Who’s a Good Boy: Dog in This Fight #1 Read online

  Who’s a Good Boy

  Dog in This Fight #1

  Ada Scott

  Impresst Publishing

  Contents

  About the Author

  License Notes

  Disclaimer

  1. School’s Out Forever

  2. Angel-Watching

  3. Mommy Needs Some Sleep, OK?

  4. What Would a Good Mother Do?

  5. Champagne Taste, Beer Budget

  6. It’s a Date

  7. Homecoming

  8. Smells Like Lust

  9. Dear Jeff

  10. It’s Your Life, Cutie

  11. Breaking in the Chevy Pickup

  12. Welcome Back

  13. A Fine Plan

  14. Crazy For You

  15. Make The First Time Count

  16. All the Juicy Details

  17. Let’s Try That Again

  18. Dating James

  19. Get What We’re Owed

  20. Two Lines Means Single Mother

  21. Dinner Date With The Past

  22. The Apocalyptic Fight

  23. Leave or Die

  24. Making Up For Lost Time

  25. Daddy-Daughter Day

  26. When a Sideshow Freak Loves a Princess

  27. The Sheriff ‘Round These Parts

  28. Hurt Her So Bad

  29. Chopper’s Last Ride

  Epilogue

  Bonus Chapter from Still a Bad Boy

  1. Kendall

  Check Out Ada Scott’s Other Books

  About the Author

  A former office drone, a former nurse, I now spend every waking moment doing what I love, creating and publishing these steamy stories about bad boys from the mafia, motorcycle clubs, and mma that make me, and hopefully you, weak at the knees! Anywhere a bad boy can be found, I'll be there taking notes and making it even sexier :)

  Connect with Ada Online

  adascott.com/free-bad-boy-romance-download/

  [email protected]

  Who’s a Good Boy? (Dog in this Fight #1)

  Ada Scott

  Published by Impresst Publishing

  Copyright 2019 Ada Scott

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  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Disclaimer

  All characters and events are entirely fictional and any resemblances to persons living or dead and circumstances are purely coincidental.

  School’s Out Forever

  Hazel - Before

  “Hazel! Hop in.”

  I turned from my friend Ella and saw that James, James Poppleton III for anybody who cared to listen, had pulled up behind us in his Porsche. Ella gave a cheerful hello while I struggled to deal with the thick cloud of entitlement that surrounded him.

  “Hi James. Um, no thanks, I’m walking today.”

  The whole time I’d known him, which was basically my entire life, I’d never heard anybody say a bad word about him, so I couldn’t help but second-guess myself. I kept things polite in case I was the crazy one on that front, but something about him rubbed me the wrong way.

  “Shot down,” said Tony, his friend in the front passenger seat.

  James didn’t take his eyes from me, but they did narrow for a moment under his friend’s light mockery.

  “You sure?” he said.

  “Yep. Thanks, though.”

  “I need a ride!” Ella piped up.

  James looked her up and down, and his face returned to its original self-assured coolness. He offered Ella the smile that had allowed him to work his way into the panties of several girls in my class.

  “Sure thing! Ella, right?” he asked.

  “Yeah!” Ella picked up her bag and turned to me. “Talk later?”

  “Yup.”

  I gave her a hug with one arm, holding my skirt down with the other hand as a sudden warm summer breeze threatened to give James and his friends a show I didn’t want to star in. Ella walked around the car and Tony got out to let her into the back with another girl whom I couldn’t make out because of the reflection on the window.

  Ella waved out the back window as they roared off, and I waved back, hoping she wouldn’t end up represented by a notch on some bedpost. On the other hand, maybe if Ella could get him to settle down then my dad would stop with the less than subtle nudges about the eligibility of James Poppleton, heir to the Poppleton winery empire or fortune or whatever they were calling it these days.

  With a heave, I settled my backpack on my shoulders, took a deep breath through my nose, and set off for home. It smelled at least a little like the freedom I always dreamed it would.

  All around, the sounds of my now-former classmates getting to grips with being let out on the last day of school washed over me. To my ears it seemed like they were feeling the freedom a little deeper than I was.

  It was probably for similar reasons that James was still cruising around here hooking up with high school girls a couple years after he graduated. He was stuck in this town like me. His family owned the biggest vineyard, mine owned the second biggest, and they’d both been kept in the families for generations.

  If Ella’s and my plans for a gap year were to come to fruition, I had an uphill battle to get through with my parents. Any whiff of freedom I could get depended on convincing them to let me have a year away before getting more involved with the family business. If I could get one year, then who knew what might happen? I might be able to build my own life instead of running our vineyard.

  Ever since the weather warmed up, I’d been walking home as much as possible. It was the most peaceful time of my day, but with all the added weight in my bag from clearing out my locker, I was almost regretting declining the offer from James.

  By the time I was almost home, the heat was intruding into my train of thought as much as the straps of my bag were digging into my shoulders. I abandoned the imagined debates with my mom and dad, and concentrated on simply putting one foot in front of the other.

  As I passed the Hatchers’ place, I saw Jeff working on a decrepit old truck inside their garage as per usual. Although sheltered from the sun, he’d been working topless the last several times I’d seen him.

  Not that I specifically noticed that, of course. I scowled in his direction, because he was the only one in town I actually hated. He went about his business, engrossed in whatever he was doing, and my death-stare didn’t interrupt the ratcheting sounds.

  Jeff used to go to the same school, two years above me, until he’d been expelled for a fight with James.

  I guess you aren’t the only one that has a problem with Mr. J. Poppleton III.

  While that may have been true, it didn’t really say much about Jeff. Jeff fought with a lot of people, apparently, but it was his fight with James that got him kicked out.

  Everybody knew all about him and his family. His dad used to own a vineyard himself, but got a little too busy sampling the product and ended up having to sell up. Since my family already owned the adjoining land, we bought it and that’s how we became the second largest wine-family in Shippensburg.

  While everybody around town assumed the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree, there was
one unforgivable thing about Jeff Hatcher that made my blood boil.

  Rumor had it that a few years back Jeff bought a fighting dog he was entering in some illegal dog fights over in Shackleford. The thought disgusted me beyond words.

  The idea alone of the way those animals were treated was enough to make me cry if I let myself dwell on it for too long. To think we had somebody that cruel, that lacking in empathy, living right next door to us made my skin crawl.

  Sometimes I’d lie awake, plagued by thoughts of what it must be like. Living in a cage, with nothing but violence and pain to look forward to, your remaining life measured only by how long you could hold your own in a fight to the death.

  Dogs were our oldest friends on this Earth, they deserved so much more than a life that turned them into mindless, bloodthirsty, machines of death and…

  The largest rottweiler I’d ever dared imagine in my most unrealistic nightmares leaped clear over the Hatchers’ fence and landed on the side of the road, its eyes set on me. I froze mid-step, feeling like the blood was trying to drain from and rush to my face at the same time.

  Time seemed to slow down as the rottweiler bounded in my direction. I could see every drop of saliva flying from its mouth and read a life of fighting in the scars on its side.

  When time slows down in the movies for action stars, they formulate a plan and execute it flawlessly. Nothing useful came to me except, ‘Oh fuck, oh no, oh fuck, oh no.’

  There must have been only ten feet between myself and certain death when I remembered that when a dog was being aggressive, they typically bared teeth or had their mouths shut, not wide open with their tongue hanging out like this. The fact that his stumpy little tail was wagging like crazy was a good clue too.

  Still, I squinted fearfully and cringed away until the moment when he nuzzled my leg hard enough to almost knock me over, shoved his nose an inch or so under my skirt, sneezed and did three rapid laps around my legs, half-whining, half-barking, until he helpfully placed his head directly under my hand. I gave him a tentative rub back and forth for a second before Jeff Hatcher vaulted the fence and came running in our direction.

  I held up my other hand. “Don’t hurt him! He was just playing.”

  Angel-Watching

  Jeff - Before

  No matter what else I needed to do, I always made sure to be working on my truck around 4 o’clock on any given weekday.

  It was a 1957 Chevy pickup, and not only would it be a thing of beauty when it was done, but it was an essential piece of my hopes and dreams. It would be in this truck that Chopper and I would ride the fuck out of this sack of shit town and go someplace where nobody knew us.

  That was motivation enough to get the job done, but that wasn’t the reason I made sure to do something on it at this time each weekday. No, this was guaranteed to be the best part of my day for entirely different reasons.

  Since the weather started clearing up a bit, Hazel Rivera had taken to walking home from school. That took her right past the front of our house, and the garage had a perfect view of the road.

  She was princess of this podunk town, but she wouldn’t have been out of place as the princess of a fairytale kingdom. She made regular going-to-school-on-a-Wednesday clothes look like Cinderella’s magic gown.

  Even though she lived next door, her family’s mansion set way back somewhere in their hundreds of acres, I’d never spoken to her. I couldn’t do it. For so many reasons, I just couldn’t do it.

  From this safe distance, she wasn’t merely beautiful. She was perfect. I swear to God, when she walked past, the world stopped to watch. All the pain and violence, dust and shit of the world didn’t, couldn’t, touch her.

  Every casual movement was graceful. Every step made her skirt swish and showed a little leg. No red-blooded man would have been able to stop himself from thinking about having those legs wrapped around his waist. I know I couldn’t deny the image from streaking through my brain. She made my fists clench and my body ache to know what it would be like to touch her. I’d probably fucking explode.

  If an angel walked through hell, it would look something like her. Every soul who saw her would have reason to hope.

  That’s why there’d never been a word between us. You get even a little close to someone and you shatter the illusion. People aren’t perfect, they fuck up, they have an ugly side.

  After everything that had happened over the last few years, I needed that illusion. I was desperately hanging on to the idea that there were little pockets of perfection in the world. There was something to strive for.

  Maybe one day I’d find another girl who made me feel like Hazel, in that hypothetical someplace where nobody knew me, and I’d test the beautiful mirage. If it shattered, at least I could always think back to these times when I worked on my truck and Hazel Rivera walked by.

  That was the plan, anyway, until the Friday of what I thought was the last day of school and Chopper did his best motherfucking impression of a show-pony and jumped the fence. Cleared it with almost a foot to spare too. I’d have been impressed if it was the weekend or any other time of day but right that moment when Hazel was heading home.

  “Oh fuck…”

  When people meet Chopper for the first time, they tend to freak out about it. Rottweilers have a reputation, and Chopper was pretty fucking big.

  I thought he was about to be pepper-sprayed, so I dropped my wrench and heard it clatter its way through the engine bay to land on the ground below as I raced to bring him back. Although he wasn’t paying any attention to my calls, at least Hazel hadn’t screamed and Chopper hadn’t knocked her on her butt. Yet.

  I vaulted the fence and landed on the other side. Chopper was sitting next to Hazel, his head under her hand, absolutely buzzing with excitement about getting a little pat from a new friend. He looked like fire might shoot out his ass and rocket him to the moon if she complied.

  Hazel looked from Chopper to me and held up her hand. “Don’t hurt him, he was only playing!”

  Boom. Just like that, illusion shattered. That was even quicker than I could have dreamed, a world record.

  I clenched my jaw for a second. “Don’t believe everything you hear. I wasn’t gonna hurt him, just trying to stop you from overreacting.”

  Hazel’s eyes narrowed as she gave Chopper a rub back and forth on top of his head. Chopper’s eyes closed completely and he even stopped panting for a second as he savored the moment. Unfortunately, whereas Chopper looked like he was getting the world’s best massage, Hazel looked at me like she was weighing up whether to believe an alien that looked like a giant cockroach when it said it came in peace.

  The disappointment of finding out for certain that Hazel was like everybody else in this town when it came to her opinion of me was a slap in the face. I was on the verge of asking her what the fuck she thought she was looking at when Chopper put phase two of his plan into action.

  Somehow, without rolling further away or bowling into her, he twisted onto his back and presented his belly for attention. It was a bold move, high-risk high-reward, because it took him out of arm’s reach until, if, she decided to bend down and continue.

  She glanced down at him, then back up to me, a softer expression on her face this time, the faint hint of any kid who ever walked past a store window filled with a litter of puppies. My f-bomb-laden question faded away and I sighed.

  “Go on then.”

  Hazel shrugged her backpack off her shoulders as she sank down and it hit the ground with a heavy thud. She ran her hand back and forth across his flank and Chopper looked over to me with what could have been extreme satisfaction or maybe he was just being a smug asshole.

  I rolled my eyes and came over to give him a pat too. Ultimate victory was his.

  For a few seconds, Hazel and I crouched there, she looking down at Chopper, me occasionally stealing glances up at her. One illusion had just been fucked up beyond all recognition, but there was another one that was still going strong, hell eve
n stronger, up close.

  She was angelic from a distance, but up close it almost hurt to look at her. It was strange to have lived so close to her for so long but to have only seen her from so far away. If I had known, maybe I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself from jumping over the fence and running to her like Chopper.

  For a second, I imagined what it would feel like to have those beautiful blue eyes look at me with love instead of hate. My heart leapt and at that moment Hazel glanced up and caught me looking at her. I tore my eyes away at light speed.

  “I… I’m sorry,” she said. “He seems like a really happy dog. Chopper, huh?”

  “Yeah. You shouldn’t-”

  “Believe everything I hear. I know, I just-”

  A car slowed down and honked at us as it turned into our driveway, my dad in his old Ford. Old enough to be a pain in the ass to maintain, not old enough to be a classic yet.

  I stood, distancing myself from that mind-bending drug that was etched in every detail of Hazel’s face. A girl that pretty could make me do stupid things, and I couldn’t afford anymore stupid things happening in my life.

  “We better go,” I said.