Growing and Kissing Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Forty-Eight

  Forty-Nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-One

  Fifty-Two

  Fifty-Three

  Fifty-Four

  Fifty-Five

  Fifty-Six

  Fifty-Seven

  Fifty-Eight

  Fifty-Nine

  Sixty

  Sixty-One

  Sixty-Two

  Sixty-Three

  Sixty-Four

  Sixty-Five

  Sixty-Six

  Sixty-Seven

  Sixty-Eight

  Sixty-Nine

  Epilogue

  Preview - Punching and Kissing - Chapter 1

  Preview - Punching and Kissing - Chapter 2

  Preview - Punching and Kissing - Chapter 3

  by Helena Newbury

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  © Copyright Helena Newbury 2016

  First Edition

  The right of Helena Newbury to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988

  This book is entirely a work of fiction. All characters, companies, organizations, products and events in this book, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any real persons, living or dead, events, companies, organizations or products is purely coincidental.

  This book contains adult scenes and is intended for readers 18+. It contains a scene that may be triggering for rape survivors.

  Cover Images

  Sean - Copyright FuriousFotog

  Skyline - Logoboom / Depositphotos

  MW, loyal companion and welcome interferer.

  You were with me from the very beginning.

  Writing will not be the same without you.

  P, taken from us far too young.

  I will miss your sweary, grumpy, smiling brilliance.

  The Grim Reaper won’t know what’s hit him.

  May both of you rest in peace.

  Louise

  I’d spent my whole life being good. And then, one day, I ran smack into bad.

  I’d been standing outside my apartment on the tenth floor, hammering the elevator call button like it was personally responsible for every crappy thing in my life. I was late, I knew I was late and it felt like the universe was moving as slow as possible just to taunt me.

  I kept glancing at the stairwell: should I just run for it, pound my way down ten flights and arrive sweaty and red-faced? But each time I stepped towards the stairs, the elevator would make a promising creak and groan and I’d hang on, thinking it was about to arrive....

  When the elevator doors finally shuddered open and I darted forward, I was still looking towards the stairs. That’s why I didn’t see the elevator was occupied until it was too late. I faced front just in time for my face to mash against the warm black cotton of his tank top. My whole body, from shoulder to ankle, was suddenly flattened against the hard, heated body of a man.

  I stumbled back into the hallway. I think I knew, on some level, who it was, but my brain was rebelling against the idea. It’s probably not. It’s probably some other guy—

  It wasn’t. It was him.

  Sean O’Harra. The scariest guy on the block.

  He seemed to fill the elevator. Not just because he was well over six foot, but with sheer presence. It was as if his aura was crackling and hissing against the inside of that graffiti-coated steel box, furious at being contained.

  I said, “Sorry,” because that’s my automatic reaction to nearly everything.

  He just frowned at me. He was good at frowning. A combination of those heavy Irish brows and the knowledge of what he might do to you if you displeased him. He was wearing a black tank top and his bare, tanned arms were loaded with muscle, one of them wrapped entirely in a tattoo sleeve. It was difficult not to follow the dramatic in and out of those arms with my eyes: shoulders and then biceps and then forearms...God, even his forearms were the size of my legs! And he was so ruggedly, solidly wide, the swells of his pecs beneath the black cotton seeming to fill my whole vision like a wall.

  You didn’t talk to Sean O’Harra. You didn’t look at him, if you could help it. You stayed the hell out of his way.

  Everyone knew what he did. He destroyed things: stores and houses and cars and sometimes people. He was built for it. Those huge arms could heave men off their feet and hurl them across the room like toys. His hands, twice the size of my own, were made to punch and tear and crush, demolishing someone’s business as efficiently as a wrecking ball. Even his legs looked vicious, muscled thighs stretching out the faded black denim. I imagined them kicking over tables and smashing down doors. And between those legs, outlined down the side of his thigh—

  My own groin twinged as I felt the tingling, ghost impression of it. When I’d run into him, his cock had throbbed right against my thigh.

  The door started to slide shut and I realized I’d been standing there like an idiot, staring at his body, for several seconds. The air hissed out of me, simultaneous frustration that now I’d be even later and relief that I wasn’t going to have to share an elevator with him. God, imagine that! Being cooped up in a six-foot metal box with Sean O’Harra. Just the thought of it made my stomach twist and knot...and a tiny, forbidden thread of heat lash down to my groin. That would have been—

  A hand slammed against the edge of the elevator door, halting it an inch from closed. Then, with a rumble that shook the floor, Sean pushed it open again and held it there.

  I’d never dared to look him in the face before. On the few occasions I’d seen him around the apartment block, I’d ducked my head and scuttled past. But now, I was so surprised that I forgot to be scared. I looked up—and up—and found myself staring into eyes that didn’t deserve to be in such a brutal body. Shockingly blue—and so light!—almost cobalt-blue, a color I’d only seen on postcards from tropical islands. Beautiful enough to have graced any Irish choirboy...but eyes that had forgotten what innocent was like long, long ago.

  I hadn’t been ready for the hard line of his jaw, or the little dimples in his cheeks. The California sun had tanned him, but his Irish roots were still obvious: that gleaming black hair, the strong brow
, and cheekbones.

  I hadn’t been expecting him to be gorgeous.

  And then he said, “Are you getting in or what?”

  Which woke me up and made me realize I’d been standing there again and now I was even later. My eyes flicked to the stairwell door, but....

  I had no choice.

  I nodded dumbly and stepped inside. He’d had to take a half-step forward to grab the door, so now we were even closer. God, he was so big, towering over me like a colossus. And even when he’d released the door, he didn’t seem to be in much hurry to move back, or to retract that big, tanned, muscled forearm. His hand was hovering just a few inches from my cheek and I swore I could feel the skin there ache and tingle in the anticipation of touch.

  The floor lurched and we started to move.

  I didn’t know what to say—I never know what to say—so I just stood there staring at him. His voice was still echoing around inside my head. Mid-Atlantic, but with the exotic twist of Irish instead of British, like a scalding rush of liquor in what you thought was a soft drink. And so low, the words throbbing through my body as much as through my ears. His mouth matched the voice: hard, stubbled jaw, all power and violence, but then that full, sexy lower lip, a lip you just wanted to feel crush against yours and—

  I looked up to his eyes again and saw that he was staring straight back down at me. Why? Why is he doing that? And that hand, the one so many people had ducked and cowered from, was still hovering next to my face.

  I dropped my eyes and looked anywhere, anywhere but at his face, feeling my cheeks flare. I sifted through the graffiti, trying to find something readable amongst the years of overlapping tags, but it was just a multi-colored, tangled mess. It didn’t matter. As long as I wasn’t looking at him. Anything was safer than entertaining some stupid, dangerous fantasy about Sean O’Harra taking me and pushing me up against the wall and running those big hands over my—

  Stop it.

  And then I saw something that made my stomach do a complete somersault. Just behind him, resting against the wall of the elevator, was his hammer.

  Some men are scary because they have a gun or a knife. Sean O’Harra was terrifying because he didn’t need either. They say that a lot of guys just drop their weapons and run, when they see him marching towards them.

  It was a sledgehammer and it suited him. The wooden shaft—almost half my height—was worn and smoothly strong. The metal head was dull gray, chipped and scratched. Brutal...and yet strangely beautiful.

  Sean O’Harra scared people. That was a fact and it was also his job: he scared people for a living. The local drug gangs hired him when they wanted a meth lab put out of business or a stolen package of coke retrieved. Sometimes, smashing the place up was the point and sometimes it was a byproduct of scaring people, but it always happened, one way or another. Everyone on our block knew someone who knew someone who’d been there when Sean smashed up the local biker bar because they’d started dealing where they shouldn’t, or when he hammered a guy’s Mercedes into a steel pancake because he owed money, or when he tore through a slimy politician’s house like a hurricane, reducing every stick of furniture to pieces smaller than your fist, because the guy had been hiring underage prostitutes. They said he’d done that last one just for fun.

  There were other stories, too, different kinds of stories. Ones told by the glamorous sort of women I’m not, with their perfect hair and make-up. The ones who were too well off to live in our apartment block, but liked to slum it and be all daring by hanging out at the local bars. They’d giggle and tease each other about Sean O’Harra and joke about how they were going to jiggle their perfect tits in front of him that night. I’d glimpse them coming home with him, all sass and confidence, delighted at having landed a real-life bad boy. The next morning, I’d see them stumbling out of the elevator, clothes half-on and eyes glazed, all their giggles gone.

  It scared me but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t excite me a little, too. Sean lived one floor below me and sometimes I’d lie awake in the early hours listening to the thumps and the groans and the breathless female cries that climbed higher and higher and always ended in wailing, frantic pleas.

  But now, looking at that hammer, I was reminded of what he really was. Not just someone who worked for the drug gangs but someone they were scared of. He didn’t even have that slim vestige of loyalty and honor that came from belonging to one of them: people said he was loyal to whoever was paying him, and then only for as long as the money lasted. I wasn’t sure if that made him worse than the rest of them, or better because he didn’t believe in all that bullshit about respect that the dealers thought was so important. To him, it seemed to be just a job. But what sort of man chooses to earn his living scaring people?

  Someone very, very different from me. Sean’s world was one utterly outside my own, a world of breaking rules and laws, of waking up to the cops banging on your door—everything I’d been raised to be terrified of. I’ve never even gotten a parking ticket. I might have to live surrounded by the gangs, but I keep as far away from it all as possible. Maybe that’s why I could feel that thread of heat pulsing and twisting like a glowing wire inside me. I’m so good—I’ve always been so good—that the idea of a guy like Sean O’Harra taking me and—

  Stripping me.

  Spreading me.

  Destroying me. Taking all my goodness and making me as dark and dirty as him—

  I pressed my thighs together. I didn’t dare look at him again. What if he was looking at me? What if he could tell?

  I focused on the feel of the elevator clunking its way down through the floors. God, I could feel the heat of him, so close in the little metal box. Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed his hand finally descending...but, as it swung down, it came almost within touching range of my breast...then my hip...then my thigh. And I realized my whole body was tense, waiting for the brush of his fingers. I didn’t dare look up but, when I glanced carefully sideways, I could see the hazy reflection of him in the polished steel between the graffiti. And it looked as if he was staring down at me with such intensity every inch of my skin should have been bursting into flame. Sean O’Harra was looking at me.

  Stop it. Like I’m the sort of woman he’d be into. I couldn’t be more unlike one of his conquests. They’re always blonde and tanned. I have hair the color of copper wire and my skin refuses to tan, even after years of living in California. I can stay out of the sun or I can burn. And my boobs are on the big side, making me awkwardly top-heavy and I don’t have time to wear anything but jeans and t-shirts or to spend hours on fancy make-up. I’m just a—

  Well, basically I’m a mom. In every sense apart from the literal, genetic one. A sex-starved, slowly-going-insane mom who can’t go out on dates or bring guys back to my apartment. That’s why I was having crazy, fleeting fantasies about Sean O’Harra: because this brief interlude in the elevator was the closest I’d been to a man in months. That was the only reason.

  At least, that’s what I told myself.

  The elevator stopped. I heard the doors slide open behind me and I backed out, wheeled around, and ran before I could do anything stupid.

  And I tried to ignore the itching between my shoulder blades, the feeling that he was watching me go.

  ***

  Ten minutes later, I was sitting at an intersection, strumming my fingers on the wheel and willing the red light to change to green. There was nothing coming in either direction but I’m the sort of person who never, ever runs a red. I just know there’ll be a cop somewhere, hiding behind a billboard, ready to leap out and haul me off to jail.

  Why was he in the elevator?

  It had been niggling at me ever since I got into my car. The elevator had been on the way down and Sean lived on the ninth floor, one below me. So why had he been passing the tenth? There were only two more floors above mine...had he been visiting someone? I’d never heard of him making social calls before. Unless he’d been all the way up on the roof.
/>   What would he be doing on the roof?

  The light finally changed and I roared across the silent intersection. I was going to be late and I knew it. I shouldn’t have run home to change after finishing my shift at the garden store, but I hadn’t wanted to show up at the school in a dirt-covered apron.

  The view didn’t do anything to improve my stress levels: nothing but concrete, bleached sickly white by the sun. It was only April but the temperature was already in the seventies. I was really, really going to have to find the money to get the car’s air conditioning fixed before summer.

  I hate Los Angeles. When my folks first moved us here, they seduced us with stories of beaches and palm trees, movie stars and endless sunshine. But that was before. Before I had to move us from the modest but comfortable house to the crappy apartment we now inhabit, with its graffiti and cracking plaster and people like Sean O’Harra as our neighbors. Before it all went wrong.

  Before it was just the two of us.

  I pulled up in front of Kayley’s school, swinging around manicured flower beds and slotting my wreck of a car between the gleaming SUVs the other parents drove. It’s a public school but it’s one of the best and the sole reason I chose our crappy apartment—it was the only place I could afford that qualified Kayley to keep going to this school. I like the place, even if I feel like a charity case next to the other parents. I like the fact it doesn’t feel like a fortress and the fact it has flowers outside. It’s a paltry amount of greenery, really, but it’s better than the endless concrete I see everywhere else. Sometimes, when I’m picking up Kayley from school and the wind blows the scent of the flowers just right, I can kid myself that I’m back in Vermont.

  I raced up the steps and straight over to the reception window. I could see Kayley through the glass, sitting swinging her legs, and tapping out messages to her classmates on her phone. “Hi,” I said breathlessly. “I’m here for Kayley. Kayley Willowby.”

  The woman peered at me owlishly. “You’re her...mom?” she asked uncertainly. Kayley is fourteen. I’m twenty-two.