Chapter 5

Tyler

After a long five days, I picked Rachel up at school, feeling overjoyed as she leaped into my truck. She began to chat away, her face growing pink and eager, as I drove away, feeling finally at-ease like I could take a breath.

“And how was San Francisco, Daddy?” she asked me. She plopped a rainbow sucker into her mouth, turning her tongue a bright, unnatural color.

“Eh, you know. Work stuff,” I said, shrugging. “Boring as usual.”

I allowed myself to dive into the beauty of Rachel’s little, routine life. She expressed her irritation that she’d gotten an A minus on her science test instead of a solid A, the fact that some idiot kid had called her a name she’d rather not say out loud’ during recess; a minor complaint that Marnie had packed her a peanut butter and jelly sandwich AGAIN. It was nice and allowed that ‘business’ talk from the previous few days to fall away and just enjoy Rachel.

At the stop sign before our neighborhood, I felt my phone buzz. Glancing down, I spotted a message from Samantha. Slipping it open, hoping it was a work message, I read:

“Had such a good time with you the other night. Hoping we can do that together again, soon. Maybe this time without Hank.”

My skin began to crawl with fear. Jesus. I’d given her absolutely no indication, whatsoever, that I was interested. She was gorgeous, sure, but the air around us didn’t electrify in that special, sexual way when we spent time together. She spoke of Human Relation responsibilities as if she were discovering a cure for cancer. The boredom all-but destroyed me, but, being the good-natured devil I was, I shook my head and asked careful questions.

And more women had fallen for me, in this way, than I could count. At least, since the divorce. I never reciprocated.

I saw the moving van parked next to our place as I drove my truck down our road. Intrigued, I mentioned it to Rachel, pointing.

“Looks like someone bought the place next to ours.”

“That’s been for sale forever,” she said, giggling. “Ever since Marty went—where did he go?”

“Alaska,” I replied. “He was involved in the oil industry. But his family was from here. Do you remember his little daughter?”

“Oh. Megan,” Rachel said, scrunching her nose. “She was so annoying.”

I sputtered with laughter, rolling my hand over Rachel’s hair. “Come on, now. You need to work on liking people more.”

“I don’t need a lot of friends,” Rachel shrugged. “It’s not like Albert Einstein had that many friends, Dad.”

Perhaps she had a point. As the truck made its way down the pavement, listening to Rachel tell me about Albert Einstein—intimate details about his life she’d picked up online—I saw the new neighbor for the first time.

She was young. A good ten years younger than me, at least, with long, bleach blond hair coursing down to the small of her back. Her lips were pressed into an anxious smile as she spoke with one of the movers, who was gesturing toward a tan couch, still centered in the driveway, instead of its probable last resting place somewhere in her living room.

Damn, she was hot. This gut reaction was unlike me, purely animal and something I didn’t experience often. It might have been better to say she was gorgeous, but looking at her my mind went to an entirely different place. This woman was a whole lot more than gorgeous—she was hot as fucking hell. I could clearly see her tight breasts beneath a pink shirt, which told me she hadn’t bothered to put on a bra; a round ass, that pulsed out in a pair of cut-off shorts, gliding down into beautiful long legs. She folded her arms across her chest as if she could feel my inspecting eyes.

“Daddy?” Rachel asked. “Hey. Earth to Dad!”

Blinking wildly, I turned my eyes back to the center, realizing that I’d driven directly past our two-bedroom colonial. “Shit,” I muttered, my mind racing. “What did Albert Einstein do? Wasn’t he the famous scuba diver?”

“No, Dad,” Rachel said, rolling her eyes. “And I think you also forgot where we live. Wake up, over there! You also owe a quarter to the swear jar!”

I would have owed a lot more to the swear jar if my daughter could have heard my thoughts. Grateful that she couldn’t, I ducked into the furthest driveway at the end of the road and then cranked back, heading back toward home and parking in front of the garage door.

Rachel sighed, staring down at her legs. She looked oddly defeated. My heart continued to hammer for the girl next door, who’d kept up her dialogue with the mover.

“I just don’t want to go back to her house. Ever again,” Rachel said finally, interrupting my reverie.

“Your mom’s?”

“Who else’s?” Rachel asked me, her eyes flashing. Sometimes, when she became angry, she looked a bit too much like Marnie. But god, their temperaments couldn’t have been more different.

“Honey, you know I’ve got to go back on Thursday,” I answered, my heart feeling squeezed. “It’s just a lot during this early part of the job. Hopefully, it’ll calm down in a few months.”

“But Mom is a nightmare,” Rachel protested, drawing her arms across her chest. After a moment of silence, I felt myself stuttering, hunting for something to say when Rachel’s lips parted in a moment of shock.

Pointing across my chest, she alerted me to the neighbor lady, and to the little black lab bouncing around the yard. “Our new neighbor has a dog!” she cried out, her face losing its sadness. Her cheeks stretched into a smile. “Oh, please, Daddy, can we go over there and introduce ourselves?”

I turned my head back toward the hot-as-fuck neighbor across the yard, who’d stretched down to pet her puppy, allowing me a full view of her cleavage which was mesmerizing. It was going to be extremely difficult for me to resist this woman, but I reminded myself that I was with my daughter and now was no time to flirt with the new and much younger neighbor.

“Sure,” I said, hopping from the truck and watching Rachel leap out, drawing her backpack across her shoulders with a quick motion. She rushed toward me, her eyes centered on the dog that leaped, with the same quivering excitement as Rachel. In that split second, I caught the new girl’s eyes, realizing that she was staring at me, too. I held her gaze for several moments, assessing her, reading the bright blueness of her irises and then tracing her curves, the flatness of her stomach, down to her feet. She seemed serious, nervous as a rabbit. Almost waiting for my attack.

Did she know what I could do to her if I chose? Did she sense it? Did she know that within seconds of seeing her for the first time, I wanted to fuck her? Perhaps every little mammal could see the eyes of the wolf, could smell the want and desire on his lips?

Samantha had sensed it, too. But she was mistaken. For her—I held nothing. No lust. No desire. Nothing.

Why was this new girl different?

“Hi there,” I called out, my voice deep. “I finally have a new neighbor. The place has been up for sale for about five months now.”

The woman allowed a slow smile to curl across her face. It was a friendly smile, still tinged with unease. “Hi,” she said. “That’s right. I just bought it last week. I came in from Asheville. Thankfully, I could close it right away.”

“Can I pet your dog?” Rachel asked her voice piping up between us.

“Of course,” the woman said, gesturing for Rachel to draw closer. “He’s a baby. He might not be very gentle and could knock you over. But it’s all love. I promise.”

Rachel rushed toward her, drawing her hand across the black dog’s head. The black pup nipped and licked her lips, making her cry out in a mix of alarm and happiness. “Oh, my gosh, Daddy,” Rachel called to me. “He’s just the sweetest. What’s his name?”

“Randy,” the woman answered, eyeing me again. “And I’m Quinn.”

“I’m Rachel,” Rachel giggled, easing her hands across the black dog’s back, scrubbing into his skin. “And that’s my daddy.”

“Tyler,” I replied, taking three long strides across the grass. I shot my hand forward, taking hers in mine, and memorizing the softness of her skin as we shook hands. God, she couldn’t have been more than twenty-three-years old. Maybe twenty-four. Her eyes only held mine for a moment, before darting downward.

“It’s nice to meet someone in the neighborhood,” she said softly, before drawing herself to the ground, with Rachel, and attacking her puppy with love. “I take it you like dogs, Rachel?” she asked, clearly finding it easier to speak to my daughter than to speak to me. I pressed my hands against my hips, towering over them both. Dominant. I could hardly control the pulsing blood against my eardrums, reminding me, over and over again, that I was a man and I should take what I want when I wanted it.

That this was the first thing, I’d suddenly wanted in years. I didn’t know how I was going to get it, but I felt confident that I would have this woman as I watched her grin grow wider.

“Love them,” Rachel said. “But we can’t get one because Daddy travels too much for work, and my mom is a slob.”

“Rachel!” I said, eyeing her. I didn’t want her to think that speaking about her mother that way was correct, even if it were true. These thoughts were purely her own, and I never tried to speak badly about Marnie in front of her. Of course, she had every reason to think them. And that yelling match we’d had on the video chat days before. It had probably altered her mind even more.

I didn’t want to poison her, the way Marnie did.

“Sorry,” Rachel said, keeping her eyes on the dog.

“I travel quite a bit,” I admitted, my voice still low. “I have a new position at the tech firm downtown. Dalton.”

“Then I’m assuming you’re always in Silicon Valley,” Quinn said, her voice a string.

“That’s right.”

I held her gaze again for a long time, sensing that the attraction between us was a bubble, over Rachel’s head. I hadn’t felt this intensity with someone in many years—perhaps not ever. But even as I toyed with the idea of knowing her, of fucking her, the realization dawned on me that it couldn’t happen. No matter how much I wanted it. Not when I had so much on my plate. Not when I had Rachel to consider.

“Well, we better head back inside,” I said, placing a firm hand on Rachel’s back. “You’re in the middle of moving, and we’re in the way. Trust me. I remember how it was when we moved in here. Too much neighborly love is definitely a thing.”

“Not enough, what I always say,” Quinn answered, her voice soft, but eager.

What on earth did she mean?

I gave her a final smile, and a good luck nod before guiding Rachel back toward the house. Rachel continued to eye the dog, allowing her backpack to sag along her elbows, before we were safe in the confines of our little colonial. Safe from the allure of the outside world.

“Pizza?” Rachel asked, piping up.

“No. No way,” I said, laughing. “I think we’ll go with fish tonight.”

“Dad. You’re so boring,” she said, rolling her eyes.

But we sat together in one another’s presence that night, eating vegetables and fish, and finding normalcy. We watched a documentary—Rachel’s choice, of course—and then fell asleep with our mouths open, our heads atop the pillows. A dry voice continued on without us, telling us the history of the Mesopotamian era which was becoming the dialogue of Rachel’s (probable) highly intellectual dreams.

But my dreams? They told something quite different. They offered nothing but my mysterious, new lust for the girl next door.

She’d opened doors within me. And I hardly knew more than her name.