My Best Friend's Brother: An Enemies-to-Lovers Romance

by Lauren Wood

  “Izzy?”

  I glanced over at Jack, seeing his concern. Oh, God, he’ll drop kick me to the curb if he finds out I’m pregnant. If I am. He doesn’t want the responsibility of a kid any more than I do. “Yeah?”

  “You okay?”

  I nodded. “What time is your physical therapy?”

  He glanced at his watch within his sling. “At three, in half an hour. It’s an hour long session, so I hope you brought a book to read.”

  “I have to run an errand. I’ll do that while you’re in there.”

  “Just be careful.”

  I should have been careful, but I wasn’t. Not on the pill and screwing bareback. Shit, what a fucking mess.

  Hardly able to focus on my work until it was time to drive him to his physical therapy, I fretted and worried. Even while driving, I was distracted and didn’t bother to keep a watch for Andrews. Fortunately, he didn’t show up, and I dropped Jack off at the small office building that held the physical therapist’s office.

  He leaned in the Mustang’s window. “You’re awfully quiet.”

  “Just worried.” I tried to smile. Well, it’s not a lie. I’m just not telling him what I happened to be worrying about.

  “It’ll be all right, Izzy.”

  No, it won’t be if I’m pregnant. It’ll be downright terrible.

  “I’ll pick you up in an hour.”

  I watched him walk into the building and disappear behind the doors. Driving away, I headed to the nearest drugstore. Now thinking to keep a watch for Andrews, I saw nothing out of the ordinary as I parked in the lot and went into the store. I found the home pregnancy tests right away, and bought one, half fearing the clerk might be someone I knew. The woman was older and paid me no attention at all as she rang up my purchase.

  Tucking the test into my purse, I went back to the physical therapy building to wait for Jack. I had lots of time to stare into a very bleak future as a single mother if I was indeed carrying Jack’s baby. I can’t tell him, nor can I tell Nellie. She’ll kill me for being stupid, and Jack will fire me and never want to see me again. Oh, God, what am I going to do?

  Jack’s expression told me how hurt he was when I dropped him off at his house after work. “I’ll be at Nellie’s,” I said, knowing the minute I got there I’d be in the bathroom peeing on a strip of cardboard. And if the test was positive – well, I didn’t want to be around Jack when that moment came.

  I’d never be able to conceal my terror from him. I daresay I wouldn’t be able to keep it from Nellie, either, but she wouldn’t be home from work until late. By then, I hoped to have my fears under control by then. “I’ll pick you up in the morning.”

  “Izzy, something’s wrong.” Jack’s face and eyes pleaded with me. “I can see there is. Please talk to me.”

  “I can’t, Jack. Not yet anyway.”

  While that in itself told him something was wrong, I waved at him and drove away before he could say more. I looked in the mirror and saw him standing on the sidewalk, watching me depart. My panic rose now that I was alone, the knowledge that Jack would dump me just when I was falling in love with him piercing my heart like a knife.

  “He can’t be responsible for a kid, his business is just starting out. Crap, I’m not even certain he’s falling in love with me. He might be using me just as I always suspected he would if I gave him the chance.”

  After locking the door to Nellie’s house, and checking through the windows for any evidence of Andrews, I took the test into the bathroom with me. My heart raced as I read the instructions, and I had to read them twice in my fear. Squatting over the toilet, I peed on the strip, then set it by to wait the instructed time.

  During that long agonizing wait, I envisioned being forced to move in with my horrible mother, listening to her tell me what a bad child I was and the irresponsible adult I became. I had no other family to turn to. Nellie might get past her initial anger and help me with the baby, but how can I earn a living while caring for an infant?

  I shuddered as I stared at the innocuous strip. The test was positive.

  Oh, my God, my life is over.

  16

  Jack

  Izzy wasn’t answering her phone.

  Worry gnawed at my gut. Clearly something was wrong, but outside of the problem posed by Andrews, I didn’t know what. Like a switch, Izzy’s normally cheerful face had changed into a tight mask, her eyes looked haunted. Even her smile appeared fake.

  I sat on my couch to watch television, a beer in my hand. I scarcely paid attention to the game I found on ESPN, hardly tasted the beer, and didn’t feel hungry enough to eat dinner. My thoughts danced between Izzy, Andrews, and my physical therapist.

  If I didn’t have enough to worry about, the person who would be coaxing my wounded muscles into staying in shape was none other than Charlene Willis, a cheerleader from our high school. I had banged her regularly for three months before I moved on to another chick. Had Charlene married and forgotten me, there would be little except laughs and friendship between us now.

  I instantly recognized the hungry look in her eyes when she saw who her patient was. Charlene hugged me, expressed sorrow in that I was shot, then all but stripped me naked with her eyes. Though she had gained some weight over the years, she was still pretty in a classical sort of way.

  “Are you married?” I’d asked her as she put me through painful exercises.

  “No. Lift your arm higher.”

  “That hurts.”

  Charlene took my arm in her hands and helped me, yet there was something too familiar and less professional in her manner. And in how she made certain that her boobs pressed suggestively against my back. If Izzy weren’t so important to me, I might have taken Charlene up on her nonverbal offer.

  “Are you married?” she asked, putting my arm through various exercises that had me sweating profusely.

  “No.” I left it at that, as it was none of her business that I was seeing Izzy, and I didn’t want to get into long explanations of her stalker and his attempt to take me out of Izzy’s picture. In addition, if I remembered rightly, Izzy and Charlene had been bitter enemies at school.

  As the torment went on for the full hour, I felt irritation and no little anger when she persisted in touching me in ways that left little doubt she wanted to pick up where we had left off in school. If she wasn’t the only physical therapist in Hattiesburg, I’d have walked out and not gone back. The nearest therapist was at the hospital, twenty-five miles away. Then I resolved to not go back. I wasn’t interested in Charlene or her libido.

  Time to do my own exercises.

  Now, as I watched the game, I flexed my very sore arm, and pondered the Charlene I knew then and the one now. I didn’t need the hassle, and the exercises she showed me were easy enough. Picking up the phone, I tried Izzy again, and once again got nothing except her voice inviting me to leave a message. With a temperamental snarl, I almost threw the phone across the room, but found my better sense before I did.

  Without my truck, I couldn’t drive over to Nell’s and confront Izzy. There was nothing even remotely like a taxi service in this small town, either. Nell couldn’t answer her phone while she was at her job, and she wouldn’t be off until late. Stewing, I tried to tell myself that whatever had Izzy so uptight was really none of my business.

  She doesn’t have to tell you what’s bothering her. It’s probably her mother. That old bat must have called Izzy and told what a terrible person she was. I recalled how often Izzy was at our house because her mother was disinclined to feed her. The woman had Izzy thinking she was worthless as a child, and no doubt still tried to make her feel that way.

  The memory calmed me. I told myself that when Izzy was ready to talk, she would. She never found it easy to talk about her mom, even when she was a kid. As an adult, Izzy believed she needed to carry the burden of her mother’s verbal abuse alone and silent.

  I hope I can change that. I’m falling in love with her and I want her to know
she can tell me anything.

  When Izzy came to pick me up in the morning, she seemed more herself. “Sorry I didn’t answer your calls,” she said. “I went to bed early.”

  “This Andrews thing wearing at you?”

  “Pretty much.”

  While I believed that was true, I also observed her eyes were still haunted, and blamed her obnoxious mother for its presence. It wasn’t my place to pester her about what her mother might have said that rankled so badly, thus I spoke of work and the hopes of catching Andrews soon.

  “I really need to be out photographing properties,” Izzy commented. “It is what you hired me for.”

  “That’s only part of your job,” I reminded her. “And you’ll be back at it once Andrews is languishing in jail.”

  “Languishing?” Izzy laughed. “Did you really say ‘languishing’?”

  “I did. I do have a vocabulary, you know.”

  “And you know how to use it. Impressive.”

  “For now, I’ll have either Leo or Benjamin photograph the properties,” I continued. “You can load them into the system though.”

  Her lower lip pooched out. “I’ve seen their pictures. Not good.”

  “I’ll try to coach them on taking better ones. But for now, it’ll have to do.”

  We arrived at the office even before Debbie, which was unusual. Izzy unlocked the door, walking in ahead of me, and took two paces.

  “Fucking shit,” she exclaimed, and backed up so fast she slammed into me, her spiked heel jammed down onto my foot. She jostled my left arm, sending a jolt of pain up, but I forgot it the instant I saw what she had seen.

  A Barbie doll hung from a hangman’s noose around its neck, its blonde hair cut off and lying on the floor beneath it. The thin rope had been tied under the front of Debbie’s desk, and swung gently in the light breeze that came in the open door. My fury rose. Not just at the invasion of my office. Not just at the clear message in the naked Barbie – Izzy was now marked for death.

  The doll’s crotch had been painted red.

  If ever there was a threat of rape before murder, that had to be it.

  “That mother fucker,” I snarled, holding Izzy close with my good right arm.

  She shook like a leaf in a high wind, and never took her eyes from the doll. “I have to call Dennis.” Her voice, little more than a dry whisper, quavered almost as much as her body held against mine. “Shit.” She tried to laugh as she fought to bring Dennis’s number up. “I’m shaking so hard I can’t do a damn thing.”

  It did little good to tell her it would be all right. Nothing would be all right until that asshole Roger Andrews was either dead or in jail. And if he popped up at that very moment, I’d have killed him without thinking twice. “Give me your phone.”

  She handed it to me, and I awkwardly clicked Dennis’s number while still holding her close to me. It rang only twice, and then Dennis’s voice boomed, “Isabelle?”

  “Almost. It’s Jack. We’re at the office, and you need to get here right now.”

  “Oh, shit. What’s he done?”

  “You’ll see. And you’ll need the crime scene dudes.”

  A noise behind me made me turn, Izzy still under my arm. Debbie gazed at us quizzically, but because we were in the way, she couldn’t see the doll. “Mr. Stanton?”

  “Out,” I ordered. “Now.”

  Though I probably didn’t need to bark at her, my anger and fear controlled my voice. Debbie mumbled an ‘oh, dear’, then walked out. Izzy and I followed her, Izzy still shaking, muttering something under her breath. Benjamin and Leo got out of their cars in the lot, their jokes and laughter halting abruptly when they saw us.

  Sirens screamed from not far away as Leo asked, “What happened?”

  “Someone broke in,” I answered, my voice tight. “The cops are on their way.”

  “Was there much damage?”

  I glanced at Izzy, who looked at me with a bleak expression. “Yeah. To our peace of mind. Her stalker got in and left us a message.”

  “Shit,” Benjamin asked, half turning to watch as sheriff’s cruisers roared into the parking lot from both directions.

  I ushered my employees out of the way of the door as Dennis parked and got out, leaving his lights flashing. He eyed us all grimly, and I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. “Take a look.”

  He waited long enough for another deputy to join him, then they both went inside. They were in my office for less than two minutes, and when they came out, Dennis swore a blue streak. He glared at us both.

  “Now that’s just wrong.”

  “No shit, Sherlock,” I replied dryly. “He may have kept a key when I fired him.”

  “We’ll look for evidence of the lock being picked when the crime scene guys get here.”

  Cops swarmed into my office, talking on radios, and Dennis asked us detailed questions. Izzy and I both answered, telling him how Izzy picked me up at my house, drove me here, and we found the doll. “You didn’t touch it?”

  “Nope, just looked, called you, and kept Debbie from coming in.”

  “Good.”

  Sheriff Hopkins also arrived, took a long look at Andrews’s message and came back out. “This boy is getting on my nerves.”

  I wanted to reply with an acid comment regarding the state of Izzy’s nerves, but refrained. Inside, the crime scene investigators dusted for fingerprints while one examined the lock on the door.

  “No evidence of forced entry,” he announced.

  “He didn’t turn his keys in?” Dennis asked.

  “He turned in a key,” Izzy answered. “We never put it in the lock to make certain it was the right one.”

  Behind the cops, Debbie shook her head. “I’m afraid I tossed it in a drawer and forgot about it.”

  “In a while, you’ll show us that key, ma’am,” Hopkins told her. “Then we’ll see if it fits here.”

  “He could also have made a duplicate,” I commented. “He had all weekend.”

  “Shit,” Dennis muttered. “Isabelle, do you have family out of town. And I mean way out of town, as in another state?”

  “Yeah, but I’m not going there. It’s my mother, and we don’t get along.”

  I noticed how her lips thinned more tightly than ever, and I wondered what it was her mother said to her this time. “Her mom is a bitch.”

  “Even so,” Hopkins declared firmly, “it might be a good time to patch things up. Maybe it is time to get out of dodge for a while, Miss Naveau.”

  “That asshole has already run me out of my apartment,” Izzy snapped, “now you’re asking me to let him run me out town, too?”

  “It’s just until we catch him,” Dennis said, his tone soothing.

  Izzy refused to be soothed. “I’m not going, Dennis, and that’s final. And there’s nothing to say he won’t follow me there.”

  “She’s right,” I added. “He could tag along behind her, then she’ll have no protection except her mother, who would no doubt happily feed Izzy to this asshole.”

  I caught Izzy’s grateful look and tightened my arm around her briefly. Both Dennis and Hopkins shook their heads.

  “Get the lock on this door changed, pronto,” Dennis advised. “Meanwhile, keep your heads down, both of you, and be careful.”

  He and Hopkins walked back into the office, talking in low tones. The crime scene guys came out with the Barbie in an evidence bag, and Debbie, Benjamin, and Leo craned their necks to get a look at it. Only Debbie appeared disturbed by what she saw through the plastic. The other two behaved as though finding maimed dolls in a realtor office was commonplace.

  “We’re done here,” Dennis said, poking his head out. “If you want to get started on your work.”

  Hopkins left without a word, pushing past us and headed for his cruiser. As I went into the office, I glanced back to see the other deputies also departing, turning their lights off as they drove out of the lot. Inside, I stared in dismay at all the fingerprint dust on every surface
.

  “I’ll help clean it up,” Izzy said quietly.

  The phone rang, and Debbie marched to her desk to answer it. As she spoke, she, too, gazed around at the mess with a clinical eye. After telling Leo the call was for him, she put her hands on her hips.

  “We’d better get this mess taken care of,” she announced, “in case we have a customer amble in.”

  I went to my office as Benjamin and Leo went to theirs, and sat down behind my desk. My previous rage at Andrews had faded, leaving me feeling very sore and tired. Dennis followed me, his thumbs hooked into his service belt.

  “I’d think you’d support me in getting Isabelle out of here,” he commented.

  “I would if I didn’t know how horrible her mother is, Dennis,” I replied, rubbing my right hand over my face. “Sending her there is like sending her into the rings of hell.”

  “And she has no other relatives or friends?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “But her mother isn’t likely to rape and murder her.”

  I smiled wryly. “Want to bet?”

  Dennis sat down, staring at me. “Jack, this kook really has me scared. For Isabelle. This guy has gone beyond just stalking. He means business, and we have no idea where he is.”

  “He has me scared, too.” I’d never have admitted that to anyone in my younger days, but it was the truth, and I felt no shame in saying so.

  “The only thing I like about her staying is that if he goes for her, she can spray him. If that happens, we can walk in at our leisure and nab him.”

  “Think he might?”

  Dennis shrugged. “Maybe. In time, when he gets tired of messing around. Is she keeping that spray can handy?”

  “Any time I see her, she is.”

  “Good. You got my number, use it if you have to.”

  He got to his feet, sketched a salute, and walked back down the hall.

  It bugged me that he felt the only way to catch Andrews was if and when he went for Izzy. And in the wild hope that she can get to her bear spray first. And if she didn’t?