EGO MANIAC
By VI KEELAND
Release Day – January 16, 2017
Standalone
The night I met Drew Jagger, he’d just broken
into my new Park Avenue office.
I
dialed 9-1-1 before proceeding to attack him with my fancy new Krav Maga skills.
He
quickly restrained me, then chuckled, finding my attempted assault
amusing.
Of course, my intruder had to be arrogant.
Only, turned
out, he wasn’t an intruder at all.
Drew
was the rightful occupant of my new office.
He’d been on vacation while his posh space was renovated.
Which
was how a scammer got away with leasing me office space that wasn’t really
available for rent.
I was
swindled out of ten grand.
The
next day, after hours at the police station, Drew took pity on me and made me
an offer I couldn’t refuse. In exchange
for answering his phones while his secretary was out, he’d let me stay until I
found a new place.
I
probably should have acted grateful and kept my mouth shut when I overheard the
advice he was spewing to his clients.
But I couldn’t help giving him a piece of my mind.
I
never expected my body to react every time we argued. Especially when that was all we seemed to be
able to do.
The
two of us were complete opposites. Drew was a bitter, angry,
gorgeous-as-all-hell, destroyer of relationships. And my job was to help people save their
marriages.
The
only thing the two of us had in common was the space we were sharing.
And an
attraction that was getting harder to deny by the day.
Available for Pre-order on iBooks, B&N, Google Play, and
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Vi Keeland is a native New Yorker with three children that
occupy most of her free time, which she complains about often, but wouldn't
change for the world. She is an attorney and a New York Times, Wall Street
Journal, & USA Today Best Selling author. Over the last three years, eleven
of her titles have appeared on the USA Today Bestseller lists and four on the
New York Times Bestseller lists.
In 2013, she released her first romance novel and never
looked back. To date, she has thirteen novels released, with PLAYBOY PILOT also
releasing in 2016. Her novels have
appeared on #1 on Amazon and are currently being translated into German,
Polish, Portuguese, Korean, Hebrew, French and Italian.
Website: http://www.vikeeland.com/
Facebook Fan Group:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ViKeeland
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/Vi_Keeland/
EXCERPT:
Sometimes what
you’re looking for
comes when you’re not
looking at all.
-Unknown
I hate New Year’s Eve.
Two hours in
traffic to make it not even the nine miles home from LaGuardia. It was after
ten o’clock at night. Why weren’t all these people at a party by now? Whatever
tension two weeks in Hawaii had relieved was already back to coiling tighter
and tighter inside me as the town car inched its way uptown.
I tried not to
think about all the work I was coming back to—the endless string of other
people’s problems to compound my own:
She cheated.
He cheated.
Get me full custody of the kids.
She can’t have the house in Vail.
All she wants is my money.
She hasn’t given me a blowjob in three
years. Listen, asshole, you’re fifty, bald, pompous, and shaped like an
egg. She’s twenty-three, hot, and has tits so young they almost reach up to her
chin. You want to fix this marriage? Come home with ten Gs in fresh, crisp
bills, and tell her to get on her knees. You’ll get your blowjob. She’ll get
her spending money. Let’s not pretend it was ever more than it really was. That
doesn’t work for you? Unlike your soon-to-be ex-wife, I’ll take a check. Make
that out to Drew M. Jagger, Attorney at Law.
I rubbed the back
of my neck, feeling slightly claustrophobic in the back of the Uber, and looked
out the window. An old lady with a walker passed us.
“I’ll get out
here,” I barked at the driver.
“But you have
luggage?”
I was already
exiting the back of the car. “Pop the trunk. It’s not like we’re moving
anyway.”
Traffic was at a
dead stop, and it was only two blocks to my building. Tossing a hundred-dollar
tip at the driver, I grabbed my suitcase from the trunk and took in a deep
breath of Manhattan.
I loved this city
as much as I hated it.
575 Park Avenue
was a restored pre-war on the southeast corner of Sixty-Third Street—it was an
address that gave people preconceived notions about you. Someone with my last
name had occupied the building since before the place was converted into
overpriced co-ops. Which is why my office was allowed to remain on the ground
floor when other commercial tenants were tossed out years ago. I also lived on
the top floor.
“Welcome back, Mr.
Jagger.” The uniformed doorman greeted me as he swung open the lobby door.
“Thanks, Ed. I
miss anything while I was gone?”
“Nah. Same old,
same old. Peeked in on your construction the other day, though. Looking good.”
“They use the
service entrance down Sixty-Third like they were supposed to?”
Ed nodded. “Sure
did. Barely heard them the last few days.”
I dropped my
luggage inside my apartment, then headed back downstairs in the elevator to
check things out. For the last two weeks, while I was screwing off in Honolulu,
my office space had been getting a total renovation. Cracks in the high,
plastered ceilings were to be patched and painted, and new floors installed to
replace the old, worn parquet.
Thick plastic
remained taped over all of the interior doorways when I walked in. The little
furniture I hadn’t put in storage was also still covered with tarps. Shit. They aren’t done yet. The
contractor had assured me there would only be finish work left by the time I
returned. I was right to be skeptical.
Flicking on the
lights, I was happy to find the lobby completely done, though. Finally, a New
Year’s Eve with no horrible surprises for a change.
I took a quick look around, pleased with what
I found, and was just about to leave when I noticed a light streaming from
under the door of a small file room at the end of the hallway.
Thinking nothing
of it, I headed to turn it off.
Now, I’m six foot
two and a half, two hundred and five pounds, and maybe it was just my frame of
mind, my not expecting to see anyone, but when I opened the door to the file
room, finding her there scared the living crap out of me.
She screamed.
I took a step back
through the door.
She got up, stood
on the chair, and began yelling at me, waving her cell phone in the air.
“I’ll call the
police!” Her fingers shook as she dialed nine, then one, and hovered over the
last one. “Get out now, and I won’t call!”
I could have
lunged for her, and the phone would have been out of her hand before she realized
she hadn’t dialed the final digit. But she looked terrified, so I retreated
another step and put my hands up in surrender.
“I’m not going to
hurt you.” I used my best soothing, calm voice. “You don’t need to call the
police. This is my office.”
“Do I look stupid
to you? You just broke into my
office.”
“Your office? I think you took a wrong
turn at the corner of Crazy and Nutjob.”
She wobbled atop
the chair, holding both arms out to regain her balance, and then…her skirt fell
to her feet.
“Get out!” She
crouched down and grabbed her skirt, tugging it up to her waist as she turned
her back to me.
“Do you take
medication, ma’am?”
“Medication? Ma’am? Are you joking?”
“You know what?” I
motioned to the phone she was still holding. “Why don’t you push that last one
and get the police over here. They can drive you back to whatever loony bin you
escaped from.”
Her eyes widened.
For a crazy
person—now that I was really looking—she was pretty damn cute. Fiery red hair
piled on top of her head seemed to match her firecracker personality. Although
from the looks of her blazing blue eyes, I was glad I’d held off on telling her
that.
She pushed one and
proceeded to report the crime of entering one’s own office. “I’d like to report
a robbery.”
“Robbery?” I
arched an eyebrow and looked around. A lone folding chair and crappy metal
folding table were the only furniture in the entire space. “What exactly am I
stealing? Your winning personality?”
She amended her
complaint to the police. “A breaking and entering. I’d like to report a
breaking and entering at 575 Park Avenue.” She paused and listened. “No, I
don’t think he’s armed. But he’s big. Really
big. At least six feet. Maybe bigger.”
I smirked. “And
strong. Don’t forget to tell them I’m strong, too. Want me to flex for you? And
maybe you should tell them I have green eyes. Wouldn’t want the police to
confuse me with all the other really big
thieves hanging out in my office.”
After she hung up,
she stayed standing on the chair, still glaring at me.
“Was there also a
mouse?” I asked.
“A mouse?”
“Considering you
jumped up on that chair.” I chuckled.
“You find this
funny?”
“Oddly, I do. And
I have no fucking idea why. It should annoy the crap out of me that I come home
from a two-week vacation and find a squatter in my office.”
“Squatter? I’m no
squatter. This is my office. I moved in a week ago.”
She bobbled again
while standing on her chair.
“Why don’t you get
down? You’re going to fall off that thing and get hurt.”
“How do I know
you’re not going to hurt me when I get down?”
I shook my head
and contained my laugh. “Sweetheart, look at the size of me. Look at the size
of you. Standing on that chair isn’t doing jack shit to keep you safe. If I
wanted to hurt you, you’d be out cold on the floor already.”
“I take Krav Maga
classes twice a week.”
“Twice a week?
Really? Thanks for the warning.”
“You don’t have to
ridicule me. Maybe I could hurt you.
For an intruder, you’re really kind of rude, you know.”
“Get down.”
After a full
minute stare-off, she climbed off the chair.
“See? You’re as
safe on the ground as you were up there.”
“What do you want
from here?”
“You didn’t call
the police, did you? You almost had me there for a second.”
“I didn’t. But I
can.”
“Now why would you
go and do that? So they can arrest you for breaking and entering?”
She pointed down
at her makeshift desk. For the first time, I noticed papers all over the place.
“I told you. This is my office. I’m working late tonight because the
construction crew was so loud today that I couldn’t get done what I needed to.
Why would anyone break and enter to work
at ten-thirty at night on New Year’s Eve?”
Construction crew?
My construction crew? Something was
going on here. “You were here with the construction crew today?”
“Yes.”
I scratched my
chin, half believing her. “What’s the foreman’s name?”
“Tommy.”
Shit. She was telling the truth. Well,
at least some of it had to be the truth. “You said you moved in a week ago?”
“That’s right.”
“And you rented
the space from whom, exactly?”
“John Cougar.”
Both my brows shot
up this time. “John Cougar? Did he drop the Mellencamp, by chance?”
“How should I
know?”
This wasn’t
sounding good. “And you paid this John Cougar?”
“Of course. That’s
how renting an office suite works. Two months’ security, first and last month’s
rent.”
I shut my eyes and
shook my head. “Shit.”
“What?”
“You got conned.
How much did all of that cost you? Two months’ security, first and last month?
Four months in total?”
“Ten thousand
dollars.”
“Please tell me
you didn’t pay cash.”
Something finally
clicked, and the color drained from her pretty face. “He said his bank was
closed in the evening, and he couldn’t give me the keys until my check cleared.
If I gave him cash, I could move in right away.”
“You paid John
Cougar forty thousand dollars in
cash?”
“No!”
“Thank God.”
“I paid him ten
thousand in cash.”
“I thought you
said you paid four months.”
“I did. It was
twenty-five hundred a month.”
That did it. Of
all the crazy shit I’d heard so far, thinking she could get space on Park
Avenue for twenty-five hundred a month took the cake. I broke out in a fit of
laughter.
“What’s so funny?”
“You’re not from
New York, are you?”
“No. I just moved
here from Oklahoma. What does that have to do with anything?”
I took a step
closer. “I hate to break the news to you, Oklahoma, but you got ripped off.
This is my office. I’ve been here for three years. My father the thirty before
that. I was on vacation the last two weeks and had the office remodeled while I
was gone. Someone named after a singer scammed you into giving him cash to rent an office he had no right
to rent. Doorman’s name is Ed. Walk through the main building entrance, and
he’ll verify everything I just said.”
“That can’t be.”
“What do you do
that you need office space?”
“I’m a
psychologist.”
I held out my
hand. “I’m an attorney. Let me see your contract.”
Her face fell. “He
hasn’t brought it by yet. He said the landlord was in Brazil on vacation, and I
could move in, and he would come back on the first to collect the rent and
bring me the contract to sign.”
“You’ve been
scammed.”
“But I paid him
ten thousand dollars!”
“Which is another
thing that should have tipped you off. You couldn’t rent a closet on Park
Avenue for twenty-five hundred a month. Didn’t you find it strange that you
were getting a place like this for next to nothing?”
“I thought I was
getting a deal.”
I shook my head.
“You got a deal alright. A raw deal.”
She covered her
mouth. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
★★★★
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