She's No Angel. Leslie Kelly
want him. The attraction was purely one-sided.
That, it seemed, was the end of that. The interesting interlude was over and he’d never see Jennifer Feeney again. By her choice. He wondered why the thought bothered him so much, considering he’d known her all of an hour.
Left with no other option, he put out his hand. Ignoring the cool softness of her skin against his, he said, “Good luck. Don’t kill anyone.”
Without another word, he got in his Jeep, and drove away.
RIGHT AFTER SHE’D BEEN DROPPED off in the driveway by Mr. Hunky-but-aloof, Jen calmly finished picking up all her things. Well, pretty calmly, considering how painful it was to see the mangled shoes and broken luggage. If her parents had been around to hear the words coming out of her mouth, they would have regretted wasting their money on her parochial-school education.
Somehow, she put aside her anger and managed to repack. Though she suspected Ida Mae and Ivy were watching from their windows, no matter how many times she looked toward them, she never caught as much as a twitch of a curtain.
That didn’t mean anything. The old structures were so dark inside—as forbidding and unwelcoming as a pair of caves—either of the aunts could have been standing behind an uncurtained window, studying her every move. Her gaze would never have been able to penetrate the murky recesses of the houses to see them. But she could see them in her mind. Arming themselves in case she came in. Or praying to the gods of mean old ladies for her to get in her car and drive away, never to bother them again.
Fat chance. Not giving up, not giving up, not giving up.
When, she wondered, had it become a crime to offer to pay a fortune to put up your relatives in a pricey, lovely retirement village where they could be waited on, kept fed and entertained, with lots of elderly single men to keep them occupied?
She simply had to explain—had to make them see.
Once she’d picked up all her things, she carried them to Ida Mae’s porch and reached for the doorknob. It was, for the first time she could ever recall, locked.
Pounding on the door, she cupped her hands around her eyes and tried to peer through the dirty inset glass. About all she could make out were the tiny dead bugs stuck between the window and the door frame. “Aunt Ida Mae? Come on, open up, we need to talk about this,” she yelled before pounding again.
A full minute went past. No Ida Mae. No Ivy. But from somewhere above, she heard the squeak of a window. Quickly backing off the porch, down the front steps, she looked up just in time to see a toothbrush come sailing through the air.
It was hers. And it landed in the dirt.
Jen gritted her teeth as the window slammed shut. “I’m not leaving,” she shouted, glaring at the second story of the house.
The window slowly groaned open again.
“Aunt Ida Mae?”
This time, her hairbrush was sent flying. It landed in a patch of mud a few feet away from the toothbrush.
“This is war,” she muttered, marching back up to the porch and trying the windows to the parlor. Though they didn’t budge, she wasn’t about to give up, and made her way around the entire perimeter of the house. Knowing the old woman wasn’t too concerned about security in this small, quiet town, she tried every single window, certain Ida Mae wouldn’t have locked them all since she’d ditched Jen in the middle of nowhere.
“Damn,” she muttered, trying the last one, to no avail.
Still not giving up, she went next door to Ivy’s monstrosity, only to discover the same thing. “They’re pretty serious,” she whispered, still not sure whether to scream and pound on the door or laugh at how darned determined they were.
The warped back porches of both houses nearly touched each other, and the two sisters went back and forth constantly, never trying to keep each other out. If Ida Mae had locked her door against Ivy, her sister would likely have taken offense and burned her house down.
Some would speculate that it wasn’t the first time.
Despite being a Feeney, Jen was not an arsonist. “But I am capable of a little breaking and entering,” she murmured. Especially because she paid the bills on these two houses.
Eyeing a small window into Ida Mae’s laundry room, she gave it some serious thought. It was already dingy and cracked, and would be just big enough for her to squeeze through.
Well, maybe. Given her recent love affair with two guys named Ben and Jerry, who’d substituted for any real man in Jen’s life, she had some serious hip action going on and she suspected some in the hood would say she had back. But she still suspected she could push herself through and pop out the other side like a cork emerging from a bottle.
Only to land on her head on the washing machine and bleed to death because, given her mood, Aunt Ida Mae wouldn’t lift a hand to call 9-1-1, if they even had such a thing in this town.
Okay. No breaking and entering.
She couldn’t force her way in, and she knew the best thing to do when dealing with the Feeney sisters was to outwit them. Or outwait them. So, deciding to make them think they’d succeeded, and, hopefully, let down their guard, she went around front, got her stuff and threw it into the trunk of her car.
“Put away your weapons, start celebrating,” she whispered as she started the car. “Just unlock a door.”
As she drove off, watching the houses in her rearview mirror, she waited for one of the women to come out on her porch and do an end-zone happy dance. Jen couldn’t watch for long, however, because she hadn’t gone a single mile when the car’s engine started to sputter. Quickly glancing at the gas gauge and seeing it firmly below the E, she groaned. “Oh, no, you did not!”
But they had. The two maniacal old women had gone on a joy ride and emptied her tank. And for the second time that day, Jen found herself stranded, thanks to the wicked Feeney sisters.
CHAPTER FOUR
When Napoleon dumped Josephine, don’t you think she was dying to run around saying, “That thing about a man’s height and his length…it’s true, it’s true!”
—I Want You, I Love You, Get Out by Jennifer Feeney
AFTER MIKE HAD DROPPED JEN OFF at her aunts’ houses, he’d made the short drive to his grandfather’s place. With every second, he’d tried to force all thoughts of the strange interlude he’d just shared with her out of his head. In the future, he’d probably look back and grin, thinking about the sexy, crazy woman with the tire iron. But for now, he was still too focused on the sexy part of the equation. Which wasn’t good. He didn’t need to be thinking that way about anyone right now, especially not a woman who had a violent streak. A woman he’d never see again.
He got as far as his grandfather’s driveway before he remembered the one thing he had neglected to pack. The dog snuffling against the back of his neck reminded him of the dog food still sitting on his kitchen counter at home. He had nothing for Mutt.
“Sorry, boy,” he said as he drove up toward the house.
He knew better than to just get out and leave a trip to the store until later. Mortimer would insist on giving Mutt an entire grilled sirloin, which would make Roderick sniff and mumble stuff about cooking for dogs. They’d snipe at each other like an old married couple—Roderick would get his feelings hurt, Mortimer would be completely oblivious and Mike would sit in silence all evening.
Uh-uh. No thanks.
The crotchety and affectionate, love-hate relationship between the two men might make people who didn’t know them wonder how close they were. Looking at them under today’s standards, their relationship might be questionable. But Mike knew better. In their day, Mortimer and Roderick had forged a completely unbreakable brotherhood, fired in battle, cemented during years of adventure and treasure-hunting. They’d been the