He stormed onto his porch with a broom in hand looking back at the house and tilting his head as if he were straining to hear. I moved out of sight before I turned my light on as he slammed his way back into the house. Another series of bangs had my head pounding. I moved to my kitchen and grabbed a bottled water when I heard the repeat thwack of his back door. Realization dawned, and I began to laugh when the door slammed again.
“Oh Simone, you’ve got yourself a new victim.” I grabbed a new pair of noise-canceling plugs from my nightstand and marched over to the porch where Ian paced. With a heated glance my way, he didn’t bother with pleasantries. “The facking smoke alarm is broken. I’m…” he tapped his forehead. “Gatvol!”
“Gat what?”
“I’ve had it! Never mind. It’s the alarms, we need to have them checked.”
“No…”
Ian, still in his slacks and undershirt, glared at me. The porch light illuminated us in weak shadow. He was a beautiful man, even with a vampire tan and the slight bulge around his waist. His thick, gelled, dark-brown hair was scattered from a day of running his hand through it and feathered over his brow. He’d grown up pretty… and pretty bitchy.
“Don’t tell me no. I’ve been listening to the screech for hours. I’ve dismantled them all!”
“Ian,” I said carefully, as I closed the few feet between us like I was cornering a very angry six-foot-plus mouse. “It’s not the smoke detectors.”
He scrutinized me in my shorts and thin halter top, sans bra. “Brilliant, just brilliant. You manage this property, right? How does anyone get any sleep here?!”
“If you will just listen—”
“Are you mad, woman? I have been listening! I’m certain it’s the alarms.”
“It’s not—”
He moved toward me his lips upturned. “Listen—”
“No listen, Ian, it’s—”
“Shush!”
Pressing my lips together he craned his neck until his eyes widened. “Hear it? Don’t tell me that’s not an alarm!”
I stood with my hand on my hips, cupping his remedy—the earplugs—in my palm. Shrugging, I made my way off his porch. “Fine, it’s the alarms. Good luck with that.”
Marching into my house, I slammed the open window and turned on my AC. Even with the added white noise from the unit, I could hear the frog, who’d taken up residence in the thick brush behind the Kemp house, begin to sing. Simone, my sweet Coqui Frog, who I’d lovingly named after Nina Simone, appeared to me on one of the plants next to my porch after a three-week fight. Simone sounded very much like a smoke alarm with dying batteries. But Ian and his head-biting ass would just have to find out the hard way.
Welcome back to St. Thomas, Mr. Kemp.
Some horses you could lead to water and they would still walk straight through it believing it was a mirage. Such was the case with my angry new neighbor.
Still, angry was better than sad. And if Ian was about to fight the good fight, he needed that fire.
I fell asleep a few minutes later to a more muted, “What the fack! A frog?!”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass, Kevin! This is unacceptable!”
I opened one eye and groaned before I pulled a pillow over my head.
“Rubbish! And she made sure of that!” Ian was growling into his phone and must have decided his back porch was the perfect place to vent. I looked at the bedside clock.
7 a.m.
I pulled myself from the comfort of my cloud and made my way outside, slamming my screen door and eyeing him from my porch with my hands on my hips, in hopes that would be enough to stop his tirade.
“Oh, bullshit! That’s bullshit!” He paced on the sand yard purposefully ignoring my presence and plea for peace.
“Excuse me,” I whispered on the wind. I needed to grow some balls and fast when it came to moody Mr. Kemp. I didn’t do well without my sleep. Years of sleep depravity in New York followed by a year of rested bliss had changed me.
“This is inexcusable! What I want, what I want? I want you to do your facking job!” Ian’s accent had turned into a strange mix of pissed off Texan with a lash whip of South African. He stood in boxer briefs pacing as he ignored me. He was tall, disheveled and shirtless. The extra weight he carried did little to take away from his appeal. On any other day, I might have enjoyed the testosterone-filled man parading in front of me.