Page 6 of Bed of Roses

“Mhmm,” I hum. There aren’t many doctors around here, to begin with, but I have to admit we had better care in prison than we do in this area. Unless it’s basic, he’ll never find out what’s truly wrong with him. Clearly, it’s not basic. He probably has cancer or something, which would suck because, if this man dies, I’m out of a place to live. Not many people would rent to an ex-con. “Have you thought about looking into it yourself?”

“According to search engines, I’m dying,” he adds with a roll of his eyes.

“Aren’t we all,” I grumble around the rim of my beer. We’re all going to die someday, but it sounds like, out of the two of us in the room, he’ll go first.

“Anyway –” He waves me off. “I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m here.”

“Since the moment you rang my doorbell.”

He raises his eyebrows above the rim of his glasses. “I have a new renter at that house I’m having you fix up.”

Pinching the bridge of my nose with my free hand, I briefly close my eyes. “I told you I didn’t want anyone to live there while I worked on it.”

“Tough shit. It’s not up to you.”

“Why?” I look at him squarely with a flex to my jaw that he doesn’t miss.

“Because it needs to bring in revenue.”

“Always after the money, I see,” I comment gruffly.

He narrows his eyes at me. “Screw you, Garner. I don’t think you realize how good you have it here.”

I roll my eyes. “You and I both know that, the only reason you rented this place out to me is to rattle your stepbrother.”

He wets his bottom lip, and I almost think he’s going to deny it, but then he says, “It was a pleasure to see the look on his face when he found out. I was lucky to be there for that.”

Derek told me that his stepbrother found out over tea in his own house. As a way to shove it to Derek, to prove that he’s better, his stepbrother always buys his tea for him. It’s a pissing contest if you ask me, but Derek won’t say no to anything free.

“And you’re still not worried that he could make your life a living hell?”

“Why? Because he’s the sheriff?” he asks. I nod, and he rocks back on his heels in thought. “He could try.”

And he’d probably succeed,I don’t say. But as far as I can tell, that bastard George Smith hasn’t done anything unsavory in retaliation.

Officer Smith and I don’t get along. We have our reasons. Valid ones. One more specifically landed me in jail. But the two brothers, even though they’re only brothers by marriage, have never gotten along. I suspect that one got more attention than the other as they grew up, but it’s none of my business, so I’ve never asked. Truth be told, I really don’t care.

“So is this new renter going to get in my way?”

He sighs. “Tegan will be helping, in fact.”

“Spectacular,” I spit. I prefer to work alone, and if this Tegan guy doesn’t know anything about construction, I’ll end up spending the majority of my time teaching him.

I learned everything about construction in jail. As a community service, they’d have some of us build houses. The ones with good behavior anyway. And since I kept my business to myself, I was considered one of the convicts who displayed good behavior. Everything I know, I learned from my time working on those houses, fromdemolition to building, to electrical, to plumbing. It helped pass the time.

“Oh, I think you’ll get along just fine,” Derek adds with humor. I’m not his favorite person in the world, so whenever he gets the chance to rattle me, he does.

I glare at him. “Does this Tegan person know anything about renovations?”

He chuckles. “I didn’t ask, but Tegan looked ready to take it on. Expressions were priceless.”

“The pink bathroom?”

He nods vigorously. “Priceless.”

It probably matched my own when I first saw it too. Honestly, I don’t know what it was about the seventies that possessed people to buy pink toilets.

“Tegan wants to keep the sink.”

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