NFH 03 Checkmate

Checkmate: A Neighbor from
Hell

by

R.L. Mathewson

Copyright 2012

Smashwords
Edition

Edited by Christi Ehrlich, Carla Main and
Lieve Van den Heuvel

A special thank you to Stephanie Shaw, Gitte
Doherty, Amanda Brown, Laura Babcock Dunaway for your time, great
advice and for just being the wonderful women that you are.

This is a work of fiction. All of the
characters, organizations and events described in this novel are
either products of the author's imagination or are used
fictitiously.

e-book ISBN 978-0-9885732-0-8

Checkmate: A Neighbor from Hell © R.L.
Mathewson 2012. All rights reserved.

http://www.rlmathewson.com

Other books by R.L.
Mathewson
:

Tall, Dark & Lonely: A
Pyte/Sentinel Series Novel #1

Without Regret: A Pyte/Sentinel Series
Novel #2

Tall, Dark & Heartless: A
Pyte/Sentinel Novel #3

A Humble Heart: A Hollywood Hearts
Series Novel

A Reclusive Heart: A Hollywood Hearts
Series Novel

Playing for Keeps: A Neighbor From Hell
Series Novel

Perfection: A Neighbor From Hell Series
Novel

Sudden Response: An EMS Series
Novel

This book is dedicated to all the avid
readers out there that have supported me, made me laugh and
smile.

As always, this book is dedicated to my
children, Kayley and Shane. They make me smile, laugh, pull my hair
out and make me wonder how I ever got so lucky to have such
wonderful children.

Checkmate: A Neighbor From
Hell Novel

Prologue

Twenty-five years earlier.........

"Rory's a boy's name," the mean little boy
who'd pushed her off the swing only seconds earlier, announced as
he glared down at her accusingly.

Never taking her eyes away from the bully,
Rory slowly got up as she wiped dirt off her shirt and jeans. When
she finally stood up all the way she was forced to tilt her head
back slightly so that she could continue to glare at him the way
her older brothers had taught her.

"It's a girl's name," she said, taking a
deep breath and shoving him back.

One thing she'd learned, thanks to having
five older brothers, was never to let anyone push her around. Once
you did, you'd have to sleep with one eye open and keep an eye out
for snakes in your bed, spit in your cereal, and toe nails in your
mac and cheese. She might have to put up with five big bullies at
home, but that didn't mean that she was going to put up with it at
preschool, she decided as she gave the boy that had all the girls
giggling and calling cute, another shove.

"You're ugly!" he practically sneered as he
reached over and pulled one of her pigtails, hard.

"Well, you smell like my brother's butt!"
she said, shoving him hard, cause she really couldn't call him ugly
since he was kind of cute with honey blonde hair and green
eyes.

"Well, you look like my uncle's butt!" he
said, yanking the other pigtail hard enough to make her eyes
sting.

"Well, you-"

"That's enough of that!" Mrs. Fitzpatrick,
the mean woman her father left her with, said as she grabbed them
each by the arm. With a firm tug, she dragged them towards the
large multicolored building that her father said looked like a
rainbow took a shit on. She wasn't sure what shit was exactly, but
she knew that no matter what shit was, her father was probably
right.

"She started it!" the boy pointed out as
they were dragged to the small table in the far corner with the
scary clown painted on it.

"That's enough of that, Connor," Mrs.
Fitzpatrick said sternly as she planted them on wobbly, red
blotched stools. "You will both sit here and think about what you
did while the rest of the children enjoy free play."

Rory narrowed her eyes on the little boy
that had cost her a turn on the swings as he narrowed his eyes on
her.

"You'll pay for this," he promised
tightly.

"No, you will," she said, knowing the
second, the very second, Mrs. Fitzpatrick turned her back on them
that the large jar of pink glitter by the window was going to find
its way into Connor's hair.

* * * *

Twenty years earlier..........

"Give it back, Connor!"

He held it up, making little Rory James jump
higher for it. She tried to glare at him, but unlike the other
boys, he wasn't afraid of her or her big brothers. As far as he was
concerned, little Rory James had been put on this earth solely for
him to torture and torture her he did.

"Give what back?" he asked innocently,
waving her notebook in the air above the brown pond water just to
taunt her. Not that he was going to give it back to her, he wasn't.
In a minute or two when he got bored with this, he fully planned on
throwing it in the water with the hopes that she'd go after it.

"My notebook, you jerk!" she said, giving up
on trying to get it back and moving to the kicking phase, but he
was ready for that. After five years of making her life a living
hell he knew what to expect and he knew that if he gave her a
chance she'd kick him between the legs and drop him to the ground.
Then she’d probably make him eat dirt, again.

"Just give her the notebook," Zack, the
annoying boy from Mrs. Plumes' class who'd been following after
Rory for the past two weeks like a puppy dog, said. Connor hadn't
minded the kid before he started following after Rory. He was a
decent basketball player and knew how to make an awesome spit ball,
but he didn't like anyone getting between him and Rory.

"I can take care of myself," Rory said,
never taking her eyes away from him, which pleased him immensely,
but he was still pretty annoyed with the interruption.

"Why don't you come take it for her?" he
suggested to the boy as he reached out and palmed Rory's face and
shoved her away before she tried to kick him while he was
distracted. With a curse that would probably have her father
reaching for a bar of soap, she stumbled backwards and fell over a
dead log and landed in the mud. Connor would have laughed, but he
had other things to do at the moment.

"Fine," the only slightly smaller boy said
as he stormed over and made a move to grab the notebook. With a
bored sigh, Connor held the notebook higher and further away. As
soon as Zack reached out for it, Connor hooked his foot between the
boy's legs and pulled up just as he turned, causing the boy to lose
his balance and take a header into the dirty water.

"Next time mind your own business," he said,
laughing as the boy started to cry. Crying over a little dirty
water, what a dork, Connor thought. Rory wouldn't have cried. She
never cried, which he took as a personal challenge.

"And next time," Rory suddenly said as he
felt her small hands press against his back and shove, "don't touch
my math homework." With that, he went stumbling and landed in the
water right next to the big crybaby.

Connor rolled over and spit a mouthful of
murky water at Rory, laughing when it hit her bare leg. Deciding
that wasn't nearly good enough, he used her now soaked notebook and
splashed her until she was as soaked as he was.

He wasn't entirely surprised when she
launched herself at him instead of running off and crying like most
of the girls he knew would have done. There was no running off and
crying for Rory James, not when she could try and kick his ass.

As they rolled around in the muddy water,
trying to make the other one eat a handful of mud he couldn't help
but smile. She was just so much fun to torture, he thought as he
forced a handful of mud and god only knows what else in her
mouth.

* * * *

Fifteen years earlier.........

"There's no talking in detention," Mr.
Williams snapped.

Rory shoved her green, black, and pink paint
splattered hair out of her face and wondered, not for the first
time, why the school hadn't let them either use the showers in the
locker rooms or sent them home to wash up and start their two weeks
of detention tomorrow. It would have made more sense and would have
saved them from having to stand at the back of the room on
newspapers so that they didn't get paint everywhere as well as the
embarrassment of having the other kids laughing at them.

"That's what I told her, Mr. Williams,"
Connor said, discretely reaching out when Mr. Williams became
distracted by a spitball flying past his head and shoved Rory,
making her stumble off their newspaper mat and onto the pristine
white tiled floor.

"You bastard!" she hissed as she jumped back
onto the newspaper, but not before her paint soaked stocking feet
left large smears of black and red paint all over the floor.

"Just wait until detention's over, Rory.
You're going to pay for making me miss practice," he said, shoving
her again, but this time she managed to stay on the newspaper.

"We wouldn't be here if you hadn't shoved me
into the art room," she said, shoving him back, causing him to
stumble, slip and slide on the floor, leaving an impressive streak
of green and pink paint behind.

"If anyone should be mad, it's me. You made
me miss work!'" she said, giving him another shove that added a
little bit of black paint to the mix.

After this little episode she'd be lucky if
she still had a job. Her father told her that any bullshit and she
was fired. She hoped that he meant any bullshit on the job, because
otherwise she was screwed since she couldn't seem to go a day
without getting into it with Connor.

Over the years their parents, teachers, the
priest at their church, their coaches, and even the Neighborhood
Watch had gone out of their way to keep them apart, but nothing
worked. Absolutely nothing. In the past ten years they hadn't been
placed in the same classroom at school or CCD at church. They
weren't allowed to play on the coed teams after school out of fear
that they'd beat each other with baseball bats, and Neighborhood
watches all over town blew those damn whistles whenever the two of
them were spotted together.

It was really annoying.

They had not gone a day in the last ten
years, not even when she was laid up in bed with the flu last year,
without giving each other hell. She still remembered waking up at
two in the morning to find Connor short sheeting her bed while she
was still in it! To this day she didn't know how he managed to
sneak into her room for two weeks straight. It wasn't like her room
was on the first floor or she left her windows unlocked. No matter
what she did the jerk always found a way to break in and piss her
off into a speedy recovery so that she could kick his ass. When he
was laid up for two weeks after she'd gotten over the flu she'd
made damn sure to return the favor.

"Oh please, it's not like
you have a real job. I bet your
daddy
," he said mockingly, and he was
the only one with the balls to do it, "has you fetching his
drinks."

She had to snort at that. Her father worked
her to the bone. She did everything her brothers had to do and
more, because she had a talent and skill with the saws that none of
them could touch. Every day after school, she and her brothers
joined their father wherever he was working that day and they
worked their asses off until dinner time. Then they went home, made
dinner, did their homework and then passed out.

Even though she knew that her father worked
them hard because he wanted to keep them out of trouble, she didn't
care. She loved working with her family and earning her own money.
It also didn't hurt that she was learning a job that she hoped to
do after high school.

"At least I know who my father is," she
said, knowing it was a low blow, but then again so was sitting on
top of her so that he could pour gallon after gallon of paint on
her.

"Well, at least my mother didn't run off
with the milkman," he said, getting in her face and just like that
she snapped. It didn't matter that there were twenty witnesses or
that extra month of detention that would no doubt be added onto her
time. All that mattered was wiping that smug look off the bastard's
face.

"It was the mailman, you bastard!" she said,
lunging for him.

"Same damn thing," he muttered as he put her
in a headlock and took her to the floor.

* * * *

Ten years earlier.......

"But I love you, Connor," Jill, Jen, or
whatever the hell her name was, said.