HOT MEN: A Contemporary Romance Box Set

by Ashlee Price

  “No, I’m not deaf. Yes, since we’re standing in front of the apartment that you rented to me, yes, I’m that tenant.” I knew I should have been more careful—with a guy like that I should have kept playing the helpless damsel card—but I didn’t care anymore.

  “Well, it’s good to see that at least you’ve got a sense of humor. You sounded a little scared on the phone. I’m surprised you didn’t faint before I got here.”

  I started to ask him what in the world he was talking about—I’d been pissed, not afraid—but I decided that getting inside was more important than prolonging this pointless conversation with this rude jerk. I handed him the key and waited.

  “Did you even try it like I told you to? Give it a little jiggle first?”

  My hands balled into fists and I forced myself to count to five before I gave him any kind of reaction. What I wanted to say roared through my mind: Of course I tried it! Of course I gave it a jiggle—and what kind of place are you running here that a normal person can’t get a door open with a normal key without having to practically molest the door first?

  Nodding my head, I waited for him to get another key out. He must have given me the wrong one, so he must have the right one on him. Instead of searching for another key, he took the one I’d just handed him and slid it into the keyhole. I wanted to say something like ‘I told you so’, or ask him why he didn’t believe me, but I didn’t get the chance.

  He made some kind of movement with the key that I couldn’t make out, and like magic, the little sliver of metal turned and the lock moved with a clank. He twisted the knob and the door opened maybe an inch. The look on his face when he popped the door open made me want to slap him. But at the same time, I could feel my stomach sink, and my face burned hotter than ever. I could have been in the apartment an hour ago instead of standing outside like an idiot.

  “Like I said, a little jiggle is all you need. Sometimes you just have to know what you’re doing.”

  With that he turned away, and I couldn’t even summon up the moral courage to come up with anything to say to that. It was bad enough that I’d been humiliated, but I’d had my share of those experiences. Everyone makes an ass out of themselves sometimes. What made it worse was that my landlord was hot. If only he were a little nicer, I could see myself with a man like Linc. He was the kind of man I’d gone for in the past, but I’d learned my lesson. Men like that weren’t worth the trouble, even if they were nice to look at.

  Shaking my head at the sentiment, I walked into the apartment without even going back out to get my futon mattress. I was ready to put this whole night behind me, even if it meant sleeping on the floor.

  Chapter Three—Linc

  The papers I’d gotten from the process server the day before were bad enough, but when I’d had to get out of bed at something like two in the morning to deal with the airheaded new tenant who’d apparently never worked a key before in her life, I’d been sure that my trip to see my attorney would just be the frosting on the shit cake that my life had turned into. I was in over my head and I knew it, so Carol—my divorce attorney—was going to have to make sense of this for me. I wasn’t stupid. I knew that it was bad news. I just didn’t know how worried I should be about it.

  If I didn’t know better, I would think that Carol purposely made the waiting area in her office too small. Between me and her other dozen or so clients, she had to have been able to afford a decent-sized office; but sitting there, waiting for her to get done with the poor schmuck who had the appointment before me, I felt uncomfortable—and not just because of the headache that had never really gone away. Being just shy of 6’4”, and over 200 pounds, I felt like an elephant in the room, and I had to fold myself up to fit into the tiny chair. My knees were almost up to my damn chest. I wanted to stand up, but if I did, I knew I was going to pace. That would only work me up even more

  “Would you like something to drink, Mr. Hayes?”

  The sweet voice of Carol’s receptionist cut through the red-tinged haze of my thoughts, and I shook off my irritation for a second to tell her I was fine in the least aggressive voice I could find. She was watching me with that wary look that women get when they suspect I’m about to explode, and I tried my best to calm down. I’d seen her a couple of times before, but she was still fairly new; I could remember when Carol had worked strictly on her own—she hadn’t been making enough to justify a secretary. The girl—I was pretty sure her name was Lucy, or Stacy, or something like that—was cute, but I couldn’t think about that right now. All I could think about was Lisa and what she was up to this time. When court papers came in from that woman, it was never a good thing. It looked like she was trying to get full custody and take away my visitation rights. Over my goddamned dead body, I thought, and then took a breath.

  “She’ll be right out to see you,” the girl said. “It’s just that the meeting she had before you ended up being more complicated than she thought.”

  “It’s fine. I’m just anxious to talk to her,” I told her.

  The receptionist nodded, but she still had the slightly wide-eyed look on her face—the one I’d seen more than once, breaking up the occasional fight at base housing, when one of my fellow sailors thought having muscles meant they didn’t need to use their brains, got drunk, and took out some issue they had with the chain of command on their girlfriend or wife. I didn’t think I looked that upset, but maybe I did. Since I was so big and tall, people seemed to watch me with special caution, and once I lost my temper, they tended to get out of the way quick. I tried to give the girl behind the desk a quick, reassuring smile, but I wasn’t sure if that made it better or worse.

  I waited with my eyes partially closed and my head down. My nerves were getting to me, and I wondered how much this was going to cost and how long it was going to take. Ever since Lisa had found the rich asshole from California, and got him dancing to her tune, it seemed like she would never run out of excuses to take me to family court—some issue about the letter of the custody agreement, like that I dropped our daughter off one minute late one time, or that I hadn’t provided some piece of paperwork that I hadn’t even gotten the chance to receive yet.

  Now she wanted to go back to California with her husband, and she wanted to take our daughter with her. But we had shared custody now, so she couldn’t, unless she could get a court to change the arrangement. I bet that burned her ass, but I didn’t care. I wanted to be a part of Jazmin’s life, and just because Lisa had found another man to pay her way, that didn’t mean she could take her from me.

  I tried to push the thoughts from my mind. I was working myself up without even really trying. What was it about that woman that pissed me off so much? It couldn’t just be that she kept taking me to court over nothing—that was like a few mosquitoes. But there was something about the way she seemed to be willing to hurt Jazmin just to get to me that made it impossible not to see red every time I thought about her. And let’s be real: it’s because she tricked you. She pulled the wool over your eyes, and you had that beautiful baby girl with that fucking snake, and you’re worried she’s going to turn your princess into every bit as much of a snake as she is.

  I heard the door to Carol’s office open, and sat up in the chair, rising to my feet and standing at attention without even really thinking about it. The guy who had the appointment before me looked like he’d been crying; there was a time in my life when I would have scoffed at the sight, but now I could understand. There had been at least one time in the past several years when I’d walked out barely able to keep my shit together until I could get to my car—but it seemed like my ability to actually feel sad about what had happened to my marriage or betrayed by Lisa had gone away. Now all I felt was angry.

  “Linc, come on in. I would like to say that I’m happy to see you, but with that paper in your hand I can tell that this is not going to be a social call,” Carol said. “Sorry that last meeting ran over.”

  “No big deal,” I told her, walking past
the receptionist. “Guy looks like he’s getting reamed.”

  “He would be if he didn’t have me,” Carol said with a confident little smile. “You of all people should know how hard that first shock is, finding out your former partner is determined to pull the ‘Hail Caesar’ special on you.”

  I followed her down the short hallway leading back to her office. Carol was maybe ten years older than me, with blonde hair that she’d told me at our first meeting had never looked better than when she started in divorce law. She made good money at it—enough to go to the salon every couple of weeks to get it colored, and enough to buy the designer suits she wore to the courtroom. “Half of my success in this field is because I never set foot in front of a judge without looking like a million bucks,” she’d told me. The other half was that she was willing to contest anything for whoever she worked for, even if it was perfectly reasonable—not that Lisa had ever met reason.

  “Like I told you yesterday, she’s taking me to court again,” I said. I didn’t have to tell Carol who ‘she’ was.

  She shook her head and shut the door behind me, gesturing to the chair I always sat in when I came to see her; it was at least bigger than the ones in the waiting room. Her office itself was actually bigger than the waiting room. It had a couch, even, along with a big bookcase full of books about law and Colorado Family Court procedures and mediation and whatever else. The desk was about the size of the bank of chairs out in the waiting area, all on its own. “Do you want some coffee?”

  I told her that I didn’t. No amount of coffee was going to help anything. I thought about heading straight back to the bar as soon as I got done talking to her about the new twist in my shitty life as Lisa’s ex-husband.

  “No, I just want you to tell me what I should do next,” I said.

  “Let me see what she’s stirred up this time.” I handed her the paperwork and she sat down behind her desk, looking around the top of it for a moment. “Have you gone through it?”

  I shrugged. “It’s in that bullshit language lawyers all like to use,” I said, giving her a little smile as part of me started to relax. “But it looks like she wants to take Jazmin with her to California and I won’t get to see her anymore.”

  “Did she get married?” I raised an eyebrow at that. Why was that the first question out of her mouth? I had to admit it had bothered me that Lisa had gotten married a few months before; but that didn’t have anything to do with what was going on, other than to give her even more access to the rich bastard’s money, the better to come at me with.

  “Yeah, why? Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

  Carol made a dismissive gesture and found her glasses on the desk, put them on and opened the packet of court paperwork. She started to read the summons I’d received; I knew that I should give her a minute to read it, but it was hard. I was too worried about what was going to happen next. I could be cool and calm in the worst of situations, but I wasn’t able to cope with anything that threatened my relationship with Jazmin.

  Finally, she looked up from the paperwork. “I don’t know. It does establish her household as the stable one. That’s not good for you, obviously. She’s going to bring up your hours at the apartments, and your career with the SEALs—she says that you still do covert special ops missions, if you can believe that—but the fact that you’re a single man is always going to be her biggest missile. She tried that last time we went to court. Now that she’s married, you’ll look even worse in comparison. And the law will always side with the parent that’s the best chance for the child.”

  Shit. I exhaled hard. Carol had never been the kind of lawyer to dress things up with candy-coating to make the bad news go down more easily; that was part of why I respected her. If there was bad news, she was going to be upfront about it. “I guess I should have figured something like that,” I said. “What’s the situation with that summons?”

  She went back to the paperwork and I tried to sit in silence without working myself into a rage, waiting for her to finish. After maybe a minute or two, she looked up at me once again. “Wow, I guess that’s about the gist of it. The claims are mostly the same as before: you’re single, you work strange hours, and you don’t have any family around to help with childcare. She also worries that Jazmin will get into your ‘tools and other dangerous work-related items’ and get hurt.”

  Carol was quoting the papers, and for a second we both just rolled our eyes together at the craziness of it all. Lisa was determined to do whatever she could, say whatever she had to, to keep me from having access to Jazmin; it would almost be funny if it wasn’t my damn life.

  “So what do I do, Carol? I can’t let her take Jazmin to California. All of my businesses are here—if Lisa takes her all the way to the coast I’ll never get to see her,” I said. Carol pressed her lips together and set the paperwork down, and I could see the wheels turning behind her bright eyes.

  “Well, there are a few ways that we can go about this, but you know what my first idea is going to be,” she said, raising one well-groomed eyebrow.

  I groaned, bringing my hands up to my forehead; just the start of this conversation was enough to give me a headache. Some of the tactics that my lawyer suggested were further out of the realm of possibility than others. I’d already heard her theories, so I did know what she was going to suggest. The look on my face must have given me away, because Carol hesitated for a second.

  “I know you don’t want to hear it, Linc,” she said. “But since Lisa got married, you look even less stable by comparison. It all comes down to the opinion of the judge, and that could go a hundred different ways. He’s going to see you and then them. They are a family unit; you’re not. If you could find a way to change that, maybe things would look better to him. I’m not going to tell you that it’ll make it a sure thing, but it could make a huge difference when it comes down to where Jazmin is going to go.”

  “I’m not even dating anyone, Carol,” I said. I don’t see how I’m supposed to just get married like that. The court date is in two weeks. There’s no way I could get it all done even if I wanted to.”

  “It was just a suggestion. I know what this means to you, and I’m not about to leave an ace out of the hand if I don’t have to. It could work, but if you’re not even seeing anyone, obviously we can sideline that idea.”

  I nodded along with her words, because I knew she was working for me—that she was probably even right—but there was no way I was going to do that, even if I could. Just the thought of Lisa was enough to give me a headache, and thinking about ever—ever—getting married again made it worse. My whole marriage with Lisa had been one long headache, and the divorce was no better.

  “I know you mean well, Carol, but I don’t see that as an option,” I said. “What are my other options?” She tapped her fingernails against the top of her desk for a moment.

  “Did you get Jazmin’s room finished?”

  “Months ago.”

  “Well, that’s one thing in our favor. Hmm... She’s talking about money again. How is everything going with that?”

  “She’s paid up, has always been paid up,” I said, remembering the painstaking way I’d made sure the transfers for the child support came out of my account automatically and with at least one day of grace. “But she keeps asking for cash on the side. If Jazmin needs anything she knows I’ll buy it for her, but I told her I’m not going to give her cash without knowing what it’s going to.”

  “Good! Don’t. She would deny it if you did, so it wouldn’t be counted.” Carol let out a gusty sigh. “I really hate this for you, Linc. How are you holding up?”

  She’d set the paperwork down and was really looking at me now. I’d been through plenty with this woman, and she was always there for me. Carol was one of the only women that I really trusted; as long as I paid her, she was as loyal as they got. There was even a part of me that thought she might like me as a person, not just as a paycheck, but I didn’t take that hope too seriously. She wa
s a lawyer, after all.

  “I just got this yesterday. I feel like I’m going a little crazy,” I said. “I mean, how many times can she take me to court?”

  “How old is Jazmin now?” Carol tried to look down at the paperwork for the answer.

  “Eight,” I replied.

  “Well, you’ve got a while to go,” Carol told me. “I wouldn’t worry about it too much. I know—might as well tell you not to breathe—but I’m going to do everything that I can to get this worked out. I don’t want you to lose her either, and we’re going to figure out a way to make sure that it doesn’t happen.”

  I groaned, and then took another breath. Feeling helpless about the whole situation was the worst part, and I knew that Lisa wanted me to feel helpless. There was nothing I could do to change things, really—just keep doing the next right thing. God damn it, Lisa. I’d divorced her for a reason. Sometimes I thought she’d married that Californian asshole just to have the money to make my life miserable. I wouldn’t put it past her.

  “That’s what I needed to hear,” I told her. “God, sometimes I think she’s determined to make my life as absolutely hellish as possible.” Carol made a sympathetic noise and I told myself to stop feeling sorry for myself; after all, she was handling it. It was in her hands now.

  “Well, just keep your cool, big man, and don’t get too tetchy with them when we do the deposition,” Carol said. “She’s going to try to get you going, and you can’t afford to let her. I know how Lisa is, and I know her lawyer. The deposition will be a fishing trip, and as long as you don’t give them anything, they won’t have anything.”

  In spite of the confident words, I thought I heard something that sounded an awful lot like nervousness in my lawyer’s voice. Even if it was, I had to rely on her. I couldn’t just jump ship now—and Carol didn’t deserve that, not after what she’d been able to do for me already.