Hope Entangles: A New Adult Romantic Comedy (Book 2 of 3) (5 page)

I turned my head and waved at his two
sisters. “Hi, girls. I’m Hope Jones, the neighbor.”

They waved back. “I’m Kyra,” the
taller, slightly older one said. “This one here is Tia. I would’ve
paid good money to see the look you just put on his face.” The two
women giggled and high-fived each other.

“
That was awesome!” Tia
enthused.

I turned back to my new, brain-damaged
neighbor and smiled, really letting the crazy I’d had pent up just
roll on out like red carpet celebrities at the Oscars.

“
Stop on by if you need to
borrow a cup of sugar… or some salt.”

I sashayed away, not looking back,
heading at a deliberately slow pace for my front door, Bette and
Darla in my wake, whispering back and forth furiously to each
other.

Oh God that felt good!

I should threaten to shoot people more
often. It was one hell of a rush.

Maybe I’d try bungee jumping or
sky-diving next?

As I came up on the stairs there came a
low, lecherous whistle from Raphael’s direction. I didn’t
acknowledge it, or look back… but I did swing my ass just a little
as I strutted up the front steps to my porch, and then went
inside.

***

My house was dark and cool, and I led
the way back to my kitchen. I suddenly felt like polishing off what
was left of the iced tea we’d had for lunch. And maybe I’d call us
the Armenian delivery guy and see if he would stop and pick up some
ice cream for me, for the proper tip incentive.

“
Miss Jones?” Darla said,
voice careful. “You don’t have a gun on the wall by your
door.”

Bette melted into girlish giggles.
“Yeah, but hot stuff out there doesn’t know that.” She gave me a
knowing, hard look as she pulled three fresh glasses from my
cupboard and started filling them with ice. “And I’m the one with
the Remington pump action shotgun loaded with
rock-salt.”

“
But it’s over her bed,” I
crooned.

Darla turned and smiled
conspiratorially at Bette. “That’s just where I have mine
mounted.”

The two women reached out and touched
their fingers together, wiggling them like they were too hot to
touch.

I couldn’t believe it. In
less than half an afternoon those two had gone from strangers to
practically
Sisterhood of the Traveling
Pants
.

Unbelievable…

Bette leaned in and looked out my side
kitchen window, up toward the road.

“
What now? Is he trying to
cut down my porch pillars now?”

Bette feigned a bored look and then
turned back to us, picking up her tea. “It was nothing. Just
thought I recognized… a passing car.”

I glared at her, knowing damn well she
was lying to me.

But, then again, she was the nosey
neighbor who had actual spy gear in her house, keeping tabs and
invading her neighbor’s privacy like she was a covert FBI
agent.

Good grief… when did my
neighbors become the cast of
Desperate
Housewives
?

Thank Bette didn’t have a pool. I’d be
up all night wondering who was buried underneath it.

***

After Drew came in to pick up Darla,
and she surprised him with her spanking new license—and Bette and I
watched as Darla commandeered his shiny monster of a truck and
drove them at breakneck speed down the street, Bette smacked me on
the ass and headed back on over to her house.

“
That was fun,” she cooed as
she sauntered up her porch steps. “We should start up a driving
school for misunderstood girls!”

I waved her off as she danced into her
house, banging the screen door behind her.

I looked over in the direction of my
new neighbor’s house. I didn’t see any trace of him, but there was
the shining front bumper of what looked like an old muscle car
hanging out from his open garage door.

Figured he’d have some shiny, penis
shaped sports car.

I spent the rest of the afternoon
cleaning my kitchen, the living room, the swamp of a bathroom, and
Clive’s litter box.

He glowered down from my bookcase like
a displeased Olympian as I scooped out his mess and replaced it all
with new, Fresh-Step kitty litter.

Maybe I should invest in one of those
self-cleaning litter boxes?

But I’d always been afraid the damn
thing would malfunction and I’d find Clive with his little feet
caught in it… or worse. Little bloody Clive bits mixed in with the
clean litter.

***

That evening I ventured out by myself
and did some grocery shopping. My fridge was empty and my cupboards
were bare.

Late that night Billy called and told
me he and Georgia could model for me the next morning. It was
sooner than I’d expected… but then again, I hadn’t actually thought
he’d get Georgia to come with him at all.

And then there was Adam, Georgia’s
actual boyfriend and Billy’s best friend. No matter how open minded
he was—and who knew with the way sexual and personal boundaries
were blurring—I didn’t think the guy would take to well to seeing
his girlfriend on an erotic romance cover with his best friend, the
Big Bad Wolf, drooling all over her.

“
Sure,” I said, going along
with the flow. I needed the shots, so whatever those two had
decided on was fine with me. “About ten thirty? If things go well,
we’ll be done before lunch.”

“
Sounds good. Georgia said
she’d meet me there. So I’ll get there first. That girl would be
late for her own funeral.”

I smiled, thanked him and
disconnected.

Good. At least my work was going along
well.

And if I took some shots of them with
Billy’s back to the camera, and accentuated Georgia’s more angular,
lovely face, I could always use those pics for another
cover.

Chapter 5: Jake

I should have called off or something.
I really should’ve—for at least a week.

But I had never called off before. Not
when I worked with my dad, not when I owned and ran the shop after
he’d passed, and I’d be damned if I’d start doing that kind of
thing now. After all, I wasn’t sick, and my transportation worked
just fine.

It felt like a hunk of my chest had
been ripped out with a hole digger, but besides that I was
fine.

Of course my fellow co-workers would
beg to argue. I’d snapped each of their heads off that first day
after I’d…

Hell, could I even say I’d broken it
off with her—with Hope? Had we even been together? Wasn’t there
some sort of time frame for these things?

Where had we been: past the one-night
stand, the first and second and third dates?

Insanity, pure and simple insanity. It
had to be.

There hadn’t been time for something to
really happen between us, and yet, there we’d been, close, so
freaking close. And she’d smelled so good. And I’d had a crush on
her since high school.

The fact that she still didn’t remember
me, her own brother’s best friend, was a pretty big blow. I mean,
it wasn’t like I was the quarterback like her brother, but I was a
senior starter when she was a freshman.

And she hadn’t even noticed me. Even
though I’d been to her house, eaten with her family and even (just
once) made fun of her lack of a chest.

Yeah, it had been stupid, and I was
only following her brother’s lead, but I had it on good authority
that girls liked being teased.

Obviously I had never made even a blip
on her radar, because there had not once been a hint of recognition
in her eyes. I was just a new guy she seemed to really
like.

Hell, she’d seemed to
like
me just as much as
I
liked
her.

Shiiit!
It had gone way past the “like” stage.

I knew it the moment she got beaned in
the noggin with that enormous beach ball. The way she’d hit the
dirt... and then gotten back up and shook it off with such good
humor.

Of course, her t-shirt had been wet…
maybe that had helped kick my infatuation into the next gear. Or
had we skipped a few gears?

Whatever it was, she was all I could
think about—all I wanted to think about.

And then that business with the picture
happened.

I didn’t even know she’d taken it. I
guess, neither had she, but between when I left and when I came
back after work, she’d found it and sent it in as… as a freaking
romance novel cover?

I knew that’s what she did for a
living. Sure. And I knew that she was under pressure to get
something “spectacular” to her boss to save her job. But it had
never, not once, occurred to me that she would…

Betray me?

Yeah, that’s what it had been, a
betrayal.

Someone I’d known since she was
fifteen, had crushed on since she was old enough to ignore me,
someone I’d let my guard down for and had…

It had been so much more than sex… it
had been…

We’d made love.

I think I lost a few ounces from my
ball-sack just having that thought cross my mind.

But it had been so much more
than sex. I had never felt so much with any other woman,
even—
especially
—my
ex-wife.

Whatever it had been, it was over now,
shot down and tilled into fertilizer before it had a chance to
grown into something that could endure.

So… why was I driving down her street
one week later, trying not to feel like a stalker, but unable to
stay away one moment longer?

It had been one crazy day at work. More
oil changes and tire rotations than you could shake as stick at,
and I’d had to fix three of my fellow “mechanics’” mistakes. One
had crammed the wrong oil filter into a Miata. Another had
accidentally cut a brake line when he was trying to pry the oil pan
off a Saturn. And then Benny had somehow “unplugged” a Silverado’s
entire electrical system.

So I’d been stressed, harassed, and
over-worked—and I still couldn’t get Hope out of my
head.

So there I was, rolling down her street
at a quarter to four in the afternoon. Talk about fucking
pathetic.

But then I’d seen people out on Hope’s
lawn. Hope was out on her lawn.

I stopped and was about to throw my
truck into reverse when I realized she was nose to nose with a
tall, dark, stranger.

Another man…

Don’t know why, but that set off a
switch inside me. It took every ounce of restraint for me to stay
in the truck and not go out there and deck the asshole.

What the hell was going on?

There was Hope, the asshole
stranger—getting way too close to her for comfort—Hope’s nosey
neighbor, Bette, and three other young women I’d never seen
before.

Looked like Hope and the asshole were
arguing… but he was too damned close… and he kept moving
closer!

Looked like Bette and “the girls” were
their audience.

And then Hope leaned in and whispered
something in the guy’s ear.

Shiiit, goddamn it straight to
hell!

She was so close she might as well have
been touching him. And he’d frozen like a deer in
headlights.

I knew that look. How he felt. It was
how I’d felt every time the woman had looked at me.

She moved past him, and sauntered
around for a few beats. I couldn’t hear what she was talking
about…

But then I saw the chainsaw in the
asshole’s hand and I suddenly opened my truck’s door. I was going
to beat the shit out of him. What the hell was he thinking
brandishing a goddamn chainsaw at my…

At Hope…

I froze though. Bette had turned around
and was staring at me, a wicked smirk on her pretty
face.

I was busted. The nosey neighbor had
spotted me, and now she would tell Hope I was hanging around, doing
drive-bys like…

Like the pathetic little stalker I
was?

Just then Hope started to walk away
from the strange, chainsaw wielding asshole, and my nerve crumbled
like a rusted out exhaust system.

I pulled the door to my truck closed
and hit the gas. Not hard enough to make the wheels squeal—I wanted
to get away without alerting Hope, even if Bette would undoubtedly
tell her all about it.

But I ended up stopping just past
Bette’s property, looking through the back window to see Hope and
Bette and the pretty blonde all troop up onto Hope’s porch and then
into her house.

I stayed for about thirty seconds
longer, watching to make sure the asshole—shit, he really was good
looking!—didn’t follow Hope to her house. He didn’t. He and the two
other women all headed to the dwelling on the other side of Hope’s
house.