Love Is Always Write Volume 4

on the grey tiles, sending the black, oily liquid crawling over the floor. He stared at it for a while, hand tingling, shoulders slumped, before a heated flare surged to his chest.
    "Fuck!" he yelled and slammed his hand on the counter. The son of a bitch continued drilling, completely unaware of Kevin's anger and spilled coffee.
    The loud thumping drowned out Kevin's cussing as he stormed out the kitchen door and ran across the unkempt garden. The emerging sun did nothing to ease his frustration. Nor did the fact that he couldn't even hear the annoying squeak of the gate as he pushed through. The guy had his back turned to Kevin, strong arms shaking under the rolled-up green plaid shirtsleeves. Firm butt cheeks sat like rounded pieces of cement in the blue jeans that rattled under the power of the jackhammer. No amount of yelling alerted him to Kevin's presence, but that did not stop Kevin from spitting out all sorts of creative names.
    "… dickless MORON!" rang across the quiet street once the drilling stopped.
    Birds chirped in the trees and a dragonfly whirred by Kevin's ear, just before the huge guy turned almost in slow motion.
    Kevin swallowed hard as the guy lifted the safety earmuffs up on his red helmet. Sweat glistened on the dark brown hair poking from under. He was easily eight inches taller and twice as muscled.
    "Excuse me?" said an ocean-deep voice. On his tanned face, brilliant blue eyes swept over Kevin's small and fragile body.
    "Ah …" Kevin wracked his brain for words. One punch from this guy would be a guaranteed knock out, but Kevin had a job to do. He cleared his throat and curled his fingers into fists, ready to duck. "Yes, excuse you! I'm trying to work here."
    The guy shrugged. "Me too."
    He turned to go back to work, but Kevin grabbed a very firm arm. "Hey, I just need one more day and then I'm out of here. Can't you do this tomorrow?"
    "Nope."
    He walked around the fragmented pavement and started drilling, facing Kevin with a smirk on his lips. What the hell? Was he doing this just to rile up Kevin? Only in lame-ass Castor Springs, Texas …
    With a huff, Kevin returned to the one-story bungalow, sighing a little when the loud thumping dampened just a smidge behind closed doors. After cleaning up the broken mug and spilled coffee, he poured himself another cup and went back to the piles and piles of papers that occupied the kitchen table.
    "Charlie, Charlie …" he muttered, squinting down at a piece of a supposed tax deductible receipt. "You can't deduct cat food for your business. Unless you have mutant cats guarding the construction sites."
    As he scribbled down a comment, the thump-thump-thump broke through his short lived concentration. Kevin closed his eyes for a second, counting semi-calmly from one to ten. He reached for the windowsill and turned on the radio.
    "Castor fucking Springs," he muttered. The noise from outside easily penetrated the semi-static country music until it felt like the thumping was coming from inside Kevin's head. His hands twitched in rhythm, his heart thudded in beat, and the vein in his forehead felt like it was going to burst.
    "Fuck," he growled. The chair clanged to the floor as he stood up. He shoved a pile of receipts into a plastic bag, grabbed his laptop and left the house. An impenetrable thump-thump-thump aura protected the muscle monster from any glares and creative names shot his way.
    Kevin jogged down the road, but the noise followed as he strode out of the residential street onto the main road where the shops sat clustered. Only when he closed the door to Dinah's Diner could he no longer hear the annoying thumping. Instead there was a cheesy eighties song with idiotic lyrics playing on the radio.
    "Well, I'll be darned," drawled Dinah, a tiny woman in her early forties. "Kevin Lewis. I ain't seen you for years and years. Where've you been hiding?"
    "Morning Dinah. Cup of coffee please and keep it coming."
    Kevin slid into a booth and started up the computer. God, he hated that Texan drawl. He'd worked hard to lose it once he got to LA. It hadn't bothered him before, but some people kept treating him like a simpleton until he managed to rein it in.
    "Sure thing, hon," said Dinah.
    Out of all the tax auditors in the United States, why was he sent to Castor Springs? It had taken three days already, thanks to Charlie Samson's stupid ass-pocket bookkeeping. That's three days of dust and sand in a run-down house with cold water and a broken fan.