He’d checked each and every time.
It wasn’t like he was purposely being an asshole. It just came naturally to him. Everyone understood and accepted it. Probably because even though he was an asshole, he was a likable asshole…most of the time.
As happy as Jason was that she’d finally decided to acknowledge his existence, he was also pissed that he was freezing his balls off. Apparently, he hadn’t moved fast enough because she sprayed him again.
“Are you fucking insane?” he demanded.
Haley gestured with the hose for him to take a step back. “Get away from my flowerbed…now.”
“Your flowerbed?” Jason asked with a snort of disgust.
“Yes, my flowerbed!” Another short spray. “I planted these flowers five years ago before you moved in!”
Frustrated, Jason ran his fingers through his messy hair. “Then, you should have checked the fucking property lines before you wasted your time!” he snapped.
Her eyes narrowed on him. “The flowerbed is my property!”
“I don’t think so, sweetheart. Go check your deed if you don’t believe me. This flowerbed is one-hundred percent on my property,” Jason bit out as he pointed to the two feet of space that separated their houses where the flowerbed continued until it came to the white picket fence that started at the corner of her house and continued to her back fence, separating their backyards. “You have five inches out from the wall of your house. Your property ends two inches before my flowerbed! That’s why the fucking white picket fence starts against your house instead of on the other side of the flowerbed.”
He watched as she glared at the small space that separated their houses. Whoever built them had been a real prick. Their master bedrooms were built less than two feet apart. Yet, there was more than thirty feet of space between the other houses in the neighborhood.
Thanks to the way their houses had been built, there was no privacy. Their bedrooms had been built facing each other with their windows providing an unobstructed view into each bedroom. With the way his room had been built, he’d had no choice but to place his bed directly in front of the window and from what he could see, neither had she. Taking the smaller bedroom had been out of the question since his bed never would have fit in there.
It felt odd sleeping less than two feet away from a woman who hated him. During the summer, they both refused to open their windows until the heat became too much, leaving them with no other choice but to open their windows. He’d quickly given up the idea of bringing a woman into his bedroom, knowing that they had an audience only a few feet away. He’d never been one for PDA, never mind having sex in public and having sex in his bedroom would have definitely felt like a public performance.
No matter how many times he’d tried to remind himself that they were in separate houses, he couldn’t bring himself to allow a woman in his bed. Not that he normally did that. He’d never invited a woman to spend the night. It was one of his top ten rules of dating. The only time they came to his house was to bitch him out when he moved on and that was done from the comfort of his front yard.
He’d never slept in the same bed with a woman. That was too much intimacy and sent the wrong message. The few times he’d made the mistake of relaxing in a woman’s bed after a quick lay had been a mistake. They always ended up demanding to know why he wouldn’t hold them, wanted to know what he was thinking about, if he loved them, where he saw this going, if he was as happy as they were, why he kept calling them by their sister’s name, and his personal favorite, wondering what their children would look like. No, sex was best kept at a woman’s house, in a hotel room, or better yet, in the backseat of a car.
Thankfully, his neighbor seemed to feel the same way. He hated the idea of waking up to the sounds of another man grunting. With his luck, the sounds would filter into his dream and he would end up dreaming about one of the assholes that she’d dated fucking her. Fortunately for his sanity, that had never happened, otherwise he’d be forced to sleep on the couch.
He’d seen the losers that came and went over the years. She was easily out of their league. It didn’t help that they were all pricks. He wasn’t perfect, but he’d found himself more than willing to deck a few of them over the years. They’d never hit her, otherwise he would have killed them, but sometimes, he felt like they were just using her. He didn’t know why he cared, but he did.
Haley’s gaze flickered from the fence to the flowerbed and back again only to sigh heavily as she said, “Fine. If I made a mistake, then I’m sorry, but I replaced the last flowerbed with tulips from my grandmother’s garden and they mean the world to me.”
He nodded, glad that it was finally settled. The damn flowers were out of here and not a moment too soon. He couldn’t take another night like last night. Besides, he was running out of cornstarch.
“I’ll just move the flowers onto my property,” Haley said as Jason’s eyes narrowed dangerously on her.
“The hell you will!”
Chapter 2
Haley’s eyes widened in disbelief as Jason threw himself back on her poor tulips and began tearing them out of the ground again.
“Stop!”
He ignored her and continued ripping the tulips from the ground, making sure that the bulbs came with them. He tossed them as far as he could onto his property so that she couldn’t get them back. Not knowing what else to do, she squeezed the nozzle, hitting him in the back with a full blast of cold water, but he didn’t seem to care.
“Please stop!” she cried, but he refused to listen.
He kept going, only slowing down when he reached the tight space between their houses and he was forced to shift his shoulders so that he could keep going. Thankfully, she gave up squirting him. It might be April, but they were in New England and that meant cold fucking days followed by even colder nights. His body shivered violently as he moved to grab another handful of tulips when something suddenly clamped down around his ankles.
“What the hell-oomph!” Jason demanded only to find himself pulled off balance, landing face-first in the thick mud she’d created with her water meltdown. Before he could push himself up, Haley was crawling over his back to get to those damn flowers.
She used her small frame to her advantage, quickly crawling over him and began digging up as many tulips as she could get her hands on and setting them against the side of her house.
“Stop doing that!” Jason demanded as he reached over to stop her.
