Vipers Den Box Set: 1-3 (Vipers Den #1-3) Read online

  A NOVELLA

  BY JB HELLER

  Copyright © 2015 by JB Heller

  All rights reserved.

  Published by JB Heller

  [email protected]

  Cover Design by Once Upon a Time Covers

  Formatting by T.J. Tims & JEB Designs

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  I cannot believe what I was hearing. I narrowed my eyes at him. “Have you lost your God damned mind? No, wait, I’m being punked right? Where are the cameras?”

  “You’re not being punked Piper. I’m deadly serious.”

  “As if anyone would believe it.” I huffed, shaking my head at him. “I don’t even like you. Why the hell would I do this for you?”

  He rolled his eyes at me like I was missing the obvious. “Because you’re just as desperate as I am. It’s the perfect solution for both of us.”

  “I’ll never be that desperate Kade.”

  “For just one moment would you stop being your usual bitchy self and hear me out?”

  I couldn’t believe I was actually having this conversation – with Kade Benson of all people. While a fake relationship wasn’t such a bad idea, a fake relationship with Kade would never work. First off, we hate each other. Not exactly a great starting point in convincing people we were a couple. Although, mum loved him, so this lie would definitely get her off my back and stop her from setting me up on blind dates with weirdos who still live with their mothers.

  Last week she sent me off on a blind date with a guy called Stewart Pickles, I kid you not. I mean what kind of name is that? It’s just like the guy on that show I used to watch as a kid. He was thirty, still lived with his mum, and took no less than five phone calls from her during our date. These guys just kept getting worse and worse. I had to do something soon, or I was going to lose my shit.

  Kade’s eyes hadn’t left me since I’d fallen silent and began internally debating this ludicrous idea of his. I narrowed my eyes at him. What was in it for him? Everyone knew how desperate I was to get mum to back off, but what was his problem?

  Crossing my arms, I huffed. “I’m listening. You have five minutes.”

  A smile lit up his face and he slid his glasses back up his nose. God, he was such a dork. “Okay, well you remember Jamie?”

  Jamie? Jamie? Not ringing any bells for me. “Nope, should I?”

  He let out a frustrated sigh and ran his hand through his dark unruly hair. “I dated her for a brief time. Anyway, I broke it off with her completely two months ago and it turns out she’s a bit of a nutbag. She calls me every day, and she started showing up at my work a couple of times a week. And that’s not including the numerous picture messages she sends me all the freaking time.”

  He has a stalker? This is gold – absolute gold. The idea of it made me laugh so hard I snorted.

  His gaze hardened. “It’s not funny Piper, she’s crazy. I’m legitimately scared here. I’m pretty sure she’d slip me a roofie and rape me if she had the chance.”

  Oh, my God. It’s getting better and better! I doubled over holding my stomach in a last ditch effort to stop the outburst of laughter desperate to leave my lips. Tears slowly seeped from the corners of my eyes. “You’re the only guy I know who would be worried about being raped. Most guys would be like ‘No need to roofie me. Take me I’m yours.’”

  “Yeah, well, I’m obviously not most guys. She’s really freaking me out. She even showed up at my house last week in nothing but a trench coat. I never took her to my place when we were seeing each other. I never even mentioned where I lived.”

  Okay, that was a bit creepy, but the question still remained. “Why me?”

  “Honestly,” he raised an eyebrow and a smirk covered his lips, “you’re the only woman I know who’s scary enough to possibly ward her off. I’m running out of options here.”

  Made sense I suppose. I’m not your hearts and candy kind of girl. I’ve been told more than once I’m intimidating. I’m tall for a woman, and I don’t take shit from anyone. Since I turned sixteen I’ve dedicated three days a week to Krav Maga. I always wanted to be able to protect myself from assholes; I’m now level five, defender and fighter. I also own and operate Vipers’ Den, a beauty salon that caters to the misfits of society.

  Kade and I had never gotten along. Not even when my brother, Rhett, first brought him home after school all those years ago. I’d never gotten along with many girls because they are bitchy and too much drama. Actually, a lot of men are nothing but drama too. I had no time for shit like that which is why Rhett had always been more than a brother to me, he was my best friend.

  Well, at least until Kade came into the picture. Suddenly, Rhett didn’t have as much time for me anymore. I understood he needed guy time, and I didn’t want to know about his sex life. I’m pretty sure guys need to brag about that kind of thing. The thought of my brother having sex was just wrong, on so many levels. So in that sense I was glad he had Kade, but then Kade came around more and more. They both shared a love of technology, something I would never understand.

  I resented Kade for taking my brother away from me. At the time, I dealt with it the way any other jealous teenage girl would. I glared, teased, and generally made his life miserable. I made sure the entire female population of our high school knew Kade was a two minute man. I had nothing to back that up with, but the gossip mill didn’t care about facts. I may have also implied he was gay. If he hadn’t of been so popular, he would have had the shit beaten out of him by the homophobic football team. But since he was the captain, he was safe. Lucky for him.

  You wouldn’t think computer geek went with football captain, but that was Kade. He was a walking contradiction: sexy as hell, tall, broad, muscular, and able to hack any computer put in front of him. He would have been easier to hate if he wasn’t so attractive. And the thing was, not even his ridiculous glasses could make him less attractive. Whenever he’d shove them over his face all the women in the vicinity would melt. Except me. I was too stubborn to let his good looks and easy going personality sway my loathing of him.

  He cleared his throat while scratching the back of his neck. “So, will you help me?”

  If this whole idea didn’t benefit me, I wouldn’t have even considered it. But the thought of getting mum off my back was just too appealing. I couldn’t deal with another Stew Pickles. Seriously, what kind of name is that? Then another thought hit me, “What about Rhett?”

  Kade scrunched his eyebrows in thought. I didn’t want to lie to my brother, and I knew Kade wouldn’t like it either.

  “If we want people to believe it we’ll have to convince him too. Nobody can know we’re faking it. And I mean nobody. If Rhett buys it everyone else will too. I don’t want to lie to him,” he sighed, “but I don’t see any other way this could work.”

  I nodded. He was right. There’s something I never thought I’d admit. “Alright, but how exactly to do we convince him? We’ve hated each other for the last ten years. Rhett’s not going to believe that all of a sudden we want to be together.”

  “You’re not going to like this… but, you’re going to have to touch me.”

  I jerked back. “What?” Surely there was a
way to pull this off without physical contact. I wasn’t above spouting out a bunch of soppy crap, but actually touching Kade? No— no, I don’t think so!

  “If this is going to work, Piper, it’s going to take more than words. There will have to be action. I’m talking major PDA.”

  PDA? Action? Oh, hell no. I changed my mind. There had to be another way to get mum to back off, and Kade could just deal with his little stalker on his own.

  “Piper, don’t over think it. You can pretend I'm someone else. I know I sure as hell will be.”

  I raised a brow. “You’ll be pretending you’re someone else?”

  “No smartarse, I’ll be pretending you are someone else. Trust me; the idea of sticking my tongue down your throat is not an appealing one.” He shivered as if the idea repulsed him as much as it did me.

  Glaring at him, I groaned, “My lady parts just shrivelled up and died, just so you know.”

  “Ugh, I don’t want to know anything about your lady parts, Piper. Sick!”

  I was actually kind of offended, but then again, I was glad he’s not thinking about my lady parts. “So we’re clear then— physical contact will be limited to necessity?”

  “Crystal. But it’s going to have to be believable.” He took a deep breath and looked me dead in the eye. “We’re going to have to practice.”

  I felt my eyes bugging out of my head. “Practice? Why?”

  Kade rolled his eyes at me as if I were an idiot. I hated when he did that. “Because it can’t look forced or awkward. And God knows it will be, for both of us.”

  I shook my head, trying to get that disturbing image out of it. “Alright, alright. But I—” Kade shifted his body and started leaning into me. “What are you doing? Not now!” I pressed my hand against his chest to get him the hell away from me.

  He reared back, confusion all over his face. “Why not now? The sooner we get this over with the better.”

  He was frigin crazy! “I need a little time to wrap my head around this. I can’t go from hating you to kissing you just like that.”

  “Yeah, you can, watch.”

  Before I could stop him his lips were pressed against mine. And shockingly, they felt nice. They were so soft. He swiped his tongue across my bottom lip and I opened for him. Tingles shot down my spine when his tongue slipped into my mouth. Holy shit! Kade was a good kisser. I pulled back startled. That hadn’t been what I was expecting. I thought my body would reject him, but it had other ideas. I wanted to crawl into his lap and maul him. No freaking way.

  We sat there in an awkward silence for a few minutes, gathering our thoughts. He opened his mouth to speak several times, but stopped short. I was staring at him, maybe gawking at him, and I couldn’t stop. What the hell just happened? It was supposed to be awkward and awful.

  I spoke first since he clearly wasn’t going to. “Well, looks like the practice portion of this little charade is done. So what’s next?”

  His brows pulled together so tight his forehead wrinkled. He was staring at his hands, glancing at me every now and then with a suspicious look in his eyes like I’d cast some kind of spell on him.

  His silence was annoying me. “What?”

  “Did you— I mean… was that, it was—”

  “You’re not making any sense here, Kade. English please.”

  He shook his head once and stood up. “Nothing, look I gotta go. I’ll call you tomorrow and we’ll set something up for later in the week.”

  “You’re acting all weird. What’s with that?”

  “No I’m not. I just remembered I got stuff to do. That’s all. I’ll call you.” Then he turned and high tailed it out of my apartment.

  Holy shit. I knew when I came up with this plan it wouldn’t be easy. Well, I thought I knew. I had been expecting to have a bit of a fight on my hands. But as she always did, Piper surprised me. She agreed so easily. Then that kiss – damn. I never did hate Piper, she thought I did, and I let her think it. But the truth of the matter was – I never could hate that girl. Even though I was fairly certain it was Piper that had spread the gay rumours in high school.

  I laid in my bed tossing and turning. I couldn’t get that kiss out of my head. Her lips were softer than I could have imagined. Tonight had not gone to plan, it was even better. Not only had she agreed to this fake relationship, but it wasn’t awkward when I kissed her.

  We can make this work, I know it.

  I woke to a loud banging on my front door. I looked over to my alarm clock to see it was only six am. Who the hell would be banging on someone’s door that early? I rolled out of bed, pulling on a pair of boxer briefs and a singlet. Rubbing my eyes, I opened the door before looking though the peep hole. Big mistake.

  As soon as the door creaked open I was face to face with the bane of my existence. “Where were you last night?” She screeched at me.

  I tried to close the door in her face, but she wedged her body between the door and the frame. I didn’t get rough with women unless it was in the bedroom, so I didn’t shove her out of the way like I wanted to. “It’s none of your business where I was last night, Jamie. I’ve told you repeatedly, there is no us. You need to take the damn hint and leave me the hell alone. I’ve had enough of this shit.”

  Complete and total psycho this one. As usual, she ignored me and continued on with her rant. “I came by last night with some take out. You’ve been working so hard lately and I wanted to do something nice for you. But you weren’t here. Where were you?”

  Now that Piper had agreed to be my fake girlfriend I could tell Jamie, and maybe she would finally take a hike.

  “I was with my girlfriend, Jamie.” I pointed to the door. “Now you need to leave.” Her body went ridged and her eyes glazed over. I watched her morph from pathetic clingy ex-girlfriend to rage possessed psycho.

  Her jaw unhinged. “You’re what?”

  I couldn’t stop the smug smile that graced my face.

  “You heard me perfectly.” She gaped for another moment before flying off the handle again. “You don’t do girlfriends. You told me so yourself! You screw. And that’s what I’m here for.”

  “First of all, I said you are not my girlfriend. And secondly, we had sex once, and it wasn’t even that great. So I’m not interested in a repeat performance. I thought I’d made that pretty clear too.”

  Her fists were clenched, her face quickly turning red. She stomped her foot and went to step further into my house, but I grabbed her arm, stopping her dead in her tracks. “I said no. Leave Jamie. Now, before I call the cops.”

  She glared daggers at me before spinning on her heels and left without another word. My body relaxed, and I decided I may need to install a security camera at the front door. I didn’t want her getting any crazy ideas and making up stories about me roughing her up. I had been squeezing her arm pretty tight. I hadn’t meant to, but the chic was crazy, and I didn’t want her in my house.

  Piper and I are going to have to jump into this head first. I want it to look real. If that means wining and dining her and having her stay at my house a few nights a week, I’ll do it. I’ll do anything to get that crazy bitch to leave me alone.

  I stalked back to my room and sent Piper a text.

  ‘What time do you break for lunch today?’

  ‘1 why?’

  ‘I'm being the doting bf I’ll bring you something.’

  ‘No Sushi. I hate that shit.’

  Piper is always up front about everything. You never had to guess what she was thinking, because chances were she’d already said it. She has no filter.

  ‘I know what you do and don’t eat Piper. See you at 1. X’

  I added the X to keep up pretences. In case someone read it. Piper didn’t reply, and I didn’t expect her to. This was going to be weird for both of us. Probably more so for her than for me since she genuinely thought she hated me. Me on the other hand – I had accepted my attraction to her long ago. But I also accepted that she was my best friend’s sister and it
would never happen. Not that it was happening now. It was fake. We were just faking it.

  It was still way too early for me to function properly, so I went back to bed. Glancing at my clock, I realized it was only half past six. I was surprised Piper was up already. Why was she up? She didn’t open the salon until nine, and I knew she wasn’t a morning person either. Odd.

  I dozed back off for another hour before dragging myself out of bed and into the shower. Thank God for hot water, because that was the only thing that helped wake me up. I was getting sick of dealing with Jamie and her crazy arse, it was freaking draining. I hadn’t been getting nearly enough sleep lately. Not with her banging on my door at all hours of the night.

  Jaime hadn’t seemed crazy at all when we met. She had been nice and sweet and normal. She had wavy blonde hair just past her shoulders and wore glasses. She was a secretary or something in the building across from mine. I’d seen her sitting out by the fountain eating her lunch a few days in a row before she came and spoke to me. She introduced herself. She was new to town and didn’t know many people. I offered to show her around and one thing led to another.

  We went out probably half a dozen times before we had sex, and that’s what sent me running. She attacked me in the parking lot one night after work. She’d been waiting for me. At first I thought it was kind of hot, now I knew it was just her particular brand of crazy. The whole time we were getting busy she kept going on about how she’d wanted me for so long. That wasn’t even the creepy part. She then went on to tell me she’d been watching me for weeks before we’d spoken, that’s when the alarm bells started ringing. She had previously said she only just moved here the week before we actually met.

  It freaked the shit out of me. I couldn’t even finish if you know what I’m sayin’. I had to fake it! I don’t know how I did it, but I managed. As soon as I could I pulled out and stuffed the condom in my pocket before she could see the evidence or lack thereof inside it. I could tell she knew something was up, but I didn’t care. I fastened my pants as quick as possible and told her I had an appointment I had to get to. Her eye began to twitch and her hands were clenching into fists at her side.