4 Shot Off The Presses Read Online Free Page B

really shrill little girl. When the mood (and the forty-ounce beers) struck, the three adults liked to brawl in the front yard. The police were often called to break it up – and haul belligerent participants away. I liked to think of it as neighborhood theater, only entertaining.
    Still, they weren’t my least favorite neighbors. Sometimes that was the pot-addled slackers that lived across the road – but they were mostly harmless. Loud, but harmless. Right now, though, that honor belonged to the new family that had moved into the house on the corner. Sure, the bevy of toys that littered the yard – and blew across their driveway and into the middle of the road during storms – was a constant irritant. The rooster they had adopted and let walk around their yard and crow – at all hours of the day and night, no joke – was the current bane of my existence, though.
    When I exited my car, I waved at my hillbilly neighbors and tried to scoot into the house as quickly as possible. Eliot’s truck had been parked out at the curb and, while I was excited to see him, I was more excited to get away from Tweedle-Dumb and Tweedle-Dumber.
    “Hey, Avery,” the younger brother greeted me. His name was Larry. He had one of those little shriveled hands from a birth defect and I tried really hard not to stare at it when I was around him. Yes, I’m a terrible person, I’m aware of it.
    I inwardly sighed. “Hey, Larry. How’s it going?”
    “Pretty good.”
    “Any prospects on the job front?”
    Larry had been unemployed since I moved in. Secretly, I was pretty sure he was comfortable living on disability and drinking his days away. It was really none of my business, though.
    “It’s rough out there,” Larry said.
    “Yeah,” I agreed. “Cooking dinner?” I hate people that ask obvious questions, but I didn’t have a lot in common with Larry and his brother so I embraced the social nicety that I loathed to ease the conversation lull.
    “Steaks,” Larry said happily. “We’re also discussing how to catch that chicken so we can barbecue it this weekend.”
    I mulled over the thought. I wasn’t big on animal cruelty. In fact, I abhorred it. That damn rooster woke me up every day, though. “Don’t bother,” I blew out a sigh. “I already reported them to the city.”
    “You did?” Larry looked impressed.
    “I tried to talk to the woman that lives over there,” I admitted. “She told me to go . . . well, she told me to go have a good time with myself, so I had a good time going and reporting them to code enforcement.”
    “How quick will they confiscate the chicken?” Larry asked eagerly.
    “They’ve been given ten days,” I replied.
    “When was that?”
    “About two days ago,” I said. “Trust me, if the chicken isn’t gone, I’ll be reporting them again.”
    Fine, I’m a narc. Sue me.
    I waved goodbye to Larry and then entered my house. The minute I closed the laundry room door behind me a heavenly smell attacked my olfactory senses. Fajitas! Eliot was cooking.
    I climbed the steps between the laundry room and kitchen excitedly and skidded to a halt on the linoleum floor.
    Let me tell you, ladies, Eliot Kane is quite a sight. He’s six feet of pure muscle and sex appeal. He has shoulder-length brown hair, bright brown eyes and just enough tattoos to make him sexy instead of trashy.
    At the present moment, he had steak, green peppers and onions cooking on my George Foreman grill and he was busily chopping tomatoes at the counter. He lifted his head up when he sensed my presence and smiled at me seductively. “What’s up, chickadee?”
    “Chickadee?” I narrowed my eyes. “Is that a crack about the chicken?”
    “It’s still there,” he laughed. “I saw it when I parked.”
    “It’s the devil.”
    “Well, it won’t be here long.”
    I moved to Eliot’s side and exchanged a warm and flirty kiss with him – one that held a lot of promise for after-dinner activities – and then dropped my