Bad Neighbor

by Molly O'Keefe

  “I’m not telling you shit,” Charlotte said, and I realized Jack didn’t know Abby was pregnant.

  “I will find out for myself soon enough,” Jack said, sounding ominous as hell.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked. “If you’re leaving, if you’re out of the life, why are you here?”

  He looked at me like I’d wounded him. “I was feeling…nostalgic, I guess. I missed my little brother. Is it so unreasonable to want to say goodbye?”

  “We haven’t been brothers in a long time,” I said. “We’re done. I don’t know you.”

  “We’ve been done since Dad died,” Jack said, the words bitten off like bullets from his mouth. “The second you dropped out and gave up.”

  “Fuck off, Jack,” I said. “I came home to help you pay off the debt!”

  “I didn’t need you to do that!” he cried. “I needed you to stay in Iowa. I needed you to stay safe. I needed you—”

  “I needed you!” I yelled, the words ripped from my gut. All I’d ever needed in my life was my brother, and he… well, fuck. I guess I didn’t need him anymore, after all.

  Jack nodded, his throat working hard as he swallowed. “I know. I know and all I can say is I’m sorry. I thought I was doing the right thing.” He took a deep breath and looked me in the eye. “Tell her, tell her everything. If you want a shot with her, you’ve got to tell her. And if she stays after that… don’t let her go.” Jack then turned to Charlotte. “I’m sorry this is how we’ve met. I hope… well, let’s just say I hope a lot of things.”

  Jack nodded at me and for a moment, stark and real, I wanted to tell him not to leave. But that was the kid in me, the little brother he’d shut out. We’d never get back what we had. I just had to hope somehow, in some way, he’d get back to being the man he used to be.

  “Bye Jack,” I murmured and he was gone.

  I shut the door behind him.

  “Oh God,” Charlotte said, sucking in air. She fell back against the wall and pulled out her cell phone. “I have to warn her. I have to tell her to run.” She sobbed once, hard. Tapping away on her phone.

  “I don’t think it will matter,” I said, pulling over a chair from my shitty kitchen table. “Jack will find her.”

  “She’s pregnant,” Charlotte said, looking at me through her cloud of hair.

  “He doesn’t seem to know.”

  “He will soon enough,” she said, sounding panicked. “I mean, she’s having the fucking hitman’s baby.”

  “He’s not a hitman anymore,” I said.

  “Like that matters.”

  Solid point.

  She put the phone down on the table and blew out a long breath.

  “That’s… that’s it, right? I’ve done everything I can?”

  “You’ve done everything you can. He won’t hurt her,” I told her, knowing that in my gut. Jack was a lot of things, but he didn’t hurt women.

  “I…I don’t think he’ll touch her. But I still think he can hurt her.” She looked away, tucking hair behind her ears, and here we were, right back in this thing between us.

  “You think he’ll hurt her, like I hurt you?” I asked and she nodded. “I was trying to protect you from Jack. And my whole family thing.”

  “You could have just told me. Whatever it is…”

  This is what my brother meant, the thing I had to tell her if we were going to stand a chance. And I was surprised by how much I wanted that chance.

  Needed it.

  Ached for it.

  I pivoted my chair and reached for her, pulling her so close her knees were in between mine. I pulled up another chair and made her sit in it. Which she did, and then she didn’t move, and I realized, my heart in my throat, that she wanted this, too. She was nervous and scared and I was going to have to work for it, but she wanted this, too.

  Do. Not. Blow. This.

  “My mom died when we were teenagers.” Telling this story was like an archaeological dig, or something, like I was pulling up the Titanic for her.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It was rough. She left a real hole in our family and my dad… I don’t think he ever recovered. After she died, Jack and I pretty much raised ourselves. It’s not like we were kids. We were both in high school, he was on his way to college.”

  “Your brother was in college?”

  “Business school. UCLA.”

  Her jaw dropped and I smiled, touching her chin like I was pushing her jaw closed. “Sorry,” she said. “I just… the man who had a gun on me was accepted into UCLA business school?”

  “I know. You have to understand, he was a different person then. Anyway, he went, I finished high school and went to Iowa on scholarship, and I just…I fell apart. Without my brother or my mom or anyone keeping me on the straight and narrow I just couldn’t do it. School was so hard. Making friends. All of it. Everything except wrestling was too hard to even deal with. My dad was doing the same thing back here, only he was gambling. Hard. Really… serious money to some serious fucking people. And by the time Jack and I found out about it, it was too late.”

  “Too late how?”

  “Dad was dead. Shot in the back of the head and left by the side of the highway.”

  “Oh my god.”

  “Well, it gets… it gets kind of worse. He left behind a debt. Like… five hundred thousand dollars. And if we didn’t pay that money, we were going to be killed.”

  This time when her jaw fell open, she shut it herself. I kept talking. “I came back here and started fighting, giving every purse I won to the shitbags that held Dad’s debt, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t close enough. So Jack…”

  “Went to work with them.”

  I nodded. “At first it was just collection shit. Muscle kind of nonsense. He went deeper and deeper into it and I couldn’t get him out. I couldn’t reach him and he didn’t want me to, so I just stopped trying. And then, sometime in the last few months, he must have killed someone.”

  “That’s what my sister saw.”

  “Anyway, I guess the debt is paid.”

  “That’s why you were taking those fights with those guys. The money.”

  I shook my head. “It was stupid.”

  Suddenly, like the earth opened up and sunlight literally filled my apartment, Charlotte was off her chair and in my lap. I grabbed her, I grabbed her so hard and so fast there was no way she was getting away from me. Not ever again.

  “Nothing you’ve done has been stupid. You were just trying to help your brother.”

  I saw us all of a sudden. How alike we were because we’d been forged by our siblings, by the fire of their mistakes. The fire of our own mistakes.

  We were full of cracks and fault lines, but we matched. Where she was weak, I was strong. And where I was weak… God, she was so strong.

  She stroked my face, her fingers running over my hair in a way I felt down my back and across my dick. I wanted to fuck her so bad. I wanted to mark her and own her and I wanted her to mark me.

  Own me.

  “What happens now?” I asked.

  “Well, I think I’m going to take you over to my bedroom and fuck you.”

  I groaned with relief, I sagged with it. I fell against her body so thankful she would have me back. So paralyzed by my good fortune.

  “I’ve agreed to that book tour,” she said. “It will be next summer.”

  “I’ve signed up at the gym,” I told her. “I start on Monday. All of it. I’m taking care of myself and I’m going to stop the fights in the basement and move out of this place. And, Charlotte, listen to me, I never would have done that without you.”

  “Yes, you would have. You would have found your way to that gym. You wanted that.”

  “But the rest of it? I never would have had that faith in myself. I never would have believed I deserved it without you.”

  “That’s how I feel about the book tour. I did it because I was mad at you, but really you just gave me the strength to see how I de
served it.”

  “You deserve everything. Everything you want.”

  “I want you.”

  Humbled, I rubbed my face against hers. “Say it again.”

  “I want you. I will always want you. Even when I hated you I wanted you.”

  “That’s sex.”

  She shook her head, her curls falling down around us, a cocoon of us. “That’s you. The power of you.”

  “The power of us,” I said.

  “You’ve wanted me too? This last week?”

  “That fucking date you went on?”

  “Cancelled.”

  I blew out a breath I felt like I’d been holding since I saw her so beautiful for another man. “Thank fuck.”

  She laughed, a bright sound, filling my apartment with something good.

  “Is this love?” I asked. Because I didn’t know. The only person I’d ever loved just walked out that door a practical stranger.

  “I don’t know,” she said truthfully. “I’ve never felt like this before.”

  “Me neither.”

  “Maybe it’s falling in love,” she said.

  “I want to be falling in love with you for the rest of my life.” I’d never said anything I’d meant more.

  Her eyes filled with tears and she nodded.

  “You,” she said, looking deep and hard into my eyes where I felt my own tears building. “Are the best fucking neighbor I’ve ever had.”

  A Note From M. O’Keefe

  Thank you so much for reading BAD NEIGHBOR. I hope you enjoyed it! Please consider leaving a review – reviews, good or bad, are super important to authors and readers!

  The sequel THE BAD BOY’S SECRET BABY (Abby and Jack’s story) will be out in May 2017. Sign up for my newsletter to get all the latest news and sale announcements:

  http://www.molly-okeefe.com/subscribe/

  For more fun join my Facebook Group O’Keefe’s Keepers – for awesome author takeovers, free books and special giveaways:

  https://www.facebook.com/groups/1657059327869189/

  If you liked Shady Oaks, check out the other books in the series:

  Bad Billionaire by Julie Kriss: http://amzn.to/2fIjREk

  Catch Him by S. Doyle: http://amzn.to/2fRGyp5

  And here’s a special sneek peak of WAIT FOR IT coming on Feb. 28!

  http://amzn.to/2eirhZS

  Excerpt From Wait For It

  In a blistering novel of raw emotion and desire, a tormented woman teaches an alpha male that money can’t fix everything . . . but love can.

  Tiffany: After fighting for a new life, I don’t want to play the victim anymore. However, with three kids to raise, I’m getting desperate enough to make a deal with the devil. My estranged brother-in-law, Blake, says he just wants to help, but he’s been trouble since I met him. I don’t know if I can believe this kinder, gentler Blake, and there’s a friction between us that has turned into the sweetest chemistry. He could be my salvation . . . or my downfall.

  Blake: I haven’t always had Tiffany’s best interests at heart but I’m ready to make up for my sins. Besides, I can’t help admiring her: The girl’s a genuine survivor, tough and lean, with eyes of steel. But the more I get to know Tiffany, the more I want her. Every inch of her. Which means I’m about to make a bad situation a hell of a lot worse.

  Chapter 1

  September

  There’s a sound people make when they break.

  Not the gut-twisting snap of a bone or ligament. But the hiccupping sigh that escapes when the person realizes he is not who he thought he was. He is not as tough. Or as smart. Or as strong or powerful or rich as he wanted to believe.

  I know how to break a man. I’m not proud of it, but it’s a skill. And a useful one in a fight and a business negotiation.

  It’s a pretty simple science, really; find the place hidden and secret, where he hoards all his weaknesses and then you apply the right pressure.

  Finding out the right pressure is the real science – but most people are simple. Money, pride, revenge, violence – those things are predictably effective.

  But then – and this is the hard part - you can’t flinch. You can’t back down. You can’t ease up in the face of their pain. You have to be right there while you break them. Staring into their eyes as you rob them of the comforting lies they tell themselves.

  It’s fine. That’s what I tell people across boardroom tables, when I’ve taken their money and their plans and bent them to my will.

  It’s okay, I whisper to the men whose noses I’ve shattered as I walk them back to their corner of the ring, blinded by blood and tears.

  Breaking people shows them where they belong in the world. It can be comforting. It should be comforting.

  Hierarchy works.

  Survival of the fittest works.

  And that sounds awful. I understand that.

  I am not a hard man. Merely a busy one.

  And very – very – wealthy.

  Outside the Porsche the world is wet and green and I can feel the humidity through my suit despite the air conditioning. I’m heading down into some godforsaken trailer park to meet my brother Phil’s “wife” and “kids.”

  Tiffany is her name and she says she’s been with Phil for over five years and has three children with him.

  My family – Mom and Christine and I - didn’t know anything about her. Tiffany claims she didn’t know anything about us either, but that’s pretty fucking dubious.

  Phil – my brother – was always really good at secrets. He was like a pack rat, keeping everything that mattered hidden away, stored in some dark hole. It was the only thing he was good at. And I smell Phil all over this thing with his “wife”. He wants money. Again. And access to mom. Again.

  Fucking Phil.

  And now this – a wife and kids hidden away in a trailer park. A secret or a lie. I wasn’t sure and I didn’t care.

  They were not getting close to my mother.

  If I had to break this woman into a thousand pieces – I would.

  I pulled into the trailer park, full of sagging trailers and scrappy little gardens chocked with dandelions. Kid’s too young to have so much cynicism on their faces watched my car from a teetering jungle gym in the middle of the whole sorry mess.

  Slowly, because the Porsches suspension was an unforgiving thing, I drove up the dirt track until I saw Dylan standing next to a shit box Toyota.

  Dylan was a former driver, bowed out of the life after a crash and fire during a race several years ago. He was my business partner, the gear head behind 989 Engines.

  Closest thing I had to a friend and maybe even a real brother. Which wasn’t saying much these days.

  He’d recently fallen in lust for some woman out here and was now thinking with his dick and not his formidable brain.

  Unfortunate.

  Unfortunate on several fronts, not the least of which was we’d built a new transmission for race cars. And the transmission had some serious applications outside of NASCAR. It was a game-changing kind of situation.

  But Dylan couldn’t see past this girl.

  Never would have thought Dylan would be such a cliché.

  I parked the Porsche and got out, buttoning the top button of my suit as I rounded the front of the car. Dylan watched me, the scars on his face pulling tight as he squinted into the sun.

  “You’re not going to be a dick, are you?” he asked.

  “No. Where is she?”

  “In the trailer with Annie.” He pointed to the old RV that had been put up on blocks. I had never seen anything quite so ugly.

  “Just,” Dylan said, “try and-“

  “What?”

  “Be…kind.”

  I laughed. Right. Kind.

  Because kindness was such an effective force in this world. Just ask those suspicious kids eyeing my car.

  The ground was spongy from a recent rain and I dodged a puddle walking up to the metal steps of the RV. I didn’t bother to knock, just opened t
he aluminum door and ducked my head so I could step inside the dim trailer.

  One woman, thin with hacked off white-blonde hair stood up to greet me like this was a dinner party she was hosting.

  I’d put money on this being Annie, Dylan’s obsession. She reeked of hope.

  And I did not see the appeal.

  “Hi,” she said, sounding far too chipper. The girl was nervous. I tucked that little ace up my sleeve.

  “You must be Annie,” I said with a soft voice and plenty of charm. “You are as lovely as Dylan said.”

  She blushed and ducked her head, an awkward Disney princess. I wanted to tell her to be careful. To stop showing me quite so much; her nerves and her self-doubt.

  “Would you like some tea?” she asked.

  “No, thank you.”

  “I’m Tiffany.” The other woman came to her feet.

  Shit. She was young. Twenty-five maybe. She was tall, nearly to my shoulders which was not insignificant. She wasn’t as thin as Annie, but she had a hard look about her, which wasn’t at all surprising. Any time with Phil would file you down to an edge.

  She wore a little make-up, blush that stood out on her very pale cheeks. A pink tee shirt tucked into a pair of khaki shorts, made her seem young. Not childish. She wasn’t a child. She was just…young.

  Her eyes were surprising, though. The color of a storm. And sharp enough to pierce metal.

  Tiffany of the sharp eyes and brass balls held out her hand for me to shake.

  I took my time, like I was assessing her for contagions, but finally slipped my hand over hers and shook it.

  Her palm was damp with sweat.

  “My brother’s secret wife.” I made it a joke, like we were all in on this together but Tiffany’s eyes narrowed.

  “And you are my husband’s secret brother,” she said back. “Well, my soon-to-be ex, I suppose.”

  “Right.” I nodded like she’d gotten the test right. “Where are your kids?”

  “Don’t worry about my kids,” she snapped, hard and fast. And if I was ever going to break her – she just told me where to apply pressure.