by G. K. Brady
“That I can do.”
“What about your hand?”
“Eh, I’m a hockey player.” He gave her a dismissive wrist flick with his good hand, followed by an eyelash flutter. “Besides, I’d do anything for my favorite cousin.”
“Except date my neighbor,” she snorted.
“Except date your neighbor,” he agreed.
Chapter 4
Howdy Ho, Neighbor
The next morning, Dave parked in the alleyway behind the block of buildings that housed Shear Indulgence and its neighbors, a mix of mom-and-pop businesses. No sign of Sonoma yet, and her back door was locked, so he took a moment to lower his window and look at the eastern sky streaked in pale yellows and muted corals. He popped the top off his travel mug, inhaling the aroma of fresh, rich coffee curling up his nostrils. About six car lengths behind him, headlights turned into the alleyway and swept the pavement. A gray Ford F-150 crept past, its windows too darkly tinted to reveal the occupants. But a familiar logo on the pickup’s door snagged his attention and had him nearly dropping the scalding brew in his lap: the same logo on What-Was-Her-Last-Name-That-I-Crashed-Into’s crushed van and polo shirt.
What the hell? His heart rate kicked up a notch or five as the vehicle came to a stop and parked several doors down. The driver’s door swung open, and out stepped a big blond guy who rounded the hood. The passenger’s door opened too, and a petite woman with a long strawberry-blond ponytail hopped out. Well, more like stumbled out, but the man steadied her. She looked up at him and shook her head, laughing, the sound musical as it drifted on the crisp morning air.
Her profile came into view, and Dave’s mouth fell open. Not only did he recognize the logo, but he recognized the woman too. Shit! She’s stalking my ass, and she’s brought her bodyguard along to kill me!
The man leaned down and hugged the woman, and her arms wound around his neck. Broken bits of conversation told Dave the man was asking if she’d be all right, did he want her to come in, and she was reassuring him she was fine and thanking him for last night. Didn’t sound or act like a woman stalking Dave. So why the hell was she here?
At least she’s not too banged up if she was out with this guy all night getting … banged up.
A puff of relieved breath escaped him, steaming the chilly air leaking through the window, and for a beat he considered shooting a picture of them clinging to each other—in case his attorney needed proof she hadn’t been hurt.
Before he could act, Blond Guy stood back, giving her room to unlock a back door she shimmied through. Once it was closed, BG trotted back to the Ford, climbed in, and drove away.
Dave wedged his mug into the cup-holder and started his engine, slow-rolling his truck past the door she’d stepped through. And there, plain as day, was the logo and “Landscaping with Altitude” painted on the back door. How often had he glimpsed it on the business’s front door while entering Sonoma’s salon? He’d probably seen the T-bonee a half dozen times too.
No wonder she and the logo had looked familiar.
She was Sonoma’s goddamn neighbor.
He circled back around through the parking lot, looking like a creeper as he peered at the woman’s business from the front. Through glass doors and windows that sported the same logo and name, a light shone in a back hallway, then flicked off. As he rounded the row of buildings and re-entered the alleyway, he spotted her darting out the back door and scurrying into a dark Dodge Grand Caravan he hadn’t noticed before. On the bumper was a green Enterprise Rent-a-Car sticker.
Yup. The rental to replace her demolished van.
Sonoma still hadn’t shown up, so he pulled out his smartphone and googled “Landscaping with Altitude.” Bingo!
He stabbed at the link, and up popped the company website. He clicked on the “Who We Are” tab, and his eyes landed on a wholesome, pink-cheeked blond, her hair in soft golden-red waves cascading over her shoulders. Ellie Hendricks, Owner.
The name rang a bell—no doubt because he’d heard it at the accident site—and he sat back as if he’d been shoved.
Feeling a prickle of guilt as if he was doing something sinister, he scrolled down and found two more pictures. The first was of the dude in the truck—a guy who could have modeled in magazines, he was so damn pretty. The name under the picture read “Finn Callahan” but had no title. This must have been the Finn Ms. Hendricks had spoken to on the phone, the one who’d just dropped her off after obviously taking her home for the night.
The last picture was of Felipe Salazar—also title-less—a smiling, middle-aged man with laugh lines creasing the weathered skin around his brown eyes.
So this was Ellie, aka “T-bonee,” Hendricks’s “team,” and she was sleeping with the help. Not that it was any of Dave’s business. More power to her.
A honk had him jerking his head up. Sonoma’s car dove in front of his and came to a rocking stop. She burst from the driver’s door with a breathless, “Sorry I’m late!” Sonoma was always late. Came with the territory. Did she keep clients waiting too?
“I really appreciate you doing this, Dave,” she puffed as she leaned down to his partially open window.
Releasing the seatbelt, he unfolded himself from the driver’s seat. “You better. I totally gave up my beauty sleep for you, and God knows I need every minute I can get.”
“If you’d let me manscape you, you wouldn’t need beauty sleep.”
“Maybe later.”
“That’s what you’ve been saying for the last six months,” she snorted.
Hoisting the chair into the bed of his Summit White Chevrolet Silverado 2500HD High Country, he struck the most who-gives-a-fuck demeanor he could muster. “So do you know the blond lady with the landscaping business?” He lifted his chin toward Landscaping with Altitude’s back door.
“Ellie?”
“Yeah, I guess that’s her name.”
A shit-eating grin slowly hiked Sonoma’s cheeks to her ears. “Did you talk to her?”
“No. Just saw her when her boyfriend dropped her off.”
The shit-eating grin dissolved into a frown. “Boyfriend? Since when does she have a boyfriend? This ruins everything.” This she said quietly, as if to herself.
He secured the chair with ratchet straps. “What’s the big deal if she’s got a boyfriend?” Not the real question. No, the one he wanted to ask had everything to do with Ellie Hendricks’s character—and how it would impact him and his wallet.
Sonoma parked her fists on her hips. “It matters because she’s the neighbor I wanted to set you up with.”
Wait. What? He stared at Sonoma, unsure he’d heard her right. The full impact slammed him like a body check delivered by a linebacker. Horrified, he spluttered, “I thought she lived in the apartment next to yours, not that she worked next door!”
“Does that make a difference in you going out with her?”
“Yes! No! What matters is that she’s the chick I ran into yesterday.”
Sonoma gaped at him, her eyes rounder than pucks. “You ran into my Ellie? No fucking way.”
“Fucking way.”
“Oh shit. She’ll never go out with you now.”
“Nope.” And that’s okay by me. “Nome? Invoking the bro code here. Do. Not. Tell. Her.”
“She’s gonna find out, Dave.”
“Someday, maybe, but I don’t want that someday to be now.” Better if I’ve been traded out of Denver when she does find out. Shit. I’m gonna miss Nome. “Don’t be too disappointed. Looks like she already set herself up with some other sucker.”
“What about you? I want to set you up so you’ll stop being so … so grumpy.”
“You can always set me up with Mandy.” He wiggled his eyebrows. Not that he wanted to date Mandy. Well, not for more than a few hours anyway. Scratch that. No Mandy. The last time he’d hooked up with someone on an impulse had left him feeling bleak and hollow. Bad idea. No, this had nothing to do with Mandy and everything to do with needling Sonoma because
he got such a kick out of it. She didn’t disappoint.
“Over my dead body!”
“No Mandy, then. Or anyone. Got it? I’m a big boy now, and I can get my own dates.”
She harrumphed. “Hasn’t worked out too well for you so far, has it, Big Boy?”
Ouch. Did she really have to state the obvious?
Fisting his second whiskey since coming home, Dave sank into a big-ass man recliner—one of the perks of living alone again—in his otherwise very modern, very sterile three-story row house. It was one of those narrow jobs with a rooftop patio and tiny, useless decks hanging off the different levels. The master and guest bedrooms were on the top floor, the kitchen, dining, and family rooms on the second floor, with another bedroom and living room he’d appropriated for a gym on the ground floor. Not his first choice in housing, but when Nicole had given him his walking papers, he’d had to rent something fast.
He clicked on the TV and surfed hundreds of garbage channels before tuning into a Pandora classic rock channel. After a sip, he let out a laugh at Sonoma’s expense. She’d been talking up her “neighbor” for almost a year, and she must have been crushed to learn he’d literally crushed any chance of neighbor Ellie going out with him. What descriptions had Sonoma included in her sales pitches besides “strawberry-blond,” “smart,” and “cute?” Damned if he could remember.
Pushing a cleansing breath through his lungs, he nabbed his iPad and pulled up the landscaping company’s website. Soon he was looking at Ellie Hendricks’s image again but on a bigger screen. Why had he thought this woman looked like Nicky when he’d first seen her at the accident site? She didn’t resemble Nicky. At all. Ellie Hendricks looked to be in her mid-twenties, and she was pretty. Very pretty—not that Nicky wasn’t pretty. But where Nicky was sultry-supermodel stunning, Ellie was wholesome pretty. Girl-next-door pretty. Not a woman to get your engine revving just by looking at her, but someone you could sit down and talk to and laugh with … who’d give you the sunny smile she wore in her picture.
No doubt the beautiful smile that reached her shimmering blue eyes contributed to her appeal. The color of those eyes reminded him of a 1969 Chevy El Camino SS he’d painstakingly restored and painted Delta Blue. He’d loved that car. How had he ever let himself get talked into selling it?
One more stupid decision to toss into his junkyard collection of poor choices. That junkyard was pretty damn full at the moment despite his efforts to scrape the lot. He took another sip of whiskey while a favorite quote blared in his head: “Not to brag, but I don’t need alcohol to make really bad decisions.”
No more bad decisions.
Too bad he wasn’t so good at heeding his inner Yoda. Which was exactly why he found himself, over the next few days, cruising through the strip mall parking lot where Shear Indulgence and Landscaping with Altitude were located. This, he told himself repeatedly, was nothing like stalking. He was merely “satisfying his curiosity” about Ellie Hendricks. Besides, the surveillance kept his mind off his tumultuous standing with his team and the fact that Herb hadn’t garnered any interest in him yet.
He wouldn’t need to worry about butting heads with his teammates for a few days. They’d just left to play some away games, and he’d been held back because of his damn hand. “You’re close,” the trainer had assured him, though it was no consolation.
As for Ms. Hendricks, what he learned was that she spent a lot of time in her small office alone—except for the company of a medium-sized pale mutt who didn’t look like much of an attack dog. An ankle chewer, maybe, but that was the extent of the dog’s superpowers. The Felipe guy waltzed in once, and Pretty Boy Finn was MIA. Shouldn’t a boyfriend stop by once in a while to make sure his girl was safe? Bring takeout so she was fed those evenings when she stayed late? Massage the kinks out of shoulders cramped from hunching over a desk for hours at a time—especially since she’d been in an accident days before?
Not his problem. He had enough of those crowding his priority list.
Chapter 5
Wookiees Have Feelings Too
Ellie glanced up from the Habitat for Humanity house’s landscape design with achy eyes. When had the sun dipped below the horizon? She’d been slaving over the plan for hours—no, days—and while it wasn’t complicated, she continually second-guessed herself because the design had to be perfect. A pro bono project that would, hopefully, bring Landscaping with Altitude a ton of feel-good exposure and a boatload of new paying clients. Ulterior motives aside, she was doing the community a service.
Few plants would survive the fall temperatures, so she’d convinced Damian Mencher, one of Denver’s Habitat directors, to let her install a xeriscape. It had appealed to his environmental sensibilities, and, selfishly, it had set her up for some sweet publicity through the slow months. By installing the rock and hardscape now, she could put up her bandit signs advertising the business and leave them in place until the spring, when the plants would go in the ground. And bonus: the house sat on a busy corner lot close to one of Denver’s trendiest neighborhoods.
Yep, she’d scored on this one. Maybe.
Besides anally tweaking her design into excellence, her biggest challenge was manpower. She could barely pay Finn and Felipe, and Damian’s team had drummed up disappointingly few volunteers to fill in the gaps. Why didn’t people want to do backbreaking landscape work on these glorious, chilly weekends instead of watching bugling elk while they sipped spiked hot chocolate?
She snorted at her own stupid joke and stretched, digging her fingers into her knotted neck muscles. God, what she wouldn’t give for a massage!
Headlights caught her eye. She glanced out the front window as the beams swept through the mostly empty parking lot. And froze. How many days in a row had it been now?
Ellie jumped up, Casper at her heels, and peered through a darkened corner of her window. Huh. Same gorgeous muscle car. The path the vehicle took was exactly the one it had taken before. The driver was obscured, so she had no way of knowing if it was an ICE agent—they didn’t drive muscle cars, did they?—or a strip mall tenant, though she’d never noticed this particular car before. And she would have noticed.
With her inner voice telling her she was being ridiculous, that it was just coincidence, she leaned down and gave Casper a scratch. “Your mom’s got a touch of paranoia, girl.”
Ellie traipsed down the hall to the kitchenette in search of food and drink. “Should be some energy bars Finn didn’t find and a vitamin water.” Apparently, Finn had found everything because all she came up with were a desiccated bouillon cube, a pack of stale saltines, and tap water. “I think this means it’s time to go home, girl.” Casper wagged her stubby tail and barked her agreement.
As Ellie headed out of the kitchenette, a rap came on the glass door. “What the …” Back against the wall, she crept carefully, one foot in front of the other. Casper darted around her and ran—Ellie could only presume—to the front door.
“Way to guard your family,” Ellie muttered.
She kept her cautious steps even, and when she peered around the corner, a large form was crouched in front of the door, feather-tapping on the glass in front of Casper’s snuffling nose. The dog’s tail was on high-speed auto-wag. Sellout!
The form stood, and shit, was it big! It nearly filled the door frame. The man—he was too big not to be a man—gave her an incongruous little wave.
What the hell? Do I know this guy?
She snatched her phone from her desktop and hit Finn’s number. The guy shoved his hands in his front pockets, not even trying the door she’d forgotten to lock. Finn’s phone rang and rang. It wasn’t completely dark out yet, and she narrowed her eyes on her visitor. He looked like a … Wookiee.
Not this guy!
Now he was pointing to his left, jerking his head in the same direction.
“What do you want?” she yelled through the door. Yelling did two things: it hid the quaver her slamming heart was causing in her voice and it fur
thered the illusion of a locked door. Casper chose that moment to put her paws against said door, pushing it into the mountain man who’d smashed Ellie’s car.
Damn it!
He grasped the door, leaving a gap the width of his huge hand—a hand that could kill and maim—and stuck his mouth in the opening. “It’s okay. I’m Sonoma’s cousin.”
What? “Sonoma the hairdresser?” My hairdresser—when I get it styled. Once a year.
A little grin formed in his beard. “Yeah. The one with the flaming hair.”
“El? That you?” Finn’s sleepy voice crackled through the phone.
“You’re sleeping?” she practically shrieked into the phone.
The Wookiee frowned. “No, I was trying to—”
“Or not sleeping,” Finn groused. Ellie understood a heartbeat later when she heard a muffled female voice.
“Shit! You’re having sex now? What time is it? Five thirty?”
The Wookiee looked so confused she almost burst out with a laugh.
“I was, and I think you just ruined my chance for the seven thirty and ten thirty repeats,” Finn said dryly.
“You’re … I don’t think the dictionary has a word for you! Here I am, about to get attacked, and—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” The Wookiee held up one hand but didn’t loosen his grip on the door. Casper’s tail was beating at hummingbird-wing speed now. A blur of white. Apparently, she liked the mass murderer on the other side of the glass.
“What do you mean, you’re about to be attacked?” Finn had the decency to sound concerned.
“Ask Sonoma,” the Wookiee pleaded. “She’s got someone in her chair, but just ask her if her cousin is Dave Grimson. Wait. I’ll call her.”
“Did I hear Dave Grimson is about to attack you? The Grim Reaper?” Finn was all kinds of interested now, but not in a you-are-so-screwed way. More like a that’s-so-cool way.