Tangled Hearts (Passion in Paradise)

by Sarah O'Rourke

  Tangled Hearts

  By Sarah O’Rourke

  Tangled Hearts by Sarah O’Rourke

  Copyright © 2016 by Sarah O’Rourke

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication or cover design artwork may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods in current use or to be developed in the future, without the prior express written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law (US. Copyright Act of 1976).

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and settings are fictitious, and are the sole property of Sarah O’Rourke. Any resemblance to actual events, names, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Any real setting, person, or situation is used in a fictitious manner with literary license.

  This work of fiction is intended for mature audiences.

  It’s a crying shame that we have to be a bit witchy right now, but alas, we’re gonna. Please know that we’re sure you’re a fine, upstanding member of society and that we really like you (more than our shoes, even!), but we like our good name even more. So here’s the deal: If you steal our work, we’ll be forced to pull out the big guns and we’ll sic our Mommas on you. Crazy One’s Momma will hunt you down and make you pay in blood. Crazy Two’s Momma will pray “for” you. And trust us...you won’t win when she goes to the Almighty. And if that doesn’t scare you, please be advised that we have an attorney on retainer who will sue you within an inch of your life. He’s a barracuda and a real pain in the ass (and he’s Crazy Two’s brother-in-law, too...isn’t he just the luckiest person ever??) Don’t copy. Don’t pirate. Don’t steal. Don’t risk it. This is us, being there for you.

  Reach out and touch Sarah! (She loves it...she really, really does!)

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter One: Sanity is a Fragile Thing

  Chapter Two: Sassy, Sweet and Stubborn is not the Sexy Combination I Thought It Would Be

  Chapter Three: Coincidence is Not a Word in Her Vocabulary

  Chapter Four: Two Stalkers, One Bullet

  Chapter Five: Stalkers, Surprises, and Other Hideous Revelations

  Chapter Six: The Belly of a Very Pissed Off Beast

  Chapter Seven: Not a Hearts-and-Flowers-Kind-of-Guy

  Chapter Eight: Inside Voices Are for Parents and Pussies

  Chapter Nine: Heart-to-Heart Chats in the Company of Three of My Favorite Conversationalists: Jim, Jack, And Their Immigrant Friend, Jose Cuervo

  Chapter Ten: Down and Dirty is the Only Way to Roll

  Chapter Eleven: When Fantasy and Reality Collide

  Chapter Twelve: Naughty or Nice and Other Difficult Decisions

  Chapter Thirteen: Holy Holiday Crap and Other Christmas Calamities

  Chapter Fourteen: Hospitals and Hangovers Make Crappy Gifts

  Chapter Fifteen: The Great Slut vs. Whore Debate

  Chapter Sixteen: Naked and Naughty in Nashville

  Chapter Seventeen: When God Gives With BOTH Hands

  Chapter Eighteen: When Cupid Draws Back His Bow… Stop. Drop! And Roll the Hell AWAY!

  Chapter Nineteen: Your Honor, Is It Really Murder If She Had it Coming?

  Chapter Twenty: How to Manage the Macho Masculine Moron

  Chapter Twenty-One: Even Loud-Mouthed Lunatics Need Lovin’ Sometimes

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Everything She Ever Wanted and More

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Hound Dogs, Hillbillies, Hookers, and Hostages

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Bullets and Bombshells

  Chapter Twenty-Five: What a Day! What a Day! What a Dastardly Damn Day!

  Playlist

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One: Sanity is a Fragile Thing

  Sanity was a really funny thing; nobody truly misses it until it’s gone.

  Unfortunately for her, Melody Song Reardon comprehended this simple truth a little too late for it to do her any real good. Live and learn and all that tripe, she thought to herself with an audible sigh.

  Melody couldn’t afford to waste her valuable time being bitter about her delayed insight, though. Nope. That wasn’t her style. She had more important things to do with her energy.

  Like bemoaning the current state of her affairs.

  Sitting in the crowded parking lot of one of the new businesses that seemed to have popped up in the town of Paradise, Tennessee overnight, she stared at the glass door to The Coffee Klatch. Leaning her head against her seat, Melody smiled faintly as she watched another patron slide through the door into the tiny upscale shop. This was exactly the kind of establishment her dearly departed granny would have hated. She would have thought gourmet coffee was a pretentious waste of money, and Melody would have agreed with her. If she wasn’t so desperate to avoid any of the familiar faces of her late granny’s friends this morning, she would have simply gone to the I Don’t Care Café. Sadly, she just couldn’t cope with anyone seeing her this out of sorts.

  Melody gripped her leather steering wheel of her new-to-her silver Nissan Versa with anxious hands while she took a few deep breaths and slowly came to the conclusion that her life had somehow devolved into a chaotic mix of hasty decisions and poor judgments. It was a harsh reality that her own sanity had clearly fled for higher ground without so much as a backward glance or a wave goodbye. It was a hard blow for her to take since she really, really needed to remain rational at this critical juncture in her life. Because as it stood, sweet little Melody Song Reardon was now officially crazier than a crabby cuckoo bird on crack!

  And no, that wasn’t an overly dramatic assessment of her character. It was simply the truth. Crazy did not look good on Melody, and she knew it. That didn’t change the fact that she felt as though she might well be certifiably insane at this point. At the rate her bad luck was running, the men in white coats would be coming with their straightjackets any time now.

  It was okay, she silently comforted herself. This was one of the many benefits of living in the South, after all. Everybody knew that the residents down here put their crazy folks on full front porch display for all the world to see. There was no shame in being what her late granny had often called ‘a little tetched in the head’. At least, this is what she kept telling herself over and over again because if she didn’t tell herself something, it was a sure bet that she was going to go searching for the nearest bridge and proceed to belly flop to an almost certain death since she couldn’t swim a lick. Heaven knew she’d never manage to dive off that metaphorical bridge with anything nearing grace or style. Heck, no. It had been genetically predetermined that Melody would be a klutz for her entire life – no matter how long that life turned out to be.

  She was vaguely aware that her mind was a jumbled mess, her thoughts growing more and more disjointed the longer she sat behind the wheel of her car. Her mental discord was the reason she was sitting in this parking lot; she didn’t trust herself to drive any further until she pulled herself together.

  Swallowing hard, she shook her head as she considered the mess her life had become. She wasn’t sure what demon had possessed her mind and body and convinced her to sink both her inheritance from her granny’s estate and her hard earned, tediously saved nest egg into opening a combination book and knitting supply store in one of the vacant storefronts on the Pa
radise town square, but it had certainly been one strong mother of a spirit. While nobody could deny that the location she’d chosen had been a prime piece of real estate for any new business to nab, Melody – now that she was in her right mind - also knew she was massively unqualified for this kind of thing. She only wished that she’d realized sooner that she was making an emotionally-fueled decision. But no, she’d been too late. She’d done a perfectly convincing job of portraying a sane, sober woman as she’d ignored that gnawing fear in her gut and that sense of doom hanging over her head while she’d met with the her new landlord and his attorney this morning to scribble her name to a year-long lease agreement. Yep, she’d effectively signed her life away for 365 days.

  “Just color me stupid,” she proclaimed out loud as she shifted in her leather seat and thumped her head against the headrest. Biting her lip, she took a shaky breath. “Oh, holy crap! What have I done? I don’t make these kind of choices….take these kind of risks. Brave people do this shit. I’m not brave. Hell, no! I’m boring. I play it safe! I live by a clearly defined set of rules and parameters. I read romances and work crossword puzzles for fun. I leave bungee jumping and mountain climbing to the adrenaline junkies. I avoid risks like I avoid the plague, so when the heck did I decide it’d be a good idea to start playin’ fast and loose with my money and my life? Who am I? Bill Gates?” she whispered shakily as her hands began to sweat and her panic mounted, the heavy weight of what she’d done settling over her like a lead mantle.

  Grabbing her pounding head with one hand, Melody squeezed her eyes closed and willed the Earth to quit spinning at such a breakneck speed. She needed a moment… just a moment to catch up with the rest of the world, and then she’d be good. Or, as close to good as she was likely to get at this critical crossroads in her life.

  This was not supposed to be what her life looked like at thirty years old. Nuh uh. And until recently, she’d been what she considered a normal woman, both physically and emotionally healthy. Melody would readily admit that she wasn’t a model by any stretch of the imagination, but she hadn’t exactly fallen out of the ugly tree either. She was simply a petite woman with looks that leaned toward the ordinary. Standing 5’2” in her socked feet, she knew she was on the short side, but it was rarely a problem for her since she almost never went without heels on her feet. If somebody had asked one of the great poets – and that poet stretched their imagination – they would have said that Melody had eyes the color of rich coffee on a winter morn. Her brother, however, was less kind. He said she had eyes the color of mud. Mel sincerely hoped the folks that wrote her obituary talked to the poets rather than her sibling about her vital statistics when she died.

  Her hair, in her opinion, was by far her most attractive feature, and she’d inherited it from her momma, God rest her sweet soul. Long, curly, and chestnut brown, it fell to mid-back when it was left down and unbound. Her shiny mane tended to be unruly, however, so she often kept it swept up in a high ponytail or in a messy bun on the top of her head. Glancing in her rearview mirror, Melody caught sight of her reflection and was thankful that she’d opted for the ponytail route today. The cold December breeze blowing outside the car would have wreaked havoc on a bun otherwise.

  As for her other physical attributes, she supposed she was okay. Average, she silently amended as her eyes went from the mirror to glance down at the rest of her body. She wasn’t fat, nor was she a bone, and she wasn’t one bit sorry for that. Hunger wasn’t her friend, and she enjoyed eating way too much to worry about a measly few extra pounds hanging around her body. The few additional calories that she regularly indulged in did leave a mark, however. Mainly, they appeared in her chest area. It was a sad, but oddly empowering fact that men’s gazes frequently found their way to her boobs. Between her love of all things edible and the legacy of her late mom’s genes, Melody possessed a set of overly healthy C cups (and by overly healthy, she meant that she should have probably bought the bra she wore in a D cup) that never failed to draw considerable attention. She had a waist that was on the narrow side, but the size of her butt more than made up for that in spades. That hip hop song, ‘Baby Got Back’…some days she was sure it was written with girls like her in mind. Yeah, Melody had suffered through more than one cat call in her younger years (and her not so younger years if yesterday’s trip to the lumber section of the Home Depot was any indication). In her experience, it seemed like both boys and men alike shared the stupid gene that said it was okay to holler at helplessly stacked women carrying around a little extra weight in their boobs and tail.

  All in all, Melody knew she was a whole lot of woman stuffed into a very compact package, but that was okay with her. Good things come in small packages and all that crap, right? She couldn’t complain about her body much because whatever flaws the Lord might or might not have bestowed on her, he gave her one key ingredient that you couldn’t beat.

  Brains.

  Yep, in addition to a shapely rack and a mostly sunny disposition, God in all His infinite wisdom smiled upon her the day she was born and gifted her with the valuable trait of intelligence. In her professional life, she’d exceled, becoming a successful bookkeeper that ran her own accounting service while patiently waiting to say her ‘I do’s’ to the man with whom she thought she’d grow old and die. Now, she just hoped he’d die. A slow, agonizing death, please.

  Oh, yes, she’d toiled away her days working with other people’s money, but she’d been dreaming of the day she’d walk down the aisle to the man she thought would do anything for her. Turns out, though, her fiancé was less concerned about doing for her, and more interested in doing anybody, anytime in any place he and his ho of the moment wanted and in any and every position imaginable. Melody could testify to that. The position in which she’d found her ex-fiancé screwing her matron of honor while desecrating her flawless polished antique mahogany dining room table wasn’t even listed in the Kama Sutra.

  She’d checked. Twice.

  She supposed it wasn’t all bad news. Melody had managed to escape the relationship without any horrible diseases. She was a lucky, lucky girl indeed since she’d spent the better part of five years being fooled by a man she’d never really known at all. So, while she was intelligent, she was also gullible as hell – which could be a deadly combination when a person thought about it. It was sad; while she’d assumed she was living the dream with the man she loved, he had been out and about, nailing any woman with a working woo woo. Like a moron, she’d allowed herself to be completely blinded by his charm and charisma.

  But the blinders were off now, and she was seeing things all too clearly these days.

  She’d been undeniably played for a fool, but never again. Oh, hell to the NO! Never ever a-freaking-gain, dammit. She wasn’t blameless, though. She could see where part of this whole ordeal had been her own fault. She’d allowed herself to fall in a rut, getting entirely too comfortable with her humdrum day to day existence of her life with the man she’d thought she loved. For five years, she’d worked, taking care of her bookkeeping clients with a skilled hand and looking after her fiancé just the way she’d imagined a dutiful girlfriend and fiancée should. While Melody had never been what she’d call ‘over-the-moon-happy’ with her life, she’d been content with the way things had gone for herself in the last few years. She would probably have gone on being obliviously content with the life she’d built with her fiancé until they lowered her casket into the ground if she hadn’t fortuitously walked in on her man banging her best friend (and matron of honor) into their dining room two days before she was supposed to take that long journey down the aisle to her future. In his normal overachieving fashion, the rat bastard she’d been going to marry had managed to effectively screw two women that long ago afternoon – one with his dick and the other one with his deeds.

  The good news was that she’d finally woken up to what an unfaithful letch of a man her ex really was. Seeing him burying his cock in another woman had convinced her of one thin
g. It was time for her to shake the sugar tree and mix things up a whole lot. No one – including her – could deny that it was long past time for her to make some radical changes to her stale, uninteresting life. And that began with cutting the cheating bastard out of her life and getting the hell out of Dodge.

  So, off the heroine of this tale had gone, launching herself into the wild blue yonder… or in her particular case, she’d aimed her car toward Paradise and stepped on the accelerator.

  Lifting her hand off the steering wheel, Melody chuckled at her whimsical thoughts before she began to chew nervously on her thumb nail. Oh, she was aware that it was a nasty habit that she needed to break, but then there were a whole lot of things in her life that needed changing. Nail biting would need to take a number and go to the end of the line. She had a whole host of other things she needed to change first - like getting better taste in men and learning how to attract a quality man. Those were top priorities in her mind.

  It wasn’t like Melody wanted anybody to feel sorry for her. She most certainly did NOT. She hated pity. That was one of the reasons she’d decided to leave Knoxville and the life she’d built there; she couldn’t stand the looks she’d been receiving from all of her friends. God, it’d been humiliating. Especially when she’d figured out that the majority of her so-called pals had known her fiancé was a cheating asshole – well, those friends that hadn’t actually been schtupping her dickhead ex behind her back. She’d found out more than a few of her pals had been the willing recipient of his wayward penis.

  Melody wasn’t a completely hopeless case. She had her strengths and had gotten her fair share of achievements under her belt. After her parents had been killed in a plane crash while they were travelling back from a folk music festival where they had been the featured duo, Melody had decided that she was going to have to find her own way in the world. She’d aced high school, then graduated with honors from the University of Tennessee, attaining her Bachelors of Business Administration with little trouble. From there, she’d done her time in a large CPA firm, then opened and run her own small accounting service just outside of Knoxville, operating it successfully until she’d decided to embark on an altogether different kind of journey. So, really, the upside to her spur of the moment decision to open a totally new kind of business was that she knew what it would take to make a success of it. Now, if only she could explain that to the relentless voice in her head that sounded a lot like her ex-fiancé. But that stupid harping bastard just kept yammering on and on about how a love of books and knitting did not an accomplished businesswoman make.