Unexpected Delivery (Paradise Place Book 8)

by Natalie Ann

  “I didn’t know you were such a diehard fan,” he said. He had more to think about with Parker now after watching that. It said a lot about her to be on national TV being all grimy but then come back and have a job where people might recognize her.

  He wondered if that helped or hurt her? He’d bet it might help her sales, but hurt her from others she was selling against. She came off as not needing many in her life.

  He actually preferred being around people like himself in that they could figure it out on their own. His one interaction with her let him know she might be a good foe to battle wits with. Didn’t she give him crap about staring at her? Not in a horrible way, but in one to let him know she’d caught him at it.

  “I am. And now that I know she lives there, maybe I’ll get lucky enough to see her around sometime.”

  “She runs around the development. Well, I’ve only seen her once, but I get the feeling she’s a runner by watching her that one time. I didn’t even know who she was when I saw her that time.”

  “She ran track in high school, she’d said on the show. She swam in college, which is what made her such a strong player. Not to mention she’s thoughtful and methodical.”

  “She’s a pharmaceutical rep,” he said.

  “Yep, they said that on the show. I bet she makes a killing. It’s like she knows how to talk and handle people, but not everyone likes that.”

  “I’m sure,” he said, ready to end this conversation. “If you don’t have anything else for me, I need to get back to work.”

  “I’m done,” she said.

  He got ready to leave thinking of what he found out about Parker. He hadn’t seen her at all last week, but he knew she was in town. There had been a light on upstairs in her room when he’d gone to bed the past few nights. Not that he was looking. The master in Parker’s house was in the front and Evan could see the light when he went to lock up at night.

  But he left for work at around six thirty each morning and didn’t get home until seven or after some nights. They weren’t crossing paths and had no reason to.

  Unfortunately, he wished he could figure out a way to do that though.

  “Evan, wait up.”

  He turned to see his father shouting at him through the car window as he pulled in. He stopped while his father parked and got out, moving over to Evan. “What’s up?”

  “Your mother wanted me to let you know she shipped something to your house. You should get it in a day or so. Don’t ask me what, I have no idea, but she knew I’d probably see you before it arrived.”

  “Okay. Thanks,” he said, wondering what it could be. Had to be some joke or possible item in lieu of a lecture. That was the only time she sent things directly to him and didn’t ask him to come get it or bring it over herself. It’s not like they lived that far. Everyone lived in the development and could run to another’s house.

  Didn’t matter. He had too many other things to focus on than his mother or the sexy neighbor that he knew he was going to have a hard time getting out of his mind after watching her ass in that bikini as she exited the set of that show.

  8

  On Her Side

  A few days later, Parker got home from work and noticed a package on her front porch. She hadn’t ordered anything that she could remember but pulled into the garage, grabbed her briefcase and went into the house, then toward her office to drop it all off. She was actually home by six tonight which was nice.

  She opened the front door, grabbed the box and saw that it had Evan Butler written on it and wanted to laugh. Hadn’t she joked about this happening and it seemed that maybe luck was on her side.

  Since it was still daylight out, she couldn’t tell if he was home but guessed he might not be. She’d seen his truck leaving before her in the morning but never noticed much when he came home. Just one night last week she was in her office and saw him pull in at seven when she was finishing up some work.

  For now, she was going to change and go for a nice long run. She’d run both days over the weekend and only one day last week. She wanted to get in four days a week, but it wasn’t always possible.

  Once she was changed, she grabbed her phone, stuck it in her side pocket and took off. If she could push forty-five minutes for a straight run, she was doing it. She needed it after today.

  Not that she had a horrible day, but some were more exhausting than others.

  She’d gone into the office to hand in some paperwork and check on a few things only to have two separate encounters with coworkers making comments about her brothers being doctors. Which of course meant that Connie had run her mouth.

  Just having her supervisor say, “Hope you are hitting them and their colleagues up good,” was fine. She expected that. It was a cutthroat business. She wasn’t someone to do anything to get a sale and that meant throwing her brother’s names out either. But she pushed it off.

  The second comment came from another rep, Austin, and he was more like a woman than her with his cattiness. “Now we know how you managed to get such good sales last year. Didn’t know your brothers were big names.”

  “Nothing big about them except their size,” she said. “They are recently practicing and it’s not like I’ve got any meds that a cardiologist or plastic surgeon would be interested in buying. Even you should know that.”

  Austin had put his head in the air like a diva and stormed away.

  She was glad to get out of the office and go do her thing. She was a team player regardless of what others thought of her, but damn it, she was much better on her own and preferred it that way.

  Her music was blaring in her earbuds and she picked up speed to match the beat of the song, then slowed down when the music did. She had a good playlist and she was going to put it to use today.

  She was on her way back home around thirty-five minutes later when she felt a vehicle behind her moving slowly. Most did or swung wide since there were no sidewalks in the development.

  When she turned her head, there was Evan waving at her. She lifted her hand back and then kept running, maybe even kicking it up a bit more to get home and go see him.

  No. Go deliver his package, she corrected.

  When she got to the start of her street, sweat was dripping from every part of her body and she was in desperate need of a shower, but she slowed to a walk to cool down and lower her heart rate.

  By the time she was clean and in shorts and a T-shirt, she grabbed a second bottle of water to chase the one she’d chugged when she walked in the door.

  She put the bottle on the counter, slipped her phone in her pocket. Grabbing the box by her front door, she headed across the street to see Evan.

  She rang the bell and waited a minute. There was no answer, so she rang it again, a little disappointed she’d have to leave it there and then miss her chance at seeing him.

  She was bending over to put the box down and leave when the door opened and Evan was standing there with his hair wet as if he’d just gotten done towel drying it. He had a T-shirt on that had some wet spots on it and a pair of athletic shorts. His feet were bare. He had some big feet to go with the rest of him.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Looks like I caught you in the shower.” She was trying to not let her mind go to picturing him naked under the water, but it sure was hard. It’d been way too long since she’d been with a man. So long she couldn’t put a date on it and might be embarrassed to even try.

  “I was shutting the water off when the bell rang the first time. I dried off as fast as I could.” He ran his hand through his almost black hair, then down over his whiskers. Oh man, she was a sucker for a five o’clock shadow and his looked to be nicely maintained on a daily basis.

  “It’s fine,” she said. “And look at what I’ve got here. Your package was delivered to my house.”

  “Imagine that,” he said. “Come on in. It’s from my mom and who knows what it could be.”

  “Your mother sent you something?” she asked. “Didn’t you say they
all lived around here?”

  He shook his head. “They do, but if she is shipping it to my house it’s probably a joke or a lecture on the horizon. It means I can’t go there to get it and leave it or make her take it home with her.”

  Parker laughed and then started to follow him into the house, looking left and right. His place was much bigger than hers. There were furniture and some decor, but it was minimal and simple. He was clean and tidy that was for sure. She liked a man like that.

  Why was she even thinking of that?

  “Well, I’m dying to know what it is,” she said.

  “Sure. Why not?” he said. “If it embarrasses me, just remember, I had no idea what it was.”

  He placed the box on a large black granite island and then opened a drawer and got a box cutter out to break the tape. “This is a nice kitchen. Huge. Obviously you built the house, but did you build it just for you or buy it from someone else?”

  “Built for me,” he said. “I wanted the land away from everyone. We all got to pick our land if we wanted to build. Christian is the only one not living in the development. He flips houses on his own on the side and lives in them. Kaelyn had lived in one of the townhouses the company owns because it was easy maintenance, but then moved into Harris’s house. Ryan had bought a house that came up for sale rather than building his own but now lives with Shannon.”

  “And your cousin Whitney?”

  “She built her house a few years ago too,” he said. He started to laugh and pulled out two gnomes from the box.

  “One happy and one frowning?” she asked, looking at the two garden gnomes he put on the counter.

  He pulled out a piece of paper and read, “Depends on what you want your new neighbors to think of you.”

  “Since I’ve met you, I would like to think you’ll put the one that is more welcoming there.”

  “Oh, definitely,” he said. “Maybe you can help me place it just right out there later.”

  “I could do that,” she said.

  “So, can I get you a drink or something? It wasn’t that long ago that you went for a run.” He leaned closer and smelled her. “Much nicer than the video I saw of you earlier today.”

  She felt her face flush. “I’ll never live that down. Not sure why I even wanted to be on the show so badly. Where did you see it? Here I thought maybe you had no clue about it.”

  “I didn’t. I was meeting with Whitney and she asked if I met the new neighbor yet. My family knows I’m not keen on neighbors and try to keep my distance.”

  “Why is that?” Had she read him all wrong?

  “Because once people know who I am they normally want to come to me with all their problems. When I’m home I don’t want to work. I put enough hours in.”

  “I can relate to that,” she said. “Don’t worry about me. If I’ve got a problem, I’ll call someone to come fix it and pay for it if I can’t or don’t want to do it myself. I hope you don’t think I’ll bug you.”

  “I have a feeling you don’t like anyone doing anything for you. At least from the description Whitney gave of you. By the way, she loved you on that show. Said you gave her chills when you competed.”

  “I suppose that is nice. I did it for that reason. My mother always drilled into our heads to be the best. My brothers were both athletic and super smart. I couldn’t keep up. I did individual sports that I was good at and stuck to subjects I knew well in school.”

  “I suspect you did it to challenge yourself.”

  “Oh yeah,” she said. “And the million dollars would have been nice, but it didn’t work out my way. I’m still embarrassed over the way I got voted off. I should have suspected that or seen it coming.”

  “Things happen for a reason,” he said. “I learned that a long time ago in my life.”

  “I guess so,” she said. “I needed to be home at that time in my life when I was voted off anyway. Had I made it to the jury, I wouldn’t have been here.”

  “Something to do with your sister?” he asked.

  She’d brought it up and it wouldn’t hurt to say a little bit. “Yeah. She needed us and I had to be here for her.”

  “Can I ask what happened to her, or is that too personal?” When she hesitated, he asked again, “How about a beer or something and we can go sit on the deck?”

  “Water is good,” she said.

  He turned and got two bottles out of his fridge, her eyes roaming over his body some more when he couldn’t see it. What a nice view that was.

  He handed over the water and she followed him to the deck. One much bigger than hers, but a nice view of the woods on this side of the street too. He even had a fence in the yard and she wondered if it was to keep people out based on his mother’s little gift.

  “So, do you want to talk about it, or something else?” he asked when he sat down.

  “We can. But we don’t talk much in my family about it. It’s just another embarrassment.”

  He frowned. “Now I guess I need to know.”

  “I’m sure you’ve heard of the NXIVM organization in the news.”

  “Hard not to,” he said. “Based out of Albany but they all lived in Clifton Park and had offices or locations all over the place. Some self-help group or something but ended up being a sex cult.”

  “Yeah. First know that if you looked up competitive in the dictionary, you’d see a picture of my mother there.”

  “So you get it from her?”

  “I won’t take that as an insult because you don’t know enough about our family. Let’s say she pitted my brothers and me and my sister against each other. She wanted us to all be the best and successful. Instead of making us all hate each other, we had a bond that drew us closer.”

  “That’s good, I guess. And sorry you went through that.”

  “It made me who I am. Not everyone likes me and I don’t care all that much.” She didn’t now. She didn’t years ago, but at least she was more aware as an adult and tried to be a good person.

  “I can see that. But I think part of you does care.”

  “Maybe. Anyway. Erin didn’t have the same level of confidence as my brothers and me. She wasn’t as book smart or didn’t feel it. It weighed on her heavily and my mother rode her harder over it.”

  “Doesn’t sound pleasant.”

  “No. Several years ago my mother thought it’d be a great idea to sign Erin, me, and her up for one of those woman groups that was being held. We went there and I got a bad taste in my mouth over it. I could see right away that those women hated men. I can’t even explain it, but I wanted nothing to do with it. Erin, though, it’s like they found the weakest of the three of us and got her to go back.”

  “She was sucked into it. Please don’t tell me she was sex trafficked.”

  Parker took a deep breath. “They brainwashed her. She ended up in the DOS group. She was calling others master, they were making her watch everything she ate, everything she did had to be reported to them. She was given tasks to do and one of them was having sex with the leader. This was before she was branded. We knew something wasn’t right, but never expected that.”

  “Did she get out?” he asked. “I didn’t even ask when she died?”

  “She got out. The family staged an intervention when Marcus walked in on her putting ointment on the brand and freaked out. My mother and Erin flew out of state for a few months and got her help. She seemed fine when she came back, but when she tried to leave NXIVM, they were making her life hell. She had to give them collateral. Naked photos of herself, videos she’d made telling secrets about herself. They said if she left they’d release them.”

  “They blackmailed her? That is what lawyers are for,” he said angrily.

  “Oh yeah. We tried. My father is a high level executive at GE. He hired a few lawyers and it didn’t matter. They had deep pockets. A few months after I returned, she committed suicide. It was hard for me to go to the reunion show as Erin had died just a few weeks prior and here I couldn’t be there
for my family,” she said with tears in her eyes. She didn’t cry often and hated doing it now.

  “Come here,” he said, standing up and pulling her into his arms. She wasn’t sure she wanted to go but couldn’t stop it either.

  “I’m sorry. This isn’t like me at all.”

  “Which is making it harder. I know. You said you are embarrassed, why? You’ve got nothing to be embarrassed about.”

  “Erin was embarrassed. She was so upset and left a letter that she was sorry that she let us all down. That she was going to make the family look bad and didn’t want to ruin anyone’s life if this came out or her videos did and with her gone, they wouldn’t bother with her. She was concerned about my and my brother’s careers and futures.”

  “That is all the more reason for you to fight back and stand up,” he said.

  “It’s not my decision to make,” she said. “No one knows what they’ve got on our family and though I don’t think it’s anything major, we will honor Erin’s last wish. It makes me sick this all happened under our noses.”

  “But you found out and you got her help.”

  “Not enough help or early enough. Anyway, when I came back from the show and this all happened, it made me look at life differently. At my life and the way people treat each other. I can’t change who I am, but I can be more aware.”

  He pushed her back a little and wiped at her tears. “We all can change who we are if we want to, but I can already see you’re a great person.”

  “You’re not as much of a tough guy as you give off either,” she said, threading her fingers in his hair and pulling his head down for a kiss.

  It was probably wrong of her, but she needed it.

  The hardness of his body next to hers, the softness of his lips, the sweetness of his tongue slipping into her mouth.

  She gripped his shirt tighter with her other hand, he kissed her hard and then he pushed back almost shocked that just happened.