Page 1 of But For You

ONE

2009

The man was a pig, and it wasn’t just me who thought so. Rosa Martinez, who lived on the other side of the Petersons, agreed with me. In fact, all the women who lived on our cul-de-sac were of the same mind. Steve Peterson, whose wife had just caught him cheating on her—again—was filth. It wasn’t the fact that they already had two children; it was the fact that she was currently pregnant with their third.

Sam—the love of my life, my partner, husband, and the guy who was parenting two small people with me—just shook his head the night before and kissed me breathless after telling me for the nine hundredth time to please not get involved. Leave the neighbors alone. This was not Housewives of Wherever; we were not on reality TV. I explained over the Chinese food that he’d brought home instead of having me cook—which, really, was very thoughtful—that I was involved because I was her friend.

“No,” he told me as we put the kids down. “You use that word too loosely. She’s an acquaintance, Jory; she’s not a friend.”

“She’s my neighbor, Sam, and her man’s a dog, and if she needs my help with whatever, I’m gonna give it to her.”

“I’m not saying not to be nice to her, but just don’t stick your nose in their business.”

I ignored him.

“Jory Harcourt!”

I gave him the most indignant look I could manage. “So, I’m what, nosy now? I’m the busybody neighbor?”

He threw up his hands in defeat.

I gave him a superior grunt because I thought he was on his way out of the bedroom to check the house, make sure all the doors were locked, and the stove burners were off, but then I realized he hadn’t moved. “What?”

“You’re very cute.”

I squinted at him. “Thirty-two-year-old men are not cute.”

“You’ll always be the twenty-two-year-old club kid I saw for the first time lying in the street with a beagle on top of him.”

I squinted at him. “I thought George was a Jack Russell.”

“Nope.” He came toward me. “Beagle.”

“Go away.” I smiled at him, trying to shoo him out of the room. “Go make sure the zombie horde can’t get us.”

But instead of leaving, he grabbed me and bumped me up against the wall in our room. With his hot mouth nibbling up the side of my neck, his hands frantically disrobing me, and his hard groin pressed to my ass, my mind went completely blank. There was no way to concentrate when I had 220 pounds of hard-muscled man focused on getting me in bed.

But the next day, as I staggered around my kitchen—I never had been and never would be a morning person—I saw my neighbors on their front porch. Christie Peterson was smiling tentatively, and her husband was scowling. I just wanted to go over and punch him out. I had an idea of what I must look like—robe on, T-shirt and pajama bottoms under that, bunny slippers looking all bright-eyed and happy; I resembled the nosy neighbor in every sense.

A throat cleared behind me.

“Don’t you have to go to work?” I asked pointedly. It was Wednesday, not Saturday.

The warm rumbling chuckle was next. “You think maybe now, since you’ve got one kid in preschool and the other in kindergarten, you should start thinking about going back to working from your office?”

Obviously, my sanity was in question because I was still working from home. I hoped the look I gave him when I turned and squinted conveyed my displeasure.

He snorted out a laugh.

I all-out scowled at the supervisory deputy US marshal standing beside me at the kitchen sink. We had both been looking at the Petersons. “Why would you say that?”

“Say what?”

“You know what you said.”

He pressed his beautiful lips together in a hard line so he wouldn’t smile.

“Sam?”