CHAPTER ONE
Neala? Are you home?”
No.
“Neala?”
Be gone.
“Neala Hayden Clarke, you had better not be ignoring me!”
Would I dare?
“Neala!”
Argh!
“I’m coming, Ma! Keep your bloody knickers on,” I called out in a raspy tone.
I rubbed my chest as I yawned and crawled from my warm haven, then shivered as the cool morning air surrounded me. I grabbed my housecoat, put it and my slippers on, and then folded my arms across my chest as I scurried out of my bedroom towards my front door. I peeked through the peephole out of pure habit. When I spotted the overly happy face of my mother, who was dressed from head to toe in bright red, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes.
I reluctantly unlocked my door and opened it wide.
“Heya, Ma,” I yawned.
She smiled as she glided past me, looking like a jolly bull’s target.
“Heya, honey. Did I wake you?”
Was she really asking me that? She just had to bang my door down to get me out of bed.
“Nah, Ma. I’ve been up for hours,” I deadpanned.
My mother clucked her tongue at me and gently swatted at my head with her red-gloved hand. I snickered and ducked away. I turned and walked down my narrow hallway and into my box-sized kitchen. I glanced over my shoulder at my mother’s attire once more and sighed.
“What the hell are you wearing, Ma?” I asked as she followed me.
My mother gasped. “It’s Christmas time!”
That, in her mind, justified the monstrosity of the outfit she was decked out in.
I rubbed my hands together, silently cursing myself for not having set the central heating to automatic before I went to bed. The apartment would have been nice and toasty had I done that, instead of chilled. With cold and shaking hands, I filled the kettle with water from the tap, and then flipped the switch on the base.
“It looks like Santa puked on you, Ma,” I said, then squealed when she not-so-gently whacked my behind.
“You watch your mouth, and stop picking on me, you little shite. I’m your mother; I should be revered.”
Yes, Your Highness.
“I’m only messing with you, Ma.” I smiled teasingly.
I wasn’t messing – she looked ridiculous.
“What’s the emergency anyway? Why’re you banging me door down so early in the morning?”
“I wanted to tell you that I can’t do lunch with you because I have to go shopping for last-minute bits for Christmas for your father and so on.”
I raised an eyebrow in question. “You couldn’t have just phoned me to let me know?”
My mother clicked her tongue. “You know I don’t like technology.”
I knew she didn’t know how to work technology.
“I forgot. Sorry.”
“Good. Now make me a cuppa.”
I saluted her. “Yes, ma’am.”
I made us tea and headed into my living room, where we sat on the couch facing my plasma-screen TV. I smiled as my mother kicked off her shoes and tucked her legs under her bum. We both sat the same way, and that wasn’t where the similarities ended between us. She was twenty-seven years older than me and the woman was hot.
Well, she was when she didn’t dress like someone from The Grinch.
She was fifty-two years old and didn’t look a day over thirty-five. She was mistaken for my older sister nine times out of ten, and we had a bond where we were not only mother and daughter, but she was also one of my best friends.
We both had frosty green eyes, long brown hair, pale porcelain skin and freckles sprinkled across our noses. My father jokingly called us twins from time to time.
“Tell me, how did your date on Friday night go with what’s-his-name?”
I could have gone the rest of my life without her asking that question.
I sighed. “His name is Dan Jenkins and it went . . . okay.”
If okay meant horribly, then yep, the date had gone A-okay.
My mother snickered. “That bad, huh?”
Understatement.
I nodded reluctantly. “It was awful. His idea of small talk was to ask me if I was planning on having children anytime soon since me eggs wouldn’t be as reliable after I crossed over to the dark side and turned the dreaded three and zero. The man is a weirdo.”
My mother burst out laughing and I found it both amusing and annoying.
“You just turned twenty-five; you have years yet to think of kids.”
“Exactly. That’s what I said, but this lad was having none of it. I bailed on him. I told him I had to go to the bathroom, and then I ran for the door the first chance I got. It sucks; he seemed so normal when I met him at the bookstore, but it turned out he’s a nut job.”
My mother was now snorting from laughing so hard.
“It’s not funny. What if I bump into him? He lives in the city centre but has family here in the village. I would freeze up, because I’d have no clue what to say to him. I didn’t say goodbye or give him a reason as to why I was leaving. I just ran out on him. He probably thinks I’m a massive bitch.”
My mother wiped under her eyes and smiled. “You could tell him you got a sudden bad case of the runs.”
“Ma!”
I shook my head while she cracked up at her sick suggestion.
“I’m sorry.” She chuckled. “I couldn’t help meself.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Where is me da? How come he didn’t come around to see me with you?”
My mother grunted. “He has his friends around for the match; it’s an early kick-off.”
That didn’t surprise me in the slightest. My father had been a hard-core football fan for as long as I could remember; he lived and breathed football like it was essential to his continued existence. Weekends, and even some weekdays, were a time that my father cherished. It meant football time, and everyone in our household had
to respect that or God only knows what would happen.
Men and their sports.
“It must be an important match for it to be on a Wednesday,” I commented.
My mother shrugged. “He said something about it being the last game the club was playing before taking a break for the Christmas holidays or something like that. I wasn’t really listening to him.”
She never did; she hated football.
I smiled. “In that case, do you wanna go get breakfast instead of lunch? I have to go to Smyths in the afternoon, and I’d rather get there when it’s relatively quiet. No doubt people will drop in on their lunch hour to buy last-minute presents.”
Smyths was a huge toy shop.
My mother frowned. “What did you forget to buy?”
I cringed. “Why would you think I forgot to buy—”
“Neala.”
I groaned at my mother’s tell-me-now tone.
“A doll for Charli,” I mumbled, and avoided eye contact.
Charli was my niece. She was five years old, and was both evil and adorable, but she was also cute enough to make you forget how evil she really was. She had told me a few weeks ago that she wanted a doll from me for Christmas, and I’d told her I’d make it happen. That was before I realised how hard it was going to be to find the particular doll she wanted.
My mother widened her eyes. “Christmas is in six days!”
Don’t remind me.
I winced. “I know, but in me defence, I ordered the doll she wanted online, but bad weather halted the order till January, so I just cancelled it and got me money back. I tried other sites, but everywhere is either sold out or couldn’t make any deliveries until after Christmas and into New Year’s.”
My mother lifted her hand to her face and pinched the bridge of her nose. I’d bet my life that she wished she had something stronger than a cup of tea to drink.
When I was growing up, she was that mother, the one who started her Christmas shopping in August and never left anything until the last minute. It grated on her nerves that I’d never developed that trait.
“Nothing is ever an easy ride with you,” she muttered, and took a gulp of her tea.
I snorted, because it was true.
“Are you saying I’m difficult?” I devilishly grinned.
My mother cackled. “Honey, you’ve been difficult since the day you were born. It’s a characteristic you share with Darcy.”
The smile on my face vanished and my grip on my mug tightened at the mention of his name.
“Don’t mention his name in this apartment,” I said as politely as I could.
My mother sighed dramatically. “For goodness’ sake, Neala, you’re twenty-five, not five. Both you and Darcy need to get over this childish . . . thing you both have towards one another.”
‘Thing’ translated into hate.
I growled in annoyance. “I hate him, and he hates me. Period. End of story.”
My mother’s shoulders slumped as she sighed. “But he is such a nice young man, Neala. Couldn’t you just—”
“Ma! We have had this conversation a billion times before. I am never having any sort of relationship with Darcy Hart, and that is it.”
I had to put my mug on the coffee table across from me, because I suddenly felt like hurling it against the wall. I sat back and folded my arms across my chest in anger. This sudden feeling of rage was exactly what Darcy, or any mention of him, did to me.
My mother watched me with a raised eyebrow and smiled at me.
I blinked. “What are you smiling for?”
She shrugged. “No reason, Neala. I’m going to top up me cuppa.”
Through narrowed eyes, I watched her get up and leave the room. She was up to something, and that worried me. I reached out and lifted my mug to my mouth and took a large gulp of my tea to calm my unsettled stomach.
Darcy Hart.
I hissed at my thoughts.
I hated thinking about Darcy, talking about Darcy, looking at Darcy, and hearing about Darcy.
I simply hated Darcy.
They say ‘hate’ is a strong word and an even stronger emotion. I agree with that, because the passion with which I hated Darcy filled me completely. It wasn’t one-sided – that man hated me just as much as I hated him, and that’s how it was between us. It’s how it had pretty much always been between us. We hated each other, and that was it.
The feud between us started fifteen years ago, when we were both ten years old. We were in school when everything changed. Up until that point in our friendship we were a duo. We were best friends, and were together so much you could classify each of us as a limb to the other.
Then a girl happened.
Darcy had a crush on a girl in our class, a girl I despised. She was an awful person and picked on me day in and day out for no reason other than the fact that I existed.
Laura Stoke.
She ruined everything and changed my entire life. It sounds dramatic, but Darcy was a part of my everyday routine; he was always there, until one day he wasn’t.
One lunchtime the whole school was out in the yard, playing and having as much fun as possible before we had to return to the evil that was learning.
I leaned my head back on my sofa as I thought back to that day when everything changed.
Fifteen years ago . . .
“Neala?”
I’d looked over my shoulder when Shannon Burke, a girl I sat next to in math class, called out my name. I smiled when I saw she held two ropes in her hands.
Single skipping ropes!
“How did you get those?” I questioned as I rushed over to her side.
It was next to impossible to get single skipping ropes; the girls in sixth class always claimed them first. All the junior girls usually had to play with the rope that was large enough for a group of people to play with.
Never the single ropes.
“This is brilliant,” I squealed in delight.
We put a metre or two of distance between us and began skipping with our ropes. We sang songs and laughed when the other got the words mixed up or missed a skip, and almost fell over when the ropes got tangled up in our legs.
We had had the ropes for only a few minutes when Shannon suddenly stopped singing, stopped smiling, and stopped skipping. With a frown, I halted my jumping and looked at her.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, concerned.
She was looking over my shoulder, but glanced down at her feet when I spoke.
“Shannon, are you—”
“Are you two done with those ropes yet?”
I felt a chilling cold spread out over my skin when I heard Laura Stoke’s voice ring in my ear. I held tightly on to my skipping rope and turned to face her.
I was surprised to find her so close to me, so I took a step backwards until I could see her. All of her.
I cleared my throat. “We just got them, Laura.”
I tried to keep the venom out of my voice, but I couldn’t help but lace a hint of it into my words. I hated Laura, and I had done for as long as I could remember. She was horrible to me and always went out of her way to make me miserable for no reason.
None.
Laura folded her arms across her chest and stared me down. “You’ve both had them for ages.”
I blinked. “That’s a lie.”
“Are you calling me a liar?” she asked, her eyes narrowing.
I raised a brow. “Since you’re lying, yes, I am.”
Her left eyebrow twitched. “Give me the ropes.”
I looked her up and down, shocked that she’d just given me an order like I was her little slave.
“No, we’re playing with them. We’ll give them to you in a few more minutes—”
“No,” Laura cut me off. “I want them now.”
Over my dead body.
“I don’t know who you think you are, but you aren’t getting them.”
I didn’t realise what happened for a few moments, but one second I was on my
feet, and the next I was on my arse. I blinked my eyes and winced as throbbing filled the back of my thighs and behind.
She pushed me.
This wasn’t the first time Laura had gotten physical with me, but it was the first time she had done it in the yard in front of other people. She usually kept her shoulder bumps and shoves for when I passed her by in the hallways.
She was the worst kind of bully.
I glanced to my left and right and saw that a small crowd of students had begun to form around us. I looked up at Laura, who had a skipping rope in her hand – my rope – and was in the middle of snatching Shannon’s rope away from her.
Shannon didn’t make a move to stop her; she practically dropped the rope as if it were on fire when Laura grabbed hold of it. She then retreated into the crowd and left me alone to face Laura.
I angrily pushed myself to my feet, grabbed hold of the two ropes in Laura’s hand, and tugged, jolting her forward.
“Give them back!” I snapped.
“No!” she shouted, and tried to pull the ropes free of my grip. When she found I wasn’t letting go, she lifted her hand and swung it in my direction.
I ducked my head just in time. Her hand sailed through the air where my head had been just moments before with a great big whoosh!
And she was going to hit me . . . again!
“What’s going on?” I heard Darcy’s voice shout over the students, who were now chanting “Fight!” over and over.
Without thinking, and with the pain in my behind and legs urging me on, I balled my right hand into a fist, pulled it back, and let it fly directly towards Laura’s face.
With a scream she let go of the ropes and lifted both of her hands to her face as she fell backwards onto the ground, where she landed with a thud that could be heard over the chanting.
Ouch.
“Neala! What the hell?”
I looked up from Laura to find Darcy standing above her with anger in his eyes as he stared at . . . me?
What?
“Why’re you looking at me like that?” I asked as pain suddenly spread throughout my hand.
Damn, punching someone really hurt!
I cradled my hand to my chest and stared at Darcy, who was shaking his head in disgust at me. I gasped when he bent down to a now crying Laura and placed his hand on her face.
“Let me see,” I heard him tell her.