Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (38 page)

“Hi,” he said softy.

“Hi,” she said.

“Can I come up?”

She ran for the ladder.

“Hi,” he said again when he was in her room.

“Hi.”

He stepped closer.
 

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Anna,” he said.
 
“I need to tell you something.”
 
He led her to the bed, and sat down next
to her.
 
“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?’ she asked.
 
Disappointment crashed into her like
waves onto a beach. Was he here because he felt guilty?

“For leaving you that night.”

“You already
 
-- ”

He put a finger to her lips.
 
“No.”
 
He shook his head.
 
“It wasn’t just me being a dumb kid.
 
I mean, it was, but there’s more to
it.”
 
He looked at her, and she saw
the ache in his eyes, the same ache she’d been feeling ever since she’d left
him earlier that day.
 
“I was
scared.”

“Of what?”

“You’d turned me down,” he said.
 
“I felt like you didn’t love me, like
you didn’t want to be with me.”

“That wasn’t it,” she said.
 
“I did want to be with you, Jaxon!
 
I was scared, too.
 
I was scared that if I gave up my whole
life for you, if I came with you, eventually you’d come to your senses and then
what would I have?”

“Come to my senses about what?” He frowned.

“About me not being enough for you,” she
whispered.
 
It was the first time
she’d ever allowed herself to really think the words.
 
It was so raw, so vulnerable, so real,
that she looked away from her, averting her eyes to the floor.

Jaxon reached out and took her chin in his
hands, forcing her to meet his gaze. “You,” he said, “are more than enough for
me.”

The words sent a thrill through her body.
 
Could he really feel that way?
 
And if he did, what did it mean for the
two of them?

“I want you to come home with me,” he
said.
 
“To Los Angeles.”
 
His eyes were still on hers, and the
moment was taking her breath away.
 
She could see on his face how hard it was for him to put himself out
there like this again, and how badly he wanted her to say yes.

There were a million questions she could ask
him.
 
Where she would live, what she
would do for work, how she would get her things from England, when they would
go.
 
But there would be time for
questions later.
 
Right now, it was
time to follow her heart.

“Yes,” she whispered.
 
“Yes, I’ll go with you.”

He pulled her close, until their foreheads
touched, and they sat like that for a long moment.
 
And then, finally, he kissed her.
  

It was the kiss of their past, the kiss of the
moment, and the kiss of their future.
 
A future they could finally claim together.

The End
of Fool Me Twice

NO GOOD FOR ANYONE

BY

LOCKLYN MARX

Copyright 2012, Locklyn Marx, All Rights
Reserved

C
hapter
O
ne

Chace Davenport was looking for a fight.

It had been a horrible night.
 
The restaurant he owned was about to go
belly up, and he had no idea how to stop it.
 
He pushed his foot against the pedal of
his Ford Ranger, edging the truck up to seventy as he dipped and turned along
the rural roads of Willow Brook, Massachusetts. It wasn’t the smartest idea
– more than one person had met their maker by speeding down these old
country roads late at night.

But Chace was feeling reckless.

He pulled into his driveway and opened the door
of his truck, swinging his long legs out onto the pavement.
 
His dog, Maximilian, was waiting for him
on the front porch, his ears perked as his master came closer.
 
It was only eight o’clock, but autumn
was starting and the days were getting cooler and shorter.

It was another thing to be upset about.

Chace hated the fucking winter.

His garbage bins were sitting at the end of the
driveway, and he decided to pull them into the garage before he went into the
house and changed for the gym. The bins felt heavier than usual, and Chace’s
bad mood deepened.
 
The two-bit
rural garbage company they had out here was notorious for moving the date of
their pickup and not notifying anyone.

He opened the bin and looked in.
 
A perfumey smell drifted out, the kind
that came from those ridiculous bags that were supposed to smell clean and
fresh, but really did nothing other than mask the scent of garbage until you
breathed in deep enough. Sure enough, three or four bags of trash sat at the
bottom of the bin.

Chace didn’t use those kind of bags.
 

Which meant someone had taken their trash and
put it in his bin.
 

And since Chace lived in the middle of nowhere,
with no neighbors for at least a couple of miles, there was only one person it
could be.
 
The house that sat next
to his had been unoccupied ever since Chace had moved in ten months ago.

But last month the house next door had finally
sold.
 
It had been a shock – the
house was a ramshackle, falling-down frame of a thing that should have been
destroyed a long time ago.
 
It was a
total eyesore.

The stupid thing had been on the market for
eleven months, and Chace had been waiting for it to hit the year mark so that
he could swoop in, scoop it up for a low price, and then demolish it.
 

But before he could, someone had bought it.

Probably some crazy old man.
 
A crazy old man who was so senile he
couldn’t even call the garbage company and schedule a pick-up.
 
Chace glared at the house next door.
 
Lights burned in the windows downstairs,
breaking up the otherwise completely dark night.
 

Chace liked the black of night, the comfort of
the dark.
 
It signified relief,
sometimes from sleep, sometimes from the gym, and sometimes from a random woman
he’d picked up at any number of places.

And now some asshole was messing with that.

Well.
 

Old man or not, the new neighbor needed to
learn that he couldn’t just go around dumping his garbage bags into other
people’s bins.
 
Yes, this was the
country, but there were rules.
 
And
there wasn’t going to be any community here, none of this ‘I need to borrow an
egg’ bullshit.
 
Chace had moved here
because he wanted to be completely isolated.
 
And if the new neighbor was looking for
something else, well, then, they were in for a rude awakening.

The sooner everyone understood that, the
better.

He slammed the trash bin shut and decided to go
over and have a talk with this new neighbor.
 
No time like the present.

***

Lindsay Benson looked around at the mess of
boxes that littered the kitchen, and thought briefly about sitting down on the
floor and having a good cry.
 
They
said moving was one of the most stressful things you could do, behind switching
jobs and having a baby.
 
Lindsay was
inclined to agree.

At least she’d been able to find the
microwave.
 
She’d wanted to heat up
some water for tea, but of course she hadn’t been able locate any mugs.
 

Finally she’d found an old package of Styrofoam
cups underneath the sink.
 
She’d heated
up some tap water and stuck a tea bag inside. As she sat on her one rickety
kitchen chair and sipped her drink, she tried not to think about all the
different kinds of bacteria she could be ingesting.
 
The property ran on well water, and she
hadn’t had time to get it tested before she’d moved in.

She’d fallen in love with the tiny little Cape
house as soon as she’d seen it.
 
And
when she’d heard its history – that a man had built it so his daughter
could live on his property with him -- she was sold.
 

Of course, the house was going to need some
work.
 
But the tiny kitchen was
functional, and once she got some butter yellow paint on the walls and found a
cozy kitchen table with a cute tablecloth and some painted chairs, it would
start to feel like home.

But first, she had to start unpacking.
 
She sighed and took another sip of her
tea.
 
Just a few more minutes, and
then she would start.
 
For real this
time.

But there was a knock on the door before
Lindsay could get herself properly motivated.

It must be the neighbor!

All the realtor had told her was that the
neighbor was a man who lived alone.
 
Lindsay imagined an older man who’d lost his wife, with wiry silvery
hair and glasses he was always misplacing. She’d bring him homemade soup in the
winter and homemade pies in the summer. “Thank you, Lindsay,” he’d say, his
face lighting up. “I haven’t had a good meal since my wife died.
 
You’re a peach.”

Of course, she’d have to get her kitchen in
order before she could do any cooking.
 
And she’d have to learn to make soup.
 
And pies. But one thing at a time.

Lindsay navigated her way through the maze of
boxes toward the front door.
 
The
knock came again, harder this time, more insistent.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” she mumbled.
 
For an old man, he was rather
impatient.
 
She opened the door.

And then she froze. Standing there, on her
front porch, was Chace Davenport.

He looked exactly as she remembered.
 
Chocolate brown hair that was cut
short.
 
Dark brown eyes that made
you think about long mornings in bed.
 
He was dressed in a pair of jeans and a black v-neck sweater.

Her heart jumped into her throat, her pulse
quickened, and adrenaline coursed through her veins.

“What are you doing here?” she blurted.
 
Had he come for her?
 
Why?
 
And how had he known she was here?
“I’m Chace Davenport,” he barked.
 
“I
live next door.”

“You live…” She trailed off, confused.
 
He lived next door?
 
But that was impossible.
 
Chace lived in Boston.
 
He
used to live in Boston.
 
You haven’t
talked to him in almost a year.
 
You
don’t know where he lives now.
 

“Next door,” he finished, looking at her like
she was crazy.
 

“And you came over to say hi?”
 
she asked.
 
Her brain was having trouble processing
what was going on, couldn’t wrap itself around the puzzle it had been presented
with.
 
She shook her head, tried to
clear her thoughts.
 
“But how did
you know I was here?”

“I knew you were here because you put your
trash in my bin.”
 
He was holding up
one of the trash bags, which he dropped onto her porch.
 
She looked down at it, still not really
understanding what was going on. Chace Davenport lived next door to her?
 
And was bringing over her trash?

“Oh,” she said.
 
“I didn’t…I mean, my sister was here
helping me move.
 
She must have put
it in your bin.”
 
She reached down and
picked up the bag and then stood there, holding it awkwardly.

“Well,” he said.
 
“Don’t let it happen again.”

“Okay,” she said, stunned.
 
And then, in a moment that was so
jarring it felt like a bucket of cold water had been thrown on her, Lindsay finally
understood what was going on.
 
He
didn’t remember who she was!
 
But
that was impossible.
 
Wasn’t
it?
 
Yes, they’d only met once, but…