Smug Bastard - Stacey Marie Brown Page 0,78

the same picture.

I let out a long breath.

“We didn’t sleep.”

Chapter 21

Smith

(1 month later)

“Get the hell up.” The blinds in my room were yanked open, splintering light into my eyes. Groaning, I rolled over, tucking myself deeper into my pillows. “Seriously, mate. Get up, take a shower… You’re helping me in the yard.”

“Fuck off,” I growled into my pillow. “How the hell did you even get in here?” I squinted back at my neighbor, friend, and old prison mate, Chance Bateman. He had been a few cells down from mine, but we ended up friends, having each other’s backs in there. His stint was shorter. I had another year of hell before my lawyer got me out.

“Come on.” He snorted, giving me a look. “You know working out and peeling potatoes weren’t the only things we got good at in there.”

True. You could pick up a lot of skills in the slammer, like picking locks, little B&E, gambling, and embezzling. Though going by my rap sheet, I didn’t need any help on the last one.

“Go away.” I flopped down face-first, pulling my comforter over my head, the air conditioner keeping the room cold.

“No. You’ve had your time of being a hermit. Time to get your arse up.” He kicked my bed. “You’re lucky it’s me. Aubrey voted to send Pixie.”

Flipping over on my back, I glared at him, which made him grin.

I was secure enough to recognize Chance was a good-looking guy. I mean, the guy barely had a career in soccer, but still they used him for posters and products years later because of his pretty face and physique. We bonded during our time in prison. Like me, many, many men and groups wanted to claim their dominance over the new toy. Put the “pretty boys” in their place.

Right away I had to show them I wasn’t anyone’s bitch. I spent the first few nights in the hole after sending one of those asshole leaders into intensive care. It was life inside—eat or be eaten.

“Get the hell out, man.” I rubbed my hands over my face.

“Not until you get your arse up.” His Aussie accent thickened with his frustration.

“Why?”

“Because you have been back for almost a month and either have been a bloody bastard or a recluse.” He hit my leg. “Get up and come outside. That little bugger gnawed through the fence again.”

A groan and laugh came up my throat. Chance and Aubrey didn’t have a normal pet like a dog, cat, or bird… No, they had a goat. One that fainted.

Goat.

A sharp pain wiggled in my chest. Funny, Chance had a real goat, and I wanted nothing more than to see a dog named Goat. Floppy ears, white soft fur, sweet brown eyes. Damn, I missed the fluff ball.

“I’ll have a beer waiting outside,” he yelled back as he exited.

“Kind of early, isn’t it?” Not that it would stop me.

“It’s two in the afternoon, wanker.” The door downstairs slammed.

Sighing, I glanced over at my phone on the nightstand; 2:12 p.m. glowed up at me. Sitting up, I grabbed it, seeing a dozen missed calls from my lawyer, but it was the last ones that coiled my blood.

“Fuck,” I moaned, my fingers scouring my head again.

Becca.

She still was texting and calling me, going around the lawyers.

From the moment she showed up in New Orleans, she once again flipped my life upside down, ripping everything good I had out from under me. She promised me if I gave her one week to see if anything was there, she’d sign the papers.

Reluctantly, I agreed.

I couldn’t say the whole week up to the wedding was horrendous, though most was, there were fleeting moments I remembered why I fell in love with her, but then I’d recall it had all been fake. Her betrayal was beyond anything we could mend. She tried so hard to get me to sleep with her, probably thinking it would rekindle my feelings, but no matter how hard she tried to seduce me, to get me drunk, the thought of being with her again made me sick.

My cock seemed to crave just one. One I couldn’t get out of my head. Kinsley was all I thought about it. In New Orleans I called her endlessly, searching the city when the lady at the hotel told me she checked out, even running to Angie’s.

When I drove up, Angie stood on her porch, her arms folded, head tilted in attitude. “You’re too late.”

“When was she here?” I knew she had