Okay—maybe he’d made the wrong assumption here. Brother-in-law or not, he didn’t seem to be territorial. Even if his presence at Cassie’s house, to tinker with something in her garage, said they were close. Brad let suspicion slide away and followed the shorter, stockier man inside. “Whatcha need, where?”
Clinton pointed at a gas can on the floor beside a generator. One black rubber hose stood out at a near ninety-degree angle, pointing toward the ceiling on one end. The other loosely connected to the intake on the machine. “Shove that end on there. I need it to give a little before we cinch it all with the clamps, but it keeps pulling loose.”
Easy as pie. Brad grabbed the hose and attached it to the can.
“You ever run a generator?”
“Nope. I live in an apartment.”
“Ah. Well…” Clinton paused to bend awkwardly around the machine. “We’ll get this fixed up, and I’ll show you how. You’ll prolly need it tomorrow.” Despite his contorted position, he managed to nod at the wall behind them. “I brought her extra gas this afternoon. So you shouldn’t run out, but her neighborhood is notorious for losing power. I swear that transformer is overloaded.”
“Tomorrow?” Brad asked, trying to make sense of not only the direction of the conversation, but why Clinton had started it in the first place.
The man glanced at him. “Don’t either of you listen to the weather?”
“Ah…”
A slow, easy smirk, spread over his face. “Yeah. I get it. I doubt I’d be watching television much either.”
There was no mistaking his insinuation, and Brad found himself blinking, dumbfounded. He didn’t know this guy from Adam. He was Cassie’s dead husband’s brother. And this conversation was the strangest one he’d ever encountered. Considering he lived in the city that never slept, that was saying something.
As he tinkered, Clinton rambled on. “We’re s’posed to get snow and ice tonight. Lots of it. You might want to back your car to the top of the drive. Cassie’s too, for that matter. Otherwise digging out of that driveway is a bitch. Trust me.”
Still struggling with the surrealness of the entire situation, Brad looked back at the closed garage door. But Cassie’s Cherokee was nowhere in sight. His confusion must have registered on his face, because Clinton chuckled.
“It’s through that steel door.” Lifting a hand he pointed at the door across the room. “I built this smaller garage for lawn equipment and stuff. Put a firewall in between the two.”
“So where’s the mower?”
He laughed a bit harder. “She sold it. Hired some lawn company to take over the yard. I told her I’d be more than happy to. But she wanted to stand on her own, I think, after Chris passed.” He shook his head thoughtfully, then his hands began to move again. With a grunt, he let go and righted himself. “She never wanted all the grass anyway, just the trees. Chris put the landscaping in.” Focusing on a point on the wall, he added slowly and with a touch of sad affection, “Hell of a guy. Always wanted to give her the best, but never paid much attention to detail.”
Stand on her own…She’d said their marriage was a pretty shell. More and more it sounded like her husband ran over her.
Chuckling once again, Clinton stepped over the generator and gestured where Brad held the hose in place. “You can screw that thing down now.” As he turned to pick up his tools, he continued. “She didn’t want the lawn, didn’t want the cost. His suggestion was to maintain it himself to save the expense. ‘Cept Cassie meant the cost of his time, not their money. Would’ve gone over better if he’d hired a company to begin with. Instead, she made up that time helping him build his career instead of working on her own.” He shook his head a moment, his hands stilling, then chuckled wistfully. “Guess that’s changed now too. Pretty proud of her lately.”
Brad couldn’t stop his curiosity. It was none of his business, really, but he asked anyway, “Changed how?”
“Family law was always her passion. She landed that big Cooper case recently. Jennifer’s sort of the town’s Shirley Temple. Everyone loves her and that little girl. If Cassie manages to keep Anna with her mom, she’ll be set up nice for the future.” He shrugged once more and locked his tool box. “Nice to see Cassie doing so well. Chris made a name for himself in criminal law to give her all this. Every damned stone was for her, just didn’t realize it wasn’t the stones that mattered.”