Chapter 1

Why get thinner when you can get dinner?

Cora

Chugggggaaaaaa chuggggaaaaaa vroooooooom.

I ground my teeth together and glared so hard at the outside wall of my house that faced the noise. It was a wonder it was still standing against my anger.

I was not a happy girl.

In fact, if there was one person in the entire freakin’ city of Hostel right now who might kill their neighbor by midnight, it was me.

“What in the hells bells made whoever was starting that truck—and it was probably a goddamn man—think it was okay to do that at” —I looked over to the clock— “twelve oh three in the freakin’ morning? Some of us have to freakin’ work tomorrow!”

The empty house didn’t answer me, and I looked at the offending wall.

If I didn’t have my bed in this room, I’d literally go to another part of the house.

Unfortunately, with none of the other rooms having any furniture, that wasn’t really an option for me.

Not if I wanted to have a good night’s rest.

Which I needed since tomorrow was my first day of work.

I, Cora Maldando, was an official animator on the newest children’s animated movie, The Young Ones.

I’d been drawing since I was a child. When I started showing my parents how good I was, they’d enrolled me in art classes by the age of five. By age nine, I was drawing comics and selling them—or my parents were. By age fifteen, I had my own deviant art account and was creating book covers for romance, sci-fi, and paranormal authors.

By the age of twenty-one, I graduated with my bachelor’s degree in business administration with a minor in art.

And now, at the age of twenty-five, I was now the newest member on the biggest team of children’s movie animators in the world.

I was still quite unsure how I’d managed to get where I was.

But that three hundred-thousand-dollar incentive bonus should’ve been enough of a ‘you’re making it.’

Now, I’d bought a house, I had a link to the mother ship in New York, NY, and I could work from home.

I still was so unsure of myself and my abilities, but my family and my bosses weren’t. They believed in me, so I was going to kick ass, even if I had to kick my own ass to kick ass.

Vroooooooooooooooooooooom.

I winced, staring at the wall again, and came to a decision.

I was going to have to do something. This was non-negotiable.

I had to be able to link up with the rest of the team tomorrow, and I couldn’t do that if I had no sleep.

My luck, I’d oversleep, not wake up until twelve, and they’d revoke my bonus.

Then I’d be homeless because I couldn’t pay my house payment or any of the repairs on the older car that I’d just acquired.

Much to my father’s chagrin.

Gabriel Maldanado hadn’t even wanted me to leave town, but I had to. I needed to be independent and to do that, I couldn’t live at home anymore. I was a twenty-five-year-old woman, well on her way to twenty-six, and I needed to have my own place.

Even though I missed my family like crazy.

Vroooooooooooooom.

I pulled out my phone and texted my dad.

I knew he’d be awake.

Cora (12:03AM): If I asked you to, would you come over and fix some guy’s truck that won’t stay running?

Dad (12:04 AM): No. He’d have to pay me. I don’t do shit for free, yo.

I grinned, knowing that it was my mother, and not my father, who was answering me.

The first clue was the punctuation. The second was that my father’s texts consisted of one or two-word sentences whenever he could manage it. If he couldn’t, he called.

Cora (12:04 AM): Whoever it is can’t keep his truck started for long, and I’m about to go over there and knife him.

Dad (12:05 AM): Shoot him. You won’t have to get as close.

I grinned, loving my mother.

She wasn’t my biological mother, but you couldn’t tell by the way she treated me.

She was my best friend, and not a day went by that I didn’t talk to her.

Moving had been harder on her than it had been on my dad. It was hard not to have your best friend around.

And she was my best friend.

Where normal people had kids their own age as their best friend, my mother had been mine instead.

Sure, there were kids around who were my age, but I was a loner. Always had been, and always would be.

But I had followed two of those kids, Kayla and Janie—the daughters of a couple of my mother’s close friends—here to Hostel. I needed to grow up and get my own life, and I couldn’t do that if I couldn’t even get out of my parents’ house.

Which led me to here.

Vroooooooom. Vroooooooom.

I should’ve listened to my father.

He’d told me this was too far out, and that there would likely be something that came up that couldn’t be solved on my own.

This was a perfect example.

I was a dummy.

I hadn’t even made it a week in this place, and I was already having problems.

Determination making my limbs stiffen with resolve, I threw the covers off of my body and made my way to the closet.

After selecting a pair of sweatpants, I grabbed the closest sweatshirt—which totally clashed with my bottoms—and made my way to the door. I slipped my feet into my tennis shoes left in front of the walk-in closet and grabbed my concealed carry weapon off my nightstand before making my way to the door and heading down the hallway.

My pants sagged, and I hastily tightened the string looping through the waistband.

Once it was as tight as it was going to get, I searched for my keys, locked up, and then headed in the direction of the sound.

Due to where my house was located, I decided to cut through the woods instead of walking around my property and down to the road. That particular way would take off quite a few minutes from my trek, and I wanted to get this over with tonight—not tomorrow morning.

Needless to say, I wasn’t in the best of shape.

Sitting on my ass all day drawing didn’t make for the most toned body.

Every once in a while, I’d pull out a couple of videos and do about a week’s worth of T-25 or Insanity. But then I’d get really, super sore, and forget why I wanted to be fit to begin with.

Then, I’d pick it back up a couple of months later and start the cycle all over again.

I was not overweight, per se, but I was on the verge of being embarrassed about my size.

On the verge, meaning, I wasn’t quite there yet.

In my mind, I was more like an Oompa Loompa than I was a person, but, since I was five-foot-three and wore a size eight, I was realistically more of a normal size than I visualized myself as being.

Vroooooom.

“You piece of shit,” came a deep, rough, male voice.

I bit my lip and looked at the barn that was coming into view.

Would he completely freak out if I walked up on him?

“Come on, you sweet little bitch. You can do it,” the raspy male voice said.

What the hell was wrong with his voice? It sounded like he was a pack-a-day smoker who had recently been punched in the throat.

“Ahhh, there you are. Fuck you.”

I found myself smiling at him and his power words.

Power words were those words that you just had to use when you were trying to make something happen, and you needed that extra oomph to make it work—that’s where power words came in.

My dad was exactly like that.

I couldn’t tell you how many times when I was a child that I’d walked into the shop and heard my dad or my uncles doing the exact same thing.

Although my dad had started curbing his mouth when I began repeating those words—at least he did when I was around. But when I snuck into the shop late at night while he was working, I’d hear him use those words.

“Fuck you, motherfucker,” came another snarl.

I was smiling when I finally made it around the side of the shop, but that smile left my face when I walked around the corner and saw him.

He was tall, around six-foot-four at least, if not taller. He was standing, his legs encased in dark washed jeans that were covered in stains. Jeans, I might add, that fit his ass as if they were made for him. A white t-shirt that was stained to hell and back and a red ball cap that looked like it had been taken off his head a hundred thousand times with dirty, grease-stained hands rounded out the image before me.

He was staring at the engine of an old Chevy, maybe from the fifties? His arms were braced against the side, and he was looking at the motor as if he was trying to figure out the meaning of life—or maybe how to get the damn thing running for longer than three seconds.

I didn’t know.

What I did know was that he was beautiful. Breathtaking.

Solid, thick, and muscular—he looked like he’d give good hugs. Especially with those long arms of his that were so thick and strong. The veins in his arms were plentiful and beautiful, too.

He had a name on his forearm in script that I could just barely make out—Francesca.

A daughter, maybe? He didn’t look the type to tattoo a wife’s name on his body.

Then, as if sensing me, he looked over and our eyes connected.

I felt the breath stall in my lungs.

Those eyes of his, God.

“Uhh,” I hesitated, unsure what I was going to say. “I’m your neighbor.”

He blinked, and despite having the break from his stare, I still felt like I couldn’t draw enough breath into my lungs.

“Neighbor,” he finally said. “Can I help you?”

That voice, God.

His eyes flicked to something above my head, and I glanced up to see a clock there.

I returned my gaze to his and then grimaced at the time. I was going to be so damn tired tomorrow.

But I’d worry about that after I left…

“Yeah,” I said in a small voice, unable to get all the words to come out strong like I’d been practicing on the way over. “I live over there.”

I pointed where I’d come from, and he looked in the direction of my finger.

“I…I…” I blew out a breath.

“Am I bothering you or something?”

I closed my eyes and felt my throat swell. “Yes. Kind of. Sort of. Maybe just a little bit,” I admitted, holding my thumb and pointer finger together, making a small gap between them to show him how much.

He didn’t smile, but I could hear a hint of laughter in his voice. “Is it the truck?”

He pointed at the offending object.

I nodded.

“Damn.”

I nodded again.

Damn was right.

“It’s loud…and I can hear everything. The impact wrench,” I gestured to the wrench on the corner of the truck that was attached to an air hose, that was attached to the other offending object. “The air compressor. And the constant vrrrrrroooom.”

His lips twitched at my car sound. “Is that right?”

I nodded.

That, apparently, was all that I was capable of.

My face was flushed bright red, and I felt like I was about to throw up. I didn’t do confrontation well at all. Especially when the person I was confronting was as gorgeous as this guy was.

“I’ll stop,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

His voice was so freakin’ deep!

I blew out a relieved breath. “Thank you.”

We stood there in awkward silence again, I assumed because he was waiting for me to leave.

But I couldn’t make my feet move.

“Uhh,” I hesitated.

His brows rose, waiting for me to voice my next statement.

“Are you okay?” I pressed my hand to my throat to indicate what I was talking about.

He grunted. “Yeah. Injury from my drill sergeant days. All I got left of my voice is what you hear.”

I swallowed.

This man used to be a drill sergeant? I could see it. Even his hair was well trimmed. But, he did have a beard. I knew that military men weren’t allowed beards unless they were in the special operation units. Then there were beards everywhere.

“Oh,” I nodded as if that explained everything. “Got it. Well, then I’m going to be going back to bed.”

He watched me walk away, and the entire time I walked, disappearing into the woods moments later, I felt his laser gaze on my back.

It wasn’t entirely a bad feeling, either.

I kind of liked that I’d garnered that kind of intense attention.

As I made my way to my back door, I pushed it open and then immediately slammed it closed behind me. Once it was locked, I set my alarm—something my father had made me set every single night no matter what—and headed back to bed.

After stripping down to my panties—I slept nearly nude, but I had to have underwear on for some reason—I laid down in my cold bed and shivered.

After rolling around until the blanket was, once again, wrapping me up like a burrito, I thought about the man who was my neighbor. Thought about how pretty of a drawing he would make.

Even though he was older, he was still cute.

His salt and pepper beard had been downright intoxicating.

And those eyes!

He had mossy green eyes, the color of dirty pond water. While not normally a particularly attractive color, on him it had been freakin’ breathtaking.

The more I thought about him, the more the itch became a burn…and I had to do it.

There was no other choice.

I got up, making my way into the other room where my drafting table was and sat down. Pulling a blank sheet of paper out, I picked up a piece of charcoal, and then flipped on the light that would illuminate the table.

Then I started to draw him. His strong hands, the veins in his forearms. The smudge of grease right above a tattoo of a girl’s name—Francesca.

I didn’t stop until well past three in the morning when the likeness was perfect.

After finishing it, I stood up, stared down at the drawing, and wondered how weird I was that I drew a man that I barely knew. If what had happened today could be counted as ‘knowing.’

After turning off the light to the table, I walked to the door, then took one final look over my shoulder once more, and then walked to the bedroom and completely forgot about him.

That was also a lie.

I lay awake for a while until I fell asleep for about two hours before my alarm went off.

The few dreams I did have were consumed with him.