Page 14 of Her Favorite Fumble
“Iris Macauley’s daughter is in town?” Gray asked, eyebrows raised.
“Wait.TheLucy Macauley?” Theo asked, and they all turned to look at him. “You know, the woman that Reese Noonan cheated on Faith Lincoln with?”
“It was one coffee in public,” Nick said. “And Lucy didn’t know who he was.”
Theo scoffed. “Okay, you’re telling me she didn’t know who Reese freakin’ Noonan was?”
“Not everybody follows sports,” Nick said. “And it’s possible to know a name and recognize a guy in uniform, but not make the connection to a guy you run into in a coffee shop. How do you know so much about it, anyway?”
“When it happened, it was impossiblenotto see it. I just scrolled or swiped past it because I didn’t care, but I saw it. Didn’t realize she’s Helen’s granddaughter, though.”
“Wait,” Beck said. “She’s Helen’s granddaughter. You’re staying at Helen’s cottage. Breakfast at Pete’s. Grocery shopping. This woman lives with you now?”
“From a top five NFL quarterback to a former college running back,” Gray said before he could respond. “Hell of a downgrade.”
Even as his body tensed and anger urged him to lash out, Nick forced himself not to react. His brother was joking—taking a shot at his brother the way they all did—and it wasn’t their fault they didn’t know how deeply the words cut him.
He’d given up his dream forthem, but he never let them see how much it had hurt because he didn’t want them to carry the guilt around with them.
“She’s crashing on the couch because she didn’t have anywhere else to go,” he said in a tone more harsh than he’d intended.
Okay, so maybe Lucy wasn’t totally wrong about him being a little grumpy now and then. Sometimes.
“And we don’t get paid to stand around gossiping,” he continued, before casting a dark glance at Theo, who was scrolling on his phone. “Or being online.”
There was a lot of grumbling, but his brothers stopped talking about Lucy and got to work, which was all Nick cared about. This was a big job, and they were already slightly behind schedule.
The historic colonial home was set off from the road by a tall, dense row of hedges. And from the back, a long and sweeping lawn sloped down to the water’s edge. It was a gorgeous property, and some rich family from Vermont had bought it.
They’d hired Slater & Sons to totally gut the interior. From a distance it would still be a majestic, historic home. On the inside it would be sleek and modern, with much of the back wall replaced with glass so they could sit in the air conditioning and look out over the water.
As much as Nick and his brothers—and most of Wayward Harbor—hated out-of-staters buying up property and making summer homes, he appreciated that they were preserving the exterior.
And hereallyappreciated the amounts on the checks the guy from Vermont was writing out to Slater & Sons.
A few hours later, Nick had to make a quick run into town to buy some more pencils because they had a way of disappearing that drove him mad. He wasn’t surprised to find his brothers lounging on the back lawn, eating lunch.
Gray, whose turn it was to supply the food, tossed him a sandwich from the cooler. It was ham, which wasn’t his favorite, but it had extra Swiss, so not bad.
Theo gestured him over, so he caught the soda Gray tossed after the sandwich and went to join him. The others were enjoying the warm spring sun, but Theo was under a tree in the shade. Probably so he could see his phone screen.
“While I’m eating my lunch andnot getting paid,” Theo said once he’d sat down and unwrapped the sandwich. “I’ve been doing a deep dive on some of the social media platforms.”
Nick gave his youngest brother a flat look. He didn’t think his constant nagging about phones during working hours was unreasonable. “Don’t even get started with the forklift fail videos because we get hooked in. Then it goes to funny snowmobile fails and then cute animals being goofy and then it’s almost quitting time and nobody’s even picked up a hammer.”
“No, that’s not what I’m talking about.” He paused, and then chuckled. “But remind me to show you the one with the guy who tried to ride a full-dresser Harley up a two-by-six into the back of his truck.”
“Theo.”
“I looked up Lucy,” he said quietly. A scary calm settled through Nick as he glared at his brother, waiting for an explanation. “I mean, we all know what happened, of course. But I was just curious about how bad it could be to make a woman drive all the way across the country to live withyou.”
“She didn’t drive out here to live with me, and you know it. She came to visit Helen.” But that wasn’t the point. “How bad is it?”
“Bad. The internet really hates her. Looking at the time stamps and stuff, it’s kind of dying down, but…” He handed Nick his phone. “Those are screenshots in my photo app, so you can just swipe through them. And it’s not even a fraction of what’s out there.”
Nick flipped through the screenshots of posts and comments, his blood pressure rising with each swipe of his thumb. The stuff being said about her. The names she was being called.
The threats.
