Part 16 (1/2)
Read on for an excerpt from Ruthie Knox's Along Came Trouble
Chapter One.
”Get out of my yard!” Ellen shouted.
The weasel-faced photographer ignored her, too busy snapping photos of the house next door to pay her any mind.
No surprise there. This was the fifth time in as many days that a man with a camera had violated her property lines. By now, she knew the drill.
They trespa.s.sed. She yelled. They pretended she didn't exist. She called the police.
Ellen was thoroughly sick of it. She couldn't carry on this way, watching from the safety of the side porch and clutching her gla.s.s of iced tea like an outraged southern belle.
It was all very well for Jamie to tell her to stay put and let the professionals deal with it. Her pop-star brother was safe at home in California, nursing his wounds. And anyway, this kind of attention was the lot he'd chosen in life. He'd decided to be a celebrity, and then he'd made the choice to get involved with Ellen's neighbor, Carly. The consequences ought to be his to deal with.
Ellen hadn't invited the paparazzi to descend. She'd made different choices, and they'd led her to college, law school, marriage, divorce, motherhood. They'd led her to this quiet cul-de-sac in Camelot, Ohio, surrounded by woods.
Her choices had also made her the kind of woman who couldn't easily stand by as some skeevy guy crushed her plants and invaded Carly's privacy for the umpteenth time since last Friday.
Enough, she thought. Enough.
But until Weasel Face crushed the life out of her favorite hosta-her mascot hosta-with his giant brown boot, she didn't actually intend to act on the thought.
Raised in Chicago, Ellen had grown up ignorant of perennials. When she first moved to Camelot, a new wife in a strange land, she did her best to adapt to the local ways of lawn-mowing and shade-garden cultivation, but during the three years her marriage lasted, she'd killed every plant she put in the ground.
It was only after her divorce that things started to grow. In the winter after she kicked Richard out for being a philandering d.i.c.khead, their son had sprouted from a pea-sized nothing to a solid presence inside her womb, breathing and alive. That spring, the first furled shoots of the hosta poked through the mulch, proving that Ellen was not incompetent, as Richard had so often implied. She and the baby were, in fact, perfectly capable of surviving, even thriving, without anyone's help.
Two more springs had come and gone, and the hosta kept returning, bigger every year. It became her horticultural buddy. Triumph in plant form.
So Ellen took it personally when Weasel Face stepped on it. Possibly a bit too personally. Swept up in a delicious tide of righteousness, she crossed the lawn and upended her gla.s.s of iced tea over the back of his head.
It felt good. It felt great, actually-the coiled-spring snap of temper, the clean confidence that came with striking a blow for justice. For the few seconds it lasted, she basked in it. It was such an improvement over standing around.
One more confirmation that powerlessness was for suckers.
But then it was over, and she wondered why she'd wasted the tea, because Weasel Face didn't so much as flinch. Seemingly unbothered by the dunking, the ice cubes, or the sludgy sugar on the back of his neck, he aimed his camera at Carly's house and held down the shutter release, capturing photo after photo as an SUV rolled to a stop in the neighboring driveway.
”Get out of my yard,” Ellen insisted, shoving the man's shoulder for emphasis. His only response was to reach up, adjust his lens, and carry on.
Now what? a.s.sault-by-beverage was unfamiliar territory for her. Usually, she stuck with verbal attack. Always, the people she engaged in battle acknowledged her presence on the field. How infuriating to be ignored by the enemy.
”The police are on their way.”
This was a lie, but so what? The man had already been kicked off her property once this week. He didn't deserve scrupulous honesty. He didn't even deserve the tea.
”I'll leave when they make me,” he said.
”I'm going to press charges this time.”
The photographer squinted into his viewfinder. ”Go ahead. I'll have these pictures sold before the cops get here.”
”I'm not kidding,” she threatened. ”I'll use every single sneaky lawyer trick I can think of to drag out the process. You'll rot in that jail cell for days before I'm done with you.”
And now she sounded like a street-corner nut job. Not the kind of behavior she approved of, but what was she supposed to do? It was already too late to give up. If she stopped pus.h.i.+ng, he would win. Unacceptable.
A tall man stepped out of the SUV. One of her cedar trees partially blocked the view, but she caught a glimpse of mirrored sungla.s.ses and broad shoulders.
”You're going to be so sorry you didn't listen to me.”
Weasel Face didn't even look at her. ”Go away, lady.”
”I live here!” She hooked her fingers in his elbow and yanked, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up his aim.
The stranger at Carly's must have heard the escalating argument, because he turned to face them. Ellen's uninvited guest made an ugly, excited noise low in his throat, edged forward, and smashed a lungwort plant that had been doing really well this year.
Ellen considered kicking him in the s.h.i.+n, but she hadn't remembered to put shoes on before she rushed out of the house. She settled for a juvenile trick, walking around behind him and sinking her kneecaps into the back of his legs. His knees buckled, and he lost his balance and staggered forward a few paces, destroying a bleeding-heart bush. Then he shot her an evil glare and went right back to taking pictures.
”Leave,” she insisted.
”No.” He snapped frame after frame of the stranger as he sauntered toward them and Ellen fumed with anger, frustration, embarra.s.sment, disappointment, fear-all of it swirling around in her chest, making her heart hammer and her stomach clench.
By the time the SUV driver reached her property line, she recognized him. In a village as small as Camelot, you got to know who everybody was eventually. This guy hadn't been around long, maybe a few months. She'd seen him at the deli at lunchtime, always dressed for the office. Today, he wore a white dress s.h.i.+rt with charcoal slacks, and he looked crisp despite the damp July heat.
One time, she'd been chasing after Henry at the Village Market, and she'd turned a corner and almost walked right into this man. They'd done a shuffling sort of dance, trying to evade one another, and for a few seconds, she hadn't had a single thought in her head except Whoa.
Big guy. Very whoa, if you went for that kind of thing.
The two invaders a.s.sessed each other for a few beats before whoa took off his sungla.s.ses and tucked them into his pocket. He stepped around the obstructive cedar tree and extended his hand to Ellen. ”Hi. Caleb Clark.”
Read on for an excerpt from Ruthie Knox's Flirting with Disaster
Chapter One.
”Yes,” Katie said, gripping the steering wheel harder. ”Uh-huh, yes, I get it.” She glanced in the rearview mirror, signaled left, and changed lanes. The traffic was getting thicker as they approached Louisville.
Her brother kept talking, his voice robbed of its customary power by the cheap speakers of her cell phone, which sat in a cup-holder mount and broadcast Caleb's warnings upward at her head. ”If you have the slightest indication that there's danger attached to this threat, you're going to call me, and-”
”Yesssssss,” she droned.