Rescuing the Bad Boy (Second Chance #2)(63)

An hour later, Connor and Donovan were perched on top of a picnic table just out of sight of the door where a fat and very happy deer should be exiting any moment now.

Annny moment now…

“Hope she’s not in there eating your lavender,” Donovan said, swallowing the end of his beer. He dug a fresh one from the ice in the cooler.

Connor held out a palm and accepted it. “Deer don’t like lavender.”

“Lucky you.” Donovan uncapped a beer and rested on his knees, watching the door. When he was about to give up, a black nose poked out of the doorway, lifted, and smelled the air.

“Jackpot,” Connor whispered.

The doe stepped out, sniffed the air again, and left the mansion. When she turned her head and noticed the two men watching her, her ears fanned out to the side. Dark eyes studied them silently for a few seconds before she broke into a run for the trees.

Donovan blew out a breath. “Least we didn’t have to shoot it.”

Connor chuckled, mirroring Donovan’s pose, elbows on his knees, beer bottle resting in his hands. “Like you would’ve shot it.”

“I wouldn’t have,” he agreed. “Would have been a hell of a mess.”

Another chuckle made him bristle. Connor took a swig of his beer. “You act like such a hardass. When really, you have this gentle touch.” He held his index finger and thumb together and motioned like he was pricking the air. “So soft.”

“Happy to black one of your eyes for you and prove you wrong.” He wouldn’t, though. Connor may have been the one friend Donovan hadn’t tussled with. By the time they met, his preferred method of self-destruction was whiskey.

Connor’s good humor vanished when he looked Donovan dead in the eye. “You know the best way to handle a deer in your house, and an injured stray dog, because you know what it feels like to be afraid. To be cornered. To have no way out.”

His childhood wasn’t something he talked about much, but Connor knew. And Evan—apparently. Connor was one of his closest friends, and when he’d started staying in Donovan’s apartment, they’d had a shitload of personal conversations.

Among them, Donovan’s father.

Donovan took a long drink of beer and looked at the house again.

“I didn’t know what to do,” Connor said. “I just rushed in. My fault the doe made confetti out of half my planters.” He shook his head.

“I’ll buy you new ones.”

“You’ll kiss my ass.”

Donovan swallowed a smile. “No deal.”

Silence gathered in the air between them.

“You need a cornhole game or something,” Connor said half a beer later. “Boring as shit out here.”

“Cornhole,” Donovan grunted.

“What’s the matter, Pate? Cornhole too lowbrow for you? Been up on the East Coast living champagne wishes and caviar dreams for so long, you’ve forgotten your roots?” Connor slid off the table and put his beer bottle down.

“You suggesting I’ve gone soft?”

“As a marshmallow.” Connor put up his fists.

Donovan drained his beer in a few long guzzles and hopped off the table as well. “You think because you have arms like telephone poles you can kick my ass, but you forget how scrappy I am.”

“Nothing above the neck. I might try to get a date with your girlfriend’s cute friend soon.”

He was supposed to react to “girlfriend,” but Donovan refused. He lifted his arms. “Faith’s too classy for a grunt like you.”

“Always was,” Connor agreed, nodding. “Not going to stop me from trying, though.”

Donovan rushed him, hitting Connor’s torso. Solid as the rock he climbed today. When his buddy trapped him around the neck and spun him out, Donny’s shoulder throbbed from the hit.

“That was easy,” Connor bragged.

But Donovan wasn’t done. He swept his friend’s leg, dropping him to his ass. Arm over his chest, he held Connor down. “Had enough?”

Connor shook his head and grinned. “Loser has to clean up after the deer.”

“Deal.”

Donovan was thrown to the ground a second later, but nowhere near giving up.

After wrestling and trading places pinning the other to the ground several times, they rolled to their backs to catch their breath.

“Tie,” Donovan said, exhausted.

“You forfeiting?” Connor asked, sounding equally exhausted.

“Hell, no.”

“Neither am I.”

They smiled over at each other.

God, he’d missed his friends. Connor was right about him being in New York for too long. No one there knew anything about him other than the loner workaholic he’d shown them. But Evan knew him. Connor knew him. Asher, too, wherever that son of a bitch was hiding.

It hadn’t occurred to Donovan how important it was to be around people who knew his crap. People who knew him through and through. His relationships in New York seemed shallow in comparison.

Not that he’d admit any of his thoughts out loud. “Arm wrestling?” he suggested.

“Beer chugging?”

“Sounds better than cornhole.”

Connor laughed, pushed himself off the ground, and offered a hand. Donovan accepted, but when his friend leaned over him, he used that hand to send Connor tumbling into the grass.