Page 3 of The Arrangement

Clearly, my original plan to make something of myself—to prove to them I had worthwhile qualities too—by joining the military had backfired. Now I was staring down an endless tunnel of more of the same, edging on burnout, and had next to no transferable life skills. Small wonder my parents thought I was the family fuck-up.

I stayed lost in my thoughts as I jogged down the stairs and bumped into another familiar face in the entry hall.

“Oh good, you’re still here,” Jones said, giving me a hand slap and a fist bump in greeting.

“Why? You looking for me?” I grinned. Jones was a good guy and had my back more than once over the years.

He gave me a sly grin, and I immediately became wary. “As a matter of fact, I am.”

“Uh oh. Why does that sound like I’m not going to like what you’re going to say?”

“You remember how I got shot in the leg while pulling you out of that burning building?” he asked with a saccharine smile.

I kind of wished he was exaggerating, but that was exactly how it went down, minus a few other unsavory details. “Yeah…”

“I’m officially calling in my favor.”

I held up my hands. “Look, I know I owe you and all, but I already told you, I’m not helping you move your psychotic cousin. There’s something not right with them, and I don’t want to be anywhere near when they finally snap.”

Davies’ smile dropped into a frown. “They’re notthatbad.” I gave him a pointed look. “Okay, maybe they are. But it’s not about them anyway, though it does involve helping someone move. Sort of.”

Officially intrigued—and not just because I was already bored out of my damn mind—I crossed my arms and leaned against the wall. “Oh, yeah?”

“So here’s the deal,” he began, rubbing the back of his neck, “I have this really good friend who I promised to help move into a small apartment and fix up the shop below it this summer. The problem is—”

“You spaced,” I filled in.

He nodded guiltily. “I totally spaced. And now I’m roped into a bunch of family drama, and there’s no way I can keep my promise. So I need you to go in my place.”

“I don’t know about this, Jones. It’d be pretty weird to show up for some stranger.” Weird, but honestly, I wasn’t ruling it out yet. So far, this was sounding like the ideal distraction.

“That’s the thing. You know the guy. I think you actually led the USAR team that pulled his unit out of Iraq.”

I flashed to a pair of sweet hazel eyes in a handsome face. Only it wasn’t the image of a soldier bound on a dirt floor covered in bruises and old blood that Jones was referring to. It was the soldier standing in a cracked doorway, watching me with an intensity that made me forget everything else. I swallowed thickly. That hadn’t been the only soldier my team had rescued that day, though it was the only one I wouldn’t let anyone else help. It couldn’t be him.

“We rescue a lot of guys, Jones. Care to be more specific?”

He rolled his eyes. “Weathers.”

I nearly swallowed my tongue. “Specialist Marc Weathers?”

“That’s the one! See, I knew you’d remember him. He’s driving down to Fairhope, but I know you don’t bother with a car and he’s already left so you can’t ride with him.”

“You lost me,” I interjected. “Where exactly is ‘Fairhope’ and how the hell do you expect me to get there?”

Jones’s grin should have given me pause. “Easy. It’s in Alabama and I’m buying you a plane ticket and a rideshare.”

I gave him a weak smile. Fuck me. Not just the South, but theDeepSouth. And Jones saved my life, so it wasn’t exactly like I could say no. “This should be fun.”

Chapter 3

Marc

Icontemplated the list I’d started last night as I tapped my pen against my bottom lip. The scope of work was about what I expected. Or, in other words, significantly more work than Great Aunt Petunia insisted needed to be done. There was updating the lighting, replacing several of the shelving and display tables, painting the walls, scraping the glass front of about a decade’s worth of grime, and I needed to see about updating the business license. And that was just for the shop downstairs. I had a whole separate list of the fixes I wanted to do to the little apartment I now called home.

It was a lot smaller than I remembered, but then I was also a lot bigger than when I’d visited and helped out over the summers as a kid. For a single guy without a social life, it was perfect. Though the sorry state of the space really drove home how much work needed to be done and that there was no way I could do it on my own. I was capable enough for most things, but others required at least a two-man team. Which begged thequestion: What the hell was taking Jones so damn long to get here?

I glanced at my phone sitting on the coffee table, even though I knew there hadn’t been another message from him since he’d sent