Uncontrollable Read online

  Loved. It.

  And she really shouldn’t be thinking about how his shorts had hung perilously low on his hips. Or the dusting of hair across his abs—abs that had abs—and how it reached down beyond the waist band of those perilously low-hanging shorts.

  Then there was the tattoo inked on his left side and down his ribs. She really shouldn’t be thinking about that either, but she was a sucker for tattoos if there ever was one. His was a shield with crossed axes, a side profile of the patron saint of firefighters at the center, and the words “St. Florian Protect Us,” written around it.

  From his chocolate brown eyes to the chestnut of his hair, all the way to his tanned toned skin, he was all shades of warmth. Too bad he was a cold bastard. Not even his sexy sexiness could make up for that fact that he was a…

  “Prick,” she mumbled to herself as she slammed another drawer shut.

  “What did the filing cabinet ever do to you?”

  Beth turned and looked over her shoulder to find Denise Morrison standing in the doorway, eyebrows raised high above her hazel eyes and hands on her slender hips. It would’ve been an intimidating pose if it was anyone else making it.

  Beth knew better. Denise could be sassy with the best of them, but she was the queen of politeness and about as nice as they came. Besides, how could the woman be intimidating when she was currently sporting light pink scrubs?

  Denise and her husband Trevor had retired before they’d moved down from Philadelphia six years ago. They’d lived in Mirabelle for two years before Trevor’s death. The pancreatic cancer had been swift and unforgiving.

  These days, Denise found that being busy was the best policy. She’d gone from volunteering to getting a full-time nursing job at the hospital. Then there was the fact that she had her hands full with her three grandchildren. Her daughter Paige and son-in-law Brendan King had a three-year-old, Trevor, named after the late Trevor Morrison, and twin girls. Sarah and Molly had entered the world last September. Denise babysat as much as possible and absolutely loved having her family so close.

  Over the last year, Denise had become one of Beth’s very good friends and a pretty excellent confidant. They got each other, part of it being that they both understood how hard it was to lose someone they loved.

  “It’s not the filing cabinet.” Beth sighed, tired of it all. She was so beyond sick of the line of jerks who’d paraded through her life, each one worst than the last.

  Though no one could top her ex Mick. It wasn’t a coincidence that “Mick” rhymed with “prick,” because that man was King of the Pricks—wore a fucking crown and held the damn scepter, a scepter he could stick straight up his…

  “Uh oh.” Denise’s eyebrows rose higher. “Who is he and what did he do?”

  “My jackass neighbor and so many things.”

  “What happened with Tripp now?” Denise asked as she leaned against the doorjamb, folding her arms across her chest and settling in for the conversation. She knew full well everything that had happened since Tripp had moved in. And just like everyone else she thought that he was a nice guy.

  “Living next to him—and his dog—is not just another friendly day in the neighborhood. Everyone is under that man’s spell except for me.” Beth didn’t fall under spells…well, not anymore. She’d been disillusioned good and proper over the last year. And really, what with the fact that she was now responsible for three other people, she couldn’t afford to be disillusioned by anyone or anything. It wasn’t just her she had to worry about these days.

  “Okay…so let’s hear it. What happened?”

  “I’m only going to tell you if you promise you will be on my side no matter what.”

  “Cross my heart.” Denise moved one of her hands and made the motion over her chest.

  And with that Beth launched into her morning…which had been on the heels of a ridiculously long night…which had occurred during an even longer week.

  Oh, who the hell was she kidding? Days? Weeks? Months? It had been the longest most difficult year of her life.

  Thunderstorms didn’t go over very well in the Ross house, hadn’t since Colleen and Kevin had died in a car accident during a particularly horrible one ten months ago. And whenever a bad one rolled in, the kids slept with Beth. Much like they had the night before…and the night before that…and the night before that.

  Nora always commandeered the left side of the king-size mattress, needing a little bit more space than the other two as she was a fully grown seventeen year old…though, her “fully grown” was exactly five feet tall. And by morning all sixty of those inches would be sprawled out like a starfish.

  Grant occupied the lower right side of the bed. As he was eight years old, he didn’t require as much space. But he slept on Beth more than he did the actual mattress. His arms wrapped around her waist while he used her stomach as a pillow. Who needed blankets—which were always stolen anyway—when she had her own personal heaters?

  And last, but certainly not least, was Penny. The three-year-old claimed the top of the bed, her tiny toddler body buried in the pillows. The second she got settled, she’d stick her foot out and whisper, “hold please.” It was the only way she’d be able to fall asleep.

  None of the three children were stationary sleepers, and without fail Beth always woke up with knees in her back, an elbow in her stomach, a foot in her face, or all of the above. That morning had been no different. If she’d gotten two solid hours of sleep she’d be shocked.

  She’d just gotten all the kids out the door and on their way to school when she’d gone into the kitchen for a very much needed second cup of coffee. And that was when she’d spotted the damn dog.

  Freaking Fido from Hell was in her backyard, again. He was rolling around in her flower beds, flower beds that she’d dropped two hundred dollars to fix up the previous summer. Flower beds that were now good and thoroughly destroyed.

  “So what happened?” Denise asked when Beth got to the part where the demon dog had made a meal of her rose bushes.

  “Well, when I tried to get him, he thought I was playing and started running around the yard.” A yard spotted with mud puddles from all of the rain over the last few days. “I think I fell about half a dozen times before I finally caught him.”

  “So you marched over to Tripp’s house covered in mud?” Denise bit the corner of her lip to suppress a laugh.

  “Oh no.” Beth pointed to the treachery on her friend’s mouth. “Don’t even. My side, remember? You aren’t allowed to be amused by this. I’m fully aware of how ridiculous I looked.”

  Denise held her palms out in surrender. “I’m sorry.” She waved a hand through the air in a please continue motion as she settled into the chair across from Beth.

  “I banged on his front door for a couple of minutes until he could be roused from his sound sleep. And, get this, he had the nerve to yell at me. He’s sleeping in, oblivious to all of it, while I’m chasing that bear of his around the yard and he gets angry with me. And then he tells me to put my kids on a leash. Can you believe that?”

  Denise was silent for a moment, chewing the corner of her lip, but this time it wasn’t in amusement.

  “What?” Beth narrowed her eyes.

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “You didn’t have to; that expression says it all. You’re about to make excuses for him, aren’t you?”

  “Look, I’m not on his side about the dog. Not by any means. He should keep his animal on his side of the fence. And that comment about the leash…that was…uncalled for and way too far.”

  “But…?” Beth folded her arms across her chest as she leaned back in the chair.

  “Is this real-time talk? Or am I still supposed to just agree with you?”

  Beth thought for a second before she sighed. “Real-time talk.” She knew that Denise had her best interest at heart…even if it was going to be something she didn’t want to hear.

  “Your kids have been known to go over onto his proper
ty.”

  Okay…so this was the one part of the argument from that morning that Beth had flat out lost. Her nieces and nephew had been playing with the borders of the boundaries as well…Nora being the worst.

  That had been a fun encounter in December. Tripp had been standing on the front porch at three in the morning with Nora and two other girls Beth had never met before. They’d all been wrapped in towels and shivering in the cold night air.

  “I believe one of these belongs to you,” he’d frowned at her. And that was the day she’d discovered just how attractive surly could be.

  Not that she thought about that a lot…no, not at all. She shook her head, pulling herself back to the conversation with Denise.

  “They’ve had their moments,” Beth admitted more than a little grudgingly.

  “Now you know I’m not saying you weren’t more than justified to be upset about what happened this morning. I would’ve been fuming mad if someone or something was responsible for messing up my garden.”

  Of that Beth had no doubt. Denise’s garden was an oasis if Beth had ever seen one. It was a passion that both Denise and her late husband Trevor had shared. Denise had told Beth many times that being out there was the best sort of therapy for her, even if it was bittersweet. This was yet another thing the two women had in common, as Beth felt the same way about gardening because of her late mother.

  “What are you two chatting about?” The voice of Vanessa Cartwright wafted through the room about a second before her Chanel perfume.

  Beth pulled her eyes from her friend and turned to the doorway, where the receptionist for the women’s health wing of the hospital stood. Her long auburn hair stretched down her back in a curtain and her super model long legs were only half covered by her silvery gray Dior wrap dress that went perfectly with the black Louis Vuitton pumps on her feet.

  Beth didn’t get to wear shoes like that very often. Her footwear was all about the practical and what didn’t have her feet screaming for release at the end of the day. Case in point: the hot pink and lime green tennis shoes she was currently sporting.

  But Vanessa and Beth lived very different lifestyles. Where Beth was the one going home at the end of the work day to take care of three children, Vanessa was the one getting taken care of. Her current boyfriend was a former investment banker who’d retired at the age of forty-five and moved to the Gulf Coast to spend his days on his boat. These days he also thoroughly enjoyed lavishing his twenty-seven-year-old bombshell girlfriend with gifts.

  There were three things that Vanessa loved the most: expensive things, rich men, and good gossip. Beth liked Vanessa just fine, the girl was as sweet as pie…but a vault for secrets she was not.

  “Beth is having gardening problems.” Denise immediately diverted from their main topic of conversation.

  “Oh.” Vanessa wrinkled her nose at the distasteful thought of dirt getting underneath her pretty pale pink manicure. “I can’t help you there.”

  No shit, Beth thought…and was proud she hadn’t voiced those words out loud. Besides, it wasn’t Vanessa’s vault that Beth was having a supremely shitty day. So she kept her mouth shut and finished filing the last of the folders while Vanessa and Denise started talking about the latest episode of a reality TV show they both watched.

  “I mean I would’ve picked the cop over the lawyer,” Denise said. “He was adorable and super sweet.”

  “No, it was the lawyer all the way for me. He had the looks and the money. I mean don’t get me wrong; the cop was cute, but cute doesn’t always cut it. Maybe if he had a few more muscles like some of our public servants…well, that would’ve changed my vote. Speaking of public servants…Beth, I heard what happened with your neighbor this morning.”

  “What?” Her head came up as she looked over at Vanessa. What the hell had she heard? What was Tripp telling everyone? That she’d barged over to his house raving like a lunatic?

  “A massive tree crashed down through the Wilkins house around three last night. Landed right across the hallway separating the master bedroom from the rest of the house. They’re on the second floor so they couldn’t exactly climb out the window to get to their kids. Jefferson is, what? Two? And Mary is only a few months. They were both crying up a storm in their cribs for twenty minutes or so before anyone could get there.”

  Oh dear…a sinking feeling started to settle low in Beth’s stomach. Why did she get the feeling she was going to come out of this conversation feeling like a jerk?

  “Dorothy was beside herself and Bobbie was about to jump out the window to get to the kids. Tripp was the one who got to the house first. He made sure the kids were safely out and then got Dorothy and Bobbie out, too.”

  So Tripp had been out in the middle of the night saving babies…and here she was complaining about a messed up garden.

  No, she didn’t feel like a jerk…she felt like an asshole.

  Chapter Two

  The Never-Ending Storm

  Beth pulled into her driveway at 6:03. She shut off the engine of her white Trailblazer and leaned back in the seat, taking a deep breath and rubbing at her throbbing temples.

  From start to finish the day had sucked and her exhaustion was emotional, physical, and mental. The thought of cooking had been pure misery so she’d ordered two pies from Papa Pan’s Pizza and picked them up on the way home. One a thin crust with extra cheese and mushrooms for her and Grant, the other a deep dish with pineapple and ham for Nora and Penny. The Hawaiian had been Colleen’s favorite, too.

  God, Beth missed her sister.

  Her eyes popped open and she focused on the house in front of her. It had been Colleen’s dream home from the very start. Even though half the inside had needed to be remodeled when they bought it, she’d seen every part of its potential at first sight. There was a massive front porch and a beautiful brick staircase that led up to the bright red front door. It had a bit of a plantation feel to it with its white columns, but as it was only one story it wasn’t ostentatious.

  Beth’s favorite part was the backyard that looked out to the lake. Nothing sounded better than curling up in the hammock on the screened in back porch and enjoying a beer while watching the sunset.

  But as another storm was rolling in off the horizon, making everything as gloomy as possible, that wasn’t going to be a reality. The sun was nowhere in sight, covered up by the big black clouds that hovered low.

  Odds were it was going to be another long evening of Beth sharing her bed with three scared kids. It wasn’t all that shocking that ten months since their parents’ death, they were still having difficulties with storms…especially at night. Nope, not surprising at all, as they’d been asleep when the sheriff’s department had shown up on the doorstep to tell them that their parents were gone.

  Kevin and Colleen had been driving back from dinner to celebrate their nineteenth wedding anniversary. Lightning had struck a tree and snapped it in half, leaving part of it lying in the middle of the road. Kevin had slowed the car as he’d rounded a bend in the road, but the driver of the SUV behind him had not. Four people had been involved in the accident. None of them made it out alive.

  Nora had been babysitting and had fallen asleep on the sofa waiting for her parents to get home. The Atticus County Sheriffs department contacted Wallace Boone, Colleen’s and Beth’s father, before they’d gone over to the Ross house with Wallace. It was only after telling the kids that her father had told Beth. Beth would forever remember the phone call she’d gotten just before midnight.

  “It’s…it’s your sister…” That was as far as Wallace had gotten before he’d started sobbing into the phone. But he didn’t have to go any further, because Beth knew. She knew her sister was gone.

  The whole thing was so fucking unfair. And yes, Beth had heard it so many times before: life’s not fair. But she knew full well what it was like to lose a parent at a young age. Knew what it was like to grow up without her mother. Knew what it was like to feel like a part of herself was mi
ssing after her own mother’s death.

  And Nora, Grant, and Penny? Well, they’d lost both of their parents in an instant.

  Beth forced herself to come back to the present moment before she lost it…because once lost, there was no guarantee she’d get it back.

  As she got out of the SUV, her eyes immediately darted over to Tripp’s house. His big black truck was parked in the driveway. Her mood took another dip as she thought about how she’d dealt with things that morning. It hadn’t been the best and she knew it. She was going to need to figure out how to coexist with the man.

  Maybe she’d get a brainwave with a stomach full of cheese and dough…and that beer.

  She grabbed the pizzas from the back seat just as a car pulled into the driveway of her other neighbors’ house, the O’Bryans. Miles and Corinne had lived there as far back as Beth could remember. They had two kids, Melanie and Hamilton.

  Even though there was a two-year age difference between Mel and Beth—Beth being older—they’d always been incredibly close growing up. As college had brought both of them up to Tallahassee, they’d actually been roommates for a couple of years when their time at Florida State had overlapped. Keeping up with each other after school had never been a problem. They’d always made the effort with each other and Beth had been one of Mel’s bridesmaids when she’d married her husband almost two years ago.

  Another thing Beth and Mel had in common was the similar age gap between them and their siblings. Mel was ten years older than her brother, while Beth had been twelve years younger than her sister. Apparently it was a common theme in both of their families; Colleen and Kevin had waited nine years between having Nora and Grant.

  Hamilton just so happened to be a year older than Nora. For over a decade—which was how long they’d been neighbors—the two had been best friends…had being the operative word.

  Nora was good and truly immersed in the anger portion of grieving. She listened to pretty much no one, and was under the impression she knew absolutely everything. And yes, Beth shouldn’t be surprised that Nora was being a rebellious teenager. But the transformation had taken place right before the holidays. And that first Thanksgiving without Colleen and Kevin had been pretty freaking awful…and it hadn’t just been Beth who’d dealt with the fallout.