Page 25 of Home for Nathan
A little breeze ruffled his hair then, making him shiver, but Zion shrugged it off. Nathan would say he had a ghost like Joe from the Merchante building. Regardless, he wasn’t going to hoard neat stuff just because he could.
“Oh, I do like you.”
Zion snorted softly. “I’m a likable son of a bitch. Come on. This is Torah, by the way.”
“Are you Torah? It’s nice to meet you.” He liked how Hank, immediately bent down to love on Torah, giving the pup her due. “You are a sweetie, aren’t you?”
Torah wagged as if to say, well yes, yes I am. That’s me, a sweetie.
“You’ve really been doing some wonderful things with the floors and everything.”
He grinned and nodded, pleased that Hank had noticed. “I’m trying, you know? I really am. I want this place to be a home, but also like a studio for my design business. I hope that a bunch of people come out here and look around and want to see everything that Secret Springs has to offer.”
Hank nodded. “I’ve already heard the buzz in town about you bringing in your business. Everybody’s kind of talking about how extra it’s gonna be, having a professional snowboarder here.”
He tilted his head, surprised to hear slang coming from the prim little historian. “Did you just say extra?”
“Is that not snowboarder lingo?”
Oh good lord. “Steeze.”
“Pardon me?”
“I think the word you’re looking for in snowboarder lingo is steeze.” Was he really having this conversation?
“Can you please use that in the sentence?”
He was really having this conversation. “Everybody’s kind of talking about how steeze it’s gonna be.”
“Steeze,” Hank whispered. “I like that. I cannot wait to use that with Antonia. It’s going to make her father crazy.”
That made him bark out a hard laugh. “You are a mean little man.”
“You have no idea. Making my Elliot insane is one of my favorite hobbies. Now box, maps, blueprints—show me the things.” Hank straightened his wee bow tie.
He led Hank back into what was going to be the parlor, where the stuff was sitting in a box marked “old shit I found in the house”.
Hank glanced at him and grinned, and he shrugged.
“I’m going to be in boxes for a while. I want to make sure I know where everything is. Believe it or not, I’m an organized kind of guy.”
“I appreciate organization on a deep, personal, cellular level.” Hank nodded and started digging through the box. “Have you seen any ghosts here?”
He shook his head no. “I haven’t seen anything, no. And thank goodness, because that would freak me the hell out.”
“You think so?”
“No, I know so.” Just the idea of having a ghost made him very uncomfortable. It didn’t seem to bother Nathan in the least. He spoke to the Joe ghost at the apartment all the damn time.
Zion was just a super practical, live-in-the-now kind of guy. He wanted to hear ghost stories and believe in romance and even watch weird movies and stuff but not live in a haunted house.
Another breeze ruffled his hair, Torah barked, and Hank gave him a wide smile. “It’s not so bad, depending on the ghost. I mean, Nathan has one. And I named my daughter after one.”
“Yeah.” That had been mentioned in the ghost tour he’d taken with Nathan, and he thought that was wild. “Anyway, I just hope this stuff is fun, not dangerous.”
“Look at that.” Hank pulled out the letter opener. “That is gorgeous. And kind of substantial for as delicate as it looks.”
“Oh no.” Zion shook his head. “No thinking it might have been used for a weapon.”
