him in a dark alley while I was expelling the contents of my stomach all over my shoes, I would forsake him and my happiness because there’s no way in hell my love story is starting out that way.”
Ginny and I exchanged a look.
Ginny dismissed him with a wave of her hand. “I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s true. You’re a petty bitch, after all.”
Roman gasped in mock offense. “How dare you?”
Ginny snickered. “You turned a guy down because he was wearing boat shoes when he asked you to dinner.”
“So?” Roman asked pointedly. “I don’t see anything wrong with having standards.”
“Those aren’t standards,” Ginny said. “That’s just shallow.”
Roman pretended to flick his hair over his shoulder, even though his bleach-blond hair was cut short. “That’s what mediocre people say.”
Ginny stuck her tongue out at him.
I clapped my hands together. “Okay, children. Let’s stay on track, okay? These clients paid big money for this room. We can’t leave it in any other condition than perfect.”
Chapter 3
Peter
The little cabin proved to be a bigger adversary than I’d initially anticipated. There was more than dust to contend with. There were also critters, spiders, broken floorboards, and a leak in the ceiling that needed mending. After seeing to most of the repairs myself, except for the floor, I managed to get in touch with the elderly couple who owned the cabin.
They explained that they hadn’t been back to the island in over six years because of their ailing health, and they admitted they had no intention of coming back.
They offered to sell the cabin to me.
That seemed like a hell of a lot more commitment than I was looking for, so I proposed a different offer that would benefit us both. I would pay a discounted rate in order to cover the out-of-pocket cost for repair materials, and I would do the labor myself.
The wife jumped at the idea. The husband was more standoffish about it and took a night to think about it. I woke to a phone call the next morning telling me to go ahead and fix what I thought needed fixing. They would even things out payment-wise as we moved forward.
I liked the manual labor.
It had been a long time since I worked with my hands and broke out in a sweat like this. My desk job as a web developer had made my fingers soft. The calluses I used to bear when I worked as a young man in construction had long since disappeared, as had the grease stains under my nails from working on old vehicles.
I felt like I was revisiting an old version of myself as I broke floorboards free and pulled nails out of the wood with an old hammer I found in a toolbox from the fifties.
I was working on the last corner of the bad floor, straining on a nail that didn’t want to budge, when a sharp pain flared in my left shoulder. A hiss of pain escaped me and I stumbled back, falling right on my ass, clutching my collarbone.
“Son of a bitch,” I cursed.
The pain didn’t ebb away quickly. It persisted, as if the bone was scolding me for being reckless and working harder than I should have been. Slowly, it faded from a sharp burning pain to a dull throbbing ache.
I raked my fingers through my sweat-soaked hair and got to my feet.
I needed a break.
My stomach growled and I remembered what Andy had told me about the market. The cabin was fully outfitted to cook myself dinner, so I decided to head into town, which began with me making the long walk down the dirt road from the cabin to the main street.
“Main Street” was a generous term.
It was still just a narrow road. I walked along the edge for about ten minutes before a single car passed and another fifteen before one of those tour-bus trucks came up behind me and tapped on the horn. The driver asked where I was going.
“Cruz Bay,” I called over the rumble of the engine.
He wore a straw hat and a pinstripe shirt. He waved for me to get on. “Hop in. We’ll get you where you’re going.”
I did as he said and climbed into the back of the truck and found a spot on the end so I could enjoy the scenery. We arrived in Cruz Bay, pulled over outside a tourist shop, and got out. I tipped the driver after he refused to accept payment for the ride and made