CHAPTER TWO
CJ
“No doubt exists that all women are crazy; it’s only a question of degree.”
- WC Fields
I had a new neighbor.
I’d known that already, but with the crazy hours I’d been logging at the office, I had yet to run into them.
Now I wished I hadn’t.
Lots of crazy shit goes down in the city. Seeing someone in a clown wig, wearing nothing but a banana hammock and pasties over their nipples wouldn’t even be enough to make me do a double take most days.
Though to be fair, people dressed up in freaky shit every day of the week here, but it wasn't every day that a woman attacked me, unprovoked, and took a shot to my testicles hard enough that I worried they’d reascended. Even now, as the crazy woman who’d barged into my apartment helped herself to every nook and cranny of my privacy, my balls still ached.
If any of the guys had been witness to the last twenty minutes, I’d never live it down. My job might be dangerous at times, but I'd never frozen up. Never wavered or hesitated. My years serving in the military had taught me how precious a few seconds were during a crisis. But this tiny woman shoveling pizza in her mouth while flipping through the channels on my TV wasn’t a scenario I was equipped to handle.
For the first time in my adult life, I had no idea what the hell I should do.
“Listen, Blanch.”
“Blake.”
“Sure,” I waved her off. She didn’t act put out that I’d gotten her name wrong (on purpose) or brushed off her correction. “Tell me the name of your doctor, and I’ll have him come get you.”
It was a dick thing to say, but I'd hoped insulting her would motivate her to get the hell out. Of course, I'd need to elaborate for her to understand the veiled insult. She was supposed to be confused and ask what I was talking about. Then I would explain that I assumed she'd escaped from the mental ward of a nearby hospital and all her crazy ass friends were probably missing her.
Instead, she reacted like we were having a normal conversation.
“Oh, they gave up trying to keep me restrained a long time ago. I’m practically a Houdini with a straight jacket. Pretty sure if you call my doctor, he won’t answer. I think he moved to a remote island and assumed a new identity after the last time I escaped.”
I blinked. Then blinked again.
“It was a joke,” she said slowly. Like I was a dumbass. I knew she was joking. Sort of. Okay, mostly I hoped she was joking.
Her eyes narrowed on my lap. My dick twitched in my pants.
“You always carry a gun around with you?”
The question sounded like an innuendo and my dick twitched in response. But then her gaze slowly traveled down my leg, stopping at my ankle where my actual gun was holstered. Except it was hidden, so I wasn’t sure how she knew it was there.
She must have seen the confusion on my face, because she nodded and explained. “I felt it when I was kicking your ass out in the hallway."
"You were not kicking my ass."
"I so was. But anyway, I was looking to see if you had another on you somewhere. You a cop or something?”
“Or something,” I answered vaguely.
“Do you only carry a gun on your ankle? Is that common? Only having an ankle gun? I didn’t think regular people did that, only like, cops or assassins or something.”
"You see a lot of assassins walking around?"
She shrugged.
"How do you know they're assassins? Do they wear name badges with their job title on them?"
Her eyes narrowed. "No, smartass. They have sniper rifles or automatic machine guns strapped to their back. Duh."
My lips twitched with the unfamiliar desire to smile. The last thing I needed was for this crazy woman to find out I found her mildly amusing. I'd never get rid of her.
“Lots of people with a concealed carry wear them on their ankles," I answered seriously. "Easier to hide without having to wear a jacket.”
She bobbed her head like she was mulling it over. “Do a lot of people walk around with guns strapped to them somewhere on their body? That’s kinda scary.”
I shrugged. “In my experience, the people who use guns for crime generally don’t have a license or a registered weapon. The ones who take the time to get their information in the system so they can legally carry a weapon aren’t the ones you should be afraid of.”
Shut the hell up, CJ. Quit adding to the conversation and making her feel welcome. The point is to get her out of the apartment, not sit around and shoot the shit.
“Do you have one of those shoulder holsters?”
I almost laughed. Almost. “No. I have no immediate plans of whipping out my pistol in a Mexican standoff.”
She narrowed her eyes again. “That’s not the only time people wear those. You’re making fun of me.”
For a second I thought she might actually be offended, but then she smiled widely. Her cheeks puffed out and she had sauce on her teeth as she chewed a giant bite of pizza. She even had a bit of sauce on the right corner of her mouth. It should have been repulsive. Yet all I wanted was to kiss her. Despite being ten shades of crazy, a barrel full of overbearing and a hot mess in her wrinkled tank top and worn out jeans, she was easily the most beautiful woman I’d ever laid eyes on.
Her bright red hair would have looked ridiculous on most people, but it worked for her. Pulled back into a high ponytail, it showed off the creamy skin of her slender neck and shoulders. Her shirt practically molded to her body, hugging a set of perky breasts that would fit in my hands perfectly. While was distracted with her food and some infomercial on the television, I took in her pert little nose, pouty lips and big, round eyes. Her features were delicate, and with her finally sitting still, I noticed just how tiny she was.
If her personality hadn’t been so damn infuriating, I might have kissed her right then, even with her mouth full of food.
My severe and sudden desire to put my hands on her snapped me back to reality. I shook my head, mentally giving myself a bitchslap for letting myself consider for even a second what it would be like to have Blake underneath me.
Not only was she freaking insane, but she lived next door. We’d inevitably run into each other, and that wouldn’t work for me. I didn’t bring women back to my place, I didn’t sleep with anyone who lived within a five mile radius of my apartment, and I didn’t exchange numbers. Ever. I had zero desire to run into one of my hookups. Other than a few semi-serious girlfriends in high school, I’d never had a repeat performance with the same woman.
Even if Blake was down for one hot, sweaty night of explosive orgasms, it'd be impossible to avoid her afterward. I had a real concern that she might end up going Fatal Attraction on me. Not because I'm a cocky prick, but because she'd already showed signs of insanity. With most women, you didn’t know if they were batshit crazy until it was too late. Blake made that part glaringly obvious. Hell, she wore her crazy openly like a badge of honor. So as fun as it would be to taste her orgasm against my tongue, it wasn’t worth the consequences. Plus, I’d rather gouge my eyes out with a melon baller than have to look for a new place to live just to avoid her.
A melon baller? What I meant to say was, I’d gouge my eyes out with my seven-inch serrated utility knife. Seriously need to quit spending so much time with my damn sisters.
“Okay, time for you to go, lady.”
Blake’s mouth fell open, but she didn’t fight me when I grabbed her by the elbow and firmly guided her towards the door. I knew it was rude, but I shut the door in her face anyway. Since the second I spotted her trying to unlock my door, she’d railroaded me to the point I couldn’t think straight. Her presence was discombobulating, and it was putting me on edge. I just needed her to be… not in my apartment.
I waited to hear her enter her own apartment. After several long seconds, I wondered if she was still standing there right outside my door.
“So, we’ll talk later, then?” She called out from the hallway.
I groaned and looked through the peephole to find her staring right at me with a giant grin taking up half her face. She waved happily, then finally - finally - disappeared inside her apartment.
My relief was short-lived. Knocking. She was knocking on the wall our apartments shared.
“Hey, you know what would be cool?”
I didn’t respond, but Blake carried on anyway.
“We should learn Morse Code so we can talk to each other like this. I bet there’s a class we could take. I’ll check it out and let you know. Night!”
For way longer than should have been necessary, I stood frozen in place. Like moving or breathing would provoke her into reappearing. Once I felt confident she would leave me to finish my evening in peace, I made my way to the bathroom to shower and get ready for bed. My day had been exhausting even before the insane little spitfire inserted herself into the mix.
Jade Securities, the private security firm I owned, was growing in success so quickly I could barely keep up so I shouldn’t complain. I was grateful, truly, but business being steady didn’t make the days any less stressful. And though we’d gotten to the point where we could be choosier about which cases we took on, it was still difficult to turn away the bigger jobs. Case in point, the current client I was dealing with. Her father was a powerful businessman turned politician and when she came to me wanting to hire personal security for a surprise anniversary party for her parents, the pay was good and the job was easy. That turned into a million other jobs for the family, including big events for her father. It had been a solid business decision, but I was regretting it personally. Every time I saw her, which was more frequent than would ever be necessary, she would blatantly hit on me. I was running out of ways to politely decline her highly inappropriate advances.
On top of dealing with her and her wandering hands, I also had an interview to conduct first thing in the morning. I was looking for a personal assistant who would also serve as an office manager of sorts. The problem with working only with men was having no one keeping shit organized, despite our military backgrounds. We weren’t paper pushers and like typical men, we didn’t clean up after ourselves. In our defense, we were much too busy to take the time to clean our dishes. We also may have gotten a little spoiled from my mom having worked in that position for so long. She’d been more than happy to mother us, and we’d taken full advantage and focused solely on work and not the back-end side of the job.
Unfortunately, those were not common qualities in an assistant. Since my mom started staying home with my dad full-time after his stroke, I’d gone through six assistants. All had made a scene when they quit, yelling that they weren’t paid enough to put up with a bunch of big-ass man children - their words, not mine. So I’d decided to up the pay and coached the guys to be more appreciative and respectful when I hired someone new. If I were lucky, maybe the next one would stick around longer than the six-week mark.
-
By the time I was walking into work at the ass crack of dawn the next morning, I was still reeling from the random experience with my neighbor and dreading the day ahead of me.
“Hey, boss,” Malcom, my best friend since childhood and one of my newest recruits greeted me with a mocking grin when I walked towards my office. We’d joined the military at the same time, though he chose Marines where I went Navy. Even still, we’d kept in touch over the years. When he’d decided not to reenlist this year, I’d immediately offered him a job which he’d quickly accepted. The years had changed us, but we fell back into our friendship easily and it was nice having him around again.
My so-called best friend looked like the cat that ate the fucking canary, though. Bad sign. It meant my guys were already up to no good, and I hadn’t even had my coffee yet.
When I passed by Liam, a former Ranger who joined us about a year ago, he didn’t do as well biting his tongue like Malcolm had. Apparently he had a death wish.
“How did it go with Clarissa yesterday? Hear you get to see her again today.”
Snickering sounded from all over the office, but most of the guys who were in must have been hiding. Smart.
It had become a daily contest of sorts between all my employees to see who could get me to lose my shit. They even had a pool going, though if asked, they would always deny it. Funny, since riling me up was the point, yet they hid something that they felt could potentially make me mad. Or maybe it was just more fun for them if it were a secret.
Either way, they were never going to see me lose my cool. Even as a kid I was fairly even-tempered, and whatever part of me wasn’t had been drilled out of me by the military. Honestly? I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt anger. Frustration? Yes. Annoyance? Daily. Stress? That shit never left.
But anger? Never. It served no purpose. It was counterproductive; instead of solving problems, it created more.
“You better watch it, or I’ll tell Reed it was you that switched out his toothpaste for Bengay.”
Liam’s eyes went so big it was comical. Not because he was worried I’d make good on my threat. The guys did that shit to each other all the time. His eyes were wide from shock, because I’d made a joke. Ridiculous, if you ask me. Sure, joking around was fairly rare for me, but it wasn’t like I had no sense of humor at all…right? Fuck. Okay, if I really thought about it, maybe I didn’t joke around very often, but it wasn’t intentional. There just wasn’t much that made me want to laugh lately.
A vision of Blake popped into my head. I couldn’t make heads or tails of her last night, but there was no denying how many times I’d had to bite back a laugh or fight not to smile. This morning, after a few hours of sleep and time to run back through the events of our evening, I was able to cut her some slack. I had startled her, and maybe that was enough to justify her odd behavior. There was no denying she was charming, crazy and all. She’d been my first thought when I woke up; despite my best efforts to keep her out, she still kept popping into my head every few minutes.
Powering up my laptop, I figured I could focus on knocking out some paperwork in the thirty minutes I had to spare until my interviewee arrived. Forty-five minutes later, I was growing increasingly frustrated that they hadn’t shown up. I started to bark at someone to get me the résumé so I could make sure and write in big, red letters not to consider the person again, but remembered no one in the office would have the first clue where the fucking résumé was. Probably mixed in with the seven-hundred sheets of paper scattered around my desk and on the floor.
I was going nuts in this atmosphere. My apartment was pristine; I liked my life to be neat and orderly. But business had grown faster than I ever could have anticipated and I just couldn’t keep up. Too many hats and not enough time in the damn day.
Someone knocked on my door. It had to be my interviewee since my employees had the annoying tendency to just walk-the-fuck-in to my office uninvited. Flicking my wrist over, I checked my watch and grumbled. Almost thirty minutes late. I couldn’t employ someone who wasn’t capable of showing up on time to an interview. As far as first impressions went, this one was already blown.
My back ached as I stood from behind my desk. Sleep didn’t come often and when it did, it didn’t stay long. It didn’t help that I was wearing a suit. Most days I dressed like the rest of the guys with jeans or khakis and our standard issue polo, but when I knew ahead of time I’d be meeting with higher paying clientele, I tried to look the part. This was day two in a row of having to wear a damn suit because of Clarissa, whose name made me shudder.
I jerked the door open, but before I could get a word out, the woman in front of me squealed.
“Oh my gosh! Small world!”
I was too stunned to speak. This had to be a joke. The guys had teamed up with some sort of prank show and they were screwing with me. It was the only explanation. Why else would my crazy next door neighbor be once again pushing into a place where she was clearly not invited?
“Uhm, Blaire.”
“Blake.”
“Okay. What are you doing here?”
“I’m your new assistant, dummy,” Blake said in a way that indicated she truly found me stupid. Three tours overseas where I spent months not even blinking an eye when in the face of danger, yet a few seconds spent near Blake and I considered crying out for help.
“You’re here for an interview?” My voice came out a couple octaves higher than normal so I cleared my throat. I really should have paid more attention to the names on the damn résumés. Then again, that’d been a week ago and I hadn’t known her name back then, so I probably wouldn’t have connected the dots ahead of time anyway.
“Well, yeah, but now that I know it’s my new bestie that’s hiring, I figured I was a shoo-in.” She must have seen the look on my face because she rolled her eyes. “I know we just met and I didn’t know who you were last night but now that I do, it’s kinda perfect, right? We can ride to work together and talk shop when we hang out after hours and-“
“Whoa. I’m going to stop you right there.”
Her eyebrows shot up at the interruption but she didn’t seem put out by it.
“I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression last night. It had been a long day and you caught me off guard with the whole knee-to-the-balls thing. But I don’t really do the whole friend thing.”
“You don’t have friends?”
I shook my head at her annoying interruption.
“Not the point. The point is, you and I are not friends. And now that I know you, there is absolutely no way I can employ you.”
“One chance,” she said quickly.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“One chance. Give me today to prove to you I can do the job. If by the end of the day, you still think I’m not a good fit, I’ll leave and won’t bother you again.”
Over the years I’d been called several things, but foolish had never been one of them. Yet there I was, considering her offer - like an idiot. Because no way in hell was giving her any sort of chance a good idea.
“You won’t bug me at home either?” Even as I warily asked the question, a tinge of regret pricked at me. Did I really want her to leave me alone? But in the end, it didn’t matter what I wanted. Less than a day after meeting her and she’d already been a distraction. Having her in my life would no doubt wind up being a mistake.
Something akin to hurt flashed in her eyes, but was quickly replaced with determination. She nodded curtly and held her hand up with her thumb extended and her fingers parted between the middle and ring finger.
“Why are you giving me the Vulcan salute?”
“The what?” Her face scrunched up and she looked at her hand. “I was giving you the Boy Scout promise.”
A laugh burst out of my throat before I could stop it. The jerk of my stomach muscles and the upward tilt of my mouth felt completely foreign. Thankfully, Blake had no idea just how fucking uncommon it was for me to laugh. I showed her the correct way to do the hand gesture, but instead of being embarrassed, she shrugged like it was no big deal.
“Alright, well I’m going to go get to work. I’ll see you at the end of the day, boss.”
Blake turned on her heel to leave, but halted with one foot out the door when I called out to her. She spun to face me, but kept one hand on the door knob. “Sup, CJ?”
Liam passed by and snickered. He tried to stifle it when I glared at him. “You can call me Mr. Jade,” I ordered with a deep, commanding tone not unlike the ones my drill sergeants gave me during my days of basic training. Anyone else would have snapped to attention, heeding the unspoken warning.
Not Blake. Of course Blake would find it impossible to show me even an inkling of respect. She just rolled her eyes before giving me an exaggerated, mock salute.
“Sure thing, Mr. Jade.” Her voice was dripping with sarcasm. Though I had to grate my teeth together so as to not say something I’d regret, my dick made the decision to suddenly join the conversation as if she were speaking to him directly. The woman was infuriating, but instead of making me want to get rid of her for good, my frustration manifested in the image of bending her over my knee and spanking her pretty ass until it was pink.
One look, a few words - that was all it took for Blake to get under my skin. And that pissed me off. A lot.
So I did what any rational man would do when he was worked up over a woman he shouldn’t and couldn’t want.
For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, I slammed the door in her face.