baby brother, Jonah, grinning up at me. Even when he was in pain.
But the damned woman—girl at the time—was all tangled up in those memories, and I hated her for it. She had no right to be there or in my thoughts. She had no right to be in my past to begin with.
And now she lived next door, and I couldn’t get away from her. I knew she still saw my parents, had wheedled her way into their lives, as well. And given our current situation, I would have to deal with her on an almost daily basis unless I wanted to lose money and sell the house right away. The housing market was doing well enough that I could probably do it and make a couple of bucks. Only not enough to cancel out the pain of moving again, finding another home, and dealing with my parents when they asked why I was picking up and leaving after only staying in my current house for less than a fucking week.
I rinsed the conditioner out of my hair, ran the soap over my body, and growled at myself as I finished showering. I shut off the water, reached for my towel, and dried off before stepping onto my bathmat.
The fucking gall of her to look at me as if she had seen a ghost. How dare she look at me as if I would hurt her? She was the one who had ruined everything. Had taken precious time and energy from Jonah. My baby brother hadn’t needed her complications. But she had seemed to want the fucking limelight and hadn’t allowed me the time I needed with my brother before he was gone. I would never fucking forgive her for that.
I let out a breath, closed my eyes, and counted to ten. I had to stop being so angry. I had left Fort Collins to attend college elsewhere, so I could stop being angry. I took out loans, stayed in school, and went to a state college so my parents didn’t have to spend what little money they had left after Jonah’s diagnosis and life in and out of hospitals. I hadn’t taken a dime from them, even though they’d offered. Because I hadn’t wanted to take any more from them. They’d already lost enough.
But it seemed they always had Annabelle. My brother’s widow.
What a fucking crock.
I got dressed and did my best not to stay angry. I’d been to plenty of therapy sessions and talked to enough bartenders to get myself through and get on with what I needed to do. I didn’t need to be an angry, obsessed man. I just needed to get through my day, help my mother and father, and work my ass off. I didn’t need to think about Annabelle Montgomery—or any other name she chose to use. I didn’t even know if her name was ever Annabelle Queen.
“Hell,” I mumbled to myself.
Had she taken my brother’s name? Did she have my name? Chills slid up my back, and I shook them off. Whatever. I needed to stop thinking about that.
The doorbell rang, and I swallowed hard, hoping it was an overeager postal carrier. But as I opened the door, I knew I wasn’t so lucky.
Annabelle smiled up at me and held out a pink box from a very familiar place. “The best donuts in the state. As a peace offering for looking like a scared deer in headlights last night when I saw you outside.”
I looked down at the box, and then at her face, and did my best not to slam the door. “I don’t need a peace offering or whatever the hell you think this is.”
She paled a bit, her lips pressing into a thin line before she put on a whole new persona like a mask, as if she weren’t an angry woman trying to win me over. Instead, she seemed happy and bubbly as if she hadn’t a care in the world. Maybe she didn’t. Perhaps she didn’t miss my brother as I did.
It wouldn’t surprise me. It wasn’t like she knew him. No, she had only married him for the press.
“Well, I wanted to welcome you to the neighborhood. This is the Montgomery neighborhood, by the way,” she said through gritted teeth, even though she was smiling.
Dread filled me. She couldn’t be saying what I thought she was. “What?” I asked.
“My family? Montgomery Builders? We built every single one of these homes. We all live here, too,