Hope Entangles: A New Adult Romantic Comedy (Book 2 of 3) (21 page)

“
Sure looked like you were.”
Okay, that was a cheap shot.

“
So you liked my sexy
dance?”

I pulled my head up and shot him a hard
glare. “Whatever dance you were doing, it certainly wasn’t
sexy.”

“
Really?”

I batted my eyelashes at him. “You
couldn’t even hold his attention for three minutes,
remember?”

He growled. “He was a double agent.
Didn’t matter how sexy my mad dance skills were, he was on a covert
mission.”

I had to laugh. Covert mission. Where
did he come up with this stuff?

“
You did look really good
tonight,” I said, breathing in his deliciousness.

“
Didn’t look too bad
yourself.”

I looked up at him, and his face was
bathed in the ambient light coming from the television. He was so
handsome, so damned sexy.

Oh, what the hell.

I reached up and placed my hand on his
cheek, and pulled his face until he was looking down at me. Slowly
I raised up, closer, closer, until I could feel his warm, sweet
breath on my lips.

I leaned in and kissed him. His lips
were soft, so soft, and his mouth tasted cool and spicy and
otherworldly good. I moved closer and deepened the kiss, entangling
my arms around his neck, pulling him into me.

I laid back and pulled him on top of
me. He was hard, I could feel the long, thick shaft of his sex
against my thigh.

And then he sat up, pulling his lips
from mine, leaving me gasping for him.

What the hell?

He looked down on me and brushed a
wayward lock of my hair from my forehead.

“
I don’t think we should go
any further right now.”

Why the hell not?

“
Don’t look at me like
that.”

I grunted as he pulled his body away
from mine. “Touchy.”

He was up on his feet, covertly trying
to adjust himself so I wouldn’t see his hard-on.

“
You know that if we went
any further tonight we’d both regret it.”

I just scowled at him.

“
Think about it,” he said
patiently. “You’re fresh out of a relationship,”—if you could call
what Jake and I had a relationship—“and you just had a run in with
a psycho ex-boyfriend.”

Okay, it did sound pretty bad. “But in
the plus column I stopped shaking.”

He looked down at me with those dark,
heated eyes, his thick, soft lips spreading into the naughtiest
smile ever. “Believe me… you’d be shaking by the time I was done
with you.”

Oh my…

Oh my, my…

Someone knocked on my front
door.

I closed my eyes and swore. I should
have turned the volume up on the TV. Bette surely could hear every
word we’d said. I was going to strangle her if she was on my porch
with a video camera.

I got up and trudged to the front door,
opening it heedlessly.

My world just fell away.

Jake stood on my porch, a shy grin on
his face, smelling of soap and an undertone of grease. Suddenly
there was only him and me, standing all by ourselves at the end of
the world.

Was it possible that the man had gotten
even better looking in the last two weeks?

“
Jake,” I breathed, and then
realized I was standing on my front porch in my pajamas. I crossed
my arms self-consciously over my chest. “Why are you
here?”

Could he ever forgive me? Would
he?

I stepped back and shivered from the
cool breeze that whipped in through the door.

“
Christ, Hope…” he scrubbed
his hand over the back of his neck and studied the wooden beams of
my porch floor for a moment. When he looked up his green eyes
sparkled in the glow of my porch light. “I just had to—”

He stopped talking and looked behind
me. Raphael cleared his throat. “Hi, I’m Hope’s new neighbor. Who
are you?”

Jake’s face turned hard, and he stood
up tall and straight. “I’m Jake… I’m…”

I tried to back up into the house
again. I just wanted to go to bed, not go through another show of
testosterone. “Maybe we could all have lunch sometime next week.” I
backed up into Raphael and he wrapped his arms around my
waist.

Jake’s eyes hardened and his jaw
clenched. “That’s a nice shade of lipstick you’ve got on there.
Been cross dressing?”

Oh crap.

“
It rubbed off. You know,
when we were, well, you know.”

Jake’s head went back as if he’d been
slapped. He turned and took a step towards the stairs leading off
the porch, but then turned back around, pointing a finger at
Raphael.

“
Not him!” he groused. “You
can’t be serious about him!”

I glared at him, my back straightening
with ire. “And why not him?”

Jake’s eyes blazed, wide and erratic.
“Because he’s an asshole, and he tried to cut down your goddamn
tree!”

“
How did you know about
that?”

Raphael stalked out around me onto the
porch, looking every inch the six foot menace he was. “I think
Bette isn’t the only one who has you under
surveillance.”

Jake and Raphael slowly circled each
other, their steps whisper quiet on the boards of my
porch.

“
I was just passing by,”
Jake barked. “And I saw you with a chainsaw. Was I just supposed to
ignore it and go on my way?”

Raphael stepped closer, his face
turning stony with anger again. “Well, isn’t that what you
did?”

“
You
sonovabitch!”

“
Stalker asshat!”

Okay, points for creativity.

Jake took a step closer and pushed
against Raphael’s shoulder.

That did it. I wasn’t going to watch
two grown men fight like a couple of barbarians on my own front
porch.

I turned and walked back into the
house, slammed the door closed and shot the locks home.

“
Hope?” Jake’s voice drifted
through the locked door.

“
Are you okay in there?”
came Raphael’s.

I switched off the front porch light,
plunging the two men into darkness, and started straight up the
stairs to my bedroom.

I was too damn tired for this
shit.

“
Hope?” they called in
unison.

I marched into my bedroom and pulled
two things out of my bedside table: the rainbow Twizzlers and my
iPod. I tore off a couple strips and chomped into them like a
ravenous hyena, and then plugged the earbuds of the iPod into my
ears, effectively cutting off the unwanted voices of the two men on
my front porch.

I tapped the screen
and
Hazy Shade of Winter
by The Bangles roared and pulsed into my head,
blasting all thought from my frazzled brain.

They really were at their best in this
song. It was hard core and still elegant and beautiful.

I clicked off my bedside lamp and
snuggled into my Hello Kitty sheets… and then clicked the lamp back
on.

Maybe tonight I’d just sleep with the
lights on.

I looked to the front window that
overlooked my front lawn.

Goodnight boys. It’s been
fun…

*The End*

To be concluded in Hope Rises, coming
soon!

Thank you for reading my novella. I
hope you enjoyed it. If you did, then help others find it. Review
it and lend it to others.

I would love to hear from
you.

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[email protected]

Twitter: @alicebello72

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