She gritted her teeth. “Hello, sugar tits.” His tits were definitely way bigger than hers.
Lardo laughed so hard his fat rolls jiggled. “You’re so feisty. I betcha you’ll taste better than those pancakes you keep making me order so I can stay here night after night.”
“More of the same?” she asked tersely.
“How about a kiss?” he countered. “Just one little peck … maybe on the pecker …”
Erica broke. Without a word, she turned, grabbed the remains of a pot of coffee on another table, one which she knew had been cooling for at least 20 minutes, and upended it over Lardo so abruptly that it took him a second to process the lukewarm fluid dousing him from head to crotch.
“Put your pecker in that, you sick, disgusting excuse for a human being,” she snarled as he started to howl in rage. “I quit!”
She walked straight out the diner door and stood there for a second, fists clenched, breathing in the cold night air before turning in the direction of the bus station. As she did, she saw him.
Brock stood a few feet away, his suit so crisply pressed that Erica briefly wondered if it was 9:00 a.m. instead of 4:00 a.m. He looked exactly like he had the day she left the office, with several additional pounds of muscle added to his frame, and a slightly shorter haircut, both with only served to make him even more masculine. The man was sex on legs, damn it.
“Why are you here?” she cried, trying not to stare into his incredible eyes or notice how soft the slight smile on his lips was. “How did you find me?”
“I watched that whole scene go down,” Brock said quietly, not making a move toward her. “Just stood here and watched through the window as that fat ass put you through hell.”
She blinked, her temper cooling abruptly, mostly due to a bucket of confusion that doused it. “You did?”
“Yeah. One of the hardest things I’ve ever done was not intervene. But I didn’t, because you don’t need rescuing, Erica.” This time he did take one step in her direction. “That’s been one of my mistakes all along. I keep trying to save you when you don’t need saving. You’re the strongest person I know. Nobody needs to bail you out of anything.”
A knot formed in her throat so she couldn’t force out any words as he continued slowly in her direction until he was directly in front of her, so close that she could see the bags under his eyes from obvious lack of sleep.
“Another of my mistakes was treating like you were disposable. Like you were just some girl at a club I could pick up and then go my way.”
A tear trickled down her cheek and she looked away. Brock’s gentle hand reached out and turned her back to face him. When she did, the look on his face took her breath away.
“Yet another of my mistakes was trying to buy you. Angie pointed that one out to me. You don’t know too much about my family, but let’s just say I got the idea that you had to bribe people to stick around,” he said quietly. “Not that that excuses anything. You specifically asked me to stop, and I kept doing it, like the fat guy in there, only with cash.”
At that, Erica managed to force out a few words. “You were an ass, but paying my father’s medical bills hardly makes you Lardo.”
“But my biggest mistake of all,” Brock went on, “was letting you walk away without a fight. So I’m here to fight, Erica. And I’m going to keep fighting, until you agree me a second chance. To give us a second chance.”
“Us?” she repeated, her voice suddenly cracking. “There is no—”
“Yeah, there is. There always was, from the time I hired you. We were a team in the office first, and then after that date, there definitely was even more. I just refused to see it. But I see it now.”
Another tear slipped down her cheek and he leaned in to very gently brush it away with his lips, so gently that she trembled.
“How’s your dad?” he asked.
Surprised, Erica murmured, “Doing all right. He has highs and lows. I should apologize too. He’d be dead if you hadn’t helped us out financially, Brock. I’m sorry. Whatever your reasons were for giving me the money, it was still beyond generous. Thank you.”
“How are you?” he asked, scanning her weary face.
“Burnt out,” she admitted. “But I have a final job interview with Nico and Henderson on Friday. I think I may finally have a place at a job where I can actually use my degree."
The smile on Brock’s face melted the ice that had surrounded Erica’s heart for months and she sagged forward a little, just enough that he placed a hand on her waist.
“Good for you. I don’t know how to say it without sounding condescending, but I’m proud of you, Erica. You’ll knock ’em dead.”
She smiled, feeling the warm spread outward from the touch of his hand and sincere words. “Thanks. I’m proud of myself, frankly.”
And then she hugged him hard. She didn’t overthink it; she just did it because this was the man she’d love for what felt like forever, and he finally felt like he was on an even footing with her. Not a billionaire. Not her boss. Not her seducer. Just a man who had opened himself up to her and even asked about her life. A man who had let her fight her own battles and cheered her on when she won.
Brock’s arms folded around her tightly and she leaned in closer, melting into the familiar heat of his embrace. “God, I missed this. I missed you so much.”
“I missed you,” he whispered in her ear. “And I love you, Erica.”
“I love you,” she whispered back, lifting her head to look into his eyes. “And next time, I give you permission to intervene if a lard ass is trying to feel me up.”
Brock laughed and framed her face with his hands. “I promise I’ll pound anyone who tries into the ground. I love you.” He kissed her again, and then again, and then again, until Erica’s weariness had completely burned away, replaced by the heat of Brock’s hungry, tender kiss. “I love you. I love you,” he whispered. “I love you now. I’ll love you tomorrow. I’ll love you forever. Give me six months and I’m going to ask you to marry me, Erica Samson.”
“Why six months?” she asked giddily, matching him kiss for hungry kiss, almost climbing him in her need to be closer to him, skin to skin.
“Because I’d like to do some things differently in my own life, things that’ll make you proud of me too,” he said simply, before lifting her in his arms, carrying her to his car, and then whisking her off to his apartment and to bed.
And she knew without a doubt that when he asked someday, she’d say yes.
The End.
The Dom Next Door
A Billionaire Single Daddy Romance
I used to know exactly what I would do with my life, and why. I planned to devote myself to God. I was in the middle of my novice training a little over a year ago, when someone blew up my parents’ car. They were the kindest people in the world, and their deaths shook the foundation of my faith.
Now I’m lost, knocking around in a half-furnished new house with no family left but a sister who hates me. No one has ever found the people responsible for my parents’ murder, and the police don’t seem interested in trying to find them, either. The only bright spot in my life is the man who lives next door with his baby daughter.
I look at him and remember that I’m a woman, not just a failed novice. He gives me one smile, and I feel some of the glacier of grief inside of me melt away.
I can only imagine what a kiss from him would do.
Chapter 1
Emmeline
“Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad. Sorry I haven’t visited in a while.”
My coat is too thin for this weather. The chilly breeze blows across the hillside and rustles the flattened dead grass before cutting through the wool. It’s the only black coat I have, however, and I’ve been using it exclusively for a year, for just that reason.
In their living will, Mom and Dad insisted on a burial on the same low hill where our ancestors’ graves have sat for centuries. The small mausoleum, a plain filing box for two coffins, sits before
me as I crouch down with the icy wind at my back.
“It’s snowing again. Second time this winter. It’s crazy. Cars are piling up
on the highways, and over in Florida the iguanas are falling out of trees from the cold. Can you imagine?”
My laugh is small, awkward, and hollow, and the wind carries it away quickly.
This doesn’t feel like New Orleans. There shouldn’t be snow here. This winter feels wrong.
But things have felt wrong for months now. None of it makes sense—but I’m not all that surprised. My whole world has felt crazy ever since my parents died.
“I’m not going to the convent after all. I know, I said I was doing that right after junior college, but I’m realizing more and more that after what happened to you, my faith ... just didn’t end up being my rock like I thought it was.”
My voice breaks and I go silent, cold tears tracking down my cheeks. The Mother Superior of the convent I had been seeking membership with was very sympathetic, but she didn’t understand. But she’d also never seen her parents blown up right in front of her.
Seen? No, felt—my whole vision was whited out by the fireball. One moment, I was walking to the car, my dad talking to me from the driver’s side, teasing me gently for forgetting my phone while my mother hid a smile. The next, a tremendous blast of heat hit me and hurled me backward, my own awkward smile barely having time to die before I landed in our hedge. After that, everything went black.
I spent last January in the hospital, first for burns and cracked ribs, and then for post-traumatic stress. They released me with a clean bill of health, but they were dead wrong.
Mom and Dad have been in their grave a year, and I haven’t felt right or healthy in all that time. I can function day to day now—I can manage my money, and I have my own house. But part of me died that day with my parents—I woke up in the hospital without it, and haven’t been able to find it since.
“I’m sorry, Mom. I know you were proud when I decided to devote myself to God. But I can’t join a religious order without faith.”
The faith that sustained me since I was six years old, which I turned to over and over again when my sister Shayla wrought havoc in my life, crumbled like sand in the face of that explosion. The arsonist hasn’t been caught; Shayla is three times worse without my parents’ disapproval to restrain her; and every comforting word from a priest or the Bible ... no longer comforts.
The tears won’t stop. In the time since my parents have been gone, I’ve slowly been able to cut down on the public sobbing fits, hating to embarrass myself like that. But right now, I can forgive myself for breaking down a little.
“I’m going back to college. I’ll finish my degree and then ... well ... I’m not sure. But I’ll try to find some way to make you proud of me.” I hope.
Lucky for me that my half of the inheritance will carry me my whole life—even if I am never able to handle a job again.
“I still can’t get along with Shayla,” I mumble, wiping my cheeks again. “She pushed me into leaving home. I could only turn the other cheek so many times, so I left. I’m sure she planned it that way.
“I think you would like my new house, though. It’s not very big, but it’s well-restored, it’s clean, and it’s mine. The neighborhood isn’t as nice as ours, but ... one of the neighbors ... well, he’s very nice.”
The thought of Carl, the single dad next door, makes me smile enough that my tears dry for a while. I can’t even fully explain how much the thought of him comforts me. Watching him play with his cute little daughter, his huge, powerful form moving so gently around her, always makes me happy.
Then there are the dreams I have about him ... but I’m not going to go dwelling on them in front of my parents’ grave. Still, I giggle a little. “I think you would like him.”
“Like who?” snaps a voice behind me, and I freeze. The voice is a little distant, and I hear the shuffle of feet coming up through the dead grass. Shayla. I shudder and clench my fists to calm myself, glad at least that she wasn’t standing behind me listening the whole time I was lost in my talk with the dead.
“None of your business,” I say as firmly as I can, cursing the tiny shake I can hear in my voice as she stalks around me and dumps an enormous bouquet atop the mausoleum. Purple monkshood clashes gaudily with orange lilies, hot pink snapdragons, and blood-colored rhododendron, crowding out my simple garland of white roses.
“I can’t believe you’re up here talking to a couple of corpses in a marble box. They’re fucking dead, you melodramatic twit. Life after death is a myth, just like your God.”
I hold myself very still, the anger and resentment I’ve felt for as long as I can remember burning inside of me like an ember. I won’t give her the satisfaction of breaking down in front of her, or of losing my temper. Either reaction will leave that narcissistic cow thinking she’s in control.
“Emmeline, can you hear me, or did your shrink put you on more tranquilizers?” Her voice is a mocking whine as she turns to confront me.
I straighten, lifting my head, and meet her sharp, dark gaze with my own. My sister looks older and crueler every time I see her. Her mouth is a narrow, dry slit thinly lined in dark red, her eyes are sunken and hold a greedy gleam, and her straight, russet-bronze hair—so like my own—has been clipped to her jawline and streaked with gold.
She wears a silk suit the exact color of her lipstick, with no blouse underneath, her silicone-enhanced cleavage tastelessly exposed. On the whole, she’s wearing too much musky perfume and too much gold, too many jewels, and not one single indication of grief or loss. That’s my big sister: making wealthy, slutty sociopathy fashionable again.
She seems absolutely stunned by my mute, expressionless examination of her. She doesn’t understand just how done with her I am. She never has been able to understand boundaries; even when my father would shout at her at the top of his lungs for her latest round of household thefts, she’d always claim he was “overreacting.” She’s immune from guilt.
But she’s absolutely unused to my standing up to her.
“Shayla, I’ve put up with a lot of your shit over the years, but I refuse to do it at our parents’ grave. Knock it off, or we’re done for good.”
She’s blinking very rapidly now, her vain, narrow little mind struggling to process where my show of backbone has come from. The thing is, I always had a backbone; I just wasn’t confrontational. I was shy and kind instead.
Instead of punching my sister in the face when she stole my clothes and ruined them, or was cruel to me at school, I turned the other cheek, and prayed, and felt better. I listened to my apologetic parents trying to explain to me that Shayla is sick, that she can’t help herself, and that I had to be strong. I did as they asked, for the sake of family harmony.
But then my parents’ car exploded with them in it, and me just steps away from joining them. If I hadn’t gone back for my phone, I would have died with them.
Shayla didn’t visit me in the hospital. She greeted me without warmth or sympathy when I returned. Instead, upon hearing that I wasn’t going to join a convent like I had planned, she drove me out of our family home, claiming it for herself.
Her ways of driving me out were very effective, making sure that I couldn’t stay, no matter how much I wanted to. Banging on my door at all hours of the night. Breaking into my room. Stealing and breaking my things. Screaming at me and lecturing me every day, sometimes for hours.
I left as soon as I could gather enough of my inheritance together to pay for my new home in cash. That was months ago, and the venom still hasn’t left my veins. Instead, it’s killed my ability to give a single damn about being nice to Shayla.
“I can’t believe you! How rude can you be? Telling me to shut up! I’m only saying these things for your own good—”
“You came into this conversation being the biggest bitch you could be, and now you’re hurt that I’m not happy to see you?” I snort, tucking a few strands of hair behind
my ear that have escaped my braid. “Drop the act. Nobody’s ever happy to see you, Shayla, because you’re a soulless bitch.”
“When in the hell did the aspiring nun take up swearing?” she finally manages to mumble. She sounds incredulous, as if I’ve suddenly sprouted a pair of devil horns.
“I’m not an aspiring nun anymore,” I growl, scooping up my shoulder bag and turning to go.
“Wait, wait! We have to talk about finances!” She starts to move to intercept me, but I step quickly away from her and stalk off down the hill. My Doc Martens have better purchase on the slippery hillside than her stiletto heels, and I hear her yelp with dismay as she falls behind. “Come back here, you rude little bitch!”
I’m cold all over by the time I reach my pickup, but I refuse to let the tears fall. My grief curdles my stomach, but I won’t take even the slightest chance that Shayla might catch me crying. If she finds me in tears, she will laugh.
Through the rage, I feel an unexpected surge of pride in how I’m handling this. I actually stood up to her. It was bitter, mean, and clumsy, but I did it.
I don’t even let myself wonder why she’s trying to talk to me about money—except, of course, that it’s the thing she loves best in the world. Maybe she’s after my half of the inheritance. She’s always been jealous of anything my parents gave me—including life.
When I was little, I used to try so hard to get Shayla to like me. I used to cry with frustration over it, and that would make her laugh with delight at how hard I was trying, even though I always failed.
Now, as I drive home in uncharacteristically thin New Orleans traffic, I think to myself that the only effort she’ll be getting from me from now on is the bare minimum it takes to keep me from beating her physically and landing in jail. A tiny, heartbroken part of me, the part that realizes that Shayla is the only family I have left in the world now that Mom and Dad are gone, knows that I should hurt unbearably. But instead, the whole encounter has just left me very, very tired.
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