How to Marry Your Frenemy - London Casey Page 0,17

smooth yet choppy. It looked old but it had a newness to it. The front doors were tall and wide. The lobby had the smell of old paper and new cleaning products.

I looked at all the mailboxes and knew one of them was mine.

I hurried to the steps and ran up them in a hurry.

When I decided to move out on my own, I shared a flat with three other women. One was a singer. One was a cosmetologist. The other was happy writing poetry, living off a trust fund from her grandfather. She kind of kept the place going financially when the rest of us couldn’t pay.

I waited tables.

I dog sat.

I worked my ass off to get through college and took any job I could get.

I was the one who used to get the big bosses their coffees.

And nothing more.

When I got promoted, it was to enter data into a computer.

Not once had I complained. At least not out loud.

I just worked and plotted.

Now I finally had my own place again.

My first apartment on my own was a dump. It was noisy, the walls shook when a vehicle with a big engine cruised by, and it felt dangerous.

I caught myself bouncing around, Mom begging me to come back to live with her, but I ended up bumping into Sheila at a cafe then I lived with her.

But this… this was real.

This was all the hard work I put in with Amado Investments. I deserved a bonus for putting up with Jackson’s bullshit, but that was coming.

It was all lined up, just like I had planned.

Work. Save. Get the promotion. Get the apartment. Torture Jackson. And eventually slide into Vince’s seat completely. Because there was no way Vince would allow Jackson to take over the company with me there. Oh, and if he did that? I would have such a reputation that I would just branch off into my own company and bury Jackson that way.

Now, my list was a tiny bit messed up since I got the apartment before the promotion. But that just proved I was actually flexible.

I opened the door to my floor and started to walk.

The smile on my face moved ear to ear.

It hurt to smile that big.

But I couldn’t stop myself.

I saw a pile of boxes and totes outside an apartment.

That’s mine.

Misha stepped out of my apartment and grabbed a tote.

As she turned, the next-door neighbor came out of his apartment.

And he looked right at me.

With the meanest scowl on his face.

My smile was instantly gone.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said.

I was moving in next door to Jackson.

Chapter Nine

Jackson

After a long day at the office, I loved to come home, get changed, and then head to the gym. It was my release and my relief. It also helped two-fold because it gave me the body that every woman secretly wanted to lick, which allowed me to get a different kind of release and relief.

That whole Dad bod thing was bullshit.

Hate me for saying it, but we all know it’s true.

I had to step over a few boxes to get to my apartment.

I smiled.

My new neighbor was moving in.

The door was slightly ajar but I couldn’t see anyone or any movement inside.

That was okay.

I didn’t need to kick down the door to make my pretense known.

Too bad my bedroom wasn’t on the opposite end of my apartment. Because then I could find myself a one-night stand and make the headboard smack the shared wall so much that my new neighbor would have to come over and introduce herself.

What if it’s a guy, Jackson?

That was a valid point.

I just had a feeling it wasn’t.

And when I peeked down into one of the boxes with one of the flaps undone, I saw a curling iron and a hair dryer.

Still, it could have been a guy, but I doubted it.

When I got into my apartment, my phone started to ring.

It was Uncle Vince.

I hadn’t called him Uncle Vince since I was a teenager. It was right after my father died that I stopped calling him that. He took over the company and I knew right then I needed to get my shit in order so I could do the same from him.

“Vince,” I said as I answered the call.

“Jackson, my nephew,” he said. He let out a laugh. “What a fuck of a day.”

“A good one.”

“Like a beautiful woman freshly off a breakup. Legs spread. Low cut top. Drunk eyes. Sadness in her heart. Ready for