Brock was a good man too, the best, but he was a different kind of good man than Dade. Or perhaps, he just had more of a history with Olivia. Therefore, he said no. Then he said no again. Then he said it again. Then he stopped taking her calls when her name came on his display. Then, without even a word, he started to flip his phone shut and turn off the ringer when she called him from other phones. And luckily his colleagues had learned to spot her when she arrived at the station. They started to give Brock the heads up so he could disappear before she made it to his desk whereupon his badge-wielding brothers told her he was out.

He was done. He was not going to hang shelves, look over legal documents, or help her buy a car.

The problem was, weeks had passed and she wasn’t giving up.

While his frustration filled the room, in bed, I’d pressed into him and whispered, “She’ll eventually give up and go away.”

Brock’s fingers had scored into his hair, his palms at his forehead and just his silver eyes tipped to me. But they told the tale. They told the tale that this was an example of her five years of her making him miserable until Dade came into her life. And now Dade was going out of her life. And Brock was facing five-plus years more. And he didn’t like this either.

Since we were in bed and I was comfortable, I didn’t want to go get him a beer or a bourbon. So, to make him feel better, I settled on a blowjob.

As usual, that did the trick.

“I’m not sure Brock’s going to like that,” I said to Raul.

I mean, I didn’t understand what the big deal was. It was, essentially, a wall and a door. How hard could that be?

“Only another week,” Raul said in my ear.

“We were kinda hoping you’d have it done by the time we got back from vacation,” I told him.

“I don’t see that happening,” Raul told me.

Damn.

“Maybe you should talk to Brock about this,” I suggested.

“No,” he said quickly and I pulled in an annoyed breath, knowing his avoiding the wrath of Brock was why he phoned me in the first place. He never phoned me. This was Brock’s deal. He’d made that very clear in his firm, unyielding, “I deal with things that require drywall, two-by-fours, hammers, and men with work belts” macho man way and I gave in. This was mostly because I had no desire to deal with more things that required drywall, two-by-fours, hammers, and men with work belts considering I had enough to deal with with my new bakery. “If you could do the favor of passin’ it on, I’ll schedule it in, for sure, when you guys get back.”