5

“The room isn’t for rent,” Brick said. “The room isn’t for rent. The room isn’t for rent.”

He was a big man who preferred to move slowly, methodically through a task. But with only a few minutes before a visit from a woman who had no problem snooping through other people’s things, he kicked the decluttering into high gear.

He wasn’t a messy person by anyone’s standards. He also didn’t feel like being anything close to vulnerable around Remi.

So his breakfast dishes went into the dishwasher, the stack of opened mail into the breadbox. The sweatpants that he kept next to the front door in case someone came knocking unexpectedly went into the coat closet. Last night’s pizza box fit under the sink. He buried the issue of GQ—the one from six months ago with the redhead on the cover who vaguely reminded him of Remi—under a couch cushion.

He flicked on the lights in the room in question and let out a breath. With windows on three sides, the natural light was good. There was an attached bathroom. Also good because it meant she wouldn’t have to traipse through his house while he was there trying to pretend she didn’t exist.

Magnus the cat wove his way between Brick’s feet.

“You already had breakfast,” he said sternly but still bent to pick up the sleek brown and black beggar. He was a skinny, picky pain in the ass that had appeared in Cleetus’s stall at the stables last winter with a chunk missing from one of his ears and an eye swollen shut.

Brick’s bleeding heart had taken the mangy beast home and nursed him back to health. It had cost him $400 in vet bills, five sets of his grandmother’s drapes, and half a dozen distinct claw marks skating down the back of the leather armchair in the den upstairs.

Eventually, they’d brokered a truce with Magnus going out at night to prowl and Brick providing enough scratching posts inside to prevent any further property destruction.

Glancing at his watch, he put the cat down on the counter. Remi was always late, which meant he had another ten minutes before she got here. He veered off into what his grandmother had called a mud room. He’d turned the space into a large pantry with open shelves, an upright freezer, and a second refrigerator.

Supplies on the island in the winter were at the mercy of the weather and deliveries. Islanders stocked their freezers and pantries with staples leading up to the long winter. Something Remi had probably given no thought to before jumping on a plane.

She’d live off candy marshmallow cereal if left to her own devices.

Just because he wanted to make sure she stayed fed didn’t mean he was overstepping his bounds, he decided.

Brick dumped a few pounds of chicken, ground beef, and vacuum-sealed bags of beef stew into a tote bag. Glancing up, he spotted the neat row of blue and yellow boxes on the shelf. Kraft macaroni and cheese. When they’d been alive, his grandparents kept it stocked just so they could make her some whenever she stopped by. He’d continued the tradition, even though she hadn’t set foot in the house since his grandmother’s funeral.