“You ready?” I asked.
He eyed me up and down, I assumed surveying for an injury, but said nothing else. Only stood and walked around to the track hoe’s side, and then climbed into the seat.
“Let’s do it.”
With that he rounded his arm high above his head, causing Maine to nod on his own piece of machinery. Followed shortly by the rest of my crew.
Then they demolished Linda’s house, and all the memories that went with it.***“You’re a fucking nut,” he said, shaking his head in denial. “That was a perfectly good house. You could’ve given it to someone.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I sure could have. I’ve given quite a bit to this community, though. It was time I did something for me. That house has a lot of negative memories in them. I needed it to go.”
He opened the truck door for me, and I waved at the guys who were still picking up the rubble while the neighborhood watched, before getting inside.
He leaned in, gave me a possessive kiss on the mouth, and walked to his side of the truck.
“You wanna go see what I’ve been working on?” Miller asked, eyes shining with mirth as he continued to watch the house come down in a pile of rubble, and splinters of wood.
I grinned at him, wrapping my hand around his, and nodded. “Anything you want to do, I’m there. Unless it’s cleaning. I don’t like to clean.”
He winked. “Dually noted.”
The drive was a lot longer than I’d thought it’d be, but really it was only twenty minutes or so outside of the city.
“That’s where Nico lives,” he said, gesturing to the massive black gate without taking his hand off the steering wheel.
My eyes widened as I saw the man in question walking down the drive.
Shirtless.
I licked my lips.
The man was gorgeous, and his dark looks, and brooding personality only seemed to add to his appeal.
“Where are we going? I thought this was a dead end,” I said, tearing my eyes away from Nico.
Nico’s wife, Georgia, was a new friend of mine, and I felt it prudent not to ogle her husband.
Nico raised his hand to us as we passed, and I waved back at him.
Miller didn’t even bother to do anything more than a chin lift, which Nico did back before we passed him.
“You’re not answering me,” I said, looking at Miller’s face.
He was grinning. Smiling so wide that I feared his next actions.
Veering off the road, he pulled into a driveway that I’d never seen before, on the opposite side of Nico’s property.
“What…oh, my God! That’s the old Holmes Homestead! When did they get an entrance on this side? Hey, they painted, too!” I said in surprise.
The Holmes Homestead was somewhat of a fairytale in Kilgore.
The Holmes Homestead was one of the oldest, and most beautiful places in the state. It’d been featured on the cover of many magazines for quite some years now.
It known mostly for the millions and millions of bluebonnets that graced its rolling pasture land during the year.
They didn’t allow the public to cross their land, but if we were lucky, some of the bluebonnets would grow underneath the fence, and we could take some pictures in them on the side of the road.
I hadn’t realized, though, that there was another entrance.
“How’d you find this?” I asked warily.
He grinned. “I saved the granddaughter last month when she fell from her horse. The granddaughter was six and lost. I found her wandering along the side of Stone Road, scared and cold.”
“So they’re letting you go on their land?” I asked worriedly.
I really, really didn’t want to get sent to jail for trespassing, which was something the Holmes’ did on occasion. They hated when people came on their land to take pictures; which was something someone inevitably tried to do every year.
“Actually,” he said, getting out of the truck. “It’s ours.”
I followed him. “What’s ours?”
He gestured to the house.
It was a massive house with huge white pillars in the front holding up the porch and second floor balcony.
It’d been repainted lately. No longer was the paint peeling and flaking. Now it was a beautiful white, with red accents.
“The house.”
I froze, turning around to look at him.
“It’s our house,” he said again once I didn’t say anything. “The place is ours. The Holmes family sold it to me.”
“What-how?” I asked, my mind reeling.
This place had to have cost a fortune.
“I told you I had money. Well…not much anymore, but I put down a fuckin’ whack on this house to buy it. I’d heard you talking about it the other day to Memphis. About how beautiful it was. So I went and asked, and it must’ve been the right time to do so, because Old Mr. Holmes decided to sell. His kids live in Alaska, and have a good business going up there. There’s no reason not to sell. He moved to Alaska to spend more time with his grandkids, and I got his house,” he explained.
I got out of the car and warily walked across the front lawn.
“This is what you’ve been doing over the last week?” I gasped, running my hands along the red pillars that graced the front porch.
He winked. “Yeah, me and the boys have been busting our ass to make it livable. Foster says you owe him a month’s worth of home cooked meals.”
“Foster can move in, for all I care. This place is the freakin’ bomb!” I said excitedly, rushing up the steps.
I tried the door, but it was locked.
“It’s locked,” I said smartly.
He winked, and then reached into his pocket, withdrawing his massive key ring, and handed it to me. “It’s the new one.”
It was easy to find.
All the keys on his ring were bronze, or really old looking.
The only new looking one on the entire ring was incredibly easy to spot.
The inscription on the key said, ‘Mercy Me.’
I tossed him a smile, then opened the door, gasping at the site before me.
“Oh, it’s beautiful!” I squealed, jumping up and down. “Uh-oh. Those are stairs. I’ve never had stairs before. Those should prove exciting when I’m as big as a house in a few months.”