Make that two beers.
Both of his friends were already at a table and his friend Tyler stood to greet him, pulling him into a gruff hug before setting him loose. “Good to see you, Kev. Glad you’re back.”
Kevin grimaced as he scrubbed the top of his head. “Well, the jury’s still out on that one.”
Tyler sat back down and Kevin sat next to a worried-looking Matt. “I know things are probably a mess—”
“Not your books,” Kevin said, shaking his head. “Let’s just say I’m never letting my sister make a real estate investment for me ever again.”
Matt burst out laughing. “From everything you’ve told me, it sounds like a great investment. That neighborhood is up and coming. Just let me come over and take a look. It’s probably not as bad is it looks.”
“I suspect it’s worse.” Time to change the subject. He looked across the table at his friend. “So, Tyler…I hear you’re a lawyer now in a big fancy office downtown.”
“He won a big case to get him that big fancy office,” Matt said, flagging down a waitress.
“That big case paid for my condo in the Plaza.” He grinned. “Which impresses my dates.” Kevin was pretty sure Tyler didn’t need help impressing women. He never had. He’d been the player of the three of them. His dark hair, dark eyes, and dark complexion had always grabbed the attention of all the girls in high school and college.
“I thought you decided to give up dating for a while,” Matt countered. “After Sheila.”
Tyler’s brow lowered and he took a drag of his beer, obviously wishing to change the subject.
Kevin wanted to ask more about Sheila, but Tyler looked like he needed another beer or three before he’d talk. The waitress came over, and Kevin ordered a beer before turning to Matt. “What about you? How’s it going with your girlfriend? Aren’t you living together?”
Tyler spit out his beer in a burst of laughter.
Kevin gave him his full attention. “So there’s a story there?”
Matt cringed. “I think we need a few more rounds before I’m ready to spill that story. I’d rather talk about your house.”
“I think I’ll just take some gasoline and a match to my house. Put it out of its misery.”
“You going to live with your mom?” Tyler asked. “Is she just as scary as she was when we were in high school? How are you going to bring your dates home?”
“Easy. I won’t be bringing home any dates. I’m taking a break from women.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. I’m like a magnet that attracts crazy women.” All the more reason for Kevin to stay away from his next-door neighbor. She definitely hadn’t acted normal. Based on several of his previous girlfriends, Kevin’s crazy meter was very broken. He’d been blindsided in his last three relationships. So if Kevin could spot her brand of crazy, that was definitely a bad sign. So why had he thought about her half a dozen times today?
His two friends chuckled while the waitress set down Kevin’s glass. “You boys ready to order?”
Tyler flashed her a grin. “I want a burger and fries, and get one for my friend over here.” He motioned toward Kevin.
“Same for me,” Matt said, handing her the menus.
Kevin laughed. “I confessed to having terrible taste in women, not terrible taste in food.”
“You haven’t had a burger until you’ve had one here. And as for the women…” A grin spread across Tyler’s face.
“What?” Kevin asked. “You don’t believe me?”
“Oh, we believe you,” Matt said. “But I suspect you’re on the farm team when it comes to crazy ex-girlfriends. Tyler and I are in the big leagues.”
A smug grin plastered Kevin’s face. “I’ve got the story to top all stories.”
Matt leaned back, wearing a smirk. “Okay, Vandemeer. Give it a go. Tell us your crazy-ex story.”
“You want the short and dirty version or gory details?” Kevin asked.
“What are we? Middle-school girls?” Tyler asked.
Matt’s eyes lit up. “All the gory details.”
Kevin sighed. “Wrong answer. Here’s what I will tell you—we moved in together after Christmas and that was the first time I realized her obsession with the circus.”
“Cirque du Soleil?” Tyler asked.
“No. Barnum and Bailey.”
“Oh, shit.” Matt groaned. “You and clowns…”
“Yeah, I about flipped my shit when she moved in and unpacked a box of clown dolls.”
“Dude,” Matt said. “You let her stay?”
“I was trying to be mature about it.”
Tyler laughed. “Because having a clown-doll collection is so mature.”
“Touché.” Matt chuckled.
Kevin narrowed his eyes. “Since when did you start staying things like touché?”
Matt leveled his gaze, the corners of his lips twitching as he tried to look serious. “I’m trying to be mature. Like you with the clown dolls.”
Releasing a loud groan, Kevin picked up his beer. “Never mind. There’s no fucking way I’m telling you why we broke up.”
“Fine,” Tyler said, leaning forward. “Don’t tell him, but don’t think you’re getting out of telling me.”
Kevin took a long gulp of his beer. “I found her with a clown.”
Tyler’s eyes bugged out. “When you say found her with a clown…”
Kevin took another drink. “I mean in the biblical sense.”
His friends burst out into laughter.
“Yeah, laugh it up. I was traumatized.”
Matt wiped the tears from his eyes. “No wonder you’ve sworn off women. It’s a wonder you didn’t become a monk.”
Tyler laughed. “Okay, I’ll admit you’re in the big leagues of crazy exes, but you’re still a rookie.”
“There’s no way in hell you can top that.”
“Want to bet money on it?” Tyler asked.
“It’s too subjective,” Matt said. “All our stories are bad.”
“I’ll go next,” Tyler volunteered. “You know that I’m not a believer in relationships. But then I met a woman who intrigued me enough for me to ask her out several times. But then I noticed things started going missing in my condo. Little things. My comb. A tie. You know how socks disappear in the wash? My underwear went missing. But I still wasn’t putting things together. She never wanted me to go to her place, but one day I stopped by to surprise her. I knocked and the door was cracked open. At first I was worried someone had broken in or she was in danger, so I walked in to make sure she was okay. But then I found her home office…or, rather, her stalker room.”
“What?”
“Every wall surface was covered in photos of me. Her computer screen was frozen on an image of me getting out of the shower. Naked. Then I found all my missing things scattered around something that resembled a shrine in her closet.”
Kevin shook his head. “What a nut job.”
“I broke up with her, of course, right after I notified the police, but she refused to leave me alone. She kept turning up. At my office. At my house. At a ball game I went to with Matt. She sat down at my table in a restaurant when I was on a date. The last straw was when I woke up tied to my bed. I filed a restraining order.”
“Jesus.” Kevin groaned. “That’s freaky.”
“She was harmless,” Tyler said. “Just annoying.”
Matt picked up his glass. “She tied you to your bed, dude!”
Tyler shrugged. “She wasn’t going to hurt me.”
“Still, it freaked you out enough that you haven’t dated since,” Matt said.
“How long ago was that?” Kevin asked.
“Three months.”
Kevin shook his head. “Have you ever gone three days without a woman?”
“No.” Matt chuckled. “Which explains his crankiness and his blue balls.”
“You’re a fine one to talk,” Tyler said. “If we’re awarding prizes, then you get fir
st place.”
Matt’s smile fell. “It’s a prize I can do without.” He looked behind him. “Oh, look here comes our food.”
The waitress set down the plates and as soon as she walked away, Kevin turned to his friend. “Good stall, but I told my story so you’re telling yours. Start talking.”
Matt’s grin fell. “I thought Sylvia might be the one. She moved in and things seemed to be going well—even though it was weird she didn’t have any friends or family. But then one night we were in bed—”
“And they weren’t sleeping,” Tyler added with a grin.
“Let’s just say I was preoccupied, when the bedroom door burst open and several members of the SWAT team came pouring through the door and the bedroom window. They arrested both of us and hauled me outside—”
“Naked as the day he was born, but with part of him still at full attention.” Tyler winked.
“Then they arrested us both on bank-robbery charges.”
“What?” Kevin gasped. “Was it the wrong apartment?”
“No.” Matt shook his head. “They had the right place and the right girl. Sylvia was really Paula and had robbed a string of banks in Iowa six months before. She figured she could hide out with me for a while, then start a new life—without me. Thankfully, I was cleared.”
“That sucks, man,” Kevin said.
Matt shrugged, but Kevin could see the pain in his eyes.
“So we’ve all sworn off women?” Kevin asked.
Both men studied him. “Looks like it,” Matt said. “We should start a club. The Losers.”
“Nah.” Kevin laughed. “It’s like when we were kids. Remember the Knights’ Brotherhood? Sixth-grade year. We swore to help damsels in distress.”
“We also swore to kill fire-breathing dragons,” Tyler said.
“Only now we’re avoiding them,” Matt said.
“Turns out they’re one and the same.” Tyler winked. “The dragons, not the damsels.”
“Maybe we’re cursed,” Kevin said. “My sister and her friends believed their weddings were cursed. What if our entire lives are cursed when it comes to women?”
“We’re not cursed,” Tyler scoffed.
“Maybe we are.” Matt said, looking unhappy with the idea. “All three of us have had extraordinarily bad experiences with women. Maybe this is our sign that we’re destined to be bachelors.”
Tyler gave him a wry grin. “Hey, I’ve never wanted to get married. But now I’m not even sleeping with women.”
“So it’s a Bachelor Brotherhood,” Kevin said, and for some weird reason the face of the woman next door’s face popping onto his front porch sprang into his mind. No, that was never going to happen. The sooner he let that idea go, the better. “I always wanted kids, though.”
“Your sister’s having a kid,” Tyler said. “Just borrow hers.”
Kevin lifted his eyebrows. “I don’t think it works that way. I’m pretty sure Megan’s the maternal type who won’t let her kid out of her sight until it’s twenty-five.”
Matt looked down at his plate. “I wanted kids, too.”
“Maybe we’re wrong,” Kevin said. “Maybe we’ve just had a run of bad luck.”
“All three of us?” Matt asked. “When was the last time any of us have had a normal girlfriend?”
They all remained silent for several seconds.
“Tina Lebowsky,” Kevin said, pointing his finger at Matt. “She was normal.”
“You dated her for three weeks our junior year of high school. I don’t think that counts. Especially since she joined a commune after she graduated.”
“I’ve dated plenty of normal woman,” Tyler said.
“How would you know if they were normal?” Matt countered. “Your crazy ex was the only woman in the last few years you even called your girlfriend.”
“Just goes to show you really can’t trust any woman.”
The thought of spending his life alone was depressing, but Kevin had bigger things to worry about than his love life. And besides, there were worse things than being a bachelor the rest of his life.
Like not having a life at all.
Chapter Nine
After Holly came home from visiting her grandmother, she changed into a pair of shorts and a tank top before she sat in the backyard with Killer. She was on her second glass of wine, pinning things on her phone’s Pinterest app to get ideas for Coraline’s wedding, when she heard a car park pull up to his house. After Holly’s chat with her grandmother, she was frustrated that she kept thinking of her new neighbor. She barely knew him and the encounter had been painfully embarrassing, but she couldn’t ignore the fact that she’d felt something with him that she’d never felt in her life.
She was curious. That was all.
At least that was what she told herself when she nearly jumped up to see if it was his car, but she forced herself to keep her butt in her chair, despite her inner argument that she should at least make sure it wasn’t another car break-in. But her job responsibility won out. She didn’t need to have the entire wedding planned out until she knew what Coraline and Miranda wanted, but she had to go to the meeting with at least a few broad ideas. So far nothing was coming to her, which had her slightly panicked. Holly’s work was very much muse driven, and now was not the time for her muse to take a break.
She was jumping down a rabbit hole of outdoor-reception pins when she heard her neighbor talking on the other side of the fence.
“Yeah, I saw her. She still wants to come over, but I think I’ve held her off for now. …” Then his voice faded as he went back inside.
She sat back in her chair, horrified to discover she was straining to hear his sexy voice through the open windows of his house.
What in the world was wrong with her?
She closed her laptop and stood. “Come on, Killer. Let’s go inside.”
He was distracting. That was all. She definitely wasn’t interested in him. Not when he surely thought she was a bumbling idiot.
She set her computer on the dining room table and poured herself a third glass of wine from the box in her refrigerator, jumping when she heard a sharp rap on the front door.
Killer looked up at her, then took off to investigate, his high-pitched barking piercing her ears.
“Killer, stop!”
Who could be knocking at her door? The break-ins fresh on her mind, she set down the glass and grabbed a baseball bat that Melanie kept in the kitchen for security measures before moving to the front window to peer out the curtains.
There was a man on her front porch.
She considered not answering, but the man was sure to have heard her yell at the dog, who was still yapping at her feet.
“Killer! Stop!”
She wedged herself between the dog and the door before she opened it, her jaw dropping when she saw her new neighbor.
He looked even sexier tonight in his white button-down shirt and his low-hung jeans. His hair was neater, and the scruff on his face from the night before was gone. And his smell…she was close enough to tell he smelled delicious.
His gaze took her in, moving head to toe in a slow sweep and back up again, taking in her bare legs and lingering on her breasts before lifting to her face.
She self-consciously lifted her hand to the hair escaping her messy bun. “Uh…hi. What are you doing here?” Oh, shit. Had she said that out loud?
He laughed and she loved how his eyes lit with amusement, his lips tilting up slightly. “I thought I’d bring your dish back over.” He lifted the container to prove his intent, and she felt her cheeks burn.
“Oh.”
“Are you about to run off to a baseball game or should I be concerned?”
“What? Oh.” Then she remembered the bat in her hand and she tossed it into the house. The loud thud when it hit the hardwood floor made her cringe. It also made Killer jump and start barking again. She stepped onto the porch, pulling the door closed behind her and bumping into his chest.
“Sorry,” she murmured, feeling like an idiot. How did this man make her lose her head? Although she was sure the wine wasn’t helping the situation.
He grabbed her arm to steady her and she found her hand resting on his chest again. This time she didn’t pull away, instead looking up into his eyes, which had focused on her mouth.
“We’re making a habit of this,” he said, his voice so low it rumbled his chest under her fingertips.
She sucked in a breath, still looking up at him. “Sorry.”
A mischievous look filled his eyes. “I’m not complaining.”
She realized he was still holding the dish in one hand, but his hand on her arm had moved to the small of her back.
What in the world was she doing? This went against every rule she had for dating. No physical contact until the second date, and even then it never went past momentary hand-holding and a short kiss good night. It definitely didn’t include plastering herself to the front of a stranger.
She tried to take a step back but the door blocked her escape, which ordinarily would have worried her but instead sent a raging fire through her blood. Her body’s reaction confused her, and she chalked it up to the wine. She’d never been so turned on by a man, and she wasn’t sure how to handle it. She had to make him leave and soon, or she’d probably do something she’d regret.
“Thank—” Her voice came out raspy, so she pressed her lips together then tried again. “Thank you for bringing back the dish.”
He grinned. “It was one of the best lasagnas I’ve ever had, but don’t tell my mother or she’ll make me suffer for the rest of my life.”
She chuckled, surprised that she was starting to feel at ease, which was equally surprising, since they were still as close as they were a few moments ago. “Surely she can’t be that bad.”
“You’d be amazed.” But then he took a quick step back, putting a couple of feet between them and moving like he’d just been caught doing something wrong. “Thanks again for bringing me the lasagna.”
Something had changed, although Holly couldn’t put her finger on what. “Yeah, no problem.”
Then he abruptly turned and walked down the steps before he looked back at her, his warm smile returning. “I’m Kevin, by the way.”
Only You Page 7
