Chapter 2
Brooke
* * *
It was actually true.
I now believed the common saying about all the good-looking guys being assholes.
This guy…Officer whatever his name was had to be the biggest one I’d met in a very long time.
Seriously, this guy wasn’t just an asshole; he was a total jerk.
The man had seen everything, all that had happened to me with the car from hell, and to top it all off he thought he should give me the third degree because I could have killed someone.
Like it was my fault the fucking car was so bad. He wouldn’t listen to me, oh no. He didn’t want to hear my explanation at all. Instead he breathalyzed me, questioned me about everything under the sun, and implied that I was on drugs.
Looking at him now, I could see that was the conclusion he’d come to. The asshole thought I was on drugs, because no one would have gotten into a car like that sober. He blamed me for the whole occurrence.
It wasn’t my fault.
Okay…maybe it was…a little. I agreed that I probably shouldn’t have driven the damn car asshole number two, Wade Marshall, had rented for me, and I agreed that the vehicle looked like shit. The rental company had said it was a Honda, but the thing was what my grandma would have called a jalopy.
What I didn’t agree with was the assertion that I’d gotten into the car knowing it had faults. How the fuck could I have known that?
The car looked like hell, but how was I supposed know the thing would have all sorts of problems and eventually give up on me?
After the day I’d had, I seriously just wanted to get to where I was going.
The whole day was messed up—all of it, start to finish.
First my flight from LA was canceled and I had to wait three hours to get the next one. Then on the plane I sat next to a man who stank of shit. Said man also insisted on flirting with me for the whole journey, and his breath was worse than his body odor.
On the plane, there was hair in my food, and next was the car. I actually almost died when I saw it, and that was exactly the effect that had been desired. Wade, PA to my boss, Perry Sanderson, had gotten the car for me out of spite, all because I wouldn’t sleep with his married ass.
He’d started at the magazine eight months before and immediately started pestering me to go out with him. I didn’t normally go out with guys who were completely full of themselves, but I thought if it would get him off my back, I’d go. I went for dinner. That was it. Then I found out he was married.
Asshole.
Still, that didn’t stop him from pursuing me—much to my dismay. Taking a break from LA and coming to Wilmington was a welcome relief. It was a break from him, but he had to make his mark here too with that car.
Which led me to this moment with Officer Gorgeous, who’d given me the third degree because he thought I was on drugs.
And,to top off my day from hell, fate or the universe decided to deal me the wild card.
Officer Gorgeous just so happened to be my next-door neighbor.
God, why do you hate me?
“We’ll continue the investigation to determine if what you’re saying is true,” he cautioned, nostrils still flared even though it had been two hours since the incident occurred.
“Investigate then. I don’t care.” That was the way to deal with him.
I shuffled on the bench and straightened up to stare him down, even though my back hurt.
He’d had me sitting there on that rickety bench the whole time while he stood over me. The stupid car was a few feet away. There was police tape on it and a few more officers had joined us, along with one of those massive trucks that looked like a tow truck except it had a massive lever that had reached into the sea to pull the vehicle out.
Officer Gorgeous shifted his weight from one solid, athletic-looking leg to the other and glowered at me with light green eyes that reminded me of the beautiful Aegean sea.
