Page 72 of The Body Checker

Ignoring me, Sylvie squeals. “He’s going back into his garage. Damned if he doesn’t look as good going as he does coming.”

“But I’d rather see him…coming,” Becca says, and they start giggling.

“Seriously. Are you both twelve?”

“Shh, he’s back,” Becca says and swats her hand at me, like I’m an annoying fly that needs to be shooed away.

I shift on my bed, not to get a better look outside my window. No, moving has absolutely nothing at all to do with the shirtless mechanic turning my roommates into dim-witted moths. The only reason I’m getting

up is to herd these girls from my room, and if I happen to get a glimpse of the hot, tattooed, badass daddy next door, well…then so be it.

I rub the blur from my eyes and toss my pillow at them. “Get away from my window, before he thinks it’s me.” They don’t need to know that the hottie’s bedroom window is also across from mine, and that late one night, he caught me staring into his room as he walked around in nothing but boxer shorts. Heck, if they knew that, they’d camp out for the rest of the school year, and that was so not happening.

“Ohmigod!” Sylvie leaps back. “I think he just saw me.” She puts her hand over her mouth and starts to giggle. Footsteps pound down the hall, announcing the arrival of my other two roommates. I shake my head as they come bursting in.

Kill. Me. Now.

“Is he out there?” Val asks, her big blue eyes wide and hopeful.

“Yeah, but he saw me looking,” Sylvie says. Despite that, she edges back around to sneak another look. Megan hurries across the room, and goes up on her toes to peer over Sylvie’s shoulder, trying to catch a glimpse without getting caught.

“Do you really think he killed someone?” Megan asks.

“That’s the rumor,” Val protests, though her tone holds uncertain convictions.

“Then why isn’t he in jail?”

“Maybe it was self-defense.”

“He’s such a badass.”

“He’s good with his little girl, though.”

“Bad Boy Daddy, now that’s hot.”

“Do you think he’d spank me if I was bad?”

Unable to put up with their incessant chatter and giggles any longer, I point my finger toward the door. “Out. Now.”

A chorus of grumbles ensues as they all sullenly walk to my door. Christ, I’m getting that lock fixed, even if I have to eat ramen noodles for the next month.

“God, you’re such a grouch in the morning.” Becca shoots me a wounded look over her shoulder.

“Doesn’t even have to be the morning,” Val adds with a hair toss.

“You need to get your nose out of a book once in a while,” Megan says.

“What she needs is to get laid,” Sylvie informs them all, but her solution to pretty much everything is sex. Problem is, this time Megan is nodding her head in sad agreement as she follows Sylvia out the door.

“I can hear you,” I shout after them. I shake my head and my mussed hair falls over my shoulders. “I’m still right here.” As I stand there, dressed only in my tank top and underwear, a warm breeze blows in and slides over my skin, a late reminder that I’d opened my window last night before crawling into bed exhausted. Great. Not only could the hot guy working on his car see my roommates drooling over him, he could hear them as well. And they just announced that I needed to get laid. How freaking mortifying. I stomp across the room and yell down the hall, “And don’t bother to close my door on your way out.” As usual my sarcasm is ignored.

I give the door a good slam, which helps improve my mood a little. With a deep breath, I turn around, not to see my hot neighbor, but to close my window. No way do I want him hearing anything else that goes on inside this place, or get the wrong idea that I might want him. I don’t. Not in a million years.

I’m completely off guys, trying to keep a low profile. After my ex-boyfriend turned violent and abusive, threatening to kill me if I went to the police, I snuck away under the cover of darkness and put several states between us. His was big and hard like my neighbor, his muscles born from rough carpentry work. Last year, when he came to do repairs on the house I was sharing with friends, I was flattered that I was the object of his attention. At first he was doting and attentive, but as time went by, he became possessive and controlling, and I came to find out later, he’d had other charges against him from numerous other women.

Jesus, why am I such a bad judge of character when it comes to men. Oh, probably because my only role model had been a mean-assed, alcoholic father who drove my beautiful, caring mom to an early grave and me out of the house the second I turned eighteen.

If I try hard enough I can still smell the cheap perfume on his shirt when he stumbled in after a weekend-long drinking binge. God, how I hated those women he slept around with almost as much as I hated my Dad. Mom used to try to protect me from his disgusting behavior, but what hurt the most was how dragged Mom down, aging her pretty face far too early.

---