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He hurriedly put on his clothes and yelled a good-bye to Ian as he hit the stairs. After snatching his keys out of the bowl on the small table in the foyer, he opened the front door and squinted when the sun hit his face. It was already around seventy degrees, and today’s forecast had said the temperature would climb into the mid-eighties.
He realized he’d forgotten the thermos of coffee he’d made when he was halfway there, so he stopped for a convenience store cup. He sipped the molten liquid and grimaced, wishing he’d remembered the fancy beans Ian had gotten him addicted to. He was completely spoiled now, and he didn’t feel bad about it in the least.
He was happy. Ridiculously happy. And it had nothing to do with expensive coffee or delicious food.
A massive Dumpster took up his driveway, so he had to park his baby in the street—something he hated doing but luckily, this part of his neighborhood had mostly elderly folks who had their own precious cars and drove at the speed of slugs. There were a lot of them, though, and they always had family around, parking all up and down the narrow street. He patted the roof of his blue Chevelle and hoped it wouldn’t get dinged.
Dread filled him as he stood in his front yard. Luckily, the outside of his house was fine. Brown and beige brick and the small porch and concrete steps had been left alone. All the damage had been done inside when that asshole Jagger and his thugs had vandalized the place.
The amount of destruction still overwhelmed him.
He’d been trying to keep his frustration at how long it had been drawn out from Ian but knew he’d been failing. The investigation and insurance crap had held him back and now, with that out of the way, he’d been hitting the place at least five nights a week when he wasn’t on a job for Shane. He didn’t mind the work, but his relationship was still so new, he had trouble being away from Ian so much.
He preferred being at Rialto with Ian in the evenings. Sharing dinner over the desk in his office had become one of his favorite things. It felt intimate despite the noise of the kitchen just outside the door. Their first kiss—that had blown his mind—had been in that room. The most romantic dinner of his life had been in that room. So yeah, it was a good place.
When he finally went inside, he was hit by the dusty, chalk-like smell of dried drywall patches. He sighed, squared his shoulders, and headed into the kitchen. Jagger’s crew had not only broken cabinets and cracked the countertops, they’d thrown paint onto everything, so the kitchen was a complete disaster. He planned to get all the cabinets out that day and hopefully start on the floor. He’d already had the broken appliances hauled off.
An hour later, just as he started to wonder where Ian was as he looked over the supplies in the basement, he heard voices coming from upstairs.
Voices he knew very well.
Confusion made him frown as he jogged up the stairs and came to a stop at his living room full of men. Ian stood in the front, a huge grin on his face. He held a box of pastries—enough to feed all his damn friends. Who were there. Lucas, Andrei, Snow, and then the last two who were carrying sledgehammers.
Noah and Rowe and sledgehammers?
His eyes flew wide open in alarm.
“Surprise!” Ian said with an expression that looked way too shy after what he’d done to Hollis that morning. He handed Hollis the box of food. “I need to run out and get the thermoses of coffee. I grabbed the one you forgot at home, too.”
Jude stepped through the front door right then, the muscles in his arms flexing as he carried a huge, white cooler. “Got a good place for this?”
“What’s going on?” Hollis asked as Lucas and Andrei wandered into the kitchen. He’d never seen Lucas dressed for grunt work: in faded loose jeans, sneakers, and a thin blue T-shirt that looked like it had been washed hundreds of times. Rowe, also in jeans and a ratty black T-shirt, and carrying that scary sledgehammer, disappeared down the hall. “I thought you guys had some big weekend planned for Memorial Day.”
“We do.” Snow took the cooler from Jude and set it in the corner of the small living room. “We’re helping your ass demo this place.”
“And other things, too,” Ian added. “I mentioned you were working a lot of nights and they decided to help.”
“More like he was whining about his lack of sex life,” Snow drawled.
Ian narrowed his eyes and Snow winked at Hollis.
Hollis shook his head, knowing very well that was bullshit. The doc had a way of stirring the pot sometimes, and Hollis had quickly learned it was better to let things slide on by rather than rise to the bait. Sometimes. Most of the time he took too much pleasure in baiting Snow back.
