The 2014 R.L. Mathewson Chronicle Collection (19 page)

            “For your information,” she bit out, taking a step towards him and pretending that he didn’t have more than a foot on her as she glared up at him, “I was asking to get out of my lease. Not that it’s any of your business.”

            For some reason that seemed to amuse him, because his scowl was instantly replaced by that smug grin of his that her palm was itching to slap off his face. “Trying to run away from your feelings for me, Tink?” he asked, bringing her rage to a whole new level.

            “Did….,” she started to say, only to force herself to take a deep breath before she did something that would involve that defense attorney that she’d already decided she couldn’t afford. “Did you just call me
Tink
?” she asked with barely suppressed rage.

            Oblivious to how close he was to certain death, Danny merely shrugged as he grabbed the towel from around his shoulders and dried his face and chest. “Mmmhmm.”

            “That’s not my name,” she bit out, her eyes narrowing on that towel as she thought of a whole new way to get rid of the bastard.

            “Well,” he said, pausing to rub the towel against the back of his head, “it really should be.”

            “It’s not,” she snapped, knowing that if he called her Tink one more time that she would-

            “As much as I’d love to stand here and chat with you, Tinkerbelle, I have somewhere to be,” he said with a wink as he shut the door, leaving her standing there, seething with rage and making her wonder how she was going to get through the next ten months without killing him.

A Sneak Peak At The Game Plan.........

            “You can’t ban all of us!”

            “This is bullshit!”

            “I wasn’t even home!”

            “You made a grown man cry!” someone, probably the cop, yelled.

            “When will this night end?” Jodi asked no one in particular as she rubbed her temples.

            “Probably not for a while,” Danny admitted, sounding oddly defeated as he sat there, staring at the destruction that had once been his living room.

            “Probably not,” she murmured in agreement as she looked around the living room and took in the damage.

            She toed the remains of his coffee table, still amazed over the amount of damage that three men fighting over pizza could do in less than a minute. And yes, she was definitely sure that the damage to Danny’s apartment had only taken a minute, because when the door burst opened she’d been looking down at Danny’s cell phone. By the time she’d looked up, the door was falling off its hinges, the coffee table was in pieces, the television was smashed, the large leather chair that had actually looked pretty comfortable was in three pieces, a window had been smashed and there were now five very large, and very noticeable, holes marring Danny’s living room walls.

            “I’m gonna need a rain check,” Danny said, drawing her attention away from the electrical socket hanging by its wires from the wall.

            “A rain check for what?”

            He sighed heavily as he stood up and held his hand out. “For our date.”

            “Our…..
date
?” she asked slowly, wondering it he’d hit his head when his cousins tackled him.

            He nodded as he reached down and took the decision out of her hand. “I’m afraid that I’m going to have to regroup,” he said, taking her hand and gave her a gentle pull, helping her to her feet.

            “Regroup………”

            “Mmmhmmm,” he murmured, entwining his fingers with hers as he raised their hands and pressed a kiss against the back of her hand. “Just a day or two to fix this.”

            “A day or two,” she repeated numbly as she allowed her gaze to run over the destruction.

            “Are you going to repeat everything that I say?” he asked teasingly with a sexy little smile that had her revisiting that whole brain injury idea.

            “Yes,” she said, nodding as she allowed him to lead her to his apartment door, which he had to release her hand so that he could grab the door and move it aside so they could go into the hallway where his cousins were still arguing with the cops and the manager from Black Jack’s, “And this wasn’t a date.”

            “Yes, it was,” he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out-

            “You stole my keys?” she demanded when he proceeded to unlock her door and open it wide for her.

            “Of course I did,” he said, smiling down at her.

An Excerpt from The Game Plan

“I’m going to say this as nicely as I possibly can,” Tinkerbelle said as he caught a whiff of a vile odor that was vaguely familiar. “If you even think about calling me Tinkerbelle or say anything even remotely annoying right now that
I will kill you
!”

“I see,” he murmured absently as he took in the scene and in less than thirty seconds he realized that his cousin had seriously fucked up.

Bradfords didn’t normally throw away food. It just wasn’t in their DNA to waste food even if it was past its expiration date and growing penicillin. They simply scraped the fungus off, covered it in ketchup and savored it. They didn’t believe in wasting food, none of them did, but since Trevor had fallen in love with Zoe and married her……

Well, they’d made an exception to that rule since none of them had the balls to tell Zoe that her cooking sucked, especially the bastard that married her. Most nights Trevor was able to force himself to eat what his wife cooked, but some nights like the other night, the man couldn’t force himself to do the impossible. When those nights came, Trevor took the coward’s way out and found a way to throw the leftovers out without Zoe finding out.

Since he couldn’t throw the food away at his house and take the chance of his wife finding out, Trevor usually brought the waste to one of his apartment houses and dumped it in one of their cousin’s trash bags, which was no doubt why Trevor had been here today. The only problem it seemed was that Trevor had royally fucked up tonight and placed the trash bags filled with toxic waste in Tinkerbelle’s barrels.

The weird, oddly discolored slime covered her from head to toe, the ground that she was struggling to get off, her trash barrels and the trash that had spilled out from the bag. He’d seen a lot of things in the Marines, but this was easily the grossest fucking thing that he’d ever come across. It was also probably one of the most embarrassing moments for little Tinkerbelle, he realized with a reluctant sigh as he reached into his back pocket and pulled out his phone.

“What are you doing?” Tinkerbelle nervously demanded as she suddenly stopped trying to find a way to get out of the slimy mess to watch his every move.

“My duty,” he explained with a heavy sigh as he opened the camera app and did what was expected of him.

“
You son of a bitch
!” Tinkerbelle screamed as she lunged for him, slipped and landed right smack dab in a large puddle of goo.

“Say it with a smile,” he said, chuckling when she looked up. Well, tried to at least, but with all that goo weighing her hair down in front of her face it was kind of difficult.

A Sneak Peek at the next Neighbor from Hell.....

The Game Plan

“Stop moving!”

            “It’s burning!” she snapped back, slapping his hands when he tried to push her hands away as she frantically tried to wipe off the white glop that felt like it was burning her skin off.

            “You need to take this off,” he said, sounding calm and in control when all she wanted to do was scream, again, and freak out, again, but he wouldn’t let her.  

            As soon as she’d started screaming about her skin being on fire, Danny had snapped into action. He’d grabbed the hose and hit her full force with a jet of ice-cold water, which may have started another round of screaming. It also made the burning sensation a lot worse. Before she could tell him that, probably because he figured it out by her screams, he’d dropped the hose, picked her up and ran with her inside, straight into his apartment and had her in his bathtub before she could put up much of an argument.

            “No, don’t turn the water on!” she screamed in terror seconds before a stream of hot water hit her.

            “You need to get this off,” he said, still sounding irritatingly calm as she struggled against the urge to scream as the water caused the white slime on her body to heat up again.

            When he grabbed the hem of her shirt and yanked it off, she didn’t even think about fighting him since she was too busy trying not to freak out over the likelihood that the gunk from the trashcan was nuclear waste. She barely noticed when he yanked off her shoes, socks and went for her pants, but she definitely noticed when he went for her bra.

            “Hey!” she gasped, slapping at the offending hand.

            “That shit soaked up into the material,” he pointed out as her mind registered the burning sensation seeping beneath the bra. “It needs to come off.”

            She opened her mouth to……

            To….

            To………

            “W-what are you doing?” she managed to choke out while she watched as Danny pulled his shirt off and tossed it out of the shower as he toed off his boots. Then he bent over and pulled off his socks and threw them out of the shower. He stood up and quickly undid his pants and shoved them down, revealing a pair of tight fitting black boxer briefs that left very little to the imagination.

            When he stood up and ran a hand through his wet hair, her gaze raced to follow the move, taking in the puckered pink scar and the raised straight line that ran through it on an otherwise droolworthy set of abs, up to the Marines tattoo that he had on his chest, the one that she may have found herself thinking about a time or two, and finally up to meet his gaze and immediately regretting it. He looked serious, really serious, and determined as he sent her a hard glare.

            “Your skin is streaked red,” he began, taking her by surprise.

            She looked down and sure enough, her body was covered in angry looking red streaks and splotches right where her skin burned and itched like crazy. Swallowing nervously, she looked back up at him and found a matching red spot on his shoulder, right where she’d nailed him with a handful of goop.

            “Your underwear is coated in that shit and the longer that you keep it on, the more damage that it’s going to do to your skin,” he said, sounding completely rational, which actually frightened her. “We need to get the rest of your clothes off and try to wash the residue off your skin, now.”

            As much as she wanted to argue with him, and she really wanted to argue this one, she couldn’t. With each passing second the burning and itching only got worse.

            “Fine,” she said, reaching for her bra strap, “but you don’t need to be in here. I can do it myself.”

            “I’m not leaving,” the stubborn bastard said as he reached down and grabbed a large bar of white soap.

            “Yeah, you really are” she said, wincing when a sting accompanied her attempt to move her bra strap.

            “Not happening, Tinkerbelle,” he said, gently pushing her hand aside and-

            “Ow!” she cried out as he pulled her bra strap up and over her shoulder and as far down her arm as it would go. She had a similar reaction when he did the same with the other bra strap.

            “Your back and legs fared the worst, Tink,” he said, startling her into looking down as he efficiently unsnapped her bra and what she saw had her swallowing hard as she tried to panic.

            “Are you allergic to anything, Tink?” he asked, sounding calm as he carefully hooked his thumbs in the waistband of her panties and slowly lowered them to the floor.

            “No,” she said, a small cry escaping her when his knuckles accidentally brushed up against her skin.

            “Are you having any problems breathing?” he asked, tossing her panties out of the shower.

            “No,” she mumbled, trying not to lose it.

            “Good,” he murmured behind her as she struggled against looking back down.

            Every inch of her body was covered in what appeared to be hives, large, angry looking hives that were noticeably raised. There wasn’t a spot on her body that didn’t itch or burn. Only the fear that she would make things worse was stopping her from scratching every inch of her body. The itching she could understand, but she’d never heard of hives burning the-

            “I’m sorry,” Danny said, cutting through her panicked thoughts.

            “For what?” she asked before a thought occurred to her and when it did, she was seeing red. “Oh my god! Those bags were yours?” she demanded, moving to turn around and kick his ass when he answered.

            “No.”

            “Then what are you apologizing for?” she asked, worrying her bottom lip as she snuck another peek down at herself and cringed.

            “For this.”

            “Wh-
Ouch
!” she screamed as he carefully placed his soapy hands on her back. The pain multiplied, forcing her to slap her hands against the shower wall and grit her teeth together as she thought of another way to kill the bastard.