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“It’s Alex,” I said, blowing out a hard breath before I stood up and offered them each a tight, apologetic smile. “My brother-in-law. If he’s here this early, it means I’m going to have to make him coffee now, too. Excuse me, gentlemen.”
“A damn nice car,” Tony muttered his agreement with Rex as he stood too. “Let’s take this to my porch.”
Alex parked and climbed out, his eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses, but I could see the confused pucker of his brow as he looked between the three of us. I raised my espresso toward him. “Good morning.”
“Morning,” he said, but he sounded almost wary. “What are you guys doing?”
“Networking,” I said, jerking my head toward the house. “Come on in. I have coffee you might actually like.”
Rex grunted at Alex. “He’s a good kid. Don’t be too hard on him.”
I smirked. “You hear that? I’m a good kid.”
Alex inclined his chin at Rex when he passed but waited for both him and Tony to shuffle off the porch with their coffee still in their hands before he spoke again. “I see you’ve made some new friends.”
“They’re connections.”
“Eighty-year-old men are your new connections?” Alex frowned. “Why?”
“They have all the information about this block I could ever need, and Rex is in his early seventies, I’ll have you know. I’m not sure about Tony, though. He could be anywhere between sixty and a hundred and fifty. He just has one of those faces, but he’s a cool guy. Grumpy as hell. I love it.”
“Why not, I suppose.” Alex sighed and pulled his sunglasses off those intensely assessing blue eyes, watching the older men go before he turned back to me. “Can we talk inside?”
“Sure. Come on in.” I pushed the door open and motioned for him to precede me, then gave my new friends a wave before following him inside.
Alicia was in the kitchen, already dressed for work and screwing the top onto her new travel mug. She blinked a few times when she saw him, slightly apprehensive. “Alex? Hi. This is a surprise.”
“Hey, Alicia.” He slid his hands into his pockets, not moving any further than the foyer. “I’m sorry to show up unannounced so early. I needed to have a quick chat with Holden and I thought I’d have a better shot if I came here than if I tried calling. I don’t think I was expecting to find him making friends with geriatrics.”
She chuckled. “He’s keeping his enemies close, is all.”
“Enemies?” Alex frowned deeply, glancing back at me. “It didn’t look like they’re your enemies.”
“She means for the Halloween porch decorating contest,” I explained, walking around him to the kitchen to start fixing us each a cup of coffee. “Mr. Henderson, Rex, is the defending champion.”
“A porch decorating contest?” Alex glanced between Alicia and me. “And you two are… participating?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said immediately. “We’re not only participating. We’re winning.”
Alicia cocked a hip against the counter and sighed, her fingers wrapped around her mug. “Holden is taking it super seriously. I keep telling him to cool it, but he’s got his heart set on receiving the prize.”
“It’s not about the prize,” I argued, winking when I caught her gaze. “It’s about the bragging rights.”
“Has it occurred to you that those bragging rights currently belong to your new best friends?”
I shrugged, pressing a few buttons on the touch screen before sliding two fresh mugs into the slots on the machine. “Sure, but now that we’ve bonded over our mutual love of yelling at errant children, our friendship will survive a shift in the title.”
“They’re not errant.” She rolled her eyes. “They’re just kids from the neighborhood who ride their bikes to school together.”
“Did you see them this morning? They’re totally errant. Reckless as shit. Last I checked, getting to school didn’t require tricks or almost getting hit by a car. You would have yelled at them too.”
“I don’t yell at children,” she said. “I work with them, remember?”
“Yeah, but you still yell at these children when they leave their bikes in the driveway all afternoon.”
“Only when they’re in our way.”
I grinned. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. You do yell at children when it’s warranted, and if you join us for coffee on the porch tomorrow morning, you’ll realize that this is absolutely warranted. Hell, it’s a public safety service.”
