Imperfect Love: Operation: Girl Next Door (Kindle Worlds Novella)

by Casey Hagen

  For the first time in years, she hadn’t the first clue what to say or what to do, so she let it go and focused on the binder. She’d just read through his hobbies: golf, racquetball, and dead lifting. His favorite foods: New York style cheese pizza with oregano, smoked salmon, and jelly beans.

  Okay then.

  She assumed with that, she had hit the end, but instead, arrived at a whole new section marked: Piper.

  She scanned the first page and ground her teeth. “What the hell is this?”

  He glanced at her lap and returned his eyes to the road. “It’s your life.”

  She turned the pages harder than necessary, tearing one. “You don’t know anything about my life.”

  He glanced in his rearview, and without using his directional, he changed lanes and passed a semi on the inside. “I made up one for you. You’re an art teacher. You work with grade school kids. You’ve been at Great Neck Elementary for three years now. One day, you hope to have kids and be a stay at home mom.”

  Just like that she felt like a colossal idiot for giving him so much credit after his little confession earlier. “Mmmmm, I see that. No hobbies?” she said as she continued to scan the information. He didn’t tell her what her favorite foods were. Generous of him, but...

  “Loving me,” he said with a grin.

  “It’s a wonder no woman has cut you yet.”

  His eyebrows shot up in surprise. “What did I do?”

  She tossed the binder over her shoulder without a care as to where, or how it landed. “Oh, I don’t know. You gave me a fake life when you could have just asked me about me. Hell, you could have asked my brother about me. Instead, you assumed I had dreams of being the little woman all barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen while you’re out waving your dingus at anything in a skirt.”

  “Your assessment of me is flattering, but there will be no waving my dingus.”

  She shifted in her seat and leaned her back against the passenger door. “Look, I owe you one. I know that and I’m willing to do my part. But don’t make me look like a foolish, meek girl waiting to bare the fruit of your loins, Trevor.”

  “Hey, I’m just kidding. I will absolutely not make a fool of you. Look, keep studying the binder and if there’s something you really want changed, we’ll change it.”

  “I don’t need to study it anymore. I’ve got it.” She turned back to the road and adjusted her skirt that had slid up higher on her thigh.

  His gaze landed on her legs for a brief second before returning to the road. “You only read it once.”

  She slid her cell out of her purse to check her text messages. “Yes. I’m aware.”

  “You remember everything?” he asked.

  “Yes.” She turned in her seat and raised a brow. “Is it quiz time now?”

  “What do I do on Saturdays at 8AM?”

  “By then you’d be halfway through racquetball with Zack.”

  “Tuesdays at 7PM?” he said with a cocky smirk.

  “Ahhhh, trick question. Nice try, but I’m onto you. The first and third Tuesday you’re at the YMCA volunteering, which, quite frankly, surprises me. Then the last Tuesday of the month you take out your corporate buddies, Zack and Sebastian, to celebrate the month’s acquisitions. I figure you do this because the bar isn’t crowded and your buddies aren’t going to drink away your cash on a Tuesday with the work week ahead. Despite your penthouse, car, and designer suits, you’re a cheapskate.”

  “I don’t know whether I should be terrified or turned on.”

  “How adorable of you to so foolishly believe you have that kind of control over yourself. I’d put my money on you being both.”

  “You’d win that bet.”

  “So, where are we headed?”

  “My boss has a place on Canada Lake. He’s been talking all year about this huge addition he’s been working on. Five suites, three with lake views, two of them mountain views.”

  “Any chance we’ll get a water view?”

  “Whatever you want, you get,” he said with a wink. He pulled off the interstate and followed the signs for the huge shopping center.

  “Stop winking at me.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked with a brief glance in her direction before returning his eyes to the road.

  “You just winked at me.”

  He shook his head. “No, I didn’t.”

  “Okay, so, are you suffering from some sort of head injury I don’t know about?”

  He did a double take. “What? No.”

  She laughed. His antics should have been annoying, but at this point, she was starting to think he’d just become a product of his environment. Perhaps the time had come to peel back some of those layers. She had to wonder if it was really his lack of being in a solid relationship, holding his boss back, or if his boss was just waiting for his rising star to grow up.

  Maybe she could help him out in both respects. After all, they were a temporary couple, and at some point would need to manufacture a break up. Why not leave them all with a better man than the one she found?

  They drove by a Lowes. Usually, where there was a Lowes, there was a Walmart nearby.

  “If we end up in a Walmart parking lot, I’m strangling you with my purse strap.”

  With a confident hand he spun the wheel and turned right at the light. “Noted, Piper. I’m hoping there’s an Old Navy. I should have stopped at the Palisades mall, but I was a bit distracted.”

  She spotted the navy and white sign and shot a finger in front of him. “Right there. Oh, thank God!”

  He laughed at her, but dammit, she needed comfortable, and since becoming a designer, her biggest pet peeve had been cheap fabric.

  It itched.

  It never fit right.

  And it smelled like the cheap chemicals they marinated it in.

  He pulled into a spot in the very back row.

  “Seriously, Trevor, you couldn’t get any closer.”

  “I’ve only had the car for three months. I’m not emotionally ready for a scratch or ding.”

  She rolled her eyes and pushed open her door. “You should take some of that money you seem to be rolling in and invest in a good therapist.”

  “You’re probably right, but not because of the car. First time in my life I’m taking a woman shopping. I’ve hit a new low.”

  “Oh, come on, it’s going to be painless. I’m a pro at this. I’m crystal clear on what I like, and what I don’t.”

  She pushed open the front door, not waiting to see if he kept pace with her. Her Spidey senses told her he might very well be walking behind her and checking out her ass.

  Whatever.

  She stopped and surveyed the layout.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Getting my bearings. Late August, upstate New York, by a lake. I need jeans, leggings, shorts, a sundress or two, t-shirts, a hoodie, a couple of tank tops—”

  “A bathing suit.”

  She shot him a look. “Do you ever make it through an entire sixty seconds without thinking about naked?”

  He held his palms up. “Who’s thinking about naked? It’s a lake. We’ll probably swim.”

  “I have a bathing suit.”

  He looked her up and down and raised a brow. “What does it look like?”

  She bit her bottom lip. “Okay, a bathing suit, too. Let’s do this.”

  She scanned rack after rack making her way through the store in record time. Their selection surprised her. She actually found things she might wear even after this trip. She especially loved the flannels that they had rolled out as part of their fall/winter lineup of clothes.

  Trevor surprised her by trailing along not making a single peep, despite having heaped a good ten outfits on his outstretched arms.

  “Okay, let’s hit the fitting rooms.”

  “Come on, you’re a designer, you can’t just eye it?”

  She sighed. “No, I can’t just eye it. I want your approval on every outfit. This is your show,
Trevor. If it blows up in your face, I don’t want it to be because of me.”

  He nodded. “Fair enough.”

  She started to turn when he worked his hand out from under the pile. His long fingers curled around hers, a sensation she hadn’t experienced since prom night. Although familiar, the callouses that came with sports had long since disappeared, leaving smooth fingers that set her nerves singing. Such an innocent touch and it shot right through her to her toes.

  “Thank you, Piper. I really mean it. You’re saving my ass here, and I don’t want you to go off thinking that I don’t appreciate it. I know you probably agreed to this because I took you to prom, but this is a whole lot more, and I know it.”

  With a bit of extra pressure, she slid her hand free, not ready to feel his touch, or hear his sweet words and handle what they did to her. She needed to get on even footing. She sure as hell had no intention of showing him just what he did to her.

  “Hey, yeah, don’t mention it.” She grabbed half the stack and hung it on the first hook, then took the last of it and hung it on the second. Closing the door, she took a deep breath before shimmying out of her dress.

  She tossed it on the bench and called out to him. “So, Romeo, how’d we meet?”

  “You marched into Ryden’s room while we were playing Monopoly and gave his hair a hard yank for leaving your paint brushes in water overnight.”

  She laughed. “Yes, I remember. I meant what is the story for your boss?”

  “Well, I thought we would keep it as close to the real thing as possible. You were hardcore about those brushes.”

  “I had saved my allowance for six months to buy them. He borrowed them once and ruined them. I think he was lucky for the yank. The other things I considered doing were worse. So much worse.”

  She pushed open the door and stood there. “How’s this outfit work for you?”

  ***

  He scanned her from head to toe. No, it wasn’t okay. It was never going to be okay.

  She looked perfectly normal, only not.

  Faded jean shorts stopped just above mid-thigh. Perfectly respectable. And it didn’t matter one bit because those tan and glowing legs commanded attention. She reminded him of super models that you see in the tabloids shopping at Whole Foods on the weekend. No matter how dressed down, their exotic features stood out, letting all those who looked know that they were something extraordinary.

  At least she had paired them with a somewhat loose fitting white t-shirt with “Weekends Rule” scrolled across the chest that hid her distracting curves.

  “Uh, yeah, that’s good.”

  She scrunched up her nose and glanced down. “Are you sure? You don’t look so impressed.”

  “I’m sure. Just wondering about a suitcase,” he lied as he checked his watch. “We can probably just exchange the stuff in the suitcase for what you packed. Show me what else you’ve got.”

  She shrugged. “Good idea. Hang on.” She tried on several outfits while he scrolled through his emails, only looking up when she stepped out for approval. He needed some sort of distraction from the curves she kept dangling in front of him.

  With the emails attended to, he had no choice but to focus his attention back on the situation at hand. “Okay, so seriously, how did we reconnect? We need some sort of story of how we went from what we were to a couple.”

  “Family barbecue?” she asked.

  “Plausible, but boring.”

  “Not if we ran into each other again at a family get together and made out on my childhood bed?”

  “That’s just stupid.” He cringed.

  “Well then, I’ve got nothing.”

  “I haven’t met a woman without alcohol or a party scene since high school.”

  She pushed open the door and stepped out in a dress. He hadn’t noticed when she picked it up, but the spaghetti straps and the delicate V of the neck, revealing the swell of her round breasts, fit just like the dress she wore to prom. This time, however, the dress flowed around her without hugging her figure. She looked like she belonged walking through a field of wildflowers or on the white sands of a beach.

  “This is the last one…is it okay?”

  He stepped up to her, close but not invasive. She had kicked off her heels so he had a few inches on her now, leaving her exposing her slim, graceful neck as she looked up at him.

  He broke the eye contact, ran his finger along the strap over the curve of her shoulder, his gaze following the path of his curious finger, then dropped his hand. “It’s beautiful.”

  She narrowed her eyes.

  He stepped back and cleared his throat. “Seriously. You should get it.”

  “Trevor?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is that really true, about meeting women?”

  He thought back to the parties with the endless alcohol, drugs even, if he had wanted them, and scantily clad women. He’d never really taken a hard look at his life before. Now, standing before Piper, this woman seemingly everything he had enjoyed in the women he spent his time with, but still so much that girl next door, he couldn’t deny who he had become and how he treated women. There was no way to spin it to make himself look better.

  “It is.”

  And there it was, that flash of disappointment and something else, like he had kicked her puppy.

  “It’s sad. I keep remembering that guy, the one who took me to prom. He held doors for me, pulled out my chair; he treated me like a lady. I wonder where he went.” She walked around him, the soft click of the dressing room door ending the moment.

  That guy, the one she talked about…the one who had dreams. The boy who still believed nothing bad could ever happen to him.

  He had believed if you did the right thing, stood for the right thing, worked hard, you would get everything you wanted.

  And then one blow to the knee changed everything, and to this day, despite the practiced smiles, knowing just the right things to say, and the success, he thought about that day. He agonized over the days after, what he might have done differently so that today he could still be on that damn field.

  Piper wanted to know where that guy was…probably still lying on the nine-yard line at Ohio State.

  He needed a distraction. A memory flashed in his head of her childhood bedroom and the white mask that hung on the corner of her vanity mirror. “We ran into each other at Phantom of the Opera.”

  She gasped. “You like Phantom of the Opera?”

  “Not particularly. You love it though, and I was there trying to impress my flavor of the month and ran into you.” He needed the words to put some distance between them. He pulled out his cell and pretended to give a shit about whatever came up on his screen. “Since you’re finished, I’m going to wait for you by the registers.”

  Leaving her with her mouth hanging open, he ducked out of the fitting rooms and put some much-needed distance between his past and his present.

  Chapter 4

  Piper should have felt a niggling sense of guilt letting him pay for the clothes, considering she found outfits she would put to use later. It wasn’t like she couldn’t afford them, but with his parting shot about bringing his flavor of the month to Phantom, she didn’t care. Let him pay, since he took the opportunity to remind her in a roundabout way that this was a favor and he was a pig.

  But how did he know she loved Phantom of the Opera?

  She’d never mentioned it. She knew she hadn’t. That night, at prom, she had struggled to keep the subject matter on things that she knew for a fact they had in common, like sports.

  She hung with the guys—her brother, his friends, her male cousins—and by association developed an appreciation for football, baseball, and hockey. She never could get into basketball. The squeaking of the sneakers on the court made fingernails on a chalkboard seem like a beautiful symphony.

  Every time she’d stop flinching from the squeak and unclenched her shoulders—another squeak. Squeak, squeak, squeak!

  Nope.
/>
  Now she realized she had been an idiot in high school. In an effort to be what she thought he wanted, she had modified herself and hadn’t touched on anything of particular interest to her. She had loved to paint as a kid, loved classical music, and Broadway shows, and in her heart, she adored dancing.

  But because she wanted Trevor to like her, she didn’t show him any of her personal interests all in an attempt to impress him. And how colossally stupid was that? What would have been her end game if they had actually started dating…to hide who she really was forever and live a lie?

  She had been so unbelievably stupid.

  And here she was, being what he needed her to be all over again. She would play the game, and she no longer felt the need to impress him with what she knew of his interests, but she would enjoy sharing some of hers, so Trevor better hold on.

  “Looks like this is it,” he said.

  Her stomach flopped. She could have sworn she heard the splat as if she had dropped a rotten tomato on the floor.

  This was it. Time to be on.

  Time to be a couple.

  They turned onto a long, asphalt drive winding through a canopy of trees. Around a couple of corners, the property opened up and the driveway led up to a circular pull-through in front of a sprawling, blue lake estate sitting at a forty-five-degree angle in relation to the lake that she spotted shimmering between the branches of the pines surrounding the water.

  On the other end of the house stood a four-car garage with cars lined up in front of it. Trevor had said that a few coworkers vying for the partnership would be there, so she hoped the cars belonged to his boss, because she hated being the last to arrive.

  Of course, there was that detour for clothes and the time it took for her to change in the dressing room after they checked out, and the repacking of her suitcase.

  Totally Trevor’s fault for not telling her he needed a specific kind of girl. She glanced down at the blue flannel she had layered over her white tank top and jean capris. She had tamed her hair with a loose side braid trailing over her shoulder. Total girl next door material…and if she were being one hundred percent honest, a weight had been lifted off her shoulders with the change. This Piper didn’t need to check her lipstick every twenty minutes. She didn’t need to smooth her hair anytime a breeze blew.