Innkeeper's Blues - Jaime Samms Page 0,1

a little off the rails since…”

“Since he did his best to derail our lives?” Lucky pushed back against Kreed’s hold on him.

“You’re not wrong.” Kreed kept his muscled arm wrapped around Lucky’s waist.

While normally Lucky enjoyed this kind of bodily tug-of-war, doing it over Joe only annoyed him. “Of course I’m not wrong. Why do you care about his bad press?” He shoved hard, and Kreed let him go.

“You think I shouldn’t care? I’ve known the man most of my life.” There was a tone under Kreed’s words that rubbed like sandpaper over Lucky’s heart.

“Dammit.” Lucky made a sour face. Kreed was right, of course. But so was Lucky. Joe had set out to deliberately hurt them. Why should they care what happened to him as a consequence? Yet the idea of Kreed not caring about Joe’s troubles didn’t sit right either. Lucky sighed. “You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t care.” Pulling up a second stool, Lucky sat where he could also see the laptop. “Open it up and let’s see how far down the rabbit hole ol’ Joe has fallen.”

“You’re very understanding.”

Deliberately, Lucky focused on the computer and not Kreed’s face. It was too tempting to let Kreed’s puppy eyes turn his resolve to mush. “Nope. I’m not. I just love you really a lot, and this matters to you for some godforsaken reason, so let’s check out the train wreck.”

“Try not to enjoy the view.”

“No promises.”

The picture the press painted of Joe’s fall from grace was not a pretty one. His attempted reconciliation with his husband, Michael, had led to public embarrassment, accusations of stalking, even charges being filed. His main sponsor ended up dropping him like a hot potato.

“I feel for the guy.” Since he’d already read everything Lucky was skimming over, Kreed settled, arm across the back of Lucky’s stool. “Michael left him with nothing.”

“Um.” Lucky lifted both eyebrows at him. “Let’s talk about nothing for a hot second.”

“I meant… well… Yes. I guess it’s relative.”

“He has a penthouse downtown and a mansion in Forest Hills. We won’t even talk about the spread he bought his parents while he was still playing football, or the backing he gave his sister to get her business off the ground. Or the astronomical amounts she charges people to help them pick out paint colours and flower vases.”

“I know.”

“Real estate aside, his net worth is more than you, me, and the Barrows put together, and that includes your B and B and their bookstore, not to mention one derelict little wannabe youth shelter out back. What he has is the embarrassing social scrutiny he tried to foist on us. What you call sympathetic, I call poetic justice, baby.”

Kreed pondered his coffee. “Okay. You’re not wrong.”

“No. I’m not. Now can we let Joe fucking Ferrell stew in his own juice in peace and talk about your bread? I think it’s trying to push the oven door open as we speak.”

“Shit!” Kreed sprang up, dashed to the oven, and peered through the window. “Oh thank gods,” he breathed as he pulled the door open. “Not over-proofed.”

“Thank gods for that,” Lucky muttered. “Don’t forget to wipe the coffee off the floor.” He pulled the laptop closer and clicked on the next article about Joe. Like any truly spectacular train wreck, it was hard to look away.

Chapter Two

“So what are you going to do about it all?” Lucky was sitting up in bed, back against the headboard, watching Kreed strip down to his boxers, then meticulously hang his jeans and flannel in the closet as he went.

Lucky used to feel a bit bad about the heaps of clothing he left on the floor to be sorted out in the morning. Then one evening, he’d come into the bedroom to find a fussy wing-back chair with upholstery too garish even for the teal room, gaudiest of their guest rooms, sitting in the corner on his side of the bed. Under it, a shallow wicker basket peeked part way out.

Now he considered it his duty—and a kindness to retinas everywhere—to leave his re-wearable clothes on that chair. The dirty ones he tossed in the basket until he got around to doing laundry. His clean clothes he left folded up on the bed in the room next door, where he mostly never slept anymore. Everyone seemed happy with that arrangement.

“About what?” Kreed looked up from buttoning the top button of his flannel over the hanger to keep the shirt from slipping off.

“About Joe.”

“Do?”

Kreed’s too-innocent inflection made