DESTIN WOKE to noises in the house—the rattle of silverware, the clink of china on the countertop. Familiar, reassuring noises, and in his sleepy brain, a word formed.
Mom….
No, not Mom. Destin’s mother had died of cancer three years ago. Somebody else was in the kitchen, somebody who didn’t belong there.
Fuming, Destin threw on his bathrobe and cinched the tie with an angry jerk. Halfway out the door, he realized his bare feet were freezing on the floor, and he turned back for his slippers. On the way back to the door, he hesitated, then picked up his comb and combed his hair. No reason, really, but when he threw Tonio out of the house, he wanted to look halfway masterly.
He smelled eggs cooking and coffee perking as soon as he hit the foyer, and despite his anger, his stomach pinched with hunger. How long had it been since he’d had a real, hot breakfast? One that didn’t come prepackaged out of the freezer?
He found Tonio standing over the cooktop, spatula in hand, fully dressed for riding.
Tonio looked up when Destin walked in and flashed him a halfhearted smile. “Heya,” he said. “How do you like your eggs?”
“Over easy.” Destin leaned back against the island. “Where’d you get the eggs?”
“Convenience store. I went out this morning.” Tonio swept the scrambled eggs—his own breakfast, Destin assumed—out of the pan and cracked two new ones. Then he turned around and faced Destin, an apologetic half smile on his face. “I fucked up last night.”
“Yeah.” Destin folded his arms across his chest.
Tonio sobered. “I’m not gonna make excuses. That’s the first time I fell off the wagon in three months, and it won’t happen again.”
Destin relaxed—not completely, but a little. “That was my fault too. I knew you were in recovery, and I shouldn’t have ordered wine. I wasn’t thinking.” As he spoke, he shot a glance at the liquor cabinet under the kitchen wet bar. His dad’s pride and joy, and one of his biggest downfalls. The bottles of Glenlivet and Jack Daniels lay discreetly hidden behind the mahogany cabinet doors, but the gleaming barware in the glass-fronted shelves above were a dead giveaway. Tonio had enough problems without Dad’s convivial ghost tempting him, and Destin made a mental note to stop procrastinating about getting rid of the liquor.
“Yeah, well, I should’a turned it down. I just….” Tonio turned back to the pan and slid the eggs up the side and over, catching them perfectly on the flat of the spatula and laying them back in the pan. “Look. It’s no secret people aren’t exactly lining up to hire me right now, so I can’t afford to screw up. We both need this thing to work out.”
The last of the air finally went out of Destin’s anger, and he slumped and rubbed his stubbly face. “All right. We’ll write this off as just a bump in the road. It needs to be the last one, though. Seriously. I was going to tear up our contract as soon as I got to the office this morning.”
“Yeah, I figured.” Tonio whisked two perfectly cooked eggs out of the pan and onto a plate. Like magic, toast popped up in the toaster, dark golden brown—a little darker than Destin liked it, but he wasn’t in the mood to complain. That feeling of rightness had come back. Slowly the old house seemed to be waking up from its cold slumber, a feat Destin, mired in his bog of despair, had not been able to manage on his own. It took a new heartbeat in its kitchen, a new voice in its halls, to bring back the house Destin remembered. Even if that new heartbeat’s tenure was likely to be short.
“I got a hackamore while I was out,” Tonio said, parking the plates on the island. He kicked a stool back and sat down. “Sam has an issue with taking the bit, so maybe going bitless will change things.”
“It’s worth a try.” Destin lifted his egg onto his toast and cut into them with his fork. Yolk ran out, thick and silky.
“I hope you don’t mind spotting me in the ring. I don’t know how Sam’s gonna react to the hackamore.”
“No problem.” Destin wiped an egg drip off his chin. He could get used to waking up to this every morning. He glanced across the counter at Tonio, busy shoveling his scrambled eggs onto his fork with his thumb. He seemed like a pretty decent guy when he wasn’t overexcited, as he probably was last night. Maybe….
“You given any thought to selling that Maserati?” Tonio asked with his mouth full.
“Uh, yes. Eventually.”
“Two broodmares’ worth, remember.”
“I know, but that fob—”
Tonio sat upright and squeezed his eyes shut, irritation bristling up around him like the spikes on a hedgehog’s hide. “Just change the fucking battery! Jesus!”
Destin also sat up, hot words dancing on his tongue. He longed to tell Tonio he’d already changed the battery, thank you, and that wasn’t the problem. But that would be a lie. It never occurred to him to try a fresh battery.
“If it’s not the battery, call the Maserati people and have them send you a new fob.” Tonio scraped the last bit of eggs off his plate and jumped up. “It’s not exactly rocket science.”
Destin glared holes in Tonio’s back as Tonio rinsed his plate at the sink. So much for making friends with this jerk. And here he’d thought they were getting somewhere.
How wrong he had been.