Page 38 of Sycamore Circle

Now it was dark out and they were almost back to T-DOT on Edgewater Road. Bo was tired and he’d absolutely had enough of interacting with the guys for one day.

Realizing that Chance was still staring at him, waiting for an answer, Bo clenched the steering wheel a little tighter. He was annoyed. It was none of Chance’s business.

The fact was that he did mind Chance asking about Joy. Just because he’d been willing to drive the kid around didn’t mean that he was eager to start discussing his personal life with him.

“Why are you asking?”

Chance’s eyes widened. “No reason. I just was asking. I mean, you two seemed close.”

“She’s my friend.”

“Gotcha.”

Even though the discussion was essentially over, Bo felt the need to clarify things a little bit further. “Joy is a single mom with an ex who doesn’t seem to be all that involved. She deserves to have someone to look out for her, so I figured that it might as well be me. Understand?” He was annoyed that he had to say anything at all. Bo liked to keep his private life separate from work, but it didn’t always work out that way.

“Yep.”

Bo pursed his lips. It was obvious the kid wasn’t going to say anything more, but Bo couldn’t help continuing. “Look, all I’m saying is that I’ve taken a personal interest in Joy Howard. Don’t you forget to treat her with respect, yeah?”

“I’m not a kid, right? I don’t need you to teach me how to respect people. And she’s teaching me to read. I’m not going to go mess that up, right? That’s the last thing I want to do.”

“Just wanted you to be aware,” Bo said as he parked.

“I heard you loud and clear.” Chance exited, nodded to a couple of guys on the front porch, then headed inside.

Watching him saunter on his way like he had something to prove made Bo clench his jaw. Why did every person he came in contact with recently want to make him want to lose control? He really needed to get a handle on himself, and the sooner the better.

While he would’ve liked nothing more than to back out of the parking lot and head home, Bo didn’t have that luxury. He had other guys to talk to, and he needed to give Mason and Seth a break. Tomorrow afternoon he was supposed to stop by Renegade for a fitting for an upcoming photo shoot. Then the next morning, he was finally going to see Joy for breakfast then sit in a bunch of meetings about the guys who were about to transition out of T-DOT.

Already exhausted by things he hadn’t even done, he got out of his truck and headed toward the house. After shooting the breeze to the guys on the porch, he walked inside and found Mason sitting at a table in the living room. Usually everyone played poker there, but at the moment, the guy was staring at a stack of papers.

He looked up in relief when Bo approached. “Hey.”

“What’s that?”

“Some of these invoices aren’t making sense. I’m trying to figure out if it’s me or if we’ve got a problem.”

“Want me to take a look?”

“Thanks, but not yet. Adrian is going to help me go through them.”

They’d learned that Adrian was some kind of math genius. Knowing he would likely be able to figure things out in half the time, Bo left it at that and went to the back room, where he needed to look through more of his own paperwork. Glad to only be surrounded by papers, he tuned everything out, determined to get through as much as he could in the next hour.

Just as he stacked the papers to one side, he heard a bunch of shouting, followed by a crash.

He rushed out to see none other than Chance and Grafton trying to kill each other in the middle of the living room. Five or six guys were standing around rooting for one or the other like the space was an abandoned parking lot.

He walked over to Mason. Mason was leaning against the wall and simply watching, just like the fight was on TV instead of directly in front of them.

Bo raised his eyebrows. “What the heck?”

“Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, but these guys have been chewing on each other for days now. I figure we might as well get it over with.”

“In the middle of the living room?”

Mason shrugged. “They know the drill. They break it, they’ve got to fix or replace it.”

“Lincoln’s going to hold them to that.”

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