Pressing my lips together he craned his neck until his eyes widened. “Hear it? Don’t tell me that’s not an alarm!”
I stood with my hand on my hips, cupping his remedy—the earplugs—in my palm. Shrugging, I made my way off his porch. “Fine, it’s the alarms. Good luck with that.”
Marching into my house, I slammed the open window and turned on my AC. Even with the added white noise from the unit, I could hear the frog, who’d taken up residence in the thick brush behind the Kemp house, begin to sing. Simone, my sweet Coqui Frog, who I’d lovingly named after Nina Simone, appeared to me on one of the plants next to my porch after a three-week fight. Simone sounded very much like a smoke alarm with dying batteries. But Ian and his head-biting ass would just have to find out the hard way.
Welcome back to St. Thomas, Mr. Kemp.
Some horses you could lead to water and they would still walk straight through it believing it was a mirage. Such was the case with my angry new neighbor.
Still, angry was better than sad. And if Ian was about to fight the good fight, he needed that fire.
I fell asleep a few minutes later to a more muted, “What the fack! A frog?!”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass, Kevin! This is unacceptable!”
I opened one eye and groaned before I pulled a pillow over my head.
“Rubbish! And she made sure of that!” Ian was growling into his phone and must have decided his back porch was the perfect place to vent. I looked at the bedside clock.
7 a.m.
I pulled myself from the comfort of my cloud and made my way outside, slamming my screen door and eyeing him from my porch with my hands on my hips, in hopes that would be enough to stop his tirade.
“Oh, bullshit! That’s bullshit!” He paced on the sand yard purposefully ignoring my presence and plea for peace.
“Excuse me,” I whispered on the wind. I needed to grow some balls and fast when it came to moody Mr. Kemp. I didn’t do well without my sleep. Years of sleep depravity in New York followed by a year of rested bliss had changed me.
“This is inexcusable! What I want, what I want? I want you to do your facking job!” Ian’s accent had turned into a strange mix of pissed off Texan with a lash whip of South African. He stood in boxer briefs pacing as he ignored me. He was tall, disheveled and shirtless. The extra weight he carried did little to take away from his appeal. On any other day, I might have enjoyed the testosterone-filled man parading in front of me.
“So facking wrong! Eish! All of this is wrong!” More silence, then, “That should have been brought to my attention a year ago!”
Ripping my eyes away from his muscular thighs, I found myself screaming along with him. “Hey, take that brawl inside, crocky!”
Ian glared at me and I swore he bared teeth as he made his way up his porch steps. I was dismissed as he began his pacing on the faded wood giving me a view of his muscular back.
“A little louder, I don’t think everyone on the island is awake yet,” I muttered as he continued his rant.
“Fine. I want a call within the hour.” Ian ended his call and threw his cell on one of the porch chairs before opening his screen without glancing my way.
“Hey!” I interjected as he paused his retreat and glanced my way. “Look, buddy, I’m all for getting a point across, but can we not do it at seven in the morning while our neighbor is sleeping?”
“Fine. Right.” He slammed the door behind him.
“I accept your apology!”
His voice drifted through the open windows in his living room. “I didn’t offer one, miss.”
“Koti. My name is Koti and you damn well know it. And from what I remember you were all about formalities and manners, Mr. Kemp, so how about showing some common courtesy?”
The only way to get privacy between our two houses was to shut them up completely. Even then, without a little white noise, you could hear a lot.
Fact: People have a lot of sex on vacation. A lot of sex.
The rumble of Ian’s voice drifted through the air. “It’s rude to listen to other people’s conversations.”
“As if I had a choice!”
“Who’s screaming now?”
“Well, we’re both up now anyway, thanks to you.”
He stayed mute as I growled from my own porch.
Koti Vaughn, you need this commission.
Minutes after my first sip of coffee, I found my calm in the crash of the waves on our shared beach. Ian made his way onto his porch dressed in his slacks from the day before, his own cup in hand. Wrinkled and wrecked were the best words to describe him and I couldn’t help the tug of recognition of the state of his distress yesterday. Mustering up some patience, I made another effort to extend the olive branch. “I’ll be by with your groceries at noon. I didn’t get a chance to check your water levels so let me know if you’re running low. My phone number is in the book on the counter, text me if you want me to pick up anything else for you.”
His reply was a curt nod.
“Okay, well, I’ll see you at noon.”
“That bad, huh?” Jasmine’s eyes surveyed me in my zombie-like state. I managed to throw on a sundress and applied some sunblock and deodorant before I made it out of my house. I left the state of my wet hair up to my Jeep.
“Nice hair.”
“Bite me and he’s a nightmare. He’s hurt, but hard to sympathize with. He spent half the night putting holes in his ceiling and the morning screaming into his cell phone.”
Jasmine filled a fresh cup of coffee and put it on my desk. “Is he hot?”
I sat back in my chair and winced due to the building throb in my skull.
“He’s a headache.”
“A hot headache?”
“He’s handsome, I guess.”
“Handsome? Who says handsome?”
“I just did.” I rolled my eyes as I logged into my desktop. “I know what you’re thinking and trust me, you don’t want to meet the ass. The first thing that came out of his mouth was that all women are liars.”
“So, he’s handsome?”
“Very handsome, and very pissed off. He taught me how to snorkel when I was six. He was cute then. He’s handsome now and completely standoffish.”
“Hmm.” Jasmine chewed her lower lip and scrutinized my face. “Sounds like an opportunity.”
I ignored her by typing an email reply to a new renter.
“Koti.” It was a demand. I met her soft brown eyes over the screen. There wasn’t a trace of humor anywhere. “You’ve barely dated since you’ve been here. Don’t you miss sex?”
“I told you… I fooled around enough in New York. I’m happy with being alone. It’s what I want for the moment. And my angry neighbor is not the one to saddle up with.” She planted her ass on the edge of my desk and covered my busy hands.
“I worry about you. You are completely anti-social. No TV at home, what do you even do?”
“I read, I take long walks down the beach, I drink wine, I attempt to play the piano, and I get a lot of sleep. I’m fine.” It was the truth. The absolute truth. I’d found calm. I wanted to keep it.
“Fine, but a little flirtation wouldn’t hurt.”
“Trust me, he’s not the one to flirt with. He’s either yelling or grunting. Anyway, I spoke to Mrs. Kemp. She’s going to double our commission and cover the difference of the Margulis mansion.”
Jasmine perked up. “Really?”
“Yep, the only stipulation is that I have to keep an eye on him and it looks like I have my work cut out for me.”
Jasmine bit her hot pink lip. “Do you think he would… you know,” her eyes bulged, “hurt himself?”
I bit the edge of my nail and she slapped it away, it was a peeve of hers. “The way he looked yesterday… it was awful. But no, I don’t think so. Not after the fight I saw in him this morning. He seems as angry as he is hurt. He’s divorced, but his mother said he was the one who wanted it. I don’t think it has to do with his ex, but who knows.”
“Huh,” Jasmine said as she looked at me thoughtfully.
“He probably just needs a break. I’m bringing his groceries in a few hours and I intend to tread lightly. I’m going to make sure we get this commission.”
She lifted a brow. “Going to get creative?”
I shouldered my purse as she gave me a suggestive wink. “You are such a backhoe.”