Neanderthal Next Door: Enemies to Lovers, Mountain Man Next-Door, Halloween Romance

by K. C. Crowne

I caught myself, worried I’d gotten too technical with the kid. But he said nothing, listening intently.

  “Now, when these panels get old or dirty or both, they don’t store as much power. We used these all the time in the desert.”

  “Wow.”

  I couldn’t help but smile at how the kid was hanging off my every word.

  “Anyway, when we used these in the desert, you’ve got more sun than you know what to do with. But here in Silver Pines, there’s lots of cloud cover. Can’t get power from the sun when there’s no sun, right?”

  “Right!”

  “So, we need to get these panels replaced.”

  “And you know how to do that?”

  “I sure do. I did plenty of mechanical work in the Army. And if you want, I can show you a thing or two.”

  “Yeah!”

  I flashed the kid another smile.

  “Then let’s get to it.”

  Over the next couple of hours, Parker and I worked our butts off. Most of the work entailed me going up onto the roof, cleaning what panels could be salvaged, and replacing the ones that couldn’t. It was hard work, but Parker made it go easier. Not only was he Johnny-on-the-spot with the tools, but his digressions about whatever happened to be on his mind were endlessly entertaining.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Matt at school says Dr. Strange is the most powerful Avenger because he can go into other dimensions. But I think Iron Man is the best.”

  “Matt at school,” I said, wiping my brow with my sleeve as I hopped down from the roof. “That a buddy of yours?”

  “Um, not really. We fight sometimes.”

  “Now, that’s no good. Why are you fighting with boys at school? They picking on you?” I stepped over to the cooler and fetched a couple of waters, handing one to Parker.

  “No, not really. They’re just jerks. They tell me I’m weird because I live up here on the mountain and didn’t know anyone. It makes me mad when they say that stuff, so…you know.”

  He shrugged.

  “I get it, bud. I really do. But you can’t go fighting with anyone who says something mean to you, right?”

  “Why not?”

  I sat down on the opened truck bed, and he took a place next to me.

  “Because no one will want to be friends with you. Back when I started in the Army, guys bust each other up over stuff like that all the time. Best thing to do is not let it get to you, don’t let ‘em see you sweat.”

  “Do I have to just let them be mean?”

  “You don’t have to take it with a smile. But you tell them you’re not having any of it, and then you ignore them. Once they see you’re not bothered, they’ll come around. Trust me.”

  “OK.” He sipped his drink, and I could tell my words were bouncing around in his head.

  A rumble of thunder sounded overhead, followed by the sound of tires on unpaved road.

  “Mom’s here!” Parker said, hopping up.

  Sure enough, Mandy’s car pulled into the driveway. And she wasn’t alone. A fancy-looking SUV came behind her, Adam at the wheel.

  They both parked, Mandy stepping out of her car and looking in wonder at the work.

  “Wow,” she said, shaking her head. “Did you guys really do all this?”

  “Yep!” Parker exclaimed proudly. “Mr. Anderson helped.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, Mr. Anderson helped. Parker was the real muscle behind this operation.”

  “He’s right!” Parker agreed, making his point by yanking off his coat, pulling up the sleeve of his shirt, and flexing his skinny little bicep.

  “Look at this tough guy!” Mandy said, coming over to give her son’s arm a squeeze.

  Adam approached, his hands on his hips as he looked over the work, an expression of confusion on his face.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “What’s this?” I repeated. “Just some work on the house.”

  He shook his head, the confusion turning to anger, frustration. “This isn’t ‘just some work’ – you guys totally redid the solar panels.”

  “Yeah?” I asked. “Truth be told, we still got a hell of a lot to do. Few of ‘em need to be totally refitted, and the wiring’s in a sad state. But they should be good enough to keep power going through the house for a few days of cloudy weather at a time.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about,” Adam said, more irritation in his voice. “This was my job. I was going to get brand new panels shipped in from California and have them professionally installed.”

  The way he said “professionally” made it clear he thought my work was far from that.

  I wanted to tear into the guy, tell him to fuck off like I had the other night.

  But not then – not in front of the kid.

  “No sense in throwing away perfectly good panels if you can do some repairs. Good for the environment and all that.”

  I smirked, letting him know I was onto what he was doing.

  “You smug prick,” he said, storming over to me and getting right in my face.

  “Hey!” I barked. “Watch your language in front of the kid!”

  “Easy, Adam,” Mandy warned, stepping closer to Parker.

  “You knew I was going to take care of this and you did it instead to make me look bad.”

  “The hell?” I asked. “That’s a load of BS. I saw a job that needed to be done, so I did it. Simple as that. Now, you best get the hell out of my face before I really lose my temper.”

  It was really, really hard to watch my language, not to mention keep from slugging him right in the face.

  He stared me down for a moment longer before breaking away.

  “I brought dinner,” he said. “Unless you’ve got damn roast in there too.”

  I glanced over at Mandy, a worried look all over her gorgeous features. I could sense she was afraid a fight was going to be breaking out at any moment.

  One of us had to be the bigger man.

  “Then give ‘em dinner. Boy’s hungry.”

  I didn’t wait around for one second longer. I stepped past Adam, knocking his shoulder with mine as I did, letting him know of the anger I was holding back.

  Mandy and Parker called out, but I was already in the truck, the engine drowning out their voices.

  And I couldn’t shake the idea that I’d just made a powerful enemy.

  Mandy

  Parker couldn’t stop talking about how much fun he’d had with Hunter.

  And I loved to hear it.

  “He let me use all of his tools and-”

  “All of them?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

  Parker looked down, as if I’d caught him in the middle of a tall tale.

  “Not all of them. He said some were too sharp for me.”

  “Good,” I said with a nod. “What else?”

  Parker went back at it, highlighting the day for me. I kept one ear open, happy as heck to hear that my boy had spent his day in a useful way with a guy who really seemed to give a damn about him.

  And as he spoke, I flicked the lights in the cabin on and off, marveling at how they went on and, well, stayed on.

  Adam hadn’t been happy. He’d spent dinner going on and on about how Hunter had overstepped his bounds, how I couldn’t let a man like him into my life.

  He was dangerous, Adam had said.

  But as far as I could tell, Hunter had been the best thing to happen to me since…well, since Michael passed. He was a man in my life who was good, who gave a damn about me and my son. And as soon as Parker was out of earshot, I told him as much. He’d stormed out after that and I’d been glad for it.

  “Were they about to fight or something?” Lizzie regarded me with an expression of total, rapt interest the next day, the two of us downtown doing some shopping.

  “I don’t know. l mean, Adam seemed squared up and ready to throw some punches.”

  Lizzie shook her head as she leafed through the rack of clothes in front of her, she and I doing some thrifting. />
  “Has he seen how big Hunter is? He’s like, three Adams. And wasn’t he in the military?”

  I nodded. “And he was a cop.”

  “So what the hell was Adam thinking?” She shook her head in disbelief and let out a sigh. “I’ve seen the way he’s been acting around Hunter, trying to goad him into fighting or something…what’s his plan?”

  “I don’t know if he has a plan. I’m starting to think he’s just mad that there’s another man in my life.”

  She let the dress fall from her hands and stood up. “That’s insane. What, does he think he gets dibs on you?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m getting to the point where I don’t want to deal with it. Maybe this was all some mistake. I mean, Adam did let me know all this stuff on Hunter that he’d been keeping from me.”

  “If you ask me, he was completely within his rights to hide that stuff. That’s his business, and it’s not easy to talk about. He let you in when he was ready.”

  “Or, when I confronted him about it.”

  We made our way to the front counter, Lizzie paying for her selections. Moments later we were outside, the sky gray as usual. Nearly every single storefront by this point was done up in Halloween décor, pumpkins and skeletons and witches in every window.

  “Still, that’s personal stuff, right?” she asked, directing us toward the coffee shop on the corner. “I mean, no one would expect you to talk about Michael right off the bat.”

  She had a point. But I still couldn’t shake the idea that Hunter had been dishonest with me, that he’d gone out of his way to hide who he was. Even if it was for understandable reasons, did I really want someone in my life -in Parker’s life- who had secrets to keep?

  We ordered our drink at the counter. Once they were ready, we took them and sat down by the window. It was the weekend before Halloween, and downtown Silver Pines was bustling. Even the gray skies and chilly air was season-appropriate.

  “Well, what are you going to do?” she asked. “About what?”

  Lizzie gave me a knowing look, a smirk on her lips and her head leaned in toward me. “Come on. Mandy, not only are you a babe, you’re also smart as shit – which almost isn’t fair, really. You have to see what kind of situation you’re in.”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “You’ve got two guys, and both of them want you. Classic love-triangle stuff. And in case you hadn’t figured it out yet, you’re going to be in a spot where you’re going to have to pick between these two. And it’s going to be your call to make.”

  “What? Lizzie, I know in your world all this exciting dating drama is totally normal. But I’m a single mom living in a cabin in the mountains and working part-time at an antique store. I worry about bills and homework. The biggest thing on my mind right now is planning out a safe Trick-or-Treating route for Parker. Love triangles don’t really have a place in any of that.”

  “That’s the thing, Mandy. I know you picked the life you did to get away from it all, but that’s not how these things work. You can try to hide, but life will come and find you. Heck, it already has. You’ve got a rugged mountain man in the process of sweeping you off our feet, and a smooth, rich guy who wants to do the same.”

  I wanted to object, to tell her that my life wasn’t anything close to that.

  “I just want to focus on Parker,” I said, looking down into the milky-brown depths of my coffee. “That’s it.”

  “I know you’re crazy about that little guy, and so am I. But you can’t pretend you’re just totally cut off from the world, you know? Even up in the woods life will come knocking.”

  I considered her words on the way back to the house. And, like always, I looked through the woods as I drove past Hunter’s cabin, hoping to catch a glimpse of him through the thick trunks of the Douglas Firs.

  But this time, I didn’t. He was probably just at work, dressed in an oil-covered shirt, underneath some car, the ropey muscles of his forearms flexing and tensing as he…

  And just like that, I was turned on again. I flashed back to the nights we’d spent together, to our lovemaking. As clear as if it had only happened a few moments ago, I could picture Hunter and I together, his handsome face tight with intense, heated concentration as he pleasured me over and over, his manhood driving into me, each thrust of his powerful hips against me bringing me closer to orgasm.

  I had to shake my head as I drove to bring myself back to the attention.

  Lizzie was right. I’d been playing dumb, been willingly blind to what was happening.

  It was the thought on my mind as I turned the corner to my cabin, spotting a pair of white trucks parked in front, a crew of men at work on my house.

  “What the hell?” I spoke the words out loud in my car, confused at what I was seeing.

  Had I taken a wrong turn?

  No, it was my cabin. And as I pulled to a stop behind the trucks, I saw Adam’s SUV. He was among the workers, his sleeves rolled up and his hands on his hips as he barked orders to one of the crewmen. Judging by the looks on the crewmen’s faces, they weren’t thrilled to be taking commands from him. The sounds of construction work filled the air.

  “-need to have this whole job done in two hours,” Adam said, his eyes hidden behind his fancy sunglasses, his voice raised over the commotion. “Let’s move, people!”

  One of the crewmen shook his head to another, the two of them carrying parts to something that I couldn’t puzzle out.

  “Adam!” I called out as I stepped from my car. “What the hell’s going on here?”

  His eyebrows shot up –he hadn’t been expecting me.

  “Mandy!” he said, quickly composing himself. “What’re you doing back so soon?”

  “Well, I live here.”

  He trotted over. “I know. I’d assumed you’d be in town until after picking up Parker.”

  I wasn’t interested in explaining why I’d come back to my own home. Instead, I turned my attention to the men working on my house. Most of them were on the roof, and I realized what they were doing.

  They were taking out the solar panels.

  “Adam, what’s all this?” I asked. “Why are there crewmen working on my house?”

  “Oh, these guys?” he said, as if they were a group of dudes he’d been hanging out with. “They’re here to fix the solar panels.”

  “But Hunter already took care of them. Parker even helped.”

  He waved his hand through the air, shaking his head as if I’d said something stupid and naïve.

  “Mandy, you don’t need some weekend warrior handyman tinkering with these panels. You need real professionals to replace them. If you’re going to be living here with Parker you’re going to need electricity, right?”

  “But I had electricity. Hunter got them to work.”

  “Well, now they’re going to work even better. These guys are the best solar technicians in the state, and the panels they’re putting on are the same kind they use at the new Apple HQ. You’re getting the best of the best.”

  “I don’t need the best of the best. I’ve got two bedrooms in there. How much is all of this costing?”

  “Don’t worry about cost – it’s on me.”

  “You didn’t need to do this, Adam.” There was irritation in my voice, and for good reason. Adam was going to expect something in return.

  “It’s done,” he said. “And you don’t need to thank me.”

  I hadn’t been planning on it. “Is it too late to ask them to stop?”

  “Wait, what?” He put his hand on my shoulder and led me away from the noise.

  “Get them to stop,” I said. “I don’t need you to do this.”

  The warmth on his face, forced as it might’ve been, faded. “Like I said, it’s done.”

  I squared my shoulders.

  “Adam, I don’t need this. I don’t want this. I don’t need any more unsolicited help.”

  Anger tinged his features. “Oh, so when Hunter does it, it’s OK. Some drug-dealing
low-life comes near your son and it’s A-OK. But when I try to help you...”

  “First of all, you’re wrong about Hunter, not that it matters. Second of all, you have no say in my life or in Parker’s. I didn’t ask for this Adam. It’s too much.”

  Adam narrowed his eyes, my words clearly having insulted him.

  “It’s done. Go back to town, we’ll finish up before evening.” With that, he turned to leave. But after only taking a few steps, he whipped around on his feet to face me. “And Mandy, you really ought to figure out who the good guy is here.”

  He stormed back to the site without another word.

  I was left standing there fuming. Who the hell did he think he was?

  Hunter

  I hopped down from the Mandy’s roof, dust kicking up around my boots.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  The evening was getting on, the sky behind her wild with oranges and pinks that peeked out through the sparse cloud cover. Mist shrouded the mountains in the far distance.

  “I mean, it’s good work. Looks professional.”

  I dusted my hands on my jeans, stepping back and taking in the sight of Mandy’s roof, glittering gold solar panels covering every square inch.

  “There’s a decent power-storage system too, which means you’ll have a good month’s-worth of power ready for use. You’ve got a solar system here that would power a good chunk of downtown Silver Pines.”

  “It’s too much.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh at that one.

  “This is the solar equivalent of using a nuclear missile to take care of ant infestation. Your boy spared no expense on this one.”

  She shook her head, stepping over to me. Mandy’s gorgeous eyes gazed up at the roof.

  “He’s not my boy. He wanted to prove a point,” she said. “He wanted to show that he’s the one taking care of me – not you. And he wanted me to know without a bit of doubt that he has enough money to do whatever he wants.”

  I nodded. As far as I could tell, she was right on the money.

  “This guy’s sweet on you,” I said. “And he doesn’t strike me as the giving up type. He’s going to keep at you until you give in.”