The Perception Read online

  The Perception

  Dedication

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six

  Thirty-seven

  Thirty-eight

  Thirty-nine

  Forty

  Forty-one

  Forty-two

  Forty-three

  Forty-four

  Forty-five

  Forty-six

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  The Perception

  by Adriana Locke

  Copyright (c) Adriana Locke 2015

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written consent of the author.

  The 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 events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or publisher.

  Editor: Missy Borucki

  www.missyborucki.com

  Interior Design: Christine Borgford, Perfectly Publishable

  www.perfectlypublishable.com

  Cover Design: Kari March, K23 Designs

  www.facebook.com/designK23

  Cover Photos: Dollar Photo Club

  www.dollarphotoclub.com

  This book is dedicated to Kari March.

  You’ve taught me so much in the years we’ve known each other. You’ve redefined my understanding of loyalty and friendship; you’ve given me so many reasons to smile.

  You are one of the smartest, most creative, most giving people I’ve ever known. I am so blessed to call you a friend and my partner-in-crime.

  Max was yours before anyone knew he even existed. I hope you enjoy this story.

  MAX

  Well, well, well. What do we have here?

  I spotted a woman standing in front of her car a few spots from mine in the parking lot. Her head in her hands, she stared at the front of her vehicle. I just finished my meeting and really wanted to go back home, but I couldn’t leave a woman stranded in the heat.

  Not with a clear conscience.

  And not with an ass like that.

  “Somethin’ wrong?” I asked, shutting my truck door behind me and walking slowly towards the brunette.

  She turned her head and a smile slowly spread across her pretty face. She stood, wiping her hands down the sides of her green workout shorts. Her body was lean and tight and I wanted to run my hands all over it.

  She was little as hell, probably a good foot shorter than my 6’2” frame. Her tight white tank top showcased her breasts in the best way possible. Her hair was piled on top of her head, strands sticking to the back of her neck.

  Her smile grew wider as I made my way across the parking lot. Sweat dotted her smooth, tanned skin and she wiped her brow with the back of one hand.

  The beauty raised her eyebrows, her green eyes lighting up. “My car won’t start.” She ran her gaze down my body, making little effort to conceal the fact that she liked what she saw.

  That makes two of us.

  I flashed her a smile and cleared my throat. I needed to focus, but that was easier said than done. The last thing I wanted to do was come across like Cane, my friend with no couth.

  “What seems to be the problem?” I unlatched the hood and raised it open.

  “I turned the key and got nothing but a buzzing sound,” she huffed, crossing her arms in front of her.

  I looked up, the movement catching my attention, and my gaze landed right on her chest.

  “What are you looking at?” she asked cheekily.

  “Nothin’ you shouldn’t be proud of.” I blew out a breath and laughed.

  She giggled and I immediately wanted to hear it again. I wanted to make her giggle, to see that smile, over and over.

  Trying to put some distance between us, I made my way to the side of the car. I felt her eyes on me, the smell of her coconut perfume messing with my mind. I needed to focus on the task at hand and not on the thing I wanted to be handling.

  Damn, I’d love to handle that little body.

  I checked the battery and saw the problem right away. I tightened the loose cable and checked the other before standing back up. I leaned against the car and folded my hands in front of me. I had to figure out how to play this to my advantage. My mind raced through possibilities and I shot her a serious look.

  “This is just my luck,” she said, reading way too much into my expression. “And I thought this week couldn’t get any worse.”

  “Wanna talk about it?” I grinned, watching her cute-as-hell act. I didn’t know what her week had been like, but I knew I was more than willing to take her mind off of it for a couple of hours.

  “So you’re a mechanic and a counselor?”

  “I can be whatever you want me to be.”

  Her mouth twisted in amusement, her eyes lighting up. “Is that so? You’re a jack-of-all trades then, Mr.—”

  “I’m Max Quinn, the man that can service any and all of your needs.”

  She laughed, her cheeks blushing. “Okay, Max. The first need I have is getting this car running.”

  “The first need, huh? Does that imply that there may be more needs that require my services?”

  She pressed her lips together, obviously enjoying the innuendos. “It’s a possibility. You know how things go—you take care of one thing and then suddenly something else, you know, pops up.”

  “Pops up? Interesting choice of words . . .”

  She laughed again, tossing her head back. Drops of sweat rolled down her neck and it took everything I had to not leap across the car, throw her over my shoulder, and into the back of my truck. I could imagine that little body wrapped around mine, that giggle piercing the air as I had my way with her.

  “If I can get this car running, and that’s a big ‘if,’ what do you think is a fair price for my time and effort?”

  I figured I’d give her a chance to either play along or opt out. As much as I’d like to get to know this little beauty, I wasn’t going to press myself. It wasn’t my style.

  “I’m not sure,” she smiled. “What are you thinking?”

  “Well, I don’t really have anything else to do today. But it could take hours.”

  “Really?” She looked alarmed. “I don’t want you—”

  “It might take minutes,” I cut her off, shrugging.

  She tossed me a flirty smile, one hand on her narrow hip. “Are you sure you’re up for the challenge?”

  “Ah, sweetheart. You have no idea.”

  Biting her bottom lip, her eyes sparkling, she ran a hand down the side of her neck. She knew exactly what she was doing to me. “Fair enough. What’s it going to cost me?”

 
“It’s going to cost you two things.” I tapped my fingers against the hood of the car and waited for her response.

  “Two things?” She sighed dramatically, rolling her eyes for effect. “Well, my options seem pretty limited, so let’s hear it.”

  “The first thing is your name. Only seems fair that I know whose car I’m fixin.’”

  The gorgeous girl in front of me cocked her head to the side. She was smarter than I gave her credit for. I knew she was attracted to me and I knew she’d give me her name, but she was smart enough to consider it first.

  “Kari Stanley,” she said finally.

  “Alright, Kari Stanley. The second thing you need to do before I fix your car is say yes.”

  “Say yes?”

  “Say yes to having dinner with me tonight. I think that’s totally fair. If I get this fixed, the least you can do is share a meal with me.”

  She pretended to consider my proposal, her tongue darting out to lick her bottom lip.

  “How do I know you’re not a serial killer?” she asked playfully.

  I grinned mischievously. “I never said I didn’t bite.”

  Her jaw dropped. She started to speak but nothing came out but another laugh.

  “But I promise you’d like it if I did.” I narrowed my eyes, fighting the grin on my face, too.

  She looked shocked for a split second and then regained her composure, trying to play it cool. “Okay. If you can get this started, I’ll go to dinner with you. But I have to say—I’m a little disappointed in your creativity. For some reason, I expected you to want more than a meal.”

  I tossed her the keys and a wink. “Don’t be. You don’t know what all dinner entails.”

  She caught her key ring with a grin. “Fair enough.”

  “It’ll be better than fair, I promise. Now quit wastin’ time and use those,” I said, nodding to the keys in the palm of her hand.

  “What do you want me to do with them?”

  “I want you to start the car.”

  She stared at me blankly. “What part of ‘this car doesn’t start’ don’t you understand?”

  “What part of ‘start the damn car’ don’t you understand?”

  She eyed me curiously before climbing into the driver’s seat. A look of disbelief crossed her face as the engine roared to life. “What the . . .”

  I shut the hood of her car.

  “Meet me at Maisano’s on Scottsdale Road at six, sweetheart.”

  “Wait. How did you . . .”

  I laughed, starting towards my truck. “Maisano’s at six—be there.”

  KARI

  Approximately one and a half years later

  The box Jada handed me felt light in my hands. It jingled as I turned it over, the contents clamoring inside. It was the size of a shoebox but held enough memories to fill a Mack truck.

  A sharp pain tore through my chest at the realization that my secrets had been in someone else’s hands.

  I looked up at my sister. Jada’s long brown hair was in a knot at the top of her head, her round cheeks pink. She looked a lot like me, only my hair was a lighter shade of brown and falling across my shoulders. Our noses were identical, our eyes a bright shade of green. We had our mother’s dark complexion, although Jada was much more like her than me.

  My eyes settled on her growing belly.

  And, right now, she’s a lot more like Mom than I’ll ever be.

  “Did you look inside?” I tried to keep my voice even. The thought of her possibly knowing the items buried at the bottom of the box made me queasy.

  At one time in our lives, I would have told her my secrets. I needed to tell her. But she was dealing with her then-husband Decker at that point and didn’t need any more stress. When I called her that day to tell her what was going on and she was already crying, I choked. I masked the pain from my voice and worked her through her problem.

  Sadly, even to me, that was something I was pretty good at. It was a coping mechanism I’d learned at a young age. Things were sometimes easier to deal with if you just kept them to yourself.

  Our mom died when I was eleven, Jada fourteen. Mom was pregnant and died from an ectopic pregnancy. It was hard on all of us, but Jada seemed to pick up the pieces faster than I did.

  Dad had done his best to keep things from falling apart. His secretary at his realtor office, Alice, came to the house a few days a week to help out. Alice was great and did our laundry, made cookies, and tried to talk to us the best she could. But our mom was perfect and, as much as I loved Alice, she always seemed like a fill-in. I remember watching her mill around Mom’s kitchen one afternoon a few months after the funeral, Jada sitting at the table peeling an orange. Alice was making plans to take her to a play she wanted to see.

  I sat and sketched on a notepad, drawing little doodles of arrows, and felt so utterly alone. I just wanted to scream that everything was wrong, pound my fists on the table and yell at Alice to get out! To stop touching all my mom’s things. Every item she moved made things a bit farther from the way Mom had left them. It destroyed me, but I felt trapped. I didn’t know what to say.

  When I tried to bring it up to Jada later, she shushed me. She told me that I didn’t need to be so hateful and that we were all doing the best we could. That we were in it together.

  Over the next few years, I mastered the art of being “in it together,” yet being absolutely alone.

  I realized that saying how miserable I was only made Jada more miserable, too. So I learned to keep my mouth shut and deal, to not spread the pain. Let happy people be happy—why ruin that?

  It was a life lesson I learned way too early. Pick your heart up off the floor when it was smashed, put it back together as best you could, and paste on a smile. You could be a mess on the inside but still look put together on the outside. As long as things looked okay, everything was fine. Smoke and mirrors wasn’t just acceptable, it was preferred.

  Sad but true.

  The sunlight streamed through the windows of Jada’s bedroom and I turned to look at my sister. The light made her even more radiant.

  “I didn’t go through it or anything,” she said. “As soon as I saw the cassette tapes, I knew it was yours so I closed it back up.”

  I released a heavy breath and walked to the window looking over the base of the mountain. Cane Alexander, Jada’s husband, had positioned their bedroom for optimum viewing pleasure. They could literally lie in bed and watch the lights twinkle below. He hadn’t missed a single detail, which was a testament to how much he loved my sister. Cane typically did things with wider brush strokes. But when it came to Jada, his attention to detail was relentless.

  The thought of Cane being so caring and considerate to Jada was endearing. When I met him originally, he was the ultimate bad boy. I had been at Max’s house one night and Cane had swung by. He had given me a smirk and made more vulgar comments about his evening than I cared to remember. He was the opposite of Max in so many ways. Although Max’s moves in the sheets outdid the tales Cane was telling, Max would never say that. Not in front of me, anyway. He was too thoughtful, too sweet. Cane, on the other hand, was giving us a play-by-play.

  Max really liked Cane and there was something about their interaction that night that cut through Cane’s vulgarity, something that gave me a clue that there was more to Cane Alexander than the man whore he portrayed himself to be. That’s the only reason I didn’t object to him meeting my sister when she returned to Arizona after her divorce. If Max trusted him, I trusted him, and obviously it was the right choice. Cane had become the best husband I could ever imagine for my sister.

  “Thanks for not throwing this out,” I laughed nervously, tucking the box under my arm.

  I turned to watch Jada struggle to get off the bed. Her belly had begun to pop, swelling with the growing baby inside. She put a hand on the bed and the other on her stomach and slowly got to her feet.

  “You okay?” Jada asked me, rubbing her belly.

  I smiled, w
alking to her and rubbing it, too. “I am. I’m excited to meet the little jellybean.”

  “I’m so excited, Kari,” she confessed. “I mean, I have quite a bit of time left, but I’m already sad thinking about it being over. It’s just that once you find out you’re pregnant, everything changes. Silly, I know, but it’s true.”

  “It’s not silly,” I said weakly, feeling a lump form in my throat. “You were made to be a mom.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that.”

  “I do.” I heard Max and Cane in the other room and figured Max was about ready to leave. I knew he had to work the next day and he’d want to get home before it got too late. “I think we should probably get going, but I’ll be by later this week. I found some of your things when I was cleaning your old room yesterday. I’ll bring them with me.”

  She gave me a puzzled look. “I don’t remember leaving anything. What was it?”

  “Just random stuff. A phone charger under the bed and a pair of boots. Oh! And a tube of red lipstick called Ruby Woo by MAC.” I furrowed my brow as I recalled the fiery color. Jada and I were both a darker complexion and I couldn’t imagine her wearing it.

  “Red? That must be yours because I don’t wear that color. You know that.”

  “Well, it isn’t mine. Maybe it’s Lara’s,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. Lara hadn’t been over for months, but the tube was dusty when I pulled it from behind the plant by the back door.

  I let out a sigh and turned back to the glass. My house felt so empty without Jada. She had lived with me after her divorce from Decker and I missed having her around. I found myself spending less and less time there . . . and more time with Max.

  But the more time I spend with Max, the messier things get.

  “I’m not prying, but is everything okay? You just seem . . . off. I know I’m married and having a baby, but I’m still your sister. And I also know that I’ve not always been there for you like I should have been, but I want to be now.”

  “Everything’s fine. I’m not going to burden you with my stuff.” I turned to face her.

  “You are never a burden to me.”

  I blew out a breath. “I just think all this marrying and baby making from you and Cane is putting ideas in Max’s head.”