Craving Rose (The Aces' Sons 5)

As I cringed, Heather reached over and pinched him.

“Why don’t you have a filter?” I asked as I led the way outside. “Seriously. No one else in our family is as disgusting as you.”

“Because all of you are prudes?” Tommy asked. He’d parked his bike right next to my Jeep, and my Spidey senses started tingling.

“What’s going on?” I asked, looking at them suspiciously.

“What?” Heather looked confused, so I relaxed.

“I’ll see you guys later,” I said, opening my door. “Is there still a party at the club on Friday?”

“Yep,” Tommy said, climbing on his bike. “Just like every other Friday at the club.”

“I’ll see you then.”

“Love you,” he called as I started up the Jeep.

“Love you, too,” I called back.

The ride home didn’t take long, and as we got closer to my apartment, I started to wonder what the hell was going on. Tommy and Heather’s place was clear across town, but they still followed me all the way to my parking lot. It wasn’t unheard of for one of my brothers to follow me home if we were both on the road at the same time, but it something seemed off about tonight.

When they drove on past the apartment complex, I relaxed a little. If there was something I needed to know, someone would have told me. My dad and brothers didn’t lead the safest lives as part of a motorcycle club, but it had been a long time since any of their shit had affected me.

I wasn’t paying close attention to my door when I reached it, because I’d been taught—rightly so—to be hyper aware of my surroundings. So when my hand slid off the doorknob, it startled me. What the hell?

I touched the doorknob again and pulled my hand away to stare at it. Then I looked at the door as a whole.

Someone had covered the entire door, from top to bottom, with Vaseline. There wasn’t a single inch that wasn’t coated with the stuff. I gritted my teeth as I shoved the key into the lock, and my hand slipped at least four times before I could grip it hard enough to turn it and let myself inside.

I was going to kill Mack.

When my phone started ringing in my purse, I nearly threw it across the room, I was so irritated. How did you even clean that shit off a door? It was so greasy.

I locked up behind me and went to the kitchen to wash my hands, ignoring my ringing phone. By the time I was done, I’d heard the text message alert twice. When I pulled the phone out of my purse, I saw that it was Tommy trying to reach me.

Don’t clean it tonight.

Wait until the morning.

I knew there was something off about him following me home. Had they parked and snuck back to watch my reaction? If there was a video of me making some dumb face, I was going to throw his phone in a toilet.

You’re a fucking TRAITOR, I texted back.

Love you too.

I tossed my phone onto the couch and growled. I really wanted to open the door and see how bad the damage was, hoping it wasn’t as bad as it had seemed at first—but I knew Tommy was right. It wasn’t smart for me to be hanging outside with my door wide open at one in the morning, no matter how irritated and ready to kill I was. That was just asking for trouble that I didn’t need.

I stomped toward the stairs, then felt like shit because I had downstairs neighbors and walked normally again. It wasn’t their fault that Mack actually had the balls to keep this little prank war going. For a minute, I wondered if Mack was actually mad about the pudding in his boots—a spectacular prank, if I did say so myself—but I was pretty sure he wasn’t. If he was angry, he would have called and said so, not kept the war going.

I peeled off my clothes and hopped in the shower, wondering what I should do to pay him back. There were tons of pranks that sounded good, but I had to be careful. I didn’t want Kara caught in the crossfire—I may need her to help me get her dad later.

By the time I’d climbed in bed with a book and a glass of ice water, I still wasn’t any closer to finding the perfect way to pay Mack back for the slimy door, but I had figured out how to clean it. Apparently, it was going to take a lot of paper towels and some dish soap.

I had to admit, his prank was pretty good—even better than mine since I’d actually ruined a pair of his shoes. I was kind of embarrassed about that, actually. I’d seen how ratty his boots were getting, so it had seemed like the perfect opportunity for him to get some new ones. I’d even gotten him a gift certificate to get a new pair. I would’ve done the same thing to my brothers, complete with the gift—it wasn’t unusual for us. One time, Will had taken my makeup and thrown it all in the toilet so I’d had to fish it out, but he’d gotten me a huge gift certificate to replace it. The ruined makeup hadn’t been the prank—fishing it out of the toilet had been. It was the same with Mack’s boots. I’d wanted him to stick his foot into a boot full of pudding, but ruining the boots had just been a casualty of war.