Just for Nice Read online

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  JUNE

  JULY

  AUGUST

  NOVEMBER

  About the Author

  By H. M. Shepherd

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  Copyright

  Just for Nice

  By H. M. Shepherd

  Nick Caratelli flees the city in an attempt to escape a broken relationship and a career he never wanted. He plans to set up a bed-and-breakfast in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country—despite the fact he has no experience in renovating the old building. Luckily his handsome neighbor Sam approaches him with a curious proposal: he’ll help with the restoration in exchange for Nick babysitting his niece.

  As they work to have the bed-and-breakfast open for business by summer’s end, their lives become interwoven without them even trying. Before he knows it, Nick is recovering from his loss and taking his place in the unconventional family that seems determined to form. But for Nick and Sam to be together in all the ways they desire, they’ll have to realize all the arguments against romance exist only in their heads….

  States of Love: Stories of romance that span every corner of the United States.

  JUNE

  THE NIGHT Nick’s fiancée took off her ring and pressed it into the palm of his hand with a whispered apology, he climbed into his car and began to drive without taking any particular note of where he was going, aside from the general direction of west. Somehow he had ended up on Route 30 between Lancaster and York counties, and crossed the Susquehanna just as the sun was rising behind him. The serenity and the silence that clung to the farmland around him was intoxicating, and in that instant, he made the decision to move.

  The process of doing so had been quite a bit more complicated, and the time he spent selling his rowhome and looking for a farmhouse in the more affordable Berks County had put his mind at ease as to whether or not the choice was made too hastily. But as he glared through the bedroom window of the caretaker’s cottage at the house across the street, he wondered if that tranquil moment over the river had been a trick, something to fool city folk into emptying their bank accounts to buy charming homes and spend half their lives renovating them. If he had known stupid teenagers and their stupid all-night house parties existed here too, maybe he would have changed his mind and stayed put. At least the college students who had lived next door to his rowhome had had the decency to eventually settle into a mostly quiet, pot-induced stupor.

  “Fesond Run Police, nonemergency line. How can I assist you?”

  Nick pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Yeah, uh, I’d like to make a noise complaint?”

  This was it. He was officially going to be the old man yelling at the kids to get out of his yard. A pang of guilt stuck him momentarily, but it was immediately erased as the bass dropped on the horrifyingly loud dubstep blaring through the open windows.

  It took about twenty minutes for a single police cruiser to arrive, but the instant the blue and red lights started flashing, the music stopped and the sounds of panicked teens racing away began. One of them made it across the street and ran past Nick’s bedroom window, casting a shadow on the wall. Nick barely noticed; by then he had crawled back into bed, with the blanket pulled up to cover his eyes, and was finally, mercifully asleep.

  THE NEXT morning (or, truthfully, that same morning), Nick woke up at 7:00 a.m. as usual. It was a habit he found himself unable to break, even though it had been weeks since he’d needed to be anywhere other than his own home. He contemplated staying in bed and willing himself to get at least a couple more hours, but it was futile. In a few minutes, he was up, dressed, and staring ruefully at the growing tumble of untidy black curls on his head while he brushed his teeth at the bathroom mirror. He promised himself for the tenth time that week that he’d find somewhere to get a haircut.

  Without bothering to lock the front door, he left the caretaker’s cottage and walked up the broken flagstone path to the big house. Across the street, he saw his neighbor—Sam, if he remembered correctly from their first quick introduction. He was standing at the edge of his own yard, his arms crossed as he spoke to a young girl, who Nick surmised was his daughter. She looked sullen, as though she was being scolded. Next to them was a stack of clear trash bags full of red cups. For all his internal whining about his four hours of sleep, Nick wondered if she had been cleaning since the cops busted up her party and hadn’t slept at all.

  He fished the key to the front door out of his pocket, slipped it in, and winced at the creaking hinges. He added WD-40 to the long-running mental list of things he had to buy on his next hardware store run. After a moment’s consideration, he left the door wide open; he was planning to paint that day and couldn’t stand the smell. He set a mug of coffee to brew in the kitchen and went through every empty room, throwing open each window. The smell of sawdust and primer still hung thick in the air and refused to vent, but at least he could pretend he was doing something productive.

  He returned to the living room and had just popped off the lid of a paint can with the screwdriver when he heard someone knock at the open front door. He replaced the lid without securing it and walked briskly into the center hall to find Sam and the teenage girl standing at the threshold. “Good morning?”

  “’Morning. I came by to apologize for my niece’s behavior last night,” Sam said, cutting straight to the point. “I’d have her do it herself, but she doesn’t seem to think that any of this is her responsibility.”

  “It’s not!” the girl said, almost shrill. “I told you, I only meant for, like, two people to come over. It’s not my fault that dumbass Kaylee went on Facebook and made a public event for it.”

  “Language,” Sam said gently, stepping to the side and bringing his niece to stand in front of him. “Ellie, this is Mr. Caratelli, our new neighbor, who I’m sure we’ve made a wonderful impression on. Nick, this is my niece, Ellie.”

  “It’s very nice to meet you,” Nick said, holding out his hand.

  Ellie looked at it as though it was covered in something foul before she took it for one brief shake. She turned back to Sam. “Can I go back now?”

  “Nope,” he said cheerily. “The other reason I’m here was to ask if it’s all right to have Ellie clean up the mess they left in your yard.”

  Nick leaned out to look. There were a few plastic cups in the grass, and he could see a lone beer can in the azalea down by the mailbox. “Sure, I don’t mind. But there’s not so much. I can take care of it.”

  “I insist.” Sam spun Ellie about by her shoulder and shoved a trash bag in her hand. “Get to it now once.”

  She growled but did as she was told.

  Both of them stood in awkward silence for a few moments before Nick offered Sam a cup of coffee, which was readily accepted. They walked to the kitchen, and Nick grabbed a new mug and a mesh pod already full of coffee grounds.

  “Oh, you have one of those fancy things?” Sam said, pointing to the only appliance on the counter. One of the first things Nick had purchased was a new single-serve machine to replace the espresso machine he’d given his fiancée last Christmas; she’d offered it back, but he’d refused. “What’s wrong with a regular coffeepot, anyway?”

  “Nothing, I guess. But when I had a regular one, I was drinking way too much, and since it’s just me now, this made more sense….” He wondered why on earth he was trying to justify himself. This wasn’t a courtroom, and Sam’s opinion on Nick’s purchasing history didn’t matter in the slightest.

  To his surprise, though, Sam tilted his head and nodded. “I suppose that is more practical, then.”

  Again, Nick found himself at a loss for what to say. This wasn’t like him at all—with his friends and family, he was
usually the annoying chatterbox, and with strangers, he never really paid much mind to what they thought about him. Something about Sam, however, left him tongue-tied and flustered. It bothered him more than he cared to admit.

  “Sorry about the mess,” he said lamely, swiping a layer of sawdust off the counter while Sam’s coffee brewed. “I had professionals come in and fix the plumbing and electric, put a couple en suites in the bedrooms, but I’ve been trying to do the rest myself, and the idea of cleaning when I know I’m just going to mess it up again is killing me.”

  “Oh! You should have said something sooner. I do construction.”

  “Really?”

  “Woodworking, mostly, but I’ve done a little bit of everything else.” Sam looked around and Nick cringed, knowing what he could see in the kitchen alone: half-laid flooring, primed but unpainted walls, a rough frame for a pantry that had yet to be drywalled, and doorless cabinets. “Actually, we may be able to help each other out here.”

  The coffee maker sputtered and stopped. Nick handed Sam his coffee and picked up his own. “How so?”

  Before Sam could answer, a crash echoed through the house.

  Nick pushed past Sam, raced upstairs, and turned in to one of the larger bedrooms. He had taken the heavy wooden door off its hinges to repair the doorjamb, and left it off when it wasn’t clear if the building code would allow it. Now he found it fallen on the floor, and a long, deep groove carved into the wall behind it. When he ran his fingers down it, it cracked further at its weakest point, sending a large chunk of plaster to the ground. Nick swore loudly.

  A long, low whistle caused Nick to nearly jump out of his own skin, and he turned to find Sam standing behind him. “That doesn’t look good.”

  “No, it doesn’t!” Nick exploded, burying his head in his hands. “And I don’t know how to fix this goddamned thing, so I can add it to the list of other shit I don’t know how to do that needs to get done before I open this place!” He looked up and flushed at the sight of Sam’s concerned face. “I’m sorry. I’ve just been so stressed out, and I think I got in over my head.”

  Sam nodded. He stepped closer to the wall, leaning over for a better look at the broken plaster. “I don’t think this is your fault. Looks like whoever repaired it last didn’t let it cure properly.” He broke even more away, apparently ignoring Nick’s stricken gasp. “I think… yeah, this is gypsum plaster over wood lath. I can take care of this, if you’d like.”

  “I’d appreciate it, really, but I can’t afford to pay anyone. That’s why I’ve been doing all of this on my own.”

  “It’s nothing, I promise. I have all the tools I’d need to take care of it. I’d just need to run out and get plaster. I’ve got time to do that now, if you’d do me a favor.”

  “Anything,” Nick agreed desperately.

  “If I drag Ellie to another hardware store, she’s like to kill me in my sleep, but I can’t leave her alone.”

  Nick tilted his head and was about to open his mouth and ask why a teenager would need a babysitter, but Sam continued.

  “If you wouldn’t mind staying with her while I’m out, I can get what I need and be back here in less than an hour.”

  Nick agreed, and with that, Sam went to find Ellie, who seemed miffed but was more than happy to stop combing the shrubbery for errant Solo cups. She dashed across the street to put her half-full trash bag with the rest of the ones stacked on the curb, while Sam drove off in a battered red pickup truck.

  Nick followed her, hesitating to get too close. “Should we go to your house, or…?”

  “I’m not going to your place. Perv.” With that, she turned on her heel and walked up the driveway and in through the garage.

  After a moment, Nick followed her. He looked around before heading inside, noting that the garage was packed so full of tools and half-finished projects that there was no possible way a car could fit in there, and it smelled more of sawdust than exhaust and oil. Sam probably used it exclusively as a workshop. Nick wandered through the door and into the kitchen, finding Ellie at the sink, scrubbing her hands.

  “There’s nothing here to do unless you want to read the paper. Our TV sucks, and Sam changed the Wi-Fi password and won’t say what it is. I swear, he’s the only tech-savvy Dutchman I know.”

  Nick raised an eyebrow. “You call your uncle just by his name?” If he’d called any of his aunts like that, he’d likely found himself hit upside the head with whatever they had handy.

  “Well, yeah,” she said, punctuating her answer with the slam of a cabinet door as she pulled down a box of cereal. “Calling him Uncle Sam just sounds stupid.”

  “Touché.”

  “It’s not even his real name. Not his first name, anyway. It’s Elias, but since Mom started calling me Ellie, he switched to his middle name instead. I guess he wasn’t really thinking at the time how dumb it would sound.” She took her cereal and sat at the table. It was her turn to raise an eyebrow as she gestured to one of the other chairs. “Are you gonna sit or are you just gonna hover there like some creeper?”

  With growing irritation, he took the chair opposite her. “So, any particular occasion for the party last night?” he asked, trying to needle her right back.

  She rolled her eyes for what seemed like the thousandth time that day, heaved a sigh, and used that breath to launch into a rant. “I swear, I asked a few friends to come over. School’s out, right? So one of them, Kaylee, she won’t give up her Facebook even though no one uses it anymore. But then it turns out there’s a lot more people using Facebook than I thought, so when she made an event out of it, something like fifty people showed up. They didn’t even all fit in the house! And then someone brought a keg, and someone else brought their car with a sound system in the trunk, which is apparently what got us all busted.” She finally stopped for a breath, pushing her cereal around with the back of her spoon. “I thought I’d be able to get away with a small get-together while Sam was working for the night. No one would find out. It just got away from me so fast. I didn’t even drink… all they had was Natty Lite, anyway.”

  “I never did anything like that,” Nick said absentmindedly.

  “Too well-behaved?”

  “Only because I would never get away with it. My mother’s a lawyer, and my dad’s a cop. Was a cop.”

  “Is he dead?” she asked bluntly.

  “No, retired. One too many herniated discs. Now he spends his days driving my mother absolutely nuts, following her around until she locks herself in her office.”

  “And what do you do?”

  “I was a lawyer too, but I don’t practice anymore.”

  “Herniated discs?” Ellie asked with a snort.

  “No. Just needed a change of pace.”

  “So…. Caratelli? Where are you really from, Jersey?”

  Here, he granted her the reaction she wanted and scoffed. “No, Pittsburgh. Do I look orange to you?”

  “You’re still a long way from home, though. Why?”

  “I was living in Philadelphia until a few months ago.”

  “Oh, I’m from Philly! I grew up in Manayunk.”

  “Really?” He vaguely knew the neighborhood, but wasn’t overly familiar with it.

  “Yeah, I was born there, actually. I miss it. Dad used to drive for SEPTA, so whenever his shift ended early and I didn’t have school, we’d go into the city to meet him. He’d say that he’d just spent eight hours trapped in a bus and couldn’t take one more minute, so we’d walk everywhere. He’d try to take us somewhere new every time, but eventually we’d always end up at the fountain in Logan Square.” She smiled wistfully. “I haven’t been there since… since I was ten.

  “Still,” she said, returning to her original point. “No one comes out here for no reason. The ones who are here, they’re here because they were born here. And they’ll either leave and never come back, or they’ll stay until they die.”

  Nick wasn’t about to delve into his whole story—that he was a sad ma
n fleeing a spectacularly failed relationship and had simply landed here by sheer chance only because he wasn’t quite ready to go home. He gave her a strained smile and repeated, “Like I said. Just looking for a change of pace.”

  Ellie shrugged and said wryly, “I guess you’re not going to find a bigger change anywhere else.”

  Nick was tempted to ask why she was there herself, if she had such a low opinion of their area, but she seemed to grow bored with him and, after that, stopped asking questions. Eventually she finished her breakfast and wandered away, muttering something about Sam being so obvious that she could probably guess the Wi-Fi password if she tried. Nick flicked through the newspaper and made notes on his phone about estate sales.

  Within the hour, Sam returned with a bag of plaster. He dug around the garage for a few minutes, throwing tools into a faded orange five-gallon bucket before he called for Nick and Ellie to follow him back across the street.

  When they got to the house, Ellie elected to stay outside, and in a gesture of goodwill, Nick gave her his cell phone. “Please don’t mess with anything.”

  “Can I download Pokémon Go?”

  “Already on there, but I don’t know if you’ll find anything.”

  Nick followed Sam, figuring this wouldn’t be the last mishap he would have with the plaster and it would behoove him to watch someone who actually knew what they were doing. Sam offered to describe the process, but after he sanded the jagged edges and mixed the plaster, they fell into a comfortable silence that Nick eventually broke with one question:

  “Why isn’t Ellie allowed to be alone?”

  Sam stopped smoothing out the plaster and glanced back at Nick before continuing. For a moment Nick thought he wasn’t going to answer. “Last night… I could have gotten in a lot of trouble. I have Ellie as a kinship foster, so there’s a lot of rules, and the state watches us pretty close. I’m not sure how much you know about that.”

  “A bit. My mother’s in family law.”