Page 4 of Love, Always and Forever
Chapter 2
“Uncle Mikhail, is it true that we’re all out here sweating on our day off to impress the lady next door?”
Mikhail shoved the posthole digger down into the ground a little harder than absolutely necessary to get the job done. His brothers had been giving him grief for the past week. He didn’t need his teenage nephew to join the party. “No, that’s not true, Ricky.”
Jack, the boy’s adoptive father and Mikhail’s oldest brother, immediately chimed in. “There’s no ‘we’ about it, kid. Mikhail is the only one trying to impress her. If this was a movie, he’d be the action star, and we’d all be cast as the lowly sidekicks.”
Of course, Tino, their middle brother, just had to add his own two cents to the discussion. “Action star, my ass. Near as I can tell, all he’s doing is flexing his oversized muscles every time his new neighbor peeks out her window.”
Ricky cracked up and immediately started flexing his own arms. Jack took one look at his son’s antics and joined right in, both of them laughing like crazy. Tino immediately followed suit with all three of the idiots taking turns striking all kinds of stupid poses, trying to outdo each other.
It was tempting to punch both of his brothers, but that would be like leaking blood when the sharks were circling. They’d only ramp up the abuse. Instead, trying his best to channel their late father, Mikhail pointed out the obvious. “You know, if you kept working instead of screwing around so much, we’d be a lot further along on this fence.”
To set a good example for the others, he finished digging the hole he’d started and moved down the line to start the next one. Grumbling good-naturedly, Jack mixed a batch of concrete and poured it into the hole while Ricky held the fence post in place. Tino made himself useful by building the matching gates that would offer access to Mikhail’s and Amy’s backyards. The man was an artist when it came to stuff like that, which would add to the curb appeal of both houses.
Mikhail managed to stay focused on the hole he was digging when he heard Amy’s back door open. There was no use in giving his brothers any more ammunition to use against him.
“Lunch is ready. Anyone want a cold drink to go with the sandwiches?”
Ricky was the first to answer. “I’d love a beer.”
Amy laughed while Jack reached over to cuff the back of his son’s head. The boy immediately changed his request. “But iced tea or even cold water would be great.”
Once Tino and Jack echoed Ricky’s answer, Mikhail finally let himself meet Amy’s dark-eyed gaze. “I’d love a glass of ice water.”
He’d like to think her smile was a little brighter for him, but that was probably wishful thinking. Since his brothers were both happily married and his nephew had just turned seventeen, none of them offered any real competition when it came to Amy’s attentions. She’d been nothing but friendly to all of them, him included, since he’d started the ball rolling on the fence. Unfortunately, she hadn’t given him any overt signal that she was interested in anything other than being good neighbors.
Originally, Jack was just supposed to lay out the plans for the fence and order the materials. Once everything was delivered, Mikhail would work on the fence on his days off, between shifts at the fire department.
That plan had lasted no longer than the time it had taken for Jack to dial Tino’s number. Neither of them thought Mikhail could manage to nail a bunch of cedar boards together without them there to supervise the project. After some loud discussion, they’d finally agreed to limit their help to the posts, gates, and rails. Once the framework for the fence around both yards was done, Mikhail would take over from there by himself.
It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate their willingness to pitch in or that he really minded the pleasure they took in giving him grief every chance they got. God knows he’d done his own fair share of hassling both of them over the years. As he shoved the posthole digger into the ground, Mikhail hid a grin. What was the use in having brothers or even a nephew if you couldn’t give them grief whenever possible?
No, he wanted to build the fence by himself because buying this house was the first permanent home he could point to and claim as solely his own. Ever. Anywhere. He loved Marlene and Joe Lukash for taking him in and giving him a new family, one complete with two brothers. God knows, the three of them were bound together by ties far stronger than the usual common ancestry and DNA. Despite the obvious differences in coloring, size, and even last names, their connection went bone deep. Never for a second had he ever doubted they had his back, just like he had theirs.
Over the past couple of years, though, things had changed. The shifting dynamics in their family had been set in motion the day their adoptive father had died from a massive heart attack. That god-awful phone call had directly led to Jack moving back home. He’d met his wife and future son shortly afterward. Now they were making noises about adding yet another lucky kid to their growing family.
Tino had been the next one to leave the military behind and return home to live in the annex, their name for the apartment next to their mom’s house in what used to be the garage. It hadn’t been long before he’d discovered a passion for working with at-risk kids and had gone back to school to pursue a degree in social work. He and his wife had recently moved in with Natalie’s beloved grandfather and seemed to be settling in nicely.
They’d offered to rent him the house Natalie had inherited from her paternal grandmother dirt cheap. It was a generous offer, but he’d wanted a place of his own. He glanced back toward the small three-bedroom bungalow and felt a surge of pride. To his knowledge, no one in his birth mother’s small circle of acquaintances had ever owned a home. Most hadn’t even held down a steady job for more than a few months at a time.
Not for the first time, he wondered if his mom would be proud of the man he’d become. He hoped so, but there was no way to know considering she’d died with a needle in her arm a decade and a half ago.
“Isn’t that hole a lot deeper than it needs to be?”
Ricky’s voice jerked Mikhail out of his downward spiral deep into the quagmire of dark memories from his past. It took him a second or two longer to make sense of the question.
His nephew stared down at the crater Mikhail had dug. “Seriously, man, that will take twice as much concrete as all the others.”
Well, shit.
Mikhail rolled his shoulders, hoping to shed the weight of his past. “Guess I got carried away. Get me the shovel.”
His nephew stared back at him with eyes that had seen too much of the uglier side of life for a kid his age. “I’ll take care of it. Why don’t you go help the nice lady carry that tray? It looks heavy.”
Not a bad idea. Mikhail leaned the posthole digger against a nearby tree. “Thanks, kid.”
Of course, the brat had to go and spoil the moment. “I’m just looking out for your best interests, Uncle Mikhail. It’s a chance to flex those muscles again.”
