Double Dare (A Neighbor from Hell Book 6) (6 page)

Chapter 6

              “Rot in hell, you son of a bitch!”

              “You had it coming and you know it,” Reese said as he climbed out of his cruiser and joined him on the sidewalk.

              “I should have known that you were going to take her side,” he muttered as he reached up and pressed the switch on his collar to turn his microphone on. “Echo 25 and 32 are on scene,” he said before releasing the switch.

              “
Echo 25 and 32, I have you on scene at 32 Thompson Road at 11:22. Over
,” Dispatch said, marking their arrival on scene.

              “Don’t try to drag me into your fucked up relationship,” Reese said as they started up the long walkway.

              Darrin snorted at that, because really, of all people Reese had no business talking about fucked up relationships. Not only was he dating the biggest bitch that Darrin had ever met, but he also planned on marrying her. God, he couldn’t stand Missy. No one in their family could.

              On top of being a bitch, she was annoying, vindictive, catty, a liar and incredibly fake. He wasn’t sure what he hated more about her, that fake smile she slapped on her face anytime that she saw someone that she hated or the whole “poor me” bullshit she was constantly spouting. 

              She worked as an artist. Well, “worked” might be a bit generous considering that she was mooching off Reese. She spent most of her time sleeping, shopping or bitching on Facebook about everyone that refused to see how truly gifted she was. From what he’d heard, she bitched about him a lot.

              Not that he cared. He didn’t, because he knew this fucked up relationship wasn’t going to last much longer. He’d admit that he’d been a little worried there for a while, especially when Reese let her move in. When Reese proposed a few months ago, he’d known that it was only a matter of time before that bitch was out of their lives once and for all because of one simple reason.

              Bradford men didn’t propose.

              Before a Bradford could take a trip to the altar, he had to lose his fucking mind. Kidnapping your bride was a Bradford tradition and Reese wasn’t willing to risk a felony to marry Missy. Darrin on the other hand…

              Was more than willing.

              He’d already attempted to kidnap Marybeth once before when he was ten. If Aidan hadn’t broken the wheels off his old Red Ryder wagon, she would already be his. Now thanks to his brother’s inconsideration, he had to take a different approach with Marybeth. She didn’t want to date, live together, get married or have a family. That made things a bit tricky for him, because he wanted all of those things and more with her.

              Not that he was going to let any of that get in his way, because he wasn’t. Sure, he could drag her across state lines and marry her and in time she’d realize that it had been for the best, but he really didn’t want to risk needing a testicular-reattachment surgery to make it happen. Besides, she was already his so he didn’t see any point rushing this.

              “What floor are we going to?” Reese asked as they stepped inside the large office building.

              “The eleventh floor,” he said as they joined the small group waiting by the elevator doors.

              “Security desk is unmanned,” Reese pointed out.

              “I saw that,” he said, hoping that the building’s security was able to handle this call on their own so that he could swing by the old Mason mansion in time to join Marybeth for lunch.

              “Did you pack or do you want to grab something for lunch?” Reese asked, moving to the head of the group to block off the elevator.

              “Marybeth packed me a lovely lunch to make up for her betrayal last night,” he said, wondering if he should pick up a large pizza or a few subs to compliment the delicious lunch that awaited him.

              Reese chuckled as they gestured for everyone to move aside when the elevator announced its arrival with a chime. “You stole her lunch, didn’t you?”

              “She owed me,” he pointed out, unnecessarily in his opinion, as they waited for the elevator doors to open.

              “You just wanted an excuse to swing by her job and bring her out for lunch,” Reese said with a knowing smile.

              “It is the polite thing to do after stealing her lunch,” he murmured thoughtfully.

              “Or you could just take her out to dinner to make up for it,” Reese said offhandedly just as the elevator doors finally opened.

              Sighing, he stepped inside the elevator. “Don’t start this shit again.”

              “I just don’t understand it,” Reese said, hitting the button for the eleventh floor as Darrin gestured for the man trying to join them to turn right around and walk away.

              “You don’t need to,” he said, wishing for probably the hundredth time that Reese hadn’t stopped by his place that fateful day four years ago and caught him licking strawberry juice off Marybeth’s breasts…as she rode him…while vocalizing just how badly she wanted to suck on his cock.

              For whatever reason, Reese hadn’t believed him when he’d tried explaining how he’d tripped while carrying a small bowl of mashed strawberries, somehow managing to pour the entire bowl all over Marybeth’s naked breasts and that he’d been helping her wipe the juice off because it was the neighborly thing to do. His brother had simply stared at him, waiting for him to tell him what was really going on so of course he’d further explained that Marybeth’s pants had been ruined and somehow slipped off during the accident and that she’d simply been expressing her gratitude for his cleaning abilities by offering to suck his cock.

              It had just been an innocent series of events that had ended with him fucking her on his couch, but had Reese been able to see that? No, the judgmental bastard had refused to believe him and forced him to tell him what was really going on by threatening to tell everyone what he’d walked in on. So, after a brief physical altercation in which he’d explained what would happen if Reese ever opened his big mouth, he’d told his brother what was going on.

              Once he’d finished explaining how he was easing Marybeth into marriage with sex, his brother had stared at him for a solid five minutes before calling him an idiot, which had led to another physical altercation where Darrin was forced to beat the shit out of his brother. Since then Reese had done his best to stay out of it, but every now and then he would bring it up, trying to convince him that this plan was too fucked up to work.

              “Why don’t you just double dare her to marry you?” Reese asked, sounding bored as they stood there, watching as the little screen above the doors announced the floors as they passed them.

              “We’ve already been over this,” he said, sighing heavily.

              “Refresh my memory,” Reese said, clearly intent on aggravating the shit out of him today.

              “Because I want her to know that she can’t live without me before I drag her beautiful ass down to City Hall and make her the happiest woman alive,” he needlessly explained, again.

              “It’s been six years, Darrin, and she won’t even let you hold her hand in public,” Reese said, shooting him a sympathetic look that he didn’t appreciate one bit.

              His jaw clenched tightly as he said, “Mind your own fucking business.”

              But he refused to listen. “She doesn’t want to get married, Darrin. She told you.”

              “She doesn’t know what she wants,” he said, wishing the elevator would hurry the hell up so that he could get this call over with and get away from the bastard and this fucked up conversation that he refused to have.

              “You want to get married and have a family and she doesn’t,” Reese said with a shrug. “That’s never going to change.”

              With a glare, he turned to face his brother. “Just for that, you’re out of the running for position of godfather when she finally starts popping out my precious babies.”

              “You bastard!” Reese gasped in outrage. “You can’t do that!”

              “Just did,” he said smugly, returning his attention to the elevator doors just as the elevator chimed, announcing their arrival.

              “Your kids would be lucky to have me as their godfather and you damn well know it,” Reese snarled.

              “They could do better,” he said with a shrug just to piss his brother off.

              The doors started to open when Reese decided to up his game.

              “You know that she’s only with you because she thought that you were me, right?”

              Darrin considered beating the shit out of his brother, but at that moment the elevator doors opened, revealing the reason that they’d been called.

              “I quit, mother fuckers!” the plump middle-aged woman standing on the receptionist’s desk announced, adding a “Whoo-hooo!” at the end there just as she yanked off her blouse and waved it above her head.

              Sighing, Darrin reached back, grabbed Reese by the back of his neck and shoved him towards the overly excited woman just as she tore off her bra and sent it flying.

              “You’ll pay for this, you son of a bitch!” Reese hissed as the bra slapped him in the face seconds before the woman spotted him and decided to try her hand at stage diving.

Chapter 7

              “But they asked for mint green,” Uncle Jared said, looking adorably confused as he looked helplessly around the large living room.

              “We’ve been over this,” she said, gesturing for Bill, one of her crewmembers, to start work in the large foyer.

              “They’re not going to be happy,” he said with a slight pout as he looked from the paint sample in his hand that the clients had picked out to the colonial green that now covered the walls.

              “It was tacky and glowed. They would have been calling me to repaint the room within a week. This way I saved time and money by fixing their mistake now,” she said, glancing down at her watch with a scowl.

              Where was that bastard?

              “Yes, but-”

              Sighing, she reached into her bag and pulled out the photo she’d printed out last night. “Give them this.”

              He frowned down at the photo. “Is this the color they picked?”

              “That would be the very one,” she said, grabbing her backpack and threw it over her shoulder as she headed for the front door.

              “God, this is horrible,” Uncle Jared said, catching up with her.

              “It’s an institutional color,” she pointed out, glancing around the large yard, looking for Darrin, but the bastard wasn’t there.

              “Well, now you’re just exaggerating. This could be from-”

              Too hungry and admittedly bitchy, she pointed at the caption at the bottom of the picture. “That’s from Riker’s Island.”

              “Oh…”

              “Just explain that this color will add more warmth and sophistication as well as complement their furniture and you should be all set,” she said, heading towards her truck, relieved when one of Uncle Jared’s employees managed to distract him so that she could make a clean break.

              “Damn it,” she muttered pathetically a minute later when she turned on her car and saw the time flashing on the dashboard.

              She was already ten minutes late for her appointment, starving, cranky, tired and sore from last night. All she wanted to do was go home, fill a bucket with ice and beer, pull out the kiddie pool she’d bought last summer for the kids, fill it to the brim with cold water and lounge in it for the rest of the night. But unfortunately for her that wasn’t an option. She couldn’t skip this appointment.

              She also couldn’t put off lunch until after this appointment, because she was starting to feel lightheaded. Sighing heavily, she resigned herself to getting bitched out by Marge, the receptionist from hell, and headed towards Roy’s Roast Beef.

              Thirty minutes later, she was juggling two large brown paper bags in her arms and trying to open the front door for Bradford Medical Associates. It took two minutes, some prodding and shoving before Marge finally walked over and opened the door for her.

              “You’re forty-five minutes late,” Marge said with that same scowl that she’d been wearing since Marybeth was a kid.

              “Traffic,” Marybeth said with a shrug, not bothering to apologize since she knew from experience that would only piss the receptionist off more.

              Marge walked away with a long-suffering sigh. “You can wait in his office if you want.”

              Leaning down just enough so that she could take a sip from the straw that was poking out from one of the bags, she looked around the small waiting room, noting that the only available chair was between a kid who seemed utterly fascinated with the content of his nose and a middle-aged man moaning miserably into a large bucket and decided to take Marge up on her offer to get rid of her. Still sipping her root beer, she walked towards the back hall. She paused at the first office door and tapped it with her foot.

              Thirty seconds later the door opened and she was relieved of one of her bags. “Thank you, sweetheart,” Dr. Bradford, Darrin’s father, said with a warm smile as he closed the door behind him and returned to what sounded like a phone call with a surgeon.

              Continuing to sip her soda, she walked down the hallway until she came to the door marked, “Dr. Aidan Bradford.” Hugging the remaining bag against her chest, she knocked on the door and waited. When there was no response, she opened the door and walked inside, making sure to close the door behind her.

              She walked over to the leather couch by the large bay window, placed the bag overflowing with roast beef sandwiches and crinkly fries on the coffee table and pulled her drink out and sat down. Knowing that she didn’t have much time before Aidan caught the scent of roast beef and fries, she dug her sandwich and fries out of the bag and started eating.

              Not even a minute later, Aidan walked into his office, sighing heavily as he tossed a folder on his desk. Without a word, he sat down next to her on the couch. He picked up her soda and took a sip as he reached into the bag and started pulling out the sandwiches that she’d ordered for him.

              “You’re late,” he said, unwrapping a deluxe roast beef sandwich with the works and took a huge bite.

              “Sorry,” she mumbled, taking the root beer from him and took a sip before she placed it back on the coffee table.

              “You’re pale,” Aidan noted around a fry.

              “I know,” she said, taking a bite of her sandwich.

              “Your blood results came in this morning,” he said, taking another sip of her soda.

              Needing something to do, she picked up a ketchup packet and slowly opened it. “And?”

              “And,” he said, shaking his head as put her soda back down, “it’s not good.”

              She nodded slowly, hating herself for hoping for good news, something that would end this nightmare and give her the one thing in the world that she craved. “How bad?”

              “We need to change your medicine for one thing,” he said, placing his half-eaten sandwich down on the coffee table and wiped his hands off on a napkin, letting her know just how bad this was.

              “What else?” she asked, swallowing nervously as she stared down at the ketchup packet in her hands.

              “You’ve developed pernicious anemia, Marybeth.”

              “What else?” she asked, reaching up and quickly wiping away the useless tears that wouldn’t change anything.

              “Your B-12 levels are too low. You’re going to have to switch to a daily injection. Your iron levels are dangerously low and so is your vitamin D and calcium levels, which would explain why you’re tired all the time,” he explained as he reached down and took her trembling hand in his and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

              “What else?” she asked, her voice breaking, because she knew without a doubt that there was more.

              There was a slight pause before he said, “Your estrogen levels are up, which means that we need to schedule another ultrasound and see if the tissue has spread.”

              She nodded numbly even as she said, “I thought that it wouldn’t be able to grow as long as I was on birth control.”

              “The medicine slowed it down for a while, but now-”

              “Now the medicine’s not working,” she finished for him as her world came crashing down around her.

              “I’m sorry, Marybeth. I wish that I had better news,” Aidan said, releasing her hand so that he could put his arm around her and hold her just as the first sob broke free. “I’m so sorry,” he said roughly as he pulled her into his arms and held her tightly. “So goddamn sorry.”

              Grabbing onto his shirt, she buried her face against his shoulder and held on as she felt her heart finally break as her last hope that this was all a bad dream faded away.