“God damn it,” he panted, stroking his way through it.

The woman reduced him to this. To an emergency jerk-off session in the middle of the fucking work day after a simple conversation. Was this what it would be like with her here?

He grabbed the hand towel off the hook.

“‘Here’s a bag of meat.’ Idiot.”

6

Fourteen years earlier…

Brick paused on the porch outside the screen door that led into his grandparents’ kitchen to brush the dust and dirt from his jeans and peel off his boots. It was a new routine that came with a new life. One he wasn’t sure he was adjusting to.

It had been a good day of hard work. He’d picked up some odd jobs as a handyman but most recently had landed a full-time position at one of the stables. Being able to continue working with horses was the highlight of the move to Mackinac Island with his little brother in tow. The rest of it basically sucked. Because as much as he enjoyed working in the stables, he still had to return to someone else’s home. To people who were strangers to him. To a grandfather who looked at him and saw nothing more than a reflection of his father.

But he could deal with it. He’d bear it as long as it took for Spencer to feel comfortable here. Then Brick would be free to move on with his life. At twenty-four, he felt like if he could get far enough away from his father’s shadow, there might still be good things in store for him.

He bent and peeled off one boot when a cheerful voice carried out to him.

Remi Ford. He knew it without peering through the screen. The wild child redhead who lived two blocks away was in his grandparents’ kitchen. He debated slipping around to the front door and hightailing it upstairs. There was something about the girl that made his palms sweat.

She looked at him like she had plans for him. But then he heard his name from her lips and paused.

“You must be so proud of Brick,” Remi said.

He dared to sneak a glance inside. His grandfather, an old man with wispy hair and a wheelchair, sat at the kitchen table with his back to the door. Remi sat next to him, spooning up something bright yellow and holding it to the man’s thin, chapped lips.

It should have been sad, devastating even. The withered old man whose life had whittled down into a handful of rooms and a wheelchair being fed by the vibrant, bubbly teenager. But Remi was the wild card. There was something almost beautiful about it. About her.

“William,” his grandfather muttered gruffly in his painful, post-stroke speech.

“I call him Brick,” she insisted, scooping up another spoonful.

“Dad prison. Same name. Same blood,” his grandfather rasped.

Brick shrunk back from the doorway, away from the truth of the words. Apparently Mackinac wasn’t far enough to escape a father’s sins.