Description
It started as a simple bet. It ended up costing me my heart.
I won’t deny it. The ladies love me.
I can’t help it.
But when my male cousins get dumped so their girlfriends can spend time with me, they’ve had enough.
They bet me that I can’t hold down one woman for more than thirty days.
Game on.
I find a sure thing.
Her name is Heather Cook and she’s gorgeous.
She’s way younger than me but when she looks at me she has stars in her eyes.
It’ll be easy, right?
Wrong.
Because my cousins are determined to win this bet and they’ll pull every trick in the book.
Add to it that I’m really starting to fall in love with Heather.
That I’ll do anything to make sure she doesn’t get hurt.
All of a sudden, this careless bet has become a whole lot more complicated.
Author’s Note: This romance contains steamy scenes.
One
Heather
My alarm clock flashes at me as Emma’s shrieking wakes me up. Fuck, there must have been another power cut during the night. This isn’t the first time it’s happened with the wiring in these shoddy apartments and I’m sure it won’t be the last.
I keep meaning to pick up a battery clock but there’s never time or money before the next time it happens.
My phone is beeping from the side-table and it looks like it’s barely charged, but even so I can see enough to be able to tell that I’m already late for work. Again.
I work in a small bookstore called the Cozy Nook and while my boss Rachel is one of the kindest and most maternal women I know she’s been under a lot of stress lately and she won’t be happy with me. I kick off the covers and hurry over to Emma’s bed where my baby is bawling her eyes out.
She’s usually the sweetest three year old you could want to meet, but lately she’s been having some trouble getting to sleep and that’s been making her cranky. I scoop her up in my arms and rock her a little back and forth as she babbles in my ear.
It’s mostly nonsense still but it sounds like she had a bad dream on top of everything else.
“Aw, no,” I kiss her flushed cheek. “Well mommy’s here now. Let’s get you all cleaned up and we can go to the bookstore, okay?”
“B’kstore!” she says, sounding a little happier as I tote her to the bathroom and check to see if we have hot water today. I’m behind on all my bills lately, especially since I maxed out my third credit card on our beat up old car. Every day is a roulette to see if we have power, internet or hot water.
It looks like I’m lucky today and I get baby cleaned up while making a mental note to check if the power is faulty wiring or the power company getting sick of me putting off my payment as long as I have. Emma squeals at the bubbles and tries to splash me and I wish I could laugh with her the way I used to.
But all my laughter has gone away lately. I can’t keep up with the bills and debt just keeps piling on top of me. I’m only twenty-one, and it’s been hard to raise a baby while working to keep our heads above water. It’s only getting harder lately with prices in the city going up and I’ve heard that the people buying up our apartment block are planning on raising the rent.
How am I ever going to pay for that?
While Emma chews on a piece of toast I hurriedly throw on some clothes and give my long hair a quick brush. I’m already late, it wouldn’t do to turn up looking like a fright as well. I’m the shop assistant and people do expect me to look presentable.
I’m really lucky that the Cozy Nook allows me to bring Emma with me because while my dad is great at watching her as much as he can, he can’t do it all the time. I wonder briefly if I can ask him for another loan to tide us over, but he’s already given us so much and he’s only got his pension to live off.
Maybe I should get another job?
But who else will put up with my erratic schedule? Rachel should have fired me a hundred times over if she wasn’t fond of me.
Finally I’m ready and I shoot off a quick text to Rachel before my phone dies, grab my charger and bundle us into the car. I can hear another banging noise in the engine and just hope it’s nothing important. We can’t afford another trip to the mechanic on top of everything else.
The worry about where rent and food are going to come from makes me stressed and Emma can tell. Maybe she can hear it in my voice, I don’t know. I try so hard to keep things light and cheerful for her so she doesn’t have to know that we’re in trouble.
But by the time I pull up into the parking lot near the bookshop she’s just as stressed and cranky as I am. I’m happy to see Sara already in the shop. She recently started a new job but she still comes by the Cozy Nook sometimes and I could cry with relief as she takes Emma from me and lets me get to my job.
“What time do you call this, Heather?” Rachel calls from the back of the store, and Sara makes a sympathetic face at me. I hurry over, all apologies and explanations but it looks like Rachel has been going over the store accounts again and this never leaves her in a good mood.
“This is the third time in two weeks, Heather, I’m not running a charity shop here.”
“I know, I’m sorry. There was another power cut during the night.”
“That’s been your excuse too many times. You could get a battery clock or use your phone and you know that as well as I do. I can’t keep holding these shifts for you when you’re never in on time to do them.”
I feel a rush of desperation. Sure I’ve been a little unreliable, but I’ve got reasons. She wouldn’t fire me for that surely!
“Look, I’ll cover the shift for the club tonight. I know you wanted to attend and no one else could get the night off. Would that make it up to you?”
“It would be a start,” Rachel says, softening. I let out a breath of relief to see she’s mollified. Of course now I’m going to have to get my dad to sit Emma for the evening but better that than looking for a new job.
Two
Rafaela
As we wait for our drinks to arrive I can tell my cousins are mad at me. But answer me this, is it really my fault that all women find me hot? And let’s go one step further and ask the really important question which is whether it’s my fault if those women happen to include my brother’s girlfriends?
I don’t think so. I didn’t twist anyone’s arm and it’s not my fault that Stefano didn’t get the memo that I’m God’s gift to women. He should take it as a compliment, he has good taste.
My father doesn’t see it that way, but he’s old school. He’s all about family loyalty and banding together and so forth. I don’t exactly disagree but what, am I not going to punch my stupid little brother in the nose for calling me names?
Of course I am.
Apollo and Daniella stare at me over their manhattans. It’s going to take a few rounds of drinks before they’re willing to talk to me again. I know that they think I’m being impulsive and out of control but all the restrictions that the family try to put on me only make me want to buck the rules even harder.
I know that my father doesn’t want someone as clueless as Stefano running the family business, and if he doesn’t have the balls to realize that means he has to give it to me then I’m not going to bend over backwards to convince him.
Although he did say that if I don’t shape up he’ll cut me out of the business altogether and that gives me a little pause. What would I do without the money or the excitement?
“You’ve got to stop with Stefano,” Daniella says finally over her second Cosmo. “It’s going to cause a war inside the Family and you know that Apollo and I will be caught in the cross fire. I don’t want to take a shot for you, Rafaela.”
“Neither do I,” Apollo adds.
“It’s your job to take bullets for me,” I say, swigging back the shot of bourbon that the cute waitress has just set in front of me and waggling my eyebrows at her. She blushes and I smirk.
Apollo smacks my hand the way he used to when we were children and I was trying to steal his cookies. “No. It’s my job to keep you out of trouble and I’m about to be fired from that job because it’s actually impossible.”
“To start with you could stop chasing every skirt you see,” Daniella adds.
“Yes. That. We’re going to end up overrun with your ex girlfriends. I know you’re chronically incapable of settling down but maybe go a week between them at least.”
I frown. No one tells me I can’t do something. “I could settle down with any girl I like, thank you.”
A look passes between them and I think if they weren’t so well trained they would burst into laughter.
“You? Go steady? The longest you ever went steady was Valentina Ridicci and that was because we were visiting her for the weekend,” Apollo says.
“I totally could,” I say firmly, eyeing him. He meets my gaze and I see the moment this becomes a competition. We’re as bad as each other in that.
“Okay, fine. Let’s make a bet. I bet you can’t make a girl…”
“One that we choose,” Daniella cuts in.
“Yes, a girl that we choose. I bet you can’t make a girl stay with you for a month.”