Chapter Two
M itch
“Uh ... hello?”
Mitch Carlson stood half-in, half-out of the front door, struggling to believe the vision standing in front of him. “I’ll say,” spat the sexy firecracker in the snug hoodie jacket and clingy yoga pants, peering gently up at him with fire in her eyes and venom on her tongue.
“You’ll ... say ... what?” Mitch opened the door a little wider, revealing a living room full of passed out freshmen in various states of comfort and undress, the remnants of that night’s party.
It was creeping up on 3:00 AM, but the sexy spitfire on his reluctant host’s welcome mat looked raring to go, as if up for a midday run. She shook her head, a sleek dirty blonde ponytail swishing along her shoulders as she not-so-gently pressed the door all the wider. Mitch watched her cool brown eyes widen at the spectacle, the first night of spring break claiming half a dozen revelers who, up until roughly an hour ago, had been downing shots, setting off firecrackers and making out like their very lives depended on it.
“You’re not Reggie,” the sexy cougar in the doorway announced, inching her way inside as he stood in awe of her ripe, curvy derriere as it flexed and flounced a step or two inside the foyer.
“You’re right,” he murmured, afraid to speak too loudly lest he wake the partiers back up and ruin this private moment with Little Miss Sex Pot. “I’m Mitch. And you are?”
“I’m Emma,” she huffed, looking every bit like an Emma at that very moment, nostrils flared, hands on her hips, wide dark dyes flitting from frat boy to coed, from overturned whiskey bottle to crumpled red plastic cup and back again. “Your next-door neighbor.”
“That explains the righteous indignation,” he muttered as she inched deeper into the living room, fuzzy pink slippers crunching over bottle tops and crumpled cigarette packs. “Can I help you?”
“Not anymore,” Emma huffed, peering more closely at the frat boy passed out on the couch. Brody? Mitch struggled to recall his first name. Or was it Brady? They’d only spoken briefly on the ride to Reggie’s house from Coastal College. “Now that you’ve quit causing all that ruckus over here.”
Mitch followed, but not too terribly close, afraid Emma might turn on him at any moment and unleash the fury clenched in those balled-up fists clenched tightly at her side. “Believe it or not, ma’am,” Mitch said quietly, knowing he’d erred the moment that last word left his lips. “I’ll have you know I did no ruckus-ing, had nowhere near any shenanigans, and caused not a single, solitary peep.”
“Ma’am?” Emma seethed, turning on him with renewed ire. “Just how old do you think I am?”
Mitch stifled a grin as he nodded toward her fuzzy pink slippers. “I mean, not old, old obviously, but old enough to own a pair of those puppies,” he pointed out.
Emma glanced down as if forgetting she’d worn them out of the house. “Shit,” she huffed, lifting one graceful leg as if to examine it more closely. “I was halfway out the door to yell at you guys when I felt the wet grass under my bare feet and went back in and these were the closest to the door for some reason and...” Emma paused, mid-rant, peering up at him with a curious expression. “Remind me why I’m telling you all this again?”
Mitch sagged against a nearby stairwell, beaming his best shit-eating grin and nodding. “I just have one of those faces, I suppose. People just want to tell me things.”
Emma seemed to size him up, but she wasn’t the only one. As they savored their brief standoff, Mitch took in more details of his surprising late-night guest—the full lips, even bare of lipstick still ripe and rouged. The pert breasts, small beneath the thin jacket, the long, tapered waist and even longer legs, even if they did descend all the way into those puffy, fuzzy slippers.
“Well, right now I want you to tell me something, Mitch,” Emma huffed, inching closer as his cocky facade crumbled with each pointy finger and flared nostril. “Why are you so protective of those damn stairs, huh, Pretty Boy?”
Mitch stammered, but not for the reason Emma might have thought. In all his days, no one had ever called him “Pretty Boy” before. Nerd? Sure. Dorkus Breath? Plenty of times. String Bean? More than he’d care to count. But Pretty Boy? Not on your life.
“I’m not being protective,” he insisted, he hoped convincingly. “I just, I’m sorry about the noise. Earlier, I mean? And the fireworks, and the skinny-dipping and ... well, all of it, really. But party’s over, right? So...”
He was tempted to scoot his hands along, like a waving motion to send her on her way, but didn’t think it would go over very well with Reggie’s nosy neighbor.
Emma nodded, nostrils flaring less often than they had, say, 90 seconds earlier. “The party may be over,” she insisted all the same, “but my job’s not.”
“Job?”
“You think I came over here for fun?” Emma huffed. “No, sir, I most certainly did not. I came over here to give Reggie a firm talking to and to make sure you kids hadn’t burned the damn house down. It’s the least I could do, as a good neighbor.”
“Well, it’s still standing, so...” Mitch hemmed, glancing around the living room in all its drunken debauchery. “Good neighbor status still intact?”
“It will be,” Emma insisted, inching closer and putting one pink fuzzy slipper on the bottom step beside where he stood. “When I see Reggie for myself and give him a mouthful.”
Mitch snorted, turning to follow her up the steps and, even with his long, cricket legs, finding them no match for Emma’s blistering pace and righteous, good neighborly zeal. “Oh, he’s got a mouthful all right.”
Emma turned at the landing halfway up the stairs. “Beg pardon?”
“Nothing,” Mitch lied. “It’s just, you might want to lecture him in the morning when he’s, you know ... alone?”
Emma had sprinted to the top of the stairs, Mitch hot on her heels and not sure why. After all, Reggie was just his ticket to a scenic South Carolina beach town. Hardly someone he was close to, let alone needed to protect. Still, the kid had given him a ride all the way to Flamingo Shores, the least he could do was shield him from the crazy sexpot cougar next door, right?
“I already know he’s not alone,” Emma insisted, facing a hallway full of doors in the spacious McMansion her little Reggie from next door called home. “He brought half of Coastal College home with him for spring break, apparently.”