Dirty Neighbor Read online

  Dirty Neighbor

  A Marriage of Convenience Romance

  Vivian Connelly

  Copyright 2017 by Night Watch Publishing. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover art by ResplendentMedia.com

  Edited by Gray Feather Editing

  It is in no way legal to duplicate, reproduce or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Duplication of this content onto information storage and retrieval systems is expressly forbidden without written permission from the author.

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  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Olivia

  I had stopped struggling with him. Resisting him was useless and it was only making me tired. Looking into his eyes, I knew I wanted to save every ounce of energy I had left. I was both hating him and wanting him with equal intensity at the same time. And wanting him was the way this was going to end.

  “Tell me why that made you so upset, Olivia? What do you care what my father says? None of this means anything, anyway.”

  My eyes drifted from his eyes to the mark on his left cheek. The fingers of my right hand were clearly visible in the red welt that was starting to show on his skin. He had been lucky, because my left fist would have delivered a much worse blow. My left fist, my left ring finger, and that little gold symbol of our love and devotion. I probably would have knocked out a tooth.

  “What do you want me to say, Jonathon?”

  I knew what he wanted me to say. And he was in the driver’s seat. He had both of my wrists pinned over my head with his left hand, a move that had started out of self-defense. But now that right hand of his was at my side, slowly starting to move up my midsection. And I knew in a few more minutes I would tell him whatever he wanted to hear.

  Maybe even the truth…

  “Tell me why you got so angry about what my father said, Olivia.”

  His right hand started to unbutton my blouse. Big fingers on little buttons, never a great combination…

  “It’s not supposed to make a difference, Olivia.”

  It was true. None of this was supposed to make a difference, and just about all of it was my idea. It was a good idea, and it was probably going to work. But that wasn’t what he was asking about now. Right now, he was still fumbling on the third button of my blouse with those big man fingers of his.

  “Let me do it, Jon. Let me take off my own damn shirt.”

  “It’s Jonathon.”

  “Right—that’s what I said. Take off your pants, Jonathon.”

  He released me and I fought the urge to throw the left hook, and I finished taking off my shirt and bra. I paused long enough to watch him pull his shirt over his head, because I thought that move was an old art form and Jonathon was part Michelangelo. His pants were next, but by that time I wasn’t watching because I was too busy with my own faded blues. We met back right where we had started—twelves inches away from each other on a bed at the Quail Feather Inn.

  He was quick for a big guy. Back up against me and looking into my eyes with that hand back at my side. I felt it move down my body and skim across my panties, and I had forgotten I had even left them on. He was buck naked. Every last glorious inch of him right where I could…

  “Why were you angry, Liv? It seems like you were jealous of her?”

  Of course I’m jealous of her, you big dummy. Good luck getting me to say it, though.

  “Put it in, Jonathon.”

  His big hand moved between my legs and came up with a fist full of silk, and a moment later I was as naked as he was. Only he wasn’t ready to go there just yet. That didn’t keep me from twisting my body enough to touch him, though. If I raised my hips just right I could feel him, right against my…

  “She doesn’t mean a thing to me, Olivia, that’s ancient history, like as in high school history. But none of that should even make a difference to you, should it?”

  No, it shouldn’t make a difference. It’s not like we were getting married or anything. I mean, we were, sort of. But not ‘married’ married.

  Hands moved back up my body, warm, wet hardness between my legs, and his lips descended onto my neck. That’s it, there’s only so much a girl can take, even a dumb country girl from Madison County, Colorado.

  “Yes, it made me jealous, OK? Is that what you wanted to hear so badly? It’s dumb, I know.”

  He stopped and lifted himself over me, poised against me but still only teasing me, although now he was teasing himself too.

  “She doesn’t mean anything to me, Olivia. And even on her best day, she couldn’t hold a candle to you.”

  He accentuated the statement with a gentle thrust of his hips, and every fear I had was pushed up and out of me. Hands that were swinging at him only minutes before were wrapped around his shoulders and digging trails across his back. It was as good as it had ever been, if not a thousand times better.

  And the only regret I had was the thought it would be over in another two weeks.

  Chapter 1

  Olivia

  Four weeks earlier…

  “Haven’t you missed this place, Olivia? How can you not miss Huddy’s? How can you sit there and say you don’t want to come back to Madison?”

  I looked around the darkened bar. It still had that crappy dark wood interior that it had probably had since it was new in the seventies. It still had the same marlin body and moose head hung over the tables in the corner. Jimmy the bartender was even still behind the bar—old and ornery and likely to be slinging drinks in this place until the day he died.

  “Yeah, I guess it is nice to come back and visit,” I lied.

  Cynthia gave me that look that told me she knew I was full of shit. We had been best friends since we were in grade school so if anyone could tell I was slinging it that would be her. She was one of the few things I would miss about home—if not the only thing. And she was the only reason I was sitting at Huddy’s on a Sunday night sipping on my second cosmo.

  “I figured once you graduated from Syracuse you would never be coming here again. I thought that hot shot business majors never came home to Madison, Colorado.”

  “They don’t. And I don’t plan on sticking around for long. I’m scheduled to start on my MBA at NYU in the fall. I’ve got to get back to New York to talk to a couple of companies about intern job offers. Seems that if you graduate with a 3.95 GPA, the big companies are interested in talking to you. Even if you are a farm girl from Madison.”

  “And what about Robert?”

  She had to bring that up. God bless Cynthia, but she already knew the story with my college boyfriend. But she was on her third cosmo and I knew this was the kind of stuff she lived for.

  “Robert is history, honey, I told you that. We’ve been through since the end of last year.”

  “W
hy? You guys were doing so well. I thought for sure you were going to end up getting hitched.”

  “Robert wanted to get married but he wanted me to move with him to where he grew up. It was some tiny little town in Indiana with picket fences and a corner store and probably a bar just like this one. Fuck that. If I wanted that, I would just come home to Madison.”

  I realized I had probably hit her a little too close to home, and I took another drink to give myself a little liquid courage before going on.

  “That’s just not for me, sweetie, you know that. Believe me, my father would love to have me sticking around here, but if I did that, I would end up working the damn family business. God knows my brother is in no position to take any responsibility.”

  “So who have you been dating since you broke up with Robert?”

  It was an awful question and she knew it. And I only gave her a head shake as my answer.

  “Jesus Christ, Liv—you haven’t been with a man since the end of last year? God bless you sweetheart—I’d be climbing the walls if I was you, You must be ready to hop on just about anything.”

  “It’s not that bad. I buy my batteries in bulk. Besides, it wouldn’t have been fair to Robert to keep him hanging on. It was the right thing to do.”

  The sound of the door opening and closing reverberated several times during the course of our conversation and I could feel the volume level inching louder as the crowd inside started to grow. Some local guy with a baseball cap on backwards walked over to the jukebox and fished around in his pocket while scanning through the songs. The clink sound of his quarter going into the slot somehow made it across the growing crowd and a second later, John Cougar Mellencamp was telling a story about Jack and Diane.

  “You could do a lot worse,” Cynthia said and she took another sip from her drink. “I mean, than settling in a place like this with a guy like Robert.”

  I looked at my BFF. It was easy for her to say. She was the captain of the high school cheerleading squad. Yeah, that was five years ago now, but she was the kind of girl that would look like that until she was collecting her AARP card. The fact that we were in a bar for more than fifteen minutes without a guy hitting on her was a minor miracle.

  “You’re right. I may still end up coming back here.”

  It was officially my second lie to my best friend in the last ten minutes. I was on a roll. My ethics professor would have been disappointed in me.

  The door clattered again and a few more people were suddenly inside the bar. Jimmy looked to be increasingly aggravated behind the bar as he struggled to keep up with an uncharacteristically busy Sunday night. John Cougar now talking about something hurting so good.

  I never got that line…

  “So why now? Shouldn’t you be moving into a place in New York?”

  “Yes, I should be moving to New York. But then old man Dunlevy up and died on me six months ago, and that fucked up everything.”

  I took another sip of my cosmo and let Cynthia chew on that a minute.

  “Are you talking about your neighbor?”

  “Technically, I’m talking about my father’s neighbor, yes. This girl doesn’t live here anymore. Anyway, the Dunlevy farm went up for sale three months ago and it just so happens the McCallisters bought it.”

  I realized I was speaking louder now because I needed to. The place was becoming a sea of denim with the odd pair of overalls sprinkled about. The door opened again and two more guys stepped in and moved to one of the last remaining spots at the bar. One of the guys was wearing a tweed jacket and I watched as he held up two fingers, which only served to aggravate Jimmy the bartender more.

  “McCallisters—that name sounds like it should mean something,” Cynthia said, and I watched as she twirled a lock of her blonde hair around her right index finger.

  “It only sounds familiar to you because your father is a barber in Madison. I grew up in a farming family so it’s a name I’ve heard all my life. The McCallisers are the biggest wheat farmers in Clark County. As soon as old man Dunlevy’s farm went up for sale they pounced on it.”

  The jukebox went quiet for a moment and I saw another guy with a straw hat saunter over to it. He fumbled in his pocket for change and picked a song without even looking at the directory. I made an internal bet with myself that it would be either Tim McGraw who started singing or Clint Black. And I preferred neither.

  “So what’s the big deal with the McCallisters buying old man Dunlevy’s property? What’s that got to do with you coming home?”

  I was watching the guy with the tweed jacket as he stood and sipped at his beer. His friend turned towards the crowd and I could clearly see the Carhartt emblem on his worn out denim jacket. Faith Hill started singing something sweet from the jukebox. The guy with the straw hat was a romantic.

  “When they were going through old man Dunlevy’s things after the sale they realized he had a survey from the county that shows he owns about ten acres worth of land that is on my father’s side of the property line. It’s an official document that looks as old as the Dead Sea scrolls. My father has his own survey that shows the existing property line so it has all the makings of a major legal battle.”

  I was watching tweed jacket talk to his friend. He had dark hair and a light five o’clock shadow and looked unlike every other guy in the bar. And he was tall. Each time Carhartt went to say something Tweed needed to lean over to catch whatever he was saying in his ear.

  “You’re not a fucking lawyer, Liv—what are you going to end up doing for your father?”

  “My dad can’t afford a lawyer. His farm is hanging on by a shoestring as it is. I’m just going to try and get him to solve this thing before it blows up. God knows my dad is not exactly the ‘let’s sit down and discuss this amicably’ type. When he found out it was the McCallisters he started keeping a loaded shotgun in every room of the house.”

  Tweed looked like he was content to sip on his beer and talk. But Carhartt’s eyes were busy scanning the room. He started where they had come in, gazing across the faces in the room. I watched him sweep the room long enough to see him get to our table and then I looked back at Cynthia.

  “My father hates the McCallisters too. I’ve been hearing that name since I was a little girl. ‘How many McCallisters does it take to screw in a light bulb,’ ‘how can you tell when a McCallister has been in your outhouse,’ you know—all the classics. I just need to go to the court house with him and put this thing to bed peacefully and then I plan on getting the hell out of dodge.”

  I looked back up and Carhartt was busy craning skyward and saying something into Tweed’s ear. The hand that Carhartt wasn’t using to hold his beer was suddenly visible and his index finger was pointing. I watched Tweed follow the path of his finger until his eyes settled on our table and he continued listening to whatever Carhartt was telling him.

  “You really think you’ll be able to settle things for your father, Liv? What the hell do you know about real estate negotiation and the law in Madison County?”

  Tweed was standing up straight and I realized he was taller than I had originally thought. He ran a hand over his hair and checked his shirt collar while Carhartt gave him a few last words.

  “I don’t know anything about real estate negotiation or the law in Madison County. But my understanding is that the McCallisers are as dumb as the day is long, so I probably don’t need to know much.”

  I drained the remainder of my cosmo and put the empty glass down on our table as Tweed started the long walk from his side of the room.

  “I also know that you are about to get hit on.”

  Chapter 2

  Olivia

  It knew it was happening before it happened because I had seen it a hundred times before. As long as I had been friends with Cynthia, she had been the kind of girl that drew guys like flies to a rib roast.

  When we were kids it was the boys at the corner playground who were just starting to feel their oats.

  In high s
chool, it was the cafeteria or the gym during the spring socials.

  As soon as we were legal it seemed to happen at every bar we came in. Before we were legal it happened even more at every bar we went into. Guys tripping over themselves to get to Cynthia. Almost guaranteed.

  Every. Damn. Time.

  Once it had even been a woman wearing a cowboy hat.

  But this time it was Tweed as he cut his way through the crowd. She turned when I tipped her off and saw him and I immediately saw her start to strike her pose. It was her way of hanging out her shingle, telling him she was available if his line was right. And it was always the quiet guy who stayed at the other side of the room who would end up being mine.

  Fucking Madison County—just another reason for me to get as far away from here as possible…

  Tweed hesitated when he was about ten feet away like he was about to chicken out. It would have been pathetic if it wasn’t just a little bit cute. Up close I guessed he was probably close to 6’ 4”, and he was about to turn tail from two little girls. But he breathed in his last breath of courage and stepped forward to deliver his line.

  “Hi ladies. I’m sorry—I never do this. I swear to God I never try to pick up women in bars. But my friend bet me twenty dollars that I wouldn’t come speak to you two.”

  “If you win the bet will you take the twenty bucks and go buy yourself a new jacket?”

  The line came out of my mouth like a reflex. I always messed with the guys who hit on Cynthia, and I loved the way that Tweed blinked at me as he took the hit.

  “You don’t like my jacket?”

  There was a hurt that wasn’t genuine and I knew that I liked him already.

  “The jacket would be fine if it was 1970.”

  I felt Cynthia’s elbow start subtly digging into my side but I wasn’t ready to let up on him.

  “This jacket belonged to my grandfather.”