Hope Entangles: A New Adult Romantic Comedy (Book 2 of 3) (14 page)

My wrist ached, right where my star
shaped scar was. I held it for a moment and wriggled my toes. I’d
read in Oprah’s magazine that it was a good way to trick your brain
into being in the here and now.

I could almost hear that song again by
The Black Keys: the way it played on a loop, and had been the
soundtrack of the worst night of my life. The sour smell of sweat,
and his voice cracking with desperation and anger, filling me with
panic.

I pulled on some jeans and a t-shirt,
yanked my hair back into a ponytail and then headed downstairs with
my laptop.

I needed to talk to Raphael. And I
needed coffee. Coffee would make everything better. That and some
of the microwavable frozen pancakes I’d bought a couple night
ago.

Luckily Bette had given me Raphael’s
phone number, so I didn’t need to go over there and be subjected to
his underwhelming charms.

I loaded my coffee maker and flicked on
the switch as I dialed his number.

Maybe he wouldn’t be home.

No luck… he answered on the second
ring.

“
Hello neighbor… what can I
do for you today?”

The bastard either had my phone number
programmed into his phone (I’d have to have a talk with Bette if
that was the case) or he had caller ID. The obnoxious, arrogant
ass.

“
Sprinkles,” I couldn’t
resist bringing that up. “Have you had your whipped cream and
precious little candy specialty drink yet? I was heading over to
Sheetz and would be happy to pick one up for you.”

Silence.

“
Funny,” he said flatly.
“Very funny.”

I try. “It’s nothing,
really.”

“
So have you found a date
yet for your party?” I could practically see him smiling as he
brought that one up.

“
As a matter of fact…” I was
about to lie, tell him I already had a date, and hang up on
him.

But I didn’t.

And I needed a sexy, swaggering peacock
of a man; which he was, in spades.

“
As a matter of fact, I do
need a date. Are you still free?”

He chuckled. “On a Friday night? What
kind of loser doesn’t have a date set up for a Friday
night?”

Asshole.

He waited and waited, not saying a
word, waiting for me to finally admit I was a loser and needed him
as a date.

I sucked in the air to tell him to
shove it straight up his ass…

But he really did have a great ass, and
the broadest shoulders I’d seen in person, and that
chest…

Good grief, I needed him on my arm for
business, but my out of control sex drive was going to get me in
far more trouble than any job was worth.

I looked around at my house, at my
kitchen, and my percolating coffee.

I loved living here, and if I screwed
up my job with Janine’s publishing house I could lose it. All of
it.

I hate you. “Yes, I’m a pathetic loser
who doesn’t have a date for this Friday night.”

A long, silent few beats.

“
And?” he
prompted.

I
really
hate you. “Will you please go
with me to the party?” I hate you, I hate you, I really, really
hate you!

“
Can you hold, I’ve gotta
check my calendar.” The line clicked over to some wacked out muzac,
like you’d expect on the home shopping network.

Twisted…

I waited for a good three minutes,
tapping my fingers, wanting to pour myself a cup of coffee, but
afraid he’d burst onto the line and make me jump, and I’d end up
scalding myself.

“
Hope?” he said, finally
coming back on the line.

“
Yes, Raphael?”

“
Are you home?”

I hesitated. Why would he want to know
if I was home or not?

“
You’re not going to try to
chop down my sycamore tree again, are you?”

He laughed and I could practically see
the sexy little creases around his dark, brooding eyes.

No! Not sexy! Irritating!

“
I just have something for
you, and would rather get it to you now than later. And I thought I
could give you my answer then too.”

Crap on toast. “You can just tell me
now. Whatever it is you have for me will keep.” Yeah, like until
the end of time!

“
No, I need to see you face
to face. So are you home or not?”

I had to find myself some handsome male
friends to have on standby so I never had to resort to this kind of
foolishness again.

“
I’m home.”

“
Come out on the porch and
I’ll give you my answer and what I have for you.”

He hung up.

I stood there in my kitchen, so needing
a cup of coffee, yet wanting to get this whole porch thing finished
and over with. So I checked that my ponytail was still intact, and
walked to my front door. If this was some kind of practical joke, I
was going to castrate the bastard myself.

I walked out onto my porch. The second
I did my phone rang in my hand.

“
Hello,” I said.

“
My answer is yes,” Raphael
said, voice smug. “I’ll go to the party with you and be your arm
candy.”

I rolled my eyes. “Thank you.” I still
hate you. “So what do you have for me? Because I’ve got a little
something for you too.”

“
Look to your left,” Raphael
crooned. “They’re coming your way.”

They?

I turned and about fell over. Marching
down the sidewalk toward me were two hauntingly familiar women. The
younger of the two looked like a much older, wider version of Paula
Troy, my personal tormentor from high school, and Jake’s sister. By
her side, looking identical to how she looked when I took typing
class from her was Ms. Leer. Norma Leer: the wickedest, evilest
teacher in the history of Wallace High.

Oh, and she’d hated me with a hellish
vengeance.

Both women locked sights on me. I
glanced over toward Raphael’s house. He was standing on his porch,
waving good naturedly, smiling like the evil, back stabbing bastard
he was.

“
That’s for Sheetz, baby.
Enjoy.”

“
I’ll get you for this,” I
hissed into the phone and hung up on him. I turned around and
started to walk back toward my front door, as if I hadn’t already
seen the two women coming my way.

“
Stop right there!” I heard
Paula bark in her most malicious, eerily familiar voice.

I sped up my pace.

“
Miss Jones.” It was Ms
Leer. Just the sound of her authoritative, disapproving alto made
my entire body freeze as if I was being sucked up into a perverted
time warp.

Slowly I turned around to find the
nemeses from my high school years standing before me on my front
porch, looking at me the same way they did all those years ago.
Paula glared at me like she’d just found me smeared on the heel of
her favorite shoe. Norma Leer leveled an icy gaze on me that could
have freeze dried an entire cow.

I closed my eyes.

Fuck me, fuck me, fuck
me...

I was so going to get Raphael back for
this.

“
Miss Jones,” Norma said,
her voice as frigid as her stare, “Are you ill?”

Yes. “No, I’m fine.” I tried to smile
at them, to lure them into a sense of faux civility, but all I
wanted to do was run back into my house and lock the door.
“Whatever can I do for you? I’d heard you both lived in Florida
now.”

“
We made a special trip when
we heard about you and Jake,” Norma said.

“
I couldn’t fucking believe
it—” Paula started.

“
Language,” Norma said
flatly, her tone no less frosty toward her daughter than it had
been to me.

Paula cringed, her head falling in a
moment of shame… but then she recovered and glared at me once more.
“I could not… believe it when I heard from Ann Williams that my
brother had hooked up with the likes of you!”

The likes of me? As if she was some
sort of prize?

I almost lost it and said what I was
thinking, but more than anything I wanted Paula Troy and her ice
queen mother to just go away. Being polite might be the fastest way
to accomplish that.

“
I had a hard time…” Norma
Leer paused to contemplate what she was going to say next, seeming
to mull it over in her head to nice it up. “What I mean is Jacob
hasn’t dated anyone for almost two years,”—join the club—“and I and
my daughter were duly surprised to hear he’d started dating again,
that it was someone we both… knew.”—Oh boy—“And that it had ended
practically before it had begun.”

“
Jake won’t talk about it,”
Paula said sourly. “He’s just being a hermit again, shut in that
old house all day. So all we know is what I’ve gathered off the
grapevine.”

I was gossip fodder. How
nice.

“
And what my daughter has
gleaned from her friends up here,” she looked around at the city
she’d spent most of her adult life teaching and raising a family in
with clear distaste, “is that you broke up with him.”

What?

“
Jake is famous for not
breaking up with women.” Paula said. “It’s like a disease. Once a
woman sneaks in under his defenses he’s powerless to get rid of
her.”

Norma closed her eyes and cringed.
“Even when it’s perfectly obvious he should.”

Paula tilted her head and gave me the
closest-to-violence stare I’d ever received. “So, Hopeless
Wonder,”

I was wondering when she’d start using
the pet name she’d had for me in high school.

“
Why did you break my big
brother’s heart?”

I gulped. They had it wrong. I hadn’t
broken up with Jake. He’d broken up with me, and for a very good
reason. One I was not going to tell them. They’d form an impromptu
lynching party and hang me from my sycamore.

“
Ah…” They wanted answers,
and I didn’t have any. Not any that would make them go away.
“That’s between Jake and me.” I took a small step back toward my
front door. “So if Jake didn’t tell you, then I really
shouldn’t.”

Paula shrieked, her arms jerking as if
she wanted to reach out and smack me. “I told you this little twit
wouldn’t have the sense god gave a housefly!”

Norma closed her eyes, a long suffering
expression on her gaunt face. “Paula, please keep this… civilized.”
She was wearing the same kind of sleek, unobtrusive blouse/skirt
combo she’d worn as a teacher. She really did look just as she did
back then.

Paula, on the other hand, looked like a
worn out, extra-large version of herself. She looked like she what
her mother might look like if you didn’t know who the woman
actually was. Obviously having kids and a husband—and Norma
Leer—living with you drove you to pack on the pounds. And from the
sun damage and stress, she really did look ten years older than she
should have.

Paula turned on her mother, her
expression irate and just this side of volcanic.

“
Don’t talk to me like I’m a
child. I don’t live under your roof anymore, remember? You live
under mine!”

Norma Leer’s glacial stare homed in on
her daughter, and without cracking a hint of expression across her
thin face, she squared her shoulders and took a step closer to her
daughter.

“
Correct me if I’m wrong,
Paula, but I helped you and that husband of yours get financed so
you could buy that house. So I’d say it’s still partially my
roof.”

I could see some of the wind blow right
out of Paula’s sails. Good god, I was glad I didn’t belong to this
family.

Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a
late model, spotless white Buick Park Avenue round the corner and
crawl slowly down the street. Just seeing a Buick, especially a
white one, made my teeth stand on edge.

Just then Paula rebounded, stepping
closer to her mother. “If you’d rather move back up here and we’ll
pay you every red cent you loaned us for the down payment… I can
arrange that today.”

Oh boy…

I had to give Norma credit. She didn’t
flinch; she didn’t even blink. She just stared her daughter down
like she owned her.

“
Are you saying you don’t
want me living with you any longer?”

Paula’s head snapped back as if Norma
had slapped her.

“
Because I thought you
wanted me there.”

Paula shook her head of frizzy black
curls. “I-I never… I want you living with me, mother. That hasn’t
changed.”

I suddenly felt I was intruding on a
very confusing private battle.

The white Buick slowly made its way
closer and closer to my house, and every inch it came closer made
me all the more nervous.

It couldn’t be. I’d lived
here for nearly two years and
she
had never once come to visit. I hadn’t seen her
since Christmas.