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Oh, and asked.

  “I might have had I not put it in for me,” I said. “And this had not been my property.”

  “Dre!” Harleigh called. “Is this your property or is it his?”

  Dre shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Dre looked bored. He was also staring at the house across the road as if there was something—or someone—he was practically willing to come walking out of it.

  She sighed. “I’ll get some surveyors out tomorrow. In the meantime…you can let me stay here, right?”

  I felt my stomach clench.

  No, no I could not.

  I just…couldn’t.

  “No,” I said. “And if you really want to see the property line, you can look at the difference in our grass. Mine is St. Augustine grass, and yours is Bermuda. Look at the differences in color right now.”

  She did, then frowned. “Mine’s brown and yours is dead.”

  Mine wasn’t dead.

  “No,” I disagreed. “Mine’s just dormant. It’ll be greener than yours by mid-summer, though.”

  She was rolling her eyes. “What does this have to do with anything?”

  “Mine’s also thicker and more lush. I laid each piece of sod down with my own bare hands,” I said. “Yours was spread by seed.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Again, not seeing the problem.”

  “I’m just saying that you can clearly see the difference in the grass between my property line and yours. It’s a very distinguishable line if you only cared to look,” I gritted out.

  “And anyway,” she said. “You literally have been gone for like—forever. Have you ever heard of ‘use it or lose it?’”

  I clenched my hands to keep from grabbing the sides of the hammock and just dumping her onto the ground.

  “Yes,” I said. “But unfortunately, other circumstances kept me from using it. Now that I’m home, though, I can guarantee you that I’ll use it.”

  She waved that away with a sweep of her hand.

  “I’m seriously getting annoyed with this conversation,” she said as she stood up. “I’ll check you later.”

  With that, she swayed inside, her shapely ass taunting me as she moved across her yard.

  I watched her go for all of a half a second before I nearly slapped myself on the forehead.

  Married.

  She’s married.

  Married. Married. Married.

  I chanted that to myself as I walked to the bike and grabbed my pack.

  Hand clenched tight around the handle of my bag, I made my way to the front door, then used the key that I hadn’t used in years to open the door.

  The first thing to hit me was the smell of Pine Sol.

  The second was the fact that every single trace of Vanessa was gone.

  Thank. Fucking. God.

  Tossing my bag onto the couch as I passed it, I made my way into the kitchen and washed my hands, thankful to see that my sister had stocked it for me as I’d asked her to do a few weeks ago.

  And, as I looked out of my kitchen window that had a pretty set of curtains that I most assuredly hadn’t put up and watched as the blonde from next door came waltzing out and got back in the hammock, I knew then that I was screwed.

  Walking to the back door, I paused by a set of panels, chose the one I wanted, and then turned it on.

  The satisfying screech of a very pissed off woman rent the air, and I grinned as I walked back to the kitchen window.

  Seeing her there, lying on my St. Augustine grass, soaking wet now from the sprinklers that were going full blast right next to her, I couldn’t help the smile that formed across my face.

  Maybe this wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

  Chapter 2

  Y’all’dve- triple contraction—y’all would have.

  -Actual words used in the South

  Harleigh

  “This is all you could find on him?” I asked Janie.

  “Why are you using valuable resources to run a complete background check on your new neighbor?” my father, Max Tremaine, asked as he came into the living room.

  I suppose it was his right to walk in wherever he damn well pleased and all seeing as it was his house, but I hadn’t expected him back or I would’ve done this business elsewhere.

  “Yes,” Janie said, ignoring my father in lieu of answering my question. “Not much to find, honestly. He was an exemplary person right up until the time he beat the shit out of that man with his bare hands.”

  It wasn’t every day that you heard that.

  Which was why my father, who’d stopped at the side of the couch with his arms crossed, turned his eyes to me and said, “You have a new neighbor that beat the shit out of someone with his bare hands?”

  “Killed him, too,” Janie added.

  Janie was our resident computer genius. She ran background checks and did all the computer hacking that needed to be done for my father’s business. Well, his secret business anyway.

  By day, my father and his friends worked at Free—a car restoration business as well as a customized bike shop. They also did the occasional repair job when they felt like it as well, but those were getting fewer and farther between now that time had gotten them to a place where they could be picky.

  They’d had builds make it all the way to Barrett-Jackson’s car auction in Las Vegas, Nevada and had made millions.

  And don’t even get me started on their custom bike builds. They had a waiting list so long that it spanned two years into the future, and that was just the ones that they chose to take on.

  The other side of their business, however, wasn’t as glamorous. Though way more important.

  They ran an underground railroad of sorts, doing their best to remove women and children from abusive situations and set them up in new lives with new identities.

  Hence the reason Janie was needed in the first place.

  Though, Janie was a second generation for Free, like I was at times. Jack, another member of my dad’s team, and his wife Winter, used to be the ones that did the computer hacking. However, now they only did it on a minimal basis seeing as not only was Janie younger, but she was better.

  “Killed him?” my dad asked. “Why?”

  Only my dad would ask why.

  I wasn’t sure if he’d figured out the significance yet or not of who I was running the background check on, but he would.

  Oh, he would, and then I wouldn’t be getting anything at all seeing as he worked for my father.

  Or he had while he was in prison.

  Janie’s eyes tipped up to meet mine, and I rolled them. “Just tell him. He’s going to figure it out anyway.”

  Janie did, sparing no details.

  “Slate Alejandro Solis was,” I missed a few beats of explanation because of Slate’s full name shivering over me like a caress. Damn, that was a great name. “He and his fiancée were working the same shift when a man was called in for drunk and disorderly conduct. Slate and Vanessa responded. Before they could even get out the door of their cruisers, the drunk was firing shots. One hit just perfectly and lodged into her stomach. She bled out in seconds because the bullet hit her aorta.”

  My heart pinched at those words.

  For Slate to have experienced that with a partner was more than awful. For him to experience the death of his partner and his fiancée all at once? Well, that was just awful times infinity.

  “Instead of staying at the scene, Slate drove Vanessa to the hospital. She was dead on arrival.” Janie paused. I lost her again as I was thinking about the utter pain he must’ve been going through while driving her. God, I couldn’t even imagine. “…he found the man first after a search. That’s when the beating happened. Took five police officers to pull him off of the suspect.”

  I felt my stomach clench at those words.

  The rage the man must’ve been feeling for him to need five police officers to pull him off? That said it all without me having
to explain a single thing.

  “Why does this sound so familiar?” Dad asked once Janie was done.

  “Because I’ve already run a background on him once,” Janie answered. “And you’ve been working with him on and off since then.”

  My father’s eyes turned to me, and he narrowed them.

  “I didn’t like the way he was looking at Dre,” I lied.

  My dad rolled his eyes. “You’re so full of shit it’s not even funny.”

  I shrugged. “He turned the sprinklers on me, okay? I wanted the background on him so I could get back at him…but you forgot to mention all the dirty details of his case to me.”

  The look I gave my father was less than amused.

  My dad shrugged. “You didn’t need to know any more than you already did.”

  That was true.

  I wasn’t ‘in’ the part of the business where I needed to know that much information.

  I was an X-ray technician.

  The only time I was involved was when I was needed to do babysitting duty or run the stray letter across a couple of counties to another person. My dad didn’t want me involved in this daily part of his life, and I couldn’t blame him. It was dangerous.

  And I didn’t do danger.

  I was a wiener.

  Hell, I couldn’t even live by myself, hence Dre as my roommate.

  My mom called me a ‘delicate flower.’

  Which was true.

  I was a delicate flower.

  At five foot and two-thirds inches, I was literally two and two-thirds inches from being legally defined as a dwarf.

  My body type was small. I had curves, of course, but they were definitely proportionate to my body type.

  I had a teenager’s breast size in my adult body.

  That, and I could fit into youth underwear.

  Finding anything at Victoria’s Secret was never going to happen for me, and I’d resigned myself to that fact a very long time ago.

  My mother had definitely passed down all of her genes to me, and the only thing I’d gotten of my father was his voice.

  Though, he was definitely a whole lot better than me—at least in my opinion.

  His voice was all smoky and raspy. Like a better sounding Josh Turner.

  When a person could pull off a song better than the original singer? That was when you knew that they were good.

  And my dad was good like that.

  Like, could’ve gone professional good if he’d only wanted to.

  Which he hadn’t.

  Singing was something he did in his spare time. He sang when he was cleaning the dishes or fixing a leaky toilet.

  Singing wasn’t something he did for a living.

  Which was how it was for me.

  Well, mostly.

  At the age of eighteen, I’d stupidly auditioned for a singing role in an animated film and gotten the part. After doing my singing, I was begged to do more…only, I’d quickly realized what my dad had told me.

  Singing for a living wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be.

  The sheer annoyance of having to do it over and over and over again, all day, for days? Well, that had completely turned me off of ever doing anything like that again.

  Now, all I did was sing in the shower, and occasionally when I watered my plants. Or, you know, in the car at the top of my lungs when a really good song came on.

  Though, while going through X-ray technician school, I’d sometimes sang my school notes to myself so that I could remember shit better.

  “Are you even listening to me?” my father growled.

  I looked up and sighed, leaning toward the table and snatching a cookie that had suddenly appeared in my line of sight.

  I smiled warmly at my mother and said, “Thank you. I needed this.”

  My mom, better known as Payton Tremaine, also a nurse at the hospital where I worked, offered me another hot cookie off the plate before placing the rest of them in the center of the table for all of us to snack on.

  Before my father could ask, my mother held up her hand in warning. “I’m coming back with milk. Hold your horses.”

  My dad snapped his mouth shut and picked up a cookie, shoving the entire thing inside before reaching for another one.

  My dad was in his late fifties now, but when you looked at him, you saw muscle and fitness, not old.

  The only real way you could tell that he was getting up there in years was that there was more gray than dirty blonde interspersed throughout his hair now.

  Hell, his beard was nearly all gray at this point.

  My mother was much the same, though she didn’t look old in the least.

  If I could age half as well as her, I’d be happy.

  “No,” I finally answered my father’s question. “What were you saying?”

  My mother came back with glasses of milk, being sure to set the one with chocolate milk down in front of me.

  “Thanks, Okaasan.” I smiled sweetly at my mother.

  My mother rolled her eyes at my use of the Japanese word for mother. “You watch too much anime.”

  I shrugged, uncaring.

  It was true.

  My life consisted of work and Japanese anime. So sue me.

  I liked what I liked.

  “Did you ever start that language course I sent you?” Janie interrupted, curious now.

  I nodded. “I’ve got part one done. I’m thinking about part two. But learning another language is hard. And I’m lazy.”

  Janie’s lips tipped up at the corner.

  “You already know sign language and Gaelic,” she teased. “How hard could it be?”

  I learned Gaelic because I’d liked the culture. And one day I really, really wanted to go visit Ireland and Scotland.

  Japan was also on my list, but I wasn’t willing to go there by myself, and I hadn’t convinced any of my friends or family to come with me as of yet.

  So for now, I was just learning languages and dreaming.

  “How about we go back to the fact that you’re running a background check on your neighbor,” Dad suggested. “Why?”

  “Because he turned the sprinklers on her,” Dre said as he strolled into the room. “And she’s mad.”

  I pinched my lips together.

  Then couldn’t hold it any longer, so I blurted it out.

  “He was a dick!” I declared.

  “He told her to move out of his hammock,” Dre continued as he leaned over the table, snatched a cookie, then placed a kiss onto my mother’s cheek before taking a seat next to Janie. “She refused. Told him it wasn’t his property. Then pretty much gave him shit for ten minutes. When she pretended to go back inside and went back to the hammock once he was gone, he turned the sprinklers on her.”

  Dad started to laugh. Mom hid her mouth with her cup and covered her smile.

  I rolled my eyes.

  “He interrupted my nap,” I muttered darkly. “He could’ve let me finish!”

  “Honey,” my dad said. “You run the risk of being woken from your nap every time you take one outside.”

  That was true, but still.

  It wasn’t my fault that I preferred to sleep outside instead of inside.

  One day, my dream of living in a treehouse in the middle of a rainforest would come true.

  It didn’t matter if I was hot or cold. As long as I was outside, I would get a solid night’s sleep—or a perfect nap.

  Well, perfect until the rude man next door decided that he no longer wanted to let you sleep in the hammock you’ve been taking a nap in every day that you were off for the past year.

  I sighed and leaned back in my chair, my eyes closing in annoyance.

  “I’m not scared when I’m outside,” I said softly.

  When I opened my eyes again, it was to find my father staring at me with a look of adoration in his eyes.

  “I know, baby,” he said. “But just sayin’,
” he laughed. “I can put you a hammock on the porch. And it’ll be new and not frayed like that other one.”

  I felt a pang of sadness roll through me at the thought.

  I liked the old better. The thought of no longer having it felt like a shot to my heart.

  “We’ll see,” I said, leaning forward for another cookie. “But, just sayin’, you offer him more than spy work like he has been doing and I might very well kill you.”

  My father’s eyes crinkled at the corners, and his mouth pulled into a wicked grin. “We’ll see.”

  Chapter 3

  Sometimes I think that I can handle the day. Then I wake up.

  -Harleigh’s Secret Thoughts

  Harleigh

  He had a hairy chest.

  Like…not too hairy. Perfect hairy.

  He was perfectly hairy.

  A perfectly hairy, I want to lick him from nipple to nipple, hairy.

  Jesus Christ.

  But…saying that…who the hell mowed their lawn in February?

  There was literally nothing to mow!

  But, there he was, mowing his lawn, and I was watching him do it.

  Shirtless.

  Would it be too much to ask him to do it pantless next time, too?

  Probably.

  But, still, I watched him go back and forth over his lawn, taking extra care around the sprinkler heads, and studied his body.

  He was wearing a pair of black boots—motorcycle, my Kryptonite—and a pair of tight jeans that looked like they might’ve once fit him but were now a little tight in the thighs and the ass.

  They were probably an old pair of jeans, and he’d grown in bulk.

  They still fit his waist quite nicely.

  And honestly, I wasn’t complaining about the way that his ass fit the jeans, either.

  They just looked like they weren’t comfortable for him.

  He kept pulling at the thighs, glaring down, and cursing.

  I bit my lip and tried not to laugh at his obvious discomfort.

  I watched him like a hawk, though.

  I knew he knew I was there.

  Hell, I’d been lying in his hammock when he’d first come out to jog this morning.

  Jog.

  You heard that right.

  He went on a jog.

  Almost every single morning.