Dream On (Stories of Serendipity #2) (38 page)

She tipped the beer to him in a thank you gesture.  He tipped his back at her, and smiled a crooked smile.  Jessica flushed and looked down.

The DJ started playing some LMFAO song, and Summer grabbed Jessica’s wrist and dragged her onto the crowded dance floor.  They danced to the next four songs before they took a break.  Jessica went to the bar to get the next round of drinks, deciding this would be their last round.  If she had much more, she wouldn’t be able to get home, much less drop off Summer.  She managed to avoid the hot guy while she was ordering, but unfortunately, Asshole was right there next to her as soon as she got the bartender’s attention.

“You look really good tonight, Jessie.”  Jessica did what she could to ignore him.  She was just starting to have fun tonight, and didn’t want him to kill her buzz.

“Jessie.  Look at me.”  He grabbed her arm, and tried to turn her around to face him.

Jessica yanked her arm out of his grasp, hitting a solid wall of muscle behind her.  “I’m sorry,” she tossed over her shoulder absently at whoever she had just hit.  “Chad, touch me again, and I’ll slap you with a restraining order so fast you’ll get whiplash.”

“Touchy.  I just want to talk to you.”  He was drunk.  He staggered back, caught himself, and grabbed the bar to steady himself.  “You wouldn’t get a restraining order against me.  Not after what all we’ve been through.”  He slurred at her.

“After all we’ve been through, you would be lucky if a restraining order is all you’d have to deal with from me.  Please leave me alone, Chad.”  Jessica grabbed hers and Summer’s beers and turned to leave, running smack into a solid wall of muscle.  The muscle grasped her arms to keep her from falling. Chad grabbed her elbow and spun her around with so much force, she dropped one of the beers in her hand. 

“Don’t you EVER turn your back on me bitch.”  He spoke with a quiet fury, which reinforced the rage under the surface.

Before she could react, a mass of white linen was between her and Chad, and all she could hear was a quiet murmur.  Then she heard Chad’s voice.

“Look, motherfucker!  I don’t know who in the Hell you think you are, but I’m a cop, and you can’t talk to me that way.  Asshole!”

More soft murmuring.  Then, “FUCK YOU!”  Chad hauled off and punched the white wall, which Jessica was just noticing as a person, in the face.  Bouncers materialized out of nowhere.

“I’m sorry guys, y’all are gonna have to do this somewhere else, or we’re calling the cops.”  Chad looked irate.

“I am a cop, you dipshit.  This guy is harassing me.”

“Whatever.  Outside.”  The bouncer took Chad by the elbow and escorted him outside, the guy in white following.  When they got a little farther away, Jessica noticed the guy in white was the same one who had bought her and Summer the drinks.

“Oh, wow!”  Summer’s voice came from over her shoulder.

“You saw that?”  Jessica turned to look at her friend.

“I think the whole bar saw it.”  Summer took her drink from Jessica, who had gotten another one from the bartender, and followed her to the table, where they finished their drinks and went home.

Turn the page for the first chapter of Anne Conley’s free novella, Neighborly Complications…

Chapter 1

She should have picked the beach house in Galveston.  

Claire surveyed the mess in front of her. She had initially been excited about it, when
  Uncle Eddie had left her this house in his will.He had given her the choice between this place and a beach house in Galveston, but she was afraid that the homeowner’s insurance on the Gulf Coast would eat her lunch.  Now, she wasn’t so sure.  The house itself was beautiful, built in the late-eighteenth century, it would make a great bed and breakfast.  Getting it up to code, though, was proving to be a daunting task.  

The kitchen? Well, the kitchen had last been remodeled in the 1950s. Claire imagined a woman in a polka dot dress with a lace apron and pearls, lovingly running her hand along the giant enamel stove. It was the same stove every woman had been fantasizing about since Rachel Ray’s television debut, except this one had seen better days. It was rusted, filthy, and totally unusable without a full restoration. And such a restoration was not in her budget.

Claire sighed heavily, and got a trash bag to start filling up.

The kitchen's only blessing was an enormous picture window with the original frame. Unfortunately it lacked the glass, so she tossed her full garbage bag out of it.
 It was certainly easier than carrying the trash out the back door, down the back porch steps, and all the way around the house.  This way, Claire could fill a bag, toss it out the window, and have it halfway to the destination of the curb.  Pleased with her innovativeness, she filled another one.  And another.  About an hour later, She had five garbage bags full of trash outside the house on the ground beneath the kitchen window.  She had swept and mopped the floors, wiped out the cabinets and countertops, and almost managed to get rid of the odor of rat pee.  She mentally patted herself on her back.  Not bad for a morning’s work.

Claire went outside the back door to start carrying the trash around to the curb, wondering what day the garbage was picked up.
 Walking over to the kitchen window, she grabbed a garbage bag and threw it over her shoulder.  She grabbed another one and started dragging it behind her as she walked around the side of the house to the front curb.

Forcing oxygen into her bloodstream, Claire breathed heavily as she carried the trash bags around the house, thinking to herself that maybe she shouldn’t have tried to shove so much into each bag.
 They were really heavy.  When her foot landed on something squishy, she paused and wondered briefly if she had stepped in dog pooh.

As her shin scraped through the pulp of the soggy plywood, and she fell forward, she realized she was falling into a hole that had been covered.
 Her forward momentum with the added weight of the trash bags, had made the top half of her body land on solid ground when she fell.  Unfortunately, the bag she was dragging added to the weight on the bottom half of her body, which was dangling over the hole.

She dropped the garbage bags and grabbed what she could grab.
 Weeds.  Crap. So she yelled.  Loudly.

“Help me!!!
 Please!  Somebody, help!”

Usually, when one pulls weeds, they need a shovel and a pick axe to get them out of the dirt.
 These weeds--which Claire really needed to be sturdy little buggers--were coming out almost as fast as she could grab them.

“Help me!” Claire screamed as if her life depended on it.
 She realized now, that this was probably an old water well, and she had no idea how deep it could be.

Scrabbling for anything to hold onto, feet dangling in the darkness below her, she tried to swing her legs forward to find something for them to cling to.
 Her hands grabbed for anything, rocks, grass, roots.  Nothing was working. She couldn’t help imagining inside the darkness of the well the Indiana Jones pile of snakes slithering over each other, anxiously awaiting her drop into their midst. Her Converse tennis shoes slipped down the slimy sides of the well that Claire imagined was covered with spiders and their webs and egg sacs. She couldn’t find anything for her hands to grab onto, and she screamed again as she slipped further into the well.  

A PIPE!
 She grabbed a pipe that was sticking out of the ground for some reason and held on tight.  She had no idea what purpose this particular piece of pipe held, except that at this moment, it was saving her life.  Now if I can just hang on…  Her feet slipped again, as they desperately scrambled to find purchase against the slimy wall.  It felt like the wall was made of stones, which would make something there for her to grab with her shoe-clad feet, wouldn’t it?

Her hand was hurting, and she tried to hold the pipe with both hands.
 It wasn’t a big pipe, and since she couldn’t really see what it was connected to, if anything, she didn’t want to grab it with both hands and put all of her eggs in one basket.  She tried her best to hold still and not jiggle anything that would make her fall all the way into this well.

Claire’s head and shoulders were still above ground level, but the rest of her body had sunk through the rotten, water-logged plywood that was “covering” this giant hole in the ground.
 While holding the pipe, she tried to feel around with her other hand to see if any of the rest of the wood was sturdy enough to hold her.  No dice.  Everything her hand touched, crumbled and fell into the abyss below.  Apparently, she grabbed a nest of some sort, because hundreds of tiny spiders crawled around on her hand.  She shook them off, while holding on to the pipe with her other hand.  Terror filled her veins as she screamed again.

“Hang on, I got you.”

Enormous arms wrapped around her body, under her armpits, and lifted her out of the hole.  She looked up at her savior.  And up, and up…until her eyes met the caramel colored eyes of…Adonis.  He pulled her back out of the hole, tripping over her beloved pipe, and tugged her down with him as they ended up a tangled pile of limbs in the weedy yard.

She had no idea who this magnificent specimen of a man was, but he was her hero, having just saved her from a horrifying death.
 Well, possibly.  If she hadn’t died, she certainly would have been extremely uncomfortable for who knows how long.

“What happened?”
 His melted, ooey gooey, caramelly eyes oozed concern, as they looked down from his body’s perch atop Claire’s body.  Ohmygosh.  He’s on top of me.  His mouth turned down at the corners, and his hands were still wrapped around her rib cage.  She couldn’t answer, her heart was beating too hard.  She couldn’t really say if it was because of her brush with certain death, or because she had the most gorgeous man on the planet on top of her.  He smelled good, earthy, like grass and man.

Her breath hitched as she looked into that face of his, and the next thing she knew, she was crying like a baby. She hated crying, and the fact that she was doing it in front of this stranger, made her cry even more, much to her own mortification.
 He climbed off and pulled her into a sitting position next to him, and cradled her head against his concrete chest making shooshing noises, begging her not to cry.  What is it about men and crying women?  I just almost died.  Although, hearing his heart pound in his chest was calming her down quite a bit.

“I didn’t realize I was (hic) walking over that (hic) plywood, and I f-f-fell in.”

“Well, you’re okay now.  It’s okay.”  His broad hand rubbed up and down her spine in a comforting gesture.  It made a warm mushy feeling spread out from the center of her chest down to her thighs.  “I have some plywood in my garage.  I’ll bring some over and put it over that well until you can have someone come over and fill it in with concrete.”  His hand still rubbing her back.  Her body still all warm and mushy.  His smell still manly, grassy goodness.

Claire looked up at him, their faces were inches away from each other. His eyes looked straight into hers, then his gaze traveled to her lips.
 Seemingly jealous of the attention that her lips were getting, Claire’s tongue snaked out to moisten the top one.  As if recognizing the desire that seemed to be radiating from her pores, he spread his lips slightly, and inhaled sharply.  She could smell his toothpaste.  His hand cradled her face, and he used his thumb to wipe a tear off her cheek.  Then he rubbed his thumb down her jaw line.

“I have plywood…”
 Claire was having a hard time breathing with this stranger so close to her.  Wait a minute…  “Who are you?”  Claire suddenly realized the compromising position she was in, pressed up next to a complete stranger who was caressing her face.

“My name is Max.
 I live next door.”  His eyes were still locked on her mouth.  “What’s your name?”

“C-Claire.”
 She sniffed, tears still managing to squeeze out of her eyes.

“Shhhh.
 Claire.  It’s okay.”  His thumb touched her bottom lip.  As if there was an alien entity inside Claire that craved a little Max-snack, her lips opened and took his thumb into her mouth. Then sucked.