Risk (It's Complicated Book 2) (41 page)

D
ear Readers
:

I hope you enjoyed the Author’s Cut version of
Risk!

I don’t know about you, but I can’t believe it’s been over eight years since this book first
hit the shelves in February 2007.
Eight years
. Wow. Where has the time gone?

Although I’ve written many more books since then,
Risk
will forever hold a special place in my heart. Why? The characters, baby. It’s all about the characters.

Justus is an old soul and a wild card, and he is from his first appearance. He’s headstrong and intuitive. He says and does what he wants. He claims he doesn’t care what his father thinks (actually, knowing Justus, he’d probably say he doesn’t give a **** what his father thinks, but I digress), but we all know he’s lying. And when it comes to Angela, the older woman who catches his eye at his brother’s wedding, Justus is all heart and passion. He can’t help himself.

Angela is a reserved, uptight and vaguely OCD lawyer who doesn’t know what to do about her attraction to the bad boy who’s turned out to be such a strong and unexpected force in her life. Her paralyzing fear of being hurt makes her keep Justus at arm’s length. Well, she tries, anyway. She tries hard. But her anxiety is ultimately no match for the power of Justus’s determination...or his love.

And little Maya. What a pistol she is, eh? Can you tell I had small children in the house when I wrote this book? I hope everyone who knows and loves a small child will connect with Maya when they read
Risk
. Oh, and here’s a fun factoid: much to my astonishment, my husband taught our kids to play chess when they were about Maya’s age. But we didn’t have a
Wizard of Oz
board. *VBG*

Finally, there’s Vincent. A disapproving and imperious right-fighter, he’s never gotten over the fact that Justus makes his own decisions and didn’t follow in Vincent’s footsteps to Yale and beyond. I had a lot of fun opening his old eyes, bringing him down to size and giving him a new lease on life.

So...Four major characters with strong personalities plus a family tragedy and competing agendas equals an emotional book. I really hope you laughed
and
cried with the characters. That was my goal when I sat down to write this one.

With my Author’s Cut version of
Trouble
, I was merciless in cutting scenes and tightening the story, but I didn’t see the need to do that here. Why? Because I learned a lot about plotting between writing
Trouble
and writing
Risk
, and I’ve never been dissatisfied with
Risk
the way I was with
Trouble.
If there was fat to trim in the Author’s Cut version of
Risk
, allow me to apologize to you now, because I missed it.

What I
did
do, however, was add some scenes and seize some missed opportunities to pluck the heartstrings just a
little
bit more. Why? Because I wanted to enhance the book’s emotional resonance and, consequently, the reader experience as much as possible.

Fingers crossed that I succeeded...

As always, happy reading!

Ann

J
OURNEY’S END
Small-Town Contemporary Romance Series

“Book” 1:
A JOURNEY’S END
Novella

Book 2:
LET’S DO IT

Book 3:
ON FIRE

“Book” 4:
LET’S STAY TOGETHER
Novella

Book 5: UNTITLED (Daniel & Zoya)

D
EADLY Romantic Suspense Series

Book 1:
DEADLY PURSUIT

Book 2:
DEADLY DESIRES

Book 3:
DEADLY SECRETS

I
T’S COMPLICATED
Series

RISK

TROUBLE

T
he Davies Legacy
: TWINS OF SIN Series

Book 1:
SINFUL SEDUCTION

Book 2:
SINFUL TEMPTATION

Book 3:
SINFUL ATTRACTION

Book 4:
SINFUL PARADISE

W
ARNER FAMILY SECRETS
& LIES Series

Book 1:
TENDER SECRETS

Book 2:
ROAD TO SEDUCTION

Book 3:
CAMPAIGN FOR SEDUCTION

Book 4:
REDEMPTION’S KISS

Book 5:
REDEMPTION’S TOUCH

S
ingle Titles

CASE FOR SEDUCTION

THE SURGEON’S SECRET BABY

SEDUCED ON THE RED CARPET

JUST ABOUT SEX

SWEETER THAN REVENGE

N
ovellas

TAILS OF LOVE

GIFT OF LOVE

B
ELLA MONSTRUM Young
Adult Horror Series

Book 1:
MONSTRUM

T
o
Richard

S
pecial thanks to my copyeditor
, Arran McNicol, for his keen eye and sharp wit; one of my writing BFFs, Eve Silver, for her beta read; and to Damonza for the gorgeous cover.

S
ofia Abbate Watch
, Day 1

Sightings: 2

K
eeping
one eye on Sofia Abbate’s huge house, a gray clapboard with black trim and a white-railed wraparound porch, Ethan Harper leaned on his spade, took off his baseball cap and wiped his sweaty forehead with the cloth he always kept in the back pocket of his shorts whenever he was on a job.

It’d been quite the morning here on sleepy Bloem Street here in Journey’s End.

Yes, indeed.

July 5, and the fireworks kept on coming.

First, two of his employees had called in with a bad case of “food poisoning,” which they attributed to the potato salad they’d eaten at a picnic yesterday. Ethan wasn’t buying it, though. Alcohol poisoning from a little too much patriotic spirit yesterday? Now
that
he’d buy. Not that it made a lick of difference either way. The bottom line was, Ethan had been left high and dry on the very first day of his big new landscaping job, with a shitload of trees, shrubs and flowers in the back of his truck, a client who’d paid a nice deposit for said flora and no-freaking-body to plant the things.

Which meant that he, the new owner of the newly rechristened Harper Landscape Design, had been required to drag his ass out of bed, ignore his own post-Fourth hangover and hightail it over here to start landscaping.

And
here
was where he’d encountered his second surprise of the day:

A vehicle repossession in progress.

He’d arrived bright and early and parked at the curb in time to see an impassive repo guy with a big-ass flatbed truck lay claim to a sick new Audi SUV with blacked-out windows, rims and all the trimmings. Since this clear sign of financial distress didn’t bode well for small business owners, such as Ethan, who hoped to be paid their entire five-figure fee without having to resort to collection agencies, lawsuits and small claims court, Ethan had climbed out of his truck, exchanged nods with repo guy and headed up the walk to the front door so he could have a small chat with his clients before he started digging in the hot sun.

But when he got within ten feet of the door, he realized it was ajar.

And
that
meant that he and repo guy could hear every barbed word Mr. and Mrs. Happy Couple hurled at each other.

“Don’t get cute with me, jackass!” The woman’s voice was shrill enough to make ears bleed all up and down the Hudson River Valley. “You obviously know what’s going on because you don’t seem surprised.
I’m
the only one here who’s surprised. So why don’t you tell me why some guy is taking our car?”

“Why the fuck do you think?” came the answering roar from the man of the house, whose voice was deep and resonant enough to double as a foghorn for any passing cargo vessels on the river. “Why do you ask me this stupid shit when you already know the answer?”

“
Excuse
me?” the woman answered. “Are you calling
me
the stupid one here?”

That was about the time that Ethan decided he was in grave danger of losing a limb if he interrupted the terrier and the bear while they were ripping each other to shreds. Ringing the bell was out of the question. So he wheeled around and went back to the relative safety of his truck to wait it out. He’d just pulled out his phone to check his e-mail when a woman strode up the sidewalk and gave him a wry look.

“That doesn’t look good,” she’d said. “What’s going on?”

He’d told her. Turned out she was the best friend, who was staying with the couple for a few days. Poor woman. She’d squared her shoulders and marched inside, to the bear’s cave, and her bravery made him feel like he’d been hiding under the bed during a thunderstorm. So, after a brief hesitation, he’d followed her back up the walk and watched her go inside just as Mrs. Happy Couple unleashed hell on her husband.

“Why didn’t you ask me for a loan to cover—”

“I’m not asking my woman for a loan!
I
can take care of us!” the guy yelled.

“Apparently you can’t!” Mrs. Happy Couple shrieked, ending on a derisive laugh.

On the other side of the door, Ethan cringed, feeling for the husband. He also felt the first twinges of memory from his own unhappy marital past. Ethan didn’t know the whole story here, true, but, as a man, he had complete sympathy when one of his brethren’s women twisted the unfortunate guy’s balls and then yanked them off.

Oh, but there was more.

“Who paid the mortgage last month?” the woman continued. “Me! Who covers the utilities and the groceries? Me! Who works her ass off all day while you sit around on your ass all day and talk to your agent about tryouts with other teams when we all know you’re not in shape to try out for the local high-school football team? Me! And when you could be making money commenting for ESPN or some other channel, you turn down serious job offers so you can pursue your ridiculous pipe dreams!”

“Sofia!” cried the best friend, and a looming silence fell.

Out on the front porch, Ethan shifted uncomfortably, wishing he could un-hear.

Sofia, who’d now blown off her head of steam and no doubt had her husband lying in a bloody pulp at her feet, immediately began to backtrack and made a valiant attempt to force the genie back into the bottle, like that was possible.

“Toby, I’m sorry,” she said, her voice calmer now, but with a rising desperation that was as bad as everything else that’d happened thus far. “I didn’t mean—”

Toby said something, but Ethan didn’t hear it because repo guy choose that moment to edge past him and knock on the door. Ethan jumped at this reminder that the rest of the world still existed, quickly turned away and adjusted his ball cap, trying not to drown in his deep ambivalence.

When it came to financial problems lobbing a grenade into the heart of a marriage and blowing it straight to hell, all he could think was,
been there, done that
.

But the past was dead and gone, and he wasn’t going to let it reach out its ghostly fingers and ruin this sunny day for him.

When it came to the unfolding drama in the here and now, though, Ethan couldn’t decide who to root for.

On the one hand, Mr. Happy Couple had, it seemed, screwed up on many levels. What kind of man let his woman foot the bills while he sat around all day? What kind of man didn’t work when work was available, even if it wasn’t the ideal job? Was there an Ideal Job Fairy twittering around somewhere, guaranteeing people that they’d only ever have to work at jobs they loved and/or were befitting their status in life?

If so, the little sucker had sure been lying down on the job when Ethan financed his bachelor’s at Rhode Island and his master’s at Rutgers by working every sweaty, dirty, smelly and, occasionally, shitty job he could find. Among many other things, he’d been a caddy, flipped burgers and walked some of the most unpleasant dogs known to humankind, all for the money he needed to get through school. He’d never been too proud to do a job that needed to be done, and do it well, and he’d been doing unwanted jobs for most of his adult life because bills, at least in his experience, didn’t pay themselves. So he didn’t have much patience for laziness and could totally sympathize with the woman.

On the other hand—
damn, bruh
.

You sure picked yourself a bitch who could go for the jugular, didn’t you?

To be fair, Ethan had made the same costly mistake back in the day, and her name had been Judy Harper.

Until that glorious morning a year ago, when his divorce decree arrived in the mail, and Judy became, once again, Judy Teller. That was the day he’d begun to build a new and improved life.

He’d never looked back.

But Ethan’s marriage had died amid a chilling disdain that still made him shiver to this day. He and Judy had never had this hot flare of passion like Mr. and Mrs. Happy Couple here. In fact, though Judy had made him feel like shit on multiple memorable occasions, Ethan had never experienced an emasculation like the one he’d just overheard, and he’d seen bulls neutered on animal shows before. He turned away from the door, resisting the urge to cup his own balls and make sure they were still safe in the presence of this shrew.

Right about then, the door swung open, and out she swept, edging by Ethan with her head held high.

The shrew.

Or bitch.

Whatever.

Based on the venom the woman had just spewed, Ethan had braced for someone with the body of a Sherman tank and the face of a gargoyle, probably with a cigarette clamped between her yellowed teeth and her pet Doberman snarling on the end of a leash.

He had not expected…

That.

Her
.

Christ.

Surprise nearly knocked him on his ass.

She was a bombshell of 100-proof unhappiness poured into the body of Marilyn Monroe and topped with the face of a Latin movie goddess with a little bit of African-American in her blood. From all appearances, she’d just rolled her sexy self out of bed, a likelihood that caused the blood to hum through his veins. She wore a short white robe that made the honey-with-cream of her skin glow in the morning sun and heat pool in his belly and nether regions. If she’d paid more than a dollar for the robe, he decided, she needed to demand her money back immediately. The thing barely cleared her tight ass and hit the bottoms of her shorty shorts, a fact for which he was profoundly grateful. Nor did the front halves of the robe
quite
come together enough to hide her bouncing and braless breasts from his greedy view. Oh, she wore a tank top beneath, sure, but her nipples were beaded and therefore prominent. And when you were rocking a pair like
that,
you were going to be stared at unless you wore an industrial strength bra at all times or else helpfully passed around blindfolds to nearby men (and interested women) whenever you went out in public.

And just to make sure Ethan never had a fighting chance? She smelled like clean laundry, orange blossoms and ripe woman. And he could just imagine—his gut tightened into a heavy knot of desire—how earthy and delicious she’d smell after rolling around in his bed with him one lazy afternoon.

Watching her walk to the SUV, he felt his lower jaw drop to the porch, which made it that much easier for his mouth to go dry. Her legs were long, bare and shapely enough to do some modeling for Michelangelo. Her hips were curvy. And there was that ass again, in all its mouthwatering glory.

The sight of her in motion—hips…ass…thighs…hips…ass…thighs—was enough to make mashed potatoes of his brain, leaving him dull and stupid. Thus, subsequent events were a little hazy in his mind. The best friend had come back. She’d said that the missus, here—Sofia; her name was
Sofia
—was equal parts banshee and angel. Ethan had asked about the husband, and the best friend had said that he and Sofia weren’t married.

That
bit of news had snapped Ethan right back to the here and now.

“Not married?” he’d asked, just to make sure he’d heard right.

Whereupon the best friend had put her hands on her hips and glared him down. “I’m not going to have any problems with you, am I?”

Since it had just become Ethan’s most fervent wish to hook up with Sofia as quickly, athletically and often as possible, he couldn’t answer and had to look away.

Sofia, meanwhile, was now climbing back out of the car with an umbrella and some other stuff. She’d been wearing a hot pink sleep scarf, but when she accidentally brushed her head on the door’s frame, the thing slid off. Her shiny brown hair, which was thick and curly and would feel amazing if and when it ever, say, trailed over his naked torso and belly while heading to southern parts, fell free.

And all Ethan could do was stare, because she was beautiful.

Absolutely, heart-stoppingly and unforgettably
beautiful
.

He heard himself gasp like a kid who’d discovered the keys to a fully stocked Toys “R” Us in his stocking on Christmas morning but, honest to God, he couldn’t make himself care that he was acting like a complete fool.

How could he help it in the presence of a woman like
that
?

And then Sofia noticed him on her way back into the house.

“Who’re you?” she’d demanded, pausing.

He couldn’t answer for an embarrassingly long couple of beats.

For one thing, he was no longer sure which way was up, what day it was or whether he actually had a name.

For another, she was
right there,
staring up at him with the most fantastic pair of dark brown eyes he’d ever seen. Long-lashed and narrowed with suspicion, they took up way more than their share of her face and way more than their fair share of his memory and thoughts in the hours since he’d first seen them.

“The, uh, landscaper,” he’d replied, sounding like Homer Simpson on a particularly stupid day.

She looked around and saw his truck, giving him the cover he needed to study her even more closely.

With this one, he quickly realized, the whole was infinitely more than the sum of the parts.

Her profile revealed a tiny bump on the bridge of her long nose. Her features were vaguely asymmetrical, with one eye slightly higher than the other and its corresponding brow flatter than the other one. Her mouth was wide and ridiculously lush, probably waiting to pout a good portion of the time, when those berry lips weren’t flattened with anger. And there were enough tiny zits sprinkled across her forehead to mar that glowing skin and no doubt annoy the hell out of her when she looked in the mirror.

And yet, if someone from
Sports Illustrated
rolled up right now and made him the one-man selection committee for the model to grace the cover of its next swimsuit edition, Ethan wouldn’t hesitate.

This one,
he’d say.
Her
.
Yes.

And then he’d say,
You know what? Forget about the off-the-charts body and the whole swimsuit thing.

Focus on this arresting face
.

“Oh,” she said, turning to face him again and snapping him out of his thoughts. “Well, why aren’t you landscaping?”