He paused to listen to the quiet house. Sylvie was still working, he supposed. Hopefully he could shower, cook supper and leave before she returned home. Not that he didn’t like seeing her, but she was an unnecessary complication. Life would be a lot easier if Cal or Dusty lived next door, not their sister.
As for teaching her how to cook? Man, he still didn’t know how she’d roped him into that one. He planned on keeping his word, but he wasn’t going to go out of his way to do so. No sense looking for trouble.
It wasn’t hard to see how protective her brothers and father felt toward her, and he didn’t want them getting crazy ideas about him and Sylvie. He came with a lot of baggage, and once people realized who they were dealing with, his dream of fitting in and being a regular joe could be lost forever.
He’d done time for assault, and if his record ever surfaced, he’d hope to have the opportunity to explain how and why the fight had happened. But he’d never confess that his immediate and brutal reaction to his mother’s abusive boyfriend had confirmed what he’d always feared—he harbored the potential for violence.
His dad, Paulie Hunter, had been an enforcer for the dreaded biker gang Sons of Lethe. For the first ten years of Adam’s life, brutality, in one form or another, toward him, toward other people, toward the damned pet rabbit he’d tried to hide from his father, had been a daily occurrence.
As a child, he’d been dragged from his bed several times each year to flee with his mother and father, leaving everything he owned behind. He’d grown up looking over his shoulder, and it wasn’t always for the cops. The Raiders, the sworn enemy of the Sons of Lethe, had a price on Paulie’s head for years. They figured if they could get to his father through him, all the better.
What they hadn’t understood was Paulie wouldn’t have cared. He’d told his son straight-out if he was stupid enough to get caught by the Raiders, or any of his father’s other enemies, not to count on his old man for help. Paulie Hunter damned well wouldn’t have sacrificed his life for his son.
It had taken longer than it should have for Adam to admit his dad was a killer, probably a psychopath. Or sociopath. It didn’t matter what you called him, he’d been one sick dude who relished violence. Adam had not only feared his father, he’d also been ashamed of him. Still was, when you got right down to it. And yet, what secretly shamed him was that, in a weird way, he loved his dad. Which caused him to wonder what that made him? How was it possible to love a monster? And Adam had been running away from the thought that he could be like this monster, his father, until the day he’d almost killed a man.
A few months ago, before coming to Collina to see his newly inherited house, he’d made the mistake of visiting his mother. He’d had the crazy notion that with the money he’d made from the sale of his grandmother’s house in the States he could get his mom help to kick her drug habit. Never mind that she’d switched to using prescription drugs—a junkie was a junkie.
Instead of helping his mother he’d ended up almost killing her current boyfriend. Bruised almost beyond recognition, his mother couldn’t even pull herself out of her drug haze long enough to report her condition to the police, but then again most of his family would die before asking the cops for help.
Horrified at the violence he’d unleashed on her boyfriend, Adam had turned himself in to the police and found the help he sought in the form of Jake McCoy, an ex-con who ran a center against violence.
The cops got a kick out of Adam turning himself in for a crime that hadn’t been reported, but he’d needed help, and he didn’t know where else to go. It had worked out okay in the end. His mother’s boyfriend wound up doing time for assaulting Adam’s mother. Adam had served a few months for assault, and then spent the last few months of his sentence doing community service, working with juvenile boys who came from similar backgrounds as him. He met Jake at the drop-in center for street kids, and that was when he began to see his way out of the shit pile of his life.
Adam dumped his groceries on the kitchen table and continued on to the bathroom. Now here he was, months later, ready to get on with his life. And he’d do damned near anything to fit into Collina.
Like Cal said, he’d never get back the money he was investing in the house. Which meant if things didn’t work out in Collina, he wouldn’t have the money to start over somewhere else. Sure, he could get a job and a mortgage in another town, but his heart had already picked this spot to make his home, probably because he associated it with his gram. He doubted he had the courage to start again somewhere else if things didn’t work out.
He shouldn’t have caved this morning and promised Sylvie he’d teach her how to cook. But it had struck him, despite all the talk about her talent and success, that her family hadn’t taken into account Sylvie or what she wanted. Maybe she’d change her mind and go back to Toronto like Cal said she would. If she did, it sounded like it would be better for all of them—except, maybe, Sylvie. The thought made him feel lousy, but then he’d always been a sucker for the underdog.
He grabbed a quick shower and returned to the kitchen. Over the past year, cooking had become his secret passion. Lots of men cooked these days, but every time he indulged, he heard his father sneering over his shoulder. Old Paulie would not have approved of his son cooking anything more than a hamburger on a grill.
He laid out three chicken breasts, sprinkled olive oil and rosemary over them and slid them in the oven along with a scrubbed potato. Halfway through mixing the greens for a salad, Dusty burst through the door. He grabbed a chair, turned it backward and straddled it.
The Carson boys might be interested in becoming friends with Adam, but apparently they also planned to keep close watch on him. He didn’t know if they were just curious or watching over their little sister.
“Smells good. Got any extra? I haven’t eaten yet.”
“There’re more potatoes in that paper bag.” Adam nodded at the counter. “Scrub one and toss it in the oven.”
“So, you cook, huh?” Dusty washed two potatoes and rolled them into the oven.
“Yeah. You?”
“Some.”
Adam slid the salad into the refrigerator and leaned against the counter. “Hey, I don’t know if you can help me out with this, but I’ve got a bike in the back of my truck. I need a place to park it, a shed or old barn, doesn’t matter, just somewhere to get it out of the weather. You know of anyone who’s not using their garage or shed?” He hated asking for help, but he didn’t have a choice.
“I’ve got a shed at my hunting camp where I keep my four-wheeler when I’m hunting. It’s not far from here. Fifteen minutes.” Dusty pulled himself out of his slouch. “What kind of bike have you got?”
“Harley.” He pushed the word out. He didn’t want to tell anyone about his dad’s bike, but he needed to find a place to stash it. He should have asked Cal, not Dusty. Cal might have kept it to himself.
“Cool.”
“I’d like to unload it somewhere so I can use my truck to pick up building supplies. Do you think we could shoot up there now?” Best to do it with as few people around as possible. He didn’t welcome questions about the bike.
“What about supper?”
“No problem. I’ll put the oven timer on, and the food will be ready when we get back.”
“That thing has a timer?”
Adam laughed. “Yeah, they’re great. I’ll show you how it works.” He explained how to set the oven to turn off in thirty minutes and followed Dusty out the door.
When they crossed the yard to Adam’s truck, the sky was clear, lit up by a gazillion stars. Adam looked longingly at the beach. He’d love to drag out an old blanket, lie down and soak it all up—the stars, the restless sound of the waves, the smell