Page 71 of For Pleasure Or Worse

“You two.” Mateo gestured like he was spraying two feral cats with water. “Cut it out.” His phone rang in his pocket and distracted him from the kittenish look my sister and his friend shared. I was too blasé to be irritated, and at the end of the day Tyler Swan was probably the best candidate for a one-night stand because the guy was a revolving door of women.Godspeed, Bella.

My fiancé put his palm over the receiver on his phone. “I have to take this quick.”

“Is everyone good with this?” Frankie chimed in. “We can all go shower, get put together, and reconvene here in an hour.”

Good? Yes. Scared? Definitely. Exhilarated? That was the closest word to what I felt. A bachelorette scavenger hunt in Las Vegas that would determine who had bragging rights for foreseeably the rest of our lives. I gave Frankie and Ophelia the thumbs-up.

“Perfect,” Phee squealed. “Pink outfits today, girls. Minus you, Nat, white and glam. Do you need help?”

I laughed. “I can manage.”

“Don’t forget your sunscreen. Sunglasses, hair ties, lip balm, wallets. I’ll have extra too.”

“I could really use you on a day-to-day basis,” Camilla said.

The room dispersed to get ready for the day, that little spark of competition like a shot of espresso in everyone’s coffee cup. When I stood from the couch I noticed Angelo had started down the hallway toward where Mateo disappeared, and I craned my neck curiously as I watched him head up the stairs first.

chapter twenty-four

Mateo

“Yes,I understand how dire this is, Stephen. But it’s a Saturday, and I’m at my bachelor party in Las Vegas. This isn’t exactly a remote job, especially if you’re telling me the service is hacked.” I pinched the bridge of my nose, inhaling an unsteady breath as I paced the bedroom in a circle. “Trust me, I would have a direct notification, and there are several firewalls in place to keep that type of thing from happening. Unless for some reason you have Edward Snowden on your case, I’m fairly confident what you’re experiencing isn’t a breach of security. Have you checked with your service provider? Outages happen this time of year, especially in a storm.”

The crackling voice of the elderly man who owned a family-run hardware store in Coconut Creek berated me on the other line. He was one of my newer clients, and so far had me doing pro bono computer tech work for him despite that not being the job I was hired for. Guy was a Korean War veteran, though, and you could call me a sucker but I couldn’t tell him no—no matterhowridiculous the request got. My email was set to be out of office for the weekend but it hadn’t kept him from dialing my personal cellphone number for office-related issues.

He likely didn’t even check his email, and the address he’d given me was for the sake of completing my onboarding.

“No, no, no, I can’t help you with a wireless outage. I know we were due for a tropical storm, that could be it.”

A beat passed.

“Well if it’s raining cats and dogs like you say, there ought to be a whole block of internet out. Trust me, Stephen, you are not being hacked. Your security is perfectly fine. No one is gathering your personal information to sell to the government.”

There was a knock on the bedroom door and I dropped the phone to my chest, covering the receiver. “Yeah?” I called out.

“It’s me.” Angelo pushed inside the room.

I lifted a finger toward him and put the cell back to my ear. “Okay, yes. Yes, definitely check in with the ladies at the coffee shop next door, or use the landline and call the cable company. I’ll be back Monday if this is still giving you a problem. Great, perfect, I will tell my fiancée you said so. Okay, Stephen, right, thanks, bye. Oh, don’t you worry about that, thank you, I’ll behave…bye now.”

I tossed my phone onto the bed and squeezed my eyes shut until I saw shapes.

“Work?” Angelo walked over to the large window and leaned against the sill.

“I can’t catch a break.” I sighed.

My brother crossed his arms and twisted his lips. “You know, I was thinking… Maybe I could be the one to help you out.”

“How so?”

“You haven’t hired anyone because you want a guy you know and trust, you said it yourself. Frankie was that partner for you, and now you don’t have him, but I’m willing to give it a go if you’re looking to fill that spot. I’ll put in the work. Dad had enough faith in me to let me tie off loose ends for D&S and I understand this is something just as important.”

My eyebrows threaded together and I turned toward him fully. “How the hell are you going to work for me if you live in New York?” I’d shocked myself by not completely shutting the offer down as soon as it left his mouth. I was desperate, or hopeful, something in between.

“That’s the thing.” Ang opened his hands and started waving them around in the way I often did when I talked, the way our mother and father did, the only way we knew how to properly articulate ourselves. “You’re down south, Ma and Pop are going to be there now, and Duran & Son is caput. I know I can find another trade skill or carpentry job to do in the Bronx, but I miss the family.”

My hard stare softened.

“If you’re all in Florida, maybe I might do well with a change myself. I’m not going to fucking move in with you or anything crazy,” he stressed. “But I’m pretty quick to learn new things, and I want to be helpful. We could make Mom and Dad proud seeing both their sons finally working on something together like they always wanted.”

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