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Vivian
Vivian Breckonly had room for one man in her life—and he was currently missing.
Vi set her wrench on the tool chest at the bottom of the stairs and strode up them and through the apartment over her garage one more time.
“Tyler?” Nothing came back but her own voice. “I am going to kill that boy. That’s the only way I’ll be able to stop worrying that someone else has killed him.”
The only emotion bigger than how frustrated he often left her was how much she loved him.
A quick scan of their rooms told her he’d been home and had headed back out. Tyler was nine-going-on-twenty. She didn’t care how many times they had to have the conversation. She’d drill it into his head he didn’t have free run of Starlight Harbor if it was the last thing she did. His safety was the number one purpose in her life and a huge part of why she’d moved back to a place that had turned its back on her years ago.
Not just turned its back, but had out-and-out stood against her in some cases.
It wasn’t like they lived in a bad section of a shady neighborhood in a huge, anonymous city. She could probably list not only the names but the phone numbers of every person he could have run into since baseball camp got out. But she’d been in those rough neighborhoods, and she knew there was just as much of a chance of bad things happening in sunny seaside towns as in places with bad reputations.
She was just about to call the rec center when she heard the buzz of a table saw and knew exactly where her son was.
Vi pulled the apartment door shut behind her with something stronger than the soft snick of a mother in complete control of her patience. She headed down the stairs, dropped theClosedsign on the office door, and tried not to storm through the shared area between her garage and the custom woodworking shop across the U-shaped space between their connected buildings.
Vi was on her fifth round of counting to ten before she pushed the door open, knowing what she’d find.
Inside, the table saw roared to life again, and she slowed her steps, afraid to accidentally cause her little man to chop his fingers off.
When she peeked around the corner, she saw Tyler standing on a small stool off to the side, a wooden horse and a lot of space between him and the Saw of Death. He leaned forward, trying to watch every move, every cut as Cam worked his magic.
The saw slowed and died again.
Cam slid the protective earplugs out of his ears and motioned for Tyler to remove the huge, super-duty earmuff-looking things that covered most of his head.
“Now, see how I held that? That’s the first and most important thing. Safety.”
“I thought it was measure twice, cut once.” Her son’s voice sounded even smaller after the deep timbre of Cam’s rumbling directions.
Cam laughed and pushed his protective eye gear up and looked Tyler straight in the eye. “Safety first, always. That’s why you’re not allowed in here or your mom’s shop by yourself.”
If Vi wasn’t so stinking mad her son was exactly where he wasn’t supposed to be—and with Camden Ross to boot—she’d be feeling pretty darn thankful to hear her own message being echoed back from another adult.
Her son mumbled something she was pretty sure would have had her saying “Excuse me?” in the patented Mom Voice.
“It isn’t about trusting you,” Cam went on patiently. “It’s about training and the fact that all the tools both your mom and I use are fitted to adults, not smaller people. You’ll grow into them.”
Cam was handling the situation exactly right which made Vi want to roll her eyes for reasons she wasn’t ready to discuss even with herself.
The fact Cam was handlinganything—right or not—was just ticking her off. Now to figure out, while there were no sharp, pointy things being powered by electrical charges, exactly who she was more annoyed with.
“There you are.” Vi stepped into the room and stared her son down, forcing herself not to let her gaze drift to her neighbor. “I’m confused. This isn’t our apartment or the rec center, so this absolutely isn’t where you were supposed to be.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Cam’s head whip from her back to her son, a small frown on his face. He opened his mouth, then shut it.
Wise man.
Her son wasn’t as smart.
“You said to come straight home from camp. And I did.” It was funny how small his voice still sounded coming out of a body that was growing so quickly. She could have sworn those shorts were longer on him just last week.
No wonder so much of her budget went to food.
