Page 7 of Three Wickedly Bad Neighbors and a Very Grumpy Girl (Three Guys and a Girl Volume 2, #8)

? Chapter Seven

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A very

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W hat is it about these men that makes me so hot? Hot ? I’m analyzing their effect on my temperature when I’ve been deliberately trapped in here with them. Do I need my head examined?

“What do you think you’re doing?” I ask, unable to disguise the quiver in my voice. I hate looking at them. They make me feel crazy, like I’m losing my mind and control over my body. I don’t like it.

“Payback time.”

“There can’t be any payback. You can’t break into someone else’s house and have a party. It’s illegal. Why am I repeating myself? Don’t you get it? Now you’re lucky I didn’t call the cops, so this is your chance to leave and—”

“We own this house,” Sullivan says, interrupting my lecture.

“Mr. and Mrs. Ambrose are our adopted grandparents,” Porter adds.

“Wait. What?”

“You heard us.” I whip my head up to look at Gray.

“You want to call them up to make sure? Or better yet...” Porter pulls out his phone, and after a few seconds, the bubbly giggles of our mayor, Shelly Burns, echo around the room as she greets Porter.

She knows it’s him without him uttering a word.

Also, she answered her phone after one ring at this hour?

“Mayor Burns, do you mind telling our lovely neighbor that the Ambroses are our adopted grandparents and that we’re allowed to have a party at any time, day or night?”

“Oh, is she giving you a hard time?” Mayor Burns says, her voice full of contrition. “My deepest apologies. I should have warned you about your uptight neighbor. She’s a stickler for rules, that one. Drives me bonkers when she starts quoting laws to me.”

“Yep, we figured that much already. The bonkers part. She scared away all our guests by pretending to have chickenpox.”

“Oh no, she didn’t,” Mayor Burns groans over the phone.

“She did. She thinks we’re trespassing.”

“Oh dear. Please accept my deepest apologies again. I’ll have a talk with her.”

“She’s right here, scowling murder at us.”

“Of course she is,” Mayor Burns sighs. “Avery, Avery? Are you there?” Porter holds the phone out to me. I take it gingerly, my head held high.

“Mayor Burns,” I say a little stiffly.

“Please stop busting their balls, honey. They’re just back from the military, and all they want to do is unwind. They deserve to have a party all night long if they want. Also, the house does belong to them anyway. The Ambroses gave them the house. I’ll speak to you tomorrow, okay?”

“But there wasn’t anything about new owners in the bulletin,” I say lamely.

“Well, of course there wasn’t. If I had put anything in there, these poor men wouldn’t have had a moment's peace. Everyone would be bringing them baked goods and swooning over their good looks. They’re just back from the military, like I said, and needed to acclimatize and kick back.”

“Well, if you wanted them to be incognito, you should have told them not to throw a party in the middle of the night and wake up the entire neighborhood anyway.”

“Did they, though? Do you know if anyone else complained? No, because no one else complained. Case in point. Avery, love, get yourself a pair of earplugs and leave those deliciously hot men alone.”

“But we have rules. No loud music after 9 p.m.”

“Oh rules, schmules. They’re the exception.”

I gasp aloud. The very purpose of a rule is to be followed. This is literal blasphemy.

“Avery, honey, as the young kids say these days, you need to chill, maybe get laid a bit too. Now be a good neighbor and do whatever you need to do to make it up to them for ruining their party. Please hand the phone back to them.”

Neon pink spheres burn on my cheeks. Ordinarily, I don’t care if people think I’m uptight or grumpy, but suddenly I don’t want them to know I need to be laid regularly because the truth is, I’ve never been laid at all.

I don’t understand the rules of sex, so until then, the only laying I’ll be doing is laying down the rules for everything else.

I barely hear Mayor Burns continuing to gush over them before they hang up, mostly because I’m still in shock that they own this house and because I had a flash thought of all three of them naked while I, too, was naked. I shake my head. Back to business.

“Well, fine. You could have told me you own the house and that the Ambroses are your adopted grandparents,” I say haughtily.

“We did,” they all chorus together.

“You could have tried harder,” I say, my tone accusing.

“What, like wave the title deed in your face?” Gray asks.

“Yes, that would have been acceptable. Still, this neighborhood has rules—”

“Which don’t apply to us, apparently. You heard the mayor,” Sullivan says.

Argh, why are these men so damn infuriating?

“Also, if you’re the Ambroses' grandsons, how can you let them travel around Europe with no itinerary at their age? That’s very careless of—”

“You think we don’t have eyes on our grandparents? We were in the Marines; trust us, they’re very protected,” Porter says.

“Well, still. And why did your grandparents give you this house? What’s going to happen when they come back?”

“They’re not coming back. Just yesterday, they decided to stay in Italy, so we got them a villa there, and that’s where they’ll be staying,” Porter says.

“You know, you’re nothing like our grandparents described,” Gray says.

“They told you about me? Why on earth would I be the topic of discussion?”

“Yes. Said you were this sweet, lovely person. Beautiful too. Said we should ask you out on a date. That you were wife material. Turns out, you’re only one of those things—beautiful—and a whole lot of psycho,” Sullivan says, except he’s grinning at me.

What? Wife material? For them? Well, clearly the Ambroses have no idea what they’re talking about.

“So how are you going to rectify the situation?” Porter asks.

“What do you mean?” My heart is going to explode.

“Well, you crashed our party, so you’re going to have to be our entertainment.”

“What do you mean?” I swear my brain only works half as well in their company.

“What we mean is, we expected a night of entertainment, freshly back from the Marines and all, and since you ruined that, we’re going to get a couple of beers and watch you dance for us, because that’s what we would have been doing if you hadn’t shown up with your fake chickenpox,” Gray says.

“In your dreams.” I give a hearty laugh. “I don’t dance.”

“Well, these are your options. As an apology, you can either dance for us or get spanked. Either way, we’re going to be entertained. Those are your only two options,” Sullivan adds.

Spanked? On my bottom? Like a naughty child? Are they insane?

“I would like a third option, please.”

“Yeah? What would that third option be?”

“I just say I’m sorry, and I leave.”

“No. Not an option.”

“What’s it going to be, sweetheart? A dance or a spanking?”

I fold my arms and glare them to death. They don’t die. Ugh.