by Roni Loren
“A little too loud?” he asked, repeating her words. “It’s midnight. The screams were damn near vibrating my walls.”
That made her spine straighten and a flash of indignation rush through her. “Yes, it is midnight. And someone thought blaring songs about tractors was appropriate at this hour. I had to turn up my TV to drown you out.” She nodded at his weapon. “Do you make it a habit to scare the shit out of new neighbors by brandishing a baseball bat on their doorstep?”
He glanced down at his bat as if just remembering he had it, like it was a normal extension of his arm. He leaned over and set it against a planter out of her reach, then lifted a brow her way. “Says the lady with the pink pepper spray.”
“Hey, you’re at my door, man. I didn’t bang on yours.” She wasn’t going to put down her weapon. No, thank you.
He sighed, a long-suffering sound, and rubbed his forehead. “Okay, so you’re not getting murdered or the hell beat out of you.”
“I am not.”
“That’s good.” He nodded, almost to himself, and ran a hand over the back of his head.
“Agreed. I consider it a good day if I haven’t been murdered.”
He stared at her for a moment as if at a loss for what to say to that, and she was momentarily struck by how well his beard suited his tense jawline, by how long his eyelashes were, how his brown eyes had flecks of green in them.
“I’m sorry if I scared you,” he said finally. “But maybe not so loud on the movies. I’m trained to respond to screams.”
Somehow the words trained to respond to screams sounded dirty to her ear, and heat bloomed in her cheeks. God. What was with her tonight? She cleared her throat. “Right. And maybe not so loud with the tractor music?”
His mouth hitched up at one corner, a lazy tilt of a smile. “I played no songs about tractors. There was no farm equipment referenced at all.”
She crossed her arms again and gave him a knowing look. “What about mommas, trains, trucks, prison, or gettin’ drunk?”
A low chuckle escaped him, and he coughed, as if trying to cover it. “Touché. No promises there.”
“Fair enough. So, you’re the neighbor,” she said, trying to disregard the warm honey sound of his laugh. There was no way she needed to entertain any Hey, how you doin’ feelings about the dude who lived next door. She couldn’t even think of the box of nightmares that would open up.
He straightened a little, and his serious face returned. “Yeah. Hill Dawson. Sorry I haven’t introduced myself before this. I’ve been…busy with things.”
“I’m Andrea—Andi,” she said, keeping one arm crossed over her chest and putting out her other to shake his hand. “Writer. Podcaster. Watcher of loud horror movies.”
He took her hand, his grip big and warm around hers, and gave her a businesslike shake. “Nice to meet you.”
“Yes, at midnight. In our pajamas. Exactly how I planned it.” Well, her pajamas. He had tennis shoes on, so he probably hadn’t been in bed.
She almost missed it, the quick flick of his gaze back to her outfit, but he seemed to catch himself and not let the look linger. He dropped the handshake. “It won’t happen again.”
She let out a breath and dropped the prickly attitude. This wasn’t who she was. Being scared and caught off guard had brought out her sharp edges. “Look, I appreciate you coming over to make sure everything’s okay. I guess we both need to be aware of how thin the walls are.”
“Yeah, I didn’t realize that until tonight either. Your side has been pretty quiet since you moved in. I’m glad you weren’t being murdered.”
She smiled. “Me too.”
He nodded. “Well, good night, Andi.”
“’Night, neighbor.”
He grabbed the bat, setting it against his shoulder with the practiced ease of someone who’d played the game, and then tipped his head toward the pepper spray clutched in her left hand. “Also, that’s decent if you’re trying to deter a dog from attacking you, but you should look into the pepper gel for real protection. That’s what my cop friends suggest. It won’t blow back on you and is stronger.”
“Oh.” She looked down at the pink tube.
“And sorry to use the fire department thing. I didn’t mean to scare you. I figured that’d be the quickest way to get you to open the door.”
She sniffed. “It worked.”
He shrugged. “It usually does.”
“Next time, you can just say it’s Hill, so I don’t think I’m about to die of a gas leak.”
His lips curved slightly, but there was a glimmer of sadness there—or wistfulness—before he turned back toward his side of the porch. “G’night.”
“’Night.”
Andi leaned against her doorway, maybe enjoying the view of his backside in a pair of sweats more than she should. He walked a little stiffly, like he had a knee bothering him or something, and headed back into his house without a backward glance.
She slipped back inside, locked her door, and leaned against it, her heart still beating fast—from the earlier scare, but also maybe from something else. She didn’t want to examine that too closely. In her darkened living room, the paused movie was the only light. Drew Barrymore was frozen in place, lying on the ground with Ghostface above her. Andi scanned the room—the single indentation on the couch, the afghan for two, the cold cup of tea. All were waiting for her to return.
But a weird urge to go back outside and knock on Hill’s door, invite him to watch the movie with her, came over her. Maybe he had trouble sleeping like she did. Maybe he liked scary movies, too.
The line from Scream drifted through her head. “Do you like scary movies?”
She could ask him. To be neighborly. To be friendly. To finally have a guy over.
But as quickly as the thought hit her, she tamped it down. He was a stranger. Yes, he seemed nice and was supposedly a firefighter with good intentions. But she’d learned not to trust her gut on things like that. Her instincts in that area were notoriously untrustworthy. Lots of people were good at appearing to be nice. Some people knew how to wield “nice” as the ultimate weapon.
Old memories leached into her brain. Whispered compliments from a boy she’d yearned for, one she thought she could trust. Gentle kisses. Locked doors. Fingers sliding a strap down a shoulder. Promise you won’t tell anyone. You’re the only one I trust.
She shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut. No. Stop.
She took a few deep breaths, pushing the images back into the vault she tried to keep them locked in. After a moment, she rubbed the goose bumps from her arms and swallowed past the sick feeling that welled up anytime she let thoughts of Evan Henry Longdale sneak into her mind.
No way was she inviting the new neighbor over. Hello, mental trigger, how are you?
As she plopped back down on the couch, she tried to shake off the memories her run-in with Hill had stirred, but after a few more minutes of the movie, she realized she wasn’t paying attention to the screen. Movie night was officially a wash.
She clicked off the television, knowing the only way to get her mind off the old looping track it was now on was to take a sleeping pill and go to bed.
She washed her face, brushed her teeth, and focused on her nightly routine to block out her anxious thoughts. But as she was finishing up, she heard the shower turn on next door. The bad memories that were pushing at the walls of her mind were suddenly replaced by images of the man who’d been standing on her doorstep. Hill was on the other side of the wall, right there. She glanced at the wall separating them, listening to the sounds and imagining what was on the other side. Hill taking off his T-shirt, revealing what she suspected was a very well-built body. Hill sliding those loose sweats down his hips, revealing…
Not cool. Stop. No mentally undressing the guy. Nope.
But her inner protests were no
use. She could hear him groan with appreciation, like the hot water had been a relief. Hill was taking a shower. On the other side of that thin wall, only a few feet away, he was naked and wet. Water droplets on bare skin were involved.
Thinking of anything else was suddenly impossible. Her starved libido was now fully in charge, popping popcorn for this new dirty movie.
She quickly finished up in the bathroom, trying to get away from the source of the images, but by the time she’d slipped under the covers of her bed, her skin was hot all over. The mental movie of Hill was there and not going away. And though fantasizing about the neighbor was a terrible idea, visions of him in the shower were a helluva lot better than the horrid memories that had taken over earlier. Maybe there was no harm in her little fantasy reel after all. There was nothing safer than fantasy. It was what had gotten her through all these years without a physical relationship.
It’s not like her new neighbor would ever know.
The dirty thoughts were safely locked in her brain, and whenever she ran into him again, she would just have to employ her poker face. She had a good one. No, of course I’ve never pictured you naked.
She closed her eyes and listened to the water run, letting her imagination take over from there.
She forgot to take that sleeping pill.
Chapter Two
Hill Dawson groaned as he let the water run over him, feeling like an idiot for nearly busting down his new tenant’s door over a damn movie. He’d been doing his nightly exercises, hoping they’d tire him out enough to actually get some sleep, when he’d heard the screaming. His instincts had kicked in, and he hadn’t even considered that the noise was something innocuous—like a neighbor playing her scary movie too loudly.
All he could think of was the petite redhead, whom he’d only gotten a few glimpses of over the past few weeks, getting attacked. He’d imagined her trying to fight off an intruder or a violent boyfriend, losing the battle. So he’d rushed over like it was the old days, ready to bust down a door and save the day. He’d almost hoped that there would be a day to save. Something to give him that old rush of feeling like a hero to someone—even if only for a few minutes. Which was fucking bent. But anything to penetrate the numbness would’ve been welcome.
Instead, he’d ended up scaring the hell out of his new tenant—though she didn’t know he was the landlord—and lying to her about his firefighter status. He’d conveniently left out the former part of that title. Great job, asshole. Nothing like starting off a meet and greet with a lie.
But he’d wanted to calm her, to make her feel like he could help. When Andi had first opened the door, pink pepper spray in hand, she’d been trying to look tough—chin jutted out, blue eyes glinting in the porch light—but he’d seen the fear underneath that thin layer of bravado. Her body had been trembling and her face pale. She’d looked so…vulnerable.
Seeing her like that had hit him square in the gut. He’d wanted to pull her to him and hug her. What the hell had that been about? He didn’t hug strangers.
The urge had been weird and completely inappropriate. There was a difference between wanting to protect a citizen from danger and what he’d felt in that moment. That urge had been anything but professional.
Luckily, his training had gone on autopilot when he’d seen her pepper spray—the training that said to speak to her in a calm voice, to be professional, to assure her he was there to help—and he’d kept his hands and hugs to himself. Thank God.
He’d never gotten an up close look at Andi before tonight, and he hadn’t realized how young she was. Or how beautiful. Big blue eyes with smudged black liner, a little silver ring in her nose, and a body that would’ve seemed boyish if not for the small, pert breasts he’d forced himself to look away from when he’d realized she was only wearing a thin tank top and the shadows of what was beneath could be seen in the porch light.
He had no business looking at her that way or allowing the surge of heat that had moved through him. At thirty-one, he probably looked like an old man to her for one, and two, he didn’t do that anymore. No flirting. No charming his way into a fun hookup. Those days were long past him. He wasn’t anyone’s good time. He was a goddamned charity case at best, a pity fuck at worst. He’d learned that the hard way when one of his buddies had tried to set him up on a date after his accident and the breakup with his former fiancée. The woman had let it slip on the date that she was doing it as a favor to his friend. He wasn’t interested in repeating that particular lesson in humiliation.
Not that someone like Andi would’ve been interested anyway. She looked like the type who dated skateboarders or vegans with full-sleeve tattoos or drummers in punk bands. Not disabled firefighters who’d been put out to pasture.
Hill grabbed the metal bar attached to the shower wall and eased down onto the bench he’d installed. He dipped his head and let the water run over him, his eyes stinging with the shampoo. Tomorrow, he’d go back to keeping to himself. He and Andi now had an agreement not to disturb each other. Perfect.
He didn’t need a chatty neighbor, especially one that made him think about things he shouldn’t, made him crave things he couldn’t have. He’d let himself slip a little tonight, getting caught up for a moment and joking with her when she’d made a clever reference to a David Allan Coe song his aunt used to love. But he couldn’t open up that kind of door with someone like Andi, even in a neighborly way.
He’d bought this duplex for the quiet, to start fresh somewhere, and to get a little rental income to add to his firefighter pension while he figured out what the hell he was supposed to do with the rest of his life. He didn’t want to be friends with his tenant. That was why he had a management company handle the rental logistics. He wanted to be anonymous in this new place, left alone. Andi looked like the type who would organize the neighborhood watch and throw block parties. No, thanks.
He lifted his head, wiped the water from his face, and took a deep breath, feeling better now that he’d come up with a plan of action and had shaken off the weird feelings the conversation with Andi had left him with. Nothing had changed. He didn’t need to worry about it. He met his neighbor. No big deal.
But as he settled down into bed that night, instead of being plagued by nightmares of fiery buildings collapsing around him like usual, he was plagued by dreams of fiery redheads.
He woke up in a sweat and didn’t sleep for the rest of the night.
***
Andi weaved her way through the first floor of WorkAround, the coworking space where she spent her weekdays, feeling the ripple of energy from all those clicking keyboards. She adored the bottom floor of the building with its tall windows lining the back wall, the exposed red brick and ductwork, and the soaring ceilings. But what she loved more was that this floor was where the hot desks were located—desks that people could rent for a few hours or days. That meant a regularly rotating mix of interesting people, which was like candy for her extroverted self. On any given day, she could chat with a musician, an actor, a book blogger, a journalist, a day trader, a visual artist. The list went on and on.
People were endlessly fascinating to her, and though she knew the stereotype of a writer was someone alone in an attic room, her writer brain needed people. How was she supposed to come up with interesting characters if she never met any interesting people? So each morning, she made a point to stop by a few of the hot desks and make small talk—“desk” really meaning “any solid flat surface you can place a laptop on” because the floor was dotted with blue, yellow, and gray couches, cafe tables, and boxy chairs. But today she breezed past most of them with only a few waves or smiles of acknowledgment toward people she already knew. She had pastries to deliver.
She headed to the stairwell next to the in-house coffee bar and made her way up to the second floor, where she rented space. She passed the podcasting and video rooms, cruised past her own office, and then knocked on a
door at the end of the hall.
“Come in,” her friend Hollyn called out.
Andi opened the door and slipped inside, the library quiet of Hollyn’s office a stark contrast to the flurry on the first floor. She set a narrow black canister and a grease-stained bag from the bakery on her friend’s desk and plopped in a chair. “Mornin’, rock star. I come bearing gifts.”
Hollyn glanced over from the entertainment article she was working on, her nose wrinkling a few times in a facial tic that Andi had gotten so used to, she barely noticed anymore. “Ooh, presents.” Hollyn examined the offerings on the desk and tucked her lion’s mane of curly blond hair behind her ears. “Well, I can guess what’s in the bag. I can smell a cinnamon roll from a hundred yards away. But what’s this?”
Hollyn picked up the black canister and turned it over in her hand.
“Gel pepper spray. A firefighter friend of mine says it’s the best, better than the normal stuff because it doesn’t blow back in your face.” Andi opened the bag and pulled out one of the cinnamon rolls she’d picked up from Levee Baking Co. on her way in this morning. One of the bonuses of renting an office at WorkAround, besides being able to have actual coworkers in a job where she normally would be stuck alone, was that she had NOLA’s endless supply of restaurants at her fingertips when she was craving something yummy. “I thought you should have one, too. You know, you can protect you and Jasper if you two are ever attacked.”
Hollyn laughed. “You don’t trust Jasper to be the action hero?”
Andi smirked at the thought of Hollyn’s adorable improv-actor fiancé attempting any sort of violence. The guy would lay down his life for Hollyn, no doubt, but Andi couldn’t picture him in a fight. “He would probably be able to talk a criminal out of robbing you guys.”