Fire & Ice (The Locklaine Boys #1) (2 page)

Like a total creeper, but whatever. Unrequited love would do that to a young girl, after all.

THE SECOND TIME I
saw Griffin I was fourteen, having my first period while experiencing the worst breakout in history. And wearing braces with neon colored rubber bands.

It was a travesty the likes of which humanity had never seen before.

He was twenty-three, fresh out of the police academy, even better looking than the last time I saw him, and with his girlfriend.

With.

His.

Girlfriend
.

Her name was Heather. I hated Heather. I wanted to throw her out in the frigid Buffalo winter and watch her slowly freeze into a ditzy, blonde dumbsicle. I hadn’t thought it was possible, but watching him kiss her or lean in and whisper in her ear, or hell, even
smile
at her, hurt like tens of thousands of tiny paper cuts. My heart was broken. My melodramatic, hormonal teenaged world had come to an abrupt end. There was nothing in life worth living for if Griffin Locklaine didn’t know I existed.

Okay, yes, so I was a teensy bit overemotional. But I was a young girl, premenstrual for the first time in
my life
. Add raging hormones and a whopping dose of adolescent angst together and the combination was catastrophic

THE THIRD TIME I
saw Griffin was pure happenstance… or fate, depending on how you looked at it.

Just a heads-up, I totally saw it as fate.

I’d moved to New York City shortly after graduating high school, determined to fulfill my dream of opening my very own high-end clothing boutique, so I was going to school for business and fashion merchandising, living in the same city as my brother and my forbidden crush.

I might have changed substantially over time, physically and maturity wise, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t reduced to a bumbling idiot when I just so happened to stumble into him and his
date
on a random sidewalk after seeing a movie with a few friends.

“Pepper? Is that you?” I nearly choked on my tongue as his familiar voice broke through the laughter of me and my friends as we made our way home from a late show. “Holy shit! Is that really you?”

I didn’t know whether or not to be offended or flattered by the bewildered look on his face. Yes, I looked different. Gone were the knobby knees and pointy elbows, and in their place were curves that rivaled ones I’d seen in women in magazines. I’d discovered a smoothing cream that managed to tame my wild, frizzy hair that no longer glowed neon orange, thanks to the deeper red and brown lowlights I added. I wore makeup—correctly. I dressed in clothes that fit my frame. I’d come out of my shell, grown up. I’d developed my own style and personality. I wasn’t that same shy, nerdy little girl I used to be.

That was, until I crossed paths with my unobtainable crush after almost five years… while his arm was wrapped securely around a blonde that barely deemed me worthy of acknowledgement.

“H-hey, Griff,” I stuttered as my two girlfriends gawked at him with undisguised longing.

“No fuckin’ way!” he laughed excitedly, and I nearly dropped dead right there on the sidewalk as he released his life sized Barbie doll and wrapped me in a tight hug. “Look at you, red. All grown up.” He grinned affectionately as he placed his hands on my shoulders and held me away from him so he could get a better look. My heart tripped over in my chest at the gleam I caught in his frosty blue eyes. If I squinted
juuuuuuuust
right, it looked a teeny-tiny bit like lust. I was sure of it.

“Come on, babe,” the blowup doll behind him whined in a nasally voice. “We’re going to be late for the movie. You know how much I like watching the previews.”

It took everything in me to suppress the urge to lunge for her and snatch the extensions from her hair as Griffin let go and stepped back.

He shot me a friendly grin as he pulled the blonde against him. “It was good seeing you again.”

I wanted to die as I forced a smile of my own. “Yeah, you too.”

“Well, see you around, kid.”

With that, he was gone.

Kid?

Kid!

Yep, I was most definitely dying inside.

THE FOURTH TIME I
saw Griffin was the night everything would change. I was twenty-one years old and in the middle of the grand-opening celebration for my boutique, Fire & Ice. I’d done it. I was living my dream. I had my own shop where I sold some of the finest clothes in the city. I was on cloud nine, so euphoric that I didn’t even cringe at the sight of Griffin walking in just behind Dex. I was totally blissed out and slightly buzzed from the glasses of champagne to even care about the whole
kid
incident from three years earlier.

That night was nothing short of magical. As the hours ticked by and the party grew livelier, to my ecstatic surprise, Griffin actually seemed to
notice
me. I couldn’t have imagined feeling happier than I was right then, standing in the shop of my dreams with the man I’d loved for nearly a decade by my side. I was convinced that this was as good as it could get.

I’d been wrong.

It got even better later that night when I gave my virginity to Griffin, knowing, deep down in my bones that it was the start of something epic between us. I finally had everything I’d ever wanted.

So imagine my surprise when I woke with the sun the next morning and rolled over, wanting nothing more than to snuggle against my man, only to find the sheets cold and empty and myself completely alone.

I HAD TO HAVE
been getting sick. That was the only feasible explanation. Hitting a club or a bar for a guys’ night out was something I usually loved after a long, exhausting week of seeing shit that only the lowest dregs of humanity could be responsible for. Shit that was burned into my fucking brain.

Going out with the guys usually meant tons of drinks and a guarantee of finding a hot, willing piece of ass to keep me company for a few hours and exhaust me to the point where I’d be able to do nothing more than collapse into my bed and pass the hell out once I got home.

But for some strange reason, I wasn’t feeling it tonight. Maybe it was the start of a head cold, or perhaps a migraine was brewing? I couldn’t pinpoint exactly when my interest in the fairer sex had taken a steep decline, but ever since it happened, I’d been freaked the hell out. Whatever illness was poisoning my body had to be pretty fucking serious. And instead of being concerned for my wellbeing, the assholes I called friends were too busy busting my balls. For all they knew, I was only moments away from keeling over, but did those bastards care about the life-threatening illness I could’ve potentially had? Hell no. It was official. I needed replacement friends.

“You think he started his period?” my cousin, Richard asked his twin brother, Rowan. I lifted the beer bottle to my lips and took a hearty gulp at the same time I flipped both of them off. What the fuck had I been thinking, expecting these douchebags to be able to play acceptable wingmen?

Rowan Locklaine was happily shackled to his pint-sized fiancée and all about monogamy after years of sticking his dick in any-and-every available woman to cross his path. My best friend and partner, Dex O’Malley—a man who’d been addicted to commitment since I met him in college—was so pussy whipped his wife kept his balls in a jar next to her side of the bed. And Richard Locklaine… well, that was a horse of a different color. Poor Rich had been epically fucked over by his blood-sucking leech of an ex-wife and was
still
somewhat gun-shy when it came to the opposite sex.

Hell, I couldn’t really blame the guy. Not only had he been trapped in Holy Matrimony with a raging harpy, but the bitch had also managed to fuck-up his relationship with his own brother for years. Rowan and Rich had only begun mending the rift between the two of them recently. And Rowan’s girl, Navie, played a massive part in that.

But despite their downfalls—and there were
many
—I was closer to the three of them than anyone else in the world.

“Fuck off, dick breath,” I muttered into my beer as my eyes roamed the club once more. I sent up a silent prayer that
someone
would catch my attention. Christ, we’d been there for two hours already and there wasn’t a single woman who’d so much as given me a half-chub. I refused—
refused!
—to consider the possible reason for my dick’s lack of interest that evening. That train of thought led nowhere good.

“Seriously, man,” Dex chuckled as he gave my shoulder a shove. “This isn’t like you. Usually you’d have some chick on her knees in a bathroom stall by now. Your dick broken or something?”

No
, I thought silently as I shot him a murderous glare.
It just refuses to get hard for anyone but your sister.

Of course I couldn’t say that out loud. If Dex thought I had the slightest interest in his little sister, he’d beat the ever-loving shit out of me. If he had any clue that I’d spent an entire night, years ago, making her scream my name so loud her neighbors felt like they knew me personally… well, they’d never find my body. That was one little morsel of information my partner could never,
ever
know.