Girl Next Door - The Complete Series (28 page)

Tears pooled in my eyes as my giggles continued. I managed to catch my breath after a few moments. Unable to resist, I rubbed salt in the open wound. “Now, Troy, there’s nothing wrong with a woman your mother’s age having sexual fantasies and a healthy, active sex life.”

He shot to his feet. “Stop! No more. God! I’ll never be able to look my mom in the eye again!”

I started to tease him further, but he put a hand up.

“Let’s just go next door and figure out what to do with those damn pictures before you traumatize me further.”

I laughed the entire short walk to his house.

A week later, it was Friday night again. And I was home alone. Again. The week had flown by, but I had managed to get in touch with Nat and Cat and make plans for a girls’ night out on Saturday. Since Nat was knocked up and Cat had her baby at home, I wasn’t worried about having a night out before I had to work on Sunday morning. I doubted we would stay out past ten anyway.

Since I had helped Troy hang his pictures on Sunday, I saw him several times in passing. Much to my surprise, he hadn’t put any moves on me the day I spent an hour helping him decide where to put the artwork his mother bought him and hang them. I told myself I would have blown him off and that I was absolutely not disappointed.

On Monday, he left his house at the same time I did. He waved at me as I backed the car down my driveway. I lifted a hand back and focused on getting my ass to the nearest coffee place without killing myself or someone else.

I didn’t see him Tuesday but came face-to-face with him at the mailbox on Wednesday. We chatted for a few minutes, but I made my excuses and went back to hiding inside my house.

I had a dinner date with Grayson on Thursday since he typically had to leave town on the weekends for work stuff. His job seemed to take up a bulk of his weekends, which was yet another reason I needed to end things with him. It sucked that I spent the weekends sitting around, twiddling my thumbs, because he always worked. In the entire six weeks we had been dating, Grayson had yet to have a weekend off.

Now it was Friday night. Grayson had yet another conference this weekend, so he was out of town again. I resigned myself to spending another evening alone. I settled on the couch for a Supernatural marathon, thinking that Jensen Ackles reminded me a lot of Nat’s husband, Aidan, when I heard something hit the window next to the front door. I muted the television, thinking maybe a bird had flown into the window, when I heard several more thumps.

I shot off the couch to my window and peeked out. It was already dark, but I saw a figure dressed in a black hoodie and jeans run to a sedan parked across the street from the duplex. I couldn’t tell the exact color, but it had to be black, dark blue, or gray. The vandal jumped in the car and sped off with a screech of tires.

Flipping on my porch light, I jerked open my front door and saw broken eggshells scattered across the concrete and the bushes by my porch. Shit. My house had been egged. I looked over and noticed the remains of shells and slimy yolks dripping off the trunk of my car. I guess I wouldn’t be spending a boring Friday night in front of the TV. It appeared I would be cleaning egg of my car and house to keep it from ruining the paint on both.

Fuming, I went back inside to get a pair of shoes and a jacket. I went back outside and grabbed my garden hose. As I washed down the side of my house, I cursed under my breath. I was pretty sure one of the high school students from the where I worked was responsible.

After the front of the house was clean, the damned vandal had even managed to get a bunch of egg on Troy’s side, I went back inside and grabbed a towel and my car wash supplies. There was no way in hell I was going to wash my entire car in fifty degree weather, but I did need to use some soap to get the egg residue off my paint.

I was filling a bucket with water and a capful of soap when a hand landed on my shoulder. I wheeled around, screaming and spraying water everywhere.

Troy managed to jump to the side and avoid the stream of water.

“Watch it!” he said.

I was breathing hard. “God, you scared the shit out of me, Troy!”

He was holding his hands up, looking at me as though I had lost my mind. “Did you decide it was a good idea to wash your car at ten o’clock at night?”

I scowled at him. “No. Someone egged the duplex and my car. I didn’t want it to ruin the paint.”

He frowned. “Did you call the police?”

I shook my head and focused on rinsing the worst of the mess off the trunk of my car.

He sighed. “Why not?”

“I didn’t get a good look at the guy and the car was a dark-colored sedan.” I shrugged. “It was probably some of the kids from the high school where I work.”

“You should still file a complaint.”

I ignored him and slapped the soapy towel on the top of my trunk.

“You’re ignoring me aren’t you?” he asked.

I let my silence answer for me.

“Jesus, you’re a pain in the ass.” His long arm reached around me and snagged the cloth. “At least let me help.”

I yanked at the material, but Troy held fast. “I can handle it, Troy. Thanks for the offer, but it won’t take much longer and I can go back to what I was doing before.”

He pulled at the towel again, causing me to stumble into his chest and soak us both with water.

“Dammit!” I yelled. “Just go back home and let me handle this. It’s not a big deal. I’m not some little woman who needs a big, strong man to do the heavy lifting!”

My hair had fallen into my face and I shook it back, staring up at him with a glare that I hoped would set him on fire.

Troy maneuvered me so my back pressed against the wet trunk of the car, water seeping through my pants and running down my legs. The next thing I knew, his hands went around my waist and he lifted me up, planting my ass down on the car.

I opened my mouth to blast him for being such a high-handed dickwad. Before I could spew out a series of foul names, his lips hit mine and his tongue was in my mouth. I was so revved up that I had my legs locked around his thighs and my arms around his neck in a nanosecond. The kiss was hard, full of fury, and the hottest minute of my life.

When I realized that I was making the same mistake I always did, letting a hot body and a pretty face influence me into making poor decisions, I simultaneously yanked my head away and shoved Troy’s shoulders.

He stumbled back and I hopped off the car. God, I was such a fucking moron. He was obviously promiscuous and I barely knew anything else about him other than the fact that he was an asshole. I didn’t think he even had a job. I was doing it again, throwing myself at the hot guy even though I knew he was going to dismantle my heart and self-confidence piece by piece.

Troy reached for me again, obviously intent on continuing our crazy make-out session, I stepped away from him.

“Stop!” I barked.

He blinked at me, realizing that I wasn’t playing hard to get.

Shaking from a mix of the cold water and adrenaline, I took another step back, toward the safety of my side of the duplex. “I don’t know what kind of fucking game you think you’re playing, but I’m not putting my piece on the board for you diddle with. From now on, keep your hands and your mouth to yourself!”

After I finished, I turned and dashed into the house, slamming and locking the front door behind me. I stood on the little rug by the front door, dripping and shivering, until the need to shriek at the top of my lungs faded.

Finally I sucked in a deep breath and forced it out of my lungs slowly. With the stream of air, the quivering in my abdomen finally ceased. Calm, I walked into the kitchen and looked out the window by the carport. Troy had rinsed the last of the soap off my trunk, recoiled my water hose, and the towel and soap were sitting in the empty bucket by my back tire.

It was a nice thing to do and I had no idea what I thought about that, so I decided not to think at all. I went through my bedroom to the connecting bath and turned the shower on full blast as hot as I could stand.

While the water warmed up, I stripped off my wet clothes, leaving them in a pile by the tub. I scrubbed my skin and hair until I felt warm again and rinsed off. After I climbed out of the tub, dried my skin, and slathered myself with lavender scented lotion, I put on my warmest flannel pajamas. They were covered in pictures of sugar skulls. They had been purchased on one of my shopping trips to Target with Nat and Cat. I swear those two couldn’t manage to get out of that store without spending a shit ton of money.

I twisted my damp hair into a bun and secured it with a scrunchy and climbed into bed. It was only ten on a Friday, but the last half hour had really taken it out of me. I knew it wasn’t hip to go to bed so early on the weekend but I didn’t care. I needed to rest.

I turned out my lamp and lay under my blankets, staring at the ceiling. Unable to help myself, I replayed every moment of my kiss with Troy. When I felt the heat building in my pelvis again, I forced myself to think about the two failed relationships I had with men just like Troy. The cheating, the lying, and how the last one had borrowed a lot of money from me and never paid it back. That was enough to kill the amorous feelings that my earlier make-out session with Troy inspired.

Frustrated and a little sad, I managed to force myself to switch off my brain and fall asleep. I knew better than to harbor false hopes for the future when it came to a man like Troy.

The next day I spent most of the morning cleaning up my house. I gave myself a stern lecture about avoiding my pretty new neighbor. By mid-afternoon my side of the duplex was spotless. I don’t think it had been that clean since I moved into it. Every time I finished one task, I immediately found another. I needed to distract myself from the itchy feeling I had every time I recalled the sensation of Troy’s mouth and hands on me.

It was ridiculous. No man had ever made me feel this way before.

Finally, I gave up and showered and started major preparations for girls’ night out. I planned to talk to Grayson when he got back from his conference and break things off. I hoped we could remain friends because he was truly a good guy, just not the guy for me. Tonight I was going to doll myself up and have a fabulous time with my girlfriends. I might even flirt a little.

It was time that I stopped waiting around for the right guy to notice me. I hadn’t dated much since my last pretty, but scummy, boyfriend and I had broken up. After that heartbreak, I was hesitant to date again. It almost didn’t seem worth it. Now all my friends were married and having babies, and I was alone.

As I blow dried my hair and used a straightening iron to smooth it out, I had an epiphany that was way too long in coming. If I wanted to have the family I dreamed of, I had to take the risk. Most things worth having were never easy. Why, in all these years, had I expected finding the love of my life to be any simpler than everything else?

Probably all those stupid fairy tales. They made it sound simple; boy meets girl, girl needs rescuing, boy kicks ass, and they live happily ever after. Maybe not easy, but simple. Unfortunately, real life never worked out that way. The fairy tales forgot to mention that Prince Charming probably had a million bad habits that drove Cinderella nuts and that Cinderella became an unbearable bitch the week before her period.

Tonight, I was starting fresh. I wanted more from my life than to be the piano teacher who lived to be a hundred and five and had twenty cats.