Best Fake Fiance (Loveless Brothers 2)

I shake my head to focus on the task at hand, particularly since it involves sharp objects, dangerous machinery, and expensive stuff.

The balusters are for a staircase on a yacht; balusters are the spindle-things that hold up the handrail, a term I didn’t learn until the second year of my carpentry program. I learned that some yachts have staircases last Friday, when I discovered that I’d be hand-making the parts for one.

I have no idea whose yacht it is. I have no idea where on earth this yacht even is, since Sprucevale is in the middle of the Blue Ridge Mountains, several hours inland, and I strongly doubt the river is deep enough for a boat that big. There are some lakes around, but they don’t seem like yacht lakes.

They seem much more like fishing-from-a-rundown-motorboat-with-a-case-of-beer-in-a-styrofoam-cooler lakes, but I’m not a lake expert.

I examine the baluster carefully, then flip the lathe off. The whine dies down, and I take the wood off of it, put it down next to the first eight that I made.

Then I frown.

“Dammit,” I hiss out loud, just to myself. The lathe is in one corner of the Mountain Woodworks building, which is big and open-plan and constantly noisy, because someone’s always running a power saw.

These don’t match. I fucked up. The big lump tapers the wrong way, because I was worrying about whether Daniel was still in court and wasn’t paying attention. You’d think that after making eight of the exact same thing, I could have another thought for one second without screwing up, but apparently not.

I grab the bad baluster, put it on a work bench, and take another square length of red cedar. I pencil the markings on it — cut here, here, here, and here — then load it onto the lathe and throw the switch, irritated with myself.

I haven’t gotten any further than the first slice when in the corner of my vision, my phone lights up. I grab it instantly, chisel on the table, shoving my goggles onto my head.

Daniel: I need to talk to you.

Me: What happened?

Daniel: I’m coming by.

Me: It’s almost lunch time, can we meet somewhere?No response. I fidget with my phone, shove my other hand in the pocket of my coveralls, start fiddling with a wood chip there. Nothing. He’s not even typing.

Me: What happened?!?

Me: Just tell me, I hate surprises. Come on.Still nothing.

Me: Please??????Daniel doesn’t respond, no matter how hard I stare at the phone. I bite my lip, watching my screen, a thousand bad possibilities flickering through my mind.

Behind me, the whine of the lathe stops. I whirl around.

William, my boss, is standing there.

“Best not to leave that running,” he says, solemnly. “Could catch something on it by accident and that’d get ugly.”

I swallow hard, my face flushing red. I shove my phone back into the pocket of my coveralls.

“Sorry,” I say, biting back my best friend just had a court hearing about his daughter, and I think something went bad and he won’t tell me what and my mind wasn’t really on carpentry, but that’s way too much information.

Besides, I just left machinery going while I looked at my phone. I don’t need to seem even less professional, and God knows I’m aware of what can happen when you forget something is on.

“Just be careful,” he says mildly. “How are these going?”

William is middle-aged, serious, looks like he’s spent a lot of time outdoors, and is a man of very few words. I was convinced that he was always angry with me until I figured that out.

“They’re going well,” I say, omitting the fact that I’ve ruined two. “This is my last one, and then I’ve got to start on the bannister itself…”

We talk shop for a moment. If William’s mad that I left the lathe running or upset that I’ve used two more lengths of red cedar than necessary, nothing about his manner gives it away. We go over some plans. We go over some drawings. We go over a grainy photograph that the client gave him, showing the exact bannister that he wants to imitate.

I’m only half paying attention.

“That’s the best photo we could get out of him,” William is saying, his drawl low and slow.

As he’s talking, the door at the far end of the workshop opens.

A Daniel-shaped being enters, silhouetted by the bright sunlight outside. My heart leaps and then falls, the silhouette putting its hands into its pockets, standing just inside the door.

He wouldn’t be here if something bad hadn’t happened.

“Seems that his ancestors came over from England as guests of the crown in seventeen-something,” William is still saying. “Now he’s trying to outfit his yacht with the same details that their ship had.”

I glance up at Daniel. He’s still standing by the door, clearly waiting. My heart shakes in my chest.