Brothers of Paradise Series

“Like me?”

I roll my eyes, even as nerves slash through my stomach. “Sure, Marchand.”

He laughs again and my nerves flatten. He’s not offended. “Lily, then,” he says. “She lives further down Ocean Drive. You won’t bump into her on the street like this.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

“Me, though, you’ll probably see all the time,” he says. “I live on Meadow.”

“You do?”

He turns and points further up the street, toward a white wooden house with a wrap-around porch. An American flag hangs off one of the pillars.

“Close to the yacht club,” I say, “and halfway between your parents’ and Lily’s?”

Parker runs a hand over his jaw. He can’t have shaved yet today, and the stubble is thicker than usual. “Yes. You know too much about me.”

“Well, I’ve known you for a great many years.” I kick at a pebble on the sidewalk. “So we live close.”

“Yeah, we do,” he says, and there’s a curious note of satisfaction in his voice. I look up to catch him smiling. “The thing I was going to say earlier, that’ll make you mad?”

“I think it would take a great deal to make me mad at you,” I say, and I mean it. Maybe we’d argued constantly as teenagers, but he’s given me a job here. Two jobs, even.

Parker laughs, like I’m joking. “Remember that. Well, I have a gym in my garage. Lots and lots of free weights. You’re welcome to use it any day. Mornings, before work, perhaps? I can show you how to lift.”

I stare at him.

“Right now,” he says, “is when you get mad at me, James, for suggesting you need to work out. You don’t.”

“But I do,” I say. “I’m weak.”

He stretches from side to side, chest rippling beneath his T-shirt. “Not how I’d phrase it. But if you want to tone, you know where to find the resources, okay?”

“Right. Thank you,” I say, and the mental image of me in my paint-stained T-shirts, lifting tiny dumbbells while he looks on in all his glory, flashes through my mind.

“Don’t overthink it,” he says, still smiling.

I kick his sneaker with my own. “Idiot.”

He laughs. “That’s the Jamie I remember.”

“She’s still around sometimes,” I say, and find to my surprise that it’s true. She’s just been buried deep down. “I have a few drafts for website designs ready for you.”

Parker’s eyebrows rise. “Already?”

“I have a lot of time after Emma goes to bed,” I say.

“That’s amazing. Anything you need me to look at?”

“Yes, just so I know which option you like before I head too far in one direction. I’ve been working on an updated logo, too, for you to look at.”

“Terrific.”

“And something struck me… well, maybe it’s a stupid idea, but the yacht club is such a focal point in Paradise Shores. You know, you organize all the sailing classes, you have the restaurant, the lobster roll shack, organize the marina…”

“Yes,” Parker says dryly. “Which is why I need to hire another Neil.”

I give a half-laugh. “Right. Well, it’s such an institution that I wonder if it would be a good idea to sell some merchandise?”

His eyebrows draw together. “Merchandise?”

Nerves surge up in my stomach. This is when Lee would have rolled his eyes or called it a stupid idea. Worthless, I hear in my mind. But Parker’s not Lee, he’s himself, and I’ve never known him to be cruel.

“Yes. Let’s say the logo ends up going on the new linen napkins, or on T-shirts for the marina staff, or on sailing caps for the instructors. I think people might want to buy that for themselves.”

“A Paradise Shores Yacht Club cap,” he repeats slowly. “It’s a great idea.”

“You think?”

“Yeah. The waitresses could wear them when we serve on the terrace in the summer. The sailing instructors, definitely. Shoot, now I want all of this ready in time for the regatta.” He grins and crosses his arms over his chest. They look larger than usual against his white T-shirt. “You came up with all of this in a week?”

“A lot of free evenings,” I say.

He grins. “Good to know. Let’s meet tomorrow night, then, at the yacht club and you can show me all of the designs. Does that sound good?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Great. And next week you’re coming by to see my gym,” he says with a wink. His voice is the one that had always needled me in the past. Strong and so sure of itself, no hesitation in it.

“So you can boss me around?”

“The day you let me boss you around,” Parker says, “is the day hell freezes over.” He smiles at me in goodbye and moves past me, legs breaking effortlessly into a run again. I watch him disappear down Meadow Lane and turn onto Ocean Drive. I bet he’s going to run along the boardwalk, in full view of anyone who might see him.

His smile wasn’t annoying. It wasn’t taunting or gloating. It was warm, and looking at it, I’d felt warm too. And I wonder how different things might have been, if he wasn’t who he was, if I didn’t have an uncertain future and a broken past, and the memory of another man branded into my skin.

PARKER

We don’t do dinner service on Thursdays. It’s the one day of the week when the place is quiet, and the dining room is empty around me. I’m at the table I prefer, right by the windows and the ocean, when I hear Jamie’s voice.

“No touching. Those are the chef’s tools. They’re very sharp… yes, that’s it.”

The door from the kitchen opens and she’s there, with a laptop bag under one arm and her daughter’s hand in the other. Emma looks around the room with big eyes. She steps closer to her mom when she sees me.

A slow smile spreads across my face. “Hi, you two.”Content provided by NôvelDrama.Org.

“Hello,” Jamie says, glancing down at her daughter. “I hope you don’t mind that I brought Emma? My mother had other plans tonight. I didn’t have your number to text you about it beforehand.”

“Oh, the more the merrier. Hi, Emma. How are you?”