by Tara Sivec
Chapter 5: Fuck, Marry, Kill
“Where in the fresh hell have you brought me?!”
I really try not to screech like a crazy person, but it’s impossible. We’re sitting in Eric’s SUV, and my voice bounces around the interior like nails on a chalkboard through an amplifier.
And I am a crazy person, so there’s that.
“The marina,” he replies, turning off the engine and shifting his body to the side to shove his keys in the front pocket of his jeans.
“I know that. I’m not an idiot. There is water and there are boats. But why have you brought me here?”
God, I sound like a bitch. I know, I know—I am a bitch, but for the first time in a long time, I kind of feel bad about it. This guy, as annoying as he is, offered me a place to stay on the worst day of my life. I think my bitchiness right now stems from the fact that my friends are traitorous assholes and hatched this plan without my permission when I was comatose, and I didn’t even put up a fight. I just got in Eric’s car and off we went.
WHO AM I?!
On top of that, I’ve been sitting in these close quarters with him for the last twenty minutes, when he left me alone to plot everyone’s death without bugging me. He didn’t make small talk, he didn’t ask me a hundred stupid questions, he didn’t tease me . . . he just left me alone with my murderous thoughts and the smell of him surrounding me. What is it about the smell of a man fresh from the shower who dabbed on just enough cologne to make your mouth water and want to cross and uncross your legs?
This is why I’m bitchy. This right here. I hate men. Especially men who smell so good. Why couldn’t he smell like gym sweat and curry? It would be easier to hate him if I had to plug my nose every time I was around him.
“This is where I live. And now this is where you live. Welcome home, honey.”
He aims that damn dimpled smile in my direction, and if I didn’t love the Flounders so much, I would dump this fish tank all over him.
“What do you mean this is where you live? You can’t live here. People don’t live here!”
He’s already out of the vehicle and slamming the door closed before I finish yelling at him. I glare at him through the windshield as he rounds SUV. Hugging the tank closer to my chest, I try to get the door open before he gets to it, but my hands are still wet from the damn tank, and it flies open before I can get a firm hold on the handle.
“M’lady,” he says, bending at the waist and making a sweeping motion with his arm.
“Oh, cut the crap,” I mutter, gingerly stepping down out of the SUV, careful not to tip the fish tank. “This is a joke, right? Wait, are you in the mob or something? Is that why you brought me out here? You’re going to take me out on a boat and make me swim with the fishes? I knew there was something shady about you.”
Eric chuckles, slamming the door closed behind me and I curse my godforsaken skin when the sound of his laughter makes my arms break out in goose bumps. Did someone give me a fucking lobotomy earlier, when I was so out of it? That is the only explanation for the effect this man has been having on me today.
“Sorry, not in the mob. I’m Greek. We don’t really have mobs. We just have loud, overbearing families who want to feed you to death.”
I take a minute to study him, wondering why he doesn’t look Greek. And with a last name like Sailor, I’m guessing he takes after his father.
“My family owns a luxury-yacht rental company. See those two white ones at the end of the dock?” he asks, pointing a few hundred yards away at two, huge white boats docked side-by-side in the water. “Those are mine. I’ve always had a thing for boats and the freedom of being out on the open water, which I guess is natural considering I grew up around that stuff. I have my own side company now, and I rent those two out, but I use them as living quarters when they’re not in use,” he concludes with a shrug.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I groan, closing my eyes and shaking my head.
I feel like at some point since I met this guy in the last few months, I maybe remember him mentioning something about his family and boats. Honestly, during our first few interactions, whenever he spoke all I heard was “Blah, blah, blah, I’m a manwhore, blah, blah.”
Of course this guy is giving me goose bumps when he laughs, and making my heart flutter when he says something like, “Seeing you broken and hurting and sad is like having someone stick a fucking knife in my chest.” Of course this guy owns fucking luxury yachts that are bigger than my house, Cindy’s house, and an entire street of houses. Out of all the men in this world, of course I find another one who has a thing for boats and freedom. My ex-husband’s parting words to me were, “You know I’ve always loved boats and dreamed of working on one. I just need my freedom, Ariel.”
Fuck boats. Fuck all of them.
“Those were my eighteenth birthday present,” Eric adds.
“Normal people don’t get yachts on their eighteenth birthday. You know what I got on my eighteenth birthday?”
I got married to a freeloading bag of dicks who ruined my life.
“I got a sweater from Target,” I say, instead of what I’m thinking.
I’ve already let this guy get under my skin entirely too much. There’s no way I’m going to let him burrow even further. My ex was an asshole, and so is Eric, and I just need to remember that.
“If it makes you feel any better, I believe the comforter and pillows in one of the master bedrooms are from Target,” he tells me with a smile.
“No, no that does not make me feel any better. I changed my mind. Take me back to Cindy or Belle’s house. Actually, I didn’t even make this decision to begin with, so technically, you kidnapped me.”
“You got in my SUV of your own free will,” he reminds me, crossing his arms over his chest and raising one of his eyebrows. “But if you’d like to start kicking and screaming now, I have no problems tossing you over my shoulder and carrying you to the yacht.”
An image of my body draped over his muscular shoulder while he rests his hands on my ass as he carries me down the dock flashes through my mind, but I quickly shut that shit down.
“Seriously. I’m not staying on one of those,” I tell him, my nose wrinkling in disgust as I look over his shoulder at the death trap floating on water. “I can’t swim. What if I fell overboard? Nope. This isn’t happening.”
I turn away from him, hefting the fish tank higher up in one arm, and reach for the handle of the SUV door, when Eric gets into my personal space. His chest is against my back, his arm comes around me, and his hand presses down on top of mine, stopping me from opening the door. I can feel his heart beating against my back and the damn smell of his cologne surrounds me again as he leans his head down until his mouth is right by my ear and I can feel his warm breath skating over my cheek.
“If you fall overboard, I’ll rescue you. I’m quite skilled at mouth-to-mouth,” he says softly.
I move my hand out from under his and jerk my elbow back and into his stomach. Which is pretty much like slamming my elbow into a brick wall and completely pointless. All it does is make him laugh against the side of my face, and there go those damn goose bumps again.
“You don’t want to stay with Cindy or Belle. Believe me, I know you.”
“I assure you, you do not,” I argue.
I mean, he knew how to get my mind off of being kicked out of my home and leaving all my things behind by pissing me off, but whatever. That means nothing. It was a lucky guess on his part.
He moves in even closer, resting both of his hands against the door of the vehicle on either side of me, caging me in.
“I know that even though you joke about how annoying it is, you’re happy that Cindy is moving in with PJ. You’re happy she found someone who adores her, and you’d never want to burden her by moving in with them when they’re starting their new life together,” Eric explains. “And even though you roll your eyes and pretend to dry heave whenever Belle and Vincent get all touchy-feely, you want
them to make it, and you know staying with them would put a major cramp in their new relationship.”
He finally stops talking, and I close my eyes and drop my head, even though I want to turn around and tell him to go fuck himself and laugh in his face that he got me all wrong. I can’t do any of that because damn it, he got me all right. Every single word he said is exactly why I got in his car earlier without putting up a fight. I don’t know why, and I don’t know how, but he does know me. And this is not good. This is not good at all.
I. Am. Fucked.
“I’m not living with you on a boat. I don’t care if it is the size of Buckingham Palace,” I say as I lift my head and shove back against him to get him to move. He takes a few steps back, and I turn around, masking my emotions with an I don’t give a shit what you say look.
“Actually, those are one-hundred foot yachts, and while a good size for yachts, Buckingham Palace is over eight hundred thousand square feet.”
“Everybody likes a piece of ass, nobody likes a smart ass,” I mutter.
“Speaking of piece of ass . . .”
“Don’t even think about finishing that sentence,” I warn him, ignoring the amused smile he gives me and telling the butterflies in my stomach to fuck off and die.
“There are two yachts, Ariel. One for me, and one for you. As much as I would love to cohabitate with you, I think we should wait until you’re madly in love with me first. That way I’ll be able to sleep better at night and not have to worry about you slitting my throat.”
He is making it really easy to remember he’s an asshole.
“Cindy, Belle, Me. Fuck, Marry, Kill. Go,” I order.
“Uh, what?” he asks.
“Answer the question correctly and I’ll get on that stupid tin can on water.”
“I thought we weren’t allowed to talk about pieces of ass?”
“Just shut up and answer the question. The Flounders are getting heavy, and I need to unpack my stuff and feed them,” I say with an eye roll.
Eric immediately leans towards me and scoops the tank right out of my arms before I can protest.
“You.”
The one word out of his mouth makes me look at him in confusion this time.
“I would absolutely fuck you, I would be honored to marry you, and sure, I could kill you. But you know—only a fun, role-play kind of way, not in a murder-y kind of way,” he responds.
It takes me a minute to come up with a response, since him saying “I would absolutely fuck you” has currently taken out a billboard in my brain with bright, neon, flashing lights.
“That’s not how it works. You can’t just say one person for each thing.”
“Then I guess you should have made the rules clearer, princess. My decision is final. Let’s go.”
With that, he turns and starts walking down the docks, my eyes trailing down to his ass in those jeans as he goes.
Damn it.
Chapter 6: Love Thy Neighbor
“ARE YOU UNARMED?”
I roll my eyes when Cindy’s voice shouts down into the cabin of the yacht from the top of the stairs.
“Yes, you asshole!” I shout back, watching her gingerly step down into the opening, taking the stairs slowly, stopping halfway, Belle right behind her, bending down on the steep stairs and looking over Cindy’s shoulder at me.
“Are you lying?” Belle asks timidly, her eyes darting around the living room part of the cabin, which is twice the size of the living room in my house.
My former house. Damn it.
“No, I’m not lying,” I huff as they both let out relieved breaths and move down the rest of the stairs. “Unless you count the machete behind my back, the pocketknife down the front of my shirt, and butter knife I hid in the rocks at the bottom of the Flounders’ tank.”
Cindy stops abruptly on the bottom step and Belle smacks into her, both of them staring at me with wide eyes.
“For fuck’s sake, I’m not going to stab you. For now. If you make any other decisions for me in the next hour, all bets are off,” I warn them.
They continue into the room, staring around in awe at the furnishings. I can’t blame them. After Eric carried all of my boxes onto the boat and offered to give me a tour, I turned him down and told him I was perfectly capable of walking around a damn boat and figuring out where things were. I never made it past the living room. I’ve been sitting here in the middle of the floor hugging my fish tank to my chest for the last few hours, wondering what in the hell I was doing.
I’ve never lived in something so fancy. So clean and neat and . . . lavish. Plush, cream carpeting; black marble; shiny mahogany; and chandeliers. I was afraid to touch anything. Or sit on anything other than the floor. I didn’t belong here.
“This place is insane. Holy shit, Ariel. You hit the jackpot,” Cindy says when she finishes walking around the living room.
Actually, it’s part living room, part dining room, part bar. Behind the giant cream-leather L-shaped couch that faces a huge, marble, electric fireplace with a giant flat-screen TV hanging above it is a table that seats eight, with fancy-looking high-back chairs and eight equally fancy place settings in front of each. Next to the fireplace and against the wall is a bar with black marble countertops that seats six. A built-in floor-to ceiling cabinet behind the bar is filled with every shape of cocktail glasses you can imagine, all made of crystal.
Like I said, lavish.
“I can’t believe you guys are here. I figured you’d still be busy moving. Or changing your names and going into the witness protection program because you feared for your lives after what you did to me.” I glare at them.
Cindy and Belle move into the middle of the room, both of them flopping down on the floor with me.
“Actually, we were going to give you more time to cool off, but Eric sent a text to PJ and Vincent and said we should come over immediately because, and I quote: That hell on wheels needs her girls. Don’t tell her I said that though. She knows where I live now,” Belle informs me with a laugh.
Damn it. Damn that man to hell and back.
“He’s such an asshole,” I grumble.
“I think he’s a sweetheart. And I’m pretty sure I had an orgasm watching the way he looked at you today, and flirted with you, and how he knew exactly what to do to get you to snap out of it,” Cindy says.
“Whatever. He’s a manwhore who flirts with everyone.”
“He doesn’t flirt with me,” Belle pipes up.
“Me either. He only has eyes for you,” Cindy adds.
As much as I hate to admit it, since the day I met Eric Sailor, he hasn’t so much as glanced in my friends’ directions. And they’re smoking hot. Their boyfriends would probably chop off his balls if he so much as blinked in the general vicinity of them, but Eric doesn’t strike me as the type of man who would give a shit about that. If he wants something, he’ll take it.
“I would absolutely fuck you, I’d be honored to marry you. . . .”
Uuuugghh why am I even thinking about this?
“All right, we’re not talking about Eric anymore. Eric is officially off the table for discussion forever and ever. I want nothing to do with him aside from using him to keep a roof over my head for the time being,” I tell them.
“Sweetie, if you don’t want to stay here, you don’t have to,” Cindy says gently.
“Who says I don’t want to stay here? Have you seen this place? Of course I want to stay here. It’s fine. I’m totally fine,” I ramble.
“Ariel, you’re sitting on the floor hugging a fish tank, and it looks like you’ve been here for a while. We don’t want you to be somewhere that you aren’t comfortable. We just want what’s best for you, and if this isn’t it, then we’ll fix it. We never should have let Eric talk us into this. It just sounded like such a great idea, you having your own place and all and not having to feel weird living with one of us,” Belle explains.
“I told you, it’s fine. It’s just fancier than I expected it
to be. I’ll get used to it. I am not living with either one of you,” I tell her.
“Ariel—”
“No!” I argue, cutting Belle off as I set the fish tank down on the carpet next to me before turning to face her again. “Why did you move in with Vincent and refuse to even ask me or Cindy if you could stay with us when your dad kicked you out of his house?”
Belle found herself in kind of the same predicament as me not that long ago, when her dad found out she started a stripping business. He kicked her out of the only home she’d ever lived in and, unbeknownst to me and Cindy, she had been sleeping at the library where she worked until Vincent came in and saved the day, coercing her to stay with him until she figured things out.
“Because I didn’t want to mess up Cindy and PJ’s new relationship, and I knew you were trying to find a roommate so you could make some money. I would have felt bad screwing that up for both of you,” Belle says quietly.
“Exactly. Which is why I’m staying here. It’s not ideal. I miss my house. I miss my things. But you’re right, I have my own place and my own space. Sure, Eric is right next door . . . er, boat . . . but it’s not like I have to see him if I don’t want to. I don’t have to share a bathroom or a kitchen or anything, like you did.”
“Actually, that turned out kind of great for her,” Cindy says with a smile.
“Blah, blah, blah, we know. Belle tamed the Beast and now they’re going to ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after. Don’t make me puke,” I grumble.
“If you just give Eric a chance, it could turn out great for you too,” Belle informs me. “Did you know that out of the one thousand two hundred and thirty-five romance books we carry at the library, six hundred and seventy of them are about a romance between neighbors? That’s a startling statistic. You should love thy neighbor, Ariel. It says so in the Bible.”
“It also says Jesus turned water into wine, and I have yet to see a bottle of Fiji turn into Pinot Grigio. Give it a rest,” I sigh.