G.I. BABY (30 page)

I'm frozen in place as quick, thunderous footsteps are moving towards our direction while Ethan quickly pulls up his sweatpants and fixes my dress. They're moving so quickly down the hall, I know it's just a matter of seconds before they reach us.
 

"Hide in the closet!" Ethan frantically orders.

My heart pounds with brute force from fear.

They're inside the room, before I have a chance to move.

A man in an all black sweatsuit and wearing a Shrek Halloween face mask (of all cliché things) bellows the words, "Don't fucking move."

I freeze in place and so does Ethan. There are two other men, also dressed in all black with black knit ski masks standing next to the one doing all the talking. They are silent, but the two of them are holding sleek metal gray handguns aimed at Ethan's head.

"Sit," Shrek orders.
 

I'm not sure who he's talking to, but I immediately sit straight down on the edge of my bed with my mouth closed and my legs shut. I smell like latex and sex, and my body trembles with fear when I take a brief glance up at the intruder's face. Even behind his mask, I can tell that Shrek is dead in the eyes. His cold glare makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and shiver.

"Where is my shit?" Shrek asks Ethan.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he replies without enough fear in his voice in my opinion. Does he know who they are?
 

"I don't know what you're talking about," Shrek parrots back in a sing-song voice. "Oh yes the fuck you do know what I'm talking about. You're high on my shit right fucking now, and if you don't give me ALL my product and I do mean all of it in the next five minutes, I'm going to have to hurt your very pretty girlfriend over here. And I promise you that she won't be pretty no more after I'm done. Then you're next."

I'm silently crying at this point and paralyzed with fright. I strangely consider all of the crime and cop shows that I have mindlessly watched all my life and wonder what the victims would do in this situation. I've always thought that if I were to ever find myself in a compromised situation, that I would be smart enough to save myself. Yet now that the time is upon me, I'm not sure what the hell to do. Should I make a run for it? Should I beg for our lives? Where's my cell phone? Hell, I'm really frightened, and I have no idea how to get us out of this. I'm just seriously praying that Ethan will give these guys whatever the hell it is they want so they'll leave. I'm very much invested in living another day with my face intact.

Ethan puffs his chest out. "Like I said man, I don't know what you're talking about."

Shrek grins sinisterly.

"That was the wrong answer Aqua Man."

And that's when a black leather covered fist cracks me square in the jaw.

Then everything fades to black.

——*************************——

COMING SOON @ AMAZON!

FOREVER MINE

Mary B. Moore

VISIT MARY’S PAGE HERE:

http://on.fb.me/24cEvgm

Chapter 1
 

Ren
 

Jaysus but it was hot out.
I'd been guilted into spending the day helping out on the family farm instead of working in my garage in town. If I had been in there today like normal, I wouldn't be sweating my ass off in 90 degrees of heat and sun. Why had I said yes? Oh yeah because of my mom; none of us could ever say no to her. With four boys and a girl under her belt she pretty much had the entire family wrapped around her little finger.
 

At least it was Friday so I could head into town tonight to get rid of this tension that felt like it was suffocating me. A couple days ago, I'd caught sight of a dark blonde in Coopers while I was picking up some groceries. It had been her hair that got my attention because it was so unfamiliar, and between me and my brothers we pretty much knew all of the females in the county, so I'd stared waiting for her to turn around — because if the back was that amazing, then God would be cruel to make the front less than the back. When she turned and started walking in my direction I'd been floored. Who the fuck was this beauty? Was she passing through or staying in the area? Please God, let her be staying!
 

She'd turned just then and our eyes had met and I remember struggling to breathe for the second that we looked at each other, until Grandad suddenly stuck his face in mine, scaring the shit outta me! "Ren boy! I was beginning to think you'd skipped the county. Where the hell you been and what are we staring at?" By that point I was twisting and trying to look around his back at the angel who'd been in front of him, but the old bastard was deliberately blocking my view. When he finally moved she was gone.
 

For the last 3 days all I could think about was her and her beautiful eyes. Seriously, seeing was believing when it came to how beautiful she’d been. The problem was - I'd been back into town every day since and had gone into Coopers and hung around the area and there was no sign of her. I thought at one point I'd seen her driving a new black Escalade around town, but it turned out to be George Montgomery's because he'd driven it into my garage yesterday saying that there was an electrical fault in the driver door that needed looked at. Who was she? Was she gone now? I rubbed a hand down my face and decided I needed to get laid tonight to get my man card back because I was obsessing over this girl like chicks did over guys.
 

"Hey sweetie,” Mom said as I walked in. She handed me a cold damp cloth to wipe my face and neck down and then handed me a huge glass of ice cold tea. I’m totally her favorite!
 

"Hey Ma,” my younger brother Cole yelled as he walked in before I could thank her. I watched as she gave him the exact same, but that was just so he didn't get jealous and realize that she really did have a favorite. Like she could tell what I was thinking she caught my eye and winked at me. I’m so her favorite!
 

"Now don't y'all forget that the interior designer is coming to look at y'all's houses ok?" She said hands on hips. Mom had organized this weeks ago when she'd found out that someone from towns niece was moving here and that she was an interior designer. Our parents had built us our own homes on the property on our 18th birthdays. Obviously it takes a while for houses to be built and all, so we moved in when we were 19 or 20 when they were completed, but on our 18th's we sat down with an architect, a plan was decided and we were allowed to choose where we wanted them to be on the land the family owned and then work was started. We each helped to build the properties in amongst work, education and all that, but they were ours.
 

I'd been living in mine for seven years and in all that time I hadn't really lifted a finger to change the place or decorate it aside from hanging some pictures or shelves or shit like that. My excuse was I didn't ever have the time, but the truth was I didn't know what the fuck to do to it. Then mom came in with this curve ball and now I was feeling a bit protective of my home and trusting a stranger to decorate it. I mean, they didn't know me and what I liked and they didn't live there so how the fuck would they decorate it for me?
 

"Shit ma, we know. You've been going on about it for weeks now. Whats wrong with how they look?" Cole whined. He was such a little bitch; even my baby sister, Layla, didn't whine as much as he did.
 

"Y'all haven't done one thing to those houses since they were built. The walls are still covered in white primer and the floors are bare wood for the love of God" She said throwing her hands up in the air in the way she only does when she's truly exasperated.
 

"Now Ma, you taught us better than to leave our wood bare,” Cole replied with a smirk on his face, just as I took a gulp of my iced tea which I sprayed all over the kitchen floor.
 

"COLE JESSOP TOWNSEND! That is...you are...I don't even know what to say back to that comment apart from the fact that you will eat your words the day you meet the girl who is yours, and you'll regret her face when she finds out about the tom catting that you and your brothers have done through town, or even through the entire state. Now get your mind outta the gutter and start thinking about what you're gonna ask her to do to your home and you Renwick Samuel Townsend - go get a cloth and clean your mess off the floor. I swear I raised y'all better than this. You get this from your father's family,” she walked away to the pantry muttering under her breath.
 

"Speaking of which, last night at Jilly's, I saw the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen in my life. I've never seen her around here before, but she walked in with the Montgomery’s and hand to God she has unrivaled beauty in these parts!” Cole told me as I mopped my spit and tea off the floor whilst laughing at Cole using the term ‘
unrivaled beauty’.
He’d obviously been lifting Mom’s Mills and Boon books again. Any other pubescent teen would hit Playboy or go online, but not Cole - he’d loved a ‘
happy’
ending to his fantasies. Then again, didn’t all teenage boys want a happy ending to their fantasies, but Cole hadn’t thought outside the box and had stolen Mom’s books one by one until she found them in his closet. Of course, we’d never let him live it down since we’d found out.
 

"Really? Did you talk to her? What was she like?" Mom asked, suddenly full of interest because one of her boys was talking seriously about a female
 

"She was quite tall, say to here" he said pointing at the bottom of his neck “with long curly blondish hair and these eyes that..."
 

My head snapped up at the description of my angel from Coopers. ”She was with the Montgomery’s?" I asked, wondering why she’d be with them.
 

"Yeah! All I know is she’s just moved here to work or some shit, and has just rented the Twyman house outside of town. Jaysus she's beautiful man! I'm gonna head back into town tonight and ask her out," he continued wiggling his eyebrows and not realizing that he was now closer to death than he'd ever been in his life.
 

"The fuck you......" I started, just as there was a knock at the front door.
 

My mom clapped her hands loudly, “That’ll be Maya. Y'all stop your arguing and get ready to meet the designer.”
 

Still in the kitchen with my brother, I put my face in his and growled, "You won't be asking her out Cole - she's mine and you don't forget that."
 

Before I could threaten him further, Mom walked into the kitchen and said, "Ren, Cole, this is Maya Price the designer. Maya these are two of my troublemaking boys - Cole on the left and Ren on the right."
 

Cole and I turned round and I damn near choked all over again; there standing in the doorway was my beauty from Coopers - who was now my interior designer. All of a sudden I felt a healthy interest in decorating my home come on, and from the gulp from beside me I'd say my shithead of a little brother was thinking the same thing. The only difference between his thoughts and mine, was that the fact that she was mine was a reality for me whereas it was a pipe dream for him.
 

Chapter 2
 

Maya
 

As my parents were in Australia and my sister was still in college doing her nursing degree, I decided to move to be closer to my Uncle, Aunt and cousins here in Piersville. My dad was a diplomat working for the US Government and was now Ambassador in Canberra. Being without any close members of family from the age of 16 had made me desperate to be closer to my family, plus I loved them so moving here while my sister studied four hours away was beyond ideal for me.
 

My boyfriend of 9 months had turned out to be a bigger mistake than I'd thought, so feeling protected and having a career was a no brainer for me. It's not that I was scared of Andy per se, its just that he had been the campus slut when we’d been at college and I'd stupidly believed him when he said he had no interest in any other girls when he’d asked me out a couple months after we graduated from the University of Florida. When I'd decided that I actually couldn't stand the jerk and dumped him, it came out that the whole time he'd been fucking anything with a hole. He hadn’t taken the break up well though and had taken to turning up unannounced, everywhere. Now, I just got regular texts, phone calls and FaceBook messages — those I could handle.