by Mia Ashlinn
“When it comes to you, sure do,” Drew snapped arrogantly.
She grabbed her hairbrush from the top of the dresser. “Bullshit. You don’t. You’re just freaking out because you don’t want to get hurt by a little, defenseless woman.” She pulled the brush through her tangled hair, wincing several times. “It’s perfectly normal to be scared, Drew.”
Randy barged into the room, as naked as the day he’d been born, holding his clothes. “Calm down, you two. We don’t want the neighbors to call the police.”
“Fuck off,” Drew spat without taking his enraged eyes off Shannon, who glared right back at him. She flipped Randy off without even looking in his general direction.
Drew crossed his massive arms over his chest. “First of all, I’m not scared of a fucking thing. Secondly, you are about as defenseless as a piranha.”
Oh, shit.
Shannon marched directly up to Drew and poked him in the chest. “You are fucking scared,” she snapped. “I get it, Drew, and I don’t blame you for it. I have done everything I could to push you away, but that’s over now. You’re mine.” She wagged her finger at him, finishing her miniature tirade. “Don’t you forget it, Buster Brown.”
“Why the damn change, Shannon?” Drew leaned over her, yelling with enough volume to permanently damage a person’s eardrums. “Years! Fucking years. Now you want me? Hell no. It doesn’t work that way. When are you going to change your mind again? Tomorrow? Next week? A month? A year? When, damn it?” He stalked around her, heading for the hallway. “I’m out of here.”
Jared jumped in front of Drew, blocking him. “Don’t you dare leave. Talk this out with her. Now!”
“Hell, no. You are my brother, not my fucking boss. How many damn times have I told you that?” Drew didn’t wait for a response before answering himself. “Too many!”
“Run away, little rabbit.” Shannon shooed Drew sarcastically. “But, you remember this. You can run, but you can’t hide. We will discuss this, and we will work it out—whether you like it or not.”
“There is nothing to work out,” Drew said as he brushed past Jared and stormed down the hallway.
Jared followed his brother, hoping that Shannon kept her cute ass in the bedroom with Randy. “Don’t do or say something you are going to regret, Drew.”
“My only regret is coming here last night.”
Randy cursed viciously from the bedroom doorway.
Jared grabbed Drew by the back of his shirt, planning to give him a piece of his mind. But Shannon came up behind him and laid her hand on his shoulder. “Let him go. He doesn’t seem to have a clue what he got into with me last night. I’m no easy lay.”
Jared let go of his brother because Shannon asked him to. If she wanted him to back off right now, he would. However, he made no promises for later.
Drew wrenched open the door, but he didn’t cross the threshold. “Whatever.”
“I’m as stubborn as you are an ass,” Shannon warned Drew, apparently not minding that she spoke to Drew’s back. “I will stalk you, tie you up, and tell you the facts of fucking life, Mr. Thinks-He-Knows-It-All. I’ll do whatever it takes.”
Drew snorted as he finally took a step outside of the apartment and called behind him, “Good luck with that.”
Shannon grabbed the door, preparing to shut it, and sneered, “Don’t let the door hit you on your fine ass!”
“I won’t,” Drew declared, without missing a step, and kept walking.
“See you later, Studley Do-Right.”
Jared held back a chuckle. Where the hell did she come up with all the crazy nicknames?
“Not if I can help it,” Drew vowed as he disappeared from sight.
“Bastard!” Shannon slammed the door and, promptly, turned on Jared and Randy. “You! And you!”
“Now, princess—” Jared began, but Randy cut him off.
“What did we do? Drew is the asshole brother, not us.” Randy reached for Shannon, but she dodged him quickly and efficiently, slapping at his hands. “Come on, baby do—”
Shannon put her hands on her deliciously round hips. “No. You two were his fucking accomplices.”
Jared knew better than to approach Shannon until she calmed down a little. She was everything he’d ever wanted in a woman, and that included feisty and hot-tempered. “Princess—” He attempted again, but it was pointless.
She just talked over him, her voice much calmer but also much cooler. “No.” She pointed at Randy. “You were distracting me with a little booty action.” Then she turned her finger on him. “You were trying to fix it, Jared. He had a problem with me, not you, damn it.”
Both he and Randy tried to speak, but the vixen wouldn’t have it. She flung up her hand in a gesture telling them to stop. “Nope. Don’t care. If we want to be together, you all need to learn a few things. One. I will not tolerate being teamed up on—”
“Not even when we’re fucking you?” Randy winked boldly at Shannon, who looked volatile enough to kill and get out of jail on “temporary insanity.” “No triple crown?”
Jared snickered. He tried not to, but who wouldn’t laugh at Randy’s antics? Well, apparently not Shannon. She scowled, continuing on as if Randy hadn’t spoken and Jared hadn’t laughed, “Two. No covering for each other. Three. No lying for each other.”
“Damn. This list is getting long, baby doll.” Randy brought out the big guns—his rogue smile. “Do I need to get pencil and paper? My memory sucks.”
“Four. Piss me off, deal with me separately. Unless you all three piss me off then we will make special arrangements. Five—”
Shannon’s phone belted out “Better Than Revenge” by Taylor Swift, distracting all three of them. “Hold that thought.” She picked up her phone, greeting her caller, “Hey, J. Can I call you back in a bit?” She paused briefly. “Oh, okay. What’s up?” Pausing again, her brow furrowed. “I’m on my way.”
She hung up without another word and said, “We aren’t through, boys, but I have to go. I’ll be back later, and we can finish this conversation.” She glanced down at her helter-skelter clothes. “Fuck a duck. I look like shit.”
Muttering under her breath, she took off down the hallway and vanished into her room just as “Bitch” by Meredith Brooks blared out of her phone.
Someone needs their hearing checked. Damn, that’s hurting my ears. He reached for the phone, spotting Katie-Anne’s picture on the display, but didn’t pick it up. Should I answer it?
“Get that, will you?” Shannon hollered from her room before he had a chance to ask. “Tell Katie-Anne I will meet her at Gray’s!”
“Sure,” Jared called out before he hit send and put her phone to his ear. “Hello, Katie-Anne.”
“Jared?”
He barely made out his name. Wherever Katie-Anne was, it was hustling and bustling. “Yeah. Where are you? What’s going on?”
“Hell yeah. Shannon popped her cherry.”
Thankfully, the background noise had died down before she’d spoken. Jared would have killed her if someone overheard her excited proclamation. Sinking down onto the couch, he rubbed a hand over his tired face. This morning had the potential to be so perfect, but no, it had gone to hell. He was just about over it. “Focus, Katie-Anne.”
Not surprisingly, Katie-Anne ignored him. “Congrats, Jared! I always knew you could do it.” A car door slammed and an engine started on her side of the phone.
“We are not going there, Katie-Anne. Tell me what’s up.” He spoke sharply, but damn it, the woman needed to get on with it.
Shannon came running down the hallway again. She looked like a chicken with her head cut off, going around in circles, searching for something. “Randy,” she whispered. “Where’s my purse?”
Randy shrugged, smiling at her crookedly. “Don’t know what happened to it last night. I was too busy to care. Sorry, baby doll.”
When Jared didn’t hear anything on the other end of the phone, he cleared his throat.
“
Oh! Hell, I don’t know. Heading to Gray’s to find out. Tell Shan I’ll be there to pick her up in five. Leaving Lou’s now. Bye!”
Click. The phone went dead.
“She’s coming to get you, princess,” Jared told Shannon, handing her the phone.
She took it from him with a nod and rushed around the room, muttering, “I swear I would lose my head if it weren’t screwed on. Now, where is it? Where’s my damn purse?”
Jared spotted it next to the table. “Over there,” he told her as he pointed to where her purse lay on the floor with all of the contents scattered around it.
Since he stood closest to the mess, Randy scooped everything up, dumped it into her purse, and handed it to her. “Here, baby doll.”
She stood up on her tiptoes and pecked a kiss to Randy’s cheek. “Thank you.”
Puzzled, Randy said, “I thought you were pissed at us.”
She laughed, patting Randy on the ass. “Still am, but we’ll work it out later. Gotta go. Katie-Anne hates to be left waiting.”
She danced by Jared, pulling him down for a gentle, tender kiss and whispered, “I love you.” Then she ran out the door, closing it behind her.
What? Huh? Did she? Surely not. Of course not. No way, no how. Right?
Wide eyed, Jared stared at the door as if it would explain what the hell had just happened here. “Did she say what I think she did?” he asked aloud, to anyone or anything that would answer him.
“Yep.”
Jared swung his head around, finding Randy grinning cockily. “She told me earlier. I was just waiting for her to tell you guys.” His grin disappeared, replaced by a frown. “If birdbrain hadn’t been such a goddamn idiot, she might have told him, too. Who knows?”
When Jared couldn’t speak, Randy clapped him on the back, yanked him up from the chair, and shoved him toward the door. “Let’s go find Drew.”
Jared tsk-tsked Randy, “Already breaking Shannon’s rules? I’m telling her it was your idea.”
Randy walked out the door behind him with a chuckle. “I’ll tell her it was yours, big brother.”
Chapter 14
Shannon leapt into Katie-Anne’s car and jerked the door shut behind her. “Put the pedal to the metal, dollface.” She buckled her seat belt hastily, pinching her fingers twice. “Come one, come on, damn it. We’ve got to move it!”
Katie-Anne put her convertible in gear, turning and making tracks to the Blakemore-McCoy Equestrian Center.
Shannon held her tongue for all of thirty seconds. She had to know what the hell was going on. Once a nosy bitch, always a nosy bitch.
“SOS?” Shannon inquired, outwardly portraying an uncaring third-party, but internally boiling with the need to be in on the big secret. If anyone knew what was going on, it would be Katie-Anne.
Turning her head, Katie-Anne gave Shannon the “there is no way in hell I am going to tell you” look that she, and everyone else, hated so much. The bitch knew, and she wasn’t going to share.
“I hate you,” Shannon sneered. She sat back in the leather seat, making herself comfortable for the drive, and pouted. “You suck.”
“Not today,” Katie-Anne replied, smirking. “But I’m willing to bet you did.”
Ha! Wrong. Damn, she loved it when Katie-Anne was wrong. As if that happened very often.
Shannon decided to take the more mature route. She suppressed the urge to taunt her friend, shaking her head and denying the accusation, “Nope. Not today.”
Predictably, Katie-Anne picked up on the “not today” portion of her statement and locked onto it. “Yesterday?”
“I don’t kiss and tell,” Shannon countered with a smile.
Katie-Anne glanced over at her, hiding behind giant sunglasses that made her look like an elegant bug. “Right.”
“I do not,” Shannon shouted. In her indignation, she came off as a bratty child who could use a spanking. Spanking. Crap, crap, crap. She so did not need to be going there right now—in a car with her best friend and without her men.
Fuck. Oh, yeah, fuck was right. She already wanted to fuck again. Maybe she had been slightly off about the “potato chip” theory. What if she wasn’t the delicious snack? What if the actual fucking was? If so, she needed a fucking potato chip. Now.
Katie-Anne scoffed and turned her attention back to the road. “Of course you do. We all share the dirty details of our love lives with each other.”
Bullshit. Katie-Anne wanted her to share, but she wouldn’t return the favor? Not happening, my friend. “Is that so?”
Katie-Anne tossed her long, dark hair over her thin shoulder. “It is.”
Shannon nonchalantly stared out the window, pretending to admire Serenity’s scenery as it drifted by. “What about Jaycee? Are you planning on listening to her without bitching now?” When she received no answer, Shannon whipped her head around and put the screws to her friend. “And you? What did you do with Landon last night? I noticed you didn’t come home.”
Katie-Anne shrugged, not taking her eyes away from the road. “I didn’t want to listen to you moan and groan all night long. Some of us aren’t getting any.”
“Yeah, well, some of us hadn’t ever gotten any before last night,” Shannon reminded her, watching Katie-Anne’s profile carefully, searching for something. She didn’t know what but definitely something. “And some of us have listened to the other fuck all night in the past. Try again, sucker.”
“True.”
Refusing to give up, Shannon badgered Katie-Anne, “So where were you?”
“Out.”
“With who?”
Katie-Anne’s hands tightened around the steering wheel, making her funky bangle bracelets clink and clank. “Fuck you.”
“Ahhhhh, Landon. Of course.” Shannon hit her forehead with her palm. “Now, why didn’t I think of that before now?” She paused for dramatic effect. “What about poor, pitiful Shane?”
“He was with Leila,” Katie-Anne said offhandedly then muttered, “Bastard.”
Shannon sighed commiseratively, remembering the way she felt about Mary and her men. “Damn, that sucks.”
Katie-Anne flipped on her blinker then turned to the left, driving around the corner faster than she should have. “Yes, it does.”
Shannon put a hand on the dashboard to keep from sliding around. “So then, where did you stay?”
“Ummm,” Katie-Anne hesitated as if she were determining whether or not to lie. Finally, she shrugged again. In all the years Shannon had known Katie-Anne, she’d never seen her friend shrug so damn much in such a short time span. “I fell asleep at Shane and Landon’s apartment.”
“That’s a first,” Shannon retorted. “Unless you’re out of town, you usually won’t sleep anywhere other than our apartment.”
Katie-Anne shrugged for the third time. “Well, I was tired.”
Shannon called her friend out, “Oh my God. You are such a fucking liar.”
“I was,” Katie-Anne insisted, never once looking at her.
“Whatever.”
“It’s true.”
“Fine then.” Shannon crossed her arms in an attempt to be intimidating, despite the fact she probably looked goofier than anything. “What were you two doing?”
“Talking.”
Shannon wasn’t about to let Katie-Anne off that easily. “About what?”
“None of your business.”
“But, Katie-Anne,” Shannon mock whined, unashamedly using puppy dog eyes on her friend who wasn’t even looking in her direction. “I thought we shared all the ‘dirty details of our love lives with each other.’”
Katie-Anne turned her pinched face on Shannon angrily and snarled, “Kiss my ass.”
Fascinating. The Ice Queen appeared to be melting. My day just keeps getting better and better. If Drew wasn’t such a jerk-off, her day would be perfect. But, no, the jackass had to take the wind out of her sails. She smothered a growl in the back of her throat and focused on the here and now.
“Nope. I’m good,” Shannon shot back, turning down Katie-Anne’s sarcastic offer. “Thanks, though. You do have a lovely ass.” She topped off her compliment with a bawdy wink.
“How was your night?” Katie-Anne asked, her attempt to change the subject unmistakable and terribly annoying. “I heard you lost the big V. True?”
Shannon playfully backhanded Katie-Anne’s arm, a distinct thwack resonating in the cramped space from her hand connecting with her friend’s leather jacket. “I wasn’t done talking about you and Landon.”
Katie-Anne snapped, “Too fucking bad for you. I was.”
Instinctually, Shannon’s mama bear sprung to the surface. She couldn’t stand for her friend to suffer alone. “Seriously, Katie-Anne, what gives?”
Katie-Anne leaned forward, propping her chin on the steering wheel, and looked up at the cloudless sky. She shrugged awkwardly. “Nothing, really. We just bumped into each other and got to talking. He explained some things to me. It’s no big deal.”
“You looked awful chummy to me.”
Katie-Anne straightened, staring back at the road in front of them. “Well, we have, um, had dinner a few times over the past couple of weeks. You know, um, just to talk.”
“How many times,” Shannon queried, pressing her but not pushing.
Katie-Anne cleared her throat. “Eight.”
Shannon gasped. Holy crap! “Eight times?”
Katie-Anne nodded, her face flushing a pale shade of pink.
Shannon couldn’t help but be impressed. That was one hell of a doozy to keep quiet in a town as small as Serenity. It was a feat just to hide it from their gang. Wow. “How is it no one knows?”
“It didn’t seem consequential enough to share,” Katie-Anne said with yet another shrug.
“Damn it! Stop shrugging, Katie-Anne. You’re driving me fucking insane.”
Katie-Anne shrugged purposefully with a smirk, propelling Shannon into a litany of curses. She would love to strangle Katie-Anne. How hard is it to be serious for one second? How hard is it to let yourself feel?
