Breaking Even (Sterling Shore 5)

I shut and lock the front door, still laughing as I go to the window.

“What’d you do?” Maggie asks, joining me and acting just as excited as I am.

“Febreeze grenades,” I say through my laughter, almost dancing from side to side as I watch his bathroom window. I’m so glad it’s on the front of the house.

We both watch in anticipation, and then the moment I’ve been waiting for happens. The bathroom window goes up, and a body with a towel drops out.

Hey! That’s my pink—

“Why does he have a pink towel?” Maggie asks, laughing.

“That’s my towel,” I pout. Damn. Now it’s going to stink like too much air freshener. He can keep it.

“Pink’s really his color,” Maggie muses, and I tilt my head, appreciating his failed attempt to keep the towel around him as he tries to get up, his body glistening from the baby oil bath. But he does get it reattached before I can get a full frontal.

His back has just as many tattoos as his front, and when he faces us again, the sun glimmers against the piercing in his nipple.

Oh damn. This wasn’t supposed to be sexy.

“Drooling,” Maggie says in a singsong voice, grinning at me, and I clap my mouth shut.

Rye looks around, his eyes glaring in my direction. Mrs. Patterson smiles and waves at him as she walks her dog, taking small, slow, very hesitant steps as she openly gawks.

Rye shakes his head and walks back toward his front door where he pushes against it, only to stumble backwards. Yep. I locked it on my way out.

I’m a genius. Or a maniacal fiend. Depending on what kind of mind frame you have.

When his head drops back in exhausted defeat, I might giggle a little. His only option is another window, which he moves to. I left it unlocked. I’m very considerate like that.

After shoving it up and drawing more attention from the neighbors, he hoists himself in. One problem... the pink towel falls off, and I get a very mouthwatering, heart-stopping, incredible view of his perfectly sculpted ass as he throws himself inside.

Mrs. Patterson loses the hold on her dog’s leash, and Skip runs off, barking at nothing as he rejoices his freedom.

I’m still staring just like the perverted lady on the street, both of us gawking at a window he’s long since abandoned.

“After a show like that, Mrs. Patterson is going to need a new pacemaker,” Maggie jokes, eliciting a small snicker from me. “You know there will be hell to pay,” she adds.

I narrow my eyes, glaring at her with as much menace as I can muster.

“And you’d better not help him.”

She shrugs, putting her hand behind her back. “I won’t.”

Juvenile as it is, I swear her fingers are crossed behind her back.

He’ll come for me. But it’ll be worth it. I just set the bar a little higher.

***

RYE

“Why the hell do you smell like you just left a bridge party at the retirement home?” Wren asks, swatting at the air around me as his nose wrinkles.

I mutter a few curses while taking a sip of the dark beer. Why are there only dark beers here? I prefer Corona. I should have brought my own.

Twelve damn showers couldn’t get that smell off me—and I had to shower in my guest bathroom. My throat still burns from inhaling that shit, my bathroom floor is still slimy, and my eyes are bloodshot. I so owe her, and I’ll have my revenge. Just as soon as I think of something that is just as good.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I mumble, prompting him to laugh.