Page 7 of Temptress

I chewed on my bottom lip, then told her about the scene I’d witnessed the day before. “I felt like an asshole for spying on the man when he was having a moment. I really did. I just couldn’t make myself stop.” My lips pulled into aneek. “That’s really weird isn’t it?”

She worked the cork out of the bottle with a pop as she gave my questions some thought. “Well,” she started as she poured us each a glass, “it’s not the sanest behavior. But I don’t really blame you. I saw the pictures.” She shrugged casually, took a drink, and rounded the island, passing the second one to me before taking a seat on the stool beside mine. She’d come over after our Whiskey Doll rehearsal for a bit of gossip and wine, and I’d finally opened up about the less than stellar first meeting with the dude next door. “The guy is five-alarm hot. I don’t think you can be held accountable for staring when he’s shirtless.”

I nodded, my eyes big. “Yes, exactly! And I have to tell you, shirtless?” I blew out a whistle. “It’s something else. I think I stared for so long because I was frozen in place by the sight of him.”

She sipped her wine thoughtfully, her gaze traveling to the kitchen window that faced next door. “You really haven’t talked to him since that first time?”

I shook my head. “Nope. Not once. I’ve tried giving him the benefit of the doubt that maybe he was stressed from the move or something. But the few times I saw him in passing and waved, he just kept right on going like he didn’t see me.”

She raised a brow in question. “Maybe hedidn’tsee you?”

I narrowed my eyes. “Oh, he saw me. He’s just an asshole.”

She gave me a sympathetic look. “I think maybe it’s still a little early for you to make snap judgments. I mean, you don’t want to get into a war with your neighbor, right? Maybe he really and truly is having a stressful time of it.”

I thought back to the pain and sadness in his eyes when I’d been spying. Maybe she had a point. I’d always been the kind of person to see the best in everyone, even to my own detriment sometimes. I’d been burned more than once because I’d been so set on believing in someone who didn’t deserve it.

You’d have thought that would jade me, but I was an eternal optimist, something my mother sneered at regularly.

“When will you learn, Sloane?”

“You can’t trust people, Sloane. You’ll just end up broken-hearted.”

“You’re so naïve, Sloane.”

“One of these days, you’ll see. You’ll let someone in who’ll crush you, and I’ll be there to say I told you so.”

That last one was a particular favorite of hers, said so much I couldn’t help but think she was giddy at the idea of being able to say that to me one day.

I didn’t need a therapist to tell me the reason for my optimism was because I was desperate to go so far in the other direction of my bitter, cynical mother, that I could never be anything like her. It killed me that she let heartbreak and a hard life sour her to anything good. For as long as I could remember, she’d clung to the bad, feeding it until it festered and turned her into a miserable shell of a woman.

I wouldn’t be like that. I wouldneverbe like her.

So I told myself that Asher was right. I needed to give him the benefit of the doubt. He probably was a good guy.

“You’re right,” I said, nodding resolutely. “I’m jumping the gun. I should give him another chance.”

We held our wineglasses aloft and clinked them gently against each other. “Cheers to that, and to hopefully discovering your neighbor isn’t a shithead.”

I could drink to that.

5

SLOANE

Asher was wrong.

My neighbor was such a shithead!

My tires squealed as I whipped my car into the driveway and slammed on the brakes. I was in such a state at what I was witnessing that I forgot to put the thing into park before I threw the door opened and tried to climb out.

“Son of a bitch,” I mumbled as my car started drifting backward while I had one foot hanging out the door. I was going to run over my own damn foot if I wasn’t careful.

Pulling my foot back into the car, I slammed the gear shift into park and yanked up the parking brake for good measure before leaping out and running toward the destruction my neighbor was currently causing.

“Hey, what the hell?” I shouted, but he couldn’t hear me over the sound of the freakingchain sawhe was wielding. I waved my arms above my head frantically, yelling to catch his attention as he butchered the rose bushes I’d tended for so long between our houses. “Hey, knock it off! What the hell do you think you’re doing, you selfish prick?” I yelled at the top of my lungs, the last three words spilling out rightafterhe caught sight of me and turned off the stupid saw.

He pushed the safety glasses covering his eyes up into his hair and pulled down the bandana he’d been wearing as a mask, letting it pool around his neck. Any other day, I would have taken in the way he swiped at the sweat on his forehead with the back of his hand or the way his forearms flexed while wielding the dangerous tool and thought it was sexy as hell.

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