Page 16 of Never Kiss the Bad Boy

“You are not pulling up to my bumper!” Nessa protests before clapping her hand over her mouth and dissolving into giggles.

“Come on, help me out here.” They’re not going to. I can see that, clear as day. This is exactly what Dani planned.

“Take it as a warning,” Dani says. “Find somewhere else to park.”

“I’m trying.” Which is the absolute truth. After talking to Kathy, I looked up where the closest public parking area is. It’s three blocks away, which won’t work for me going back and forth.

Dani shrugs. “Not good enough, not hard enough.”

“I bet he’d be good and hard,” Nessa quips, eyeing me up and down hungrily, which makes Dani blush.

I smirk, not denying it. Still, I’m getting nowhere, so I give in. This time. “Fine.”

Dani sticks out her chin, equally stubborn. “Fine.”

Growling angrily, I turn and head over to Wayne’s truck, thankful he stayed. “Got room for one more?”

“Zeus, get your skinny ass in the back,” Wayne says immediately. “Boss is riding shotgun.”

I accept the gesture gratefully, glad Wayne doesn’t mind giving me a ride home too. I climb in and buckle up, slamming the door behind me. As we pull away, I see that Dani’s in her front yard, a big smile on her face that says she won this round, and rather than waving goodbye, she flips me off again.

She looks steady on her feet and sure of herself. As I suspected, she might be tipsy, but she’s not that drunk.

Which just pisses me off. At this point, I might not take Dani up on her implied offer even if she were actually making it. Dani is as big a pain in my ass as Kathy is.

“Hey, Boss, how about some Taylor Swift?” Frogger asks, and I groan.

I can’t wait for this job to be fucking over.

CHAPTER 7

DANI

Rubbing my temples, I grimace as the headache from hell pulses behind my eyeballs. I know better than to ever overindulge like that, but Nessa and I had the opportunity for a rare night together when her Mom’s aide offered to stay overnight because she needed the money.

Nessa couldn’t afford to pay her, but she also couldn’t afford to refuse an evening off-duty herself. And when she asked if I had plans, I came up with a genius idea to majorly screw up Kyle’s day, and Nessa had been all-too-willing to help with that. In fact, she’d been downright giddy about it.

It was as if the universe was on our side for a change, giving us a neon, blinking sign to cut loose and raise some hell. And it’d all gone according to plan, right down to Kyle’s humiliated retreat and Nessa’s and my cheers of celebration.

Until this morning when the universe decided to slap me across the face with the consequences of my actions. Because to celebrate afterward, Nessa and I went from having a few to really tossing them back, to the point we were both dancing around the living room, whipping our shirts over our heads and doing our best impersonation of Ice Spice at her wildest.

I’ve only made it as far as my couch, where I’m nursing a cup of coffee that I’ve yet to make a dent in because the bitterness is stomach-turning. Hopefully, Nessa’s head feels better than mine does because she left at the butt-crack of dawn to go home and relieve the aide after I tucked Kyle’s fifty bucks into her back pocket. She tried to argue, but I shut that down, knowing she’ll put it to good use. If anything, it’ll help with the extra cost for her aide.

I close my eyes for a second, inhaling slow, deep breaths, only to jerk in alarm when someone fires up a chainsaw inside my brain and starts sawing logs like they’re in a lumberjack competition.

Brrrrrrrrrr-RRRRRRRR!

Wait… that’s not in my head. That’s out front.

Grumpily, I stumble to the front door and peer outside. Through the blinding, piercing light, I’m shocked to not see a lumberjack competition or a World War II reenactment going on in my front yard. Instead, there is a loud, rumbling, growling motorcycle at the curb, revving its engine with each savage twist of the throttle. And though the rider’s wearing a helmet, I’d know those arms anywhere.

What the fuck is Kyle doing here so early, and why is he being so damn loud?

Oh, he knows exactly what he’s doing and why he’s being so loud. Basically, I fucked around, and now I’m finding out.

Except that I’m not the one who does the finding out, and Kyle needs to learn that lesson. Gritting my teeth, I bust through my screen door, stomping toward him. If I weren’t hungover, I’d probably try to come up with something snappy to say. But my brain isn’t in prime form at the moment, so all I come up with is screeching at him, “Noooooo! Make it stop!” as I point at his bike with one hand and hold my head with the other.

He pulls his helmet off, revealing a one-sided grin of triumph. “What?” he yells, cupping his hand at his ear, his other hand going back to the throttle. “Did you say, louder? Yeah, it’ll go louder.” He revs the engine, making me flinch and curl into myself protectively.

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