Blaze: (Naughty Neighbors 1) Read online

  And though Grant didn’t consider himself a nosy kind of guy—okay, he was, completely and totally nosy—he was dying to see what her place looked like. He knew from her twin brother, Max, that she worked from home as some kind of wedding coordinator or something. So he was just curious how she had her space all set up.

  Well, Grant had a pretty good idea that her bedroom and bathroom fit snugly on top of his, because he was able to hear every damn sound she made through the old vents. And he’d bet his life savings she didn’t know that. Especially not tonight during her rub-a-dub in the tub and later in bed.

  And jeez, later in her bed.

  Usually he was barely home enough hours to do more than fall into an all too brief, coma-like sleep. Maybe have a game on in the background while he was working on briefs, if he was lucky. Why he’d rented more than an efficiency apartment was beyond him. Well, he knew why he had. He was going up for partner soon, and he wanted to appear settled and responsible. But he wasn’t looking for the drama of home ownership anytime soon, and a flashy apartment in one of Dallas’ new high-rises just wasn’t suitable for him and Bess. So when Max had offered him his old place, it had seemed the perfect solution—perfect except for this sultry summer evening and the noises he’d heard from his very lovely landlord.

  Their duplex had once been a stately old home and was in a very desirable neighborhood. From the outside, it still looked like a single-family home. Columns. Wraparound porch. Lush lawn and lots of pink flowers peeping out of all manner of flowerbeds and pots. Though he occupied the entirety of the ground floor, some clever architect had designed the renovation to where they shared the grand entry but didn’t chop his living space into weird pieces. Apparently they hadn’t worked on soundproofing in that reno.

  Grant had tried escaping the ecstatic sighs and moans by way of a couple of longnecks on the back patio. But her windows had been open and the sound of her rising pleasure was even more acute.

  It was hard to do the gentlemanly thing when a real-life porno was playing out above his head, and damn, could he ever fill in the visual blanks in his mind’s eye. His new landlady might not be much of a talker, but fuck was she gorgeous.

  The last time he’d seen her—well, before the tits-out-the-window thing tonight—she’d been wearing some see-through naked dress at his sister’s wedding. All the girls had been forced to wear these blah-colored diaphanous gowns and stupid sparkly doodads tied around their heads. But Laurie’s dress had been almost the exact color of her blush, a creamy, peachy color that had made reciting Con Law flowcharts a necessity as they were walking down the aisle together so his erection wouldn’t offend the congregation.

  Like they’d have been able to look anywhere but at Laurie wrapped up in that soft fabric.

  Her phone buzzed in his back pocket—not a text, but a persistent buzz telling him she had it on vibrate. She was probably trying to call it to locate it. Or else she had met some guy who was blowing up her phone on a Friday night. Damn, if that were the case, he’d back over it with his car and claim ignorance.

  No. He sighed. Grant would be a gentleman and return her phone—without saying a word about what he’d heard. He’d embarrassed her enough already.

  As he mounted the stairs, he saw she was starting to come down. Bess rushed past him to get to Laurie; his dog had had the good sense to instantly fall in love with her when they’d moved in. Once Bess had her complete attention, Laurie didn’t continue her descent.

  “Are we going to play Shakespearean balcony scenes all night?” He laughed to try to dispel some of tension. But it didn’t work. If anything, it caused her to stand up even straighter.

  The old chandelier cast her face in shimmering light, and he thought that it might not be too bad to play at Shakespeare, even if it hadn’t ended well for the young lovers. That tight little tank top she wore was enough to make him risk a tragic death, though.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess it depends if you were a jock who conned some shy, nerdy girl into writing your English papers once upon a time so you could raise hell on the weekend. Seems you have failed to note we are, neither of us, teenagers.” She was giving Bess a thorough and affectionate ear rub, and he had a hard time not being totally envious of his own dog. “Plus, Bess and I don’t fancy following you, or any man, to an untimely death, do we, sugar?”

  She lavished more attention on his dog than she’d ever given him. At his sister’s wedding not long ago, Laurie had barely looked at him, much less spoken words. Much less make his eyes roll back in his head when she rubbed him in just the right spot.

  But she was off limits. Though Max had been happy to have him take over his apartment, Grant was pretty sure he wasn’t also handing over his sister.

  Fantasizing about the sounds she made when she was about to come while jacking off in the shower was probably off limits, too. But that was a grey area Grant was willing to suspend his ethics for.

  Laurie was still standing on the landing, eyeing him warily, sending Bess into paroxysms of pleasure with her scritches.

  “What light through yonder foyer breaks? It’s not a flashlight, it is your phone.” He tried to pick up the thread of their earlier banter, but it fell flat. Who knew how long he’d been standing there just staring at her. Where was his game?

  “That wasn’t even close to iambic pentameter. How did you ever graduate? Pass the bar?” Apparently she thought his game had fled the premises, too.

  “Judges typically frown upon poetry in legal arguments.” He held her phone between his forefinger and thumb. “Restitution.”

  Her eyes lit up, and for a moment, her smile offered him the same joy she’d seen fit to give Bess. “It didn’t shatter into a million pieces? Oh, I’m so glad. Thanks for bringing it up. But I’m just on my way out.”

  “Yeah, I can see that.”

  She was in the same light pink tank top but had pulled some ratty old running shorts on. Not that he’d ever complain. There was something so satisfying about seeing a woman with frizzy hair and knockaround clothes. Something he didn’t get to see all that often. His women were usually thousand-dollar suit and heels types, and rarely did they ever let him see their unpolished sides. If they had them.

  It was…intimate. Familiar. And far more sexy to him than expensive lingerie and structured hairdos.

  Of course, it had been quite a while since he’d seen a woman in any state of dishabille, structured or not.

  “I guess you’re going out back to find what else you’re missing.”

  “I’m not missing out on a thing, Grant.”

  He rocked back on his heels, enjoying looking up at her. The soft undersides of her braless breasts in that top the most enticing view. “Funny. Cuz it sure sounded like you were about to find that missing…something before there was a crash. Maybe a frustrated scream? And then a little plastic guy fell from the sky.”

  “But it looks like my phone survived the fall, so thanks, again,” she said hurriedly, and rushed down a few stairs. When she stood a few risers above him, her big blue eyes level with his, he felt rather than saw her put a hand out.

  Heat rippled between them, and he suspected it had nothing to do with the summer night. If her phone had survived a two-story drop, surely it could survive the sizzle when their fingers brushed.

  “Oh, but I think we both know that something much more important took a flying leap out of your bedroom window before you ever poked your head out and dropped your phone.”

  The look she gave him might have frozen his balls if he hadn’t been prepared for it. He’d let her have this easy win. No need to push it. Besides, he supposed it was the gentlemanly thing to do. After all, he’d be pretty cranky, too, if moments before the big finish he’d been denied.

  “Well, I leave you to have a good Friday night. Drive safe.” He turned and motioned for Bess to follow him down the stairs.

  When he looked back up, she was standing on the same stair, looking down.

  �
��Good night, Laurie.”

  She nodded and he moved to his front door. But not before he heard her muttering curses when he started whistling “Good Vibrations.”

  Chapter 3

  She had never been more miserable.

  Except maybe for that time she had almost hit her neighbor on the head with a flying purple vibrator. Yeeeeah, that had been pretty miserable.

  She couldn’t have slept above three minutes the night before, and the heat hadn’t been the sole reason. Her abject mortification had played a part in her insomnia. And the obsessive way she’d replayed every word he’d said to her.

  Not that it even mattered. It was the twenty-first century. Women had orgasms all the time. Alone! Or at least she’d been trying to have an orgasm—alone—before the traitorous amorphous shape had died in the palm of her hand.

  Why should she even care if he’d heard her orgasm ramping up—and cruelly denied?

  At six, she’d given up on being in bed and had her first shower for the day, unable to even muster the energy for a showerhead-assisted quickie. Once she’d heard his laugh last night, he’d ruined her for every non-Grant-given orgasm.

  Heavens, who knew a heat wave would fry her brains as well as her AC unit? She wasn’t even thinking straight. It was like every rational thought was seeping out of her pores with every drop of sweat. Gross. Laurie had sweated more than she thought was possible; she’d have to burn the sheets and mattress protector when Monday morning came around.

  She could make it until Monday. She could make it until Monday.

  There were people all over the world who didn’t have air conditioning, and their world did not stand still in the face of one hundred and—crud, one hundred and three at the stroke of noon, according to her mercifully unbroken phone.

  At least that was one thing that had gone right last night.

  After she’d aimlessly driven around for a while, long enough to suck down two large unsweetened iced teas and let her car’s AC tease her—or long enough to hope that Grant had gone to bed—she’d come home with a real flashlight and found the purple one only minorly mangled from his short life as a dog chew toy.

  Ew. Ew. Ew. That was just about the grossest thing ever. Even grosser than the time Max had piped toothpaste on the toilet seat of their Jack-and-Jill bathroom growing up. Even grosser than being stuck, bodily, by sweat, to the glider she’d found junk shopping and reupholstered herself, thankyouverymuch. If that project hadn’t been a total pain in the butt, she’d consider recovering it after sullying it this afternoon.

  Maybe she shouldn’t have taken the mangled purple one straight out to the alley trash. What if a band of wild possums overturned the trash bin, scattering the trash bags and the purple one in the alley, and all the neighbors who hadn’t heard Grant’s raining cocks comment last night saw it? What if Grant thought he’d lost a rare nineteenth-century doubloon by accident and went to go through the trash to save the precious artifact? What if—

  She couldn’t go check on it now. No, she’d have to wait until after dark. She couldn’t risk him seeing her. Gah! She hated sneaking around like a thief even though she was in her own backyard. By unspoken agreement, Grant had custody of the deck and backyard and she had full rights to the pretty wraparound porch and its gliders and the hammock on the east side of the house. And that seemed the sensible plan, since he had Bess and Laurie loved the porch. But now it was ridiculous.

  “It’s ridiculous for you to be this miserable.”

  His voice nearly turned her out of the glider. At least spilling her iced tea everywhere cooled her off. Marginally.

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.” He was poking his head out of his living room window, and the blast of AC that wafted out almost made her cry. “When did you say the repair guys were coming out again?”

  “Monday.”

  He swore and then slammed his window. Laurie didn’t know if she missed his voice or the cool air that had trickled out more.

  Oh, the air. Definitely the air.

  Grant moseyed out to the porch, a travel mug of coffee in one hand. In that moment, she became aware of the wet spots on her shorts and tank top. Her nipples in tight points beneath the built-in shelf bra.

  And from the direction of his gaze, so did he.

  She refused to shift and hide—how could she without leaving altogether?

  So women sweat. Deal with it! She wasn’t going to hide what was a natural reaction to heat and humidity.

  He leaned one hip against the porch railing, drawing her attention to his basketball shorts and his massive quadriceps. Yeah, how do you like that leering now?

  What she’d give to test those with her teeth as she meandered her way up—

  “Stay with me.”

  She felt that weird cartoon brrzup of a record player screeching to a halt, actually felt that in her body. And when he repeated his request, she hoped she imagined the way his voice got a little gravelly and another interesting bulge appeared under those shorts.

  “I couldn’t possibly impose…”

  He waved his coffee mug, and though it smelled divine and she needed the caffeine jolt after a sleepless night, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to make a hot cup.

  “Take it out of next month’s rent if you’re that fussy about it. I can’t bear to be sitting in my office, cool and well rested, knowing you must be miserable.”

  “It’s not that bad, Grant. There are millions of people all over the world who live without air conditioning.”

  She watched his stomach leap a little when he let loose with a guttural laugh. Why did he have to be so hot? Why couldn’t Max have recommended his elderly administrative assistant to rent the lower unit? Not this paragon of manly pulchritude.

  “Yeah, well, there’s nuns and priests who are celibate and you don’t see the rest of the world following suit.”

  It was an interesting argument in light of last night, but she wasn’t going there. With him.

  Oh flip, did she ever want to go there with him.

  “Come on. Take a cold shower. Hang out on my couch under the ceiling fan. I’ll even crank down the air to seventy just for you. You won’t bother me.”

  Oh, but he’d bother her. There was no way she could get naked and wet in his apartment.

  Though getting naked and wet in his apartment sounded like the best idea she’d ever had. The stupidest idea she’d ever had. But the best stupid idea.

  He seemed to sense her reluctance, and she watched, fascinated, as his mind seemed to scroll through and discard a series of arguments that would convince her.

  “Actually, you’d be doing me a favor. You’re Bess’s favorite person at the moment and she’s driving me crazy today.”

  Ah, damn him, he’d hit on her one weakness. She’d be hard pressed to turn down the opportunity to snuggle with an animal who actually cared she was alive. “I don’t know…”

  “I’ve got an ass, um, boatload of case files to review today, and she just won’t leave me alone with you out here on the porch.”

  Finally, insanity won out and Laurie agreed. Though she tried to convince herself it was because he was a lawyer and would badger her with arguments until she capitulated. Her sense of self-sufficiency demanded it. It had nothing to do with wanting to get up close and personal to that sizable bulge in his shorts. Nothing to do at all with fantasizing that he’d ask to join her under the shower’s spray.

  Nope. Nothing.

  She waited until he sauntered back inside. Jackass hadn’t even broken a sweat while sitting on the porch while she—oh, sick—she had sweat spots in places she didn’t know it was possible to sweat. Laurie arranged a throw pillow to cover up the worst of it.

  It felt like she squished all the way up the stairs into her place.

  She fought the urge to take a quick shower before she went down to his blessedly air-conditioned place to shower again. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen her at her absolute worst. Twice.

  And
, heck, why did it even matter? She was his landlady, and though he could probably recite all the specific county, state, and federal housing codes that said there was no law against neighbors fucking, she was pretty sure fraternization was frowned upon.

  It felt weird to gather up not only clothes and toiletries but a set of towels, but she’d be double damned if she’d use his towels. Being in his shower was going to be enough to fuel a thousand nights’ worth of dirty fantasies. She wouldn’t compound matters by rubbing his towels all over her, transferring his clean laundry and spice scent to her own skin.

  Laurie had picked out every blessed tile in the reno, had insisted Max go with a dual-overhead spray and pony up for the steam features. Never once had it crossed her mind she’d designed the world’s sexiest shower.

  Until Grant Everton had moved in.

  Shaking her head, Laurie gave her cat a gentle nudge off her small carryon, filled it with her shower stuff, and zipped it shut. She worried about leaving Rochester upstairs, but he’d probably flip out if she tried to move him. No, he definitely would. And he seemed okay with the tower fan in the living room. Plus, she wasn’t abandoning him forever. It was only temporary. Laurie absolutely drew the line at sleeping over.

  She would be back at sunset.

  Chapter 4

  “Whoa, are you moving in?”

  He’d meant it as a joke when she appeared on his doorstep with a small rolling suitcase and a makeup bag. But as he lead her through the apartment on the way to his master bath, he thought he could get used to seeing a face like hers over the breakfast table.

  And an ass like that bent over the breakfast table.

  Over the arm of the couch. Up against the wall in the hallway. Spread out on his sheets while he—