NEXT TO ME (A Love Happens Novel Book 1)

by Watters, Jodi

  Before he could say more, the front door was thrown wide open and two navy blue uniformed police officers entered with their guns drawn, yelling for everyone to freeze. Ali wanted to laugh, the predictable command, along with their buzzed haircuts and puffed up chests, straight out of the latest network crime drama. She was glad she had the good sense not to, though, because the overzealous street cops took one look at the gun hastily shoved in the back of Sam’s waistband and a lifeless Danny lying on her living room floor, and decided to ask questions later.

  They immediately—and roughly—cuffed a complacent Sam. And then a not so complacent Grady.

  ***

  “Are you happy now, Ali? Are you finally fucking happy?” Sam paced the length of her living room and shouted the words at her, no longer able to maintain his composure.

  She sat stiffly on the edge of the sofa, her red, swollen eyes staring widely at him as if he were a total stranger. Well, thanks to her, he was certainly no stranger. In fact, the woman knew him inside and out, lying and manipulating him to suit her needs. Dragging him into her fucked up life, knowing he wouldn’t sit idly by as she was terrorized by her psychotic, control freak of an ex-husband. Grady stood loyally by her side, like he had the goddamn right. Like he was the one with the right to shield and protect her, fighting her battles in the name of love and honor. And from him, of all people. Well, not in this fucking lifetime.

  Once the two uniforms had radioed in the two four five—assault with a deadly weapon, and a possible one eight seven—homicide, an array of law enforcement officials had swarmed the place. After a lengthy question and answer session, they had finally accepted what he, Grady and Ali individually had to say, each advising them of exactly what had gone down. The broken door, the triggered alarm, and the illegal switchblade supplied substantial evidence to support their story, along with Ali’s wounds. It took several hours and a few calls to Fairfield County, Connecticut to verify Danny’s record of previous arrests—not surprisingly, Ali wasn’t the first woman he’d knocked around—and the detailed report of tonight’s incident was all but filed, soon to be collecting dust in the deep caverns of the San Diego County evidence room. Luckily, Sam had connections with the various, local alphabet agencies and had gone through basic training with a buddy who was now lead detective for SDSO.

  Sometimes, all you needed was to know a guy who knew a guy.

  The paramedics had left quickly but reluctantly when Ali refused to be transported to the hospital for further observation. Grady had practically pleaded with her to go as Sam watched in stoic silence, but she’d been adamant that she was fine, glancing anxiously his way the entire time. The nasty looking abrasions on her neck were covered by a large bandage, which looked shockingly white against her tanned skin, the main cut so deep it required a painfully long row of small, neat stitches.

  Looking at it now made Sam’s blood boil all over again and he wanted to lash out. Go toe to toe against anyone within a mile of him. And that included Ali. He knew it was irrational to rant against the very person that he had taken fatal measures to protect, but he wanted to hurt her, as badly as she hurt him. Use her, as selfishly as she used him. The destructive emotions were completely out of character for Sam, and a direct result of Ali’s deception.

  “You should be pleased as fucking punch, right now, Ali! You got what you wanted, didn’t you? I got rid of him for good. Isn’t that what you needed me to do?” He ran a hand down his face, trying unsuccessfully to stem the words. “I was just a pawn in your twisted game and I can’t believe I fell for the whole goddamn thing.”

  Sam stopped pacing long enough to look at her, waiting for some kind of reaction. Some kind of answer or excuse for her behavior. A denial, no matter how ridiculous at this point, was better than this absolute silence. “Say something!” he yelled.

  “I was gonna handle it myself.” Her voice was raw. “I had mace.”

  His mouth gaped open and he looked at Grady in stunned amazement. “She had mace. The woman has no idea the level of fucking danger she was in, but she had mace.” Staring back at her, he added, “Ali, that dude was completely unhinged.”

  “I know,” she whispered without emotion. “I lived with it for years.”

  Sam turned away from the heartbreaking sight before him. He didn’t want to think about that. About what she might have lived through, suffered and endured at the hands of a narcissistic coward. It was easier to vent, to let his anger get the best of him rather than admit exactly how scared he’d been seeing that blade against her tender flesh, only millimeters away from a major artery, mere seconds from draining her of life.

  “I killed a man for you today. Do you get that, Ali? I fucking killed him.” It took everything Sam had in him to keep his tone even. “I made peace with myself for my past. For the things I did in those godforsaken countries. For the politics that came out of the barrel of my rifle. And within a matter of a few days, you took that from me. You waltzed into my life and stuck your ass in the air, making sure I got a good whiff of what you were ready and willing to give away. What you didn’t tell me, though, was how much it was gonna cost me.”

  “Sam, don’t.” Grady said, holding up a hand, but backed off at Sam’s threatening look. Tears leaked silently down Ali’s flushed cheeks and her eyes pleaded with him. What the hell she wanted, though, he had no idea. She wasn’t saying a goddamn word. Wasn’t bothering to defend herself or her actions. Wasn’t bothering to apologize.

  Sam wondered if he had meant anything to her at all. Or if it had simply been a ploy.

  “I’m a person, Ali. A fucking human being!” He pointed at himself before spreading his arms wide. “Not your personal mercenary who’s allowed to fuck you during his downtime. I hope I fulfilled my duty to you, but I gotta say, it sure as shit wasn’t worth what you paid me. I admit it was nice having a hot piece of ass right next door, ready to go at it whenever I wanted, but the superficial chit chat and mediocre blowjobs just didn’t cut it.”

  She flinched and looked away.

  “That’s enough, Sam.” Grady took a warning step toward him.

  The last thing he needed was a self-professed player’s opinion on his love life. “Stay out of it, Grady. This is none of your business. It’s time you made your exit, anyway. You need to be in the office in less than three hours and you better not be late. Not one minute or you’re fired,” Sam added, feeling like a heel at the incredulous look on the other man’s face, but in too deep at this point. “I’m not fucking around, either.”

  Ali made a sarcastic sound, clearly in Grady’s defense. Furiously wiping the tears away with the loose cuff of her sweatshirt, her eyes were spitting fire and her jaw was clenched in anger. The first real emotion he’d seen from her since Danny’s body had hit the floor.

  Sick to his stomach about the horrible things he’d said, but tired of playing the fool, he was incapable of stemming his words. “You’re going to defend him, now? From me? After what I did for you? You have no fucking right to be mad at me, Ali. You brought this all on yourself.”

  She didn’t react, didn’t even bother to look at him, and he turned to leave.

  Swearing savagely under his breath, he stopped before slamming the front door closed behind him, the back door now boarded over with plywood. “Scorpio Securities values their clients and thanks you for your business, Ms. Ross. Now that the assignment is completed to your satisfaction, you can expect an invoice for the balance due. We don’t trade for services so you’ll have to pay in cold hard cash.”

  Grady laid a supportive hand on Ali’s shoulder, ready and willing to provide her comfort in his place, and Sam saw red. Tapping his watch, he added, “Don’t test me, Grady. Not one fucking minute.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Confirmed kills wasn’t something he had paid much attention to or kept track of like the other, more overenthusiastic ones did. Doing so was straight up lame in his book. Sam was far more concerned with the number of lives he’d saved vers
us the number he’d taken. That was where his focus had remained throughout his years in the Army. His had been the kind of job that required a single minded perspective, because if a person scrutinized it too closely, looked at it under a moral microscope, it could take a toll on even the hardest of souls. Sam had been trained to take decisive and lethal action for the greater good, and he had done it supremely. That good was supposed to outweigh his merciless actions and keep his conscience clean at the same time. And truth be told, it had.

  Some guys in his unit counted the kills, though. As if it were a video game with a ticker in the upper right hand corner of the screen, adding up the dead bodies as they fell, watching the score increase accordingly. They were proud in a grisly, it’s either them or it’s us, kind of way. One less person intent on killing an American soldier, no matter the cost. It was a number Sam had privately acknowledged and accepted a long time ago, never expecting to add to the morbid list of casualties. The other unexpected casualty in this fucked up mess that was his love life—if one could even call it that—was his deplorable behavior toward Ali after the fact.

  A memory flashed through his mind, one he hadn’t thought of since the day it happened, years ago in a different country, on an old rooftop of a rundown building near the outskirts of a small village that smelled like sewer and scorched earth. He’d been on watch for several hours, with a young spotter who was new to the teams and as green as they came. Not yet live combat tested. The time had dragged by in relative silence, as it was prone to do when you were hunting while standing still, when the newbie’s tentative question had come out of nowhere. His nervous curiosity mixing with his fear of the unknown and getting the best of him.

  “What do you feel when you kill someone?”

  It had taken Sam a moment to answer his inappropriate question. Not because he didn’t want to respond to what was a generally prohibited subject, but because he wanted the greenhorn to understand that in spite of his answer, Sam took each and every shot seriously.

  “When it’s an insurgent, doing his best to take us out first?” The newbie nodded slowly and Sam shrugged, answering truthfully. “Recoil.”

  He sure as hell hadn’t felt the recoil from the shot last night, though. It had been pure, unadulterated relief coursing through him when Ali had inadvertently dipped her chin for one split second, exposing his target and allowing Sam to take the kill shot. Hell, he’d been so jacked up on adrenaline, it was a damn wonder he hadn’t missed altogether and tagged the wall behind her. With sweat beading his brow and an embarrassing amount of fear making his hands shake, he had roughly traced her body for injuries, his legendary composure hanging on by a thread. Grady’s presence was the only thing that kept him from losing it right then and there, the former Green Beret’s relaxed demeanor enough to keep Sam focused until he had assurance from the paramedics that she wasn’t seriously injured.

  It was after the fact that Sam lost his shit entirely, going nuclear all over Ali the minute he’d had the chance. And there was no denying it, his tirade had made him feel a hell of a lot better, too. For about an hour.

  Hightailing it out of her place just before 3 a.m., he’d gone straight to the gym, spending the few hours before sunrise extinguishing what fury he had left on a brutal CrossFit workout. After showering at his office—and silently thanking Caroline for suggesting he keep a spare suit there—he drank a full pot of shitty tasting coffee, hoping to be human again by the time she and the guys started filtering in. What he really wanted, though, was that bottle of Glenlivet he’d missed out on last night. A double shot of that in his coffee would make the upcoming day a lot easier to stomach and it was almost a goddamn shame that relying on booze to get by had never been Sam’s style. That particular crutch had belonged to his mother and all it had gotten her was six feet under a month before her thirty-fifth birthday.

  That sad, little fact aside, he needed to be firing on all cylinders today, anyway. He had done a bang up job of digging his own grave last night and hell if he knew how to get himself out of it. Knee deep in a river of his own bullshit, he decided a good start might be with the person currently popping his head into Sam’s office.

  Grady tapped the watch on his wrist, a rueful grin on his face. “Just checking in.”

  “Grady.” Sam motioned for him to come in as Caroline’s hushed voice filtered in from the outer office, the phone lines lighting up earlier than usual. He heard her screen a caller asking for him just as Grady plopped down in front of him.

  “What can I say here? Other than I lost my mind.” Sam shook his head and grinned sheepishly. “Just completely lost it. I was way out of line.”

  Grady was shaking his shaggy blonde head before Sam could continue. “Myself in your place? I probably would have done the same thing. She’s a pretty special girl. You don’t come across too many out there like her.”

  Sam ignored the now familiar twinge of jealousy. “Even so, it was a shitty thing for me do. And... well, shit. I’m sorry.”

  “No biggie, man.” True to his laid back personality, Grady brushed the apology off. “Not sure what you have in mind to make amends with Ali, though. The girl is tore up inside, I can tell you that for certain. Thinks she’s to blame for all of it. I don’t have a lot of experience in this area, but you might not want to let that fester too long. Hey, did you return any of Dwayne’s calls yet? Beckett says Ray is damn near pissing his pants to get back in your good graces. Keeps calling and begging Beck to get Dwayne a meeting with you. It’s a sure thing that one of them will show up today with his tail between his legs. And his AmEx card.”

  Sam shook his head absently, staring at the screen on his laptop, not noticing the few dozen unopened emails demanding his immediate attention. “Do you think she planned it?” At Grady’s quizzical look, Sam hesitated, not wanting to reveal too many details but needing a different perspective. “Ali knew who I was and what I used to be, before I told her. Before anything between us got started. Hell, before we’d even officially met. And there have been some discrepancies, here and there.”

  Grady’s brows rose. “You mean she’s lied?”

  Yes, but Sam didn’t respond to the statement, neither confirming or denying. “It makes me wonder if she somehow planned the whole thing.” An epic understatement.

  “Christ, Sam. I would hope not. She’s always seemed legit to me. But then again, I really don’t know her very well.” He looked affronted on Sam’s behalf. “That’s fucked up.”

  “What’s fucked up?” Mendoza choose that moment to walk into Sam’s office, interrupting their heavy conversation with his loud question.

  “Or desperate.” Grady added meaningfully, his brow furrowed as he stared at Sam.

  “What’s desperate?” Mike asked, as if he was missing some juicy office gossip, tossing an unopened can of energy drink at Grady. “Your mad skills with the ladies? I could give you some pointers if you want, buddy.” He stopped and looked slowly from Sam to Grady and back. “Christ, you two look like death warmed over. I thought Carrie and I were the only people not sleeping. I swear on my grandmother’s pearl rosary, that baby is half vampire. Only sleeps during the day.”

  Sam had always done his best to keep his personal life private, preferring not to have the embellished details become office fodder around the water cooler, and even now that Grady knew some of the more salacious facts, he had no reason to worry.

  And Grady’s smooth change of subject proved it.

  “Actually, I could use some help. And since they say you should ask your elders for advice...” he snickered in Mendoza’s direction. “Tomorrow is my new housekeeper’s birthday. And before you put me on the spot and freak out, Sammy, I’m just going to tell you right now that my housekeeper is Misty.” Grady held up his hands before Sam could indeed freak out, apparently unaware that hiring their former receptionist was a train wreck waiting to happen. “I know, I know. But the temp agency fired her for continually violating what I consider to be an unusually
strict dress code policy. She needed a job and my place needed to be cleaned. And since she was already there, helping me dirty up the sheets—” The other men groaned and he grinned widely. “Let’s just say it was the perfect storm. But, it was one time only and it’s been strictly platonic since. So now I need a proper gift. The kind that says, I appreciate all that you do, but that’s as far as it goes. Do you two have any ideas?”

  Shitty mood aside, Sam had to laugh. Only Grady would hire a one night stand to spend hours at a time in his home, thoughts of love and marriage surely running through her mind as she played house. And then paying her for doing it.

  Mendoza was the first to offer advice. “How about ponying up for her tuition to stripper school? Student loans are a bitch, you know. Or wait, I have a better idea. How about a one way bus ticket to The Bunny Ranch? That’s money in the bank for a girl like her.”

  Rolling his eyes at those ideas, Grady turned to Sam, an expectant look on his face.

  Sam shrugged. “A gift certificate for the downtown clinic? I don’t have firsthand knowledge of this, but I’ve been told the antibiotics for sexually transmitted diseases can be fairly expensive if you’re not insured.”

  The two men looked at each other and chuckled again as Grady got up and headed for the door, shaking his head and muttering, “I knew I should have asked Caroline instead.”

  They laughed even harder when Caroline’s serious voice trailed in through the open doorway. “Don’t bother, I agree with Sam. And didn’t your daddy ever tell you that you shouldn’t stick your dick in a girl like that? She has the word contagious written on her forehead.”