NEXT TO ME (A Love Happens Novel Book 1) (21 page)

They did hit it off. If he and Ali had hit it off any better, they would be on their way to a cheesy roadside chapel in Vegas by now because Sam had come just that close with her. Closer than with any other woman, ever. And quick, too. If only she hadn’t lied and schemed, intent on manipulating him for reasons he’d yet to figure out, they might well be past the point of no return, legally speaking. At least not without attorneys getting involved.

Shit, after what he’d found out today, Ali probably still had her divorce lawyer on retainer.

Helping Donna with the dishes first, then with Ava’s bedtime routine later, Sam listened with half an ear as she lamented about her latest listing, a ramshackle mid-century mansion that was nothing but a money pit disguised in ornamental woodwork and sweeping city views. He nodded and commented when appropriate, but his mind was on what she had said earlier.

Ali had known who he was all along. What he did for a living now and what he’d done for a living before. And she had known that information long before their first meeting on the beach. Long before their date for drinks that hadn’t ended until the next morning, after he’d been buried several inches into her, multiple times. Ali had been playing him like a five dollar fucking fiddle and he’d had no goddamn idea the entire time. For the first time in his life, Sam had been blindsided by hot pussy. It was an embarrassing realization.

Sitting outside on Donna’s small patio, overlooking a rickety metal swingset consuming much of the grassy backyard, Sam chugged his second bottle of pale ale and told his sister as much, laying out the whole story. Minus all the mind blowing, supercharged sex Ali had given him, of course. She must have known that nothing kept a guy coming back for more than an all access pass into a hot chick’s pants and her proven ability to make him see God with a single blowjob. The twinge of self-loathing Sam felt for making the passionate sex he’d shared with Ali sound dirty and heartless only pissed him off more. His emotions, and his heart, had certainly been involved, but Ali’s had not.

“It was all a head game, Donna. And I never saw it coming.”

“Are you sure we’re talking about the same woman, Sammy? You know, centerfold body with an Ivy league brain? Kind of jumpy?”

“Yeah, her. I can’t figure out what her motivation was.” He raked his fingers through his hair, the gesture a telling sign of his frustration. “I’m not sure it even matters.”

Donna looked off into the distance, shaking her head. “Well, it can’t be that she’s looking for a sugar Daddy. She seems to have plenty of money on her own. I wonder why she wouldn’t tell you that we know each other? That’s really strange, Sam. And her husband just showed up this morning, out of the blue? And he rang the doorbell?”

“Ex,” he added, before nodding, not that it necessarily made a difference. “And more importantly, he probably ate my fucking pizza, too. With a fork.” Smirking, he slouched deeper into the patio chair, dangling the bottle of beer between his fingers. “I liked her, Donna.”

“Oh, Sam.” His sister’s reply was as quiet as his softly spoken confession and she put her hand on his arm. “I’m sure there’s a perfectly logical explanation. In fact, it’s probably just a big misunderstanding. Go talk to her. Listen to what she has to say and work it out.
Like
is not a word I’ve heard you use before when referring to a woman.”

She was right on all counts. That was the reasonable thing to do. Unfortunately, Sam’s anger was at a level beyond reason and his pride wasn’t faring too well, either. Shaking his head, he stood and drained the last of his beer, planning to break the seal on a new bottle of Glenlivet as soon as he got home. The scotch had been sitting unopened in his kitchen cabinet for months and now seemed as good a time as any to drink his way to the bottom of it. Single malt couldn’t cure what ailed him, but Sam was willing to give it a fair shot.

Walking him to the door, Donna used her mom voice and gave him one last piece of advice. “The world isn’t always as black and white as we want it to be, Sammy. Like we think it should be. Living in the gray is okay.” She glanced down the hall to Ava’s partially closed bedroom door. “Sometimes it’s messy and confusing to navigate your way through, but it’s where all the good stuff in life is, you know.”

Sam did know. A person’s life, planned and executed down to the most minute detail, wasn’t possible. It was the trusty, go with the flow philosophy. And her ‘do not be like Dad or Steve Decker’ went without saying. Donna’s ex-husband Steve had skipped out on her the day after their ninth wedding anniversary. The fact that it was two days after Ava had been born was no coincidence. His sister believed the existence of an unplanned baby had been the reason why her workaholic husband, once steady and conservative, had run for the hills before his wife and newborn child had been released from the hospital. And there might be a fair amount of truth to that, but more likely it was the pair of augmented double D’s that had answered the door when Sam had tracked Steve down to a posh cabin near Lake Tahoe. The support checks had been coming steadily ever since. Steve might be a first class weasel, but he wasn’t stupid. He wanted to live, or so he’d told Sam when faced with dying a painfully slow death, his body never to be found, or paying up for his kid. If Donna knew about Sam’s visit—or the double D’s—she’d kept it to herself.

Mulling over her parting words on the drive back to La Jolla, Sam wondered if he had it in him. If he could forgive Ali for the lies she had told and the secrets she had kept, and accept the less than honest circumstances that led to their meeting. If he could build a life with her that was rooted, and currently bogged down in, the gray. The answers eluded him.

Halfway home, he was anticipating the hot burn of smooth, twenty-year-old Scottish whiskey when the loud beat of Five Finger Death Punch filled the silent car. Sam cursed under his breath, now hating the sound of that damn ringtone. It was Grady’s weekend to receive the auto-dialed calls to Scorpio’s central station, relaying intrusion information when one of their security systems was breached. Sam wasn’t surprised by his call, the guys knew standard protocol was to alert either him or Ash each time a circuit was interrupted, unintentionally or not.

“Hey, are you with Ali? Tell her to turn the alarm off. She’s not picking up my call.”

Sam hesitated. “Her alarm’s been activated?”

“Yeah. The siren was turned off forty-two seconds after it sounded, but the silent alert on the panic button is still active. Has been for over seven minutes. You’re there, right? Tell her to stop molesting you for a second and go turn it off. How the hell did you two manage trigger it, anyway? Wait,” he said, his drawl deepening, “don’t tell me, man. It’ll only make me jealous.”

The hair on the back of Sam’s neck stood up. This wasn’t a false alarm. “Call it in, Grady. Tell them we have a possible domestic disturbance. And a home invasion.”

“What? You’re not there?” Confusion and concern laced his voice.

“No, but I’m on my way.” Disconnecting the call, he quickly tapped Ali’s number but got the same thing Grady had. Nothing. Only her generic, computer generated voice mail message answered, no matter how many times he dialed it.

Long minutes later, he pulled into the quiet, ocean front community on two wheels, knowing something bad was about to go down. Ali was meticulous when it came to that damn alarm. No matter how distracted she was, how rushed to get him upstairs and into bed, she had never forgotten to set the alarm. Ali didn’t so much as walk to her mailbox without setting it, so the fact that it was pinging through to the Scorpio hotline, alerting them of a perimeter breach on their system and made all the more significant by the silent, duress beacon, could only mean one thing. Bad news. Leaning over, he reached into the small glove box and grabbed the loaded 9mm he kept stashed there—legally, thanks to a conceal carry permit—just as his car came to a stop at the end of her driveway, blocking the white Mercedes now backed up close to the garage door. Every light in her house was on, the two story cottage lit up like a Christmas tree, and Sam’s adrenaline surged. Ali did not leave her alarm ringing and she did not leave her lights on.

She also did not leave her front door unlocked, but when Sam silently turned the knob, pushing the heavy door open slowly and entering the house undetected, he was grateful. Breaking the fucking thing down would have cost him precious seconds.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Ali tried not to show her fear. Like a starving coyote looking for his next meal, Danny would attack at the first sign of it, knowing he had the upper hand. As it was, he was in full control of the situation anyway, but her mama had always taught her to fight fire with fire and after years of letting Danny control her life, now was finally the time. Hitching up her chin, she stared him down, as if his presence in her home was a mere nuisance. His cold eyes narrowed on her, the left one bloodshot and bruised a plummy shade of blue, blackening already as it slowly swelled shut. Imagining she’d been the one to give him that mother of all shiners, Ali smiled broadly. Goosebumps bloomed on her arms when he simply smiled back, as if he could read her mind. Barely moving a muscle, she darted a quick look at the oversized clock hanging on the wall above the fireplace mantle and then back to Danny, who sat stiffly on her sofa, a slowly dwindling fifth of vodka in one hand and a baggie filled with melting ice cubes in the other. She guessed the Grey Goose was doing a far better job at numbing the pain than the ice, but it had yet to dull his senses.

Almost a half hour had passed since he’d darkened her doorstep for the second time that day. Twenty-three minutes and ten seconds to be exact—she knew because she was counting every tick—but she hadn’t opened the door and let him walk right in this time.

Laws didn’t stop Danny. Neither did locks.

Ali had spent the afternoon in a state of dazed panic, alternately dialing Sam’s cell and staring at her open dresser drawers, wondering how much she could pack into jumbo-sized, black trash bags. She only owned one small suitcase, hastily purchased at a truck stop along Interstate Eighty the night she had first fled from Danny. This time, she was only a car load of Hefty bags and a final destination away from running again. Here was the catch, though. She didn’t want to run. And there was nowhere she could really go, anyway, unless she left the country. Danny would always, eventually, find her. Standing on the plush ivory rug covering her bedroom’s scarred wood floor, hands on her hips and one bare foot stacked on the other, she’d collected her thoughts and tried to figure out her next step. Maybe she could go to Venice and buy a little farm outside of Tuscany. Plant some grapevines and try her hand at wine making, drinking all her profits away each night. Mama might even come along, if she promised her a patch of fertile land and a carton of hazelnut gelato every day. Or maybe she could live on a sparsely populated island in the Seychelles, spending her days birdwatching and getting drunk on rum made from pure sugarcane. The ocean was saltier there, she’d read somewhere, greener than the Pacific and as warm as bath water. Never needing to wear anything but a bikini and nail polish had its benefits. The fact that both of these destinations included the enticing possibility of never facing life sober again also made for a convincing argument. But, as she’d stood there contemplating her future while staring unseeingly out at the white sand and blue water beyond, Ali knew the Seychelles was out. She would never stand on another beach and stare at another ocean again, unless it was this beach. Sam’s beach. Or unless he was right there beside her, holding her hand in his. And considering the man wasn’t taking her phone calls, that option seemed pretty far fetched. And honestly, who was she kidding here? Ali didn’t want to be any place that Sam Gleeson wasn’t. Tuscany might as well be a pup tent in the middle of Siberia, for all the enthusiasm she had at the thought of going there. Living next to Sam, even if he never spoke to her again, was preferable to being anywhere else in the world. He could marry the reigning Miss America, have two point five kids and buy a wood paneled minivan and she probably wouldn’t leave. Of course, there would be some crying and a lot of drinking—and maybe a boiling bunny on his stove—but still. She couldn’t run from Danny because if she did, she would also be running from Sam.

Which was why, when Danny showed up later that evening as promised, Ali stood her ground. This was her home and she was no longer his wife, and it was time he came to terms with it. Hoping he would do so while remaining outside her house though, was a pipe dream and once the doorbell had stopped ringing repeatedly, the banging and yelling had begun.

“Open this door, Alexandra!” The booming sound of his pounding fist against the carved mahogany door echoed through the silent house. “You don’t want to make me angry.”

Every light was on as she stood in the center of her living room, gripping her cell phone tightly, preparing for the showdown. She felt exposed, knowing anyone looking through the windows could clearly see her when she couldn’t see them, but Ali was counting on that working to her advantage. When dealing with Danny, darkness wasn’t her friend. The banging stopped suddenly and she tiptoed slowly to the front door, her bare feet silent on the hardwood. Peering through the peephole, she saw that he had vanished and she briefly closed her eyes, knowing his next move was critical to her plan. The glass on her back door rattled loudly a minute later and she jumped, the sound startling her even though she expected it. Her intention was to have him break it, shattering glass everywhere and making it clear to the police that she hadn’t let him inside willingly, but Danny was never one to cooperate and instead, slammed his fist repeatedly against the splintered door frame. The already weakened wood casing gave way easily, popping the lock and activating the alarm in the process.

The sound was deafening, briefly disorienting her.

“Shut that bloody thing off!” Standing in front of her before she knew it, with his chest heaving and his pretty face contorted in anger, he yanked hard on her arm and she stumbled to keep her balance. “Now!”