The King Next Door

She was a mother, for God’s sake. And then there was Katie’s threat to consider. Besides, he was thirty-three now. That was the magic number. The age he’d decided would be the end of his days as a player. The age when he would damn well mature whether he wanted to or not.

“And I really don’t want to.”

“Are you talking to yourself?”

He glanced up as Nicole came into the kitchen, Connor on her hip. She was wearing white shorts and a bright pink tank top with matching pink polish on her toes. Her hair was tucked behind her ears and twin silver hoops winked at him in the early sunlight.

“What? No.” He shook his head and focused on the cup of coffee he held between his palms. “I’m just thinking.”

“Wow, you’re a noisy thinker.”

Connor shouted, “Down!”

Griffin winced. It was too early for conversation and way too early for chipper.

“Want some milk, baby?” Nicole asked.

Griffin almost said no thanks.

Connor shouted, “Milk! And cookies!”

Nicole laughed. “No cookies for breakfast.”

Griffin looked at the boy. Such a cute kid. Would it be wrong to put tape across his mouth?

Nicole brought Connor some milk, then took eggs from the fridge and a skillet from the cupboard. She was as comfortable in Katie’s kitchen as she was in her own. “Can I make you something?”

“No, I never eat breakfast,” he mumbled, concentrating on the coffee. Caffeine. The secret to survival.

“It’s Connor’s favorite meal,” she said, and started scrambling eggs, setting the skillet on the stove and in general making a clatter of noise that had Griffin clenching his teeth.

“I’ve decided that I’m going to look at this whole situation as a gift,” Nicole said from her place at the stove.

“Is that right?” Griffin reached out and took away the spoon Connor was beating against the tabletop. The little boy’s features screwed up, his bottom lip poked out and a sheen of tears filled small blue eyes. Griffin sighed and handed the spoon back.

Just keep drinking coffee, he told himself and stood up to get a refill.

“Well, like you said,” Nicole continued, “I have to have it fixed anyway, so I’ve decided to try and look at it like redecorating rather than rebuilding.”

“Probably a good idea,” he allowed as he took his seat again. Connor grinned at him and pounded that spoon with all the fervor of a rock-band drummer.

Griffin was not a morning person. He preferred conversations over a late supper with plenty of wine. He never spent the night with any of the women he … dated, so the morning-after chat had never been on his agenda. Now, not only did he have a woman to talk to, but a two-year-old to endure.

Usually he greeted morning with all the enthusiasm of a condemned prisoner facing execution. Today, even more so.

Nicole set scrambled eggs in front of Connor and the little boy used his fingers to eat while he continued to pound the spoon. Griffin sighed, then asked himself just when exactly he’d turned into an old crank.

“Connor has preschool,” Nicole was saying, “so as soon as I drop him off, I’ll be back here to make some phone calls to the insurance company and a contractor …”

Griffin took a sip of coffee. “You take care of calling the insurance company and I’ll call King Construction,” he offered. “They’ll take care of it and give you a better deal than you’d get anywhere else.”

He watched her and saw refusal glint in her eye a moment before she nodded and said, “Thanks. I appreciate that.”

She might appreciate it, he told himself, but she also didn’t like having to accept favors. He could understand that even as he would have swept right past her refusal if she had argued with him.

“No problem. What’s the point of having family if you can’t call on them when you need ’em? With Rafe out of town, I’ll talk to Lucas. He can probably come over today for a look around.”

“Okay.” She handed Connor a cup of milk at the same time Griffin slipped the spoon from the boy’s hand.

“Not used to dealing with kids, are you?” she asked with a half smile.

“Not at the crack of dawn,” he admitted, feeling a little guilty now at snatching away Connor’s spoon again. Resigned, he gave it back.

“It’s eight o’clock.”

“My point exactly.” When his world hadn’t been turned upside down, Griffin would just now be sitting down for his first cup of coffee. He’d be on the balcony of his condo, staring out at the water, letting the silence sink into him. Then he’d shower, get dressed and arrive at King Security a little after nine.

Ironic, he thought, that his working schedule suddenly looked so much more relaxing than his vacation.

Shaking her head, Nicole focused on her son. Taking another sip of his coffee, Griffin watched her with the boy, saw her eyes sparkle with interest and humor as Connor prattled, half coherent, half in some weird baby speak that Nicole seemed to understand. Morning sunlight lay across the table and shone in her hair and something hot and hard settled in the pit of his stomach—then dropped lower. Any woman who could affect him like this first thing in the morning was dangerous.

Oh, yeah. Them living here together was going to work out great, he told himself with a heavy sigh.

He needed to make that call to King Construction fast. The quicker he got Nicole out of arm’s reach, the better it would be.

For all of them.

Three

“Man, you did a number on this place.” Lucas King moved through Nicole’s kitchen later that afternoon, noting every bit of damage with a practiced eye, missing nothing. In minutes he had examined the room, checking every outlet, every piece of missing plaster. The power was still off, of course, but Lucas had checked that as well, not trusting anyone else’s word for it.

“I didn’t exactly put a torch to it,” Griffin argued, leaning back against the ruined kitchen counter.

“Might as well have.” Lucas’s voice was muffled. Standing on a metal ladder, he had his head poked through the hole in the ceiling while he shifted the beam of his flashlight across the area.

Griffin thought about giving the ladder a shove, just on principle. But, since his cousin was actually using a stable ladder rather than the one Griffin had toppled off, it probably wouldn’t do any good.

“You did all this by falling off a ladder?”

“Yeah,” Griffin said tightly. He heard the amusement in his cousin’s voice and knew damn well that Lucas would be telling this story to the rest of the family. “I grabbed the light fixture, hoping to steady myself, and instead …”

Lucas snorted. “Ripped it right out of the wall, didn’t you?”

“Seriously?” Scowling at his cousin’s back, Griffin added, “I didn’t bring you here to rag on me. Just to look at the kitchen.”

“Yeah, I know,” Lucas said, voice still muffled as he continued his examination. “The ragging on you is the fun part of all this.”

“Happy to help,” Griffin said in a tone that made it plain he wasn’t happy. “How bad is it?”

“Like a bad horror movie up here. The wiring is antique,” Lucas muttered. “Even from a distance I can see spots that are frayed. It’s a wonder the place didn’t catch fire years ago.”

That thought gave Griffin cold chills. He thought of Nicole and her son living here alone. What if there’d been an electrical fire in the middle of the night? Even with the smoke alarms, there was no guarantee Nicole and Connor would have gotten out. He scraped one hand across his face as a sense of uneasiness rolled through the pit of his stomach.

“Guess we can’t lay this one all on you,” Lucas commented as he came down the ladder, metal groaning and creaking with his every step, to stand in the center of the devastated kitchen.

He squinted into the sunlight streaming through the window over the sink. “The wiring in the whole damn house is about a breath away from whoosh.”

Griffin shook his head. “Whoosh?”

“That’s a technical term.” Lucas grinned. “The sound a fire makes when it whooshes into life.”

“Great. Disaster humor.” Griffin didn’t think it was funny. He’d actually heard that sound, right after the series of pops when the wiring burst into flame. He remembered the smell of the smoke, too, and tried to push those memories out of his mind. The kitchen was wrecked, but they’d all gotten out in one piece. That was the important part. And from what Lucas was saying, they were lucky the whole house hadn’t been turned into a pile of rubble.

Griffin pushed away from the counter and tucked his hands into his pockets. He took a quick look around the room and saw things he hadn’t noticed when he’d been here before—pictures of Connor on the fridge. A teakettle in the shape of a rooster on the soot-covered stove. Small green glass vases, knocked off the windowsill, now shattered on the scarred countertop, the flowers they’d held lying wilted and dead beside them.

It wasn’t just a room, he thought, it was Nicole’s home, and more of a home than he had. Visions of his condo leaped into his mind. Hell, all he ever used the place for was to store his clothes, to sleep and occasionally to nuke a takeout dinner. He frowned to himself as a nibble of guilt chewed at him. She’d lost so much, and he had more than he needed or used.

Didn’t seem to matter that Lucas had told him the wiring was ready to blow at any time. The plain truth was, Griffin had pulled those wires loose. Griffin had caused the damn fire that had put Nicole and her son out of their house. And Griffin was the one who had to make it right.

Whether Nicole liked it or not.

“So what do you want to do?” Lucas asked, making notes on a computer tablet.

“I want her place fixed.”

“We can do that,” his cousin assured him. “I’m assuming she’s got insurance?”

“She says so,” Griffin told him. “But I’m guessing she’s got a big deductible, too.”

“Probably.” Lucas nodded thoughtfully. “Single moms don’t usually have a hell of a lot of extra cash lying around.”

“That’s what I think, too.” Griffin glanced over at the house next door, where Nicole was working in the dining room with her laptop—thankfully undamaged by either the fire or water. She knew Lucas was here, but she hadn’t been in a hurry to walk back through the destruction, so she had stayed where she was, waiting to talk to Lucas when the inspection was over.

Turning back to his cousin, he said, “I’ll take care of the deductible and any extra it runs.”

Lucas’s eyebrows lifted. “Is that right?”

Griffin saw the interested look in his cousin’s eyes and sneered. “Don’t get any ideas. There’s nothing going on between me and Nicole. But I caused this. The least I can do is fix it.”

“She won’t like it.”

“She doesn’t have to know.”

Lucas laughed shortly. “Dude, you are out of your mind if you really think Nicole won’t find out what you’re up to.”

“Please.” Griffin tugged his hands from his pockets and folded his arms over his chest. “I’m in the security business, remember? We know how to keep secrets.”

“Not from women you don’t.” Lucas shook his head. “It’s spooky, I swear. Every time I think I put one over on Rose, she nails me with it. It’s like female radar or something. Built into the whole double X chromosome or whatever.”

Griffin just stared at him. “You’re delusional.”

“No, I’m married.”

“Same thing.”

“You’re a sad, sad man,” Lucas said, shaking his head and grinning.

“Yeah,” Griffin shot back, his smile wide and self-satisfied. “Poor me. Different woman every week. Nobody making demands on my time. Sex whenever I want it.”

“Uh, hello?” Lucas scowled at him. “I get sex whenever I want it, too, you know. And I don’t have to leave home to get it.”

“Yeah?” Griffin laughed. “How’s the sex life these days?”

Lucas’s wife was pregnant with their second child. Just like most of the King family, Lucas had turned from a player into a husband and father. The Kings were falling, one by one, like a row of dominoes bowing to gravity. Pitiful. Just pitiful.

“You should have it so good.” Lucas gave him a wicked grin.

Possibly true. For all his big talk, Griffin knew that his cousin had a point. Hell, over the last few months, Griffin had been less and less interested in living the lifestyle that had been his for years. Dozens of different women had come and gone from his life, barely making an impression. Different. He laughed silently at that, because though the faces and names had changed, they’d all been the same.

Beautiful and boring.

Try having a conversation with any of them. Hell, after the first five minutes, he’d been zoned out and barely listening to talk that centered on the hottest club, the newest designer or the best place to get a spray-on tan.

But then, he hadn’t dated them for their ability to discuss art and literature, had he? Griffin could admit that all he’d wanted from them—any of them—was a quick romp in the sheets. So he really had no room for complaints, did he?

Damn. This whole maturing thing was a pain in the ass.

“So when do you want us to get started?” Lucas asked with another glance around the kitchen.

“This afternoon work for you?”

Lucas laughed. “Got it. You want it done fast.” Nodding, he made a few notes on his computer tablet. “We’re spread a little thin right now—we’ve got at least a half dozen jobs up and running, not to mention that Rosie’s got me building shelves in Danny’s room when I’m not working. But two of our jobs are winding down.”

“Man. Rafe left town for a vacation when you’ve got that much work piled up?” Out of character for a King, Griffin thought.

“Yeah, well.” Lucas shrugged. “Things change when you’ve got a wife and a life. Besides, Rafe wanted to take Katie on that tour of Europe while she was still feeling well enough to travel.”

“Katie?” Fear reached up and closed a hand around the base of Griffin’s throat. Staring at his cousin, he demanded, “Is there something wrong with Katie? Why doesn’t the family know about it?”

“Damn it.” Lucas lifted one hand. “Power down. Nothing’s wrong with Katie. She’s pregnant, is all. And nobody’s supposed to know yet, so keep your big mouth shut. Katie and Rafe are gonna have a family deal when they get back and let everybody know.”

Relief spilled through Griffin. “I already told you, I know how to keep a secret.”

“Right.” Lucas nodded. “Anyway, Rafe wanted them to have some time together before their lives really get busy. Nothing sucks up your time like kids.”

Another King becoming a father. Finding a life. Finding … something more. Something that Griffin wasn’t sure he’d ever find for himself and, if he did, he didn’t know that he’d want it. Which said what, exactly, about him? Griffin frowned to himself.

“Another King bites the dust,” he muttered to cover up the unexpected emotions crowding him.

“Call it what you want,” Lucas said, a little on the defensive side. “But we don’t see it that way.”

“You used to,” Griffin reminded him. “In fact,” he continued, “I remember a poker game a few years ago when we were talking about Adam and Travis getting married and you said—”

Lucas huffed out a breath. “I remember.”

“—you said,” Griffin went on, “that getting married was like being buried, only you didn’t have the sense to lie down and be dead.”

Shaking his head, Lucas muttered, “Yeah, well, things change.”

“Damn straight they do,” Griffin told him, and felt his own wayward emotions coming back into line. Maturing was one thing, he told himself sternly. Going crazy over one woman and signing up for a lifetime of marriage was something else again. He wasn’t about to set himself up to be one of the many Kings ready for a fall. Let his cousins go from happy bachelors to husbands and fathers. Let his own twin, for God’s sake, make that move, but not him. “Things change, cousin, but only if you let them.”

Lucas snorted. “Whatever you say, cuz.”

Griffin knew sarcasm when he heard it. “Just figure out who you can get in here to fix up this place. And do it fast.”

“You got it,” Lucas said. “We’ll take care of permits from the city. I’ll have some plans drawn up and email them to Nicole for approval.” He turned off the tablet and tucked it beneath his arm. “Tell her I’ll let her know when she needs to decide on flooring, paint and appliances.”

“Fine.” And whatever she picked, Griffin promised silently, he’d be upgrading. He paid his debts, and he’d be damned if he was going to let Nicole have a half-assed remodel because of her pride.

Chuckling softly, Lucas headed for the back door. “You know … sometimes things change whether you want them to or not. And not even a King can stop it.”

Griffin didn’t bother saying aloud what he was thinking. You can stop anything—if you never let it get started.

Trouble was, Griffin told himself as he walked out of the destruction into the summer sunlight, as far as Nicole was concerned, he had a feeling it was already too late.

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