Table of Contents
Prologue
Part I
Epilogue
Part II
Prologue
Epilogue
Part III
Epilogue
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Dirty Cops Next Door
A Menage Romance
Summer Cooper
Copyright © Lovy Books Ltd, 2017
Summer Cooper has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved.
Respective authors own all copyrights not held by the publisher.
Lovy Books Ltd
20-22 Wenlock Road
London N1 7GU
For my neighbors.
Contents
Personal Note
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Author’s Note
Exclusive Novels
I. New Neighbors
II. Brit Next Door
III. Don’t Tell Daddy
Menage Romance Collection
I. Double Billionaire
II. 2 Choices
III. Double Rebound
More Romance Stories
I. Just You
II. Sweet Love
III. Bad Star
IV. Beautiful Stranger
Sneak Peak - Billionaire Hunt
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Summer Cooper
Personal Note
To my lovely readers,
Thank you for choosing to read my book. I really hope that I can bring you some joy with my words.
To extend your reading pleasure, I’ve included a few complimentary stories right after the main story.
Please refer to the Table Of Contents to see what to read next!
Summer Cooper
Discover the wild girl in you.
Prologue
Toni
“David...” I whispered his name against his neck, my stomach a knot of need.
“Shh, Toni. We’re here. Everything is going to be alright now.” His lips met my forehead and I reached to smooth a finger down his cheek.
“I don’t have to be afraid anymore?” I could hear my hesitation, the disbelief that was only a slight echo of the emotions roiling through me.
“Toni...”
Grant’s voice made my head turn. I considered his laughing gray eyes in the half-light from the moon.
“You will always be safe with us.”
His fingers ran down my bare waist, making me shiver as I pressed against David. Need burned through me, stronger, hotter than anything I’d ever felt in my life.
I let the hesitation go. Grant’s lips caught mine, and David’s hands gripped my waist.
I could feel them, so hot against me, and I reached for Grant as David pulled me closer to his body... One more moment, only one, and I would be theirs.
If only that grating noise would go away.
1
Toni
I breathed deeply as I applied a final coat of mascara and tried to chase away the memory of my dream. My new neighbors had become a fixture in my dreams, despite my efforts to block them by falling asleep listening to old radio mystery programs. They’d appeared in my dreams ever since they’d helped me move into my new house. I pushed the memory away and re-focused on my reflection in the mirror.
“You’ve got this, you can do it. You’re a strong person.” I looked at myself in the antique oak mirror over my dresser and brushed a lock of light brown hair away from my face. “New Hope is not Roanoke, and it’s sure not anything like working in New York. You can do this.”
This was my new job as a reporter for the New Hope Herald, the local newspaper. With a brand new degree in communications, I’d sent out dozens of applications. The Herald was the only one that had replied. I was happy that even one had responded. It also gave me an opportunity to move my younger brother and me out of the small town we’d been living in over in western Virginia, to a bigger town in central Virginia.
“Hey, Toni, now that you’ve got a job, and you’re over twenty-one, does that mean you’re going to start buying alcohol?” I heard my brother call from the bathroom where he was doing his hair. I swear he takes more time on his hair than I do on mine!
“You know I don’t drink, Eric!” I didn’t tell him that he was the reason I didn’t usually drink. He’d been my responsibility since I’d turned eighteen and I took that very seriously.
“Fine!” I could almost hear his eyes rolling as I strode through my bedroom door. “Don’t forget to eat today; you’ll pass out and that will not look good on your first day at work!”
I rolled my own eyes this time and went down the stairs. I’d managed to rent a house with two floors in a decent neighborhood and was keeping up the payments on my three-year-old car with the advance the paper had given me; the rest I’d spent on Eric’s school clothes.
I looked down at my old skirt suit, bought from a second-hand shop for the graduation I hadn’t been able to go to. Eric had been sick and a two-hour drive to the school where I’d taken online classes just hadn’t been feasible. It was a good school, but I’d needed flexibility and the university had given me that freedom and a degree with a good name on it. I just hadn’t been able to go my own graduation.
As usual, all I could do was breathe deeply and carry on.
The sun had peaked and was lighting the leaves in oranges and yellows outside the window by the time I’d managed to set toast and oatmeal on the table as I waited for Eric. I thought about my coming day as I sipped at my orange juice, the oatmeal already forgotten.
Get Eric to school, meet with my new boss again, and hopefully not make a complete idiot of myself.
“I’m going to see what activities there are at school I can get involved with; that way you don’t have to worry about me being here alone if you have to work late at some point.” Eric sat down in the chair opposite mine, his voice startling me out of my list-making.
“Oh good! How are you going to get home though?” I rubbed at the crease that formed between my eyes when I was confused or concerned, hating that the habit wouldn’t break. I was going to give myself wrinkles at this rate.
“You’d look so much prettier if you’d put a little more makeup on, you know?” Eric said as I smoothed a hand down his bare jaw, his own eyes creased. He was the spitting image of me, after all, only male; it would make sense that he had the same expressions I did.
“I don’t have time for things like that and never have. Besides, it’s silly. If people don’t like the way I look naturally, they can just kiss my…” I stopped as his eyes went wide in gleeful anticipation. He loved it when I cursed, but I trie
d not to. “Behind.”
I didn’t realize how prim I looked as I picked up a piece of toast and ignored his snicker of delight.
“Anyway, how will you get home?” I glued him to his chair with my patented “mom look” and waited.
“I’ll find a ride with another kid or walk. It’s only a couple of miles to the school.” He shrugged as if to say it was no big deal.
He was all the family I had left. It was a big deal to me.
“At least take your bike then; that way it won’t take you as long.” I didn’t try to control him too often, but I did like to maintain some kind of discipline between us, siblings or not.
“Yes, ma’am,” he mumbled, giving me a fake glare with familiar eyes the color of well-worn denim before he grinned. “Does that mean I can ride the bike today?”
He was at that stage where he didn’t want a parental figure anywhere near his school, because it was so… lame was the word I think he used.
“I have to drop off some papers, otherwise I would say yes. I might as well take you.” I gave him a look that said sorry before grabbing the rest of my toast and standing up.
“Come on, let’s get this show on the road before I have a heart attack wondering what’s going to happen today.” I snatched my purse, my laptop bag, and the papers I needed to drop off at the school.
We were silent as I drove my sedan through quiet streets, the congestion only starting as we neared the school on Main Street.
“Look at all the people, Toni!”
Eric hadn’t realized there were so many kids at the school and neither had I.
It seemed like there were about a hundred kids milling around the building, all engaging in a variety of teenage activities, from listening to music on headphones as they sullenly stared out at the people passing by, to the ones sucking face on the lawn as if there were no other people around to witness their young passion. I looked away as we walked into the school, embarrassed for the ones apparently trying to win a kissing competition.
“Good morning, how may I help you?” A woman with garishly dyed red hair and large green glasses stared out from a Dutch door. She leaned on the half of the door that was open, her large frame hiding the other half tucked away behind her.
“I’m Eric Wallace’s sister, Toni Wallace. His guardian. You wanted me to bring these papers in.” I waited for her to take them, thinking that would be the end of it.
“Oh, we’ve been waiting for you. We had some trouble getting Eric’s records from his old school and need you to sign another form. Now, where did I put that…” She wandered off, tapping her chin as she looked around the room filled with three desks and another closed off office.
I started to tap my foot when five minutes passed, watching the lower hand tick around the large clock on the wall. I was going to be late.
“Well, I guess I’ll just have to print it off again!” she said, her mid-western accent flavoring her words. “Oh, here it is in the tray where I left it! Silly me!”
She fluttered her eyelashes as she came back to me and handed me the paper. I tried to hold my temper down and not let it show as I scratched a pen over the paper.
“Is that all? I need to get to work.” I gave her a smile, hoping that was it.
“I think so. We’ll give Eric a guide, just another student to help him find his way around, and send home any other papers we might need you to fill out. Eric’s only going to be a few weeks behind the other students so he should catch up quite quickly. Don’t worry, we’ll take care of your brother. Welcome to New Hope, Ms. Wallace.” She gave me a rather simpering smile before she dismissed me from her mind and turned to Eric.
I didn’t want to interrupt so gave him a wave and left the school. Most of the students were beginning to move into the building, slamming lockers, dropping books, yelling across hallways at each other.
I remembered it all from my own days of quietly wandering the hallways, trying to keep my head down and out of trouble while I finished high school. I left, my heels clicking on the tiles and then thudding as the tiles turned to concrete steps.
I drove the five blocks to the newspaper’s office and pulled in. Taking a deep breath, I grabbed my things, adjusted my hair once more, ignored the flash of my blue eyes, and left my car in the parking lot. Time to face the music, I guess. Prove my writing skills. Or whatever it was they were going to have me doing.
I walked into the building, an old brick-fronted structure with three floors and a basement. I didn’t know which floor I needed to be on! I panicked for a minute before a woman with kind eyes and a laughing smile came my way.
“You must be Toni. I’m Barbara. I’ll be your editor. Let me show you around, okay?” She held her hand out and I took it gratefully, the shake quick, concise, and to the point. I had a feeling her handshake pre-empted much of Barbara’s personality.
“You’ll be working on the second floor, but I’ll show you what’s down here.”
She proceeded to give me the grand tour, showing me the printing room, the break room, and cubicle offices.
It was a large paper for a town, but I knew its readership was spread all over the county.
“So why am I upstairs?” I asked as we left the land of cubicles and headed up to the second floor, which seemed to be nothing more than a long hallway with doors on each side.
“I’m going to be your mentor during your first few months and my office is up here, so I want you close at hand. It’s quieter, and I won’t be far away if you need help. My office is the door just across from this one.”
She opened the door and the sight took my breath away. A wall of glass showcased the town just outside the window. A tall desk, a computer, and a few filing cabinets filled the rest of the room. There was a landline phone, a new smartphone, and a few other devices on the desk. It seemed kind of backward here in that you worked your way out of the cushy office to downstairs where the noisy cubicles were. Odd.
“You’ve already been issued a company phone and a few other things. You know the rules with that equipment, right? Only company business?” She waited until I nodded, her brown eyes still smiling. “Right, well, other than a few bits of paperwork we need to go over, I guess we can get to work.”
She handed me a stack of papers to fill out, mainly insurance forms and company policies, and then sat down with me to discuss my role.
“Right now, we’re going to have you doing small articles, announcements, things like that. As we get to know you and how you write, we’ll move you onto bigger articles. Today, I need you to go to the police station and interview the chief about the policemen’s ball that’s going to be held this weekend. You’ll also need to get an interview with the director of the event, Marsha Johnson. I need that story in the morning. Any questions?”
I’d done an internship with a small paper in my hometown but not one as big as this. I’d expected to be thrown to the wolves, but an article due tomorrow? I’d only been in town for a week, I didn’t even know where the police station was! I glanced at the phone hoping it had some kind of GPS software, or a map at least!
“Don’t panic, the station isn’t hard to find, it’s just down the street here. And Marsha won’t be far away. She’s been hounding the chief all week over last minute details. You might even luck out and get them both at the same time. Oh, one more thing. I’ve programmed all the numbers for people you may need to call whilst working here. You can scroll through and have a look. Are you good?”
“Yeah, I’m, uh, I’m good.” I gave her a smile that I’m certain was a bit watery but held up.
“Good, I like the work you’ve been credited for, Wallace, and you look like a smart woman. We’ll get on as long as you don’t let me down. Okay?”
She was at the door now, her smart, light gray suit clinging to her long legs.
“I hope to keep you a happy lady, Barbara.” I nodded in affirmation, before I went behind my desk and settled into my chair.
I’d sat with her i
n one of the two chairs in front of my desk as we’d gone over the papers and talked. It just hadn’t felt right to sit behind the desk and leave her on that side. She’d given me a pleased smile and got on with it. Now I was behind my desk. My desk! I took a picture of it with my phone, wanting to share it with Eric. He wouldn’t be able to turn his phone on until lunch, our rule, but he’d get a kick out of this too.
Life had been cruel to both of us, and times had been hard, but we had each other. He’d never complained when we had to go without or screamed at me for not being able to buy him expensive shoes. He’d tried to sell his baseball card collection while I was in school so I could buy myself a dress for graduation. I’d finally found one at a consignment shop, but his gesture had simultaneously broken and healed my heart.
My brother and I had a bond many siblings could not and would not share. We’d faced the toughest of times together, and nothing could break that bond. He was always the first one I thought of when something happened, good or bad. I thought of sharing the news when it was good, and how excited he would be, and I tried to protect him and lessen the blow when it was bad. I knew he did the same for me, even at such a young age.
Setting the phone down, I hit a button on the computer screen and sighed, it was an operating system I was familiar with. I began to click on icons and saw there was a note on one side. Apparently, emails had been set up for me with generated passwords. I was to delete the note after putting the passwords somewhere safe. I sent the entire note to myself in an email so I could access it from all of my devices.
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