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  Copyright 2015 by Anne Conley

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarities to real persons, living or dead are purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Cover model: Devon Ryan

  Cover photography: Carlos Salazar and Tresal Photography

  Cover designer: Love, Lust, and Lipstick Stains Cover Art

  Editor: Tiffany Fox; Beyond Def

  Formatter: E-Book Builders

  Acknowledgments

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thrity-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Epilogue

  About Anne

  Contact Anne

  Anne's Bookshelf

  For the Reader

  Pierce Securities:

  Craze

  Wire

  Click

  Stories of Serendipity:

  Neighborly Complications

  Chef’s Delight

  Dream On

  Hot Mess

  Falling for Him

  Gambling on Love

  My Mistake

  Wrecked

  Saving Charlie

  Four Winds:

  Falling for Heaven

  Falling for Grace

  Falling for Hope

  Falling for Faith

  Falling for Cyn

  Stand Alones:

  Best Laid Plans of Boys and Men

  The Fixer Upper

  I would really like to thank everybody who has made this book, and this series possible. To my amazing editor, Tiffany Fox with Beyond Def, thank you for helping me stay true to my work, and helping me make sense of the madness when I lose the thread. To Deena Rae, with E-book builders, thank you for being my friend, and making my stuff pretty. I appreciate your talents, and am totally willing to acknowledge this is something I cannot do. And you’re a total badass to boot. For every beta reader who previewed Click in its rough form, thank you for your patience in reading and making notes to make it better. To Suzanne, Fabie, Jackie, and Stephanie, my personal cheer squad, your words of encouragement are priceless to me. And finally, Wren, Melanie, and Kristie… I just flove you. Thanks for letting me bounce ideas off you guys and telling me when I’m being stupid.

  To my husband. I will always love you, to the stars and back.

  Joe Calahan was going to die today and had absolutely nothing to show for his life, except a fresh piss stain in his new pants.

  “Please! I’m good! I’m good!” Tears tracked up his face as he dangled upside down over the backside of his building, a three-story drop, and if he managed not to fall on his head, it probably wouldn’t kill him. It would just break every bone in his body, liquefy his organs, and leave him in a vegetative state.

  “We know you’re good. You took a cut of our trade, pendejo, and now we want a cut of yours.” The man holding his left ankle spoke low and slow as if Joe was stupid. Apparently, he was. “We told you this. Ten percent was what we said. You remember?”

  Joe nodded his head as the gangsters shook him, dangling him cruelly over a dumpster filled with broken glass. The tell-tale tattoo of the double-headed snake in the shape of the number three should have been his first clue not to try to wheedle out of their deal. Now he was dead meat. He had ignored Tres Lobos.

  Blood pounded in Joe’s ears, as it was all pooling in his head. Sweat and tears streamed into his hairline, he was pretty sure he had snot all over his face, and his arms dangled helplessly above him. Below him. Whatever. How the fuck did he get here? He looked around at his surroundings, everything upside-down and blurry. He was so fucked.

  “Javier, I’ll do anything. Please don’t drop me!” Joe’s bowels loosened and he knew the piss stain was the least of his worries; he was about to be splattered across the pavement below. His pulse pounded frantically while he desperately bargained with his life. “I’ll double it!” Jesus. Why couldn’t they just punch him in the balls?

  “You’ll triple it, guey. It’s called interest. We love interest.” ‘We’ being Tres Lobos, the gang trying to put the Mexican Mafia out of business. Joe was so stupid. “Black Friday.” Javier chuckled. “I love Black Friday. It has such a nice sound to it, don’t you think so?” He looked down at Joe, who couldn’t see shit through the tears of relief in his eyes. He was going to live. Thank fuck.

  They yanked Joe up the side of the building he’d been dangling over and dropped him unceremoniously in his own piss and shit-ridden pants with a dull splat. The quiet one didn’t speak, only spat a wet glob of tobacco juice between his outstretched legs.

  Joe didn’t think he was sobbing, but he was gasping for breath. Huge, heaving, sobbing gasps which could be mistaken for crying.

  “Coño.”

  He should be relieved for the reprieve, but some part of him wished they’d just killed him. The difference in what he’d done Black Friday last year and what he was going to try to avoid Black Friday this year was hard to miss.

  He didn’t have the money. He couldn’t get the money. Joe didn’t know what he was going to do.

  Thanksgiving was hell this year. Usually Jake’s favorite holiday—full of family and football—this year it was positively awful. And his twin was to blame for it.

  This was the first Thanksgiving after his divorce was final, for one thing. And the divorce was because Abby had cheated on him with fucking Joe, of all people. So sitting here, at his parents’ table with Joe across from him instead of Abby and their son, was like a kick in the nuts all over again. Jake couldn’t eat—never mind the fact that his mama’s cornbread dressing was the best in the world. It was totally wasted on him.

  Instead, he had to look in this funhouse mirror, watching his twin shovel food into his mouth, oblivious to the world around him and the effect of his actions on others.

  Like most doomed marriages, his and Abby’s had suffered from communication issues, probably from the get-go. But instead of talking to Jake, her husband, about what she wanted, she went to Joe, his brother. His twin brother.

  Joe had convinced Abby that her problems of communicating her sexual needs with Jake could be fixed by sleeping with him. And she’d done it. That’s probably what she wanted all along, right? Who would talk about sexual issues with a guy she didn’t want to sleep with?

  Jake gritted his teeth together, trying vainly to chew the turkey turning to ash in his mouth. Giving up, he dropped his fork on the plate with a clatter and reached for his glass of tea. “Sorry, Mom. I guess I don’t have much appetite.”

  Joe grinned
up at him over his plateful of food, squishing sweet potatoes between his teeth. Unable to stomach looking at him another moment, Jake pushed back from the table and stormed into the living room.

  It wasn’t just him, either. Something was up with Mom and Dad. Mom had been really quiet since Joe had gotten there, and his dad looked positively ashy. Jake wondered if Dad was having health problems they weren’t talking about. That would be bad. What if it was cancer?

  A knot formed in his gut and worried itself into a boulder while he sat in the living room, staring at an empty TV screen, listening to everyone silently eat Thanksgiving dinner.

  It had never been this quiet. In the past, Abby, Drew, and Mom chattered away about any and everything, filling the voids of silence made by the men at the table. Of course, last year was the year everything fell apart. Little did Jake know that his wife and brother were planning an illicit liaison for later that evening. She’d been talking to Mom about the Black Friday sales she’d planned to wait in line for, and Jake had been oblivious to the fact it was an excuse to go see his brother and have sex with him.

  Of course, the next afternoon, she’d come home and tearfully confessed her sins. Not only had she cheated on Jake with his brother, but they’d had sex multiple times, in various positions, and she’d enjoyed it. She felt guilty about it, but—and these were her words—it was only because she couldn’t talk to Jake about sex that she’d turned to his brother.

  It still made him want to puke.

  He’d filed for divorce the next Monday, unable to get over the image of his wife and brother together. She didn’t contest anything, and it was final sixty-seven days later.

  So he didn’t get to spend Thanksgiving with his son because his wife was a cheating bitch. The one person he didn’t want to spend Thanksgiving with, of course, was here, silently shoveling food into his mouth where his son, Drew, should be.

  But it was so quiet.

  After a while, the sound of another chair pushing away from the table filtered into his conscience, and Dad stood with a sighed, “I’m going to catch the game.”

  A few seconds later, he was in the recliner next to Jake, hitting buttons on the remote to find the Cowboys game. Jake heard muttered whispers between Joe and Mama and Dad raised the volume to drown them out. He looked over and saw his dad’s face was drawn tighter, anger pinching his mouth.

  The pit in Jake’s stomach widened, and what little Thanksgiving turkey he managed to choke down threatened to come back up as clarity surfaced.

  “What did Joe do now?” he asked his dad, clamping his jaw shut in anger.

  His dad knew about what Joe and Abby had done. So did his mother, for that matter, but she was too willing to forgive their transgressions. Jake wondered how willing to forgive she would be if it was another man Abby had cheated with besides her son, but no one would ever really know the answer to that one. Dad had tried not to take sides, but it was clear Joe’s actions were not so easily forgiven for him.

  “He borrowed some money from your mother,” Dad stated quietly.

  Jake’s eyes darted to the dining room, where Joe was looking angrily at their mother, who pleaded with him with her hands.

  “How much?”

  The older man muttered a number which left Jake gape-mouthed. “Are you serious? Y’all have that kind of money?” he whisper-shouted.

  “In our retirement…” Dad closed his eyes and leaned his head back, as if that would make all this go away.

  Jake felt the anger for Joe spill over, making the bile rise in his throat. Without another word, Jake stood and stormed into the dining room, where Joe looked up at him with a smirk on his face. Sure, they were twins. Sure, they were identical. But the differences were glaring and horrifying.

  Jake didn’t hurt the people he loved, his family. He cared about the difference between right and wrong. Jake knew he was an adult and had to fend for himself, not try to mooch off everybody who gave him a second-glance.

  Joe was still seated, oblivious to the rage inside Jake as he towered over him. He pulled back his fist and punched Joe square in the nose before he realized what he was doing.

  “Jake, don’t!” his mother shouted at him. Dad stood in the doorway, a slight smile on his face, still looking ashen.

  “You have no idea what you’re doing, do you? You don’t even care!” Joe had lurched to his feet and had his fists in front of his face, ready to defend it against another attack. “Don’t even fucking bother. I’m out of here.” Without another word, he left.

  Happy fucking Thanksgiving. Surely, Christmas would be a hoot.

  Pity party for one, please. Miriam contemplated the cheese. Bleu cheese was her favorite, but she always ended up with a headache when she overindulged, which she was planning on doing tonight.

  She reached her hands out for both the Bleu cheese and the Brie, causing a sharp pain from her incision site to stab through her torso. And that was why the overindulgence was necessary. Absently, she tossed both cheeses in her cart with a sigh. Just the trip to the store was exhausting, and she was suddenly too tired to choose. She’d eventually eat all the cheese she planned on buying.

  Her recovery period was officially over tonight, and she was returning to work tomorrow. She missed people but wasn’t looking forward to the questions her nosy, overbearing, alpha co-workers were inclined to ask. In her head, they were obnoxious and pushy, even though her heart told her it wouldn’t be that way. But the pessimist she was, Miriam mentally prepared herself for the barrage of questions while she decided on a nice chevre to go with her chardonnay. She was going all out.

  In her imagination, her co-workers’ voices rang out, taunting her.

  “Why don’t you have any money-makers anymore, Mir?”

  “You had your tits removed? Voluntarily?”

  “So, you can’t feel your nipples anymore?”

  “Don’t you feel less feminine?”

  She knew she was projecting. Most of those were her own thoughts, as she now was second-guessing herself. But after three mammograms in a two-year period, she didn’t see any end to the stress in sight. With her family history, she was high risk and could only assume she carried the gene. She would get breast cancer eventually. It was only a matter of time, and then she’d probably have no boobs, no hair, and even less self-esteem. Okay, not really that last thing. It was probably hard to have less self-esteem than she already had.

  So she’d elected to have both of her breasts removed. She hadn’t wanted the reconstructive surgery, mostly because she couldn’t afford it. And there was something about the fakeness of it all that seemed distasteful to her. Why would she want replicas of the very things which had caused her so much stress and misery?

  Part of her, a very small part, was willing to admit Vincent played a part in it all. He had been in love with her breasts, and knowing she’d had them sliced off was a sort of ‘fuck you’ to her ex-husband.

  With his obsession about her femininity—the way she dressed, the way she looked, and his eventual abuse after the baby died—he did everything possible to make her feel like less of a woman, even though he tried to make her into his ideal one with his controlling, abusive ways.

  But she wasn’t going to think about him. He was her past, and she was ready for her future.

  A future, such as it was, without boobs.

  She chuckled ruefully to herself. Talk about first-world problems.

  Miriam reminded herself that her co-workers at Pierce Securities probably wouldn’t say any of those things to her. They were nice guys, and she enjoyed working with them, even if it did feel like she was mothering them more than anything.

  At least business had picked up and she had more to do than their laundry. But she imagined after three weeks off of work she’d have her fair share of picking up in the office to do.

  Her phone rang, the song, Eye of the Tiger, blaring from her purse, the initial drum sequence scaring the bejeesus out of her.

  “Hey, Ni
ck. How’s things?” Her brother had tried to come down for her surgery, but she’d nixed the idea. He had enough on his plate trying to get his new bar in the tiniest town she’d ever heard of up and running.

  “How ya doin’, Sis? I miss you.” His affable voice boomed over the phone at her, and she could hear the music in the background, indicating he was at his pub.

  “Do you ever not work?” She laughed at him.

  “Not unless you need me to. I really feel bad about not being there for you.” His voice sobered, and she suddenly felt guilty for not letting him do his brotherly duty and come see her.

  “I’m fine. Really. I go back to work tomorrow, and everything will be good once I get back into my routine, ya know?” She steered her buggy toward the checkout counter.

  “I just feel bad. I mean, you pitched one of your little fits, but I feel like I should have tried harder to come down there. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not a big deal, Nick. I didn’t need you here.” Feeling bitchy, Miriam tried to backtrack. “That came out way worse than I meant it to.”

  “No. I get it. You’re a lot like Mom was. It’s okay.” She could tell he was trying not to sound hurt, especially when he tried to cover it up with a chuckle.

  “Any women up there in Mystic?” She desperately tried to change the subject to the new town to which he’d moved.

  A heavy sigh sounded in her ear. “Not really. There was this one girl, but she’s got a kid, and I really can’t take time for that sort of baggage.”

  Miriam had to laugh at her brother, the quintessential bachelor. “O-kay. Moron. You just really never know, you know?” Even though she didn’t think she could date a guy with kids, either.

  “Yeah, well, you get where I’m coming from. Pretend you don’t, if you want. But you wouldn’t date a guy with a ready-made family, either. You got anything to think about besides the surgery? Any guys on the horizon?”

  Miriam gave a rueful laugh, “No. Not hardly.” Thinking of the boys at the office, she amended her statement. “Well, there are guys all over the place, just none I’m romantically inclined to be with.” Miriam would save him the caveman comparisons, not wanting to get into the whole Alpha men are assholes thing with him. She had cheese to buy.