World's Worst Boyfriend: A Romantic Comedy Adventure (Fake It Book 3), Carina Taylor [ebook reader online txt] 📗

“Well, I’ll admit, sometimes it’s frustrating to compete with nameless people who pay your salary versus your girlfriend who doesn’t.”

He pulled a business card from his pocket and handed it to me before extending his hand to shake mine. “Sullivan Keene. I’m a broker here in town. I’m sorry I didn’t introduce myself earlier. I don’t want to get lost with those nameless people.” He winked and I released my jacket to shake his hand.

“Saidy Perez. And thank you again for helping me.”

“Do you want me to give you a ride home, so you don’t have to sit here alone? I can text my friend that the keys are in the car and the address to where you want the car towed so you don’t have to wait for him.”

I bit my lip, glanced at my car, the deserted road, and then the nice man who was helping me. If he was going to kill me, he probably would have done it already. Everything I’ve ever been taught about safety as a woman went flying out the window. “You know, that sounds really great.”

And now I hoped Fletcher or Dad never found out about the night a perfect stranger gave me a ride home in the dark. They’d never let me hear the end of it.

I just hoped I lived long enough to make it home tonight.

Chapter Three

Fletcher

Four months earlier

“Get back here!”

The piercing scream floated through the open window of my service van. I slammed on the brakes and glanced around the old neighborhood I was driving through.

My Exploratory Solutions tech van didn’t seem out of place in a neighborhood, so I wasn’t sure what the person could be yelling at me for.

Maybe they’d had an emergency issue with their security system and needed some tech support. It wouldn’t be the first time someone tried to hire my phony company.

I was on my way to report to my boss—my real boss, the chief of police—and tell him everything I’d discovered while I worked undercover.

My tech company was my cover story for a man we’d been investigating for trading black market goods. I’d gone into this job with high hopes that it would be a short undercover job. I was hoping to make detective after this. But this wasn’t a quick hack. I couldn’t slam my way through this job. There were too many intricacies, too many people involved and too little trust.

The man we were investigating, Sullivan Keene, had an extensive criminal ring that sold stolen goods as well as dabbling in some money laundering.

While their operation was no secret, no one had had any luck turning up hard evidence. Which was why they sent me undercover as a security tech.

So far I’d learned nothing. I’d been “hired” a week ago by our suspect and hadn’t learned anything valuable in that time. The guy was good at covering his tracks—even within his own operation.

I started to accelerate again. The older neighborhood had quaint houses with large yards and usually lots of kids and pets running around. It wouldn’t surprise me if one of the two of those had gotten away and the mother was chasing after it.

I took a right onto a side street.

“Don’t you drive away from me!” The voice yelled again.

I stopped the van and glanced in the rearview mirror. In my left mirror I could see a woman running down the sidewalk.

In a bathrobe.

Holding a mug.

I glanced at the clock. It was ten o’clock in the morning—that seemed a little late for robe wearing. But then again, I was in suburbia. Maybe robes were a requirement to be a mom in the suburbs.

I needed to go check in with my boss, but I couldn’t possibly ignore the fact that this woman seemed to be in distress. It was probably a domestic dispute, but I didn’t want to risk it being something more serious. Like a kidnapping or a missing child.

I flipped a U-turn and sped across the street, back toward the woman.

I pulled over behind her and jumped out of the van. She was barefoot and running down the sidewalk still, her robe flapping behind her.

“Ma’am, are you all right?” I called after her. She didn’t seem to hear me as she turned down a gravel alleyway—a common thing in older neighborhoods like this.

My shoes crunched on the rocks as I caught up to her.

She was muttering under her breath as she ran. I sprinted alongside her, cringing when I saw her bare feet pounding into the gravel.

She never slowed—just kept holding that mug like a relay racer.

“There he is,” her whispered words were still loud enough for me to hear as she stopped abruptly and turned to face me. “Hold this.”

She thrust the open-top cup—of what appeared to be coffee—into my hands. The liquid splashed over the side and onto my pale blue shirt. I don’t know how she’d managed to keep anything in the mug after the sprinting she’d done, only to have it splash out as she passed it off to me.

She leapt forward onto the sidewalk at the end of the street.

I glanced up in time to see her throw herself out into the street in front of a mail van.

“No!” I yelled, as the van slammed on its brakes. The postal driver looked terrified.

I would have been shaken up a little too if someone had leapt in front of my moving car. Unfortunately, we’d seen things like that all too often on the force.

The woman slapped a hand on the front of the van. “You’re going to give me my package, Bill. The notification said you delivered it, but we both know you didn’t.”

He nodded rapidly, put the van in park, and spun around to pull out a package from the back.

He passed a large box out the window into her waiting hands.

“Don’t try to hoard my packages again. Do your job and get out of the van next time.” She glared at him. “This is getting ridiculous.”

She