Page 5 of Guarded by My Gargoyle

“There’s a newsletter,” Eric added helpfully.

“I’m aware of the newsletter.”

“You’re in this one.”

“I’m aware of that too.” It had been sitting in his mailbox when he arrived home earlier that morning and it was one of the reasons he hadn’t slept. Our reclusive gargoyle has finally engaged a landscape professional, it had said in Flora’s chatty little typeface. More on this as it develops. He’d spent way too much time contemplating the many ways that sentence could be interpreted before deciding he didn’t want to know. “Does she have a printer now?”

“She has a printer, a mailing list, and a column at the bottom where people write in.”

“Of course she does.”

“Callan’s in this one too. Callan is furious.”

The leader of Eric’s pack was known for many things, but a sense of humor wasn’t one of them. Garrick couldn’t hold back the laugh, a deep rumble that rolled down the gravel drive, and Eric looked pleased with himself.

“How’d the Charlotte job go?” Eric asked, mercifully changing the subject.

“Finished under budget. Opened two weeks ago. The client wanted glass on three sides of a building that faces due west. I told him he was constructing a greenhouse for people. He didn’t listen.”

“And now?”

“Now he’s complaining about the cooling costs.” He allowed himself the smallest smile. “I quoted him for the retrofit.”

Eric laughed this time. It was a good sound, one Garrick used to hear in this house decades ago, back when the house had still been a house and not a mausoleum his father wandered through with the curtains drawn.

“How long are you staying this time?” Eric added.

Garrick looked at him and Eric looked back, his expression perfectly blank.

“Six weeks. Maybe longer.”

“And then?”

“They want me in Atlanta for most of the winter.”

“Do you want to be in Atlanta for most of the winter?”

“The work’s where the work is.”

“The work’s wherever you point it, Garrick. You own the company.”

He finished the cold coffee and set the mug beside him. Stonehaven Construction had projects in four states, several of which needed more attention than the managers overseeing them wanted to admit. There was always somewhere he could be useful. A problem that needed solving. A schedule that had slipped. A client who had ignored his advice and was now surprised by the consequences.

“You’ve been back for what? Two years now?” Eric added. “You’re here maybe half the time.”

He looked out across the drive instead of answering. Beyond the drive, the grounds rolled away in an undisciplined tangle of late-summer green. He’d spent almost two years restoring the house his father had allowed to decay and almost two years finding reasons not to stay in it for too long.

It was easier to leave.

Easier to drive out before dawn with a schedule in his head and a problem waiting at the other end. Easier to stand on a construction site and know exactly what needed doing and in what order than to sit in the study at night listening to a house that was too big and too quiet and too full of the boy who had grown up believing his family would always fill it.

In spite of the delays, the house was nearly finished now. He’d done it with his own money and, whenever he was home, his own hands. He’d fixed everything money and mortar could fix. The house was still empty.

Eric’s gaze followed his towards one of the overgrown terraces south of the house. “There was a rose garden down there.”

“I remember.”

“It was amazing when it bloomed. My mother used to slow the car down so she could smell it.”