Pretending She's His: A Hard Feelings Novella (13 page)

“Your six thirty sketch consult is here,” Harold said, popping his tiny-ass head into Ronnie’s room.

Ronnie slathered some ointment on top of the freshly branded flesh. “Tell him I will be there in a few, I’m just finishing up this girl’s latest mistake.”

“Ronnie!” Harold admonished, but he knew good and well that Ronnie said and did what she wanted and even he couldn’t stop her. She was too good an artist to let go anyway. She was the best he had ever seen.

Ronnie lifted her head and raised her eyebrows at Harold, challenging him. He just shook his head and walked away.

“All right, keep it clean, but don’t mess with it too much.” She covered the girl’s tattoo with a non-stick bandage and taped it down before turning and cleaning up.

“Harold will check you out.” She stood from her chair and headed out of the room without as much as looking back behind her.

Most would call her rude, but she liked to think of it more as “real.” She didn’t sugarcoat anything and she wasn’t going to pretend to like you if she didn’t.

Ronnie sashayed to the front of the tattoo shop. She had one last client tonight and then she could slip off her heels and go home. Sure, she was going home to nothing, and not because her fiancé was still deployed and overseas, but because her fiancé was now an ex-fiancé and her solo living arrangement was now irreversible. Apparently her fiancé had a problem keeping it in his pants while he was gone, and his squad’s female medic just so happened to be the lucky one to help him with his little, and she did mean little, dilemma. Okay, maybe she was being a smidge too hard on him . . . nah.

The shitty thing about it all, well, other than her fiancé sleeping around on her, was that she found out from someone else. His best friend, who just so happened to be deployed with him, called and told her what was going on. That was not a phone call that she wanted to get, let alone from someone other than the piece-of-shit cheater himself. When she confronted her fiancé about it, he didn’t even deny it, just acted like she should forget about it. He was halfway across the world, how could she possibly think he could wait that long? Fucking prick.

“Kale Emerson?” Ronnie said, scanning the waiting room. There were only two people there: one was Harold’s intern, who was waiting to do his nightly bitch work, and the other one was a fuckingly handsome Captain America impersonator. He was tall, broad, and his well-defined arms were bulging through the thin material of his shirt. His sandy-brown hair was cut short, barely enough on top to run your hands through, and of course he had to have blue eyes that seemed to grab onto hers with a force that held her captive. And for the first time in a long time, she felt vulnerable.

Keep reading for an excerpt from the second Hard Feelings novel, Reed and Meagan’s love story

FEEL THE RUSH

Available now from InterMix

Meagan loved summer nights. It was nine o’clock and only now starting to get dark. The sky was still that dim blue, like it was holding its breath for daylight before the night smothered it. And the Southern air was beautiful—just the right amount of warmth to make it perfect.

Meagan pulled her feet out of the open passenger-side window of Eva’s truck as they pulled into their new apartment building in Columbus, Georgia, and sat back up so she could get a better look. It was a small community, just eight apartment buildings forming a square surrounded by the parking lot. It seemed almost cold, isolated. There was only a small section of grass extending from the buildings to the sidewalk—other than that, it was empty, plain, and very unimpressive. But it was nighttime—maybe it would look better during the day. Here’s for hoping.

Eva parked in a couple of parking spots. Luckily she owned an oversized monster of a truck, and it was able to pull Meagan’s little Volkswagen Beetle on a trailer. It would have been complete hell driving the entire nineteen hours in the car by herself, although having complete control of the music would have been nice. If Meagan never had to listen to another country song, it would be too soon—and she didn’t even mind country music, but nineteen hours of straight twang was torture.

Meagan hopped out of the truck to stretch her legs. She brought up her ankle to her butt to stretch out her thighs, which had cramped up somewhere in North Carolina, and the pull she felt in her muscles was delicious.

Eva walked around the front of the truck and stopped in front of Meagan. “So, what do you think?”

“It’s great.”

“Don’t lie to me. I can tell by the complete look of panic on your face that you think it sucks. Well, don’t get your panties in a bunch, princess. The pictures on their website looked great.” That wasn’t completely promising. “I’m meeting the landlord at his apartment to get our key since the office is closed. I’ll be right back.”

“Um, Eva, that sounds a little sketchy,” she said, leaning against the side of the truck. “I’m going to stay here and watch our stuff. If you’re not back in ten minutes, I’m going to assume that you’ve been offed by the landlord and I’m taking the truck and getting the hell out of here.”

Eva tossed Meagan the truck keys. “You wouldn’t come looking for me?”

“Hell no, this feels like the beginning to a cheap horror movie—it would be called
Tenants
. But I will be the smart one that gets away in the end, you will be the stupid one that goes running to the killer in the middle of the night looking for your damn apartment key.” She shook her head and laughed as Eva looked completely amused. “It’s your funeral.”

“You’re such a bitch; I can’t believe you wouldn’t come save me. I’ll remember that!” she shouted as she walked toward the apartment building in front of them.

Meagan smiled and then opened up the door to the truck and grabbed two very noisy crates from the backseat. “Hopefully we will be inside soon so you guys can get out of there,” she said, peeking in to look at her cats, who sounded like they were dying—they really hated those damn things.

Within a few minutes, Eva was jogging back to the truck with a couple of keys dangling from her fingers. “Did the boogeyman come while I was gone?”

“Shut up. Which one’s ours?” she asked, handing Eva a litter box and a container of litter.

“This way.”

Meagan picked up the crates and followed Eva down the walkway in between the two buildings that were in front of them. When they got to the back side of the buildings, it was like they were in a completely different world. It was absolutely beautiful. It was set up like a courtyard, with a stone fountain surrounded by a circular stone walkway placed in the center of the enormous grounds. The lawn was beautiful, professionally landscaped to perfection. It was the middle of June, and flowers were blooming everywhere, and there was a handful of surprisingly mature trees throughout. There was a huge pool at the far side of the courtyard, complete with a diving board and a twirly slide—and yes, the twirly slide got her the most excited. When she looked at the backs of the buildings, there were small patios and decks that faced the courtyard.

“This is amazing, Eva.”

“No shit,” she murmured, slightly surprised as well. “This is even better than the website led on. Now I’m dying to see the inside. We should be this one right over here.” She walked to the building to the right of the fountain, stuck her key into the patio door of apartment 2C, and pushed it open.

Meagan was more than pleasantly surprised when she walked in. Actually, that was putting it mildly. Going off the opinion she had from looking at the outside of the building, she was completely prepared for molded carpet, broken cabinets, crusty bathrooms, and maybe even one of those chalk outlines of a dead body on the kitchen floor.

Instead, she saw beautiful hardwood floors—okay, so they were probably laminate floors, but they sure as hell were better than nasty carpet—stainless-steel appliances, beautiful mocha-colored cabinets, and the bathrooms—there were three! This place made her old apartment look like a college dorm room, which actually wasn’t too far off from the truth, to be honest. This apartment was clean and spacious with a huge eat-in kitchen and a separate dining room. The bedrooms were large with walk-in closets and each one had their own bathroom.

“So what do you think?” Eva asked, looking around the large, open living room.

“I’m thinking this is a hell of a lot better than my old apartment.”

“We’re splitting the rent, roomie. You can afford a big-girl apartment now.”

“Point taken. In that case, I’m glad I left all the planning to you. This is perfect.”

Eva headed toward the front door, which Meagan assumed led to the outside of the apartment building. “I’m not gonna say, ‘I told you so’. . . well, yep . . . I am . . . ‘I told you so’. I’m gonna go grab a couple boxes.”

Meagan rolled her eyes. “Okay, I will be out to help in a minute. I’m going to let Harry and Weasley out and get their litter box set up real quick.”

“Okay,” Eva said before shutting the door behind her.

Meagan opened up the crate. You would have thought they got bit in the ass by the way they bolted out. Meagan laughed. “Not too bad, huh?”

Meagan stepped back and looked around her new home. Sure, there was nothing filling it yet, and there probably wouldn’t be anything for another couple of weeks until the movers got there, but oddly enough it already felt like a place she could settle in to. She still had slight reservations about packing up her entire life and moving, all within a matter of weeks, but just being here eased those up a little bit. Moving without any plan was probably the most irresponsible thing she had ever done, but if she wanted to change, if she wanted to find her forever, why not get a fresh start? She swept her eyes around the empty apartment again. This was it—her fresh start.

“Hey, Meggy, grab the door for me, will ya?” she heard Eva holler from the living room as she walked out of the laundry room.

Meagan hurried to Eva, who had her hands full of boxes stacked one on top of the other. That little shit was strong. “Seriously, I’m about to drop. . . .”

The top box fell from her hands. Luckily the army was moving most of their stuff and all they had packed with them were mostly clothes, but the sound of the box hitting the hard floor scared the crap out of Harry and he bolted out the patio door.

“Shit!”

Meagan ran after him. This was great, they had been here a total of ten minutes and her cat was already lost. Looking for a black cat at nighttime was difficult, add the fact that they were in a new place and the cat had just been spooked to the equation, and Meagan knew it was going to be hard to find him.

“Here, kitty, kitty, kitty,” she said over and over as she frantically searched the courtyard. As she was coming up to the fountain she heard a deathly screech, one that could only be her cat, followed by a bark that more resembled thunder.

Great.

There was a dog—no, this wasn’t a dog, it looked more like a bear—barking at one of the larger trees in the courtyard. Meagan ran to the tree and sure enough, Harry was halfway up, hissing like a trooper at the devil dog below.

“Dammit,” she said under her breath. “Go. Shoo. Get out of here. Get the hell out of here, Cujo.”

“Actually, his name’s Tiny,” a low Southern voice said from behind her, making her spine stiffen and her pulse accelerate.

Kelsie Leverich
is the author of the Hard Feelings novels, including
The Valentine’s Arrangement
and
Feel the Rush
. She lives with her husband, two children, and their three pets. She loves stories that can sweep you off your feet, make you fall in love, break your heart, and heal your soul.