The Game Plan (Neighbor from Hell 5)

He hadn’t said a word as he closed his door. He didn’t need to say anything, because that glare had said it all. She’d spent that night tossing and turning in bed, torn between apologizing to save herself from his bullshit, shrugging it off while trying to tell herself that there was nothing to worry about, and getting good and mad at herself for obsessing over something so stupid. When the alarm clock forced her to drag her butt out of bed the next morning she’d wanted to kick his ass as well as her own for wasting the entire night lying awake worrying instead of sleeping.

Thirty minutes, a lukewarm shower, and three cups of burnt coffee later, she’d still been kicking herself for her own stupidity as she’d left her apartment and mentally prepared herself for the next ten hours of dealing with meetings, committees, story time with the kids, craft hour and a book vendor event. All thoughts of the hectic day that awaited her slowly evaporated from her thoughts when she’d caught sight of the five-foot high cinderblock wall that surrounded her parking space where her car had been parked the night before.

It was at that point that she realized that she needed to either move or find a good defense attorney. Sadly, with the current state of her finances a good defense attorney was out of the question and so was moving, she’d realized. She couldn’t afford to break her lease early and she didn’t have enough money to cover the first and last month’s rent for a new apartment.

Since she didn’t have many options available to her at the moment, she decided to try and talk her way out of her lease. Actually, she’d been hoping to have this conversation with Zoe, because she was pretty easy going and probably would have let her out of her lease without a fight. If Trevor hadn’t overheard their phone conversation an hour ago, she was pretty sure that she’d already be looking at other apartments.

Unfortunately for her, he did overhear it.

He scrubbed his hands down his face as he muttered, “I’m going to kill that fucking bastard.”

“If you do that I’d be willing to stay,” she pointed out helpfully.

He chuckled as he leaned back in his chair and she did her best not to cringe when the chair creaked in protest, again. “I like you, Jodi. You’re never late with the rent. You keep your apartment clean and you don’t cause trouble, but I can’t let you out of your lease.”

“Why?” she asked, her shoulders slumping in defeat.

“Because if you move out, my wife will just move another one of my asshole cousins in here,” he said with a heavy sigh.

“Well, they couldn’t be any worse than Danny. So-”

“Believe me, they are,” he said, cutting her off as he sat up, causing the chair to creak ominously with the movement. “What if I reduced your rent by a hundred bucks a month?”

“To stay?” she asked, tempted to say yes and give in.

She didn’t have much money in the bank and even though she actually did make a decent salary, she didn’t have much money at the end of the month once the bills were paid. Fifteen thousand dollars in debt had been her ex-fiancé’s parting gift for her, one that she couldn’t seem to return, and she desperately wanted to return that lovely gift. She’d been foolish when she’d agreed to open a credit card account in her name for him, and even more foolish for giving him access to her bank account, which he’d drained, legally according to the police department, mere hours before he broke the news publically to her that he couldn’t force himself to marry her.

“Two hundred?” he offered, sounding a little desperate.

“Wouldn’t it be cheaper just to let me out of my lease?” she asked, struggling with the urge to say yes and make things a little less financially tight for a while even if it meant putting up with Danny Bradford for ten more months.

“Three hundred bucks,” he said, not asked, she noted.

“Three hundred dollars?” she repeated, sure that she’d misheard him.

“Deal,” Trevor said with a firm nod as he stood up and headed for the door, leaving her sitting there struggling to figure out what just happened.

“Wait, what deal?” she asked, scrambling to get out of the chair and rush to the door and block it before he could make his escape, but sadly, her short legs just couldn’t manage it.

Trevor had the door open and was halfway down the hallway before she managed to catch up with him, well, get within ten feet of him anyway. “Wait!” she said, hoping that he’d stop long enough so that she could figure out what just happened.

With a sheepish smile, he did, but her relief was short lived as he walked towards her and then kept walking. Before she could ask him what he was doing, he was pounding on Danny’s door. Seconds later, and unfortunately before she could make it back to her apartment, Danny, wearing only jeans and looking fresh out of the shower with damp hair, a towel around his shoulders and his large muscles glistening beneath the hallway light, opened the door.

Having a really bad feeling about what was coming, Jodi took a step back, hoping to get to her apartment before-

“Ow!” Danny said, rubbing the top of his head. “What the hell was that for?” he demanded. His glare shifted away from his cousin and landed on her just as she’d reached her door and was about to sneak inside her apartment, where she planned on hiding until it was time to go to work in sixteen hours.

“Stop being an asshole,” Trevor said with a satisfied grunt before he turned around and headed for the exit only to pause and throw over his shoulder, “You still coming to dinner?”

Danny’s eyes never left her as he answered, “Yeah, what time?”

“Six,” Trevor said, continuing towards the door and leaving her to deal with his asshole cousin. “Bring dessert!”

Danny didn’t respond and Trevor didn’t wait for him to as he opened the door and stepped outside, leaving Jodi in a rather awkward position.

“Tattled on me again?” Danny asked in that deep voice that made her toes tingle.

It also reminded her of just how much she hated him.

Because of him she hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep all night. Now she was tired, cranky, admittedly bitchy, and had to work on re-writing a proposal for the library renovation that had taken her a month, in fourteen hours and without pay. All because the Town Council didn’t feel that the first proposal properly conveyed the importance of the library and its staff, meaning that she had to figure out a way to bring the budget for library renovations down by ten grand or start looking for a new job when they were forced to close the library.