by Emma Hart
And I had absolutely no idea how to handle it.
***
I knew how I was going to handle it.
I was going to pull up my big girl panties and be a civil human being.
I’d been over it a thousand times inside my mind during the eight hours the store had been open. I’d mentally worked over just about every feeling I had toward Mason Black, and being a nice person was the only way I would be able to move past it.
All right, I’d also been on Pinterest and Instagram for some of those ‘be the bigger person’ quote-type things, but I digress.
He was my neighbor. He’d bought the house. I had no intention of moving, and I assumed he didn’t either. It was the one thing in my life I was going to admit was a coincidence—we had no connections. There was no way he’d hunted me down, and even if he did, he had an entire life that I wasn’t a part of.
That I’d never been a part of.
That’s right, world. Imogen Anderson was pulling her stubborn head out of her ass and being an adult.
I was going to start off my new leaf by delivering him something nice. Since my grandma and her erotic book club had the baked goods covered, I was opting for the thing that would make any man smile:
Beer.
Me naked wasn’t an option, although it wasn’t exactly a bad sight, to be perfectly honest. Although it did depend on how many baked goods I had eaten.
Anyway. Back to my point.
I locked the store and took the day’s takings from the register. A lot of the customers were elderly and still preferred to pay in cash, which meant an almost daily stop at the bank. As soon as I’d done that to deposit the cash in the business account, I headed across town to the liquor store for beer.
I was taking a trip down memory lane with this one. I knew his favorite beer from college and I knew our local store stocked it, so I was hoping that he still liked it.
I was also grabbing a bottle of Jack Daniels, because, well, I liked to have a backup plan. And if he didn’t take the Jack, I knew the OAP book club would happily make use of it later in the week.
Not that anyone needed them after Jack Daniels, but I was willing to take the risk.
“Hello, Imogen, dear.” Mrs. Henderson took the bottle from the belt. “Are you stocking up for the book club?”
“No, ma’am,” I replied. “Just a gift for a friend.”
She scanned the beer. “That nice gentleman who moved in next door?”
I smiled tightly. “No.” The lie rolled smoothly from my tongue. The last thing I needed was the local grapevine to know I was taking the ‘nice gentleman’ from next door alcohol. They’d be marrying me off in seconds.
“Right-o,” she sang, giving me my total right after. I paid with some of the cash I’d swiped from the register—it was my business, okay?—and took my alcohol out to the car.
I really should have bought wine.
I eyed the store. Did I really want to go back in there?
No, because then I’d be accused of being a drunk.
God, wasn’t living in a small town fantastic?
I set the alcohol on the front seat and got into the car. After waiting for three of the world’s slowest drivers to pass and park, I pulled out of my parking space and made my way back across town, away from Main Street, and toward home.
It was late enough that all the roads were quiet—not that they ever really got going—and my mind whirred the entire time. What was I supposed to say to Mason?
Here’s alcohol, let’s be friends.
Sorry, I was a bit of a bitch, here’s some booze.
Wanna get drunk?
Yeah. No. Not the last one. That was how the whole shebang had started in the first place.
Drinking was bad.
She said with a six-pack of beer and liquor next to her.
Whatever.
I had no idea what to say to Mason, and that was the long and short of it.
The closer I got to his house, the more obvious it became that I had to wing it.
God, I was going to have to wing it, wasn’t I?
See, if I were a smarter woman, I’d have been nice to him the first time I’d seen him. In all honesty, I’d been too shaken and let my emotions overrule my common sense, but now, it was different.
Imogen Anderson was going to be a slave to her common sense. Amen. Blessed be. Hallelujah.
Did you end a prayer with hallelujah?
God only knew.
I didn’t. I really had to get to church once in a while. Not that Grandma and her band of merry erotica-philes ever went.
The church would go up in flames if Grandma, Kathleen, Evelyn, and Lillian stepped foot inside one.
If anyone had the devil in them, it was those four.
I pulled into the driveway outside my house and frowned. The mailbox was half-open with a brown package sticking out, and I groaned as I got out of the car. I’d told the mailman a thousand times to leave it on the porch if it didn’t fit in the mailbox.
Ugh.
I pulled the package from the mailbox and looked at the name. It was for Grandma, and a shake confirmed it rattled.
I swear if it was Viagra…
Shaking my head, I tossed it into my car where it bounced off the stick onto the floor and turned back to the mailbox. Grandma hadn’t checked it so there were probably three days of mail in there.
I pulled it open and peered inside.
Fear wracked my body.
The biggest scream I’ve ever screamed left my body, and I staggered back into my car where I almost fell into my wing mirror. The front door swung open, and Grandma hobbled out, a large kitchen knife in her hand.
“What’s going on? Who’s there? I’ll get you!” she yelled. She scanned the street until her eyes landed on me. “Was that you making that ungodly noise?”
Swallowing, I nodded. “Spider.” I pointed at the mailbox. “Big spider.”
Grandma huffed. She tossed the knife onto the porch like it was the sink and made her way down to me with a series of mutters that I was pretty sure complained about how much of a wimp I was.
This, from the woman who couldn’t leave the house with mascara.
I was pretty sure spiders eclipsed that fear.
Grandma shoved her way to the mailbox and shoved her hand in it, leaning on her cane. A chortle accompanied a sweeping movement of her yanking a huge spider out of the mailbox, and I jumped so high I was almost sitting on top of my Mazda.
“It’s a rubber spider, you pussy.” Grandma laughed, poking it with her stick. “But do that again. I want to get the camcorder to video it.”
My nostrils flared. “You can call me a pussy but don’t know we don’t use camcorders anymore? I don’t know how I live with you.”
“I pay you rent.”
“No, you don’t.”
“All right, I garden.”
“Totally comparable. There’s a package for you in my car.” I motioned to the vehicle and moved for the rubber spider. “Did you do this?”
She balked. “When do I have the time to get a rubber spider?”
“You have the time to shop online.”
“Those are my vitamins!”
I stared at her for a moment. Her expression didn’t change, and I reluctantly backed down. “Fine. But who the hell would do this? It has to be someone who knows I’m scar—”
Son of a bitch.
“Imogen?” Grandma called. “Are you okay?”
“Mason!” I yelled, the rubber spider slapping against my leg as I stormed down his driveway. “I know you did this, you asshole!”
“Imogen!”
I ignored her and marched right up to his front door, banging on it with my fist. After several quick thumps, I resorted to extra loud bangs at a slower pace until the door swung open and a very wet-looking man answered the door.
Mason clutched a towel at his waist and rubbed his hand down his face. “Are we being bombed?”
“What?”
“Is the street being bombed?”
“No.”
“Then why are you hammering at my door like the worst burglar ever?”
I blinked at him. Honestly, it was a little hard to ignore the fact he was tall, tanned, shirtless, and gripping a My Little Pony towel around his waist.
I didn’t know what was more distracting.
“You did this!” I held up the rubber tarantula. “You put this in my mailbox.”
He looked at the offending fake arachnid in my hand and quirked an eyebrow. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You put this in my mailbox! You know I’m terrified of spiders! I about had a heart attack just now, Mason!”
“Immy—”
“Imogen!”
“Imogen,” he continued, smirking. “I didn’t put the spider in your mailbox.”
“You damn well did and you know it,” I snapped, waving it so the legs slapped against his bare chest. “You put one of these in my bag when we were in college—and under my pillow! It’s your trademark move!”
He leaned against the doorframe and folded his arms across his tanned, muscular chest, apparently no longer bothered about potentially flashing the entire neighborhood. His eyes danced with amusement, and with a tiny shake of his head, he said, “I didn’t do it.”
“That’s what you said when you put a rubber snake in my underwear drawer!” I shoved the spider at his chest and let go. He didn’t bother to grab it, so it splatted onto his doorstep. “I’m not letting this go, Black.”
“I didn’t do it!”
“You can shove your lies!” I stabbed a finger at him and backed up his path. “I’m coming for you. You’ve done it now. It’s on.”
He laughed, shaking his head again. “I haven’t done anything. I’m telling you, it’s all in your head.”
“Is that a rubber spider on your doorstep?”
“Yes.”
“Then it’s not in my head.” I gave him my best glare as I stepped onto his sidewalk. “Watch your back, Mason. If you thought our prank wars in college were something, you have no idea what I’m capable of now.”
“You burn toast!” Grandma hollered from the front porch, hugging the bottle of Jack Daniels she’d apparently spirited from my car.
“Only when you turn the toaster up!” I yelled back, then paused, briefly turning my attention back to Mason. “I’m not done with you!”
“Now, those are some words I can get behind.” His smirk pulled his cheek right up, showing the shadow of a dimple on his left cheek.
My nostrils flared, but I didn’t have a response for him. Not even I was quick enough to think up something that would be smart enough, so I simply ignored it and turned to my car. I grabbed his beer—or what was his beer—from it and marched up to the house with it.
“C’mon, Grandma. Let’s get drunk.” I shot a pointed look toward Mason, who was still standing in his doorway. He was now grabbing his towel again and was peering over at us.
“Yahoo!” Grandma cheered. “Let’s get drunk and think about how we can remove his ball hair in his sleep!”
“That—” I stopped because my protestation was useless.
She’d already gone inside, hugging her bottle of Jack, wondering out loud how much Nair hair removal cream she’d need for a ballsac.
Yep.
She hadn’t even opened the bottle yet, and I was already regretting not hiding it under the seats.
CHAPTER FIVE – IMMY
Bombs Away
“What on Earth are you doing?”
I looked up from the table where I was using a funnel to get flour into water balloons. “Making flour bombs.”
Hannah flicked her brunette curls over her shoulder. “As you do. What for?”
“My neighbor.”
“What did Alistair do to you?”
I peered at her through my eyelashes, unamused. “Not Alistair. I have nothing against him, except that he’s forty-five and living in his mom’s basement.”
“Oh. You’re talking about Mr. Hottie Daddy.”
“Don’t ever call him that again.”
“He’s hot and he’s a daddy. What’s the issue?”
“How’s your hot neighbor again?”
She groaned, slumping against the counter. She passed me the flour when I motioned for it. “Isaac is great. Takes out my trash if I forget. Waters my plants when I go on vacation. Otherwise, I’m not sure he even knows I exist.”
“You need a hobby that doesn’t include mooning over your hot British neighbor.”
“Says the one filling up water balloons with flour to throw at her own hot neighbor.” She took the flour bomb I handed her and tied it off.
“He put a rubber spider in the mailbox and about gave me a heart attack. He deserves to be flour-bombed.”
“Didn’t he do that in college?”
“Mm-hmm. He said it wasn’t him, but that’s what he said when I found one in my panty-drawer.”
“I remember that. You screamed so loud you woke the dead.”
“It wasn’t that loud.” Except it was. It really, really was.
I’d only wanted panties.
Not a heart attack.
“So what are you going to do? Throw these out of the window whenever you see him?”
I handed her another balloon to tie off. “Well, I’m not going to block his exhaust pipe with them, am I, genius?”
“That would be a hell of an explosion.” She grabbed a cloth and wiped flour from the counter right as the door opened.
Two old ladies I knew lived at the senior center waddled in, their fabric shopping bags slung over their hunched shoulders. They beelined for the knitting yarn as their carer, Melissa, ran in before the door could fully shut behind her.
“God, they’re fast.” She blew out a long breath and frowned when she saw what I was working on. “Is that for a class?”
“It’s for a kind of lesson,” I replied vaguely. I didn’t need everyone knowing what I was going to do to Mason. “How are the ladies today?”
“As sticky-fingered as ever,” she answered brightly. “But that’s what I’m here for.”
I grinned. Marsha and Constantine were almost ninety and both had been battling dementia for almost as long as I could remember. Their weekly visits to the store were a point of contention because they almost always tried to leave without paying for something.
It wasn’t their fault. They simply forgot.
“I better get to them,” Melissa said when there was a clatter of what sounded a lot like knitting needles to the floor. “Oh, Immy? If you’re using those to teach a lesson to someone, I’ve always had great success with throwing a water balloon first.” She winked and disappeared to where the ladies could be heard fussing about the mess.
Hannah turned to me. “Water first. That’s genius.”
I shoved a handful at her. “Get filling. I have taking over the world to do.”
“I’m not sure this counts as taking over the world, Immy.”
“Do you want me to flour bomb your car?”
“I don’t know how I put up with you,” she muttered, grabbing the empty balloons.
“You don’t have a choice,” I called as she walked into the back room. “We share DNA!”
“Unfortunately!”
Yeah, for me.
***
My bedroom gave me the perfect vantage point to throw water and flour bombs at Mason’s car.
This wasn’t mature at all. I wasn’t going to pretend this was a remotely adult thing for me to do, but I was going to enjoy every second of it.
The truth was, I knew Mason would be expecting this. Flour bombs had always been my chosen method of retaliation, and I’d once gotten him on his way to class. He hadn’t had time to go back to his dorm and get changed, so he’d spent the entire lecture looking like Jack Frost had taken a huge, snowy shit on him.
Flour was apparently difficult to remove from your clothing.
I wasn’t aiming for his clothing, though. I was aiming for his car. I was going to sludge the shit out of it with my water and flour bombs.
The problem was I had to get the flour to hit immediately after the water. I didn’t exactly always have the best aim, but Mason would know exactly what I was doing the moment he heard the water bomb explode on his car.
I’d also watched him earlier like a little stalker to make sure he didn’t have his daughter with him. The last thing I wanted to do was accidentally hit that sweet girl in the process of pissing off her dad.
I did have a heart.
Somewhere.
It was buried under my inner bitch. I was pretty sure my inner bitch ate my heart for breakfast, to be perfectly honest with you.
I pushed my window open to see how far I could lean out of it. Far enough to get a good swing on the bomb and throw it with enough force for it to break.
That’d do.
I grabbed one of the water bombs in my right hand and took a flour one with my left. I was going to do this, and I was going to do it right.
I drew in a deep breath and focused on the car. It was a nice car. Shiny. Probably new.
Not for much longer.
I threw the water bomb with all my might. It was a dud and didn’t break on impact, so I muttered a cuss word and tried again with a second.
It hit the back of the roof, exploding all across his car. The late afternoon sun glinted off the water that was already beading on the vehicle, and I quickly switched to the flour bomb and did the same.
Unfortunately for me, Mason was in my way.
Fortunately for me, my aim was spot on, and I hit him on the back of the head, covering him—and the car—with flour.
It could have been worse.
I clapped my hands over my mouth and dipped down, crouching beneath the window. Ridiculous. He already knew it would be me.
That was what I got for using my signature move.
Also, that thump on the head probably hurt a little.
“Imogen!” His voice carried up to the open window. “You’re the worst hider ever!”
All right. I was.
I peeked up over the window ledge and peered down at him.
He was not happy.
