Love Letters in Fortune's Bay: A Fortune's Bay Novella Read online

  Although maybe that last bit was on account of the fact that she worked for him and figured if she didn’t give him her undivided attention, she might find herself on the receiving end of a closed door.

  A heavy sigh rattled in his chest. Raking his fingers through his dark, messy hair, Reese glanced at her darkened computer screen, then noticed the notepad she’d been hunched over when he’d walked in.

  How close to being done with the report was she?

  Daisy was one of those people who had to write down everything before she typed it up on the computer. It was her “thing,” she said, and he respected that. Even so, she’d promised him an estimate on the company’s wages for an upcoming project and curiosity got the better of him.

  Flipping the notepad over, he stared down at Daisy’s chaotic handwriting.

  Frowned.

  Lifted the legal pad from the desk until he held it at an angle in front of his face, like somehow that would make the words look less foreign.

  Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. His heart rate skyrocketed as he read the first line to himself: Dear Insufferable You.

  By “you” did she mean him?

  Reese glanced over his shoulder, but he was alone. Although Harvey Construction did well, they’d never needed a third staff member in the office. He and Daisy Mae handled it all.

  Which meant that it was unlikely this letter was written to anyone but him.

  Damn.

  He rubbed a palm over his chest, directly over his rapidly beating heart, and skimmed his gaze over the page with quick efficiency.

  Dear Insufferable You,

  After all these years of knowing you, I’m still not sure why I let even the mention of your name get under my skin. (This letter, just so you know, is supposed to be funny—even though it’ll never reach you—and I’ve already accepted the fact that this is Draft #1, and Draft #1 is for my emotions only. Nothing else.)

  So it isn’t going to be funny.

  It probably won’t even be that nice.

  I was asked to write about you from a reader. I could wax on about the obvious: your dark hair and your dark eyes and the stubble that always makes its presence known along your jawline.

  Harping on about your looks won’t do me much good, and I’m all about being productive with my time. So, here are the top five reasons why I hate you, in no particular order:

  I hate the way you make me question my self-worth.

  I hate the way you drive me to the brink of insanity.

  I hate the way you think I can’t handle more responsibilities.

  I hate the way you talk down to me, like you secretly think I can’t understand the bigger picture.

  And I hate, sometimes more than anything, that you act like I can’t amount to anything more than managing this place for you.

  I have dreams. Big dreams. Dreams that don’t include you.

  So, Insufferable You, this is the letter I should have written to you long ago—if I’d had the confidence to do so. But as they always say, better late than

  The letter cut off with a jagged ink blot scattered downward across four lines.

  And Reese . . . Well, it was safe to say that he felt like he’d just been plowed over by a Mardi Gras float, the kind he used to run alongside as a kid in New Orleans. His chest ached and his throat felt raw and he felt the sudden need to sit his butt down in the closest chair and pull the Jim Beam bottle out from his desk.

  Usually, the Beam was kept for celebrations.

  Today, he figured it’d do better as a grown man’s cure-all.

  The letter was absolutely about him, and if that didn’t say all he needed to know about how Daisy felt about him, then he wasn’t sure what did.

  Like the notepad had suddenly caught on fire, he tossed it back on the desk and turned swiftly away from Daisy’s desk. He should have known better than to even think . . . than to hope—

  His fingers flexed at his sides, mimicking the tight squeeze of his heart in his chest.

  Simply put, he should have known better.

  But to learn that she found him insufferable? Jeez, that was rough.

  Palming his cell phone, he pulled up his cousin’s number under his recent contacts. Gage picked up on the second ring, his voice sounding so similar to Reese’s that they’d often been mistaken for twins growing up, despite their three-year age gap. And, despite the fact that Gage was already a twin.

  “Well,” drawled Gage, “if it isn’t our missing driver, Reese Harvey.”

  Three years meant that for the first half of their lives, Reese had been the tagalong kid. Nowadays, they were at least on equal footing. Tucking the phone between his ear and shoulder, he said, “Some of us aren’t on vacation.”

  “Some of us have the luxury of working for ourselves and can take vacation whenever we want.”

  Reese chuckled low. “Is that how my life works?”

  “Did you or did you not fly into N’Orleans a few months ago just because you wanted to watch the Saints play at home?”

  Nothing he could say to dispute that. He was a diehard football fan, and there was no team he loved more than the New Orleans Saints. Floridian transplant or not, he wasn’t a traitor. He’d bleed black and gold until the day he was six feet under. “I had some time to kill,” he said, then swiped the keys for his personal truck off his desk. “And I figured you and Owen might want to see your favorite cousin.”

  “Are you our favorite?” Gage asked, lighthearted sarcasm puncturing every vowel. “Let’s just say that if you were, you’ve been demoted.”

  He’d been demoted often while they were all kids—at least, during the years they’d all lived in New Orleans together. When Gage and Owen moved out west to Hackberry, Louisiana, after their parents’ divorce, Reese’s demotions had been relegated to the stray weekends whenever his cousins visited the city. Their fathers had been brothers, and Reese had been taught as a kid that family was everything.

  “Who’ve I been shoved over for this time?” He eyed the digital clock on the dashboard as he climbed into his Ford 150. Plugging his phone into the Bluetooth, he turned the volume up and pulled out of his parking spot. He had exactly twenty minutes until his butt had to be planted on a chair at Metairie Realty one town over. Fortunately for him, Fortune’s Bay had never seen a traffic jam in its life.

  Pirates? Sure.

  Treasure? Absolutely.

  Bumper-to-bumper traffic? Not even on Christmas.

  After the grit and grime of New Orleans living, moving to Fortune’s Bay was like coming home to his own slice of paradise.

  Reese had no plans to leave anytime—

  Gage’s voice broke through his thoughts: “For your assistant, Daisy?”

  Fu—duck. All the ducks. Every last one.

  Hearing her name lit a spark in Reese that he could never shut down, even now that he knew how she really felt about him.

  Double duck.

  “She grab y’all already from the airport?” he asked, palming the steering wheel as he pulled onto the main drag that would lead him out of Fortune’s Bay. “That was quick.” Although they were a good distance away from Miami’s international airport, Fortune’s Bay had a more local set of terminals thirty minutes away.

  “Say hi to the jerk who runs your life,” Gage teased, clearly speaking to Daisy, and then it was her voice Reese heard through his speakers, saying his name, and it took everything in him not to wince at the memory of finding her letter.

  Insufferable, man. She thinks you’re insufferable.

  “Daisy said you’re on the way to a big meeting?” Gage asked after a moment.

  Reese pulled onto the highway, then merged into the middle lane. “Yeah. I’m heading there now.”

  “Up to meeting us for dinner and drinks after? Lizzie and I are gonna take Daisy as hostage. You’ll have to rescue her.”

  Damn you, Gage.

  Tempted as he was to squeeze his eyes shut and pretend this conversation wasn’t happening, that simpl
y wasn’t an option. For future reference, though, Reese was going to have to limit any and all phone calls to his cousin when he drank one too many beers after a long work week.

  Clearly, spilling his guts wasn’t going to do him any favors now that Gage wanted to play matchmaker and Daisy was preparing her resignation letter.

  Her resignation letter . . .

  Yeah, he didn’t even want to think about that right now.

  “I don’t need rescuing, Mr. Harvey,” Reese heard Daisy say, and there was no mistaking the quiet edge to her voice. “I can take care of myself.”

  “Ah, man, I didn’t mean it like that.” There was the sound of fingers scraping over the mini-phone speakers, and then a very muffled, “You can handle yourself just fine. Now, Reese? Him I’m worried about.”

  Familiar, tinkling laughter made Reese’s heart squeeze. “So am I.”

  Was she?

  They’d always shared a quiet, familiar sort of relationship. Comfortable. Easy. Obviously disregarding the fact that he wanted her more than he wanted air to breathe—cliché or not. “Where are y’all heading?” Because he was clearly a glutton for punishment. “All goes well and I should be done within the hour.”

  He’d prefer not to think about if crap hit the fan.

  “Daisy?” Gage asked. A moment later, Reese heard his cousin laugh and then his voice tumbled through the speakers: “The Wilde Pirate, huh? I have fond memories of the place. Namely, Reese dancing on a pool table.”

  If he hadn’t been ten-and-twoing the wheel, Reese would have slammed his eyes shut in embarrassment. As it was, he mean-mugged a driver who cut him off, and then muttered, “It was my twenty-first birthday.”

  “Then we’re right on target, aren’t we, for a ten-year reunion?”

  Then there was nothing but the sound of Reese breathing—Gage had hung up, taking Daisy right along with him.

  Reese inhaled sharply and then made a vow: no drinking Guinness at the Wilde Pirate, no drinking tequila, and for everything that was good in the world, no letting Connor Callaghan make him one of the bar’s “specialty cocktails.”

  Amen.

  Chapter Three

  Gage and Lizzie Harvey were Daisy’s kind of people.

  It took only a single drive from the airport to the Wilde Pirate to make that decision.

  Oh, and perhaps the delicious hard cider clasped in her hand had something to do with it, too.

  She met Lizzie’s gaze over the glass rim of her honey-hued drink. “So, you’re telling me that you needed a fake boyfriend and you hired him?” On the last word, she dipped the pint glass in Gage’s direction.

  Brushing her light brown hair back from her face, Lizzie grinned. “Hired sounds so impersonal, don’t you think? I prefer . . . lured?”

  With an arm around his wife’s shoulders, Gage pressed a kiss to the side of her head. “Lured makes you sound like one of those nut jobs off the Investigation Discovery Channel.” He paused, then sent a wink in Daisy’s direction. “She hired me. Offered me money, even”—he whooped out deep-seated laughter when Lizzie swatted his shoulder—“okay, okay, she didn’t pay me. But the hiring happened. Don’t let her fool you otherwise.”

  There was no denying it—Reese and Gage were polar opposites.

  Well, in everything but the looks department. Whereas Gage was quick to smile, Reese’s version of “smiling” was to hitch one corner of his mouth and leave it at that. Whereas Gage actively engaged in conversation with the bar’s owner, Connor, Daisy knew for a fact that Reese was much more comfortable sitting in the booths along the back wall and ordering the same thing all night, if it meant he could just signal the bartender with a lift of a finger and keep to himself.

  She didn’t hate that about Reese, though she could never stop herself from wondering why he was, well, the way that he was.

  Jumping back into the conversation, Daisy pointed a stray finger at the couple’s matching gold wedding bands. “Seems like the hiring worked out,” she said. It had taken at least a year after her breakup with Steve to not feel the bite of jealousy whenever she existed in the same breath as another couple, married or not. Thankfully, she’d never been one to reminisce about the good old days.

  With Steve “Flat Butt” Barker, those days had always been numbered.

  Lizzie sipped her chardonnay, and then ran a hand across one of the pub’s laminated menus. “Are you seeing anyone, Daisy?”

  Liquid threatened to zip down the wrong pipe, and it took everything in Daisy’s power not to come up spewing cider. Okay, okay, so she failed. Just a little. Awkwardly grasping for a napkin off the table, she drew it across her foaming mouth.

  “No,” she croaked a moment later. “I’m actually on a no-dating streak.” Lizzie and her husband traded a glance, and the hairs on the back of Daisy’s neck stood on end. “What? It’s a thing, I promise you. Sometimes you just have to face the facts, and the fact is . . . men suck.”

  Gage’s dark brows arched high on his forehead.

  This was not going well.

  Daisy tried again, a strained smile pulling at her mouth. “What I meant to say is, sometimes men do stupid, stupid things that, in turn, make women crazy. So, to avoid the crazy, it’s just easier to avoid men altogether.”

  “She’s got a point,” Lizzie said with a slow nod. “No one likes the crazy.”

  “Exactly!” Drawing another sip from her cider, Daisy snapped her fingers in the air and then tapped them on the edge of the table. “And it’s like the crazy can catch on, right? It’s a disease—the plague, really. One moment you think you’re all set and then BAM”—she clapped her hands together—“that beady-eyed woman takes over, her skin glistening green, her pupils dilating—”

  “Are we talking about a female version of The Hulk?”

  Reese. Of course.

  Whoever said that brunettes didn’t blush easily hadn’t met Daisy. Her cheeks warmed, and she knew, just knew, that she was on the verge of turning into a human tomato. Risking a glance in his direction, her gaze latched onto his belt buckle.

  Which was at eye level.

  Which was also so shiny and silver that there was no missing her wide-eyed reflection staring back at her.

  Oh man, she needed air. Now. Before she spontaneously combusted from humiliation.

  “Daisy?”

  She gulped her cider in two swallows. “Yes?”

  Do not look at his belt buckle. Eyes on the table. Eyes on the table!

  The traitorous devils swung up and over, skimming past the belt buckle again—oh God, she still looked so very shell-shocked—to smooth over his worn, maroon T-shirt, and the ever-present gold necklace around his neck. A gift from his maternal grandfather before he’d passed away a year ago.

  She met Reese’s dark eyes as an indrawn breath stuck in her throat.

  Lifting a bottle of water to his lips, he casually took a swig and then screwed the plastic cap back on. “Move over in the booth, would you?”

  Oh, right.

  He needed to sit.

  As she shifted to her left, it was hard not to wonder what other people in the pub thought of their little setup. A double date, obviously. Or maybe a group of friends. But probably the former.

  Reese’s large frame lowered to sit beside her. Just before his jean-clad butt made contact with the cushioned bench, he hitched the denim at his knees.

  It was a habit of his. Something she watched him do around the clock while they were camped out in the office. But maybe it was the fact that they weren’t at the office right now—heck, they weren’t even on the clock—that made Daisy cock her head and take notice.

  Of the way his T-shirt rode up in the back, exposing a thin band of black underwear (boxer briefs or just briefs?) above the waistband of his jeans. Of the way dark hair dusted his forearms, not too heavy and not too light. Reese was a guy’s guy, and it would never occur to him that some men might shave every inch of their bodies aside from the hair on their head.

&n
bsp; The breath she’d kept imprisoned burst from her clamped mouth, earning her a raised brow from the man in question. “You good?” he asked.

  “Oh, yeah.” Actually, I’m feeling a little . . . off-kilter? Daisy pushed a grin to the surface. “I’m definitely good. Your cousin and Lizzie were just talking about—”

  “I asked if Daisy was seeing anyone,” Lizzie said before taking a sip of her wine. “Her answer was interesting.”

  Daisy never would have noticed if she weren’t sitting next to him, but yep, those were his shoulders stilling and the line of his back tensing. He kept his gaze glued on his cousin-in-law. “And what’s the answer? She datin’ The Hulk?”

  Everyone around the table chuckled at that, save Daisy.

  Had she mistaken the note of censure in his voice? There was no doubt about it—he sounded surly. Displeased. All and out crabby, really. And, yes, that was Reese’s usual M.O., but something told her that his current reaction had to do with something else altogether.

  It went against every employer-employee handbook, but Daisy placed a hand on his arm and gave it a comforting squeeze. He could be so hard on himself when things didn’t go as planned with a project. “Did the meeting with Metairie go okay?”

  That earned her his attention. Dark eyes swept from her face, lingered on her mouth, before dropping to where her thumb brushed back and forth against the grain of the tiny hairs on his arm.

  “It went okay.”

  Daisy gulped a fistful of air. His voice was husky, the same exact pitch it was every morning when he walked into the office and she handed him a mug of his favorite coffee.

  “Famous last words,” Gage piped up from across the table. “Do they have a hold on a good property?”

  Reese tore his gaze from Daisy’s hand, and then blinked at his cousin. “It’s one of only three Victorian properties still standing in all of Fortune’s Bay. It’s out on Shelter Island, along with one of the other mansions of the same era, so it’d be perfect as a bed and breakfast.”

  That was where she and Reese differed.

  The moment Daisy had spotted the listing online, she’d had visions of toddlers bumbling about and the smell of cookies baking in a beautifully restored kitchen. They wouldn’t be her kids, of course, since she was still technically on her sabbatical from men, but perhaps—in her mind’s wandering—they’d looked like her just a little bit.