Romeo (Payne Brothers Romance Book 6)

by Sosie Frost

In the past, such an invitation might have included a sexy strip tease or recited poem of beautiful images and unconscionable vulgarity.

  This time, I planned to drop two wanna-be teenage arsonists in her lap.

  Wasn’t the most romantic gift, but I didn’t know what sort of Hallmark card adequately described acting like such a pigheaded asshole without including the aforementioned unconscionable vulgarity.

  By three o’clock, I’d taken my place behind the market, crouched within a fortress of soggy cardboard forsaken by one of the clerks on his smoke-break. The boxes provided cover as I knocked against the metal door of the employee’s entrance

  Three soft raps.

  I waited. Listening.

  A single thud answered. She was in place. Confused and probably supremely pissed, but as long as I ended this feud, I could win her back even if she despised me.

  After all, the woman fell in love with me years ago when I didn’t have a clue.

  Imagine how much she’d love me once I tried to win her heart.

  Jimmy and Justin Abernacki couldn’t resist the siren call of firecrackers, vandalism, and stolen cigarettes from their mom’s purse. The twin miscreants showed up right on time. I hated the type—the smarmy troublemakers who acted tough, threatened the weaker, and cried to their mother if anyone happened to wise up and clock them in the nose. Fortunately, that meant it’d only take a little pressure and one hell of a scare to force them to turn themselves in.

  And if they happened to piss their pants along the way, all the better.

  “Where the hell is Spencer?” Jimmy asked. He tugged his black ball cap down low, as if it would distract from how badly his braces lost the battle against his bucked teeth. “You said he’d be here.”

  Justin had won the genetic lottery and scored a set of perfectly straight, blindingly white teeth. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see them under all the acne.

  “He’s a little pussy.” Justin’s accusation might’ve felt more badass if he hadn’t lowered his voice to whisper the word. “All talk. Probably got scared and ran off again.”

  “Got any matches?”

  “Yeah, but what’s the point?”

  Jimmy snooped around the dumpster closest to the door. “Well, this is full of paper and junk. It’d look cool if it burned.”

  “But there’s no boom.”

  “At least it’s something fun. This shit town is so boring.”

  Justin had yet to grow into his arms and legs, and the lanky punk looked as awkward as his cracking voice sounded. His classmates must’ve known it too, but those long arms could throw a punch further than the other kids. Everyone but Spence usually kept their mouths shut and their eyes un-blackened. Of course, Spence would retaliate, but Tidus taught him well.

  No fist-fights…where the marks could leave a bruise.

  “What happens if you get in trouble?” Justin asked.

  Jimmy had the makings of a classic sociopath too stupid to manipulate anyone and lacking the self-esteem to ignore any criticism. All he had was a tough-guy act that only ever seemed to punish one kid.

  “We won’t get caught. Spence texted us. We’ll just blame him.”

  “Again?”

  “Worked last time.”

  That was all I needed. I braced to pounce onto the kids, but the market door kicked open with a sudden ferocity that sent the metal crashing into the wall.

  Unfortunately, it first detoured through my head.

  A solid crack clobbered me in the forehead, and I crashed to the cement.

  I blinked. Stars poked into my vision.

  And Lady scrambled into the alley, doing her best to intimidate the boys with a harsh growl that sounded more kitten than mountain lion.

  “Don’t move, you little punks!”

  I clutched the knot growing on my head and squinted through the pain. Lady held her phone in front of her and triumphantly strolled into the alley. Justin and Jimmy panicked, tripping over their own feet and banging into the dumpster behind them.

  “I’ve already recorded your confessions…” Lady’s radiant smile had never been used for anything so diabolically evil before. “But if you’d like to do another take, I’m sure the sheriff wouldn’t mind if you repeated it in a place with better lighting…say, down at his office?”

  Justin panicked and shouted. “Run!”

  Jimmy didn’t get a chance. Justin grunted and shoved his brother towards Lady and attempted to flee.

  I dove from behind the boxes and grabbed his leg before he could skirt the corner of the alley. We both crashed to the cement.

  Lady nearly dropped her phone. “Quint!”

  Jimmy came to his aid and hauled his brother to his feet. I was quicker. I blocked their only exit and dared them to make a mistake.

  But I should’ve remembered that teenagers possessed a singular gift—the ability to squeeze into tight places that would forever torment them until their voices officially dropped and their faces cleared up.

  The boys dodged, rolled, and somehow slithered into the tiny gap left in the closing Employee door. The latch clicked behind them, and Lady burst forward, beating against the metal with an irritated groan.

  “It locks from the inside!” She spun to face me. “What the hell do we do?”

  Her eyes widened under the glasses. The dark caress of her skin contrasted with the crisp, pressed white blouse, its buttons straining ever-so-slightly over her breasts.

  The woman was beautiful.

  Fuckable.

  Lovable.

  It nearly dropped me to my knees.

  Why the hell had I ever pushed her away?

  “Did you get their confessions?” I asked.

  It was then her confidence shattered, and she gnawed on her bottom lip. “Kind of.”

  “…What?”

  “I heard them outside and had to rush to get an app open to record them.”

  Uh-oh. “What app did you use?”

  She flashed her phone at me. “Snapchat.”

  I watched a few seconds of the clip, only long enough to view the boys repeating their confessions with cat ears and whiskers as pink flower blossoms drifted over the dumpsters and trash stacked behind them.

  “Do think it still counts?” she asked.

  I wasn’t taking any chances. I grabbed her hand and dragged her of out the alley. And I thought the blow to the head nearly killed me. The jog to the front of the store was a goddamned gauntlet of honking cars, wayward shopping carts, and panicking employees spinning in circles in the parking lot, chain-smoking while memorizing their speech for their resignation before returning to the market.

  “Don’t go in there, man!” A kid grabbed my arm, his eyes a distant thousand-yard stare. “They’re animals, and hotdogs are sixty-nine cents a pack…they started grabbing and…and…” He held up his bruised fingers. “They tried to put me on the buns. If you care about your sausage, you won’t go in there.”

  I didn’t have a choice.

  Every parking space filled. Every motorized cart jammed in the sliding doors. And all Butterpond shrieked with rage as one shopper raced to their car—their cart loaded with over a dozen six-packs of discounted pop.

  We crawled over an abandoned, overturned cart and shouldered our way into the market. Chaos reigned as a sea of elderly patrons flooded the middle of every aisle and impatient soccer moms rammed their carts through the clusters to race for the last few bottles of Gatorade. The children had been too slow. They were left behind and formed an enclave just outside of the darkened bakery. Some cried. Others watched in horror. The smart began raiding plastic clamshells of stale cookies, fattening up for the long day of shopping ahead.

  Lady and I stared through the utter bedlam.

  “What…what the hell’s going on?” I hissed.

  “Duke is trying something new.” She witnessed the scene unfolding and whispered a silent prayer. “Triple coupon day.”

  “Is he mad?”

  “We told him Butterpond wasn
’t ready for this, but he didn’t listen. He’s doomed us all.” She grabbed a ladder abandoned by the stock boys and climbed a few steps. “Do you see the Abernacki boys?”

  Not yet.

  “They won’t get far.” I ran toward the registers. “You stay near the entrance. Don’t let them leave.”

  Lady shouted for me, but we were beyond heartfelt confessions or whispered blessings. I launched deeper into the bowels of the market. If I survived the Mad Max Cart gauntlet, the bloody battle for the last Supreme Digornio pizza, and the auction that traded promises of mown lawns, repaired fences, and first borns to the genius who had purchased the entirety of the shrimp case, maybe then I could return to Lady with a clear conscience and resounding faith that nothing could come between us again.

  I spotted the boys huddling within a stack of paper products.

  An eight-pack of Charmin mega-rolls launched at me from across the aisle. The package thunked into my chest, and I staggered back.

  “Hey!” I batted away their second attack and charged for the little assholes. “Stop them!”

  The two freaked, sprinting through the aisle and slipping over the freshly waxed linoleum in their frantic escape. They climbed the shelves to rise to their feet, accidentally collapsing the merchandise. A wall of napkins, curtain of paper plates, and mountain of plastic cups avalanched down the aisle, nearly burying an elderly lady bickering with an exhausted stock boy about the price of a single sponge.

  The heap of fallen goods blocked my path. I swore and doubled back, chasing the twins through the bread and jellies and into the cereals.

  Justin reached out as he ran, punching at the boxes of meticulously sorted Cheerios and Rice Krispies. Jimmy did the same, only he grabbed and tossed five-pound bags of flour. A plume of white obscured the aisle, cloaking them in a shadow of grey. I couldn’t see Justin’s attack. A Bunches of Oats smashed into my honey nuts.

  I nearly keeled over, but I breathed through the pain.

  “You can’t run forever!” I shouted.

  The boys coughed as the flour filled their lungs. They couldn’t see where they ran, and the first casualty struck the market—a woman lost in thought as she flipped through a thick binder of coupons and consulted with her phone and solar calculator. Justin smashed into her cart and knocked the handle into her gut. Her binder crashed to the ground.

  Then it exploded.

  A barrage of neatly clipped and painstakingly organized coupons burst into the air. The woman shouldn’t have shouted. It only alerted the other people near her to the fact that she possessed one of the rarest of BOGO coupons.

  Ben and Jerry’s.

  The aisles ran red, and not just from the strawberries in the discounted yogurt parfaits. Young mothers who had too many children and not enough sleep slid across the floors, ripping coupons from each other’s hands and hair from their heads. Screams billowed from the chaos. Handfuls of Cheerios pelted unsuspecting shoppers from across the aisle.

  I escaped with only a rip to my shirt and a bloodied lip and chased Justin and Jimmy through the meat market. I nearly captured one of the boys before a butcher emerged from behind the counter with a giant cart loaded with cheap cuts of steak. A herd of five women dashed toward the man, threatening to fillet me to score a ribeye.

  The kids sprinted, but Jimmy lost his balance as he attempted to flee from the seafood samples and dash down the canned foods aisle. He stumbled and fell into the three-foot-tall, brand new, crustacean-shaped lobster tank. The fully-loaded, state-of-the-art aquarium had everything the store needed—a home for the lobsters on dining-death-row, flashing lights, even a place for traumatized kids to take pictures.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t have the stability to cope with the full-weight of a panicking teenager slamming into the case. The tank toppled. Jimmy swore.

  And the glass shattered across the linoleum. A torrent of water and freed lobsters scattered through the seafood section. Women screamed. Children cried. And the smart dove after the wiggling lobsters and shoved them into their purses.

  Jimmy fell to the ground, terrified by the lone lobster that had managed to crawl onto his leg. He kicked. Cried. Scurried backwards.

  And was finally captured by an utterly bewildered fish monger.

  He shouted for his brother to surrender, but Justin was a boy on the edge with only an X-Box to lose. He raced into the produce section.

  Soaked, bruised, and sporting one hell of a concussion, I followed, dodging the rolling apples, pitched bananas, and two little old ladies arguing over the best peach cobbler recipe.

  But I came to an immediate halt as Justin seized the lone durian fruit and held it over his head.

  Son of a bitch.

  “Easy,” I said. “You don’t want to do that.”

  “Yeah?” The boy twitched and panted, too hyped up on adrenaline to think reasonably. “Maybe I do!”

  “It’s not worth it.”

  “I’m not going down for this!” Justin twisted the fruit in his hands as the tears streamed down his face. “You can’t make me, man. I’ll do it! I swear!”

  Shit. Too many people crowded the store, and one durian would ruin everyone’s day.

  “Think about this real hard,” I said.

  “Just give me a reason!”

  “Listen to me. I can help you.”

  “No one can help me!”

  “Just put down the fruit and walk away.” I edged closer. “No one will give you a hard time. You can just leave, and we’ll forget all of this.”

  “Like I’d believe you!”

  He’d grown an audience, but only a few recognized the threat. They shouted, crying for help. This only made the boy more nervous, and I shushed the crowd.

  “Hey, hey, hey.” I called to Justin. “Just focus on me now. You got no one else to trust, so trust me.”

  “You’re gonna take me to the sheriff!”

  “Put the durian down, and I won’t.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “You really need a friend right now…” It wasn’t smart to get any closer, but if he smashed that fruit, we were both goners. “There’s a lot of innocent people here, Justin.”

  “No one is innocent in Butterpond!”

  “You’re right…” I gestured to the bedlam in the cereal aisle as a dozen men and women wrestled over coupons offering a fifty cent discount on Fruit Roll-Ups. “But it doesn’t have to be this way. We can change things.”

  “You want to turn me in.”

  “No,” I said. “I just want to make sure everyone walks away with their noses in-tact!”

  The boy wavered on the verge of a catastrophic mistake. He tensed, his eyes wide. Slowly, the fruit lowered, though his fingers clutched the prickly skin so hard he’d nearly cracked the shell.

  “Good boy…” I reached for the fruit. “That’s good…”

  A woman wailed from the seafood counter.

  “The rubber bands have failed!” A cascade of screams echoed over the store. “The lobsters are loose!”

  Even Justin knew he had no escape now. He gritted his teeth and raised the durian.

  “If I’m going down, I’m taking you with me!”

  He pitched the fruit into the air and took off running.

  I leapt backwards, crashing into the display of cabbages. My arm outstretched, and I groaned as the sudden motion ached in my head.

  With one hand, I captured the vile fruit before it split upon the floor.

  I landed hard, sliding across the produce section. The durian cradled against my chest. My head throbbed. My shoulder ached. And I was pretty sure I’d landed on a cantaloupe.

  But I’d saved the day.

  …Only to fuck myself.

  A pair of sandals angrily tapped against the tile, inches from my head. I frowned, studying the brown socks the man had chosen to wear with them.

  I glanced up.

  And swore.

  “Oh shit.” I thunked my head against the ground. “Is this your day
off, Sheriff?”

  Sheriff Samson stared at me, his polo shirt untucked, Cheerios captured in the fabric. He clutched a fistful of ripped coupons, nearly wrenched from his grip by a marauding pack of shoppers gone savage. Water dripped from his body. He smelled of salt and seafood and one of his toes had bled through the socks, pinched by a frantic lobster.

  He hauled me to my feet but didn’t let me get far.

  “I got him, Duke,” Samson said. “It’s over!”

  Duke Barlow sprinted from the manager’s office. He clutched three very irritated lobsters in his arms, each tearing at his expensive suit, hell bent on vengeance. He sneered at me. The sheriff prevented him from starting his own fight.

  “You.” Duke tossed the lobsters onto a pile of watermelons. “I knew it’d be a Payne! Look at this mess! Look at my store! Why is it that anytime something goes wrong, it’s your family’s fault!”

  “Hey!” I held my arms up. “It wasn’t me. The ones you should be chasing are the Abernacki kids. They’re the ones who vandalized your store a couple months ago and now they’ve gone Aquaman on your lobster tank.”

  Samson patted my shoulder. “Just stay quiet, son. No use incriminating yourself.”

  “Incriminating?” I didn’t let him place my hands behind my back. “It wasn’t me. Ask Lady.”

  Duke jostled the sheriff out of his way. He ripped off his suit jacket and shoved me in the chest.

  Bad idea for a man holding a durian.

  Duke seethed, a vein nearly popping in his forehead. “What did I tell you about staying away from my little sister—”

  “Duke!”

  The PA system screeched. The entire market winced.

  Lady’s voice rang over the store. She spoke quickly, desperate for her brother to listen.

  “I recorded it all,” she said. “The Abneracki kids confessed to everything. They said they set the fire and blamed it on Spencer Townsend. When we confronted them, they rampaged through the market.”

  A collective gasp rose from the produce section. People twisted, standing on their tip-toes toward the registers. Lady waved a hand, but couldn’t be seen over the crowds. Instead, she climbed onto the express lane belt and pleaded into the casher’s phone.

  “Quint was just trying to help!” She smiled at me. “He’s only ever tried to help. Don’t you see, Duke? Look at the store. Look at what this fighting has done to us. We can only blame each other for this mess. All the problems in this town stem from this stupid rivalry with the Paynes.”