Heat Stroke (Beach Kingdom, #2)(15)

Already knowing he hadn’t, Jamie went through the process of patting his pockets anyway. “Nope.”

Andrew took out his cell and hit a button. “Rory has the only other set.” He sighed and hung up a moment later. “He’s not answering. How am I going to lock up the bar?”

Jamie winced. “Diesel was back there.”

His older brother groaned. This was not the first time Marcus had walked off with someone else’s shit by accident. In early June, he’d picked up the wrong duffel bag in the Hut, not realizing it belonged to someone else until Jamie pointed out his red lifeguard shorts were riding up his CrossFit-honed bubble butt and the seam was about to burst.

He should have let it happen, Jamie thought wistfully.

Wistfully.

All right, that was quite enough. He needed to build a bridge over Marcus and walk across to the other side. That wouldn’t happen until he got some answers…

And here was his chance.

“I’ll go get the keys.”

Andrew did a double take. “You’re going to wake Marcus up at four in the morning?”

Jamie shrugged, avoiding his brother’s hawk-like scrutiny. “Those are the breaks when you take someone’s keys, right?” He tossed aside the rag he’d been using to wipe the bar, trying and failing to ignore visions of Marcus messy from sleep. “Hang tight. I’ll be back.”

On his way out the door, Jamie paused, watching Andrew climb onto one of the bar stools and rest his face in his hands. They all got their asses kicked in the summertime, working two jobs, so they could manage the mortgage on the house they shared for the rest of the year. Not to mention the mountain of debts their father had left behind. But Andrew bore the brunt of the workload, supervising the lifeguards and overseeing the Castle Gate…and he never let the strain show. Ever. Jamie was catching him in a weak moment, and knowing his stoic brother, he should just leave without prying. But he couldn’t.

“You okay, A?”

A long pause, followed by a measured breath. “Yeah.” Without looking at Jamie, Andrew waved him off. “Go.”





CHAPTER SEVEN





Marcus heard the knock on his front door and immediately reached for the baseball bat under his couch. Although a bat would be totally ineffective against a ghost, wouldn’t it?—and it had to be a fucking ghost, man. No one knocked on his door. His father and brother had keys and barged in whenever they felt like it.

Since coming home from the Castle Gate, Marcus had been unable to sleep. A lot like every other night this week, but tonight was worse, because Jamie had been drinking behind the bar. If he wasn’t positive that Andrew would be with Jamie on the way home, Marcus would probably be lurking in the shadows of the boardwalk about now, making sure no one so much as looked wrong at Jamie.

Coming to his feet with the bat poised to swing, Marcus threw a guilty glance at the porn video paused on his computer. Had the ghost heard him ineffectively jerking off?

You’re the idiot everyone thinks you are.

Marcus shook his head at his own ridiculousness and advanced toward the door, one quiet step at a time, fully prepared to move apartments first thing tomorrow if some old-timey ghost from the Great Depression era or some shit was on the other side of the door. “Uh…yeah? Someone there?”

A beat passed. “Open the door, Diesel. You took my brother’s keys.”

His heart climbed up into his mouth. “Jamie?”

“No, it’s Paul Rudd.”

Trying to breathe normally, Marcus eliminated the remaining distance between him and apartment entrance, twisting open the deadbolt and opening the door. He was so busy gulping down the sight of Jamie, Marcus forgot he was holding a bat. “How did you know where…”

Jamie rested a hand on the doorjamb, drawing Marcus’s attention to his bicep. “We dropped you off in Andrew’s car that night it was raining so you wouldn’t have to walk. Remember?” He shrugged and sauntered into the apartment. “I just looked at the names on the buzzer. Pretty obvious Deez Nuts in 2A was you. Why are you holding a bat?”

Horror washed over Marcus until he realized Jamie was actually referring to the bat and not the erection springing up in his sweat pants. Sure. Now he gets hard. “Oh, uh…” Turning slightly, Marcus tried to shift his cock to one side and make it less noticeable. “I thought you were a ghost from the Depression.”

Jamie turned with a cocked eyebrow. “Bats don’t work on ghosts. Everyone knows that.”

“What does work?”

“You just have to ignore them,” Jamie said. “You’re well versed in that.”

“Does that mean I’m good at it?”

A smile tugged at the corner of Jamie’s mouth. “Yeah.”

Before Marcus could crawl toward Jamie on his hands and knees, complaining about how fucking horrible the last week had been, Jamie reached past Marcus and used his index finger to lift a set of keys off Marcus’s entry table, complete with a lucky rabbit’s foot and a four-leaf clover. “I’m going to get these back to Andrew.”

“Oh.” Marcus managed. “Okay.”

“You obviously have both sets, right? Since you got in to your place.”

“Yeah.” Christ. Jamie smelled so good. Coffee and books and whiskey. “Guess so.”