No Laughing Matter: Lennox Brothers Romantic Comedy Read online

  I tugged my wallet out of my pocket and flipped him my badge, giving him just a glimpse. “Can I come in?”

  He frowned. “What’s this about?”

  Instead of answering, I crossed my arms, flexing my biceps and focusing a stare on him. It was a stare I’d learned from Asher, impassive and cold. Inside, I was a pit of red-hot, seething fury. But on the outside, I was an iceberg.

  He glanced from side to side. “Um. Okay, I guess you can come in for a minute, but that’s all the time I can give you.” He opened the door a little wider and I stepped into his gloomy hallway.

  Without waiting for him to show me the way, I strode into a dank living room filled with the stink of old food. It smelled like grease and cheese, and I was willing to bet Willie Stroker had a diet as bad as my father’s.

  Most of the room was taken up with a large desk covered with computer equipment. A giant TV was against one wall, and a small couch was jammed in front of the desk. The TV was on, but paused. Willie had been watching porn. Two men and one woman were on the screen, frozen in a position that made me wince. But knowing Willie’s history, I was grateful the movie’s cast members didn’t include any poultry.

  “Tell me why you’re here.” Willie followed me into the room. He grabbed the TV remote off the couch and flicked off the screen. Also on the couch were some wadded-up tissues, a jar of Vaseline, and his cellphone.

  I made a mental note not to touch anything.

  “I’m here to ask you a question, Willie. Do you get off on being an online troll? Does abusing people make you horny?”

  “What?”

  “It’s a simple question, Willie.” I made my tone as reasonable as I could. “Does being an asshole get you excited?”

  His eyes were wide. “Hey dude, you can’t speak to me like that.”

  “Tell me why you send death threats to innocent women. And if you like assaulting those women in real life even more.”

  A flicker of realization passed over his face. “I don’t want you in here anymore.” He motioned to the door. “Please leave.”

  I moved the battered toothpick from one side of my mouth to the other. “Come on, Willie. Or should I call you FowlFetish? Either way, you can tell me about your weird sex kinks. I won’t judge.”

  “You’re a cop, right? Let me see your badge again. I want to call the station and check you’re supposed to be here.” He grabbed his phone off the couch.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  His finger hovered over the dialer, his expression nervous. “If you’re a cop, you need to leave when I tell you to. Or show me your warrant.”

  “Did I say I was a cop? That’s funny. I don’t remember saying that.” I moved closer. The room was so small it wasn’t hard to crowd him. When I advanced, he backed up until he hit the couch.

  “What do you want?” His gaze flicked to my scars, then bounced back to my face. He was starting to sweat.

  “You’ve been harassing Carlotta Watson.”

  He flinched. “You can’t prove that. You have nothing on me.”

  “I don’t need to prove it. Carlotta’s a friend of mine.”

  Swallowing hard, he dropped his phone by his side as though he’d given up on calling the police. “She shouldn’t have messed with ducks.”

  “You hacked her account and altered her pictures.” I leaned closer, making him bend backward. “You threw paint over her.” I tapped him on the chest. “You left a pile of shit on her front porch.” I let a little of my rage show, my voice becoming a snarl. “And you went back to her house again today and hurt her. You put her in the hospital.”

  “What?” He blinked fast. “I didn’t go to her house today.”

  “Willie, you know it’s a crime to lie to the police?” I narrowed my eyes. “It’s called perverting the course of justice.”

  “So you are a cop?”

  “You should get your hearing checked, Willie. I didn’t say I was a cop.”

  He shook his head, looking confused. “It doesn’t matter anyway, because I’m not lying. I didn’t see Carlotta today. I wasn’t anywhere near her house.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “I had to work today, I swear. I was in the office all day and didn’t even go out for lunch.” He lifted his phone. “Look, I can call someone from work. My manager. He’ll tell you I was there.”

  He was obviously scared, and I believed him. So he can’t have been the reason Carlotta was in the hospital. My rage eased a little.

  “I admit I did that other stuff,” he said. “I threw some paint on her, but it was the stuff that washes off easily. I wasn’t trying to hurt her, just scare her. And the crap on her porch, that was just because my cousin works at the zoo, and I ended up with some bags of giraffe shit. Long story. But I didn’t go to her house today. I promise.”

  “Giraffe shit?” I mused, as though I was trying to work out what the story could be. All I could think about was Carlotta being rushed to hospital in an ambulance. If Willie hadn’t hurt her, what could have happened?

  “My cousin bags the shit from the zoo. People put it on their gardens.”

  I could have pointed out it wasn’t a long story. Instead I said, “Don’t forget about the death threats and all the nasty comments you left on Carlotta’s social media. The effluent from your twisted brain is worse than the shit you left on her porch.”

  “Hey dude, I don’t want any trouble, okay?”

  I sighed, chewing the battered toothpick thoughtfully, as though I were considering what to do. “You know, Willie, it’s too late to say you don’t want trouble. Why shouldn’t I arrest you, seeing as you’ve confessed to at least three felony charges?”

  He held up both hands, straightening his back and regaining some of his bluster. “No way, man. You can’t charge me with anything. You said you weren’t a cop! Isn’t that against the law? And you threatened me, so you can’t use anything I said against me. I know my rights.”

  “Then we’ll have to do this another way.”

  His hands dropped and the fear came back to his eyes. “What other way?”

  I took my phone out of my pocket and showed him the picture of him I’d taken a few seconds before I knocked. “You see this?”

  His face went white. “How did you…?”

  “There’s a window right there.” I motioned to it, my lip curled. “Next time you jack the beanstalk, try closing the drapes. What if a kid had looked in? That would be child abuse.”

  He gulped like a fish. “What are you going to do with the photo?”

  “Nothing. Unless you keep assaulting women. Then I might decide to share it.”

  “Okay. You win.” He sank onto the couch. “If you delete the photo, I’ll play nice.”

  “You can start by telling Carlotta how sorry you are for everything you did to her.” I nodded to his phone. “Do it now. Leave her a nice apology for everyone to see. Confess your sins. I’ll wait.”

  He picked up his phone and typed for a couple of minutes, then looked up, his expression sullen. “Is that all? Will you go now?”

  I checked Carlotta’s feed on my phone, and found his apology. It was short and to the point. Good enough, I supposed.

  “I’ll go,” I said grudgingly. “But from now on, I want you to be Mister Nice Guy. No more death threats. No nasty comments. Unless you’re confessing your undying love for someone, I don’t want to see it. And if I hear you’ve so much as thought about Carlotta again, I’ll be back.”

  “I won’t do anything else. I promise.”

  I went to the door and opened it. But before walking out, I shifted the toothpick to the other side of my mouth and narrowed my eyes at him. “One last thing, Willie. Who‘s Chuck Norris afraid of?”

  “Um.” His frown was puzzled. “Actually, I thought Chuck Norris wasn’t afraid of anyone.”

  I gave him a nod. “That’s because he’s never met me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Carlotta


  To my relief, the doctor said my brain scan looked normal. What wasn’t normal was that I was too tired to make any jokes about that result, like suggesting their machine must be broken.

  When they wheeled my bed back into the cubicle after the scan, Mom insisted on staying in the uncomfortable looking chair beside me. Until I woke around midnight and found her asleep with her neck bent in such an awkward position, I convinced her to go home.

  In the morning my headache was miraculously gone, and I felt fine. So good, in fact, that I dared to snag my phone off the nightstand, get online, and brave the haters.

  Among all the vitriol on my feed, a weird comment popped up. A confession and apology from the man who’d hacked my account, thrown paint over me, and left poop on Mom’s porch.

  I read it several times, not quite able to believe it, then laughed out loud.

  Maybe now some of my followers might believe I hadn’t posted the gory duck photos. And it was a huge relief to know my attacker wouldn’t come back.

  But why the change of heart?

  I was reading it again, trying to puzzle it out, when I heard footsteps. Then Mason poked his head through the curtains.

  “May I come in?”

  “Sure.” As I eased up to a sitting position, I couldn’t stop my grin. “What are you doing here? Not that I’m unhappy to see you. The opposite.”

  When he smiled back, his blue-gray eyes were the color of a sunny winter’s day. And his disarming, lopsided smile was the perfect contrast to the square cut of his ridiculously masculine jaw.

  Mason’s jaw equaled a regular jaw squared. And yes, that was a math joke.

  “I wanted to make sure you were okay.” He winced, motioning to my face. “That must be painful.”

  I gently touched my sore forehead. “I probably look terrible. Not that I usually worry about how I look. Only when I see you.”

  He sank down on the bed, taking my hand and lifting it to kiss my fingers. “Aside from the bruises, you’re as gorgeous as ever.”

  I wrinkled my nose, but my smile only grew. “I guess when you’re around, I’ll need to get used to caring.”

  “How’d you get hurt, sweetheart? They wouldn’t tell me anything.”

  “I fell off the ladder and knocked myself out.”

  “My ladder?” His expression darkened.

  “It was my own fault. I was fixing the curtain rail and slipped.”

  He kissed my fingers again, his lips warm on my skin and sending tingles into my core. “But the doctor says you’re going to be okay?”

  “I’m fine. They wanted to monitor me overnight, but they’re about to discharge me.”

  “You had me worried.”

  I wanted to ease the concern from his face, so I shuffled further over to the edge of the narrow hospital bed. “Want to lie down next to me?”

  “Someone could come in at any moment.”

  “Where’s your sense of adventure? Besides, you can stay on top of the covers. I just want a horizontal kiss. They’re the best kind.”

  He hesitated a moment longer, then stretched out next to me. His manly bulk squeezed me in, but I wasn’t complaining. His lips found mine and he gave me what I was coming to think of as a Mason kiss. Deep, thorough, and delicious. His kisses always delivered the nicest type of low-down tingles.

  “You’re right about the horizontal kisses,” he murmured. “They are the best kind.”

  I was warming up, so I pushed the blanket down as much as I could with most of it trapped beneath him. I was wearing a hospital gown in an ugly shade of medical blue. Something hard was poking into my back, and it turned out to be my phone, which I’d forgotten I’d left on the bed next to me. Lifting it, I held it above us. My bruised side was closest to it and in spite of Mason’s rose-tinted glasses, I was pretty sure I looked like I’d died a horrible death before a forbidden voodoo ritual had summoned me from my grave, pulling me out of the ground face first.

  “A picture,” I said. “For our album.”

  “But not for social media.”

  “I wouldn’t do that. Not unless you agreed to it.” I lifted the phone higher, positioning the shot as best I could. “Give me a horrified look. Like you’ve woken up and discovered you’re in bed with a zombie.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I look like this.” I pulled my mouth to the side, stuck my tongue out, and rolled my eyes back. Then I snapped the shot. “See?” I showed him the photo. “It’s funny.”

  He studied it a moment, then took the phone from me. His lips brushed over mine, kissing me so gently it was as though he was afraid of hurting me. His kiss was so achingly tender, it shot straight to the top of my incredible sensations list. How could the softest caress from his mouth set my body on fire?

  “I was worried about you,” he murmured, tasting my lips with his tongue before he parted my mouth, as though he had to make sure every part of me was okay. I wanted to nip him, to show him I wanted more. But it felt so good, I just sighed into his mouth, kissing him back the same way, as though he were precious to me.

  I was starting to believe he was.

  He pulled away a little to smile at me, his warm eyes creasing in the corners. My own smile came from deep inside me, spreading through my entire body before blossoming on my face.

  Then I heard the digital click of a camera shutter.

  I blinked, confused. Where was my phone?

  Turning my head, I saw Mason was holding it above us. “Did you just take a picture?”

  “A better one for the album. I don’t like it when you pretend you’re not beautiful, just because you have a bruise, or messy hair. It couldn’t be further from the truth.” He looked at the shot and nodded. “This is much better.” He angled it toward me.

  “Holy frijoles,” I breathed, staring at the photo. “We look like we’re in love.”

  The angle of the camera meant Mason’s face was mostly out of shot. Only his eyes and the top of his head were visible. But his eyes were shining. And as for me… I couldn’t tear my gaze from my expression of wonder. The intensity of my emotion would have made me seem disturbingly vulnerable, except that Mason seemed to be looking at me with a similar expression. Was it a trick of the camera? An optical illusion? For some reason, it made a lump form in my throat.

  “You can post that one online,” he said. “Enough of my face is hidden that I can’t be recognized.”

  “But it’s not funny.”

  “Maybe instead of a made-up funny story, your followers need to see something real.”

  I blinked at him, struck by his words. Reality was exactly what I’d asked Mom for. I’d never thought about it that way before, but most of the stories I created for my followers were as removed from reality as the ones Mom used to make for me.

  “Okay,” I said, uploading the photo before I could change my mind. “It’s worth a try.”

  Usually after posting, I closed the app down so I didn’t obsess over the reactions. But this time, I left it open.

  “People are starting to comment,” I told Mason after a minute. “The first one is positive. Apparently we’re sweet enough to eat. The second one just says ‘Aww’. There’s a third one now. And a fourth.” My eyebrows lifted. “Wow. This is the first image since I was hacked that’s getting positive comments.” The tone of the comments had to have been helped by the confession and apology posted by the FowlFetish account, but they still blew my mind. “This is incredible. So far, my followers love this post. None of them seem to mind that it isn’t funny.”

  A rush of relief and happiness made me want to jump out of bed, form my own one-person Conga line and dance around the room.

  “Do you know what this means?” I demanded. “My followers may have finally forgiven me. What if I could convince my sponsors to come back and make a living from doing this again? You’ve done the impossible. I could kiss you all over.”

  His eyes sparkled. “Kissing me all over seems a fair and reasonable way to
show your appreciation.”

  The blanket I had over me wasn’t tucked in, so when I rolled on top of Mason, it ended up underneath me, forming a thin barrier between us. I rained enthusiastic kisses down on his forehead. He laughed, his face scrunching, as I worked my way over his eyes, down his nose and across his cheeks, attempting to cover every inch of skin. He took my face with both hands to stop me.

  “On second thought, how about you focus your kisses on my mouth.”

  I had the full weight of my body on him, but judging by the hardness jutting into my belly it didn’t seem to bother him. It was nice being on top for a change, and feeling in control. When I captured his mouth with mine, he kissed me back in that playful, sexy way I was already addicted to. His hands loosened, sliding from my face to my back. Then they froze.

  His head was resting on the pillow, but he still managed to pull it back a little. “What are you wearing?”

  “A hospital gown.” Now I thought about it, my back did feel cold. The gown was hanging open at the back, and the blanket was scrunched between us, leaving my naked butt in the air, exposed to the full blast of the hospital’s air conditioning.

  He chuckled, his deliciously warm fingers caressing the bare skin of my back before drifting down to my buttocks. I shivered with arousal, feeling goose bumps springing up wherever he touched. And in the places I wanted him to touch.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever fully appreciated the hospital gown before,” he murmured with his lips gently brushing my jaw. “Turns out, it’s a very practical garment. It deserves a lot more respect.”

  I stretched my neck up to give his mouth better access. His breath was tickling my throat in the best possible way. “Mmm,” I agreed. “Now I want to take this one home. What do you think? Shall I sneak it out of here?”

  “Yes. One hundred percent, yes.” His voice was lower. Throatier. “Carlotta, you don’t know what you do to me.”

  “I think I might.” I wriggled on his hard length and he groaned, capturing my hips.

  “You’re so damn sexy.”

  His mouth moved down my throat, and I suspected he was travelling lower so his hands could properly explore my naked body. His fingers brushed the crease where my butt checks met my thighs, making me shiver with pleasure.