F-Bomb - Lani Lynn Vale Page 0,10

check on your neighbor,” Dad suggested. “Why?”

“Because he turned the sprinklers on her,” Dre said as he strolled into the room. “And she’s mad.”

I pinched my lips together.

Then couldn’t hold it any longer, so I blurted it out.

“He was a dick!” I declared.

“He told her to move out of his hammock,” Dre continued as he leaned over the table, snatched a cookie, then placed a kiss onto my mother’s cheek before taking a seat next to Janie. “She refused. Told him it wasn’t his property. Then pretty much gave him shit for ten minutes. When she pretended to go back inside and went back to the hammock once he was gone, he turned the sprinklers on her.”

Dad started to laugh. Mom hid her mouth with her cup and covered her smile.

I rolled my eyes.

“He interrupted my nap,” I muttered darkly. “He could’ve let me finish!”

“Honey,” my dad said. “You run the risk of being woken from your nap every time you take one outside.”

That was true, but still.

It wasn’t my fault that I preferred to sleep outside instead of inside.

One day, my dream of living in a treehouse in the middle of a rainforest would come true.

It didn’t matter if I was hot or cold. As long as I was outside, I would get a solid night’s sleep—or a perfect nap.

Well, perfect until the rude man next door decided that he no longer wanted to let you sleep in the hammock you’ve been taking a nap in every day that you were off for the past year.

I sighed and leaned back in my chair, my eyes closing in annoyance.

“I’m not scared when I’m outside,” I said softly.

When I opened my eyes again, it was to find my father staring at me with a look of adoration in his eyes.

“I know, baby,” he said. “But just sayin’,” he laughed. “I can put you a hammock on the porch. And it’ll be new and not frayed like that other one.”

I felt a pang of sadness roll through me at the thought.

I liked the old better. The thought of no longer having it felt like a shot to my heart.

“We’ll see,” I said, leaning forward for another cookie. “But, just sayin’, you offer him more than spy work like he has been doing and I might very well kill you.”

My father’s eyes crinkled at the corners, and his mouth pulled into a wicked grin. “We’ll see.”

Chapter 3

Sometimes I think that I can handle the day. Then I wake up.

-Harleigh’s Secret Thoughts

Harleigh

He had a hairy chest.

Like…not too hairy. Perfect hairy.

He was perfectly hairy.

A perfectly hairy, I want to lick him from nipple to nipple, hairy.

Jesus Christ.

But…saying that…who the hell mowed their lawn in February?

There was literally nothing to mow!

But, there he was, mowing his lawn, and I was watching him do it.

Shirtless.

Would it be too much to ask him to do it pantless next time, too?

Probably.

But, still, I watched him go back and forth over his lawn, taking extra care around the sprinkler heads, and studied his body.

He was wearing a pair of black boots—motorcycle, my Kryptonite—and a pair of tight jeans that looked like they might’ve once fit him but were now a little tight in the thighs and the ass.

They were probably an old pair of jeans, and he’d grown in bulk.

They still fit his waist quite nicely.

And honestly, I wasn’t complaining about the way that his ass fit the jeans, either.

They just looked like they weren’t comfortable for him.

He kept pulling at the thighs, glaring down, and cursing.

I bit my lip and tried not to laugh at his obvious discomfort.

I watched him like a hawk, though.

I knew he knew I was there.

Hell, I’d been lying in his hammock when he’d first come out to jog this morning.

Jog.

You heard that right.

He went on a jog.

Almost every single morning.

Sometimes it was for a short time, like ten minutes or so. And sometimes he didn’t come back for hours.

Each time he did go, though, he made sure to make eye contact with me and tell me that he didn’t like it when I was in his yard.

I’d raise my coffee cup at him, apologize profusely and falsely, then head to my porch where I’d finish the rest of my coffee. Once he was all the way down the street, and he could no longer see me anymore, I would go back to the hammock, stretch out, and read my newspaper.

Periodically I’d lift my gaze to study the street in the distance, and when I