Love Hacked

by Penny Reid

  Department of Health and Human Services; Foster Care Statistics 2012; published report 2013

  Child Welfare League of America

  Courtney M., and Piliavin, I. (1998). Foster youth transitions to adulthood: Outcomes 12 to 18 months after leaving out-of-home care. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin.

  Roman, N.P. & Wolfe, N. (1995). Web of failure: The relationship between foster care and homelessness. Washington, DC: National Alliance to End Homelessness.

  Reilly, T. (2003). Transitions from care: status and outcomes of youth who age out of foster care. Child Welfare, 82, 727-746.

  McMillen, C., Auslander, W., Elze, D., White, T. & Thompson, R. (2003). Educational experiences and aspirations of older youth in foster care. Child Welfare, 82, 475-495.

  Assessing Restrictiveness: A Closer Look at the Foster Care Placements and Perceptions of Youth With and Without Disabilities Aging Out of Care; Schmidt J, Cunningham M, Dalton LD, Powers LE, Geenen S, Orozco CG; other members of the Research Consortium to Increase the Success of Youth in Foster Care; J Public Child Welf. 2013;7(5):586-609.

  Long-term depression and suicidal ideation outcomes subsequent to emancipation from foster care: Pathways to psychiatric risk in the Métis population; Kaspar V.; Psychiatry Res. 2014 Feb 28;215(2):347-54. doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2013.09.003. Epub 2013 Dec 25.

  Youth transitioning out of foster care: an evaluation of a Supplemental Security Income policy change.; King L, Rukh-Kamaa A.; Soc Secur Bull. 2013;73(3):53-7.

  Family Histories and Multiple Transitions Among Homeless Young Adults: Pathways to Homelessness.; Tyler KA, Schmitz RM.; Child Youth Serv Rev. 2013 Oct;35(10):1719-1726.

  German words/phrases: I love the German language because it has THE BEST descriptive words. They’re so efficient, yet so colorful—just like Germans!

  Shitzterhozen = Shitpants

  Kummerspeck = (literally) Greif Bacon

  der Rüssel = The trunk (which I am given to understand is a naughty way to refer to an impressively sized penis)

  Ideenentgleisung = Idea derailment

  I had quite a few more I wanted to use, but didn’t want them to take over the book.

  Acknowledgements

  I always have a lot of people to thank!

  It is fitting that I thank my husband first. He gave me the idea (really, it was his idea) to incorporate bitcoins into the story. I knew I wanted Alex to be a genius hacker, but my husband brought up the idea of using bitcoins.

  I also want to thank Karen for reading (and reading and reading and reading) this book (and all my other books) as they are written. Thank you for your unfailing support. You are the best!

  Thank you to all my BETA readers—Heather, Jexa, Shirra, Kristi, April, Laura, Silvia, and Angie. You took a 95k word novel and helped me turn that poo into a diamond. I am so proud of this book, and your thoughtful suggestions made all the difference.

  Thank you to my editor, Janet Angelo of IndieGo Publishing. If my BETA readers helped me metamorphosize poo into a diamond, you cut the diamond into its beautiful shape.

  Thank you to my proofreader Carolyn for putting the final shine on this baby. Your patience amazes me. Especially since I know I’m incredibly annoying.

  Big thanks to the indie author community (especially Penny Watson, CC Wood, Renée Carlino, and Daisy Prescott) and the 101 ladies (Carey Heywood, Kimberly Knight, TK Rapp, RS Grey, Mia Sheridan, and the incomparable Belle Aurora) for creating a welcoming community for writers. Between the memes, publishing statistics, knowledge sharing, and shirtless guy pictures—you give me a safe haven within the shark-infested waters of the internet.

  Thank you SO MUCH to all the bloggers who have read and reviewed my books, or even included my books in a list. Without blogs like Smexybooks, Maryse’s Book Blog, Ana’s Attic Book Blog, FTLOB, Penny for my Thoughts, Page Trotters, Back off my Books, Knock Your Books Off, and Miss Construed (and so many others), no one would know anything about my work. Thank you for sharing the love and getting the word out.

  Last, but not least, thank you to my readers!! If not for you I wouldn’t have continued to write for Janie’s knitting group and we would have missed out on meeting Elizabeth and Sandra (not to mention Nico and Alex). Thank you for your love and support.

  Most of all, thank you—all of you—for your friendship.

  Sincerely, Penny

  Other books by Penny Reid

  Knitting in the City Series

  Neanderthal Seeks Human: A Smart Romance (#1)

  Neanderthal Marries Human: A Smarter Romance (sequel, coming June 2014)

  Friends without Benefits: An Unrequited Romance (#2)

  Love Hacked: A Reluctant Romance (#3)

  Beauty and the Mustache: An Educated Romance (#4, coming September 2014)

  Tattooed Dots

  By Kimberly Knight

  Prologue

  Easton

  The moment I held my beautiful baby girl, Cheyenne, in my arms five years ago, I swore to myself that I would never let anything happen to her. Her mom, Dana, and I married right out of high school. We had no idea what we were getting into, and then before I knew it, she was pregnant with Cheyenne. When Dana held her hand out with the pregnancy test, smiling and jumping for joy, I thought nothing could go wrong in my world. I was doing what I thought we were supposed to do: marriage, babies, forever.

  We were high school sweethearts. Now those high school sweethearts sit at two separate wood tables inside a courtroom, awaiting a judge to tell me how much I owe the bitch who gave me the greatest gift I never realized I wanted or needed.

  We had been sitting in the courtroom for five days straight. We didn't have much to fight over, but the one thing I wouldn't budge on was my daughter. Dana was trying to do everything in her power to get full custody. She even went so far as to have her attorney request that the judge order a drug test for me.

  Of course, the drug test came back negative. I hadn't smoked weed or done anything else but drink since before the bitch was pregnant. Now as the trial was coming to an end, my nerves were running through me, and I wanted to do nothing but roll a fat one and blow the smoke in her cunt face.

  Over the last year of our rocky marriage, Dana acted like an angel and painted me as the bad guy. We used to smoke up after the high school Friday night football games when we would party with the rest of the school. We didn't stop smoking because it was bad for us; we quit because we were poor and needed all our extra cash to eat, especially since we were kids playing house with an extra mouth to feed in less than nine months.

  The day Dana told me she was pregnant, I answered an ad for a shoot and started my modeling career. I'm not gonna lie and tell you that we are only getting divorced because of Dana and her nagging ways. I'll tell you the truth: I cheated on her repeatedly with whores. It was so easy when all that the whores saw was a pretty face and a nice body, and Dana stayed home to take care of Cheyenne.

  Part of me regrets the cheating aspect of my marriage, but part of me is relieved. We married so young, and I couldn't imagine spending my whole life with a nagging, screaming bitch of a wife. Now she sits to the right of me, tapping her French manicured nails on the table, and all I want to do is walk over there and rip them off her fucking fingers.

  I know she is doing it to get under my skin. This is her last slap in my face, because she knows she is not getting full custody of Cheyenne. Hell would freeze over before I’d let some judge rip my heart from my chest and hand it to Dana on a silver platter.

  I looked at the clock as it ticked, second by second, minute by minute, and I heard words spoken, but I wasn't paying attention. The trial had already dragged on for a week because of all the character witnesses, a vocational job expert testifying and our attorneys building our cases. Dana was playing dirty and so was I. If she wanted to pretend I was doing drugs in front of Cheyenne, then she needed to get a job. No more supporting her ass.

  Of course, Dana didn't want a job. She wanted to live off m
y gigs and the work I did for her father at his landscaping business. As soon as the trial was over and the judge issued his order, I was quitting that fucking job. The less she knew about my life, the better. I didn't need her father bossing me around and then reporting my every action back to her. Plus, it would be less spousal support that I would owe her.

  I made enough modeling to support my baby girl, and that was all I cared about. Dana’s father, Bill, paid too little for me to want to stick around and work for him. If my gigs started to slow down, I would find another backbreaking job.

  “Monday you're going to need to start preparing something to tell the judge I have less income,” I leaned over and whispered to my attorney as I remembered I was quitting.

  “Why?” she whispered back.

  Yes, I had a female attorney, and she was smokin', too. I initially hired Allison because I knew Dana would think I was fucking her. Okay, I was fucking her, but we were exchanging services. I gave her multiple mind-blowing orgasms, and she gave me discounted legal advice and representation.

  Alright, alright, we were more than fucking. I would buy her a meal or two so she thought we were dating. Plus, she was a kickass attorney, and I loved watching her toned, lightly tanned legs walk in front of the table in her skirt while she examined a witness or presented evidence to the judge.

  “I'm quitting Parker & Sons,” I replied, leaning closer to smell her perfume that would linger on me after we had sex.

  “You're what?” she whispered, eyes wide with confusion.

  “I'll tell you when this shit is over,” I whispered back, looking over her shoulder to see Dana staring at us. Just to dig at her more, I placed my hand on Allison's thigh, which was in plain view of Dana's evil eye, and inched it up between Allison’s legs. Allison grabbed my hand, gave me a stern look and nudged her head towards the judge. “What?” I asked with a wicked grin on my face.

  Fuck, I was just trying to make her fantasy come true. One night after a...meeting, she told me that she had always wanted to be laid bare on a table in a courtroom and fucked until she couldn't walk. I guess that fantasy didn't include my soon-to-be ex-wife in the same room or an old judge who was on the verge of dying on his bench.

  After an hour of being questioned in front of the courtroom, Dana’s attorney finally released my best friend, Avery, from the hot seat. Of course, he said nothing that would lead anyone to believe that I was the bad father Dana was accusing me of being.

  Avery and I had been friends far longer than Dana and I had been together. We played baseball together from when we were four until our senior year of high school. He went off to college while Dana and I played house. I knew I should have gone with him and used my baseball scholarship to Florida State instead of listening to Dana tell me she couldn't live without me, but that's a whole different story that I don't want to talk about. Let's just say I wasn't thinking with the right head.

  Fucking bitch.

  “Do you have any more witnesses?” the judge asked the schmuck of an attorney Dana hired.

  “No, your honor.”

  After the judge said some bullshit I didn't listen to, we were dismissed, and I walked with Allison out of the courtroom to the parking garage.

  “Do you want to go get a drink?” she asked, running her finger up my hard chest as she gave me the look I had learned in the last six months meant that she was horny as fuck and wanted my cock.

  “I can't, Babe. Cheyenne's with my parents who flew in from New York, remember?”

  It was my weekend to have Cheyenne, and she hadn’t seen my parents in five months.

  “Can't we make it fast? I’ve been horny ever since your hand ran up my thigh twenty minutes ago.”

  I looked at my dying cell phone and realized the judge had dismissed us thirty minutes before five. “Fine, but you keep the skirt and heels on. You've been shaking that ass at me all day.”

  “I've been shaking my ass at you all week,” she said as she winked.

  My pants became tight at the memory. “I know, and you remember what I did to you two nights ago because of it?”

  “Yes, and I want you to do it to me now,” she said, pulling her medium-length, chestnut brown hair from her ponytail as she stepped closer to me.

  I grabbed a fistful of her hair, pushing her against the trunk of her silver BMW as her back arched backwards, and began kissing her soft throat.

  “Not here, Easton, my peers will...” Allison giggled and squirmed beneath me as my cock grew harder, thinking about tying her up to her headboard—or in this case, her hands tied above her head and attached to the “oh shit” handle in her backseat where she hangs her suit jacket.

  “I knew you were fucking the help,” said the familiar voice of my past that wouldn't leave me alone.

  It felt like my dick wanted to run and hide from that voice; it was like nails on a chalkboard to me now. Allison and I broke apart, and she smoothed her black skirt down as I turned to address my baby momma.

  “The ‘help’, as you so call her, can go all night and not have to stop after one orgasm,” I said, squaring my shoulders, and then belatedly realized Dana was standing there with her father, Bill.

  Fuck me!

  “Oh God,” Allison murmured under her breath.

  “Fuck you, Easton! Why aren't you going home to our daughter? It's so typical of you to pawn her off on your parents.”

  “Dana...” Bill said, trying to pull her towards her car.

  “For your information, I was saying goodbye to my attorney and thanking her for kicking your ass in court.”

  “Enough!” Bill shouted, causing all eyes to turn to him.

  I still feared the man. The first night I met him, when I went to pick Dana up for our first real date, I almost shit my pants. He was very fit for his age after putting in many years of hard physical labor for his landscaping business. When he found out the reason why Dana and I were divorcing, I actually feared for my life.

  “Dana, get your ass in your car and go enjoy your evening. Easton, I'll see you on Monday.”

  “Yeah, about that...”

  “No, I don't want to talk to you anymore today. Go enjoy your time with your parents, and tell them I said hello. We'll talk man-to-man on Monday.”

  I swallowed hard at his words and watched Dana get into my Ford Edge, slamming the door while her father walked to his car. After they both left, I turned back to Allison and said my goodbyes. Even though I wanted to bury my cock into her tight pussy, I wanted to see my daughter more. We made plans for Monday night when Dana would have Cheyenne and my parents would be back in New York.

  After each long-ass day in court, I turned my stereo up, blasting the radio while driving down the freeway to calm my nerves and clear my head, especially before I arrived home to see my baby girl. She had no idea what was going on, other than mommy and daddy didn't live together anymore.

  I'm not sure when Dana and I planned to tell her that we were no longer married, but it wasn't now at five going on six-years-old. She would probably figure it out before we told her anyway since statistically, eighty percent or some shit of her age group had divorced parents. There would probably be a clique of the “broken home” kids and the “happily married parents” kids by the time she was in high school instead of the jocks and nerds I grew up with.

  Ten minutes after I pulled out of the garage of the courthouse, Sorry by Buckcherry started to play through my speakers of my Ford F150. Yeah, I was a model, but not some pansy ass that spent all his money on an expensive car to get chicks. Trust me, chicks dug my truck. Hell, Tim McGraw even had a song about it.

  For a split second, as I listened to the words sung by Buckcherry, I wanted to call Dana and tell her that I was sorry. I really was sorry for cheating on her. I wasn’t happy in our marriage, I was young and had hot girls surrounding me all the time. It wasn’t fair to her and it wasn’t fair to Cheyenne. Dana was my first love, and when I asked her to marry me after our high school won the championship
game my senior year, I meant every word I said to her that night.

  I did want marriage at that time—the kids and the forever. If I could have seen into the future, I would have waited longer before promising her forever. I would have waited until we grew up and lived a little. Made her come with me to college and then start our forever once we graduated.

  It was all my fault that we had a broken home. If I were a better man, things would be different. I’ve done a lot of thinking during our divorce proceedings and I hated that I’ve made her cry. I can’t take any of it back. I’m ashamed of how I treated her and each day, I mask my feelings by being a complete asshole. An asshole to her and an asshole to Cheyenne for not being a better father.

  But, I couldn’t change what happened seven years ago, and now when Buckcherry was turning me into a sap, I dried my misty eyes with my white-collared dress shirt and whispered “sorry” as if she could hear me. I would never say it to Dana's face, though. Not after the hell she put me through, trying to take Cheyenne away from me. But I needed to make this right. I needed to be a better man, a better father, a better person.

  *~*~*

  I pulled into my driveway and didn't see my peanut's face that always greeted me, staring at me through the bay window. I knew I was early getting home, but I didn't think I was that early after being held up by the make-out session with Allison followed by the verbal sparring match with Dana.

  “Easton!” my mother, Jane, exclaimed as she stood up from my couch when I walked in my front door.

  “What's wrong?” I asked, looking at her red, tear-stained face. “Is Chey okay?” I looked around to see only my mother in my living room.

  “Yes, she's in the backyard with your dad.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. I figured Cheyenne would tell my parents that she customarily waited for me at the window, but she also needed play time with my folks, so she had probably just lost track of time.

  “Okay, well, what's wrong? Why are you crying?”