Trust with a Chaser (Rainbow Cove Book 1) Read online

  Feeling guilty, I’d had Adam take some cheesecake to his mom’s. Dad needed to lay off the sugar, anyway. He came to the door, leaning on his cane, pair of beagles preceding him.

  “You’re later than you said you’d be.” He wasn’t mean about it, more resigned, as if he hadn’t expected better from me.

  “Sorry. Got pulled over by Flint for a busted brake light.” I made my way into the house, which as always smelled of cigarillos, dust, and dog. I’d largely outgrown my asthma or at least learned to manage it, but it was a wonder that my lungs didn’t seize up every time I came here.

  “Flint. That son of a bitch.” Jimmy sneered from the old brown couch near the one working TV. It was stacked on top of two that didn’t turn on anymore.

  “Hey, I was grateful for the heads-up. Can you fix it for me?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Jimmy made a dismissive gesture that meant I’d have to prod him a good four more times before he actually did it.

  “You watch yourself, Mason,” Dad added. “First it’s a light. Then it’s five miles over. Next he’s harping on your license renewal. Always something.”

  And never your fault. I sighed. Same as always around here.

  “Uncle Mason!” The real reason I’d come and the reason I even worried about food for this place came barreling in from the kitchen and dining area.

  “Hi, Peanut.” I swept Lilac up into a hug. My niece was seven and the spitting image of my mother—fine, blond hair, green eyes, and delicate features.

  “Did you bring bread?” Her voice was all hopeful. “We’re out.”

  “Of course.” I rubbed her head. “You got peanut butter?”

  “Of course,” Jimmy imitated my smoother speech.

  Lilac usually stayed with her mom, but Francine was off dancing in Coos Bay again. She’d turn back up eventually, but without my mom here I worried about Lilac being fed and getting to the last week of school. And, unfortunately, if her teachers got concerned about her, it wouldn’t be the first time Jimmy and Francine had landed on the radar of child protective services. Thus far, they’d managed to scrape by with warnings, promising to work out their domestic squabbles peacefully and to stay clean and sober, but my heart beat faster at the thought of the state getting involved with our family again. We’d had cousins in and out of foster care, and it wasn’t a fate I wanted for my Lilac.

  “You do your homework?” I ignored Jimmy and spoke directly to her.

  “Yeah.” She shrugged, miniature version of Jimmy when he put on a world-weary attitude. “Math is hard.”

  “You can skip it.” Jimmy’s tone said he was already bored by my presence.

  “No, you can’t. I’ll help.” I glared at Jimmy. “I’ll do a load of laundry for you while I’m here if you round up your school clothes.”

  “You’re a good wife.” Jimmy’s tone was teasing, but there was a bite there.

  “Watch it,” Dad said before I could. “Your brother helps out, which is more than I can say for your lazy ass.”

  “Little ears.” I gestured at Lilac, but it was a losing battle, getting Jimmy or my dad to clean up their language.

  “I’ll put the food away.” Jimmy grabbed the bags from me and headed to the kitchen.

  Dad settled back into his recliner with a groan. He was the other reason I kept coming around—he might be cranky, but he was the only parent I had left. Mom’s unexpected death had hit me hard, underscored all the times I could have eased her burdens but hadn’t, too wrapped up in my Portland life. I was determined not to repeat the same mistake with Dad, even if he lacked her quiet gratitude.

  “Leg acting up?” I asked.

  “Just the weather.” He’d never admit to diabetic circulation issues. Mom would have pressed him into going to the doctor, but I didn’t have her sort of leverage. “And, son, you really do have to keep an eye on Flint. He’s got it out for us.”

  Not again with the conspiracy theories. “He gives me business at the tavern. That’s all I care about.”

  Dad shook his head. “I don’t trust him one lick. Not since Freddy.”

  “Freddy was fool enough to listen to his friends and vandalize a police car. Burning it up wasn’t Flint’s doing.”

  Dad shrugged. I wasn’t winning this one. “He didn’t have to throw the book at him. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “Uh-huh.” I busied myself picking up the toys from the living room floor. This was just another reminder of why I couldn’t go lusting after Flint. Dad might have grudgingly accepted me being gay—a shocker for sure and at least partly Mom’s doing—but he’d never tolerate Flint.

  Nash

  I worried about Mason getting rear-ended the whole way back to town—he might think I was being picky, but a broken brake light was no joke. I also didn’t like the little electric jolt that had gone through my body when I’d seen it was him. Annoyance, for sure, but there was something else there, almost like I was happy to see him, and that just wouldn’t do.

  “Chief? I’ve got a call in about Vera Matthews.” Marta’s voice crackled over my car radio. “Her daughter thinks it’s another heart attack. The EMTs are there and have a call into life flight. Can you secure the landing zone?”

  “I’m on it.”

  Our rural ambulance service was good, but we didn’t have an ER or hospital, just an urgent-care clinic, and we relied on the ambulance service plus life-flight helicopters for real emergencies like this. I headed to the urgent-care clinic, as that was where the helicopter usually landed. My job was to make sure that things went smoothly, no idiots getting in the way of the crew, and that the crew had everything in hand.

  I checked that the lights on the landing pad were on and waited for both the chopper and the ambulance. When the ambulance arrived, I headed over. Vera was a friend of my mother’s, and I figured she might take some comfort from my presence.

  I greeted the two EMTs who were getting Vera ready for transfer to the chopper.

  “Vera? We’re going to take good care of you, hear?” After my dad’s series of strokes, the docs and nurses had told us to keep talking to him. I might not be much of a praying man, but I’d never seen the harm in a positive word.

  “She’s stable,” Derrick told me. The young EMT was married to Candace, my junior officer. They were a nice couple, one of the few new families in town the last few years. We needed more like them, young folks looking to stay around rather than move on like so many of our kids did after graduation.

  The chopper arrived and the EMTs got Vera transferred without incident. Derrick and I stayed around a bit afterward, shooting the breeze about when the fishing would get good again and whether it was a decent market to buy a house. It was past dark by the time I headed back to the station, what with a quick patrol of 101 and downtown and all.

  The car ahead of me was doing six miles over. And ordinarily, I’d let it slide, but it was Jimmy Hanks’ beat-up Mustang, and I couldn’t rule out another DUI for him. I flipped on the lights, but it took him two full blocks to decide to pull over. Typical.

  I waited for him to roll down the window and then greeted him. “Evening, Hanks. You know why I pulled you over?”

  Jimmy muttered something unintelligible and less than charitable sounding, but his breath didn’t reek of alcohol and his speech was unslurred when he finally raised his voice. “Nope.”

  “You were six miles over the limit.”

  “That ain’t nothing.” He glared at me, really testing my decision to just give him a warning.

  “Think you can slow down around town?”

  “I guess.” Another glare and some muttering. “Heard you pulled over my brother today, too. Banner day for you, riding the Hanks boys?”

  I bristled at that. Jimmy Hanks had a way of pushing all my buttons, but I had long experience being calm and not letting my temper get the better of me. “You fix that brake light? We don’t want him getting into an accident.”

  “Yeah, I fixed it.” He chomped down on the w
ad of gum in his mouth. “You need to leave my brother alone.”

  For a split second I wondered if Jimmy had some sort of psychic powers to read all the inappropriate thoughts I’d been having about Mason. Then I shook my head. “As long as he keeps his head down, he’ll do fine. Nice establishment he’s got going. Gainful employment’s a good look.”

  “Hey, now. I work.” Jimmy almost spat. He bought junkers here and there, spent ages half-fixing them, and sold them on the cheap to people who always regretted it. “I’ve been working longer than Mason. He was always spoiled. Soft.”

  I could not get into it with Jimmy, no matter the strange urge I had to defend Mason, who honestly was the hardest working Hanks I’d met. I might be skeptical, but the kid was trying to make something of himself, which was more than I could say for most of his family. “You go on now, Jimmy. Keep it under the limit.” I ground out the words, hands fisting with the desire to wring his fool neck.

  There were lines I just didn’t cross. And, unfortunately for me, Mason Hanks was one of those lines. I didn’t need a warning from Jimmy to see that. Didn’t matter how nice Mason was, how hardworking, how hot—he wasn’t for me.

  Five

  Mason

  I didn’t know what to wear to the Chamber of Commerce meeting, but as soon I saw Nash Flint inside the Rainbow Cove visitor center, I knew I’d picked wrong. He looked me up and down like he’d never seen a dude wear peach before. It was one of the few shirts with buttons that I owned, and Felipe, my ex, had always said it made me look expensive, for whatever that was worth. I’d paired it with khakis that I’d actually ironed. I wanted to make a good impression.

  Flint was, of course, wearing his uniform. He always commanded respect and made a great first impression, but then he’d been born a Flint, whereas the sight of a Hanks in dress clothes had to be raising more eyebrows than just Flint’s.

  “Since when do you come to Chamber meetings?” I grumbled at him. It was seven thirty in the morning, and I did not do mornings, unlike like Flint who was probably one of those guys who woke up at five just for the heck of it.

  “Coffee’s over there, Sunshine.” Flint gestured to a table against the far wall of the visitor center where someone had mercifully set out two large urns of coffee and a generous tray of pastries from Dolly’s Donuts. They got a little sign advertising their generosity. I needed to find out how the tavern could donate next month.

  “Mason? Could you help me with my flip board?” Brock, my friend from Portland who’d driven down to attend the meeting, approached me. He looked at Flint with undisguised interest, while Flint’s eyes narrowed. Brock had an air of “city” about him. Dress shirt that probably cost more than my monthly rent to Flora, haircut that required careful application of product, hipster glasses, and skinny pants that showed off his Pilates-and-paleo slim frame.

  “Sure.” Even though I was desperate for the coffee, I followed Brock out to his car—a foreign make that Jimmy would undoubtedly salivate over, but all I knew was that it was so shiny it made me nervous to ride in it.

  By the time I helped him lug in his stuff, Flint had already grabbed himself a coffee and a seat near the front. The coffee was undoubtedly black—the man didn’t seem to have a single sweet tooth. For all the times I’d served him at the tavern, it was odd how little I knew about his partialities, other than a preference for red meat. I tried to tell myself that it was just my restaurateur’s soul that had me wondering how to wow Flint—and not the libido I kept trying to tamp down.

  “That Sheriff Sexy?” Brock asked in a low whisper.

  I groaned, keeping it soft. “Adam told you that ridiculous nickname?”

  “That he did.” Brock sighed dramatically. “Forget my Bonobos shirt fetish. Next time I’m here I’m wearing my ‘I’d bottom you so hard’ T-shirt.”

  “He’s…straight.”

  “There was a pause there, Mason.” Brock’s eyes sparkled.

  “That was not a pause.”

  “I distinctly heard a promising pause—”

  “Can we all come together? Get your coffee and get a seat.” Everleigh Atkins, who ran the visitor center and the Chamber, clapped her hands once as she strode to the front of the room. “Mr. Whatley-Lewis, you can come up here.”

  Brock followed her, tossing a look over his shoulder that said we weren’t done talking about Flint. But we totally were. I was not going to encourage this crush of Brock’s, nor was I owning up to any such thing of my own, no matter how much I wished I could fill in that “promising pause” with some concrete information. My hallway encounter with Flint had done nothing but confuse me for over a week now. He’d been in for food since then, always polite but distant, and I didn’t think I was imagining the relief in his eyes when someone else had to wait on him.

  I grabbed a coffee and doctored it to my preferred light tan and highly sweetened consistency. I took a plain donut to be nice, but I was already dreaming up what baked goods we could bring to one of these meetings. I’d never been much of a line cook, but I did love to bake, and doing the breads and dessert specials for the tavern was a point of pride for me.

  Everleigh handed around the minutes. Like Flint, she had to be a morning person, scheduling these things so darn early and looking all put-together in a sweater set embroidered with seashells and matching skirt. She’d gone to school with my mother, but they hadn’t been friends—my mom dropped out to have Freddy while Everleigh snagged a business degree and an insurance-salesman husband who ensured that she lived in the newer part of town with an ocean view and beach access. She hadn’t been into the tavern and had been more than a little skeptical of our plans in our prior meetings, but I wasn’t giving up hope for her backing quite yet. We’d gotten the state grant, which had been step one in our plan, and we’d been at prior Chamber meetings, trying to drum up support for the next stage of our goals.

  She went over the old business first, of which the only interesting item was the ongoing discussion of whether Rainbow Cove needed a festival.

  “Other local towns do hugely popular festivals. There’s the cranberry fest, the softshell crab fest, and ones devoted to sandcastles and kite flying and local beers.” Everleigh’s blond bob swayed as she gestured with her hands. “It’s time for us to get on the map.”

  I raised my hand.

  “Yes, Mason?” Her tone was the same as every teacher’s I’d had in the Rainbow Cove school system—she’d already decided she wouldn’t like what I had to say.

  “Coos Bay did a Pride Fest last year, and further north, Lincoln City does one, too. We could—”

  “We’ll get to your ideas for us later, m’kay?” She made a dismissive wave of her hand. “But first, I wanted to brainstorm. What are we famous for?”

  “The smell coming off Moosehead Lake.” Ralph, who owned the Bait Shack, cackled.

  “The old haunted mill?” Adam’s mother, Patsy, spoke up. “My guests always like that story.” Frankly, Patsy’s guests at the B&B liked whatever stories Patsy told—her chatty nature was as much a reason why people returned as her breakfast quiches.

  “See?” Everleigh beamed. “That’s the kind of thing we could use. A spooky fall festival, anyone? And be thinking about ideas for later in the year, too!”

  The next twenty minutes were spent reviewing other festival options and going over other old business like the scholarship fund and a shoe drive for foster kids. All good works, but I was eager to get to our part of the agenda. Flint, of course, had plenty to say about the policing of said festivals which got the issue tabled until the next meeting. Officer Buzzkill. That’s what we’re famous for.

  Finally, Everleigh made her way down the bulleted list to Brock’s name. God, I hoped this worked and people listened. The dream that four of us had hatched together in his Pearl-district loft had been so perfect a year ago. But now, even with the grant and the business launching, long-term success seemed more tenuous than ever.

  “Sorry I’m late!” Curtis c
ame rushing in, sawdust raining down from his hair as he took the empty seat next to Flint. “Lost track of time, but I didn’t want to miss the grand ‘Make Rainbow Cove Gay-er’ plan. That is still on the agenda, right?”

  I glared at him. He of all people should be taking this seriously. “LGBTQ tourism is huge money,” I piped up. “And tourists love to spend cash on unique art.” Including the overpriced tree stumps you sell.

  “Well, by all means, bring on the gay money.” Curtis made a go-ahead gesture to Brock.

  As Everleigh introduced Brock and gave background to the agenda item for those who hadn’t been at prior meetings, Brock set up his large flip board on the easel he’d brought with him.

  He smiled, adjusted his glasses, and began talking. “Now, as some of you know, the Rainbow Tavern received a grant through the state. Part of why I’m here today is to discuss more businesses applying for funds. My development group is particularly interested in seeing more remodeling and new businesses opening or expanding, particularly if we can do it in a unified fashion.”

  “Can you break that down into something I might have a chance of catching on to?” Ralph asked, leaning forward.

  “If the town embraces the rainbow theme, and the Chamber of Commerce and businesses go in together on ads in some of the largest gay publications, that would be a big positive for my group to make a substantial investment in the area.” Brock continued in MBA-speak, albeit slower now.

  “He means they’re thinking about buying the old Sandview Resort,” I explained for him, referencing the beachfront hotel that had gone bankrupt a decade ago, taking a lot of jobs and tourists with it. The news sent an excited murmur through the group of business owners, exactly the way I’d hoped it would. He unveiled a series of drawings showing a renovated Sandview, complete with pastel colors and depictions of happy tourists. The Chamber of Commerce’s support was integral to Brock’s investors committing to the project, but the city council and other permitting agencies would also need to be involved going forward.