Page 1 of The Barn: Frost and Q
One
“Hey, Frost, you got a minute?”
Frost Kelly stopped short of swinging his axe, resting it down on the ground to stare at one of his business partners in the Barn, which was supposed to be his pride and joy BDSM club, but was turning into a serious source of irritation. Today at least.
Boone Tyler was the undisputable day-to-day guy at the Barn, running all the weird little logistics that kept the place humming along, and when Boone bothered him, it was rarely good news. Sometimes it was an idea, sometimes an emergency, but it was always a pain in the ass.
And it usually cost him a fortune. Well, him and all the invested partners.
“What’s up, buddy?” Frost tried not to let his impatience show. He was in a shit mood, and he just wanted to be alone and chop a metric fuck-ton of wood to get out of said mood.
“I need to nail down the final budget for the gala.”
Ugh.
Sometimes, it sucked to be the money guy.
They all had their strengths. All four of them. His just happened to be the damn budget.
“Didn’t we do that? If not, talk to Ender.” His assistant was preternaturally efficient. He had the gala budget worked out to the last line item, which Frost thought was the kale that was going to make a mini forest the area for the giant charcuterie boards.
“I did. He sent me to you.” Boone had that look. That impatient rancher, dammit-the-cows-got-out look, the scowl deep in his forehead.
God save him from assholes from the lower forty-eight.
“Okay, so what exorbitantly expensive thing do you want?” he teased, trying to relent in his grr. Boone didn’t deserve his shit, really.
Boone’s silvery gray eyes sparked with humor, which was a much better look for him. “Well, you know, this thing is like 10K per ticket, plus transport. We can afford a little extravagance.”
“Mmmhmm.” He would not roll his eyes or whack Boone with the axe. Not notty not not. “What is it?”
“Tug wants a barbecue pit. And he wants to bring up a friend who’s a pit master and their smoker unit. Which is a full-size tractor trailer.”
He blinked. “You know they can only get here by boat.” Frost kind of thought Boone already knew that, but hey. Who knew?
“Man, Tug is from Texas. And a rodeo man. I’m not sure he knows what a boat is. You’re talking about things that are way over his pay grade.”
Frost had to grin, even if his face didn’t want to, because of all of them, Tug was the one who had bought into their little project here for the rush of it all. Tug wanted what he wanted, and he didn’t care what the complications were. He also didn’t care if it pissed everybody else in the business off. Frost liked that about the man.
“How about we offer to build permanent smokers here? That’ll still save us a little money, and it’ll make the rodeo junkie happy.”
“You spoil that son of a bitch. You were supposed to just say no.”
“I’m allowed to spoil him a little bit.” Sometimes, he wished Tug was his type, to be honest. But the guy was totally not a sub, and not at all into service.
He sighed.
“I’ll tell him. But if he can’t get it done before the gala so that it’s not an eyesore…”
“Then he has to wait. That’s your bailiwick.” Frost gave no shits for logistics.
“Good deal.” Boone nodded. “I’ll tell Ender.”
“Thanks. I’d like to work out all my aggressions now, thank you.” He indicated the axe and the wood.
“Speaking of aggressions…” Boone arched an eyebrow. “Q hasn’t eaten anything that I know of for a day and a half.”
Frost arched an eyebrow and sighed again. He didn’t want to get into this with Boone. Q was the reason he was down here, swinging his axe. “Have you sent food up?”
