“Why?” Jodi asked, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth.
“Because if you move out, my wife will just move another one of my asshole cousins in here,” he said with a heavy sigh and a helpless shrug.
“Well, they couldn’t be any worse than Danny. So-”
“Believe me, they are,” Trevor said, cutting her off as he sat up, causing the chair to creak ominously with the movement. “What if I reduced your rent by a hundred dollars a month?”
“To stay?” she asked, tempted to say yes and give in.
She didn’t have much money in the bank and even though she actually did make a decent salary, she didn’t have much money at the end of the month once the bills were paid. Fifteen thousand dollars in debt had been her ex-fiancé’s parting gift to her, one that she couldn’t seem to return, and she desperately wanted to return that lovely gift. She’d been foolish when she’d agreed to open a credit card account in her name for him, and even more foolish for giving him access to her bank account, which he’d drained, legally according to the police department, mere hours before he broke the news publicly to her that he couldn’t force himself to marry her.
“Two hundred?” Trevor offered, sounding a little desperate.
“Wouldn’t it be cheaper just to let me out of my lease?” she asked, struggling with the urge to say yes even though it meant putting up with Danny Bradford for ten more months.
“Three hundred bucks,” Trevor said, not asked, she noted.
“Three hundred dollars?” Jodi repeated, sure that she’d misheard him.
“Deal,” Trevor said with a firm nod as he stood up and headed for the door, leaving her sitting there struggling to figure out what just happened.
“Wait, what deal?” she asked, scrambling to get out of the chair and rush to the door and block it before he could make his escape, but sadly, her short legs just couldn’t manage it.
Trevor had the door open and was halfway down the hallway before she managed to catch up with him, well, get within ten feet of him anyway. “Wait!” she said, hoping that he’d stop long enough so that they could discuss this.
With a sheepish smile, Trevor did just that, but her relief was short-lived when he turned around and walked past her. Before she could ask what he was doing, he was pounding on Danny’s door. Seconds later, and unfortunately before she could make it back to the safety of her apartment, Danny, wearing only jeans and looking fresh out of the shower with damp hair, a towel around his shoulders and his large muscles glistening beneath the hallway light, opened the door.
Having a really bad feeling about where this was going, Jodi took a step back, hoping to get to her apartment before-
“Ow!” Danny said, rubbing the top of his head. “What the hell was that for?” he demanded even as his glare shifted away from his cousin and landed on her just as she was about to go back inside her apartment, where she planned on hiding until it was time to go to work in sixteen hours.
“Stop being an asshole,” Trevor said with a firm nod before he turned around and headed for the exit, only to pause and throw over his shoulder, “You still coming to dinner?”
Danny’s eyes never left her as he answered, “What time?”
“Six,” Trevor said, continuing towards the door and leaving her to deal with his cousin. “Bring dessert!”
Danny didn’t respond and Trevor didn’t wait for him to as he opened the door and stepped outside, leaving Jodi in a rather awkward position.
“Tattled on me again?” Danny asked in that deep voice that made it hard to focus.
It also reminded her of just how much she hated him.
Because of him, she hadn’t slept all night. Now, she was tired, cranky, admittedly bitchy, and had to work on re-writing a proposal for the library renovation that had taken her a month, in fourteen hours and without pay. All because the Town Council didn’t feel that the first proposal properly conveyed the importance of the library and its staff, meaning that she had to figure out a way to bring the budget for library renovations down by ten grand or start looking for a new job when they were forced to close the library.
“For your information,” Jodi bit out, taking a step towards him and pretending that he didn’t have more than a foot and more than a hundred pounds of muscle on her as she glared up at him, “I was asking to get out of my lease. Not that it’s any of your business.”
For some reason, that seemed to amuse him because his scowl was instantly replaced by that smug grin of his that her palm was itching to slap off his face. “Trying to run away from your feelings for me, Tink?” Danny asked, bringing her rage to a whole new level.
“Did…” Jodi started to say, only to force herself to take a deep breath before she did something that would involve that defense attorney that she’d already decided she couldn’t afford. “Did you just call me Tink?” she asked with barely suppressed rage.
Oblivious to how close he was to certain death, Danny merely shrugged as he grabbed the towel from around his shoulders and dried his face and chest. “Mmmhmm.”
“That’s not my name,” she bit out, her eyes narrowing on that towel as she thought of a whole new way to get rid of the bastard.
“Well,” he said, pausing to rub the towel against the back of his head, “it really should be.”
“It’s not,” Jodi snapped, knowing that if he called her Tink one more time that she would-
