Rescuing the Bad Boy (Second Chance #2)(41)

Charlie raised an eyebrow and crooked her lips, the mannerisms resembling her fiancé’s. “Nice segue.”

“Yeah,” Faith said. “Smooth.”

Sofie grinned, changing the subject again. “Coffee?”

Her friends let her have the reprieve. Faith laid out the plastic on the floor, and Charlie opened and stirred a bucket of paint. Donovan had already moved the table and chairs and the buffet against the one wall they were leaving red as an accent.

Sofie left them to it, walked to the kitchen, and fired up the coffeemaker. She watched out the window as Evan climbed into the Jeep and Donny opened the driver’s door. He caught her looking, and paused for a few lingering seconds, before shutting himself into the Jeep as well.

Enduring one another.

Yeah, right.





The quarry in Evergreen Cove was no pile of rubble.

A fifty-foot wall stood against a blue sky, jagged edges and craggy handholds where Donovan used to attempt to scale his way to the top. Trees and shrubs and other brush grew at the base around where piles of unclaimed rocks rested.

He inspected a piece of quartz before dropping it into a cardboard box. The new design he had in mind for the fireplace required him finding just the right rocks.

“What’s your ETA for finishing up?” Evan asked from his perch on a sizable boulder.

He meant the mansion, Donovan guessed.

“After the charity dinner. And the campout.” He spared Evan a glance, ignored his friend’s surly expression, and went back to picking and sorting.

“Entire town is excited,” Evan said. “My agent flipped out when she heard about it. She’s calling our publisher and getting advance copies of Asher’s and my latest Mad Cow book to give away at the event.”

“Nice.” Asher. There was a guy he hadn’t seen in forever.

“Know what that means?” Evan asked, then answered himself. “Penis Bandit reunion.”

Donovan chuckled.

Evan was talking about the summer Donovan stole a bottle of liquor from Robert’s liquor cabinet. They drank way, way too much, stumbled through town in the dark, and then Evan and Asher painted phallic symbols all over Mrs. Anderson’s library walls.

Bright spot in an otherwise dark past.

Donovan shook his head. “I haven’t seen that * in I don’t even know how long.”

“That’s sweet. I’ll tell him you still care.”

He palmed a large rock with a rough edge and tossed it into the box. Good size and shape for a corner piece.

“Bust your hand?” Evan asked.

He’d forgotten. So many scrapes, cuts. They blurred into one another. “On the fireplace I’m now apparently rebuilding.”

“Not Scott Torsett’s face?” Evan grinned.

“You heard about that?”

“Charlie. Sofie.”

“Chicks.” Donovan shook his head. “Scampi wouldn’t let me hit him.”

“Too bad.”

“I don’t fight anymore.”

But he used to. He was young and angry, using his hands for destruction instead of creation. Then he’d evolved to using those same powerful, roughened hands to build works of art rather than use them to prove his strength. It was a necessary part of growing up.

Out of simply not knowing better, he had begun repeating his father’s patterns. He had taken his rage out on other people. Until he was about seventeen, then he acquired friends. One was sitting with him now. The other, a rock star coming to town to hock his children’s book. The final link in the chain had come later. Connor had looked up to Donovan at a time when no one should have looked up to him, and lucky for him, Connor stuck around.

His support system. He owed those guys a lot.

Back in the day, the quarry had been his refuge. On more than one night he would come down here and smash rocks into the wall before scaling it without climbing gear. Stupid.

But he’d figured he wasn’t hurting anyone when he was here, and at the time, that’d been good enough.

“You’re not your dad,” Evan said.

Every muscle in Donovan’s body tightened.

“I know that comment seems random. But I see you beating yourself up over being back here. Know you’re struggling being in that house. And navigating whatever is between you and Sofie.”

He glanced over at Evan, who shrugged, as if his observation of Donovan’s innermost battles was no big deal.

“Thought I’d point out to you that you are not your old man.”

“I’m fine,” he replied stiffly, not liking how Evan noticed things.

“You know I know, right?”

He clenched his teeth. He knew Evan had a guess at his past, but he didn’t think he really knew. Wasn’t something they chatted about casually.

“How many times have you and I been drunk together?” Evan’s lips lifted slightly. “Approximately.”

“A million?”

Evan laughed, an easy sound that relaxed him some.

“Yeah,” he said, then his smile fell. “Well. You mentioned your dad a time or three.”

Great.

Donovan pushed to standing and looked at the surrounding rocks and the pines, the only refuge—not counting Caroline’s house—he’d had in the years he’d lived in the Cove.