Bad Boy Next Door (A Romantic Suspense)(7)

Burt laughs, and Laura joins him. They’re f*cking laughing at me. Worst of all it’s a kind of “I’ll get you eventually” laugh, like he knows he’ll wear me down. He’s already asked me to join him for dinner.

Not a chance.

The Burtmobile rolls off into the sunset, leaving me sweltering in the heat until the bus rumbles up five minutes late at quarter after five, meaning my girls have been home alone for over an hour. I tromp up onto the bus and slide my card through the reader to pay for my seat.

Of course, it’s full. I walk to the back and stand, holding one of the posts, and brace myself for forty-five minutes of this. If I had my own car it would be a ten-minute drive.

Yawning, I sway with the motion of the bus as it rumbles off.

By the fourth stop I can finally sit down and collapse into a seat. I smell like ass, my feet hurt, I’ve been up for fourteen hours already, and I just want a nap. Oh, and some food. Real food.

By the time my stop rolls up I’m starting to nod off. Somehow I manage to scrape together the brains not to fall asleep and miss it, and jab the button on the side so the driver pulls over.

I lurch back down to the pavement and start walking. It’s another fifteen minutes to the house from here at a brisk pace, and I manage a brisk pace as long as I can.

My first thought on seeing my home is always the same. I hate this place. The entrance to Hunter’s Run is landscaped like the driveway to a grand mansion, rows of trees leading up to a guarded gatehouse.

When I walk up, the guard on duty, Todd, is kicked back in his chair, reading an issue of Popular Mechanics. I stop at the gate and clear my throat.

“Rose.” He sits up. “On your way home?”

“Yeah. Can I trouble you for a ride in the golf cart?”

He sighs. “Yeah, sure. Hold on.”

I stand there while he locks up the gatehouse and hangs one of those little moveable clock signs marked WILL RETURN, the time set ahead ten minutes. The golf cart is parked on the other side of the gate, which really only stops cars; I just walk around it. I settle in next to Todd and he starts it up, the little motor buzzing like a lawnmower as he drives me down Elm and then up Beech Tree Street, to my house.

I resent the goddamn thing more and more every time I see it. With five bedrooms, it’s practically a mansion. It was all Russel’s idea. Russel Hayes, my ex-husband. I “kept” the house, if you could call it that. Between alimony and child support and my salary I can barely afford the payments and food for my two daughters.

The house is a gaudy monstrosity, dominated in the front by an empty garage and a towering high-ceilinged foyer.

Todd stops and grunts.

I have neighbors. Behind me are the Lincolns. On the driveway side of my house are the Bartons. Across the street are the Moores.

I don’t know who lives on the other side. I’ve never met them and, as far as I know, the house is empty. I’d have assumed it was abandoned, except that it’s clearly furnished and somebody must be paying the bills, or else there’d be a notice from the sheriff tacked to the door.

Somebody has apparently moved in, though. There’s a car in the driveway. A big, obnoxious muscle car, a nineteen-sixty something, black with lots of shiny chrome.

“I’ll have to say something,” Todd says.

Of course. The home owner’s association. There are so many rules in this place. Don’t do this, don’t do that. You can’t actually park in your driveway, the car must be in the garage, unless it’s within three years of the current model year. We wouldn’t want Mrs. Campbell the block captain to be offended by the sight of a four-year-old car.

“Let me handle it,” I sigh.

I don’t know why I keep piling other people’s problems on myself. I should just let Todd handle it, stumble into my house, and flop on the floor for a nap.

Of course I can’t.

“What?”

“Yeah, I’ll say something. He must have just moved in. Seriously.”

“Right.” Todd shrugs. “If you insist.”

I step out of the cart. “Thanks for the ride.”

He gives me a curt nod. “Anytime.”

As the golf cart buzzes off toward the front gate, I trudge up to the door of my neighbor’s house and knock lightly. This is a bad idea. Maybe if he or she doesn’t notice me I can just go home and forget about this. I have enough trouble keeping my own place up to snuff.

I can’t afford a landscaper like everyone else on the block, and I’m constantly fighting my youngest, Kelly, over her fixation on getting a pool. We can’t get a pool. It’s in the rules.

No answer. I start to turn away from the door when I hear the lock rasp and it swings inward.

“What?” the man inside snaps.

I blink.

He’s, um. He’s wearing pants, I mean that’s a start. Nothing else. Barefoot, but I’m not paying much attention to his feet. I’ve never seen anyone so muscular in person, like an underwear model, but he’s covered in tattoos, almost to the point I’d think he was wearing a transparent shirt.

There’s a dragon on his chest and chains around his belly and figures tattooed down both arms, stopping where they’d be covered up by a dress shirt. I can’t make them all out, because he’s swathed in bandages. He towers over me and bores into me with startling blue eyes.