Color of Loneliness (25 page)

Myra doesn’t laugh because Jackie should be banned from all energy drinks.

“Well, I’m going to go start unpacking my boxes and get settled in. This is going to be the greatest thing ever, us being next door neighbors and best friends. I’m just so happy. Wait. That didn’t sound right. I mean I’m really devastated that my grandpa died and everything because I don’t mean I’m happy that he died. I just mean that it’s neat how things have worked out so we can be near each other. This was meant to be.”

Myra stands, thankful that she won’t have to endure any more Jackie for at least a little while. Jackie hugs her hard before bouncing out the door and down the stairs towards her house, constantly looking back and giddily waving the whole time.

Myra sighs as she closes the door, shaking her head.

* * *

Dylan winces as he takes his coat off and half listens to Elaina’s babbling. “Ah,
mi querido
, I’m so sorry you fell through that roof. You have to be in so much pain. I’ll get you whipped back into shape before…”

She stops talking when a phone starts ringing.

Dylan’s brows scrunch up as he stares at her. “Oh, sorry,” she mutters as she shoves her hand into her cleavage and whips out her cell phone.

His mouth drops open because he can’t figure out how she squeezed that phone in there. He tries to cover his smile as he quickly averts his eyes away from her flower-covered, extremely large rack. “I need to take this,” she says before she turns and walks towards her desk, rapidly speaking in Spanish. Dylan doesn’t understand a word she says.

Elaina smiles when she returns, looking flustered. “Sorry. Now, you said you have some bruising from the accident? Let me take a look.”

Dylan stands and turns around, pulling up his shirt. “Ah, what a mess. Just when we were making such good progress,” she says.

He grimaces as he situates himself on the table. But within minutes, he moans when he feels her hands on his back.

“Other than falling through a roof, what else have you been up to? Did you get some rest over the weekend?” she asks.

“God, that feels good… no,” he mutters.

Elaina leans her elbow gently into his back. “No?”

He takes in a deep breath. “My brother and his family showed up.”

“Really? Where are they from?”

“Boise,” he grunts.

“Did you do anything special?”

He snorts. “You mean other than my sister-in-law dragging us to fucking church on Sunday?”

“Church?”

“Yeah.”

“Which one?”

“I don’t remember the name.”

“Oh. I go to the Catholic church over on Main. Did you at least enjoy it?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

He pauses, taking in a deep breath. “Because if there is a God, he sure did a damn good job screwing me over.”

Elaina gasps and mutters something in Spanish. “Everything happens for a reason. You just need to have a little faith.”

“Look, I’m done with this conversation, all right? Just work on my back and no more talking.”

“Of course,” she says softly.

* * *

Myra stares at the tiny vertical blinking line on her screen, watching it flash over and over again. She can’t focus. Her thoughts are a million miles away from her story, focused on the look that a certain someone gave her earlier out on her front porch. The same look he had the night before when he was drunk. He should not have looked at her like that when he was sober. Like he wanted to ravage her.

She frowns because it doesn’t make any sense. Unless Dylan does this with all of the women he works for. He could be a cheater.

Leaning her head back against her headboard, she closes her eyes thinking back to how he looked at her. She knows he was going to kiss her. The way he kept staring at her lips with his mouth parted, his heavy breathing, the lust in his eyes. She shivers just thinking about it. And she knows what would have happened had Jackie not shown up. She squeezes her eyes tight and rubs her temples against that thought.

She needs to be stronger because she will not allow herself to be the other woman.

Sitting up and looking back at her laptop, she re-reads her last paragraph.

“The dust swirled in massive, billowing clouds around the black stallion as he came to an abrupt halt, his nostrils flaring from the exertion. The horse neighed and rose up on his back hind legs, desperate to charge forward. A swift yank on its reins calmed the horse immediately. The brim of the rider’s weathered cowboy hat tipped just enough to hide his face from view. Just as the dust settled, the cowboy slowly lifted his head to reveal green eyes flashing a fearsome anger. One thing was for certain. Someone was going to die today.”

Annoyed that she can’t type another word, Myra flips her laptop closed and sets it on her nightstand. Sighing and knowing that she probably won’t be able to sleep at all, Myra still switches the light off and snuggles under the covers; she has many thoughts to keep her company for the next few hours.

* * *

Dylan slams his hand on the alarm clock and, with a groan, flops back against his pillow. He only fell asleep about an hour ago after tossing and turning all fucking night. Then somehow – in that short hour – he managed to dream about somebody’s lips being attached to a part of his anatomy that happens to be hard as a damn rock right now. And to top it all off, he has to drag his tired ass out of bed and try like hell to avoid looking at those lips today.

Climbing out of bed with a grunt, he walks uncomfortably into the kitchen. He looks down at the source of his discomfort and wishes it would deflate. Flinging open the refrigerator door, he grabs a carton of milk and takes several gulps, pushing his naked body closer to the inside of the fridge, trying to rid himself of his massive hard-on so that he can go take a piss.

After putting the milk back in the fridge, he yawns and stretches, standing a little longer in the cold. He contemplates pulling out an ice pack and throwing it on his aching dick, but decides that might be a little painful. A cold shower would obviously do the trick, but he took a shower last night and sure as hell doesn’t feel like taking another one.

Within half an hour, he pulls into Myra’s driveway. As he starts unloading his tools, he tries like hell not to think about the beautiful lips inside that house, but that seems to be all he thinks about. A few minutes later, Ray pulls in beside him, but he keeps at his task and doesn’t bother looking up.

“Good morning, Sweetpea,” he hears Ray’s voice boom loudly, causing him to cringe. Dylan clenches his fists together before he turns around to face him.

His mouth drops open as he stares at Ray standing there grinning from ear to ear, holding a huge bouquet of roses and a couple of balloons with hearts on them. Ray tilts his head and cocks an eyebrow at Dylan. “You did remember what today is, right?”

Dylan frowns.

“It’s Valentine’s Day, you ass,” he says as he lumbers off towards the house.

Dylan seethes as he pulls out a cigarette. Leaning up against the side of his truck, he blows the smoke out of the corner of his mouth as he watches Myra open the door.

He knows Myra doesn’t want to go out with that stupid fucker because she said so, and it doesn’t matter who she goes out with anyway. But for some reason, he doesn’t like this. Not one bit.

Myra’s eyes meet his for a moment before she lets Ray’s sorry ass into her house and the door closes. Dylan pushes himself off his truck and starts to pull his ladder out of the back, but it gets stuck. He yanks and tugs on it so hard that he almost rips a rung off.

Leaning the ladder roughly against the house, his eyes narrow when he notices he bent the gutter. Climbing up on the roof, he starts tearing the shingles off as hard as he can, trying not to think about the two of them together in the house below him.

Ray shows up a few minutes later grinning like a dick and humming. Dylan somehow manages to maintain his composure and refrains from shoving the fucker off the roof like he so desperately wants to.

* * *

Myra looks worriedly at the clock. Part of her wants to eat lunch with Dylan again like she did yesterday – without Ray of course – and part of her doesn’t. She knows it would probably be best if she stayed as far away from him as possible because every time she gets near him, something inappropriate almost happens.

Her heart leaps into her throat when she hears a knocking on the door. Jumping up off the couch, she hurries towards it, hoping it might be Dylan. Her shoulders slump when she sees Ray standing there. “You’ve got me all to yourself for lunch today,” he happily informs her as he steps through the door.

Looking outside and not seeing Dylan anywhere, she turns back to Ray. “Where’s Dylan?”

Ray shrugs. “Who knows? Off somewhere being his jackass self.”

Myra frowns. “I can just eat by myself then,” she says.

“Oh no,” Ray says, shaking his head. “I can’t let a lovely lady such as yourself eat all alone on Valentine’s Day.”

Internally groaning, Myra closes the door. With her head down, she walks quickly towards the kitchen. Grabbing a pre-made salad from the fridge along with a bottle of water, she sits down across from Ray as he starts pulling out a sandwich from the lunch he brought.

“Why won’t you go out with me tonight?”

She stares at her salad, picking at it, and sighs. “Like I told you earlier, I don’t want to date anyone right now.”

“Let’s not call it a date. We can just go out as friends.”

“No.”

“Why not? I’m a nice guy.”

“It has nothing to do with that. I don’t want to date right now.”

“Is it because you don’t know me very well? I can tell you all about myself. I can even provide some references,” he says with a wink.

Myra takes another bite of her salad and stares down at the bowl, trying to decide how to get rid of Ray. The man obviously has some serious issues because he can’t take no for an answer. She knows she has a soft heart and just doesn’t have it in her to be mean to someone, but she may have to get more assertive with this guy in order to get him to back off.

She sighs as Ray drones on about himself and determines she needs to do something about him soon.

* * *

Dylan stares at Myra’s house as he sits on his tailgate, eating a sandwich. He wants to be inside that house so damn badly he can hardly stand it – with just Myra of course – and with Ray maybe behind bars somewhere. Dylan bristles at just the thought of him. That fucker had better not be spewing any rude shit or offending her in anyway or he’ll bust his ass.

Sighing, he tosses his sandwich to the side and lights up a smoke, and continues staring at the house.

* * *

Myra opens the door.

“Delivery for Myra Sommers?”

She frowns at the delivery man who has a large box sitting at his feet. “Oh, yeah, that’s me,” she finally says.

“Great. Sign here.”

She signs, her forehead crinkling as she tries to think of anything she might have ordered. Coming up blank, she takes the box from him and kicks the door shut.

The return address has a name and address from someone in Schenectady. The name doesn’t ring a bell, and there are no markings on the outside of the box to indicate what could be inside. Carrying it into the kitchen, she grabs a knife to open it and pulls out a gift basket wrapped in pink cellophane paper.

Myra’s brows pull together because she has no idea who would send her a gift basket.

As she sets the basket on the table, her mouth falls open and a gasp escapes her when she sees the outline of a giant pink dildo through the transparent wrapping.

“Oh my God,” she mumbles as she picks the basket up and stuffs it back in the box. She quickly scurries down to the basement and shoves it on one of the shelves in the corner. Pulling out her phone, she immediately dials Susie as she makes her way back upstairs.

“Hey,” Susie says.

“I can’t believe you,” Myra hisses.

“What?” Susie asks, feigning innocence.

“You know what.”

Susie snickers. “I just wanted to send you a little “O” on “V” day. Make sure you think dirty, dirty thoughts about Mr. Shit-faced Asshole when you play with your new tools. Just imagine him all naked and sweaty wearing only his tool belt and waving his giant pipe wrench in your face.”

“You’re disgusting.”

“Yes, I am. Hey, I’ve got something that’ll cheer you up. I had to go into work an hour early this morning because I have to leave early for a dentist’s appointment, and Trent was already here. So the little wiener stopped by my desk and acted all surprised to see me. He said something stupid about how he had a few things to take care of because he was going to be out of the office for a couple of days.”

Myra sits down at the kitchen table, listening.

“So anyway, I decided to talk to the scuzzball for a minute, and asked him if he was serious about hiring a private detective, and he said no, that he was just saying that to try to get me to talk. That piece of slimy shit was just blowing smoke up my ass, can you believe that? And here I told you all about it and got you all upset for nothing.”