Love Next Door (Lakeside 1)

“Maybe you should consider wearing different shoes!” I call after her. “Or you could stay off my property from now on!”

She bats at the trees as she stomps her way through the bushes. There’s another small cottage-style house beyond the brush, but that isn’t where she goes. Instead she heads for the rusted trailer almost completely hidden by the trees. A few seconds later a door slams shut.

So much for a peaceful vacation in Pearl Lake.

CHAPTER 5

FAMILY BIZ

Dillion

I’ve been working for the family business, a.k.a. Footprint Renovations and Home Maintenance, all weekend, and now it’s Monday. In that time, I’ve discovered how lackadaisical they’ve been about the bookkeeping and contract management. I have my work cut out for me, but I can already see a bunch of ways they can be more organized, reduce costs, and save me time. Starting with their filing system, which seems to be several piles stacked around the office and on top of the cabinets instead of in them.

I’m currently sitting cross-legged on the floor with a stack of file folders in front of me, trying to arrange them in some kind of logical order. What I really want to do is take them down to South Beach and start a bonfire. Especially the file I found citing a dispute between Footprint and a north side client who called some of the charges into question. It looks like it’s been resolved, but it’s something that shouldn’t have happened at all.

“You all right, Darlin’?”

“Totally fine.” I flip the folder open and sift through the contents. The file is fourteen years old. They only need to be kept for seven years, so I move the folder to the shred stack. It’s substantial at this point.

A coffee appears in front of my face, my dad’s thick, scar-riddled, and callused fingers wrapped around it.

“Oh, bless you and the coffee gods. I needed this more than you can know.” I cradle it between my hands and take a tentative sip, humming contentedly. “This is from Boones, isn’t it? Did you get apple fritters too?” I finally lift my gaze to find my dad smiling down at me, a greasy paper bag dangling from his other hand.

I try to snatch the bag, but he lifts it out of reach. “You can only have one if you take a break.”

“Do I look like I have time for a break?” I motion to the mountain of file folders.

“You’ll be more effective if you stop for ten minutes and eat something. You didn’t come in for breakfast this morning, and unless you’re grocery shopping on the sly, the only thing in the trailer fridge is beer.”

I ate half a bag of stale salt-and-vinegar chips this morning, and that was hours ago. We start early, and my neighbor apparently likes to stay up late working on construction projects and listening to music. He also likes to burn crap in Bee’s firepit. The worst part is that the firepit is close to my trailer, so I not only get to listen to his music and his hammering, but everything I own now smells like campfire. The charred aroma is embedded in my hair, so I’ve given up on wearing it down and instead keep it in a ponytail. Even still, every once in a while I get a solid whiff, and it’s highly unpleasant.

My dad is still standing in front of me, waiting. So I give in, partly because he has a point and also because there is nothing more delicious than one of Boones’s apple fritters. I step over the maze of stacked files and follow him into the break room, where my uncle John and one of their employees, Aaron Saunders, are seated around the small table, both cupping take-out coffees. Aaron and my brother were friends in high school, but Aaron disappeared for a few years after graduation. No one knows where he went or why he came back, but when he returned to Pearl Lake, he immediately started working for Footprint.

“Hey, guys, how’s it going?” I cross over to the cupboards and grab plates and napkins for the fritters. Normally the guys shove their filthy mitts into the bag and get sugar flakes and crumbs all over the table, which no one bothers to clean up. In the three days since I’ve been here, I’ve begun the process of encouraging basic table manners. So far, I’m not having much success.

“Good, good. How’s file Jenga?” Aaron asks.

I don’t have to turn around to see his smirk. Yesterday I was in a mood over the number of ancient, misfiled documents. It’s a pain in my ass to go through everything, but once I’m done, they’ll have a much more streamlined, organized system.

“It’s a work in progress.” I pass out plates and napkins and snatch the bag from my dad before he can pass it around to the guys. I use a pair of tongs to distribute the fritters before I dump the rest on a communal plate and take a seat.