Adam (Heartbreakers & Troublemakers Book 1) Read online

  Adam

  Hope Hitchens

  Copyright © 2018 by Hope Hitchens

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events & incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, incidents or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Author’s Note

  Thank you so much for checking out the very first novel in my new romance series Heartbreakers & Troublemakers. As with all my books, this story was a labor of love for me. I’ve poured my heart and soul into polishing it to perfection. I hope you have as much fun reading it as I had writing it!

  - Hope xx

  Contents

  1. Dana

  2. Adam

  3. Dana

  4. Adam

  5. Dana

  6. Adam

  7. Dana

  8. Adam

  9. Dana

  10. Adam

  11. Dana

  12. Dana

  13. Adam

  14. Dana

  15. Adam

  16. Dana

  17. Adam

  18. Adam

  19. Dana

  20. Dana

  21. Adam

  22. Dana

  23. Adam

  24. Dana

  Epilogue

  Newsletter

  Introducing… Thaddeus

  About the Author

  1

  Dana

  “Come on, baby. Don’t give up on me now,” I pleaded, turning the key in the ignition. The engine briefly rumbled into life before petering out into a weak wheezing and eventual silence.

  “Come on, Janie, we made it all the way across the state together; you can’t die on me like this,” I whispered. I turned the key again. Nothing. This was becoming ridiculous. “You never did this to me in LA, Janie, let’s go,” I urged. I turned the key one more time and listened helplessly as the engine’s powerful roar died down into a soft whimper. I cursed, pressing my forehead to the steering wheel.

  Was it the change in altitude? Was it the humidity? Air pressure? Something about this city had taken my car from a powerful roadster to a hunk of junk. Janie was my vintage 1965 Buick Riviera. She was the same blue as the sky was when the sun was rising or setting, which was to say, she hadn’t had a paint job since Johnson was president. She was a beauty, though, in that way that only real automobile fanatics appreciated.

  As a graduation gift, my mother and her husband had offered to get me something new and shiny from the European car showroom of my choice, but my father wanted to give me Janie, one of his very own restorations. Thus began our attachment. It had been smooth sailing until the 120 or so miles it had taken to get from Los Angeles to San Diego. I had made the trip twice, and it seemed like completely flatlining was Janie’s way of letting me know that she didn’t like our new home.

  I gave the key one last hopeful turn… nope, nothing. Janie had officially tapped out.

  “Janie’s toast,” I announced, re-entering the house.

  “How many times have I told you to take that car to the shop?” Mimi, my best friend, and roommate called from the kitchen. I walked into the room and saw her seated at the dining table, tapping away at her phone while drinking her morning green juice.

  “Janie’s never totally broken down before. It’ll probably just sort itself out.”

  “Dana, it’s a car, it isn’t a case of the common cold. You can’t expect to let it sit for a few hours and fix itself. If you don’t call the shop, I will.”

  “Whatever you say, Mom. Hey, can I please take your car? The supermarket isn’t that far away.”

  “Are you going to give me gas money?”

  “Mimi, I pay for half the rent,” I complained. I knew she was teasing me. She wouldn’t actually make me pay her back for the gas it would take to get me to the store and back. We lived under the same roof; the groceries I was buying were going to be hers too.

  “And I pay for the other half, on top of putting gas in my car.” She put her phone down and shot me a mock-angry look. “What are you getting?”

  I shrugged. “Milk, batteries, pasta, mushrooms. Groceries for the next few days. You want me to get you something?”

  “Don’t worry about it, I’ll come with,” she said, rising. “After what’s happened to Janie how can I know my car isn’t next?”

  I rolled my eyes, following her out to her car. It was sunny outside, and the tail end of summer.

  Mimi James was the only person I knew who I could ever imagine spending the rest of my life with. Neither of us was romantically attracted to each other, but that didn’t matter. If neither of us ended up settling down, we’d still live together ‘Golden Girls’ style, drinking too much and laughing too hard. We had met for the first time when we were 12 years old. I was in San Diego for the first time to spend the summer with my father. Rather than take the ‘every other weekend route,’ my parents had agreed to share my brother and I seasonally. This was partly because as soon as the divorce was final, my father put as many miles between him and my mother as he could without tripping into Mexico. He had summer and winter breaks, and she had the rest of the year. Mimi’s family was intact and were the most stable and loving people I had ever met, but that didn’t stop her from being as belligerent and angry a preteen as I was. We became friends, bonding when school was out, and I was visiting my father.

  Whenever we weren’t together we were in constant conversation; Skype, Facebook, email, whatever we could use. We knew everything about each other. That was why she was the first person I turned to when my writing career in Los Angeles failed to live up to what I had imagined in my head, and extenuating circumstances had made the city unbearable to me. My mother had been offended when I told her I was moving to San Diego, thinking I was leaving to live with my father.

  Their divorce had been clean and quick; since my brother, Jaden was a shining college athlete with a girlfriend, I was the only thing over which they still butted heads. In her mind her daughter was going to marry a director and live in Beverly Hills, having procedures done and attending premieres. In Dad’s mind, I’d backpack around Asia and end up marrying an Indonesian man, living there for a few years before moving back to the States and starting an organic food co-op.

  Mom had been completely baffled when I told her I was going to move in with Mimi. Not only had she never met Mimi, she had also gathered enough from the name to know that it was not a man and that her daughter was still single. But Miriam James was better than a boyfriend. In the words of Emily Brontë, whatever souls were made out of, hers and mine were the same.

  I pushed the shopping cart as Mimi threw the various food items we needed and didn’t need into it. Mimi was the most ‘LA’ person I knew who didn’t live in LA. She practiced yoga, ran every day and looked exactly like Malibu Barbie. She studiously read the nutritional information on everything we got. Anything containing trans fats, preservatives or more than 2 grams of sugar was banished to the cabinet she’d christened, ‘Dana’s fat stash.’ I leaned against the trolley as Mimi analyzed a box of pasta. A man further up the aisle seemed similarly deep in thought, contemplating complex carbohydrates. I took him in. He was tall—very tall—and wide across the shoulders like a bodybuilder. The most eye-catching thing about him was his tattoos. He wore a
vest, so his two full sleeves were totally visible. The tattoos were etched over large, round muscles. I couldn’t see his face because he wasn’t looking at us, but his hair was dark and stubble in the same color covered his jaw and chin.

  “There a lot of motorcycle clubs in this neighborhood?” I asked. Mimi looked up from the back of the pasta box she was reading.

  “Hm?”

  “Over there, faded jeans and tattoos.” She looked.

  “Oh, that’s Adam Holloway. He’s not a biker; he’s just a thug,” she said, dropping her eyes back down to the box of spaghetti.

  “Do you know him?”

  Mimi scoffed.

  “Who doesn’t?” she said. “He works at the auto shop. A lot of girls around here couldn’t tell you his last name, but they could tell you what size condom he uses.” My eyebrows raised.

  “So he’s a troublemaker?”

  “The worst kind.” I looked over at him again.

  “You said he’s popular with the ladies, right?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Is he… I mean… Mimi, have you and him…?”

  Mimi’s eyes widened in shock and disgust.

  “No! Nothing good or wholesome could ever come from someone like that.”

  “I thought gentlemen preferred blondes?”

  “Honey, Adam Holloway is not a gentleman.”

  “Does he, though… you know, prefer blondes?” I asked, trying not to betray my curiosity. Mimi shrugged replacing the box she was studying and picking up another.

  “Don’t know. Couldn’t really tell you his type based on the girls I’ve seen him with… unless ‘easy’ is a type. Desperate. Fast.”

  I cringed hearing her descriptors.

  “My god, Mimi, tell us how you really feel,” I joked. She shrugged, tossing the box she had decided on into the cart and picking another one for when we ran out.

  “Just calling them as I see them.”

  “And here I was, believing like poles repelled.”

  “Nope. That ‘opposites attract’ bullshit is total bunk,” Mimi said with conviction. “Birds of a feather Dana. Women and men of ill repute find acceptance in each other.”

  “You sound like a bitter old sister in a convent. The one who’s been there the longest, so the entire region between her navel and upper thighs has completely lost all sensation from disuse.”

  Mimi laughed, returning to the shelf the pots of ramen that I had popped into the cart.

  “You don’t need all that sodium in your diet Day, it’ll make you bloat,” she lectured kindly. An eerily similar sentiment had been expressed to me by my mother back in Los Angeles but in a much sharper, far more condescending tone. A comment about the health of my colon might have followed, right before she dropped her surgeon’s name and made mention of the fact that I ‘never really filled out in high school.’

  No two people were so different, yet so alike. That had to be it. Mimi James was my mother’s dream daughter. Never mind that we were born in two different zip codes, there must have been some sort of mix-up at the hospital. Mom had been so against me moving in with my female best friend, but they’d probably fall in love if they ever met each other. They’d just sit across a table and admire each other’s loveliness.

  “God, what if that could actually happen?” Mimi asked, shuddering.

  “What? You becoming a nun?”

  “No, your lady parts calcifying and turning to rock because you haven’t been touched in so long. Ugh, could you imagine.”

  I cringed at the thought.

  “Thanks for that Mimi. Now I can never watch The Sound of Music again.”

  “I’m just saying. It’s been a few minutes Dana.”

  I rolled my eyes as we neared the fruits and vegetables section; Mimi’s favorite spot in the whole market. She could go on and on about this or that salad and why cucumbers are the best something for doing who knew what. I wished she would talk about the superiority of the grapefruit instead of what I knew was coming.

  “Has it been Mimi? I hadn’t noticed,” I said sarcastically.

  “I’m just saying, Dana.”

  “You’re always just saying. And every time you do say it I hear you. You don’t need to remind me that I’m single in the way that’s unattractive.”

  “I didn’t say that Day, don’t put words in my mouth. I just said it’s been a while since you went out with somebody.” She was hefting a giant watermelon into the cart.

  “That’s the thing; it’s only been a ‘while.’ I’m aiming higher. Longer. Trying for an ‘age,’ or an ‘eon.’ Something large and grand like that.”

  “I’m serious Dana,” she huffed. She looked ridiculous trying to gently place the watermelon that was likely half of what her perfect tiny body weighed safely into the cart.

  “I’m serious too,” I said, helping her with the enormous fruit. “I don’t want to become involved with anyone at the moment. I don’t need that kind of stress.”

  Mimi watched me knowingly from the other side of the cart. I practically saw her shelve the thing she really wanted to say to me and substitute it with what she said next.

  “I’m just suggesting that you get out and meet new people. Have some fun. Kiss some boys. I’m not asking you to shack up with your mother’s future son-in-law.”

  “Oh, God. Why? So I can end up like you and Anthony?”

  “You might get lucky,” Mimi said sweetly, chucking a punnet of blueberries into the cart.

  “Lord, spare me,” I said dramatically. I picked the pack of berries out of the cart and opened it up, popping a few into my mouth. Of course the beautiful and brilliant Miriam James had a man. Of course he was successful. Of course he was going to propose to her with a perfect, tastefully sized diamond and I’d lose her to suburban bliss and PTA meetings.

  “Don’t eat those; they charge by weight.” She snapped the berry container shut and placed it back in the cart. “You should have had something to eat before we came here Day. You never go to the store hungry.” I shrugged, giving up and reaching for a bag of licorice. I opened it and pulled a piece out.

  “Advice that makes no sense since this is the place where food comes from,” I said. I gnawed on the piece of candy as we rolled our way to the checkout. My two tubes of Pringles and microwave ready-meals that Mimi hated had made it past her grocery audit.

  “By the way, Anthony’s coming over tonight,” Mimi said to me, unloading our shopping cart. I moved past her, placing my open licorice pack with the rest of the food.

  “Wonderful. Therefore, I won’t be.”

  Mimi smirked at me. “He says hello.”

  “Tell him I’m not interested. I know his girlfriend, and she’s crazy. She’s beaten up chicks in the street for looking at her man the wrong way.” Mimi laughed. Who would I be without the positive reinforcement I got from her laughing at all my awful jokes?

  “Where are you going to go?”

  “There’s lots of places to go for a young girl like me, looking for a good time.”

  “Do you need a ride to your dad’s?”

  God. She knew me so well.

  “No need. I could do with the walk.”

  I worked on bagging our groceries as Mimi paid for them. Glancing to my left, I caught sight of the troublemaker. He was looking at me, or at Mimi, which was more likely because she had the face and body that people told their plastic surgeons they wanted to have. She was saying something about putting the eggs at the top of the pile, so they didn’t crack, but I didn’t hear her.

  Glancing back again I saw that he was still looking, this time, definitely at me. Not knowing what else to do, I smiled. He blinked a couple of times and smirked back at me. He was bagging his own purchases; beer, condoms, elbow pasta, something in a can and toothpaste. His eyes lingered until he turned to leave.

  Mimi’s voice came back into focus. She was telling me something about the sugar content of the packaged smoothies I liked to drink. I took a bag under each arm a
nd let her lecture me all the way to the car.

  2

  Adam

  “There you are handsome; I’ve been looking all over for you.”

  I rolled out from underneath the car, blinded by the bright outdoor light. I was greeted by the sight of Natasha’s panties as she stood over me in a short skirt, looking down at me with this smile on her face like she knew exactly what I could see, and she knew that I liked it.

  She would be right. I did like it. I would have liked it even more if she had decided against the underwear altogether. I sat up and slowly rose.

  “Hey Tash,” I said to her. Her greeting was far warmer. She wrapped her arms around my shoulders and kissed me, right on the lips. I let her. I wasn’t going to say no to a beautiful woman throwing herself at me. She looked at me in a way that was probably supposed to read as loving, but lustful would have been more accurate.

  I knew she didn’t love me, but she certainly did like to fuck. I wrapped my hands around her waist and drew her near, so her body pressed against mine. She didn’t mind me touching her when I was covered in dirt and oil from the cars; I could give her that. It was nearly the end of the day, and a lot of the guys at the shop were beginning to head out. We kissed again, this time, me leaning down to kiss her lips.

  I didn’t know why she had come all the way to the shop. I was leaving soon, and chances were that I would have found my way back to her place anyway.

  “Heading out soon?” she asked seductively. The woman had two modes. Sexy purring was one, and I had never experienced the other.