Chapter Eight
Denver
Denver could move firewood for hours, and he had no qualms about getting his hands dirty. He even knew a bit about furnaces and wood stoves. But that was where his handiness ended. Assembling furniture, especially an L-shaped desk the size of a small country, was outside of his area of expertise.
“You need this monstrosity to write books?” Ryder stood in the doorway, hands folded, eyebrow raised.
“It’s my office,” Denver explained. This corner room on the main floor was the reason he bought the house. Though he was in a residential neighborhood, the acre lot allowed him a fair amount of privacy. The windows fromthisroom gave him a clear and distinct view of the bay with a backdrop of snowcapped mountains.
“So?”
Sherlock lifted his sleepy head from the dog bed Denver had moved outside the office, near the staircase. The pup exhausted himself in an earlier rabbit battle and was more annoyed at the noise than anything. Denver fully expected Sherlock to relocate to the couch in protest. “So, I want it to be nice.”
The delivery man had struggled to get the hefty box inside the house, cursing Denver under his breath when he pointed to the room down the hall. Ryder strode to the massive cardboard box on the floor, examining it closer. “Fit-for-a-king nice, huh?”
“Fit for a mystery writer.”
“Couldn’t even get it out of the box ahead of time?”
“And risk losing a piece and get a lecture from you?” Denver shook his head. “No, thanks.”
Ryder’s shoulders raised and dropped—the closest thing Denver would get to a laugh from his brother.
Together they ripped away the glued-together slats of cardboard, laying out all the pieces sticker side up. The boards—solid oak—were labeled with letter and number codes, but not in any seemingly logical order. Enough hardware to build a small house filled connected plastic pouches. Denver let it unroll all the way open, the opposite end nearly hitting the floor.
The puzzle spread out before them should be simple. Like a mystery novel, with clues laid out for assembling in the correct order. But Denver just stared and scratched his head. “Directions?”
Ryder snorted. “Those are useless.”
Outside of being related by blood, Denver and Ryder didn’t have many things in common. Denver wouldn’t dare proceed without instructions. He grabbed the paper booklet, written in four different languages, and tried making sense of it all, while Ryder crouched down and examined what they had to work with.
“For an extra hundred bucks, I bet you could’ve had the company put this together for you,” Ryder pointed out.
“What fun would that be?” Denver joked. “Trading a hundred bucks for bonding time.”
“Yeah.”
They worked in grunts and mutters for over an hour before Denver declared a break. Half of the pieces were at least attached to another piece, even if they weren’t yet all connected. At two in the afternoon, Denver considered it too early to offer a drink. “Coffee?”
“Beer.”
Though Denver rarely drank, he kept a six-pack on hand for Ryder. He hoped that someday they would be more like brothers again and not just acquaintances. Last summer, they’d competed in the Alaska Woodsman competition together, and even took second place. But the renewed relationship he hoped to regain from that event quickly fled.
Denver handed Ryder a bottle and decided he’d join his brother. He always wondered if Ryder blamed him for losing that competition.
“How’s the writing deal going?” Ryder asked after a first pull of his beer. “Making millions yet?”
“Not yet. But someday maybe,” Denver answered. He never would have believed such a thing was possible as a self-published author, but every month he was pleasantly surprised to see his sales increased. Denver was struggling to keep up with everything required of his newfound career, and more than once he’d forgotten to send out his bi-weekly newsletter. But he had to be doing something right.
Ryder dropped into Denver’s desk chair. “When did you decide you wanted to write books anyway?”
“Afghanistan.” Though he’d always dabbled with words, the idea of being a published author had never resonated until that overseas tour. His best Army buddy, Conner, caught him writing one evening and asked what he was doing. That one question changed everything.
Ryder took another swig. “Why aren’t you writing military thrillers or something like that? You have all this experience from the Army. Why not use it more?”
“What’s wrong with Malcom Yates?”
When Ryder shrugged, a rare smirk crossed his lips. “Just trying to rile ya up a bit.”
