Better Off

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Epilogue - Hailey

  Better Off

  Copyright © 2019 by Tanya Chris

  (www.tanyachris.com)

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author.

  Chapter One

  Gregory MacPherson II didn’t have the time or the patience to make a personal trip to a bookstore, but here he was. Alone.

  No patrons roamed the narrow aisles formed by overstuffed bookshelves. No clerk waited at the vintage cash register sitting on top of a linoleum-covered counter barely capable of holding its weight. No one rushed to greet him from behind the tawdry multicolored curtain hanging at the back of the store.

  From where he stood only a few feet inside the doorway, leery of allowing anything in the dusty hodgepodge to brush against his suit, he could see straight down the center aisle all the way to the back of the store. It was a thirty-foot-by-sixty-foot shoebox, longer than it was wide, one of four retail spaces on the ground floor of the six-story brick building and the only one still open. Which was why Gregory MacPherson II, commonly referred to as Mac, had personally dragged himself down here.

  How the place could stay in business without any workers, never mind customers, was a mystery he didn’t intend to solve. He was there to shut the place down, not rescue it, though in the few short minutes he’d been exposed to Hailey’s Comic, he could already list a half-dozen ways to improve its profitability.

  That sign out front, for instance. It was a purple whirlwind of planets, well done if you were going for an acid-trip vibe, but the name implied there’d be comics, and the sign implied there’d be comets. Or drugs. And from what he could see, there were neither. If an establishment wanted to bring in customers, it needed to make clear the services it provided and establish confidence that it would provide them well.

  Then there was the matter of actually waiting on the customers you did bring in. A bell had tinkled as he’d entered, but apparently only for its own enjoyment.

  “Hello?” He raised his voice to a level that couldn’t be ignored and had a brief moment to wonder if he really was completely alone before a head and a hand appeared around the edge of the curtain.

  “Mercy, you scared me,” the head said. It belonged to a young man and had a mop of brown hair piled on top of it, a few shades lighter than Mac’s own reddish brown. “Sorry, I didn’t hear the bell. Give me a minute. I’m sort of in flagrante delicto.” The head disappeared.

  “In flagrante delicto doesn’t mean naked, you know,” Mac told the air where the head had been. “It means you were caught doing something you shouldn’t have been. Something sexual.”

  “Now, now. It’s never wrong to masturbate. There.” The head reappeared, this time attached to a body that gave Mac a startlingly clear vision of how it would look masturbating. The man was stringy, taller than his own six-foot frame, but lean and underdeveloped—the body of a person who spent a lot of time reading. Or jerking off.

  “What can I help you with?” He was in his midtwenties, so perhaps ten years younger than Mac, dressed in jeans laddered with intentional rips, each the same two inches wide, running down his thighs like claw marks. His face was clean-shaven, fresh with his youth, and Mac wondered how his skin would react to having Mac’s tightly trimmed beard rubbed all over it.

  “You’re free to browse around, even if I’m not out here.”

  Mac added lax security to the mental list he was pointlessly compiling. “I need to speak to the owner.”

  Hailey Green, owner of Hailey’s Comic, was the only thing standing in the way of his plans to revitalize this misbegotten section of Ballhaven, which plan started with this very brick building and would ultimately lead to Ball’s End—as everyone called it; he’d have to do something about the branding—becoming the newest hot spot for millennials to eat, drink, shop, and live. Urban revitalization was Mac’s business, and Hailey Green was Mac’s problem.

  “Still me,” the man said, tilting his head to the side as if to take in Mac’s appearance more carefully.

  Mac hadn’t changed clothes before driving down to Ball’s End, though he could’ve guessed the place would be dirty. He’d been reading a report on the effort to clear 502 Main Street of its tenants and had made an abrupt decision to come down and take care of ridding the building of its final holdout himself.

  He’d been expecting a woman. Then again, he’d been expecting a comic store. “Hailey is a girl’s name.”

  “Not in this case.” Hailey waved a hand down his long body, which had a lithe, graceful appeal just on the feminine edge of masculine. “I’m all man.”

  There was a rip in his faded pink t-shirt. Unlike the ones in his jeans, it appeared unintentional. Mac caught himself following it as Hailey moved, waiting to see if a nipple would pop out. The guy had three rings in one ear, two in the other, and a stud through his nose. A nipple ring wasn’t out of the question.

  Mac wanted to strip off the trendy jeans and paint-splattered t-shirt and put Hailey’s cock back in his hand. Or take it in his own hand and make a very thorough appraisal of it.

  “Were you wanting a tour?”

  For a moment Mac thought Hailey had been reading his mind. Then he realized he was offering a tour of the store, not his cock, and pinched his mouth firmly shut.

  Hailey smiled as if he really had been reading Mac’s mind. “I should probably ask who you are, though, since you know who I am and also what I’ve so recently been up to.” He came forward with his hand extended. “I promise I washed it.”

  Mac took it, a little sorry it’d been washed. Hailey had brown eyes that twinkled as if he were as jolly as old Saint Nick. Or maybe he was high on something. His hair shone glossily where it lay coiled on top of his head.

  “Gregory MacPherson. The second.”

  “Ooh, the second. Do I say all that?”

  “People usually call me Mac. Or Gregory is fine. Greg.”

  “Greg,” Hailey repeated, as if he knew no one called him that. Mac didn’t know why he’d offered it as an option. “So what brings you down to Hailey’s Comic? I don’t get a lot of handsome men in suits. Handsome men sometimes, but not in suits.”

  Mac opened his mouth and then closed it. Their hands were still linked, so he dropped his. He must have given himself away for Hailey to flirt with him so brazenly, but even if Hailey were his type, which he wasn’t—when it came to men, Mac preferred them classically handsome, not hippie… hipster… bohemian… whatever that thing Hailey had going on was—but even if Hailey were his type, Mac was at Hailey’s Comic on a mission. Which wasn’t to get laid.

  “A tour would be fine,” he agreed belatedly.

  Hailey didn’t seem to know who he was. Maybe he could use the kid’s interest to establish a bond before getting down to business. Hailey might be a skinny flower child covered in tattoos and beads, but he’d also proven to be an obstacle that his development team hadn’t been able to overcome. The guy had a lease and enough business savvy not to be intimidated into walking away from it.

  “What kind of books do you like? Fiction’s on this side, nonfiction over there.” Hailey gestured
to the right and almost knocked over a stack of books. “And we’ve got a section in the back just for adults, if you know what I mean.”

  “Porn?” Mac made a mental note to have Declan, his lawyer and general partner-in-crime, check for a morality clause in Hailey’s lease.

  “Erotica, but it works the same. Depends whether you get off on words or images. Me, I can go either way. Some days I want to ogle a hot body, some days you’ve got to stimulate my mind. Some days my imagination supplies everything I need.” Hailey tapped his forehead. “Is porn what you were looking for?”

  That was… not a road it was safe to go down. Now that Hailey was standing right next to him, Mac found him even more appealing than he’d been across the room. He smelled like pot—the sweet, good stuff Mac had smoked in college—and roses, not the prize ones from his mother’s garden that had no smell, but wild roses, the ones that circled their estate like a thorny moat. And also a bit like sex.

  Maybe the scent clung to him because Mac had interrupted him. He wanted to bundle Hailey back behind the curtain and watch him finish, so he tucked his hands in his pockets and leaned away. Perhaps whatever Hailey had been smoking lingered around him enough to have an effect.

  “I was expecting a comic store. As in Hailey’s Comic.”

  “It’s a play on words. You know, Halley’s Com—”

  “Yes, I get it. It would be apropos if this were, in fact, a comic store. But since it’s not….”

  “I do have comics, if that’s what you’re here for. If you’re just here to sneer, I can leave you to enjoy that and go back to what I was enjoying.”

  Shit. He’d meant to put Hailey at ease, not get his back up, Normally, Mac was all charm, at least long enough to seal a deal, and he’d started with the advantage of Hailey finding him attractive, yet he was somehow fucking this up. His body’s almost-uncontrollable reaction to Hailey’s had overridden his brain.

  “Perhaps we should try this again.” He extended his hand. “I’m Gregory MacPherson—”

  “—the second. You said.”

  “Owner of C&G Development.”

  “C&G Development,” Hailey repeated. “I’ve heard that name before.”

  Meanwhile their hands were clasped again. This time Mac left his in Hailey’s, which was rougher than he’d expected, at odds with the skinny biceps and bony forearms. Hailey must use his hands for something besides stacking books. The image of him with dick in hand flashed through Mac’s mind again, but a man would have to be pretty dedicated to jerking off to work up calluses over it.

  He realized his thumb was stroking the base of Hailey’s fingers and yanked his hand free, putting it back in his pocket so it would behave. “We own this building.”

  “Oh, right. You bought it from Carlos a few months ago. Here to see about the hot water? I used to think the tank wasn’t big enough for the number of tenants, but it’s just me these days, so it can’t be that. Given that the heater is gas, I’m concerned—”

  “No,” Mac interrupted, pulling himself up to his full height to better make the point that his suit cost more than Hailey’s rent. “I’m not here about maintenance.”

  C&G had heard the complaints about the hot water and had ignored them. They intended to gut the place, hot water heater included, and the first step was clearing the building of tenants—tenants who might be more inclined to leave if they didn’t have hot water.

  “I’m here to find out what it’s going to take to get you out of here.”

  “Ah.” The twinkle in Hailey’s brown eyes dimmed. “I still have nine months on my lease. I renewed right before you bought the place.”

  “I believe we made you an offer.”

  “You did.”

  “A generous offer.”

  “You ever wish people were better at math?” Hailey asked with a sigh. Mac could only assume he was talking about himself. If it were simply a matter of going through the math with him to explain that C&G’s offer was beyond generous, he could do that. It wasn’t the sort of task he normally took on personally, but in this case—

  The bell over the door rang, and this time Hailey noticed. “Hi, Edgar.”

  A middle-aged man wearing a ratty cardigan and a baseball hat shuffled into the store with careful steps, saying something that sounded like mumble-mumble Hailey.

  “Excuse me just a minute,” Hailey said to Mac. He danced off toward the curtain at the back while Edgar continued his painful way into the store.

  “Mumble-mumble rain mumble?”

  “Um, it might.” Mac turned his back on the man who was already drunk at—he tugged back his sleeve to check his watch—three thirty in the afternoon, then pretended to browse the bookshelf closest to him.

  Used books, not even new ones. It explained the heavy smell of dust and old paper. Mold, very likely. He pulled out a book and sniffed, but it smelled better than he’d expected, much as Hailey had, except the book brought back a memory of reading under the covers rather than an urge to run his tongue over creamy white skin. On the copyright page, the whopping price of a dollar fifty had been handwritten in pencil. Hailey definitely needed someone to explain basic math to him. A dollar fifty times one customer equaled exactly this store.

  “Here you go!” Hailey bounced back into the room holding a ceramic cup that read “Kiss Me, I’m Irish,” out of which a tendril of steam curled. He handed it to Edgar, who’d settled himself into a ratty armchair with a pile of books. Free coffee for drunken customers who weren’t even buying anything. Perfect.

  “Sorry,” Hailey said as he made his way back over to Mac. “I should’ve asked if you wanted some.”

  Mac reminded himself that he was trying to charm this spritely bundle of energy. He smiled instead of telling Hailey how unlikely it was that he wanted coffee brewed in the back room of a tenement bookstore and served in a chipped cup with a pithy saying.

  “Perhaps I could take you somewhere for coffee,” he suggested. “Or dinner?” No idea where that came from. “I’m sure if we discussed the situation, we could come to a mutually agreeable solution.” He gestured toward the door, inviting Hailey to precede him.

  “I’m open until nine, silly. I can’t just leave, not even for a handsome stranger who wants to buy me dinner.”

  So Mac hadn’t blown his chance—his chance to persuade Hailey to terminate his lease, that was. And once they’d taken care of business, why not take advantage of the chemistry between them?

  If Hailey would agree to move out, there was no reason Mac couldn’t enjoy a night with him. Maybe he’d have to look harder at twinks in the future, not that Hailey was what he’d call a twink exactly. Young and slim and weirdly cheerful, but not exactly femme. Androgynous was probably the best word, but even that…. All man, Hailey had called himself.

  Mac caught himself mentally undressing Hailey again and raised his eyes to find that Hailey didn’t mind. Good. They were on the same page. A quick explanation of everything C&G was prepared to offer, Hailey’s signature on the dotted line, and they could get to down to the business of getting each other naked.

  “You’re not exactly busy.” Mac looked pointedly at the sole customer, who hadn’t even purchased anything.

  “Not now, but that’s because everyone’s at work and school’s just gotten out. In fact, the kids should—”

  As if to confirm Hailey’s words, the door opened and two small bodies came through it so fast they seemed to arrive before the sound of the bell, making a beeline for the rack of comics.

  “If you were expecting children, why were you…?” Mac raised his eyes toward the curtain.

  “I know what time school gets out,” Hailey said with a wink. “I take advantage of my downtime. But right now is my busy time, from now until closing. Plus it’s Wednesday. The book club meets on Wednesday,” he explained when Mac remained expressionless, having no idea what it being Wednesday had to do with anything. “Once they get into the wine, it’s hard to get them out.”

  “
You serve wine?” He was positive Hailey didn’t have a liquor license.

  “BYOB, but boy do they bring the B. Sometimes I’m not sure whether it’s a book club or a wine club, but they enjoy themselves, and anyway, it’s Wednesday, so I’m stuck here until nine, I’m afraid. But if you come back after….” He raised his eyebrows suggestively, and Mac found himself agreeing.

  Why not? It was what he wanted, after all.

  Chapter Two

  It was exactly nine o’clock when Mac pulled up in front of Hailey’s Comic, but the lights were still on and the cardboard sign was still turned to Open.

  He texted Hailey to let him know he was there rather than go inside. Something would have to be done about parking, because there wasn’t any. That church on the corner, for instance, could be removed and a garage put in its place. He made a note to have Declan find out what tearing it down would take. Likely a visit to the city building committee to convince them that the crumbling stone structure wasn’t a historical treasure. Places like Ball’s End stayed places like Ball’s End because the inhabitants didn’t have any vision.

  Nine fifteen. He was about to send another text when the door opened and a pair of Black women came out with their arms around each other, making Mac wonder if all Hailey’s patrons were drunk at all hours. Perhaps Hailey was up to something besides selling books that would explain why he was so desperate to hold on to this small segment of storefront.

  Mac pushed the thought aside. He didn’t want Hailey to be anything other than what he seemed—a pretty young man with no head for business and a dirty mind. Maybe if they turned out to be as compatible in bed as Mac’s cock was telling him they would be, he could extend the relationship long enough to help Hailey get settled into a different endeavor. He liked the idea of using his business acumen to guide the young man into something more profitable, and he could think of a few ways Hailey could pay him back for his time.

  The store lights flickered off at last, leaving only a pin spot over the doorway. Hailey flipped the Open sign to Closed, then scanned the street until he identified Mac’s BMW. A moment later, Hailey was in the passenger’s seat with an enthusiastic “hi.”