Loud: The Complete Series (A Bad Boy Alpha Male Romance)

LOUD

The
Complete Series

By
Claire Adams

This
book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are
products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not
to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual
events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Copyright
© 2016 Claire Adams

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CHAPTER
ONE

Brooke

Moving sucks. However, it has become something of a tradition
for me. I’ve moved more times than I care to think about. So many times, in
fact, that I’ve adapted to look at it as a reinvention of myself, a new leaf to
turn, a blank page that I can use to rewrite my life. Instead of dreading it, I
have come to use it as a new start.

Not that I had much choice in the matter growing up,
with my dad having been in the military and being stationed all over the place.
Don’t get me wrong, it was great in a lot of ways. I mean, not only did I get
to experience different cities and different states, but also I got to live in
a few different countries.

Of course, there were aspects of it that kind of
sucked, too. I never got to make the kind of solid, lasting friendships that kids
get to make when they grow up in one location. I admit, I was rather envious
when I saw other kids my age and their best friends who they'd known for most
of their lives. I wanted those kind of connections. But even with social media
and cell phones, those connections always faded. Then there was my first real
high school boyfriend — I had to leave him behind just about the time things
were starting to settle in and get to the good part. So, yeah, moving isn’t
always ideal, but life is what you make it. Or, so I’m told.

So, I find myself moving once again. Only this time, it
has nothing to do with my dad getting orders to yet another Air Force base.
Nope, this time it was my choice. And it was the right choice, considering the
circumstances that led to it. Granted, if I wanted to maintain any level of
self-respect, it was the only choice I really had after what
he
did to me. He who should not be
spoken of. I didn't want to think about him, about that, about the place we shared
together, about the trust I put in him, about the stability I'd longed for and
thought I had finally found. That is, until it was all ripped away.

“Helloooo. Earth to Brooke! C'mon, I can't get this
sofa off the back of this truck by myself, girl!”

Leslie.

The sound of her voice brought a smile to my face. I
guess I did have some stability, after all. There's nothing quite like a best
friend to distract you from a broken heart. Especially, when she's as bubbly as
Leslie. Okay, maybe bubbly isn’t the right way to describe her. Maybe a little
left of center in the best way possible is more accurate.

“Sorry, Les, I was just-”

“Daydreamin', girl, like always!”

She rolled her eyes at me in that melodramatic manner
that she is known — and loved — for. It’s really not a huge surprise to anyone
who’s ever known her that she's majoring in drama. She'll land a part as soon
as she graduates, I have no doubt.

I snapped myself out of the turmoil of thoughts and
emotions crashing through my head and hurried over to help Leslie get the sofa
off the truck.

“I’m coming. Don’t get too excited. Just hold on
before you hurt yourself!”

I clambered up onto the tailgate of the truck and moved
toward the cab, maneuvering around the 1970s iconic sofa. I squatted down low before
I slid my hands into position and gripped the underside of the big piece of
furniture. My dad’s voice played through my mind —
always
use your legs to lift, not your back
. I
grinned a little to myself at the thought.

“Okay, Les, are you ready?” I asked.

She positioned herself at the edge of the truck's bed,
clutched her side of the sofa tight, and gritted her teeth.

“I got this,” she assured me. “Been doing squats at
gym with Antonio. I'm ready, as ready as I've
ever
been!” Her over-the-top
enthusiasm made me laugh. Especially considering I could barely see her face
peeking over the top of the clunky sofa from her squatting position.

I tried to reposition my hands in a way that wouldn’t
slip on the plastic furniture cover wrapped around Leslie's grandmother's still
pristine relic. One thing was for certain, the thing was sturdy. And there
wasn’t a spot on it. Without the plastic covering, it looked as though it had
just been delivered from the showroom. However, it had been sitting in Leslie’s
storage since her grandmother had passed a few months before. And while it was kind
of clunky, we both agreed that it was pretty much the most comfortable sofa
either of us had ever sat on. Combined with the fact that the style of it was
so retro that it was practically back in style, it was a no-brainer to use it for
our new apartment. We'd saved more than a few dollars by not buying a new one,
and we had used the money we saved to buy other items that
weren’t
practically antique and were a little more our style so that we could decorate
the apartment with flair.

Of course, before worrying about that, we had to actually
get the sofa off the truck and into the apartment. Getting the thing onto the
truck had been easy enough. Leslie's uncle — a big, burly, biker — had helped
us get it out of her storage building and onto the back of the truck. But then
he'd had to head off to work. It had sure seemed a lot lighter when we'd had a three-hundred-pound
biker helping us lift it.

“Alright, you ready? On three,” I said. “One, two,
three!”

We both grunted and tried to put our backs into it. We
managed to get it up off the bed of the truck, but then Leslie's eyes started
bulging white in their sockets and the look on her face was more than enough
for me to know we weren’t going to make it far with the sofa.

“Put it down, put it down,” she managed to gasp.
“Hurry, or I'm gonna drop it on my foot!”

“Okay, okay! Easy!”

We lowered the sofa back onto the truck bed and Leslie
breathed a sigh of relief as she flailed herself over the back of the sofa.
After a moment she stood, resting her hands on her thighs as she breathed in
and out in deep breaths of exertion.

“So, ummm, what happened to 'I've been doing squats?'”
I laughed.

She looked up at me and shook her head. “
Clearly
I haven't been putting enough weight on the bar! Damn, that sofa feels like it
weighs as much as a small car!”

I leaned back against the rear window of the truck.
“Well, we've gotta get it off here somehow. And we've gotta do it soon. My
brother will be getting off of work in about an hour and I've gotta get to the
other side of town to give him his truck back. We need to have all of this
stuff unloaded in the next thirty minutes…give or take.”

“Girl, I'm telling you, if I have to try get this
big-ass sofa off of this truck again without any help, I’m pretty sure my back
is gonna snap clean in half like a lil' ol' matchstick.”

“Well, do you have any suggestions about what we’re
gonna do? Bryan only agreed to lend me his truck for the afternoon.”

“Let me think,” Leslie said as she plopped down into
the sofa.

The sound of a motorcycle screaming up the road
distracted us from our current predicament. Even if we wanted to discuss ways
to get the monstrous sofa into the apartment, we wouldn’t have been able to
hear ourselves talk. We turned our heads as the motorcycle sped closer until a
bright red, sleek and sexy machine with aerodynamic bodywork and sharp,
purposeful curves came into view. The bike slowed down as it rounded the corner
to our apartment block. The rider — a young, muscular guy dressed in a tight
tee shirt and faded jeans — pulled into the parking space next to us, killing
the bike's rumbling engine as he did. My knees went a little weak when he
pulled off his helmet and grinned at us with a set of brilliantly white teeth. I
almost expected to hear a tiny dinging sound like you’d hear on a toothpaste
commercial. He had the square-jawed look of a cover model and despite having
just pulled a helmet off, his dark chestnut hair was meticulously styled —
short on the sides, but longer and flowing on top. His eyes seemed to hover on
me for a few moments before his gaze moved to the sofa where Leslie sat. Then
again, it could have simply been wishful thinking on my part.

“Nice bike, cowboy,” Leslie called out to him. “Is
that a Suzuki?”

“Kawasaki,” he replied.

“Hmph. Got something against Honda or Ducati?” she
asked with a grin.

“Not really, but I only ride Japanese bikes.”

“Do ya now?” she said twisting her mouth curiously.
“My friend Brooke here lived in Japan for a while.”

“Nice,” he said, his stare moving back to me with a
crooked grin turning up one side of his breathtaking face. “I'm hoping to visit
Tokyo over semester break. I've always wanted to go. Maybe you can tell me some
places I should check out?”

“Um, sure,” I replied, fighting back a flutter of
butterflies in my stomach as he directed his attention toward me. “But maybe we
should be properly introduced first?”

He chuckled warmly. “Of course, where are my manners?
I'm Emerson Reed. I live just over there,” he said, pointing at one of the
apartment buildings.

“No way!” said Leslie. “That's right next door to us!”

“Ohhh,” he remarked, dragging the word out a little
with a suddenly mischievous, knowing glint in his eyes. “So you're the new
neighbors I've heard so much about.”

“Heard so much about?” I asked wondering why anyone
would be talking about us.

“And what exactly is it that you've heard about us?”
asked Leslie.

Emerson looked us each up and down briefly and smiled.

“Oh, this and that,” he replied, still grinning.

His gaze returned to the sofa on the back of the
truck.

“Wow. That is quite the sofa. I haven't seen one of
those since I was about this tall,” he remarked, holding a hand to the side of
his knee to indicate the height of a small child. “My uncle had one just like
that when I was a little kid. Only, his was red. It didn't last too long,
though. My aunt had a bunch of cats and they tore it to shreds. That was a
tough sofa, though, I remember that about it.”

“Yeah, it's pretty solid alright,” Leslie sighed,
rolling her eyes. “Too damn solid for us to get it off the back of the truck!”

“Say no more,” Emerson announced. “I'll go get my
roommate, Chris. I think we can get it off the back of the truck for you.”

“Seriously?” I asked. “You'd help us out with it?”

When he looked at me, I could have sworn his gaze
lingered over me for a few moments longer than necessary.

“It's no big deal,” he insisted. “We were just about
to head off to the gym to work out anyway, so this'll be a good warm-up. You
two just hang tight, I'll be back in a minute.”

He set his helmet down on the tank of the bike and
jogged into the building. After he was out of sight, Leslie and I looked at
each other, simultaneously bursting into a fit of giggles.

“Oh my
God
!” Leslie exclaimed. “How freakin’ hot
is he? And I
saw him
checking you out! Oh yeah…he's got a thing for you.”