The Very Rude Boys Next Door by Chloe Kent

Chapter Three

 

Anastasia paced the floor of the living room and drove herself mad in the process. For all she knew, her uncle had already been alerted to the fact she hadn’t gone to Paris after all and had escaped instead and was now scouring the earth to find her.

But even in the deepest darkest pit of her despair, her brain kept short circuiting back to the three strange men next door. And with those thoughts came untold amounts of mortification.

She thumped her forehead with the palm of her hand and called herself stupid for the millionth time. 

Also, she had to tell her aunt that Lakeside Banter was not what she thought it would be when she sold the idea to Anastasia to take up residence in her friend’s house until they came up with a better plan.

It was most certainly not a beautiful lakeside development with a lush golf course to the right, a magnificent lake in the center surrounded by architecturally stunning A-frame houses that looked like mini triangular mansions, a luxurious, fully equipped clubhouse, a stunning Olympic-sized swimming pool all in an exceptionally secured gated community.

She could see the clubhouse from where she stood, or rather the walls of the clubhouse that had graffiti sprawled all over it. The building looked as dilapidated as everything else around her... well, varying stages of it anyway. Some houses were well kept, while others seemed in dire need of attention.

It seemed as if anyone could have come, claimed a piece of land, and erected their houses: most were unfinished, and others had suspect structural issues visible to the naked eye.

And almost every second house seemed to have a rusty car parked haphazardly in their front yard.

But beggars couldn’t be choosers, and maybe being here in the middle of nowhere was the thing that was going to protect her after all.

Since she had made her publicly proud but internally dreadful exit from their house, she had wanted nothing more than to take a shower and regroup. Instead, after discovering the house would not be a haven of any kind while she sorted through her emotions and came up with a plan to outwit her uncle, she had been forced to do a cleanup, in her heels, no less.

Lucky for her she found a very new washer and dryer had been installed, and not trusting that the bedding had been washed, she prepared to do a load, and it took her forever and nine Google searches to learn how to operate it. She then vacuumed the bed and was glad it was also quite new, as was the vacuum.

She cleaned up as best she could, including the shower, which again took what felt like an eternity to clean before she was satisfied enough to climb into the cubicle and scrub away her exertions. After that she slipped into a pair of lounge pants and a silk vest with thin straps over her shoulders.

But she couldn’t evade the evidence that had dripped from between her legs, the silky wetness that had caused her to gasp as she had bathed herself. She could understand the sensations even less.

Yes, they were beautiful to look at. Rugged, with an understated gorgeousness that she was sure had other women gaping at them openly. She would know; she had almost done the same, until she had wrongly thought they were Russian thugs sent to locate her, or even just plain thugs out to hurt her.

She could still hear their soft chuckles throughout the whole insane episode, which seemed to have penetrated further than skin deep. They weren’t afraid of her despite her being armed and after demonstrating her skill with her gun twice.

No, there had been a constant supply of amusement in their eyes, in the expressions of their perfectly symmetrical faces with their exquisitely sculptured jawline and thick and long-fringed eyes.

They found her to be a source of entertainment, and that made her madder. She should have put more holes into the interior of their home, if not their kneecaps.

Also, yes, she had made a mistake, but to threaten her with a spanking, a grown woman they don’t even know... and if there ever came a time where she failed to escape them, she would let them know, in no uncertain terms, again, that they were, in fact, very rude.

Besides, her stay was temporary. She couldn't be in one place for too long anyway.

With nothing else to do, she stopped pacing and crossly folded her arms over her chest, stared out the large bay window overlooking the shimmering lake and told herself, as of that moment, the three men from next door were banished from her mind.

She had no business being in their company and vice versa.

But the truth was she had no idea what she was going to do. How she could she possibly spend her whole life running from her uncle? It was an unfeasible approach and only rendered short-term protection, yet what choice did she have but to run? She exhaled in defeat, sat down, then buried her face in her hands.

She nearly jumped out of her skin when suddenly her doorbell rang.

She had to get a grip. Being this visibly jittery was going to make other people wonder about her, and that was the last thing she needed. Viktoria had warned her to fit in so as to not cast any suspicions about her person.

She had already decided she wasn’t going to open the door if she found even one of the men from next door on her doorstep. She was just going to pretend to be unavailable… until they gave up and left.

She peeped through the keyhole and was relieved to see it wasn’t the trio of new neighbors but instead a nice-looking older couple.

Composing herself by planting a smile on her face, she opened the door.

“Oh. Oh,” the lady said.

“Oh,” the man said.

“Hello?” Anastasia said, still smiling.

“My, my, what a beauty you are,” the lady said at last after a moment of uncomfortable silence.

“My, my, indeed,” the man said. “Allow us to introduce ourselves. I’m Edgar, and this is my lovely wife, Janine. We're the Harolds, and we live next door, thataway next door,” he said, pointing left before he stuck out his hand for her to shake.

“Oh, lovely to meet you, dear,” the lady said and shook her hand.

“I’m Anas… Anna. I’m Anna,” Anastasia said, remembering just in time, she couldn’t give out her real name. Not that it would matter one way or the other. There weren’t many, if any, black-haired, blue-eyed Russians around and she’d be found by that description alone. She had inherited her rather dark hair from her mother, who was of Siberian heritage.

Apart from her Aunt Viktoria, she had no one else she trusted. Her uncle had kept her imprisoned in his home since she had gone to stay with him when her parents had died, and he had cut her off from everything that had given her joy before.

“Anna,” Edgar said, “we brought you a basket of some basics—tea, coffee, sugar. We know you aren’t fully stocked yet. I’ll just leave this inside here,” Edgar then lowered a wicker basket on the floor in the entrance.

“Thank you so much,” Anastasia said. She didn’t realize how much she would appreciate the gesture.

“But that’s not the only reason we stopped by. We are having a barbecue in our backyard for lunch, and we would be honored if you joined us.”

“Thank you, but I am… I still have a bit of jet lag.”

“We won’t take no for an answer,” Janine said and slipped her arm into Anastasia’s. “You need to eat something, and I doubt you have any food in there. We know that you paid Angela a huge amount of money to clean and stock everything up, but she half cleaned the house, then up and left. We won’t see her for days. Come on, just for a few moments. Grab a plate, eat some pie, and then we'll let you be.”

Edgar closed the door behind her, and soon she found herself sandwiched between the older couple as they chatted away merrily. Filling her in about all the amenities the gated lakeside community offered, although everything ended with, “It doesn’t work now sadly.”

She listened attentively but at the back of her mind was always the truth she had no idea what she was doing, or how she was ever going to get out of the situation her uncle had mercilessly placed her in. Fleeing Moscow had been a temporary solution to a problem. If she failed to protect herself, it could mean a very hard and cruel life waited ahead for her.

It was only when she arrived at the Harolds’ backyard that she realized other people were going to be there. As she was introduced to them all, she hated that her gaze became skittish as she wondered if the three men from next door would show up as well.

She hoped not. At least not until she had a chance to eat something. Her growling stomach at the smell of food told her she hadn’t eaten in longer than her body could withstand. And, no, she wasn’t going to count the six éclairs she had eaten at their house that she thought had been left for her by the supposed housekeeper. Angela something or other, who had taken the money and had run off apparently. She wasn’t going to count those eclairs because that scene, and everything that went with it, no longer registered with her.

She couldn’t help but like Janine and Edgar and also quite a few of the other people she had met as well. Of course, a teen, a man in his twenties, and a man in his eighties had flirted with her outrageously before Janine declared them all harmless, with bigger barks than bites.

She stuffed herself with an American burger that Edgar said he had added his secret sauce to and washed it down with a glass of soda.

She couldn’t deny it was nice being outside, surrounded by people who had no clue about anything that concerned her and her dilemmas, but she also couldn’t escape the pestering doom that would follow her for the rest of her life.

She also felt at odds and exposed out in the open, and that was probably how she was going to live out her days. Always worrying.

But her thoughts of eternal doom were shattered to smithereens when suddenly every single person around her chirped up. When she looked in the direction they were all fixated on, she saw her three nemeses heading their way.

Nope.

“Janine and Edgar, thank you so much for lunch,” she said hurriedly. “It was delicious, and I loved meeting everyone. But I have a headache, and I need to—” She cut herself off. She didn’t have time to make excuses; she should have left already.

“But you must stay and meet Callum, Ben, and Kane. They’re our own very handsome heroes around here, and you’ll love them.”

“Maybe some other time,” she said quickly. But it was too late, and they were almost at the back gate, which forced her to quickly make a detour into the Harolds’ house and had to lock herself in their bathroom when she couldn’t undo the lock to open the front door.

She couldn’t risk leaving the bathroom and instead opted to climb out the window.

Easy.

Not so much.

The window was higher than she expected. She fell into a muddy clump of soil in someone else’s backyard and then had to start running when a dog began barking as if he wanted a piece of her.

That completely messed up her bearings, which wasn’t saying much about her. She was the worst with directions. She soon realized she was running like a mad person in the wrong direction, then had to double back. This time she flicked her hair over her shoulder, and with her chin high, she marched and didn’t run home, mostly because at almost every second house, someone had parted their curtains to look at the crazy girl with her silk pants covered in mud, running down their street.

But she had escaped and avoided seeing them, and for that she deserved a medal or sorts.