Hope Entangles: A New Adult Romantic Comedy (Book 2 of 3) (16 page)

Somehow I didn’t think she was entirely
on the up and up. She was acting too naïve, and her voice had that
tour guide cadence.

She picked up her cup of coffee and
took a careful sip. “You don’t still have any lingering feelings
for Jake, do you?”

Okay, that was a weird
question.

Of course I still had feelings for him!
But that was pretty damn pathetic, wasn’t it?

I shook my head. “No, none at all. I
just don’t want to go through the hassle of facing him right now.”
Liar, liar, pants on fire.

Bette’s face was strangely
expressionless. She was either hiding something, or she’d caught my
mother’s emotional detachment syndrome.

My phone rang. I picked it up and
looked at the caller ID.

Raphael.

I took the call.

“
I’m going to get even with
you no matter how long it takes!”

“
Now, now… I was just being
neighborly and helping old friends reconnect.”

Bullshit. “You’re going to need
reconnecting when I get through with you.”

He laughed. The infuriating asshole
laughed at me!

“
First you wanted my head,
and now it’s my balls.”

“
I never said—”

“
Are there any parts of me
you’re not coveting?”

I hung up on him.

Bette hid her smile behind
her coffee mug. That was until her phone started playing
I’m Sexy and I Know It.

“
Really?” I
growled.

She smiled beatifically and then
accepted the call. “Raff! What’s up?”

Raff?

She listened, she smiled
even wider. “He wants me to ask who’s re-enacting
Clash of the Titans
on
your front porch.” She listened some more and giggled. “And would
you like him to call law enforcement for you?”

I lunged across the floating island and
grabbed Bette’s phone out of her hand.

“
If you cause me any more
trouble, you… you…”

“
I have fresh coffee and
banana nut bread.”

Banana nut bread? “You…”

“
I just baked it. It’s still
warm.” Raphael’s voice was like melted butter.

“
I…”

“
There are no homicidal
women camped out on
my
front porch.”

I sighed. “We’ll be right
over.”

I hung up, grabbed the
Spencers’ sack with the novelty mug and started for the back door.
“Come on,
Judas
.” I
cricked my finger at Bette. “We’ve been invited for coffee at the
neighbor’s.”

Bette fell in behind me,
humming a jaunty tune. I think it was the theme song to
Green Acres.

Chapter 14

We stole across the side yard toward
Raphael’s house, the sound of high strung, well-educated women
verbally bashing each other our soundtrack. Well, that and Paula
barking out curse words.

Raphael stood in his open backdoor. I
suddenly realized the sheets of plastic and work tools were gone,
and what was left was a beautifully remodeled back porch/deck
combo, with a top of the line grill, mini fridge and the biggest
hot tub I’d ever seen.

How had they gotten all this
done in one day?
It must have cost a
fortune…

I stopped and gave Raphael the dirty
look he deserved.

In return he just smiled wider, looking
even more handsome, wearing a muscle hugging black t-shirt with
some sort of math or Greek lettering on it.

Bastard.

I walked past him into the kitchen,
jamming my knuckles into his six pack abdominals as I handed him
the Spencers’ bag.

Just touching him gave me a little
thrill, as if I had a low grade fever. He groaned over
dramatically, but never stopped smiling.

“
Mi casa es su
casa
, ladies,” he crooned. “So who are all
those angry ladies on Hope’s front porch?”

I went right for the coffee and banana
nut bread, cut off a four-inch slab and slapped it on one of the
plates Raphael had set out.

Don’t look at me that way! I eat when
I’m nervous.

Bette, still acting beyond strange,
bee-lined it straight for Raphael’s open laptop. “The first two
were Hope’s ex’s mother and sister,” Bette said absently. “The late
comer was her mother.”

Raphael made a low whistle and a scowl,
pouting his luscious lips.

I just stared at Bette. “What, do you
have my porch bugged too?”

She tried to look apologetic as she
pulled her mini listening device from her ear. “I just had my
binoculars out, so I kinda caught the whole thing.”

I shoved a huge bite of banana nut
bread in my mouth and then pointed accusingly at Bette.

“
Ma shoon ass—”

“
What?” Bette said,
furrowing her brow at me.

Good god the banana nut bread was
good!

I swallowed and took a gulp of coffee.
“As soon as the goon squad loses interest in having a death match
on my front porch, I’m going to change all the locks on my house
and install surround sound speakers in every room so you won’t be
able to eavesdrop on me anymore.”

Bette shrugged.

“
And black out blinds on
every window.”

She actually looked sad at
that.

Raphael laughed at me.

I turned on him, “And you, you immature
little…”

He just smiled at me. “I’ll go with you
to the party.”

“
You will?”

He took a step closer. “Yeah, I’ll go
to your little party.” He stepped closer. “I’ll be impeccably
groomed, probably better dressed than you, and I’ll do my best to
make every woman and man in the place wish they were
you.”

I bet he would…

I looked up into his dark, sexy eyes
and lost all track of my thoughts. I’d been angry,
right?

He smiled, looking like the sexiest
devil ever, and raised the bag I’d given him up into my line of
sight. “I assume this is from you?”

That broke me out of my temporary mind
meltdown. I shook it off and coughed.

“
Call it a belated house
warming gift.”

Raphael walked away, and the
temperature in the kitchen blessedly went down about twenty
degrees. He placed the bag on the floating island, gave Bette a
cursory glance, and then pulled the box out of the bag. He opened
the box and pulled out a gaudy, multicolored, sprinkle clad coffee
mug. Only the handle was white.

“
I washed it and everything,
so you can have your coffee in it.” If you can stand it… you
obsessive compulsive pain in the ass!

Raphael studied it with a scowl. I
mentally patted myself on the back. This was the last thing he’d
want in his kitchen, or his house.

I smiled.

“
Um, Raff?” Bette
interrupted.

We both turned to look at her. She was
still standing in front of his open laptop.

“
Sorry to be so
nosey,”—Raphael and I rolled our eyes simultaneously at this—“but
are you really worth what it says on this spread sheet?”

Raphael gulped, suddenly looked
flushed, and scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “No… not
really.”

Liar. Just hearing his words screamed
he was lying.

I walked over to Bette and peered at
the screen.

It was a spreadsheet and… well, I
hadn’t any idea what it all meant. But there were a lot of large
numbers on there.

“
What’s it say?” I whispered
to Bette.

“
It says our neighbor is
rich enough to live in a penthouse in New York City… and to summer
in the Hamptons… and to have a villa in France—”

“
Ladies!” Raphael said, his
voice cracking. “I’m…”

We both stood there, staring at him,
not giving an inch.

“
I remember your sisters
said you were some kind of computer genius,” I prompted. Maybe he’d
started some software company like Bill Gates had?

He shook his head.

Bette raised her eyebrows. “So you’re…
what, some sort of mobster?”

“
No!” Raphael
scowled.

I joined in. “Are you the founder of a
pyramid scheme? Like Ponzi?”

That made him smile. “No.”

He walked over to his refrigerator and
pulled out a package of Hot Pockets: the two pack. He turned it so
we could see the back and pointed to the UPC—the little barcode
that they scan at the cash register.

“
What about it?” I
said.

Bette raised a perfectly plucked
eyebrow. “Don’t even try to say you invented barcodes!”

He shook his head, looking meek and
embarrassed. “No. I just came up with a way to make them look
better.”

We looked to each other and Bette
shrugged.

“
What do you mean, look
better?”

He took a deep breath and sighed. Then
he walked closer and pointed to the UPC again.

“
See how it’s in the shape
of a flame?”

Bette and I nodded.

“
I came up with
that.”

I canted my head at him. “No
way.”

Bette took the box out of his hands and
glared at the barcode. “I read that this shit came out of Japan.”
She locked him with a hard gaze.

“
Yeah, they implemented it
first… but I’m the one who came up with it.”

WTF?

“
Okay…” Raphael pulled up a
stool and sat at the floating island. “I was sixteen, I’d graduated
early from high school and was a freshman at MIT.”

Oh boy… he really was a
genius.

“
By the way, I don’t
recommend going to college early. Especially so far away from
home.” He looked off out the window over his kitchen sink. “I was
homesick, friendless, and bored shitless when a professor in
mathematical statistics started in on a two hour lecture on the
modern UPC.”

“
Eww,” Bette said
sympathetically.

“
Yeah, so I started playing
on my laptop, found the UPC for Preparation H on the internet, and
then made it look like his face. His teeth, actually.

I had to smile. Sixteen and alone in a
strange university, and he was still a smart ass.

“
I’d hacked into the
professor’s email the first week of class, and had the emails and
phone numbers for everyone in class… so…”

Bette had a wicked smile on her face,
leaning forward in anticipation of where his story was
going.

He took another deep, embarrassed
breath and sighed. “So, I texted it to everyone in the
class.”

“
And?” Bette
prompted.

“
And people started laughing
and talking, and the professor swooped in and took a kid’s
blackberry from him and saw the UPC.”

Bette roared with laughter. “I bet that
went over real well!”

Raphael shrugged his broad, thickly
muscled shoulders.

“
At first he looked pissed…
and then he started smiling. Next thing I knew he dismissed the
class and had me making other—less embarrassing to him—UPCs. About
an hour later he dragged me across campus to the Dean of Computer
Sciences office and presented me and my little trick.

“
They both got really
excited, and for the next two weeks I was refining and making more
and more of my “artistic barcodes.” They took me to six meetings
with manufacturing executives, but they didn’t think much about my
little trick. So they started talks with some companies over in
Japan and Asia. I guess the Dean had some contacts over there from
his college days.”

He sighed. “They ate it up, and before
I knew it most of the products over there started sporting UPCs
made to look like cartoon art.”

“
Wow,” I said.

“
A couple years ago they
started popping up in the good old US of A.”

“
And you…” Bette shook her
head and smiled. “You get paid for every product that uses
it?”

He shrugged. “I get paid a certain
amount for every item that’s sold that has one. It renews every six
months.”

“
Wow…” I couldn’t even
imagine how much money that was.

Bette shook her head again. “So why the
hell are you living here?”

Good question.

Raphael looked around his kitchen and I
could see him relax. “I liked the house.”

I raised my eyebrows to
Bette.

“
I mean… I grew up in a
crappy little apartment, sharing my room with two brothers, and the
rest of the apartment with my mom and two sisters.”

“
There were five of you?”
Bette asked.

“
Yeah, in a two bedroom
apartment.”