Neighborly Complications (Stories of Serendipity #1)

Anne Conley
Text copyright © 2013 Anne Conley

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover photo by Dreamstime. Cover art by Anne Conley

Neighborly Complications
Dream On
Chef's Delight
Hot Mess
Falling for Him
Gambling on Love

S
he should have picked the beach house in Galveston.

Claire surveyed the mess in front of her. She had initially been excited about it, when Uncle Eddie had left her this house in his will. He had given her the choice between this place and a beach house in Galveston, but she was afraid that the homeowner’s insurance on the Gulf Coast would eat her lunch. Now she wasn’t so sure. The house itself was beautiful, built in the late-eighteenth century, it would make a great bed and breakfast. Getting it up to code, though, was proving to be a daunting task.

The kitchen? Well, the kitchen had last been remodeled in the 1950s. Claire imagined a woman in a polka dot dress with a lace apron and pearls, lovingly running her hand along the giant enamel stove. It was the same stove every woman had been fantasizing about since Rachel Ray’s television debut, except this one had seen better days. It was rusted, filthy, and totally unusable without a full restoration. And such a restoration was not in her budget.

It was a creepy old house, evidenced by the prickles on the back of her neck that made Claire feel like she was being watched. Choosing to ignore the sensation, she sighed heavily and got a trash bag to start filling up.

The kitchen’s only blessing was an enormous picture window with the original frame. Unfortunately it lacked the glass, so she tossed her full garbage bag through it. It was certainly easier than carrying the trash out the back door, down the back porch steps, and all the way around the house. This way, Claire could fill a bag, toss it out the window, and have it halfway to the destination of the curb. Pleased with her innovation, she filled another one. And another. A couple of hours later, she had five garbage bags full of trash outside the house on the ground beneath the kitchen window. She had swept and mopped the floors, wiped out the cabinets and countertops, and almost managed to get rid of the odor of rat pee. She mentally patted herself on her back. Not bad for a morning’s work.

Claire went outside the back door to start carrying the trash around to the curb, wondering what day the garbage was picked up. Walking over to the kitchen window, she grabbed a garbage bag and threw it over her shoulder. She grabbed another one and started dragging it behind her as she walked around the side of the house to the front curb.

Forcing oxygen into her bloodstream, Claire breathed heavily, as she carried the trash bags around the house, thinking to herself that maybe she shouldn’t have tried to shove so much into each bag. They were really heavy. She wasn’t paying attention to where she was stepping, so didn’t notice her feet were tangled in some weeds before she walked into a spider web, sending her flailing into a free fall.

As her shin scraped through the pulp of the soggy plywood, she fell forward. She realized she was falling into a hole that had been covered. Her forward momentum with the added weight of the trash bags had made the top half of her body land on solid ground when she fell. Unfortunately, the bag she was dragging added to the weight on the bottom half of her body, which was dangling over the hole.

She dropped the garbage bags and grabbed what she could grab. Weeds.
Crap.
So she yelled. Loudly.

“Help me!!! Please! Somebody, help!”

Usually, when one pulls weeds, they need a shovel and a pick axe to get them out of the dirt. These weeds—which Claire really needed to be sturdy little buggers—were coming out almost as fast as she could grab them.

“Help me!” This was probably an old water well, and she had no idea how deep it could be.

Scrabbling for anything to hold onto, feet dangling in the darkness below her, she tried to swing her legs forward to find something for them to cling to. Her hands grabbed for anything: rocks, grass, roots. Nothing was working. She couldn’t help imagining inside the darkness of the well, the Indiana Jones pile of snakes slithering over each other, anxiously awaiting her drop into their midst. Her Converse tennis shoes slipped down the slimy sides of the well that Claire imagined were covered with spiders and their webs and egg sacs. She couldn’t find anything for her hands to grab onto, and she screamed again as she slipped farther into the well.

A memory raced through her head, of a book she’d read. A romance novel, where the main character had found a skeleton in her well. A woman had fallen in and died in the depths of the dark cavern. Of course in the book, she had been thrown into the well and left for dead, and the main character and the hunky town sheriff and solved the crime and fallen madly in love with each other. But this was real. Claire didn’t really have anybody to miss her if she fell into this well and died. She would stay down there and rot away, until years from now, someone would find her skeleton and try to solve the mystery of whatever happened to the woman in the well.

All this raced through her mind in a matter of seconds, as she frantically searched for a handhold. Her heart was pounding in her ears, her biceps straining to hold onto the ledge.

A PIPE!
She grabbed a pipe that was sticking out of the ground and held on tight. She had no idea what purpose this particular piece of pipe held, except that at this moment, it was saving her life.
Now if I can just hang on
… Her feet slipped again, as they desperately scrambled to find purchase against the slimy wall. It felt like the wall was made of stones, which would make something there for her to grab with her shoe-clad feet, wouldn’t it?

Her hand was hurting, and she tried to hold the pipe with both hands. It wasn’t a big pipe, and since she couldn’t really see what it was connected to, if anything, she didn’t want to grab it with both hands and put all of her eggs in one basket. She tried her best to hold still and not jiggle anything that would make her fall all the way into this well.

Claire’s head and shoulders were still above ground level, but the rest of her body had sunk through the rotten, water-logged plywood that was “covering” this giant hole in the ground. While holding the pipe, she tried to feel around with her other hand to see if any of the rest of the wood was sturdy enough to pull herself up with. No dice. Everything her hand touched, crumbled and fell into the abyss below. Apparently, she grabbed a nest of some sort, because hundreds of tiny spiders crawled around on her hand. She shook them off, while holding on to the pipe with her other hand. Terror filled her veins as she screamed again.

“Hang on. I got you.”

Enormous arms wrapped around her body, under her armpits, and lifted her out of the hole. She looked up at her savior. And up, and up…until her eyes met the caramel-colored eyes of
…Adonis.
He pulled her back out of the hole, tripping over her beloved pipe, and tugged her down with him as they ended up a tangled pile of limbs in the weedy yard.

She had no idea who this magnificent specimen of a man was, but he was her hero, having just saved her from a horrifying death. Well, possibly. If she hadn’t died, she certainly would have been extremely uncomfortable for who knows how long.

Claire examined the man holding her, strong jaw, prominent cheek bones, aquiline nose. My God. This man was perfect-looking. His brown wavy hair was a little long, but it hung down almost to his eyes, which rose over a wide mouth that looked just perfect for kissing. By the feel of his arms, he was strong, and he seemed big. He certainly wasn’t soft. Anywhere.

This was a man who worked for a living. Those muscles didn’t come from a gym, and his tan hadn’t come from artificial means. This was a guy who worked outdoors, and he worked hard.

“What happened?” His eyes were the color of melted caramel and they oozed concern, as they looked down from his body’s perch atop Claire’s body.
Ohmygosh. He’s on top of me.
His mouth turned down at the corners, and his hands were still wrapped around her rib cage. She couldn’t answer, her heart was beating too hard. She couldn’t really say why, if it was because of her brush with certain death, or because she had the most gorgeous man on the planet on top of her. He smelled good, earthy, like grass and man.

Her breath caught as she looked into that face of his, and the next thing she knew, she was crying like a baby. She hated crying, and the fact that she was doing it in front of this stranger made her cry even more. It was mortifying. He climbed off and pulled her into a sitting position next to him. He cradled her head against his concrete chest making shooshing noises, begging her not to cry.
What is it about men and crying women? I just almost died.
Although, hearing his heart pound in his chest was calming her down quite a bit.

“I tripped (hic) on some weeds (hic)…spiderwebs, I f-f-fell in.”

“Well, you’re okay now. It’s okay.” His broad hand rubbed up and down her spine in a comforting gesture. It made a warm mushy feeling spread out from the center of her chest down to her thighs. “I have some plywood in my garage. I’ll bring you some and put it over that well until you can have someone fill it in with concrete.” His hand still rubbing her back. Her body still all warm and mushy. His smell still manly, grassy goodness.

Claire looked up at him, their faces were inches away from each other. His eyes looked straight into hers, then his gaze traveled to her lips. Seemingly jealous of the attention that her lips were getting, Claire’s tongue snaked out to moisten the top one. As if recognizing her desire, his mouth parted and he drew in a ragged breath. She could smell his toothpaste. His hand cradled her face, and he used his thumb to wipe a tear off her cheek. Then he rubbed his thumb down her jaw line. Claire watched his eyes fill with desire, and she was suddenly convinced he was going to kiss her. As soon as the thought crossed her mind, his eyes filled with guilt, and his thumb halted its journey. She was about to say something when a woman’s voice interrupted them.

“Oh my gosh, is everything okay? I thought I heard screaming.” Claire looked up to see a pixie-like woman come running around from the front of the house, carrying a broom. She had spiky hair dyed platinum blond and was wearing a very cool, gauzy skirt with a black tank top.

Claire blushed and rolled her eyes. Another witness to her stupidity. Just what she needed. Realizing she was sitting in this strange man’s lap, she jumped up and began to brush off her shorts. He stood as well, but he stayed behind her.

With what looked like a knowing smile at Max, the new-comer said, “I’m Summer from next door, over there.” She jutted her chin toward the other side of Claire’s new house. “Are you okay?” Her eyes kept darting towards the man standing behind her, and Claire decided they must already know each other.