Chapter One
The spin devil didn’t work.
Which was odd, since it was the same toy that had thrown Jason Sheppy and his friends into a sexual frenzy only last year, at their mini-reunion at his beachfront home.
Since then, the plush devil had been making the rounds. David had just shipped it to Jason from New York, not having further use for it himself. But now that it was back in Florida, the little bastard wasn’t working.
Jason had tried it for the past two weeks and all he’d gotten was a few minutes of lousy sex with a really fat chick. He’d twirled it, whirled it and spun it some more, and no matter whether the tail or the pitchfork pointed at him, he still wasn’t getting any hot sex. The conclusion, then, was simple. The little shit didn’t work and Jason had no further reason to stride around town looking for a hot date with the little thing sticking from his shirt pocket in case he got lucky—since it was now pretty clear that he wouldn’t .
He’d been damned glad to see it sink deep into the ocean last night.
The problem was his neighbor, the young and beautiful Penelope Judd, a.k.a. little Miss Disaster, as he liked to think of her, thought she was being very cute and considerate coming to knock on his backdoor the next morning, clutching the vicious little thing in her hands.
Jason didn’t know who he was most annoyed at seeing—the spin devil or her . Miss Disaster was a load of trouble and every time he had the misfortune of seeing her, she all but dragged him into her personal crap bag of problems. It seemed she always needed someone to do some kind of weird, dirty job for her, and this unfortunate person—without exception—ended up being him. Only last month, she’d completely lost her house keys only God knows where—and it had probably been on purpose, no doubt, just to give Jason something to yell about. A half-hour later, he’d found himself hanging precariously from the ledge of an open second-story window of her house, climbing through it and running down to unlock the front door so the little princess could calmly stride inside. Then last week, she’d crashed her month-old BMW smack center into a palm tree on the side of the road, claiming it had all just “sort of happened.” Who did the little troublemaker call? Jason.
Hell yeah, why not?
The fact that Miss Disaster had been a permanent resident in his brain for what seemed like forever didn’t help his disposition much. Yes, she was damn good-looking, but Penelope was trouble. She was screwing up his brain and messing up his golf.
She was like a child in a woman’s body, and he the lucky, lucky sitter.
Two days ago he’d decided to stay away from her from now on because he’d had just about enough. He wanted nothing more to do with her. And he’d been doing fine, too, until right now.
He stared her down for a full minute, yet she seemed unperturbed by his deep blue gaze. It was unfortunate that she happened to look extremely, inordinately beautiful this morning, because that meant Jason would have to work double to ignore his body’s reaction to her. Her face was all but glowing and the freckles on her nose looked remarkably more like glittering gold than sunspots. Her eyes were framed by thick, spiky lashes and shone a beautiful amber color in the sunlight. Her hair, a soft brown with natural reddish streaks, was held back by a sleek white headband which only served to emphasize the delicate features of her face. Features so angelic that it was hard to believe a real live monster could live under there.
She wore a billowy, long white sundress, the bottom of her skirt flapping softly with the wind and the material around her hips clinging in a way Jason found infinitely disturbing. Flickering gold sandals encased her tiny feet and her little pink toes.
Although Jason had never harbored fantasies about licking toes, he found a particularly pleasant one coming to mind. Thank God he quickly caught himself before