Chapter Five
Noah
As a last-minute customer walks in to grab whatever’s left, I walk out of the bakery like Bobbi wants. No matter how happy I am to see her or how much I want to make my case that I’m back for good, she obviously needs a bit of time.
I head to her place. She lives in the house she inherited from her traitor father. The SoCal sun warms me inside and out, driving the chill from the Pacific Northwest—and Bobbi’s cold shoulder—out of my system. I’m clutching the bag of Bobbi’s bread I got from Mom’s pantry like a security blanket. I know Bobbi will come around. I’ve never failed to charm her, and soothing her is the easiest thing in the world because all I have to do is spoil her the way I want to.
The two-story house hasn’t changed. Squat. Unassuming. Dark brown roof and pale green paint on the exterior. A two-car garage and well-maintained yard with a couple of orange trees. I know there’s a basement as well. The property blends in with the middle-class neighborhood, and nobody would look twice while driving past.
Wonder if Bobbi got to redo the kitchen floor. When she inherited the house, it had the ugliest tiled floor imaginable: bright lime green and reddish-brown tiles with cracked, yellowing gout. Whoever picked those shades was at least color-blind. Her father never bothered to redo it, probably too busy being a traitor, and Bobbi swore she would replace it as soon as she got a chance.
I slow down, then stop. I have to blink…but yes, there is in fact a pair of human legs sticking out of one of the windows. Shitty old jeans and ratty white tennis shoes. Not Bobbi’s style. Not her ass, either.
I park my Bugatti on the road and climb out. Munching on the bread, I approach the person—a skinny Caucasian guy in his twenties, with mousy brown hair that could use a comb. His white T-shirt doesn’t look that old, but it’s still dingy. Mom would say that’s what happens when you don’t separate your laundry correctly.
He’s wriggling his bony ass, legs kicking, like he’s trying to air-swim. Given that the upper half of his body is inside, it’s obvious he’s trying to enter Bobbi’s home and failing. Not sure why he’s using the window when there’s a door. He can’t possibly be a burglar because he’d starve. Even crime requires some level of competence to earn you a living.
“You stuck, buddy?” I say conversationally, like it’s normal to see a person wiggling in a window.
He twists a little and something cracks. “Ow.”
“You okay?”
“Think I pulled something. Shit.”
Definitely a starving criminal. What an opportunity to practice the enhanced interrogation technique I’ve always wanted to test. I’m trained to do it, but unfortunately never get a chance. The top brass assigns me targets they want dead, not singing.
“Just trying to get back inside, man,” the guy says with a faint Nova Scotian accent. “Got locked out.”
“Didn’t leave a spare key under the welcome mat?” The fucker broke one of the glass panes to unlock her window. What an asshole. I thought Canadians were supposed to be nice.
I pull his wallet out of his back pocket, which he doesn’t seem to notice. A California driver’s license, issued last year. Lorcan Duncan, with an Orange County address. My God, what was his mother thinking? She should’ve at least given him a dignified middle name he could’ve used. Lorcan Duncan sounds like a particularly stupid tropical bird.
“Nah. Bobbi doesn’t do that,” Lorcan says. “Says it’s begging to be robbed.”
I smile. Smart girl. Although…trying to rob her would be a mistake. She owns at least four guns and isn’t afraid to use them. On top of that, her license and permit are up-to-date. I know because I checked. If they weren’t, I was going to take care of it. I can’t have my girl getting into trouble over some bureaucratic bullshit.
“So why are you going this way instead of asking her to let you in?”
I flick his license to the ground—just because it seems like a fitting punishment for trying to break into Bobbi’s house—and look through his wallet. Two Visas. A Master Card. Four AmExs. All of them well used. A few small bills that look more worn out than a hooker after a busy night, and I remove them as a penalty for damaging her window. Four Powerball tickets. Hoping to turn your life around? The latest jackpot is one-point-two billion. A life-altering amount of money if you can beat the odds of two or three hundred million other lottery players in the country.
Oh wait, those tickets are for previous drawings. Guess he wasn’t so lucky after all.
“Okay, so get this.” Lorcan groans. “Wait, can you lift the window up? I can’t stay like this anymore. It’s killing my back.”
I lift the window, and he slides out, landing inelegantly in the dirt. Wincing, he pushes himself up and smooths his wrinkled shirt to make himself more presentable. Not that it really works. He needs a shower.
“Thanks, man.” Lorcan straightens his back, placing his hands on his hips for support, and winces. He doesn’t seem to notice the wallet in my hand. “I’m, like, totally ready to ask her to marry me, you know?”
“You are?” I let go of his wallet and shove more bread into my mouth. That’s better than murdering this irritating Canadian guy. Unsanctioned kills are frowned upon.
“Hey, did you drop something?”
“No. You were saying?”
“What? Oh, yeah. About the proposal. I know she’s gonna say yes.”
What the hell?When did she start dating this guy? And when did her standards drop so low?
I might—possibly—acknowledge with great bitterness and reluctance that she found another man. After all, I’ve been gone for a while. But that’s only if the guy she replaced me with was God’s gift to humanity. Like, the perfect man.
Lorcan doesn’t qualify. I can spot ten things wrong with the guy just at a glance. If I spend more than a few minutes with him, I know I will be tempted to terminate him for the betterment of humanity. If nothing else, it would make me feel good about saving Bobbi from this loser.
“Did she say she loved you?” I ask, the bread suddenly tasting like dust in my mouth.
He looks at me. “Not really relevant, dude.”
What?
“I mean, I’m not sure if I’m really going to marry her. I just need a fiancée, you know?”
“You need a fiancée who might not love you? A fake fiancée?” It sounds like one of Nicholas’s romance novels. Except Lorcan doesn’t strike me as the type to read anything other than Instagram captions. If that.
“Yeah, exactly! I knew you’d get it!” His eyes go bright. “See, I need my parents to understand I’m leading a stable life here, but not so stable that they’ll want to come visit, you know?”
“Not really.” I should probably go ahead and do some enhanced interrogation to get straight answers out of this guy.
“Well, it’s pretty simple. My parents are worried that I’m in another country by myself. But if I’m settled here, with a fiancée, they won’t be ’cuz I wouldn’t be alone.”
“Why wouldn’t you want them to worry about you?”
“Look.” He gives me a don’t-be-so-na?ve smile. “I don’t really want to go back home. This area has all the good shit, you know? Plentiful and cheap.”
“Good shit?”
“You know.” He tries to elbow me, but I move out of the way. He sniffles. “Mostly club stuff. You can’t find anything good at a reasonable price in Halifax.”
It finally dawns on me. A druggie.
“Bobbi doesn’t have much going for her, you know?”
“Is that so?”
“Nobody wants to date a girl that tall. And she’s, like, hard. Her body.” He lets out a just-between-us-boys laugh. “I like a soft woman. With some heavy artillery up front.” He mimes holding a pair of cantaloupes.
“You touched her?” I ask with a smile, placing my hand over the blade I carry in my pocket. It isn’t big, but plenty sharp enough to emasculate him. Knives aren’t my thing, not like Mom, but they’ll do in a pinch.
“Nah.” He scoffs. “She couldn’t get me up.”
Spoken like a true loser, blaming his problem on a woman. It isn’t Bobbi’s fault his dick is softer than soggy rigatoni. Mine works better than fine around her.
He continues, “She isn’t my type. Probably isn’t anybody’s type. Maybe one of those bodybuilder freaks. But the girl can bake. Gotta give her that.”
He’s lucky he never touched her because he would’ve lost his balls—and tongue—otherwise. I make a noncommittal noise, then look at the window. “Want some help getting inside?”
He immediately perks up, but his eyes hold as much intelligence as a lobotomized turkey. He doesn’t suspect I want to filet him—we both have dicks and so I must agree with everything coming out of his mouth.
“Yeah, sure! You’re the best, man.”
I clap him on the shoulder, bro to bro. “I aim to please.”