He’d simply smiled and did his best to ensure that she didn’t end up accidentally burning down the house or end up being torn apart by an angry mob. Her grandparents had done an amazing job, making sure that they were well taken care of, had clothes on their backs, and food in their stomachs even though it meant putting aside their dreams to make sure that they found theirs.
When she went off to college, she’d figured that her grandparents would finally get a chance to enjoy their retirement. What she hadn’t planned on was her grandparents both passing away before the first semester was over. After that, she hadn’t seen a reason to come back here, not with Jackson in the army, but now…
She was determined to see this thing through for her grandfather.
With that in mind, she headed toward the house, slipped, tripped, and stumbled along the way, but eventually, she made it to the back door. After taking a deep breath and telling herself that there was no other way, she picked up a rock, closed her eyes, and-
Realized too late that her brother had installed an alarm.
*-*-*-*
Wondering why Jackson refused to sell this dump, Reed grabbed the baseball bat that he kept by the back door as he kicked the broken glass out of the way and headed toward the sounds of squeaky footsteps, noting that the burglar had managed to shut off the alarm. From the open doorway of the large living room, he watched as a small silhouette stumbled around the room. Shaking his head in disgust, he reached over and turned on the light.
“Don’t move,” he said, praying that it was just some kid here on a dare so that he could kick him out and call it a night.
There was a surprised gasp before the small burglar tried to turn, only to slip, stumble, and fall over Mrs. Lawson’s old tea table with a pained grunt. It took a moment before he realized that the burglar was soaked to the bone, covered from head to toe in mud, trembling, and most likely female. His suspicions were confirmed when she reached up and shoved the long, dark wet hair out of her face. Her eyes widened when she caught sight of him standing there. He watched as she licked her lips nervously, moved to stand up, only to slip on the small puddle she’d created and fell back on her ass.
“I don’t know who you are, but if you don’t leave immediately I’ll be forced to call the police,” she announced, taking him by surprise as she held up a dripping wet cell phone to show him that she was serious.
He had to bite back a smile when the cell phone battery slipped out and fell to the floor with an ominous “clank.”
She looked up at him and noticeably swallowed. “Damn,” she whispered with an adorable frown.
Reed decided to take pity on the little wet rat. He lowered the bat and gestured toward the front door. “Just get out of here and I won’t call the cops.”
Large beautiful blue eyes widened even further at that announcement a split second before they narrowed on him.
“Not happening,” she said firmly.
Whatever patience he had snapped. “Look, enough is enough, woman,” he said with a heavy sigh as he stalked forward, grabbed her by the arm, and hauled her to her feet only to drop her a split second later when she raised a small metallic tube and sprayed him in the face.
*-*-*-*
Joey cringed back from the very large man that didn’t seem fazed by her peppermint breath spray as he glared down at her while she struggled to come up with a way to save herself and admittedly drawing a blank on this one.
“I’m accident prone,” she heard herself mumble, really hoping that he didn’t put Jackson’s old baseball bat to good use.
“What exactly does that have to do with spraying me in the face with breath spray?” he asked with a frown as he wiped the last of the peppermint spray off his face while she took this opportunity to check out her burglar.
And frowned.
She wasn’t a hundred percent sure, but something told her that the large, incredibly handsome man with neatly combed black hair, wearing a tie, shirt, slacks, and polished shoes wasn’t a burglar, which brought up an interesting question…
Why was he here?
Worrying her bottom lip and wondering if Jackson had finally followed through with his threat to sell this place, she took a step back and slipped in the puddle she’d made when she’d tried to find a lamp and would have fallen on her ass if he hadn’t reached over and steadied her.
“Thank you,” she mumbled automatically as she tried to straighten her wet clothes and figure out how she was going to afford to buy Jackson’s share of the house and still be able to afford to restore it to its former glory.
She wasn’t going to be able to, she realized pretty quickly as she bit back a groan, wondering how she was going to convince Jackson to give her a chance when they both knew that he was going to say no. He didn’t want the house, never had. The only reason that he hadn’t really pushed her to sell it yet was because he knew just how much it meant to their grandfather, but sooner or later sentiment wasn’t going to be enough.
“Well?” the man that she was afraid was a realtor said.
“I don’t carry mace-”
“So, I’ve figured,” he cut her off dryly.
“-because with my luck I’d end up spraying myself in the face or mistake it for breath spray,” she admitted with a shrug.
His lips twitched. “I see.”
She glared, slipped, caught herself, and glared again.
He smiled.
She made a small growl of frustration somehow causing herself to lose her footing. He chuckled as he caught her, again.
“I’m Reed Bradford, and you are?” he asked with that devastating smile that brought it all back.
It also made it kind of difficult to breathe as she stared at her childhood nemesis, the boy who’d made her life a living hell and had made her feel like a third wheel in her own house. He’d made an art out of glaring at her, and the man that she’d publicly humiliated. As she stood there, trying to think of something, anything to save her from the ass whooping that he’d promised her if he ever saw her again, she couldn’t help but regret her decision to come back here.
Granted, when she’d made her decision to come home and pretend that her life wasn’t falling apart, she hadn’t exactly been thinking straight because if she had, she would have considered just how stupid that was and never would have taken the risk. Deciding that perhaps it would be for the best if she was anywhere but here, she mumbled, “I’ll just be going now,” with a somewhat hysterical smile as she slowly backed up toward the door only to go still when the smile on his incredibly handsome face slowly died and was replaced by the glare that used to haunt her dreams as the realization that she was the girl who’d made him a YouTube sensation hit and when it did…
She decided that it would be in her best interest to see if the pantry still locked from the inside.
Chapter 4
“I said I was sorry!” the little brat who had made his life a living hell yelled while he stood there, glaring at the locked pantry door as his hands twitched with the need to finally give her the spanking that she should have gotten a long time ago.
“No, you didn’t,” he bit out evenly through clenched teeth as the memory of everything the little brat put him through nearly knocked him on his ass.
“Well,” she said, pausing to clear her throat, “it was implied.”
“No, it wasn’t,” he said, narrowing his eyes on the door.
“I tried, but Jackson felt that it was for the best if I gave you some space until you were able to get your homicidal urges under control.”
“Then you came back too soon,” he bit out, looking around the kitchen for something to use to take that damn door down.
“Oh, come on! You can’t still be mad!”
“Think again,” he said as he considered grabbing that baseball bat so that he could bash the door in and spank her ass raw.
“If it makes you feel any better, I sent the frat house that posted that video a strongly worded email,” she said, s
ounding hopeful.
“It doesn’t,” he said as he rubbed his hands roughly down his face as he stared at the door, debating his next move and wondering if getting revenge after twelve years was worth losing his job, going to prison and having to worry about dropping the soap for the rest of his life. Totally worth the risk, he decided as he grabbed hold of the doorknob and slammed his shoulder against the door.
“Wait. What are you doing?” came the hesitant question.
Slam!
“Maybe we should talk about this?
Slam!
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Oh, my god, I’m sorry!” the little demon screamed when the door finally gave way with a satisfying crack.
Shoving the broken door aside, he stepped inside the pantry and took in the small muddy mess plastering herself against the shelves, noting the scrawny little brat that had been nothing more than knobby knees, pointy elbows, and ink-stained fingertips was gone and in her place was this small frumpy woman, who barely came up to his shoulder, an overabundance of curves that put her on the plump side, messy, mud-caked hair, crystal blue eyes, and plump pink lips that were working soundlessly as she struggled to come up with some bullshit excuse to get her out of the spanking that she deserved. Deciding that he’d waited long enough, he grabbed the little brat and dragged her out of the pantry and headed for the old kitchen table where he’d learned how to read and write, pulled out a chair, sat down and-
“Wait! We can talk about this!”
-yanked the little brat down across his lap, raised his hand and-
“You promised!” she shouted somewhat hysterically as she tried to wiggle her way free as her words slammed into him and when they did, he shoved her off his lap with a curse.
“Goddamn it!” he bit out, shoving to his feet and knocking the chair back in the process.
“So, ummm, since we have that settled then, I’ll be calling it a night,” the little brat mumbled nervously with a nod as she got to her feet, nodded again, opened her mouth to say something else that would probably piss him off, closed it, nodded again, mumbled, “Right then,” and moved to make her escape.
But there would be no escaping him, and they both knew it, and it was all thanks to the promise that he never should have made. Not that he’d had a choice, he reminded himself as he grabbed the little brat before she could make things more difficult, threw her over his shoulder, and headed for the door.
“Where are we going?” she asked, but since he was in no mood to talk to her, he simply carried her out the door. As he set the alarm, he made a mental note to come back tomorrow and replace the glass before locking up on his way out.
“Why are we heading to the woods?” she asked, shifting nervously over his shoulder before pointing out, “You know that it’s almost impossible to successfully hide a body these days, right? Reed?”
Still, he said nothing as he headed for the old path in the woods that connected their properties, thinking about the day that he’d stupidly promised to watch over the little brat. If it had been anyone else, he would have told her no and laughed it off, but he couldn’t say no to Mrs. Lawson, not after everything she’d done for him. She’d watched him when his was little, taken care of him when his mother was put on bed rest when she was pregnant with Matt, helped him with his homework, and always made sure that there was a spot at her table for him, which he’d always appreciated since his mother couldn’t cook to save her life. She’d always been there for him, so when she’d asked him to watch over the little brat if anything ever happened to her, he’d forced himself to say yes, knowing damn well that he would regret it.
*-*-*-*
“So, how are your parents?” the little demon asked conversationally as she glanced around the large first floor bathroom, shifting her attention here and there, which of course resulted in her feet threatening to go out from under her every few seconds thanks to the large puddle that she was creating on the tiled bathroom floor.
“What the hell are you doing here, Joey?” he asked, rubbing his hands roughly down his face and still unable to believe that this was really Joey, the annoying little pain in the ass that had done her best to give him a heart attack when they were kids.
“Came home,” she said with a shrug as she took in the floor to ceiling cabinets that his grandfather built for his grandmother before shifting her attention to the large shower stall that he’d installed last year.
“I see,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief because he honestly never thought that he would see her again. “So, you flew home and-”
“Oh no, I drove here. It took five hours longer than it should have, but that probably had something to do with the incident at the drive-thru,” she explained with a shrug and that smile that he couldn’t help but find adorable on the mud-caked demon even as he asked, “Drive-thru?”
She pursed her lips up, looking thoughtful. “Now that I think about it, the manager was probably right about the clown.”
“The clown?” he found himself asking against his better judgment.
“The clown at the drive thru. When I didn’t hear anything, I decided to use the call button,” she said with a shrug.
“Sounds reasonable,” he murmured, not really sure that he wanted to know where this was going.
“I thought so, too,” she said, nodding in agreement. “But I couldn’t reach it through the window. So, I opened my door and ended up accidentally hitting the clown, but the fireman said the fire would have happened anyway. Faulty wiring and all that,” she mumbled quickly with a helpless shrug.
“I see,” he said softly as childhood memory after childhood memory hit him, leaving him standing there seriously wondering how she was still alive.
Granted, he’d been wondering that since the day he’d stumbled across her at the playground down the street, barely two-years-old and already pissing off all the other kids. He’d been forced to step in when the rest of the toddlers tried to bury her alive in the sandbox. He still wasn’t sure what she’d done to piss them off, but from that day on it had become his job to keep the little pain in the ass out of trouble. He’d lost count of how many times he’d had to step in over the years to save her ass and this time it seemed, wouldn’t be any different.
“My insurance is covering the repairs. The manager said the restaurant should be open again in a week at the latest and thankfully no one got hurt. Well, except for Johnny that is.”
“Johnny?” he said, not really sure that he wanted to hear this.
She waved it away, unconcerned. “Johnny, the burger clown.”
His lips twitched despite the fact that he still wanted to throttle the little brat. “I see.”
“It’s fine. I have really good insurance,” she added absently only to frown as she glanced down at the large muddy puddle that she was creating. “I should probably go back home now,” she mumbled thoughtfully, and as much as he would love to show her to the door and save himself from the nightmare that was Joey Lawson, he didn’t have a choice.
He had to keep the little brat out of trouble.
“Jackson shut the water off years ago,” he said, wondering if he should give her brother a call only to immediately dismiss the idea since he didn’t want to get dragged into the middle of whatever mess the little hellion had gotten herself into.
“Oh,” she said with an adorable frown as she looked back up. “What about the heat?”
Once their grandparents passed away, Jackson stopped staying at the old house and started crashing with him or with whatever bar bunny he’d picked up for the night. Reed couldn’t even remember the last time that Jackson checked on the old place. Between the taxes and the insurance, the old house just wasn’t worth keeping, but every time Reed suggested that he sell it, Jackson would just shrug it off and tell him that he would think about it.
“Broken,” he said, wondering why she really came back here.
Nodding absently, she mumbled, “I see,” as she reached up and pushed her mud-caked
hair back before releasing a heavy sigh. “I guess I’ll stay at a hotel until I get it fixed. Is there still a Marriot on Chase Street?”
“You can stay with me,” he found himself saying because he couldn’t send Jackson’s little sister to a hotel.
“Oh,” she said, worrying her bottom lip as she turned to take another look around and somehow managed to trip over her own two feet in the process. She would have fallen on her ass if he hadn’t caught her.
“That must be some insurance,” he said as he dragged her back up to her feet.
“The best.”
Chapter 5
“My mother left some clothes in the closet, take a shower, stay out of trouble, and try not to burn the place down. I’ll be in my office upstairs if you need anything,” and with that, the man that she never thought that she would see again was gone and she found herself standing in the middle of the admittedly beautiful bathroom, dripping mud all over the floor.
“All right then,” she mumbled to herself as she continued to stand there, trying to figure out where she went wrong.
Since there were just too many possibilities to choose from, she reluctantly closed the bathroom door. For a moment, she considered trying to sneak back out the front door and heading next door, but since she was covered in mud, freezing, and wasn’t really a big fan of “roughing” it, she decided that she would take Reed up on his generous offer and stay the night. Decision made, she struggled for the next ten minutes to tear her water-logged clothes off and once she was free, she climbed into the large shower, turned the water on, closed her eyes, and let everything go, the stress, the worries, everything that she couldn’t do anything about at the moment. It was something that she’d been doing since she was a kid and the only thing that had allowed her to survive this long without developing an ulcer.
Twenty minutes later when she started to feel human again, she reluctantly turned the water off, grabbed a towel and walked over to the large closet where she found his mother’s clothes on a shelf next to the dryer. When she spotted the size small on the label, she put them back on the shelf, because this just wouldn’t do. After a slight hesitation, she turned her attention to the dryer and helped herself to some of Reed’s clothes. After grabbing one of his tee shirts and a pair of his boxers, she threw her clothes in the washer along with the clothes she’d found in the hamper, started a load, and cleaned the floor. Once that was done, she decided to kill some time by exploring the old house that she’d been banned from since she was three.
The Promise (Neighbor from Hell Book 10) Page 3
