Some Kind of Hero (Troubleshooters #17)

“We’re gonna need a few more details,” Shayla said briskly now.

“Like what?” he asked.

“Like, what exactly happened. Did you dive for your towel?”

“Nope,” Peter said. “She handed it to me. Eventually.”

“Eventually? So you’re just standing there, hanging out, everything just kind of…lazily blowing in the breeze…?”

He smiled at that. “Yeah, but no breeze. I think Lisa was as surprised as I was—maybe more, because my family was unconventional. So I was comfortable with nudity. I turned off the water, and I think I might’ve said What the hell, or the equivalent. She was trying to play it cool, but she blushed, which pretty much gave her away.”

Shayla’s fingers were flying as she typed his words, even as she asked, “So what did she say when you said What the hell?”

“She goes, Of course Auntie’s new pool boy is you, Goldilocks. I should’ve known. And I now know what she meant—but then I didn’t get the cultural reference, having lived on an island for two years, and also having never seen any porn at that point, so I said something like, Hiroko’s your aunt? And then, She doesn’t have a pool.”

“Wait,” Shayla said. “Rewind. She called you Goldilocks? Like, And the Three Bears?”

Pete laughed. “Yeah. Here’s another of those shameful secrets. At that time, I had really long blond dreadlocks. One of my friends from the island was a Rastafarian.”

“A Rastafarian?” Shay repeated.

“He was from Jamaica and was best friends with a Tibetan monk who’d taken a vow of silence. I’m pretty sure they communicated via interpretive dance. We also had a curmudgeonly eighty-year-old former rock drummer who used the beach as a giant Zen garden, these incredibly jacked German women who were into blacksmithing, and a constantly rotating group of Americans looking for inspiration, which I’m pretty sure was code for getting high and sleeping with someone else’s spouse.” He laughed again. “It was an artists’ colony.”

Shayla nodded—suddenly it all made sense. But as fascinating as this was, and as much as she hated reining in this backstory tangent, these were details for another chapter. It was nearly ten-thirty. Her boys had been home for a while—she could see the shifting glow from the TV through her living room window—and she wanted to get back there before they went to bed.

Still, her detail-loving heart broke a bit as she forced herself to ask, “What did Lisa say after you pointed out that Hiroko didn’t have a pool?”

Peter smiled. “She said, Are you seriously tan all over? And I think I said, Yes? And then she kind of shook her head and made a Harold and Maude reference, which I also didn’t get at the time. That’s that cult classic movie—”

“About the suicidal kid who gets into an intimate relationship with an eighty-year-old woman,” Shay finished for him. She knew. “Lisa seriously thought…?”

“That I was banging her aunt H,” Pete, in turn, finished for her.

And there was another creative use of that verb to bang, also used with authenticity.

Was he? Harry wondered.

Shhh, Shay murmured silently.

“At the time, I was clueless,” Peter was continuing with a rueful shrug. “Lisa told me later, you know, that that was what she’d thought. She and her family lived just a few blocks over and a neighbor told her about some kid with really long hair visiting Hiroko at odd hours. So Lisa came swooping in to protect and defend.”

“That’s really sweet,” Shayla said.

“Yeah, I’m not sure about that,” he said. “Yes, it’s what she said, but in truth, it was more complicated. Hiroko and Lisa didn’t always get along. It’s possible Lisa was looking for leverage or even blackmail material—more about power and self-defense. But that’s not for Maddie to hear. Anyway, I’m standing there, with literally nothing to hide as Lisa grills me as to how I met Hiroko, and where I’m from, and what I’m doing there. I told her, and I guess she believed me.

“She finally stood up and handed me my towel, probably because she’d also figured out that she was way more embarrassed than I was about the full frontal nudity. But then she said, Hurry up and get dressed, Goldie. We’re already late for school. I’ll wait for you in your car.” Pete smiled at the memory. “So I drove her to school, and I’m thinking, Okay, that was interesting, but now it was over. You know, it felt kind of like an alien encounter—I was pretty sure it wasn’t gonna happen again. Except the next day, after my shower, I head for my car, and she’s sitting in the front seat. She hated riding the bus, so it became a regular thing. She called me her carpool buddy—when she wasn’t calling me Goldie or Goldilocks. She was funny and smart and blindingly attractive, and she gave me her full attention for twenty minutes every day. I’d get in the car and she’d announce a topic of discussion. Kirk or Picard? The Beatles: Yes or No? Who’d Win a Wrestling Match: George Bernard Shaw or Shakespeare? Was Filming Flipper Animal Abuse?

“A few days in, I remember thinking, Huh, I kinda don’t hate it here anymore. A week later, I’m all Yup, I love San Diego. And a few days after that, I knew I was doomed, because I recognized that what I really loved—who I really loved—was Lisa Nakamura.”

Shayla was typing as fast as her fingers could move, but she just had to glance up, because his tone—his voice—had changed. He sounded softer—dreamy—and yeah, his face and body language had softened perceptibly, too. His eyes were distant and warm—he’d time traveled. And she knew she was looking at the ghost of teenaged Peter Greene, and she wished Maddie could see just how powerful and pure his love for her mother had once been.

He wasn’t done. “I was smart enough to recognize that when a girl—especially a senior who was already dating the school’s star athlete—used words like buddy and nicknames like Goldilocks,” he continued, “Well, the chances that she’d fall in love with me were a snowball’s in hell.”

Shayla nodded as she transcribed his words. This was good. With just a few minor tweaks, it would be ready to send.

Still, she wondered if Maddie would recognize what she did—that the melting-in-hell snowball really represented Lisa’s chances of not falling for Peter. There was no way on earth that that boy could have successfully hidden his feelings from anyone, let alone the object of his affection. And that much adoration would’ve been hard for anyone to resist.

Also? Harry pointed out, Lisa had seen him naked, in his all-over golden-tan glory.

Yup. Game. Over.





CHAPTER SEVEN


Thursday

Tevin was in the kitchen, doing his preworkout morning zombie shuffle, when Shayla was ready to leave.

It wasn’t quite six A.M., but she’d glanced out the window to see Peter already waiting for her, standing in his driveway beside his truck, checking his phone.