Page 3 of Right Next Door (Stone Family #3)

Ian

W hen I step out of Stone Ink, the sun is high in the sky, and while I don’t need another cup of coffee in the middle of the day, I’ll buy one anyway because it’s a few minutes I have with my siblings every other week to catch up.

As I head down the cobblestone sidewalk on Aster Street, I stuff my hands in my pockets, nodding at the familiar faces in each storefront, but it’s Clara Wilkenson-Shaw who reaches for me as I pass by.

“Just who I need! Bring your strapping self over here. Come help me with this, please.”

I reverse two paces and steady her as she steps up onto a small stool, holding a large vine with decorative flowers in her hands. Clara is five foot nothing, with personality to spare, and she stares up at me with her impish smile because, even on the stool, she still doesn’t meet my height.

“How ’bout you just tell me where to put it, and I’ll hang it?” I suggest, and she swoons.

“My hero.”

I accept the tacks from her along with the flowers, moving this way and that until I have it hung exactly right around the door to Lux & Lace, the lingerie boutique she owns with her wife, Marianne.

West Chester is a college town, not too far from Philadelphia, and while I’ve lived here my whole life and everyone does sort of know everyone around here, it never feels as small as when Clara corners me.

“I saw Nicole crying this morning,” she says overly casually, and of course she did.

I don’t know how this woman knows everything about everyone, but I honestly think it has something to do with all her crystals and witchy shit. Since I can already read where this conversation is going, I attempt to shrug her off. “Okay, well, I’ll see you later.”

She stops me from walking away with her arm like an iron bar across my torso.

“She was crying when she went into Sweet Cheeks, and then she left Sweet Cheeks not crying, and I thought it was funny because I saw you go in there after her. So, two plus two and all that.” She flaps her hand in the air.

“I thought I’d ask the source. What happened? ”

I don’t especially relish being part of the town rumor mill, but I loathe the idea of anyone knowing Nicole’s secrets. I shake my head. “Not sure.”

Clara cocks her hip out. “You didn’t see her?”

“No, I did.”

“And?”

I draw my hand over my beard a few times. “And she was eating a cinnamon bun.”

“You have no idea why she was crying?”

Her asshole husband was the reason she was crying. I don’t think of myself as a particularly violent person, but I’d do nearly anything to have a few minutes in an empty alley with that bastard.

Telling her he wants an open relationship. Ha.

What he wants is to be able to get his dick wet without any repercussions. I’ve seen it happen before, these assholes thinking they know what they want, that they can handle what it actually means to be in an “open” relationship. And it’s certainly not based in respect or communication.

It’s selfish egotism, and Nicole doesn’t deserve his bullshit.

I shake my head at Clara, but it’s clear this tiny gossipmonger doesn’t believe me.

“And you didn’t say anything to her?”

After my brain finally cleared of my temper and my very clever imagination cleared out visions of Nicole being under my control, I told her to do some homework. To educate herself about what she was really getting herself into.

What I hadn’t expected was her eagerness to please. Her readiness to accept an assignment. Like a natural submissive.

It’s not the first time I’ve gotten half hard in her presence, but it was the first time I actually thought there was a possibility of my fantasies coming to life.

I shake my head again, earning an exasperated sigh from Clara. “You are such a liar.”

I play at hurt, pressing my hand to my heart. “My mother taught me better than that.”

She crosses her arms over her chest as Marianne pokes her head out the door, her natural black curls grown out on top with a perfect fade on the sides. “What’s going on out here?”

I motion to Clara. “Your wife attacked me, forced me to hang up your flowers, and is now berating me for being a liar.”

I’ve known Marianne for a long time, given that she’s been my sister’s best friend since grade school. She shoots her wife a pitying look. “You’re making trouble again.”

Clara lifts an innocent shoulder. “I’m trying to find out why Nicole was upset this morning.”

Marianne laughs. “You could always ask her.”

Clara’s eyes go round like a hurt kitten in one of those Sarah McLachlan commercials. Innocent and pathetic. “She’s so private, she’d never actually tell me.”

“Because you’re always in everybody’s business,” I say. It should be obvious.

“I am not!”

Marianne and I both stare at her blandly.

“A little bit,” she amends, and when we don’t give in to her, she huffs. “Fine, okay! I may possibly get a smidge overinvested in people’s lives, but I only want everyone to be happy like me. I want them to have what Mari and I have.”

Marianne wraps her arm around Clara’s waist. They’ve been married for about five years now.

Both women are originally from the area, but with more than a decade between them, they didn’t know each other until Clara moved back after she graduated from a fashion school in Philly.

Marianne is locally known as a whiz with numbers, an accountant by trade, but had a reputation for saving failing businesses, and the two teamed up to open their boutique. And I guess one thing led to another…

See? It’s not so hard not to know every single detail about my neighbors’ lives. It’s actually quite easy to let them live in peace.

“Not everyone wants or needs your help,” I point out to Clara, who takes no offense.

“And not everyone is such a pessimist like you.”

“I’m not a pessimist.”

She presses her thumb and index finger together, bobbing her head back and forth like, yeah, a little bit .

“I’m a realist.”

“And you should really let me set you up on a date.”

“No. Last time I did, you set me up with that boring preschool teacher.”

“Gail. She is lovely!”

“As dull as a brick wall.”

Clara scoffs. “Listen here, my friend. You’re not exactly Timothée Chalamet, okay?”

“Who?”

“An actor.” She snaps her fingers. “I need you to live in this decade.”

I roll my eyes, heaving a sigh. I love the girl, but she’s exhausting.

“Timothée is a triple threat.”

I shrug. “Okay?”

“I need you to try a little charisma. You can be scary when you want to be.”

As if I didn’t know that about myself, I arch my brows and point my index finger at my chest. “Really? People are afraid of me?”

She ignores my sarcasm. “Gail is actually quite funny, but you probably frightened her, and she clammed up.”

“I’m not that big of an asshole.”

At that, Marianne squints in thought. “You’re probably ranked lowest on the Stone asshole chart, but that’s still relatively higher than the general population.”

I toss my hands out at my sides. “Well, sorry I don’t have patience for dicks who don’t say please and thank you to servers like your friend Gail.”

It gets under my skin when people don’t use manners or have general decency for others, especially to servers. They’re waiting on us and splitting tips. It doesn’t cost us anything to be fucking nice to them.

“Or maybe you’re being a little too picky,” Clara says, her head slanted to the side in curiosity. “Because you have someone else you’d rather be on a date with.”

I don’t like that knowing smile on her face, and I step back, shaking my head. “There is no one else I want to be on a date with, and I definitely don’t want to be set up again, but thanks for the offer.”

“Seems like I hit a nerve.”

I wave her off, taking a few steps backward. “Gotta meet Taryn and Griffin for coffee.”

“Oh, great! I’ll take an iced latte.”

“Not happening.”

Marianne laughs with a wave. “See you later.”

I hold up my hand in a goodbye then pivot toward Cuppa Jo.

Marianne Wilkenson has been in my life so long, she’s practically another sister, making Clara like another sister as well.

And I could never actually be mad at her.

At any of them. While I find each of my siblings—biological or chosen—annoying, I’d never have it any other way.

After all the shit I’ve been through, I want to keep my family close, and if I have to take a little ballbusting in exchange for having them in my life, so be it.

I walk into the coffee house to find Taryn and Griffin already seated at our usual table by the window, drinks in hand. I accept my coffee from my sister when she holds it out. “Thanks.” I sit next to her and across from Griffin. “Cap.”

He adjusts his baseball cap with his firehouse number and emblem on it then nods. “You’re late.”

I’m usually the first one here, so I’m the one who orders our drinks and saves our seats. But not today. “Clara cornered me.”

Taryn sips her drink. “She’s not happy unless she’s up somebody’s ass.”

“That’s what I said.”

“What did she want now?” Griffin asks, spine straight, arms folded over his chest. He’s a doll stuck on a factory setting who can’t ever relax. You can take the man out of the military, but you can’t take the military out of the man, I guess. Even for twenty minutes with his siblings.

But then again, he wouldn’t be Captain America if he weren’t always such a soldier. Serves him well since he’s the fire captain now. A father of twins. He raised them on his own their whole lives after their mother died, but he’s got Andi now. The former nanny turned girlfriend.

And ironically, it was all set up by Clara.

“She wanted to know why Nicole was crying.” I keep my attention on a small divot in the table, so I don’t see my siblings’ reaction, but I can imagine. The slow blinks and wrenched necks.

Because why would I know anything about Nicole?

It’s Taryn who asks the question. “Do you know?”

I comb my fingers through my beard. “Nope.”

“I don’t believe you,” Griffin says, and I lift my focus as my sister shakes her head in agreement.

“You’re both as bad as she is.”

Taryn snorts. “That’s offensive.”

My sister was the latest one to star in Clara’s games, and now she’s a few months into a relationship with Dante, the contractor who renovated her bed-and-breakfast. But I’m happy for her.

She’s been through a lot of shit with her ex-husband, and she deserves someone who worships her, takes care of her two kids.

It’s about time she has someone to lean on.

Which makes me think of our younger brother. Moving on from the subject of Clara, I ask, “Either of you heard from Roman lately?”

“Not really.” Taryn leans her elbow on the table. “I texted him on his birthday but never heard back.”

Griffin shrugs. “No. Why?”

I scrub a hand through my hair, wishing I had a hair tie to put it up. “He’s being distant again. I thought we were making progress. He was talking to all of us more, and now it’s like he’s disappeared again.”

Taryn has softened toward Roman in the last few months, probably because being with Dante has taken a lot of the stress from her shoulders, so she has more room to empathize.

But still, she’s not completely thawed. “You can’t force him to do anything he doesn’t want to.

If he doesn’t want to be involved with our family, that’s his decision. ”

“I know, but…” I worry about him. He might be almost forty years old, but it’s still hard not to think of him as my baby brother.

Taryn and Griffin are less than a year apart, and they’ve always been tight, and while Roman is closer in age to them, it was me he was with all the time.

We have twelve years between us, and I always sort of saw him as my baby.

After our father left for the second time and for good, I took on a lot of responsibility.

My mother, the best woman to ever exist, worked herself to the bone to provide for the four of us, and I couldn’t stand by and let her shoulder it all herself, especially when I was old enough to make money.

So I got a job painting houses, and whenever I wasn’t in school or working, I was babysitting Roman.

He followed me around everywhere. Everything I did, he did.

Even down to fixing up my car. That kid was changing oil before he was potty-trained.

And, for as close as we were, I haven’t seen him in years.

He’s had a rough go of it. I mean, we all have, with our dad walking out on us and our mother dying so young and suddenly.

But he was still in college when we had to bury her.

He had a full ride on a football scholarship with a future in the NFL ahead of him.

Then Mom passed, and everything went downhill for him.

He tore his quadriceps muscle clean off the bone and needed surgery to repair it.

Unfortunately, that addict gene got its claws into him, and he never graduated, too wrapped up in pills, drinking, and grief to recover.

I paid for therapy and rehab, but none of it worked or stuck. Roman is my biggest worry, even more than my own children, and the most painful thorn in the side.

And I’d love to have him home again.

Have us all back together.

“Anyway.” I sigh, suddenly tired. “How’s everybody been?”

As Taryn and Griffin fill me in on summer plans with their kids, I pretend I’m paying attention, nodding and humming in all the right spots, but the more my siblings tell me about how great everything is going with their significant others, the more my mind drifts back to Nicole.

Wondering if she’ll do that research I told her to, and if she’ll have the courage to talk to me about it again.

I hope so.

After all, she said it herself, she loves homework.

And I love a girl who can follow orders.