Run To You by Gibson Rachel

Author:Gibson, Rachel [Gibson, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-09-23T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Beau took off his beige ball cap and reached for a discarded T-shirt on the downed cypress tree. The New Orleans temperature hung at eighty-five while the humidity had dropped from that morning’s high of ninety percent to a livable sixty-four. Beau wiped sweat and sawdust from his face and the back of his neck. “I should have known this was your work proposition,” he said to the man with the chain saw.

Gunnery Sergeant Kasper Pennington laughed and cut the small engine. He set the chain saw on the cypress stump and reached inside a cooler. “You probably wouldn’t have come.” He grabbed two bottles of ice-cold water and tossed one to Beau.

Beau caught it mid-air and unscrewed the top. His friend and fellow HOG was likely right. For the past few years, he’d been too busy building his business to take time and hang out with buddies. Being with Kasper reminded him that he needed to make the time. Even if it was just cutting down trees. “I finally got to see this house of yours,” he said before he raised the bottle to his lips and guzzled half. Beau had logged a lot of hours tipping back whiskey or holed up in a shelled-out building waiting for action, with nothing to do but listen to Kasper go on about home. The two-hundred-year-old plantation house that had been in Kasper’s family since before the Civil War. The place had been one of the South’s leading sugar producers, but now the big home sat on five acres of mostly overgrown cypress and kudzu. Kasper talked about it more than either of his wives or his string of girlfriends.

“Esterbrook isn’t my house. It’s my home.” Kasper took a drink and looked at Beau over the bottom of the bottle. His brown eyes squinted against the bright afternoon sun, and sawdust and bark chips covered his Cooter Brown’s Tavern T-shirt. “You don’t understand,” he continued after he’d swallowed, “because you were brought up a Navy brat and moved around.”

The Jungers had moved around, but even if Beau had been raised in one place all his life, he doubted he’d look at the old house with its massive columns and wraparound galleries as anything but a dinosaur around his neck. “All I can say is that it’s lucky for you that you own your own construction company and can afford this money pit.”

Kasper raised several fingers off his water bottle. “Three,” he said. “Three construction companies. Commercial, new home, and remodel and restoration.” He swatted at an insect buzzing around his head. “You’re right about the money pit part.” Earlier Kasper had shown him around the ten-thousand-square-foot house, parts of it restored while the other parts needed attention. “But worth every cent. Growing up at Esterbrook was amazing. I crawled under acres of kudzu and shot a lot of squirrels around here.” Later, he’d crawled in a ghillie suit and shot enemy combatants. He pointed to an overgrown field behind the house. “Some of the old slave quarters are over there.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.