Page 22 of The Seascape Between Us (The Men of Saltwater Cove #4)

Chapter Fifteen

Grey

R ain poured in sheets from the bleak, gray sky, and of course, the roofers were nowhere to be seen.

There was no way they could continue to work in the pouring rain.

They’d tarped their work, and I was sure they’d be back as soon as the rain let up—they’d better, at least, for what I was paying them—but every day that the weather kept them from working was another day closer to our Grand Re-opening with nothing getting done.

I left my car in the Seascape’s nearly empty parking lot and ducked my head against the rain as I hurried to the entrance.

Still dressed in yesterday’s rumpled suit—except for the jacket I’d wrapped around Daniel’s injured arm and had since tossed into the trash—I had nothing to protect myself from the elements and I was drenched by the time I stepped into the lobby.

“What have you done with Daniel?” June demanded the moment I stepped inside.

I pushed my dripping hair back from my face and met her angry glower. What was she even doing here? It was early, not quite nine, but her shift had ended hours ago.

Carter stood a little behind her, wide-eyed and helpless.

“Um… nothing,” I said, unless you counted a blow job that left both of us like melted wax, followed by an emotional revelation about how our relationship ended nearly twenty years ago. Since I was pretty sure she didn’t mean either of those things, I just waited.

“This one,” she jerked a thumb in Carter’s direction, “told me Daniel was hurt working in one the rooms, and you took him to the hospital but didn’t bring him back.”

“I didn’t kidnap him,” I said, sounding more defensive than I would have liked.

“He fell while he was working in one of the bathrooms, cut his arm and hit his head. I did take him to the hospital, where he got some stitches in his arm and the doctor thought he might have a mild concussion, so he said Daniel should rest for a few days. I knew if I brought him back here, there was no way he’d rest. So, I brought him to my father’s place.

” After hearing that last part, maybe I had kidnapped Daniel, after all.

June’s narrowed gaze drilled into me as if she were trying to see inside me to assure herself that I was telling the truth.

She was small and round, the top of her hair barely reaching my shoulder, white hair curling under her chin.

Without knowing her, I would have thought she was someone’s grandmother, and she should have been baking cookies or something.

But I did know her, and she terrified me.

“You’re not wrong,” she finally conceded with a slight nod. “He wouldn’t have taken it easy if he were here.”

“I’m picking up our things from our rooms,” I continued, uncertain why I felt compelled to explain my plans, our plans, going forward.

“The construction crew will be starting on the rooms on the second floor, so since the tenants are out of my father’s house, Daniel and I will be staying there.

We’ll still be here through the workday, and you can reach us at any time if there are any problems.”

June’s thin brow lifted, disappearing under her softly curled white bangs. “How long do you really think you can keep Daniel from the hotel?”

“I’m hoping at least today,” I told her, honestly. He’d been sleeping still when I’d left this morning.

She nodded. “Well, you can only do so much. You’ll look after him?”

“Of course.”

“Of course,” she agreed. “You remember what I said to you?”

“Testicles. Blender. I remember.”

She flashed that sweet, grandmotherly smile, and a shiver slithered up my spine. Honestly, if she turned out to be a serial killer, I wouldn’t even be surprised.

“I’m off, then.” She slipped out from behind the front desk. “Have a good day, Carter.”

“You too,” Carter told her, sounding as uncertain as I felt. Once she’d left, he added, “Man, I wouldn’t want to be on her bad side.”

“You really wouldn’t.”

I went over anything Carter needed, and since the hotel had no guests, there wasn’t much. The hotel was booked to capacity from the opening all the way to mid-September and with more to the end of the year.

I took that as a good sign and probably the result of my marketing team’s hard work. Now, I just needed to be sure that the hotel was ready to open as planned. I’d give Finn a call. Maybe get the crew back down here working on the rooms, since the roofers couldn’t work in weather like this.

Having gone over everything I needed to with Carter, I made my way to my room, then showered and changed into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt before packing up the rest of my things.

There wasn’t much. Not surprising since I’d only been staying here a few weeks, and the hotel was not my primary residence.

However, when I started packing up Daniel’s room and saw he didn’t have much more than me, that was far more disconcerting.

I packed up his clothes—mostly a collection of battered jeans and old T-shirts that he no doubt used while making repairs around the hotel and a much smaller collection of khakis and button shirts for when he interacted with the guests—in an over-sized duffel bag I found in the closet.

Aside from his clothes, he had a cardboard box of old photos on a shelf in the closet and a couple of tattered sci-fi novels he’d taken out from the library.

He’d taken minimalist to a whole new level.

Once I’d grabbed his things from the bathroom and tossed them into the bag, I did a final sweep around the room, but I’d packed up everything in under twenty minutes. God damn, Daniel was living like a guest in his own hotel, his own life.

It was as if he put so much of himself into the hotel that there was nothing left of him for himself. He was existing, not living, and god damn it, I was going to change that for him.

Last night, after going over my father’s letter, Daniel stated he didn’t think we could be anything more than business partners with benefits.

I stopped pushing. Instead, I’d ordered food while Daniel had collected his underwear and jeans from the laundry room, so he wasn’t wandering around the house naked—despite my encouragement otherwise.

We didn’t talk anymore about my father, or us, for that matter. It may have been seventeen years since Daniel and I had been together, but I remembered how stubborn he could be. How once he’d set his mind to something, getting him to change it was like working a miracle.

Of course, that didn’t mean I would just let him decide we couldn’t be together because of some imagined idea that he’d never accomplished anything with his life.

If he’d told me he didn’t care about me anymore, that he didn’t want me, I’d have left the past in the past, but he hadn’t said either of those things. Instead, he’d said he didn’t belong in my life, which was absolute bullshit.

As infuriating as it was to listen to Daniel, I knew better than to argue when he’d made up his mind. If I were going to convince him we should be together, I needed to show him how good it could be.

It’s not that I was blind to everything he’d been going through.

He’d been managing on his own for so long, he didn’t trust that help from anyone else could last. I needed to show him he didn’t have to do everything on his own and that keeping the hotel going while facing everything he had was its own kind of success.

He hadn’t ended our business-partners-with-benefits arrangement yet, so I considered that a good sign.

Last night, while we ate, we’d talked about inconsequential things, the hotel and our plans for it going forward, all the time being careful to skirt around us and our plans for the future.

By the time we’d cleaned up and gone to bed, Daniel hadn’t commented when I’d slipped into the bed next to him, and in the morning, I’d been careful not to wake him when I extricated myself from his limbs tangled around me.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, jerking me from my thoughts. I slipped it free, and Daniel’s name glowed up at me. I swiped my thumb over the screen and pressed it to my ear. “Hello?”

“Where’s my clothes?” Despite his low, controlled tone, I could hear the frustration seeping through.

I grinned. Something about an annoyed Daniel never failed to amuse me. “Who is this?”

“Very funny. They’re not in the laundry or the bedroom. What did you do with them?”

“I took them with me,” I admitted.

“Why? Where are you?”

“At the Seascape.”

“Why didn’t you wake me up? I could have gone with you.”

I rolled my eyes and sank onto the end of his bed. Despite the bed being neatly made, his faint scent lingered, wafting from the covers. Between his scent teasing my nose and the deep rumble of his voice through the phone, my cock was already half-hard.

“I think you answered your own question. You’re supposed to be resting.”

“I’ve been away from the hotel since yesterday. I should be there. What if there’s a problem?”

I could hear the anxiety building in his voice, turning his words fast and desperate. “Everything is running smoothly. This is one of the perks of a partnership. When you need to take some time away, you know someone’s got your back. I already spoke to Carter and June—”

“June? How early did you go in?”

I let out a soft, scoffing chuckle. “Not that early, believe me. She was waiting for me. I think she thought I’d kidnapped you.”

“You took my clothes to keep me from leaving. You did kidnap me.”

“Relax. I’m bringing you clean clothes now.”

“The hotel—”

“Is fine ,” I told him, standing and hoisting the duffel bag containing everything he owned over my shoulder. “Like I said, I went over things with Carter, and I’m going to check in with the restaurant before I head back.”

“Fine,” he grumbled. “But hurry up with my clothes. I can’t keep walking around wrapped up in a bedsheet.”

No need to bother with a bedsheet on my account . But I thought better than to say so out loud. Instead, I promised to be quick before ending the call.

I wrapped up everything I needed to get done at the hotel quickly.

A part of me worried if I took too long, Daniel might fashion something to wear out of the bedsheets and try to make his way to the Seascape on his own.

Then I loaded mine and his things into the car and started back to the house, with a quick stop for groceries so we wouldn't have to survive on leftover Chinese food.

Once I pulled into the driveway at the house, I climbed out and hauled Daniel’s bag and my suitcase from the backseat, then carried them both inside, setting them down in the foyer.

At the sound of me entering the house, Daniel scrambled up from the sofa where he’d been watching some morning news show.

Clutching the bed sheet wrapped around his waist with one hand, he lifted the remote from the coffee table and shut off the TV with the other.

“Thank god,” he said when his gaze fell on the bag with his clothes.

“I’ll be right back,” I told him. “I’m just getting the rest of the stuff from the car.”

While grabbing my laptop and the box of photos from the back seat, I heard footsteps on the stone path behind me. I threw my laptop bag over my shoulder and clutched Daniel’s box, then turned and found Daniel standing behind me.

He’d pulled on a pair of jeans and a plain black t-shirt that clung to his broad chest and shoved his feet into sneakers that had seen better days.

Was there anything he didn’t look fucking gorgeous in?

Jeans and t-shirt, sedate button-down and khakis, bed sheets.

He’d always been one of the most beautiful men I’d ever seen, and though I felt like an idiot for staring, who could blame me?

“Is that from my room?” Daniel asked, nodding at the box in my arms, a frown clouding his features.

“I brought everything from your room, which, by the way, wasn’t much.”

“I don’t like clutter.” Red crept into his cheeks. “Why would you bring this here? The doctor said I only needed to take it easy for a few days.”

I sighed and leaned back against the side of the car, tension knotting my insides.

I knew I was being a smidge overbearing, but my plan to show Daniel that we belonged together would work out easier if we were under the same roof.

“Look, we’re going to start renovating the second-floor rooms, and we’re both going to need to find a place to stay.

This place is empty now. We might as well stay here unless… you have somewhere else to go?”

Daniel hesitated before saying anything, his face completely unreadable. My heart rate sped up, my chest tightening as I held my breath.

“Okay,” he said, folding his good arm over his considerable chest and clasping his other arm. “I’ll stay until the hotel is finished.”

Relief left my limbs weak, and I let out the breath I’d been holding. He was staying, and while I knew better than to say so, I would do everything I could to see he stayed forever.