Falling for Trouble

Evernight Publishing

www.evernightpublishing.com

Copyright© 2013 Jenika Snow

 
ISBN: 978-1-77130-468-9

Cover
Artist: Sour Cherry Designs

Editor: Cheryl
Harper

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

WARNING:
The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is
illegal.
 
No part of this book may be
used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission,
except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

This is a
work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any
resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or
dead, is entirely coincidental.

DEDICATION

This is for JC and CC. Thanks for helping
me pick the title that was the starting point for these characters' story. I
don't know what I'd do without you two.

FALLING
FOR TROUBLE

Jenika
Snow

Copyright
© 2013

Chapter
One

Six years ago

Sophia
sat on the old, half broken deck, her feet dangling off the sides, the cool
water lapping at her toes. Sometimes if she just closed her eyes, she could
imagine herself in another world, one where everything was good and right. The
only problem was she eventually had to open her eyes and come face-to-face with
reality.

“You’re
thinking again, Kid.” Abe sat beside her, nudging his shoulder against hers.
Even at sixteen Abe was big, with hard lines of muscles and long limbs. They
had been through a lot together, and if not for him, she would have crumbled at
the first opportunity.

Sophia
turned and looked at him, the setting sun causing a swatch of golden color to
slash across his too-handsome face. Just looking at him caused Sophia’s heart
to race. Dark hair swooped across his forehead, and his eyes, so blue they almost
seemed unreal, stared back at her. He was trouble with a capital T.

 
There wasn’t a girl in town that didn’t want
Abe Rochester, and there wasn’t a girl he didn’t like to give that time
to…well, except her. He didn’t look at her like he did the other girls: all
half-lidded gazes, smooth words, and a smile that dropped panties left and
right. No, Abe looked at her like a little sister, and for the first time in
her life she thought that really sucked.

“Thinking
is about all I can do anymore.” She smiled, not really knowing what she meant
by that comment or if it even made any sense. Being around Abe seemed to cause
the wires in her brain to malfunction all at once. It was like overnight she
had realized she cared for him as more than her best friend.

His
big hand covered hers and she turned her gaze back toward the pond. The sun was
just starting to set and the light hit the water, casting tiny crystalline
shards across the silky top.

“One
day all of this isn’t going to matter, Sophie girl.” His hand tightened on hers
and she moved closer, resting her head on his shoulder. “The shitty things that
happened to you, the asshats that think they can mess with you, everything,
Soph.” She knew he was right. “I’m always going to look out for you, Kidd,
always.”

Sophia
didn’t doubt Abe’s words, but there was always doubt inside of her, always the
fear that her life would always be like this.

“You
think too hard, Soph.”

She
lifted her head and looked up at him. “Sometimes you can’t just erase what
happened and look for a brighter future.”

 
Pain danced behind his eyes and he looked
away. His jaw tightened. For several long moments nothing was said, but the
emotions were thick enough to suffocate her.

“I
know, but when life gives you an ugly hand, you have to lean on the people that
love you and hope that they will see you through.” He looked at her again and
kissed her forehead. “I love you, Sophia, and that will never change. Even if I
have to try with my last breath, I’m going to make things better for you.”

She
really hoped that was the truth, but sometimes the ugliness in people’s lives didn’t
stay in the past.

****

Present day

“Hey,
baby. How ’bout you and me go back to your place for a little fun?”

Sophia
rolled her eyes as she poured three shots of Crown. The woman who spoke sidled
up to Abe, her best friend for as long as could remember. She wore a top that
looked like it belonged on the beach and a jean skirt so short there was no
doubt in Sophia’s mind that she’d get a clear shot of her pussy when she bent
over.

She
slid one of the shots to Abe and he smiled in thanks. The girl, who she thought
was named Maxine or Maxi…something like that, rubbed her huge tits on Abe’s
thick, tattooed arm. He looked over at her and let his eyes travel over her
scantily clad body. Despite that this wasn’t uncommon behavior for Abe, Sophia
hated watching it all go down. This was the regular whenever Abe came to
Tiny’s, the bar she worked at. He was a gorgeous man, all six foot three inches
of him. His muscles and tattoos tended to make guys leery of him, but there was
always that one drunken asshole that thought he could take Abe. Obviously they
didn’t know Abe’s reputation. There were a few times he got a shiner, but if
Sophia was being honest, he had deserved them. When he screwed around with
another man’s girlfriend, it tended to piss off the boyfriend, and when alcohol
was in the mix, people thought they were invincible.

Abe
Rochester was considered the town bad boy. He may have been dubbed “Trouble”,
but Sophia knew a different side of him, a side that wasn’t drunk every other
day, getting into brawls, and fucking anything with a pussy. He was the boy she
had followed to the fishing hole when they were ten, the guy that held her when
she was fifteen and crying because Frankie Gutten had called her ugly, and the
same one that beat the shit out of Frankie for saying she was ugly. He was also
her best friend and the one she had to all but carry home on several occasions
because he was too drunk to find his way. How many times had she taken off his
shirt and shoes and tucked his grown ass in bed? Too many too count, but she
would continue to do it because she was a fool in love with her best friend.

“How
much do I owe ya, Kid?” Abe took his wallet out and pulled out a twenty before
handing it over to Sophia. She hated when he called her Kid, a silly nickname
he had given her when they were little. She supposed the nickname was
inevitable since her name was Sophia Kidd, and she’d prefer Abe use it than
some asshole trying to be witty. She was bound to have someone calling her
that.

She
took the twenty and handed him his change. He shook his head and stood. Abe
always gave her the change as a tip even if the bill had been two bucks and he
gave her a twenty. She’d learned early on that it would do no good to argue
with him, so she smiled and tucked the money in her back pocket. Maybe he
thought it was her small fee for putting up with his shit over and over again.
She smiled at her thoughts.

He
stood and grabbed Maxi or whatever her name was around the waist. The light hit
her seriously bad dye job. The dark roots stood out on top of Maxi’s head, and
Sophia could see that she was far older than she originally appeared.

Lines
crinkled around her eyes and mouth, but the woman had attempted to cover it up
with a thick layer of foundation. The end result made her look like some kind
of wax mannequin. It was so not attractive, but then again Abe wasn’t the type
to care so much what the face looked like. What he focused on was what was
between her legs. Disgust slammed into Sophia at the thought that he was taking
home yet another random girl. This was the third one of the week, and there
were still four more days to go.

“You
good, Kid?” Abe looked over his shoulder at her and she nodded. He always asked
her this before he left the bar. Well, when he was sober enough to actually
walk out.

Tiny’s
was only a few blocks from his house, a small cottage-style home that his
parents left him when they both died in a car accident years ago. On the nights
he knew he wasn’t going to be getting drunk, he took his Harley out, a
beautiful FXDC Dyna Super Glide that he had customized himself. Sophia wasn’t
into motorcycles like that, but there was something darkly sexy about seeing
Abe ride up on that machine, his white T-shirt and tattoos, worn denim jeans,
and black boots making him appear as dangerous as he really was.

He
turned around and leaned over the counter to kiss Sophia on the cheek. He could
be sweet when he wanted to. He stalked out, the tattoos covering his back
visible through his shirt.

“Girl,
when are you going to tell him?”

Sophia
looked away and finished drying the glasses she’d just washed. Steph, the other
bartender, wiped down the counter beside her. “I mean, it’s clear as day you
got it bad for that boy, yet you don’t have the balls to tell him. Why?”

Sophia
turned and stared at the other woman. Steph was in her late thirties, but the
world had not been good to her. Weathered and rough, she looked like the kind
of woman who’d ride on the back of a chopper, her eighties-style hair blowing
behind her and her tits practically hanging out. Steph had lost her husband, a
big guy named Zachariah, a year ago. Sophia didn’t know the details, but she
knew he had been in some kind of motorcycle club. There had been rumors
floating around their small town about illegal shit happening with rival clubs
and how Zachariah had died as a result of that. For a long time Steph had been
in bad shape over it, and rightly so, but each day she got better.