at chair-rail height. The large window was unencumbered by any kind of curtains, although there were small holes in the window frame where a rod had once been attached. Grubby fingerprints marred the paint next to the window, as if someone had spent a lot of time leaning there.

Now it was Dylan’s turn to lean. Steve was right: even with the poplars barely leafed out, the branches obscured most of the house next door. But there was a gap in the trees—almost as if several of them had been removed—and through that space he could see the neighbor’s back porch. Dylan recognized that he was using the term loosely. Unstained wood set on cinderblocks wasn’t his usual definition of “porch.” As far as he could tell, the primary outdoor décor consisted of piles of beer cans, rows of beer bottles, and two or three pots containing bare sticks that might once have been plants. There was also an ancient, warped metal-and-plastic lawn chair, a few buckets of unknown purpose, and an upturned wooden picnic table.

Nothing like a boutique hotel.

Dylan spent several minutes at the window, thinking about the risks. Steve was right—he wasn’t going to find a home more isolated than this one, not unless he planned to cut his ties with the rest of the world. Although his social calendar was rather paltry, he wasn’t ready to withdraw completely. If he bought this house a risk would remain. But hopefully the slob next door would be too drunk to venture outside at night.

Christ, he really, really wanted this house.

As he hovered uncertainly, his eyes caught a flash of movement. At first he thought it might be a bird or squirrel in the poplars, but then a human being came into view. A male human being—his gender pretty clear since he was wearing nothing but a tight green T-shirt. He had a cigarette in one hand. As Dylan watched, the man padded to the edge of the porch, stuck the cigarette in his mouth, took his dick in his other hand, and pissed into a thicket of weeds. He seemed to stand there forever, smoking and spraying, his eyes focused on nothing in particular.

And then, just as Dylan was becoming convinced the guy had a ten-gallon bladder, the man glanced up at Dylan’s window. His mouth dropped open, and his cigarette tumbled to the ground. The last driblets of piss landed on his bare feet. He spun and marched back into the house. Dylan was too far away and at the wrong angle to be sure, but it looked like the neighbor had a spectacularly nice ass.

BY THE time Dylan returned to the Honda, Steve had finished his phone calls and was leaning against the driver’s side door, staring off to the east. “I bet you can see Mount Hood from here on a clear day,” Steve said.

“Terrific.”

“So, what do you think?”

“It… it has potential.”

An enormous grin lit up Steve’s face. “I said you were gonna love this place!”

“I wouldn’t call it love. But I guess I’m interested.”

“Not even a crush?”

Dylan had to admit, Steve was kind of annoyingly adorable, like a golden retriever puppy who kept plopping a soggy tennis ball in your lap. “Maybe,” he admitted.

Steve just about rubbed his hands in glee. He opened his mouth to say something—probably to ask what kind of offer Dylan would make—but then something behind Dylan caught his attention. Dylan turned to see the next-door neighbor approaching them.

He’d put pants on. Tight, faded jeans that emphasized his muscular build. At ground level Dylan had a much better view of the guy. He was probably a little short of thirty, with too-long dark hair falling over his square, handsome face. His skin was tan, and he had a sort of rolling gait like a cowboy. He didn’t seem to be cold even though he wasn’t wearing a jacket, and his feet were clad in ancient, holey sneakers. As he drew closer, Dylan saw that the man was a few inches shorter than his own shade-under-six-feet and that his eyes were a clear and startling blue.

“You scared the hell out of me,” the man said by way of greeting.

“I was just looking at the house,” replied Dylan with a frown.

But the man grinned. “I know. But for a second there I thought you were the old man.” He pointed in the general direction of the window where Dylan had been standing. “He used to stand there for hours, just starin’.”

“And that’s why you wander outside naked?”

Steve goggled a little at that news, but the neighbor’s smile didn’t fade. “Old man’s been dead for years, dude. I thought you were a ghost.”

Wrong monster, Dylan thought.

There was a short, slightly awkward silence as the man and Dylan sized each other up. The man was no doubt taking in Dylan’s soul patch and Art Not War T-shirt, while Dylan stared at the way the guy’s John Deere tee stretched in interesting ways. The man’s smile morphed into an amused smirk, and he stuck out a grease-stained hand. “Chris Nock.”

“Dylan Warner,” he replied, trying for as firm a handshake as possible.

“Bob or Thomas? I bet your parents are old-school hippies.”

Dylan was a little surprised that Nock had heard of the poet. “My parents are dead.”

The arrogant smile faded a little and Nock shrugged. “Sorry, dude. Mine too.”

Dylan didn’t think they were going to bond much over that, but in any case Steve chose that moment to position himself between them as if he were guarding Dylan. “Mr. Warner’s considering purchasing this property,” he said, sounding so prissy even Dylan rolled his eyes. “But he has some concerns over the proximity of your… place.”

Nock’s eyes stayed on Dylan. “You some kind of hipster hermit or something?”

“Something like that,” Dylan replied.

“No problem. I’ll stay out of your hair. I’ll probably even keep my clothes on when I’m outside.”

Dylan nodded slightly, hoping the guy didn’t notice his flushed face.

Nock seemed to be waiting for another response, but when Dylan remained silent, the man shrugged again. “Well, good luck with it, man. It’d be nice to have someone living in the old heap, even if he’d rather play Peeping Tom than have a neighborly chat.” He gave Dylan one more half smile, still ignoring Steve completely, then turned and walked back to his house.

“He doesn’t seem too bad,” Steve said when Nock was out of earshot. “Kind of rustic, maybe, but what do you expect out here?”

Dylan chewed on his lip for a while, looking at the vacant house. He could picture himself on the porch on a summer day. He’d have a bottle of beer near at hand, droplets condensing on the glass and rolling down, the Dandy Warhols or maybe even Pink Martini playing softly on his iPod, a set of brilliant architectural plans on his laptop. And he’d know that, even if he was due to change that night, he didn’t have to worry about hurrying to his self-made prison. When the sun set he could simply shed his clothes and his human form and finally give in to the urges that had been gnawing at him for so long.

The Realtor must have been pretty practiced at his art, because he knew enough to keep his mouth shut while Dylan daydreamed. When Dylan finally opened the car door and folded into the passenger seat, Steve climbed behind the wheel. “So?” Steve asked.

“You think they’ll go for three eighty-five?”

Chapter 3

“SO YOU’RE really serious about this thing,” Matty said, stealing a french fry off Dylan’s plate.

“I better be. We close next week, and I’ve already got a buyer lined up for my place in town.”

She sat back in her seat with a frown. “I don’t get it. I thought we made good roomies.”

“I liked sharing an office with you, Matt. It’s not you, it’s me.”

“Oh God. That’s exactly what my last three boyfriends said when they dumped me. Is it in the Y-Chromosome User’s Manual or something?”

He grinned. “On page five. But, you know, don’t tell anyone I told you.”

She rolled her eyes, and then they were both distracted as a hunk in an expensive suit brushed past their table. The guy turned and eyed Dylan briefly before moving on to the restaurant’s exit, and Matty huffed melodramatically. “Jeez, Dylan. They practically throw themselves at your feet.”

He pushed down his sudden longing and, focusing, took a bite of his cheesesteak sandwich.

“So come on,” she said. “Why the change of scenery? I never really pictured you as the back-to-nature type.” Dylan had to muffle a snort with another mouthful of food and hoped she’d drop the subject, but she speared a cherry tomato and then pointed her fork at him. “Spill.”

“I just… I need something different. Somewhere different.” Which wasn’t a lie, and if she assumed he needed peace and quiet to court his muse or to get his head on straight, well, that wasn’t his fault. “It’s not like I’m going to Mars or anything—I’ll still be in the office once a week.”

“Won’t be the same. They’re probably gonna make me share with Brian now.”

Dylan smiled cruelly. “Then I hope you’re ready to cultivate an avid interest in the Trailblazers.”

She made a momentary sour face but then pointed her fork again, this time at a pair of forty-something men a few tables over. “And how are you gonna meet anyone if you’re spending all your time in Podunk? They don’t have gay bars in the wilderness.”

“First off, meeting someone isn’t my first priority. Second, get with the times—they’ve been allowing queers in Podunk since 1994. As long as we don’t scare the livestock. And third, those two gentlemen are straight.”

“So you have perfectly honed gaydar.”

“I do.” He’d always had a pretty good idea of which men were into men, even though until a couple of years ago very few of them had been into him. Not until he met Andy. But that wasn’t a line of thought he wanted to pursue just then, so he finished off his sandwich and snagged the last fry before Matty could get it.

“You know,” Matty said, smiling slyly, “Steve thinks you’re pretty cute.”

“Are we back in junior high now?”

She kicked at his shin. “He does.”

“He’s a nice guy. But he’s not really my type, and anyway, I’m not in the market. So please don’t encourage him. Really, Matty. Life’s not all about people lined up in happy little pairs like… like Noah’s ark. I’m good, okay?”

“Fine. Just don’t be a stranger.”

He grinned at her. “No stranger than usual.”

DYLAN’S FURNITURE was more suited for an upscale contemporary home than a farmhouse, and it would only get in the way while he was renovating the new place, so he sold most of it on craigslist. He did keep a few things, though, like his bed and dresser and the budget drafting table he’d had since college. All it took was a single early-morning trip in a small rented U-Haul to schlep his stuff. Rick came along and helped him move in.

“I’m getting old,” Rick said with a groan and a stretch after they’d set the mattress in place.

Dylan kicked a cardboard box full of clothing into the corner. “Well, I appreciate the help, old man.”

Together they walked back through the house into the kitchen, where rooster wallpaper presided over cracked Formica and worn green vinyl flooring. “I’m gonna start in here,” Dylan announced. “Gut it, knock down the wall, start from scratch. I’m thinking hickory cabinets, granite counters, a nice big island in the middle.”

“Are you gonna turn all Martha Stewart on us, Dyldo?”

“Nah. Still going to eat a lot of frozen pizza. But I’ll look stylish while I do.”

Rick looked up at the stained ceiling, then over at a pile of mouse droppings where the refrigerator used to be. “It’s not a solo job. You know guys willing to come all the way out here?”

Dylan had thought about that quite a bit, and it sort of worried him, but he didn’t want to admit that. “I talked to a couple of contractors, but I’d rather do it myself. Those guys drag everything out, and they always go way over the estimates.”

“Just don’t expect me to be swinging hammers for you, kid. I’ve been working a lot of overtime lately, and Kay’s still got my dick on call. Too bad the two of you can’t synchronize your cycles or something.”

Dylan flipped him the bird and Rick smirked, but then his face grew serious. “Have you rigged up any… containment yet?”

“Not yet. I have a few days to go, and it won’t take long. Anyway, I think things are pretty safe out here.”

“Okay. But the guy next door?”

“Haven’t seen him. He probably spends his nights inside watching NASCAR.”

They laughed, and Rick hugged Dylan. That would once have been overwhelming, because Rick was a big guy and Dylan used to be pretty scrawny. But he had put on a lot of mass since he was bitten. He didn’t look like one of those overbuilt guys who spent their lives in the gym—he didn’t even have the kind of impressive build that Chris Nock sported—but he was strong. One guy said he was built like a pro swimmer, and maybe it was just a creative pick-up line, but maybe not. In any case, when it came to competitive fraternal hugging, he could now give better than he got, and it was Rick who was left slightly breathless and rubbing his biceps.

On the return trip, Dylan took Rick home, and Kay greeted Dylan with a potted orchid and a batch of cupcakes. “Housewarming gifts!” she said and kissed his cheek. He ended up staying for lunch, then turned in the rental truck and bought a dorm-sized fridge at Costco to tide him over until the kitchen reno was complete. It was drizzling by the time he reached Scappoose, and he stopped at Fred Meyer for basic groceries, emergency candles, and a few other supplies.

By the time he finally parked in front of his new house, the mist had intensified to a shower. He ran his groceries inside, lugged in and set up the fridge, and put the cold stuff away. He was exhausted, sore, and a little overwhelmed by the size of the project that lay ahead of him, but he also felt more at peace than he had in ages.

He ended up eating three of Kay’s cupcakes for dinner. They were good. As miserable as the whole werewolf situation was, at least he now had a metabolism to be envied. He decided to wash the sweets down with a beer, so he snagged a bottle from the fridge and spent a good fifteen minutes swearing steadily as he tried to find his bottle opener. When he finally tracked the damn thing down—tucked into his one and only oven mitt—he popped the top and wandered out onto the porch to drink and watch the rain.

When a figure came slogging through the puddles in his direction, Dylan felt an odd combination of hesitation and excitement. “Hey,” Chris Nock said as he climbed the front stairs, a can of Budweiser in each hand. “I brought you a brew, but looks like you have your own.” His T-shirt—a plain white one this time—was plastered to his body and nearly transparent, highlighting his broad chest and a pair of distractingly erect nipples. His hair was dripping onto his face.

“I was just finishing this one.” Dylan set the empty bottle near the door—he had no intention to copy his neighbor’s outdoor decorating scheme—and took the offered can. “Thanks.”

“So it’s okay if I actually show my face for a few minutes, huh? Long enough to play Welcome Wagon. I’m wearin’ pants.” He had this sarcastic little curve to his mouth that Dylan wanted to punch. Or perhaps kiss.

“I wasn’t trying to be rude last time. I’m sorry.”

“I get it. You like your privacy.”

Dylan nodded and sipped at the Bud. He had to turn his head away when Chris tucked damp hair behind one ear. “Yeah,” Dylan said. “It’s pretty much why I moved out here.”

“You mean you’re not plannin’ to run an organic winery or something? Grow heirloom tomatoes and quinoa? Grind your own wheat for bread?”

“I’m an architect.” Dylan wasn’t sure why he’d shared that information. It wasn’t really any of this guy’s business.

Chris chuckled. “Don’t got a whole lotta those in the neighborhood.”

They stood side by side for several minutes, staring out into the darkness. Chris wasn’t quite close enough to touch, but Dylan could still feel him there, his proximity making the hairs on Dylan’s arms stand up as if he were in an electric field. Dylan could smell him as well—beer and motor oil and cigarettes and a surprising floral scent that was probably shampoo or laundry detergent. The combination smelled rather nice.

Dylan’s neglected cock twitched and considered coming to life.

“Fuck,” Dylan mumbled.

“What? Tired of my company already?” Chris’s smile hadn’t faded.

“No. Sorry. It’s been a long day, and I was thinking about how much I have to do before the place is really livable.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of a dump, ain’t it?”

Dylan scowled at him, but Chris didn’t seem to mean much with his snarky comments. He didn’t seem to easily take offense either. He just kept on grinning and leaned his elbows on the railing. That particular position pushed his ass out in a way that was even more distracting than a wet T-shirt, and Dylan was thankful that the light was too dim for his flush or his half-hard dick to be noticeable.

“You got anyone yet to help you out?” Chris asked.

For a very brief moment Dylan thought Chris was talking about sex. Fortunately, his frontal lobe kicked in before his libido took over, and he realized the discussion was still centered on home improvement. He cleared his throat. “Not yet. I’m sure I can find someone.”

“I used to work in construction, and my rates are reasonable. I won’t even charge you for my commute time.”

The offer took Dylan by surprise, and he had to process it for a minute. “But… won’t you be busy… plowing?”

Chris stood straight and turned to look at him. Christ, that half smile was infuriating! “I didn’t know you were interested in plowing,” he said.

Dylan’s face went redder. “I’m not. But it’s spring and I figured you’d be planting stuff. Or something.”

“Nah.” He jerked his chin in the direction of his property. “I don’t farm it myself. Lease it out to a guy who grows wheat. I just sit back and collect the bucks. Wouldn’t mind a few extra dollars, though. I guarantee you—I’m a handy man.”

Chris Nock was a gorgeous redneck who might or might not have been enjoying subtle double entendres at the faggot’s expense. Dylan should have been kicking him off the porch and tossing his cans of crappy beer after him.

Instead, he heard himself saying, “Okay.”

Chapter 4

DYLAN WAS still trying to decide where to plug in his coffeemaker when there was a pounding at the back door. He opened it, blinking bleary eyes at Chris Nock, who wore a pair of tight faded jeans and an equally tight and faded blue T-shirt. He had a leather tool belt around his waist.

“Mornin’,” Chris drawled, grinning as if there was something amusing about Dylan.

“Um… morning. Come on in.” Dylan stepped back and ran a hand through his uncombed hair.

Chris sauntered in and looked around the kitchen appraisingly. He smirked when he saw Kay’s orchid on the counter, then turned to Dylan. “Where we gonna start?”

“Here, I guess. I wasn’t expecting you quite so early. Hang on while I get the java going.” Dylan took the coffeemaker into his future study and set it atop the mini-fridge. He had to come back into the kitchen to fill the carafe with water, and when he did he found Chris gazing thoughtfully out the windows at the soggy backyard. There was something lonely about the set of those broad shoulders, Dylan thought, and then silently chided himself. He was probably just projecting his own feelings onto his neighbor.

Dylan waited in the study while his coffee brewed, munching on a cupcake and no doubt scattering crumbs for the mice. Then he took his insulated mug and another cupcake back into the kitchen, where Chris was still at the window. “Want breakfast?” Dylan asked, holding the pastry out.

Chris looked down at the cupcake—white paper with red polka dots and pale blue frosting on top—and raised an eyebrow. “I ain’t a ten-year-old girl, dude. I had sausage and eggs already.”

Dylan scowled slightly. “Whatever. There’s joe in the other room if you want it.” Then he set his coffee down and ate the cupcake himself.

The other man didn’t take him up on the half-hearted offer. Instead, he nodded his head at the toolbox Dylan had set in the corner. “You’re payin’ for my time. Wanna get going?”

“Yeah. Fine.”