That’s when she did something that I’d never experienced in my life and never wanted to again. She flicked me hard, in the middle of the forehead, with her middle finger. “No, ass brain, I haven’t. The fuzz are in the garden and the rooms all have monitors in so we can hear Liv. Your brother’s paranoid and has units in each room now, so you can’t even fart without it being heard everywhere.”
Seeing how red her cheeks had turned, I started snickering. “That happened to you, didn’t it?” Growling, she turned to glare at the wall, not saying anything back. “Oh shit, this is hilarious,” I snorted, starting to laugh hard enough that Liv quickly grabbed a handful of my tank. “Who was here?”
I didn’t think she was going to answer the question when she stayed silent, but then she sighed and looked at me. “A couple of the Townsends,” she muttered, making me wince. Yeah, that bunch didn’t forget shit like that. “Mace,” she added, getting another wince from me. That was my brother’s best friend, his business partner, and he was hot as hell, too. Taking in a deep breath, she continued, “Dave, Raoul, your dad, your mom, Tabby, Ava, the Townsend women, the Townsend kids…”
“Oh, boy.”
Looking to the side, she nodded slowly. “Yeah, it’s been a problem.”
Deciding to change the subject, I went with the only consolatory words I could think of. “Hey, you already had the nickname Shart Lady, so at least it couldn’t get any worse than that, could it?”
Judging by the look on her face after I’d said them, those weren’t the words she was looking for. Oops!
“Anyway,” she gritted out, her jaw clenched tightly. “As I was saying – this is the only place we can talk without being overheard, but I have a way to get back at him.”
Those words were winners! If anything could snap me out of my mood, those words were it. Well, they would be if it was a good idea. If it was a shitty one, they weren’t worth the oxygen poor trees worked so hard to produce for them to be spoken.
Turns out they were, though. And my day went from shit, to shit literally solving my day.Chapter TwoRaoulAs discretely as I could, I did another skim of Ellis’s backyard to see if she’d arrived yet. Not seeing her anywhere, I was both relieved and disappointed. For the last year she’d been the best and worst part of every hour of every day. It had started off with us being neighbors, greeting each other civilly and just going about our day, but then things had changed. I’m not sure what it was that had been responsible for the change, but something had, and we’d gone from civil to… well, not so civil. And when I’d seen the mess of her front yard this morning when I’d gotten up early for my run, I’d been torn between laughing and feeling bad about what my dog had done to it.
Yes, I knew it was my dog who was responsible. He had as big an issue with plants and flowers as I did, so it could only have been him. Plus, I ran with him on an extendable leash, and it wasn’t unusual for me to run ahead while he finished pissing and then caught me up, so it was a feasible conclusion to make. The other dogs in our area were all small ones, and my boy was a freaking horse. If a small dog had done that amount of damage, its bladder would take up most of its body, and a scientist would make a lot of money studying it – just saying.
Looking down at the dog in question, I saw that he’d decided Tabby was his, and was now lying on her lap, more than likely crushing her legs under his weight. I was about to call him to get off, when the pain in my ass walked out of the door at that moment, meaning I started going through my options of escape instead. I could run past her, I could walk around the side and jump over the fence, I could dig a hole where I stood – but then I’d be ruining a second Beauregard garden in the space of a week, and that was just unnecessary. Or, I could just stand here and hope she didn’t see me.
The last option seemed the most reasonable, so I turned my back to her, knowing I was safe when there were other people around and she was carrying her niece. Fortunately, my friend - and boss - Dave was standing behind me when I turned, apparently about to talk to me, so I pasted a smile on my face and acted like I’d known he was there.