Single Dad Next Door: A Fake Marriage Romance
Penelope Bloom
Prologue
“No one can know,” she says, breaking the kiss just long enough to gasp out the words. “They can’t know the truth about us.”
I find special pleasure in running my calloused, dirty hands across her smooth and flawless skin. Women like her are supposed to be off limits for guys like me. Her family is old money rich. Just imagining the look on their faces if they found out she was sleeping with a mechanic never fails to put a grin on my face.
I kiss her while I guide her to the back of my truck.
“In the truck, sweetheart.”
She hops up, not taking her hungry eyes off me. I jump up beside her, sliding her back so I can lay her out like the prize she is in the bed of my truck. Long legs, long lashes, and an even longer list of reasons why I shouldn’t even be thinking of touching her. I strip her clothes unceremoniously, yanking her panties off in a single, hard jerk.
She quivers, completely naked. She’s already wet for me.
She has brown, curly hair that catches the moonlight through the open garage door. When I think about how much she must look down on me for being a lowly mechanic, I just want to give it to her that much harder, that much rougher. I want her to have to scream my name in this filthy garage and know it would enrage her parents. She should’ve known it would come to this when she moved in next door. She should’ve known she wouldn’t be able to stay away for long.
I slide my calloused hand along her smooth leg, up the inside of her thigh. I trace the soft curves of her body with my eyes, from her full lips all the way down her slender neck and to the sweet swell of her breasts. She stretches out luxuriously, arching her back and biting her lip while squeezing her eyes shut tight.
“Open your eyes,” I growl. “I want you to see who you’re fucking.”
She obeys. I grip her chin and kiss her hard--relentlessly. Whether she knows it or not, and even if her rich parents would never approve, Sandra Williams is mine. She may think she’s too good for me, but I know exactly how to keep her coming back for more. And if she thinks we’re going to keep the truth about us a secret forever, she’s wrong. There’s only going to be one secret between us. There’s only one thing that she can never find out, that no one can ever find out about.
If she knew… Fuck. I kiss her even harder, using my fingers against her pussy to make her squirm against me and gasp. Just thinking about what would happen if she found out makes me want to take her like it’s the last time. Because hell, if she finds out about the terms of my grandfather’s will, this will be the last time.
1
Reid
Two Weeks Earlier
I clutch the letter from my grandfather in my fist. The paper is soft and wrinkled from years of being handled. I know every word in it by heart. Every single fucking syllable is burned into my brain like a cancer. But the last line is the worst. It’s the one that haunts me. It taunts me every morning when I look in the mirror. It’s the line of text that hangs over me like a fucking time bomb, waiting to explode and tear everything in my life to pieces.
I leave my shop and property to Reid William Riggins under the condition that he is married with children by the time he is thirty-five years of age.
There it is in plain black ink. Children and a wife. I have one child and no wife. So that puts me in a very shitty place--one child, one ex-wife, and no prospects of that changing anytime soon. My grandfather went and threw me the shittiest curveball he could with his will. I shouldn’t even be surprised. My younger brother practically exiled himself from the family after college, and my grandfather was obsessed with the idea of the Riggins family name carrying on to a new generation. I’m thirty-three years old now, which doesn’t leave me much more time to satisfy the conditions. Either I marry someone and knock them up this year, or I lose my shop. I lose my house. Everything.
I shove the letter back in the drawer and slam it shut.
Tyler sticks his head in the small office at the back of my shop. “‘Ey, Reid. You’ll want to see this.”
I’m not in the mood for Tyler’s bullshit right now, but if I stay in this office any longer, I’ll just keep getting more pissed. I push out of my chair and cross the distance toward him in two long strides. The shop isn’t much, but it’s mine. For now. I’ve run the place since grandpa died six years ago. We have two bays for cars, one of which I built myself on the weekends. It took close to a year, but it’s good, solid work. Everything is to code and sturdy.
When I see my little guy kneeling to watch Garry work on an old Acura’s brake lines, the hot anger in me cools a little. Roman is the only good thing that came out of the two years I spent married to Tara. His brown hair is a tangled mess of brown and he has a thick streak of black on his cheek. I smirk, spitting on a rag then cupping his cheek to clean the grease from his cheek. He scrunches his face and tries to escape, but I manage to get the spot before he can slip away.
“You learning about brakes, bud?”
Roman is turning five next month, but he probably knows more about cars than most adults already.
“Yep!” he says cheerily.
I ruffle his hair and move to follow Tyler. As soon as Roman is out of my sight, the heat of my anger rises up again. I see what Tyler was calling me out of the office to see now. The shop sits directly in front of my house. The house next door has been abandoned for years, but there’s a moving truck parked outside in the shade of two big oaks. I tuck the rag in my jeans and cross my arms. I have to squint against the sun to see, but there are three guys from the moving company bringing box after box inside while a woman with long legs and short shorts follows them around, fussing over everything they move.
I take a few steps closer, eyebrows drawing down in frustration and confusion when I realize I recognize her. “Is that fucking Sandra Williams?” I ask.
Tyler spits between his teeth, nodding. “Sure is. Ain't she like, best friends with your ex?”
There’s a bad taste in my mouth as I answer. “Yeah. That’s the one.”
“So your wife’s best friend is going to live next door. What’re you gonna do?”
“I’m gonna set this shit straight. Keep an eye on Roman. This won’t take long.”
Tyler nods, walking back toward the shop.
I realize I’m not wearing a shirt when I’ve already crossed half the distance to her house. Fuck it though, I’m too pissed to go back and put one on. Besides, the shirt I had on is covered in oil. I don’t bother thinking about what I’m going to say. The message is simple. She’s going to keep her fucking distance and I’m going to keep mine, or we’ll have a problem. The last thing I need is a reminder of Tara and the crap she pulled living next door, let alone some rich daddy’s girl like Sandra Williams.