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Fitzgerald?” he said calmly.
    “Shit,” Luke said. He couldn’t say sorry. He didn’t feel sorry. He wanted to be sorry. The satisfying thud of his fist into flesh was just what he had received in the past and he’d needed to do it. What did that make him? He’d only been here two days and he was turning into his old man. Suddenly terrified at the temper inside and the need to hurt he backed away from Daniel then when every ounce of energy left him in an instant, he collapsed to the ground in a heap.
    Daniel didn’t move, simply looked down at him with that cool assessing gaze.
    “You can go,” Luke said. He didn’t want the other man standing there watching him.
    “You want to tell me what the hell that was all about?”
    “Go. Please.”
    Daniel crouched down next to him and Luke flinched at the movement. Any minute now the rough tough looking big guy was going to retaliate. Luke cursed inwardly. He knew better than to poke in a hornet’s nest.
    ‘You’re not living, Luke, you’re frightened of shadows and you keep most of yourself back and what little I get is enough. We can just be friends. I can be a good friend.’
    Zach’s words rang in his head. His ex was a kind guy, a nice guy, despite him ending up fucking a stranger in their bedroom. Zach was the sort of man who stepped back and allowed you to work through your issues. Just what Luke needed. Until, actually, it was exactly what he hadn’t needed. Losing his job because of department cuts and suffering from the ‘last in, first out’ rule he had gone home to find his ex in bed with another man and what had he done?
    Shaken the lover’s hand. Introduced himself and apologised for interrupting.
    Who the hell did that?
    “You gonna be okay down here?” Daniel’s voice was low and infuriatingly calm. The tone of it threw Luke. “Because we do need to set a time when we talk about your plans.”
    “Selling.”
    “Selling. Right. Who to, is what concerns us. My mom has put her heart and soul into the resort. We have a staff, loyal local people, and a good trade. We’re not selling to a corporation or one of these chain places that homogenise everything.”
    “I’ll sell to who I want to sell to,” Luke said. “And I’ll be putting it on the market today.”
    “All I’m asking for is that we get some say in who gets the other half—”
    “Who I sell to is my business,” Luke said. He was pushing Daniel. Poking and prodding and forcing a reaction on that otherwise handsome yet impassive face. Luke didn’t deal well with calm and rational when it came to emotion. He was either flat and closed off or riled and emotional. No freaking middle ground.
    “Then I guess we’ll need to be instructing our lawyers,” Daniel said.
    “You do that,” Luke snapped back.
    Daniel didn’t go. He wasn’t leaving. Luke shuffled on the hard and slightly damp ground. This was so not the place to have a mini meltdown. He saw Daniel move in his peripheral vision and some kind of acceptance washed over him. This was Daniel’s reaction. He braced himself for a blow. Instead though Daniel placed fingers under Luke’s chin and tilted his face up. Daniel had pushed his sunglasses up on top of his head revealing the clearest green eyes that Luke had ever seen. Those eyes were filled with compassion and questions.
    “Why are you pushing me?” Daniel asked gently.
    Luke was on emotion overload and he cursed the town and the thoughts he’d had that coming back here may lay some ghosts to rest. All it was doing was exposing his raw nerves. “Do you need me to get angry?”
    For a minute Luke couldn’t move. This stranger was staring right into his soul and asking questions he didn’t want to be asked. This town was playing with his head. With a muttered “ fuck you” he scrambled to his feet then, at a jog, he climbed the slope to the buildings of town then on to the hotel. Only when he was back in his room did he realise what he had done and how