My brother answered immediately.
Johnny: What the fuck is wrong with you? I would never call or text during your nap time.
Lies.
I took a nap every single weekend at the same time—because those were really my only times that naps were possible until today—and if any of my family couldn’t get ahold of me, they tended to lean toward freaking out.
I quickly scrolled upward to the weekend where I’d forgotten to text them, and my dad had threatened to come to my house and make sure I was all right. Then I went further to the weekend before it when my brother had done the same thing.
After taking a few screen shots, I sent them to them.
The one with my brother was funnier.
Johnny: Blaise, let’s go get something to eat. I need a break from my kids.
Johnny: Blaise, why aren’t you answering me? My wife went to Target with the kids. She’ll get back any second and I want to be with you and have you as an excuse not to come home, before she does.
Johnny: Are you alive?
Johnny: Oh my God. It’s been an hour. I’m about to come over there.
Johnny: I see your car in the driveway. What the hell are you doing in there?
Johnny: I can see you sleeping. You sleep really ugly. Your mouth is open and everything. And when did you get that shirt? That’s mine. I’ve been looking for it everywhere.
Johnny: I texted June and told her that you were scared, so now I’m going to sit on your front porch and drink this beer that’s in the outside fridge until you wake up.
Johnny: You’re out of beer.
Johnny: Don’t worry. I went to the corner store up the street and bought more. Good news is your fridge is now restocked. Bad news is, I had to break into your place because I really had to take a shit. Sorry if the smell wakes you.
Johnny: You need a new television. This one blows.
Johnny: I had to take my pants off. Don’t freak-out when you walk out here. They were too constricting after I ate the sandwich that was in your fridge.
Johnny: I gotta go back home now. I checked to see if you were still alive, too. You are. Just an FYI, you should probably get an alarm system. It was way too easy to get in here.
Mom: Johnny, so help me God. I’m working. Shut the fuck up.
Dad: Thank fucking God someone said it. And make sure you have your pants back on when you ride home. You could get arrested for that.
Mom: As long as he’s wearing underwear, I doubt it. Love you.
Johnny: I love you, too.
Mom: Wasn’t talking to you. Not that I don’t love you, because I do, but I was directing that toward your father.
Johnny: That’s just wrong.
Mom: That’s just the way the cookie crumbles. Love your child’s parent first and foremost. It makes life so much better. That way he or she knows that they’re first in your relationship.
Johnny: I think that you’re supposed to love your kids more.
Mom: Why?
Johnny: That’s just the way it is. Kids first.
Mom: If you say so.
I didn’t bother to read any more than that, because that discussion had degraded from there.
But I did agree with my mom—at least somewhat.
Though I knew that I’d love my kids, I had a feeling that Sin would always come first with me.
Johnny: Whatever. You should really think about getting a security system.
Me: I do have one now. Remember I’m in the Haunted House?
Johnny: Are there any cold spots? Anything move on its own? What about mysterious sounds?
I ignored him and tossed my phone down to the bed, then shivered as I thought about what had happened in this house.
That was the last thing on my mind for a long time.
CHAPTER 16
Once I get an attitude, it takes 3-5 business days to fix my face.
-Text from Blaise to Sin
SIN
“I’m sorry, but what?” I asked, sorting through the mail as I walked up to the office doors.
“There’s a woman here asking for your services,” my receptionist, the one that came with the job, said. “She’s telling me that you for sure will want to hear her out.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “What’s her name?”
I didn’t want to go inside those doors without first knowing who it was that waited on the other side.
“Her name is Linda Ames,” the receptionist explained.
I felt my entire fucking body lock.
“One more time?” I asked, looking around the parking lot of the investigative offices that I’d taken over upon getting out of prison.
“Linda Ames,” Lulu repeated. “Why, she bad?”
I liked Lulu. She was a no nonsense seventy-year-old black woman with six children she raised on a single income, a mountain of grandchildren, and a perpetually bad attitude toward anyone that threatened any of her kids.
And, somehow, I’d ended up being one of her ‘kids.’
So yeah, she didn’t like my being threatened, even when it came to a woman.
“She’s bad,” I confirmed. “I’ll be in in two seconds.”
Then I hung up the phone, placed my phone in my pocket, and tried to compose myself.
This had to be why Blaise’s message had struck me as wrong earlier.
Though she said she was fine, I’d left the office to go check on her. And she was indeed asleep.
Leaving her alone with Sarge as her protector, I’d just gotten back to work when Lulu had called.
Opening the door to my office, I was unsurprised to find Ames sitting on the only couch in the waiting room that faced Lulu’s front desk.
I gritted my teeth, plucked the aviator glasses from my face, and then hooked them onto the collar of my shirt.
Once my eyes adjusted, I walked over to Lulu‘s desk to stand beside her.
Lulu coming with the business had been great. The man that I’d replaced had recently retired, and Lulu knew what she was doing when it came to running an office.
She handled all the bills, all the client accounts, and did the shit that I didn’t want to do.
“Couple of bills, Lulu,” I told her as we made eye contact and I held out the mail for her to take.
She studied me for a long time, not reaching for the mail, as she tried to decide what to do.
Finally, upon reading whatever it was she needed to in my eyes, she reached up and took the mail.
“There’s always bills, darlin’,” she said. “I’d be more surprised if there weren’t bills.”
I winked at her, grinning wider when I heard the impatient woman at my back clear her throat.
Lulu’s eye twitched, as if she wanted to give Ames a piece of her mind.
And hell, maybe she did.
We took new clients by walk-in only. For her to stop by and stay went against Lulu’s routine, and Lulu didn’t like getting off her routine.
After rapping my knuckles on Lulu’s desk, I turned around and moved slightly to the left so Lulu could see, then leaned my ass against it while studying Ames.
She’d aged quite a bit since I’d last seen her before the shit had gone down with Brees.
Her hair was longer, but it was also grayer, as if she’d aged a shit ton and didn’t even care.
She was also heavier. She’d put on quite a bit of weight.
“How can I help you?” I asked carefully. Neutrally.
At least, I hoped what it came off as was neutral.
Based on the way Ames’ eye twitched, I was thinking it didn’t.
“I didn’t realize you lived here,” she said.
My brow rose. “I do. What’s it matter?”
“You need to leave,” she said. “Jaycen and I were here first.”
Jaycen.
I’d heard Brees called that only during the trial that sent me to prison.
“Sorry for your bad luck,” I said calmly. “But this is where I live now. I�
�m not leaving, whether you want me to or not.”
Ames’ jaw clenched and unclenched as she processed those words.
“We’re happy,” Ames continued. “My kid is in daycare here. We can’t leave. You can, though.”
The understanding that Brees and Ames lived here—I mean how fucking bad could my luck get?—was a punch to the gut.
I mean, seriously. How the fuck, out of all the places in the world, did they end up here?
“Are you actually living in this town?” I asked curiously.
Her eyelid twitched. “No. I live in Bear Bottom. But it’s close enough to here. I have a mail route that I run for this part of the area. And I was here first.”
My eyelids twitched. First the left one. Then the right.
Then I shook my head.
But before I could speak up, Lulu was there.
“Honey,” Lulu said, “you don’t just get to say someone needs to leave. They’re here. You’re here. They’re not leaving. Obviously, you’re not leaving. I honestly don’t see what you hoped to happen by coming here. I mean the man has a business. He’s part of a motorcycle club here. What do you do? Work for the federal government delivering mail? You could leave easier than he could.”
That’s why I loved Lulu. She told it like it was, and she was so blunt sometimes that it hurt.
But for Ames, she really needed to hear the shit that she was spewing.
I mean, would I have come here if I’d known that her and her husband, the asshole, were here? Probably. It wouldn’t have changed anything.
But I surely would’ve warned Blaise first before she followed me to this area.
Ames growled, narrowing her eyes. “I’ll get a restraining order.”
“Go ahead,” I suggested, then narrowed my eyes. “Why do you know that we’re here? Who did you see today?”
I knew who she saw today. I just wanted to see if she would tell me the truth.
I was honestly surprised when she did.
“I run your mail route.” She clenched and unclenched her teeth. “And I saw that woman that started this all.”
I had the urge to laugh at her words.
Instead of doing that, I decided to keep my cool and hope that it would make her leave faster.
“Maybe you should switch that up if you plan on getting a restraining order,” I suggested.
Ames narrowed her eyes. “I was on that route first. Maybe you should move.”
I did nothing but shake my head. “Oh, Ames. You never cease to amaze me.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “What is that supposed to mean?”
I leaned forward then, getting into her space.
“It amazes me,” I said, “that you stayed with a man that would have no problem hurting a woman the way your husband did. He beat the shit out of her. Was in the process of raping her when I came along. Why would you want to have a family with a man like that? What if he did that to your kid?”
Ames flashed me her teeth. “That was all a lie perpetuated by your girlfriend. You went to jail because of this woman’s lies. I feel sorry for you, honestly.”
I shook my head. Same ol’ song and dance.
The fuckin’ shit of it is, Brees had prepared for what he’d done to Blaise.
He’d planned ahead. He had a great alibi—Ames—and he’d made sure to cover his tracks so that it looked like he wasn’t doing what he was actually doing.
Because, an eye witness account—one that held some weight at the base—by Ames made it to where I was the one in the wrong.
And since Blaise couldn’t remember her part in the play, it was Ames and Brees’ word against me.
They’d ‘happened’ upon Blaise in a back alley on the way to a dinner.
They’d stopped to help her, when I’d stumbled along, misinterpreted what had happened, and acted rashly.
I hadn’t acted rashly.
I’d acted honestly.
I’d gone to prison for it.
And the woman standing in front of me was responsible for it.
Maybe she hadn’t done the actual act of hurting Blaise, but she’d definitely played a large part in why I’d gone to prison and lost everything.
Granted, I’d have probably ended up going to prison regardless. You didn’t just beat a man to near death, knowing that he was likely going to fuckin’ die of his injuries, without thinking that you were going to deal with the consequences. But I hadn’t expected what had actually happened.
“Are you even listening to me?” Ames hissed, poking me in the chest with one overly long blue fingernail.
How did she even get anything done, like text on her phone or wipe her ass, with fingernails that long?
Like, seriously. They had to be at least an inch long. They were so long, in fact, that when she started clicking them on her watch, her fingernails would slightly scratch her skin with each downward curl of her fingers.
What kind of bacteria was trapped underneath them?
I barely suppressed a shudder.
“No,” I admitted. “I’m honestly hoping that you leave on your own so I don’t have to call the cops. Which, might I add, will be a point in my corner when you go do your thing with the restraining order. They’re going to see that you were the one kicked out of my place of business. That you were the one that refused to leave. How do you think that’ll look when you go do that?”
She narrowed her eyes hard, so much that I wondered if she could actually see out of them.
Then, she proved that she could by flouncing out of my office and not once looking back.
Though, the icing on the cake was when she pushed out of the door and broke a nail.
She cursed and watched it fall to the ground, stomped her foot once, then kept walking.
“I’m not picking that up,” Lulu announced loudly. “That’s gross.”
I looked pointedly at Lulu’s own long nails. Though, not nearly as long as Ames’.
She held them up for me to see. “Mine are fashionable. Hers are just plain ol’ gross.”
She had a point.
“Don’t take anything that woman says seriously,” Lulu ordered. “You’re not doing anything wrong. And I did my research before deciding to stay here with you. I know when facts don’t add up. And yours add up. They did something, I’m sure, that really screwed you over. Don’t do anything bad a second time, okay?”
I nodded once. “I won’t. Honestly, it gives me extreme happiness to know that that asshole won’t be able to hurt anyone else the way he hurt Blaise.”
“Good.” She paused and picked up four sticky notes off of her desk. “Now, these are yours. Do what you will with them. Sadly, I have to be getting home if I want to make it in time to watch my soaps before my show starts at six.”
With that she stood up and grabbed her purse from her front desk.
“Have a good one, Lulu,” I said.
She patted me on the chest as she walked past then left, being sure to make a wide berth around the broken nail Ames left behind, before heading out into the late afternoon sun.
I could do nothing but laugh as she walked to her massive motorcycle—one nearly the size of mine—and rode off.
That smile fell off my face when I once again looked at the fingernail.
Yeah, Ames and Brees were definitely going to be problems. I could feel it in my bones.
CHAPTER 17
I’m one rude comment away from bringing up a bunch of shit that happened two years ago.
-Blaise to Sin
SIN
My lips skimmed up the length of her body, stopping once over the slight roundness of her belly before continuing up to her breasts.
Just as I was about to pull her nipple into my mouth, she groaned and rolled over.
“I have to pee before we can do anything else,” she grumbled as she hurried to the bathroom, dislodging the damn cat that I hadn’t seen until he’d left with a grumbled hiss.
I rolled over onto my back, t
hrowing my arms behind my head, and stared at the closed bathroom door as she did her business.
After the toilet flushed, I heard the sink go on and off, then she was back, hurrying toward the bed.
I grinned when she all but dove into the bed with me, choosing to crawl right up my body instead of returning to her previous position that I’d woken her from not even moments before.
I pulled the blanket up over the both of us, and then growled when she stayed for a whole two seconds before she got out of the bed.
“Why am I naked?” she asked as she moved.
“I divested you of my shirt last night when I came to bed,” I explained. “Where the hell are you going?” I asked as she disappeared into the main part of the house.
Last night she’d been exhausted.
She hadn’t so much as twitched when I’d pulled the shirt off of her lithe, sexy body.
Nor had she twitched when I’d pulled her into my arms and fallen asleep.
Now that she was awake and didn’t have to pee, she was pressing herself against me, and I hadn’t gotten my fix of Blaise Mackenzie in at least twenty-four hours.
Yesterday had been… bad.
Needless to say, when I’d gotten home, she’d immediately told me about seeing Ames at her mailbox.
She’d then told me about the rest of her day and I just knew that she needed a distraction.
So I took her on a ride through the back roads of Souls Chapel.
Which was how we’d ended up looking at real estate that was for sale.
Which then had gone further into the night when we’d gotten up to look up all of the houses that we’d seen in person online so we would know their prices.
Which then led to arguments on what we could afford, who was paying mortgage payments, and then leading to whether the baby would be going to daycare or not.
Blaise came back into the bedroom a couple of minutes later, but instead of still being in my shirt like she’d been in when she’d gone in there, she was wearing a sports bra and a thong. She was also yanking up a pair of tight compression pants that made her ass look like a dream.
“What are you doing?” I grumbled.
She grinned at me. “I thought you wanted to network at the gyms today?”
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