King Stud

  Evernight Publishing ®

  www.evernightpublishing.com

  Copyright© 2015 Liv Rancourt

  ISBN: 978-1-77233-424-1

  Cover Artist: Jay Aheer

  Editor: Melissa Hosack

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to my in-home King Stud, who even now is starting our long-awaited kitchen remodel, complete with solid surface countertop. (Yay!) Thank you so much, my dear, for giving me the foundation I need to write.

  The book is also dedicated to the two most fantastic teenagers any mother could ask for. You guys are so patient with me, and I appreciate your willingness to put up with all the time I spend at the laptop.

  It doesn’t matter what story we’re telling, we’re telling the story of family.

  —Erica Lorraine Scheidt

  I’d like thank Evernight’s Stacey Adderley for putting her faith in this story. I’m so happy King Stud found a home with Evernight. I’d like to thank my agent Margaret Bail of Inklings Literary for sharing her skills and talking me off the ledge more often than I should probably admit to.

  I’d also like to thank Melissa, my editor with Evernight, who is an amazing mix of knowledge and flexibility, and their fantastic cover artist Jay Aheer. My beta readers for this project were Michele, Debbie, Amanda, Shannon, Rhay, Ruth, and Ellen. I could not have done it without your eyes and minds and patience. You guys rock!

  And finally, I’d like to give a shout-out to Margie Lawson, whose Fab30 and Immersion classes taught me so much. King Stud is a much better novel because of Margie.

  KING STUD

  An O’Connor Family Novel, 1

  Liv Rancourt

  Copyright © 2015

  Chapter One

  Ryan jogged down the stairs and grabbed his sweatshirt from the post at the bottom. Stress had a chokehold on his shoulders, and as he pulled the sweatshirt over his head, he paused to stretch his neck and shoulders, but couldn’t loosen up.

  “Come on, bro. We’ll grab a couple o’ senoritas and teach ‘em to mambo.” Chubb lounged against the bannister, his white-boy dreadlocks trapped in a ponytail holder.

  “Are you trying to sound like a douche?” Frustration added an edge to Ryan’s tone. Times like these he wished he could afford his North Seattle house without a roommate. “Because you’ve pretty much got it nailed.”

  “Shut up,” Chubb said, with all the concern he’d give a snarling puppy.

  Pulling a black watch cap over his dark curls, Ryan opened the door and gritted his teeth against the near-freezing air. “Gotta keep moving, man, me and the sharks.” Gotta keep moving to keep from thinking. To keep from feeling. To keep from making the same mistake. No way he’d go crawling back to Cherry. No way.

  Chubb didn’t give up. “We’ll go to the Pig and have a couple beers, and if the Toxic Twins are there, we’ll go somewhere else.”

  The Toxic Twins were Ryan’s very recent ex-girlfriend Cherry and his sister, Maeve. They were best friends and pretty much the reason he had to stay on the move. “You’re on your own. I’m going to go to Home Depot to grab some pavers for that Sanderson job.”

  “What job? It’s a holiday.” Chubb smacked the bannister like he was really irritated, but they’d been friends for too long for Ryan to buy into his bullshit.

  “I’ll see you later.” Ryan cut off Chubb’s protest by slamming the front door, pretty sure his roommate would find himself a senorita before Ryan had the truck warmed up enough to drive.

  The Ford truck’s engine rumbled a chorus of growling bass notes, the only soundtrack Ryan was in the mood for. He’d been planning the break-up for weeks, and three days later his bones still said it was the right thing to do.

  But a low-grade, irritable queasiness said some part of him noticed the loss.

  In the ten minutes it took him to get to Home Depot, Cherry left him three voicemails and Chubb sent him one final whiney text. Ryan jammed the phone in his pocket without listening to the messages, though he came close to caving in to Chubb’s request. The combination of the dark, half-empty parking lot and the shitty weather made hanging out in a friendly pub more appealing. His knuckles tightened on the steering wheel. He could be talked into it if Chubb would agree to go somewhere besides the Pig n’ Whistle.

  A woman walked behind the truck, heading into the store. She had straight ginger hair, long legs, and something familiar that Ryan couldn’t place. She passed the scope of his rearview mirror and he shifted in his seat to watch her stride through the big sliding doors of the store.

  Okay, so he might only be seventy-two hours past the worst break-up on record, but he could still appreciate beauty when he saw it. Ending things with Cherry had beaten him up, but it hadn’t killed him. He climbed out of the truck, shrugging his shoulders against the cold.

  It’d be a lot easier to keep moving if he had a pretty girl to chase.

  Faced with the drafty interior of a big box store on a Sunday evening, Danielle did what any other single woman would do. She whipped out her cell phone, scrolled through her contacts, and sent up a prayer to whichever god was listening. She’d been back in Seattle exactly three days, just long enough to have figured out things at her grandmother’s house were a lot worse than she’d anticipated.

  Maeve picked up on the third ring. “Why aren’t you here?”

  Relief trailed out on a sigh, and Danielle eyed the rack of lumber, each six foot piece as wide as her hand. Those boards wouldn’t fit in her Mini Cooper, which might not matter since she wasn’t sure they’d fix the problem. “Because I’m here.”

  “Where?” The brew-fueled babbling on Maeve’s end of the call made her location obvious: her favorite hang-out, the Pig N’ Whistle.

  “Home Depot.”

  “You nerd,” Maeve said, then hollered ‘Home Depot’ to the crowd around her. A surge in the general hubbub gave Danielle’s location a big thumbs-down.

  “Do I want to know what you’re up to?” Maeve’s voice dampened, as if she’d cupped the phone to cut out the background noise.

  “Well, the kitchen floor’s kind of a problem.” It topped the list of challenges at Danielle’s late grandmother’s house, right ahead of ‘no heat’ and ‘intermittent electricity’.

  “That whole house is a disaster.”

  “Shut up. There’s nothing a little elbow grease can’t fix.”

  “Wishful thinking,” Maeve said over a swell of crowd noise. “You don’t believe that any more than I do.”

  Danielle scratched the hairline at the back of her neck, wanting nothing more than a long, hot shower. “Guess I got a couple months to prove us both wrong, then.” Maeve had been her best friend since high school, her go-to phone call when things turned to shit in L.A. In the three days Danielle had been back in Seattle, Maeve had been her rock.

  She rested against one of the orange metal stepladders employees used to reach the top shelves. The whole thing shifted, zapping her with fear the top boxes would come tumbling down on her. Why not? The oversized store, the oversized project, hell, the oversized change in her life could very well squash her flat.

  If Maeve had been at home, painting her toenails or paying bills, Danielle would have invited her down to the ol’ Home Depot right off. But now? No way could she interrupt Happy Hour.

  To he
r right, a man pushed one of the store’s big dollies up the wide aisle. He wore a black knit cap pulled down almost to his brows, allowing just a fringe of dark curls and long sideburns to show.

  “Just come have a pint with the rest of us,” Maeve said. “The floor will be there when you get home. Tomorrow’s Veteran’s Day and the place is packed.”

  “Honey, it’s the kitchen floor.” Danielle gave Mr. Sideburns a ‘privacy please’ grimace, then almost made a fool of herself double-taking his return smile. His dimples and blue eyes had a familiar feel.

  “Don’t ‘honey’ me,” Maeve said. “You can’t cook there anyway. Nothing works. Did you call my brother yet?”

  “Not yet.” Danielle rubbed her forehead, pushing back the headache that wanted to take over. Focus. She was in no shape to play with Mr. Sideburns, no matter how sexy he looked in his paint-splattered UW sweatshirt. “Last time I saw Ryan O’Connor he was a ten-year-old with a dirty face and holes in the knees of his jeans.”

  “Call him. He knows his stuff.” Maeve said. “And you’re family, babe. There’s nothing more important than family.”

  Danielle had to smile. Maeve’s family – her rowdy brothers and generous, loving parents – had been Danielle’s ideal since she was a kid. In comparison, her own mother had relied upon a principle of benign neglect when it came to raising Danielle, her carelessness contradicted by a perverse inability to approve of any of Danielle’s life choices.

  “You’re a good sport to help me out like this,” Danielle said.

  “I figure if I’m nice enough, you’ll stick around.”

  “Yeah, my boss’d love that.” Right now, her job was the best part of life in L.A.

  Mr. Sideburns pulled a couple sticks of lumber from the rack, angling them across the top of the bags of concrete and box of tiles already in his cart. He lifted them with no more effort than if he was pulling a box of cereal off the shelf in the grocery store.

  Danielle dragged her eyes down to the floor. No more ogling the other shopper. The buffed and gorgeous other shopper. Who probably had all kinds of women admiring his dimples and sideburns and whatever was hiding under his worn-out jeans.

  Danielle convinced Maeve this wasn’t a good night for drinks with the gang and tucked her phone away. Like any L.A. woman worth her yoga studio membership, her usual approach to home improvement meant calling a local contractor. She could have done the same thing this time, except she’d given in to the impulse to get her hands dirty. She refused to look too deeply at that decision, because it probably meant something significant. Why else would someone with a great job, a gorgeous condo, and a busy life drop out for a three-month leave of absence?

  When the project was done, she ought to take a long vacation and figure out why she’d chosen to come home to Seattle, why she wanted to do the work herself. Until then, she needed to leave off the introspection and go ask one of the orange-vested employees for some help.

  “Must be bad to get you into Home Depot on a Sunday evening.” Mr. Sideburns leaned on his cart and gave her an appreciative once-over, his almost-cocky baritone mellowed by a hint of laughter.

  Hitting on me? Not until I’ve had a shower, dude. Danielle jumped up from the ladder, ready to run. “I’m good, thanks.”

  “Got that right,” he said, mostly to himself. “Sounds like you need a carpenter.” A wry grin tweaked the corner of his mouth, just enough to show a dimple. “Ryan O’Connor.”

  “Ryan?” The wheels in her head burned rubber tracking back through the conversation with Maeve. How much did he hear? “It’s been what? Fifteen years?” She raked a strand of hair out of her face, torn between embarrassment over her woefully unwashed state and stupidity for blushing like a teenager. “Danielle Jacobsen.”

  “Figured.” He smiled wide enough to show both dimples. Yep. Definitely related to Maeve. As a kid he’d had freckles and a snub nose. His nose was still rounded at the end and it looked like he’d broken it at least once, and his jeans had the kind of shredded wear at the knees that L.A. hipsters paid big dollars to copy. Her reserve melted until it warmed parts of her anatomy that had no business heating up in a Home Depot store.

  “So … um … you’re Maeve’s little brother.” Danielle offered her hand, covering her momentary fluster with a glossy SoCal smile.

  He wrapped her in a grip so sure and strong she didn’t want to let go. “Yep. I heard you were back from L.A.”

  Danielle loosened her grasp to keep from giving him the wrong idea. Or to keep from giving herself the wrong idea. “Got here Thursday.”

  “Shouldn’t you be at the Pig with Maeve?”

  “Well, my grandmother’s house is kind of run down, and there’s this hole in my kitchen floor.” She gave a weak laugh, the banks of glaring fluorescent lights turning their conversation into a stage play.

  Ryan stuffed his hands in his pockets and shrugged like he’d already seen worse than anything she could show him. “Before you spend any money, let’s go take a look.”

  “Not tonight. I mean, it’s a holiday weekend.” If he was anything like Maeve, there was a bar stool with his name on it somewhere. “I’ll call you and get on your schedule.”

  He gestured to his cart. “I just gotta pay for this stuff and we can go. Don’t buy anything ’til we know what you need.”

  “But you must have plans.”

  “Yep. I’m going to help out a pretty woman.” He lifted his eyebrows in a clear gesture of approval.

  It’s like that, is it? She pinched her lips to stifle a grin, aiming for stern with a helping of skeptical. “Pretty older woman.”

  “What do you expect from a kid with holes in his jeans?” He gave his cart a shove in the direction of a checkout line.

  It would have been rude not to follow.

  Grandmother’s house was on Perkins Lane, at the westernmost edge of the Magnolia Bluff, an area best known for breathtaking views and devastating mudslides. Danielle parked her Mini Cooper in front of the garage door, because she didn’t trust the rickety building not to collapse if she pulled the car inside. The house had gotten shabbier in the hour she’d spent at Home Depot. It crouched low on its lot, avoiding its neighbors, ignoring the view of the Sound.

  She waited for Ryan on the small front porch, the headache dancing around her temples, not quite settling in. A six foot laurel hedge shielded the house on the street side. The shrubs blocked the streetlights and covered the yard in murky shadow. Standing there in the dark, Danielle had time for some stern self-talk. She had too much going on to be distracted by any guy, let alone someone so young, so scruffy, and so closely related to Maeve.

  So why was she so fluttery?

  Finally a huge black pick-up pulled into the driveway. Ryan climbed out of the cab and surveyed the yard as if he’d already started a to-do list. “Nice pink Mini.” He gave her car a careless nod on his way to the front door.

  Her eyes narrowed. Was he really going to make fun of her car? That was asking for trouble. “It’s cream.”

  “Looks pink in this light. Only a real princess would drive a pink Mini.” He stood with his arms crossed and grinned up at her from the front walkway.

  She squashed an answering smile. The O’Connors valued teasing more than anything, and if she didn’t dish it right back to him, she’d be in trouble. “And I suppose only a real man would drive a monster truck.”

  “Ford F250.”

  “Don’t you mean F150? I’ve never heard of a 250.”

  His half grin hinted at all kinds of inappropriate thoughts. “It’s bigger.”

  Her stomach did a triple flip, and in self-defense she reached for the doorknob. I guess he’s old enough. “Compensating?”

  “Don’t need to.” He put his foot on the lower step, his tone casual, his eyes hot.

  She jerked her gaze away, convinced her blush would leave permanent burns on her cheeks. “Come on.”

  Ryan didn’t move right away. Danielle gave him time to get a good look a
t the cracked 1930’s siding, the grass sprouting from the gutters, and the moss clinging to the shingles.

  “Have you thought about tearing it down?” he asked.

  “Come on, now,” she said, halfway laughing. “This place has great bones.”

  His gaze worked her over with the same intensity he’d given the house. “Can’t argue with that.”

  She managed to get the door open without combusting, and he followed her through the foyer into the living room, snickering when it took her three tries to coax the corner lamp to turn on. Uncle Jonathan had arranged for the estate sale people to come, and except for a few of the nicer pieces Gram had specifically left to family, the room was bare.

  Danielle winced at the overall shabbiness. The old wool rug she’d played on as a kid had gone to the dump – the parts of it the rats hadn’t eaten, anyway – and the walls were mottled and stained. The big stone hearth was still in place, though, along with the arts and crafts mosaic tile surrounding the firebox.

  Built-in bookcases flanked the fireplace and most of the original wainscoting remained. Ryan ran his fingertips along the mahogany chair rail, moving slow, as if he could read the wood’s story by touch. “This is the shit.”

  “Come see the kitchen.” Dropping her purse on the lone wing-backed chair, she led him past the dining room with its antique cherry wood table and four ratty chairs.

  A single fluorescent tube hung from the kitchen ceiling. She flipped the switch, and for once it turned on. “Ta-dah.”

  The linoleum floor was a lot older than the 1970’s vintage olive green appliances, and there was an inch-deep well in the floor in front of the sink. “Sonofabitch, you put your foot through the floor,” Ryan said, kneeling down to pick at the chunk of linoleum missing at the center of the depression.

  “Hey! It’s not like I meant to.”

  “Right.” Ryan stood and straddled the hole, focused on the generous window with its view over the edge of the bluff. “Turn the light off again,” he said.

  Without the glare, all of Puget Sound spread out underneath them. Danielle eased up alongside Ryan, not quite close enough to touch him. Behind a tugboat, a single row of lights skimmed the water, marking the progress of a shipping barge. The twisted arms of the back yard madrona tree made a velvet silhouette against the darkness. Across the Sound, random bright spots pockmarked the dense shadow of Bainbridge Island.