He didn’t miss her surprised blink. She was hurting for money, no doubt. “Okay,” she said, a slight squeak in her voice. “That’ll be fifteen hundred. Is that okay?”
He frowned as he quickly did the math in his head. “That’s only a hundred-dollar deposit. That’s not very much.”
“I could drop the last month requirement?”
Bless her heart, she wasn’t used to dealing with tenants. From the looks of the furniture, and her lack of makeup, she appeared to be a down-home girl, not one of the skinny and looks-obsessed women he’d grown to hate dealing with while undercover in Miami.
One of the vacuous kinds of women Allan was notorious for dating.
“We’ll pay twenty-one hundred,” Allan said, surprising Ben. “A month’s worth for the deposit is standard. And we’ll be paying cash every month, if that’s all right with you.”
Ben breathed a silent sigh of relief that his brother had latched on to the same wavelength he had.
She nodded, but looked a little confused, in addition to overwhelmed. “May I ask what you do for a living?”
“He’s a struggling artist,” Ben said, tipping his head toward Allan. “He just quit his job at an insurance firm. I’m working on starting my own Internet consulting firm.” He held out a hand. “I’m Ken. Ken Dougherty. This is my cousin, Charles Stackhouse.” When she slipped her hand into his to shake with him, he immediately lightened up on his grip when he noticed her wince. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
He let go and she pulled her hand back. “No, it’s okay,” she said as she gingerly cradled her hands. “I’ve got arthritis and fibromyalgia. My hands almost always hurt. Especially this time of year.”
The older man had climbed the stairs and caught her last statement. “Did you take your medicine, young lady?”
Ben successfully stifled his laugh. From the man’s tone of voice, he definitely considered himself her father.
The woman’s face reddened. “No, not yet, Grover. I took it this morning. I can’t take another one for an hour yet.”
Grover nodded. “Make sure you do.” He pointed at them. “You boys thinking about renting the apartment?”
They both nodded.
“Good. Then I expect you to help me keep an eye on her. She’s stubborn.”
“I’m sorry,” Ben said to the woman. “What was your first name again?”
“LacieBelle. LacieBelle Addams. But you can call me Libbie.”
* * * *
As much as she loved Grover, Libbie wanted to smack him. Okay, so the cousins were gay. Big whoop. They were still handsome, and now she felt like a scolded schoolgirl in front of them.
“Did you say Mandaline sent you?” she asked. “From Many Blessings?”
The men nodded. The dark-haired cousin, Ken, said, “I’m guessing you mean the lady from the coffeeshop?”
“Yeah.”
Maybe there’s something to Mandaline’s magic after all.
She couldn’t get over how alike they looked, including their beautiful blue eyes.
Charles said, “She seemed really nice.”
“She is. They buy their pastries from me.” She realized they both carried small paper bags bearing the store’s logo.
Ken smiled, turning his stern expression into a handsomely playful sight. “We hadn’t got that far yet,” he said, holding up the bag. “But we bought cheese danishes.”
“Well come on in here. You can eat at the counter. We’re still moving the furniture and stuff around.” She led them into the apartment. “Charles, since you’re an artist, you might like that this apartment gets really nice light during the day and afternoon.” She pointed to two large windows against the living room wall. “That’s another reason I decided to move to the other apartment. It’s darker later in the day. I’m an early riser and go to bed early. Occupational hazard of owning a bakery. Plus I didn’t need the second bedroom.”
The men set their snacks down on the counter and followed her to the bedrooms. Both were empty.
Ken said, “I saw the mattresses and box springs.”
Still shrouded in plastic storage bags, the twin bed sets leaned against the wall out in the hallway.
“Those come with the apartment. I don’t have much in the way of extra towels and bedding,” she said. “That’s still boxed up. I’ll need to find it and get it all washed for you. It’s been packed for a while. But the mattresses and box springs for the beds are brand new. My parents had put them in their guest room a few months before…” She cut herself off and quickly continued. “They’re several years old, but they’ve never been slept on.”
“That’s okay,” Charles assured her. “We can pick some bedding and towels up somewhere.” He looked at his cousin. “I like it. Let’s do it.”
She fought the urge to hold her breath while Ken slowly nodded. “I’m in.” He pulled out his wallet and counted out fifties. “We’ll sign the lease for six months, if that’s okay? And then possibly extend it after that. We don’t know what our plans will be by then.”
Her heart fluttered. Six months wasn’t that long, but it would get her through snowbird season and take some financial pressure off her. “And I’m willing to take some off the rent every month if you wanted to help out downstairs. I can always use another set of hands in the bakery.”
“I don’t know anything about baking,” Ken said, “but Charles is pretty good in the kitchen. Let’s pay you for this right now, and we can negotiate the rest later. Seven hundred a month is more than a fair price.” He offered her another smile that not only set her stomach fluttering, but warmed up places lower in her body that hadn’t felt like that in years.
“Great. I’ll go get the lease.” She hurried downstairs to her office, to where she’d printed off a generic lease form for Florida rentals.
So what if they’re gay?
Her immediate problems were solved.
Ben waited until she was out of earshot. He kept his voice low. “This is perfect.”
“She’s cute.”
Ben glared at Allan and reached for his cheese danish. “Don’t even. We’ve talked about this. It wouldn’t be fair to her. That’s why we’re telling folks we’re gay, remember?”
“Dude, you have to admit she’s a sweetie. She’s tripping all over herself.”
He found his hand fisting the front of Allan’s shirt collar before he realized what he was doing. “
No
. We will not put someone else at risk. I’ve seen what those fuckers do to people. Especially what they can do to the women of men who cross them.”
Allan stared at him. “Let me go,” he said, his tone strained, but calm.
Ben let out a breath and released him. “Sorry.”
Allan straightened his shirt. “One of the executive assistants in my office has fibromyalgia. Some days, she can barely function. I don’t have a problem helping Libbie out in the bakery if she needs it. And you can’t dictate who I can and can’t be friends with.”
“Friends, fine. No problem. But don’t go dragging an innocent woman into our crap. I won’t put anyone else at risk.” He bit into his danish. As he chewed he struggled not to moan. It was, no lying, the best pastry he’d ever had. And he’d consumed more than his fair share during stakeouts while working his way up to detective.
He glanced at Allan, who bit into his. His eyes widened. “Fuck, this is great!”
Ben nodded as he devoured his. “Yeah.”
Libbie returned a few minutes later with the papers and a pen. “So where are you from?”
“Omaha,” Ben said, sticking to their story. “Born and raised there.”
“Wow. That’s a long way to move, huh?”
“We’re tired of the winters,” Allan said. “Been there all our lives.”
“What made you pick Brooksville?”
Ben started filling out the forms. The PO Box address he listed in Omaha actually was a generic drop-box used by the DEA office out there for undercover operations. “We stopped for the night over at I-75 and decided to explore before we got to Tampa. I can work from anywhere I have Internet.” He looked at Allan. “So can he. We sold everything, cashed out, and said good-bye to cold-ass winters and judgmental family.”
“You’ll like it here,” she said. “Small town, very quiet.”
“And great coffee,” Allan added as he sipped his.
“Everyone loves Many Blessings,” she said. Her expression grew wistful. “We all miss Julie, the former owner. She was such a sweetheart. She was a good friend. We knew each other growing up.” She let out a sad-sounding sigh. “It was especially hard on Mandaline. She was even closer to Julie than I was.”
“What happened to her?” Ben asked, his senses on alert at her tone.
“You remember that horror writer, Stephen Corey?”
Allan frowned. “The novelist? Didn’t he die a few months ago?”
She nodded. “He killed Julie before he died. He went crazy.” She shuddered. “Actually, if you’re staying at I-75, you’re not far from where it happened. They lived in the Croom Motorcycle area there at the northeast corner of 75 and 50.”
Ben remembered reading about that case in the news. It had made national headlines due to the brutality of the crime, as well as the fame of the guy. Corey didn’t just murder the woman. He raped her first, before almost killing his wife and friend in the rampage. The tabloids especially had gone nuts over the story. Autopsy revealed the guy was a severe alcoholic as well.
“That kind of stuff isn’t normal around here,” Libbie said. “It’s usually very quiet.”
Ben finished filling out the lease, signed it, and handed it to Allan to sign. “Here you go,
Charles
.”
Allan shot him a glare, but signed it correctly.
While he did that, Ben said, “We’ll run over to the hotel and get checked out. Then we’ll come back and help you all finish up with the moving, if that’s okay?”
“Oh, sure. I appreciate that. I’m sorry it’s not ready right now.”
“We don’t mind,” Allan assured her. “We’re just glad to find such a nice place so quickly.”
She took them on a quick tour of the rest of the building before handing them a set of keys. “Those are for your apartment and the back door over there.” She pointed down the hallway to the door to the stairs where they’d come in from the outside. “You can park in back behind the building. There’s only room for one more car in the carport. I usually park in front of the door.”
“We only have one truck,” Ben said.
“Oh, okay. There’s a washer and dryer downstairs, in the utility room. The key is the same for the back door.” She led them outside and introduced them to everyone.
Ben was glad to see his instincts were still sharp. Grover turned out to be the father, or father-in-law, of most of the others.
Grover smiled as he shook hands with them. “Welcome to the family, guys. We have plenty of food left, if you’d like some.”
Allan reached for a plate before Ben could stop him.
What the hell, why not? Can’t hurt to be friendly.
“Thanks, Grover,” Ben said. “We appreciate it.”
By nine o’clock that night, the moving had been completed, the men had taken a quick trip to the store for sheets, pillows, towels, and groceries, and they were settled in for the night. Before Grover had left for the day, he’d slipped Ben a piece of paper with his name and several phone numbers written on it.
“You call me if she has trouble,” he told Ben. “Girl’s too damn stubborn to ask for help when she needs it the most. I’m counting on you two to help me keep an eye on her when I can’t be here.”
Libbie had gone to bed nearly two hours earlier, her face pinched with pain as she bid the men good-night.
I wish I could make her feel better.
Ben shoved the wistful thought back into its cage again and slammed the door shut. He really liked Libbie and could tell Allan did, too. That was dangerous.
Very dangerous.
It wouldn’t do to fall for her. From the way she’d acted that afternoon, Ben could tell she’d quickly grown comfortable around them.
It would be too damn easy for him to fall for her.
You’re just lonely. Don’t be a dick and hurt her. Keep your distance.
Later, as he collapsed into bed, alone, after taking a shower, he couldn’t help but think about her sweet green eyes.
* * * *
Libbie slowly sank into the deep tub of hot water with a relieved groan. Galileo, still disgruntled by the upheaval, strolled into the bathroom and put his front feet up on the tub’s edge.
“Mwrao.”
She closed her eyes and put her head back against the tub pillow. “Stuff it, buddy. This is Mommy’s time.”
Everything hurt. Hurt worse than it had in a long time.
At least something makes my hands seem to feel better.
She smiled at the irony. Tonight, her total pain level was through the roof, meaning her hands were the least of her problems.
And now she had some nice man-candy to think about while waiting for sleep to kick in later. Ken and Charles were sweethearts.
Just my luck they’re gay.
Didn’t it figure? The first two decent guys, not to mention hunktacular guys, to cross her path in years, and neither was available.