Delectable (Neighbor from Hell 9)

Finally, Kasey couldn’t take it any longer and she blurted, “What did she do?”

“What didn’t she do?” Mary asked with a disgusted shake of her head as she continued to flip through the pages while Kasey sat there, not really sure how to proceed on this one.

On the one hand, it wasn’t any of her business, but on the other hand…

It wasn’t any of her business.

With a disgusted shake of her head at herself, she shifted her attention back to the pictures and couldn’t help but smile when she spotted the picture of Reese in his uniform the day that he’d graduated from the academy. He was so handsome, she thought with a smile, somehow resisting the urge to reach over and trace her finger along his chin.

“He’s so handsome,” she said, smiling as she leaned in to get a better look.

“He really is, isn’t he?” Mary said softly, turning her head to study her.

“How old was he in that picture?”

“Twenty. He’d just finished training with the reserves before he went to the academy,” Mary said, going back a few pages to show her a picture of Reese standing at attention in an army uniform.

“I didn’t know he was in the reserves,” she said even though it kind of made sense.

He was just a good guy all around and god, did he look incredibly sexy in a uniform, she thought as she watched a familiar large, tanned hand pluck the photo album off Mary’s lap. She followed that hand up to the large muscular arm, well-defined chest showcased by a navy tee shirt and up to the handsome face marred by stitches and an aging bruise, reminding her of how incredibly kind he’d been to Mikey after it happened when any other man would have probably screamed at her.

“There’s a lot that you don’t know about me,” he murmured with a challenge in his eye as he closed the book with one hand and reached out and took her hand into his, “Why don’t we go get this done, sweetheart?”

Chapter 24

“Kill. Me!” Kasey pleaded, finally accepting the fact that it was her time.

She didn’t want to go, God knows that she didn’t want to, because she wanted to watch her baby girl grow up, but she didn’t have a choice in the matter.

“You do realize that I’m four hours away, right?” Sara asked, sounding amused as Kasey squeezed her eyes shut and slowly rolled over on the double bed that she’d been given for the night only to stop mid-roll with a shake of her head, because it just wasn’t happening.

“And if you cared about me at all, you’d grab a baseball bat, get in your car, and get your ass over here and put me out of my misery,” she pointed out with a pained groan as she fell over onto her back and stared up at the black ceiling fan as it spun around. She shifted her arm so that she could use the cellphone more comfortably as she begged for a quick death.

“Tell me again why you’re still there?” Sara asked while Kasey watched the fan blades cut through the cool air being pumped into the room as she tried not to think about the pain radiating from her knee to her back.

“By the time that we finished loading the truck everyone was hungry so we went to his brother’s restaurant where an insane amount of cousins, uncles and siblings showed up and before we knew it, it was too late to head back,” she explained, not bothering to mention that she’d spent the entire evening trying to ignore the way her back muscles continued to lock up on her anytime she shifted in her chair.

“Are you okay with that?”

No, not really, but she didn’t really have a choice. It was either stay here in Reese’s old bedroom, which was surprisingly spacious and comfortable, or spend the next four hours squeezed in tightly between Reese and Mikey while her back locked up completely on her.

Not that staying here was going to stop her back from locking up, she thought with a pained groan.

“Yeah,” she said, deciding that her muscles were not happy with her current position and shifted back onto her side.

“What about Mikey?”

She sighed as she once again gave up on trying to shift onto her side. “Has completely forgotten that I’m alive,” she said, smiling as she thought about how happy Mikey had looked tonight.

Tonight, Mikey had smiled more and laughed freely as she’d spent time with Reese’s family. They’d treated Mikey like one of their own, talking to her, teasing her for knocking Reese on his ass, and seemed genuinely pleased to have her around. If she hadn’t been in so much pain she would have joined in, but god help her, she couldn’t remember ever hurting this much before.

“They’re spoiling her?” Sara guessed with a pleased chuckle.

“Absolutely,” she said, smiling, because smiling didn’t hurt right now.

“And that’s the real reason you stayed, isn’t it?” Sara asked with a heavy sigh of her own, because they both knew that this short trip was a real treat for Mikey.

“Yeah, probably,” she admitted with a small smile, although she was pretty sure that pulling that muscle in her ass, back, leg or wherever it was had something to do with it.

While Mikey was loved and adored more than any child could ask for, she was also an only child being raised by a single parent. She had Eric and Sara wrapped around her little finger, had since the moment she came into this world, and they loved her more than anything, but…

That didn’t make up for the fact that there was no one else. Kasey had no idea who her father was, her mother had bailed on her a long time ago and she had absolutely no idea if she was dead or alive, and that was pretty much it for family on her side. On Michael’s side was Eric. Just Eric. He was the only one that had anything to do with Mikey.

His parents had tried, they really had, but they hadn’t been able to handle seeing Mikey. She was the reminder of everything they’d lost. It didn’t excuse abandoning their grandchild or even abandoning Eric for that matter, but she could understand how devastated that they’d been when they’d lost Michael. She’d been devastated, too, but she’d forced herself to move on for Mikey’s sake.

One day, they were going to regret missing out on so much, but that was their problem. Her only concern was her daughter. She needed to do her best to make sure that Mikey was loved and taken care of and that was it.

Or at least, it should be.

Sometimes though, she wished she could give Mikey more, cousins, more uncles, aunts, people that adored her almost as much as she did and that could be there for her, make her smile, but that just wasn’t in the cards. Not unless she could get Eric to get off his ass and get married, but that was looking less likely with every passing year.

Selfish bastard, she thought with another groan as she tried to get more comfortable only to end up gasping when the move made things hurt.

“Did you just whimper?” Sara asked with a snort of amusement, because clearly she was mean.

“I hate you,” she said, wondering what had possessed her to do this to herself.

“You love me and we both know it,” Sara said, laughing, which officially ended their conversation.

With a glare at the ceiling, Kasey hit the “End,” button, tossed the phone aside, and seriously considered dragging her ass back down the hall with the hopes that another hot shower would help ease some of the stiffness out of her muscles, but that just sounded like a lot of work so she settled on laying there and being miserable.

Eventually Mikey would remember her and would come to check on her, but until then she was just going to lay here, wearing one of Reese’s old shirts…staring at the ceiling.

“You look like hell,” the incredibly sexy voice that sent shivers down her very angry back, said, as the owner of that voice sat down on the edge of the bed, which resulted in her jumping up and-

“Oh, my freaking god!” she gasped as pain shot through her back, knocking her back on her side where she curled up and waited for the excruciating pain stabbing her in the back and ass to subside so that she could climb off this bed and walk away with as much dignity as she could muster while wearing one of his old shirts and pretty

much nothing else.

Except for her panties, but since he couldn’t see those she wasn’t going to add them to this already mortifying moment. As she gasped through the pain, and god did her ass hurt, she couldn’t