Zoey And The Nice Guy (Big Girl Panties #1) Read online

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Blank Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  About The Author

  8 years ago

  Zoey And The NiceGuy

  Carter Ashby

  Text Copyright © 2014 Carter Ashby

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Digital Edition. Personal use rights only. No part of this publication may be sold, copied, distributed, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means mechanical or digital, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Cover Design by Quirky Bird

  http://quirky-bird.com

  Connect with the author

  www.carterashby.com

  To my husband and children, for their unfailing support.

  CHAPTER ONE

  At sixteen, Zoey was considering emancipation from her mother. She already worked thirty hours a week while keeping a perfect grade point average in school. She alone maintained the house, handling her own shopping and cooking. The only reason she could think of to remain a dependent was the wine.

  She grabbed a bottle of sweet, red wine from the fridge. Her mom’s ex-boyfriend had worked at a local winery and brought them cases of it.

  Zoey poured herself a glass. It had been a long day of tests before Thanksgiving break, followed by six hours waiting tables. Now it was ten-thirty and she intended to indulge in some wine and a bar of dark chocolate she’d bought in St. Louis the weekend prior.

  She gathered her goodies and sank into the good spot on the couch. Anywhere else on it, she’d get stabbed by a rusty spring and need a tetanus shot. She’d considered buying a new one, but she didn’t want to put nice things in her mom’s ramshackle, single-wide trailer. No, she would save for her own place and fill it with comfortable furniture and a television that didn’t tint the picture green around the edges.

  She flipped on Nick At Nite and took a sip of her wine. She grabbed her laptop off the coffee table and opened it to the new social networking website. All of her friends had profiles on it, now, and she figured it was about time she jumped on board. She figured this Facebook thing would be a cool place to just be herself without having to worry about parents or teachers seeing everything.

  Her phone rang. “Yeah?” she said, not having checked the caller id.

  “Zoey, please get back with me.”

  “Oh, God,” she groaned. Jeremy. She tucked the phone against her shoulder and started filling out her Facebook profile information. “Not interested.”

  “Please. I didn’t mean the things I said. It’s just you make me so crazy. But I love that about you. Really.”

  “I’m not going to be in a relationship where I constantly feel bad about myself. You can’t undo what you said. You obviously don’t know how to be with a strong, independent woman. We had some fun. Let’s just drop it.”

  “I swear, Zoey, I didn’t mean any of it. I just lost my temper.”

  “I’m done, Jeremy.”

  “Zoey, please! I think I love you!”

  Was he crying? “My God, are you crying?”

  “Please, please, give me another chance.”

  “Ugh. I totally don’t go for guys who cry and beg. Grow a pair and move on, buddy.” She hung up and started scanning through the list of suggested friends. She found Maya and Addy, the only two people who really meant anything to her.

  The phone rang again. “Fuck off, Jeremy,” she said, once again not looking at the caller id.

  “It’s Addy. I see you’ve broken up with Jeremy.”

  “You know, actually he broke up with me. Last night we fought and I told him he was a no good sack of shit and he said it was over. But, now, he’s been calling me, begging me to get back with him.” She sighed. “What a fucking loser.”

  “Yeah. Okay. Can we come over? Maya needs us.”

  “You and Maya? Yeah, you know my home is your home. Come on over.”

  She hung up and closed her laptop. In first grade, Addy had been ganged up on by some mean girls. Zoey had dragged her out of the fight by her pigtails and proceeded to wail on the leader of the bullies. She’d gotten a meeting with the principal out of the deal, but she’d also gotten a best friend.

  Maya’s entrance into her small, but tight, circle had been a little less dramatic. She’d been a mouse of a thing. Always sitting at the end of the lunch table alone, hunkered over her weird, homemade lunches, and casting fearful glances around her. Zoey had been so annoyed by her timidity that she’d decided she was either going to have to beat Maya up or make friends with her. A toss of the coin decided it, and they’d been best friends since.

  Zoey returned to the kitchen for two more wine glasses. She checked the freezer to assess the Ben & Jerry’s situation. Chocolate Therapy for Maya. Cherry Garcia for Addy. And Coffee Coffee BuzzBuzzBuzz for me. With a satisfied nod, she moved back to her bedroom to put on fresh sheets. Whenever her mom was off on a boyfriend binge, Zoey slept in the big room. She wanted to have the little room ready in case Maya needed a place to crash. Nine times out of ten, she came here to escape her abusive father.

  A knock on the door had her hurrying to the living room, bracing herself to see Maya. Zoey exhaled in relief. No bruises or red marks. Just tears. Maya had the face of an angel; wide, innocent green eyes and skin with a perfect, bronzed glow on her cheekbones. Her light brown hair curled in halo-like wisps around her face.

  She was leaning on Addy, who wore her usual, care-free jeans and t-shirt; relaxed, maybe even slovenly to the casual observer, except that the jeans were Gucci and the shirt was Ralph Lauren. Her black hair rolled back in a loose bun, her glasses sliding off her nose. They shuffled past Zoey. Addy deposited Maya in the good spot on the couch while Zoey locked up and poured two more glasses of wine. She topped hers off and handed the glasses to her friends.

  Addy took the glass and drank, downing half of it.

  “Uh, what’s up, ladies?” Zoey asked.

  Maya burst into tears. She was still in her cheerleading uniform from that night’s football game. Zoey knelt on the floor at her feet.

  “She’s pregnant,” Addy said.

  Zoey’s world skidded to a stop. For a moment there was
only silence, barely disturbed by Maya’s quiet sobs. This couldn’t happen to her friend. This happened to skanks and drug addicts. Not to Maya, who’d never mistreated anyone nor stepped out of line in her life. The only thing Zoey could think to do was reach up and take the wine glass out of Maya’s hand. She sat it on the end table.

  “Damon?” Zoey asked, looking up at Addy, who was pacing and drinking.

  “Who else?”

  “Fuck.” And then the inevitable rage came. Zoey either loved or hated. There was no in between. She loved Maya and Addy with an unwavering loyalty she’d never felt for anyone else. Damon hadn’t even been on her radar, except for the times that his plans took Maya away from her. Now he had a big, red target painted on his face, and hell was about to rain down on him in the form of a nuclear Zoey.

  “That motherfucker!” Zoey leapt to her feet and started pacing with Addy. “He’s dead. He’s beyond fucking dead!”

  Maya sobbed harder. Addy sat next to her on the sofa and immediately hopped back up. “Ouch. Goddammit, Zoey, get a new couch!” She knelt on one knee at Maya’s side and took her hands.

  “First I’m gonna tie him up,” Zoey growled. “Then I’m gonna chop off his balls with a dull knife and feed them to his dog while he watches—“

  “Zoey! Not helping,” Addy said.

  Zoey snapped out of her gruesome fantasy. “Does the dipshit know?”

  Maya shook her head. “I don’t know how I can tell him. This is gonna ruin his life. He’s got dreams of joining the military and seeing the world.”

  “Fucker never had a dream in his life. Don’t tell him, Maya. We’ll take care of you. Won’t we, Addy?”

  Addy gave her another warning look. “I think it’s important that we all calm down and deal with the here and now. Maya, honey, what can we do for you?”

  Maya shook her head, her angelic face twisted in pain.

  “She’s All That and Chocolate Therapy?” Zoey offered.

  Maya sniffed like a sick kid and nodded. Zoey loaded the guilty-pleasure movie in her DVD player and then went to the freezer for the ice cream.

  Once they got her settled, Addy and Zoey convened in the kitchen for a quiet conference. “I’m serious,” Zoey said in a hushed voice. “I’ll take care of her here. I’ll work two jobs if I have to. I don’t want her marrying him.”

  Addy’s lips pursed. “She loves him.”

  “She’ll get over it. He’ll hurt her. I mean physically.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “He left finger marks on her arm that time, don’t you remember?”

  Addy winced and blew out a breath. “Will your mom freak?”

  “Please, she won’t even notice. Unlike your parents.” Addy’s parents monitored her every activity. And they couldn’t stand Maya, which put them on Zoey’s hate-list. Anyone who disliked someone as pure and good as Maya didn’t deserve her affections.

  “We should definitely encourage her to stay with you, then. Her old man’s gonna throw a fit. And I agree that Damon isn’t…dependable.”

  “Stable, you mean. He’s unstable. You have to admit he fits the profile of a future wife-beater.”

  Addy drained the last of her wine and then went to the freezer for ice cream. “Behavior-wise, yes. But background? It just doesn’t make sense. His parents are upstanding citizens. They make plenty of money and are the least temperamental people I know. And Kellen—well, you know Kellen. He walks little old ladies across the street. I mean—how can Damon be bad when he comes from that kind of family?”

  “Kellen’s only eighteen. Maybe he just hasn’t grown into his mean streak yet.”

  Addy shook her head.

  Zoey didn’t argue. She was right. There was no making sense of Damon’s character. But it didn’t matter. Maya shouldn’t be with him. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “What about an abortion?”

  Addy licked the back of her ice cream spoon and shook her head. “Absolute last resort. If that. And we can help her together, if all else fails. We should be able to provide her enough support that she doesn’t have to do something like that if she doesn’t want to.”

  Zoey exhaled in relief. She wasn’t prepared to go that direction and secretly hoped Maya wasn’t either. “Okay, so we murder Damon and dump him in the Missouri River, then we get Maya settled in here. After that, I guess we need to check out her insurance situation. She’s still a minor, so if her dad doesn’t have anything, he can at least get her on state aid.”

  Addy gawked. “I never even thought of that.”

  “That’s because you live with competent parental units. Be grateful.”

  Addy nodded in adamant agreement.

  They moved back into the living room to huddle around Maya. Later that night, after she’d calmed, they discussed her options. She called Damon and broke the news to him over the phone. He didn’t yell or anything and after she hung up, her eyes closed in relief.

  The next day he showed up with a cheap ring he’d bought at the Dollar Store. He got on one knee in front of Maya and proposed. Zoey watched in horror as Maya tearfully accepted. There was nothing to be done. Maya loved him and refused to hear reason.

  The next Monday at school, Kellen Bradley came up to Zoey, grinning like a damn fool. “How crazy is it?” he said. “I’m gonna be an uncle.”

  Zoey cocked her fist and punched him in the face. She got in-school suspension and was more than willing to pay the price.

  CHAPTER TWO

  8 years later

  “I’m going to kill him. He’s dead. He’s so fucking dead!” At six on a Saturday morning, Zoey paced the living room of Maya’s two-bedroom shack in the shitty part of town. In the background, The Island of Misfit Toys played, tinny from the bad speakers of a very old television. Zoey glared at the Claymation Rudolph. She picked up the remote and turned it off.

  Addy shot her a frustrated look. Maya was in her bedroom packing her things. Maya’s kids were in their room, doing the same. “Pull yourself together. This isn’t what she needs.”

  Zoey choked down as much of her rage as she could, but her vision blurred with tears. “As soon as I saw her face….” She couldn’t finish the sentence. The words vanished into a place of blind pain and fury.

  “I know. But this is it. It’s over. And, right now, you and I need to—“

  A sharp scream came from the back. Addy hurried away. “I told you not to try and lift that bag yourself,” she said as she disappeared down the hall.

  Zoey stared after her, lost in her own pain. Eight years of watching a woman she considered a sister trapped in an abusive relationship…and now it was finally over. An ending and a very rough beginning.

  She felt a tug at the hem of her sweater. She looked down to see five-year-old Sophie, who shared her mother’s wide, green eyes, staring up at her. Zoey smiled and stroked her hair.

  “Will Santa be able to find us?” the little girl asked.

  “Absolutely. I’m sending him a letter to let him know where you are. It won’t be a problem at all.”

  Sophie smiled softly and then ran back to her bedroom.

  There was a knock at the door. Zoey hoped to God it was Damon because she had her legally licensed gun in a holster at her waist and if he so much as laid a hand on her, she was all ready to defend herself with lethal force.

  But it wasn’t Damon. Instead, she was greeted with the ingenuous smile of Damon’s baby brother. Kellen could not be more different from Damon. He was perpetually kind and generous. Just an all-around sweetheart.

  Zoey found him disgusting.

  He might have the most perfectly sculpted shoulders you ever saw and a smile that could weaken the knees of even the most stalwart man-eater; he might have gorgeous, sun-kissed hair and eyes you could swim in; and maybe his voice resonated in a deep baritone that vibrated down to your toes—but he was related to the wrong guy; an unforgivable sin, in Zoey’s mind.

  “Hi, Zoey,” he said cheerfully, as though she wasn’t
scowling at him. “What are you doing here?”

  She opened her mouth to tell him to fuck off, but the kids came barreling in. “Uncle Kellen!” they squealed, and jumped into his arms. He swung Sophie onto his hip and slung his arm around Matthew. He kicked the door closed behind him.

  After Damon and Maya had gotten engaged, Kellen had started hanging around their little group. She’d already hated him for his relationship to Damon. But when he started worming his way into everyone’s affections, her hate took a solid hold, becoming a permanent thing.

  “Get out of here, Kellen,” she said. “She’s leaving him, and she’s not coming back.”

  His smile disappeared altogether and the man actually looked perplexed. He sat Sophie on her feet.

  “I know they had some problems. Damon crashed at my house and wouldn’t stop crying about it. But he loves her. And she loves him. I really think we should stay out of their business.”

  “God, you’re just as bad as he is! Go fuck yourself, Kellen!”

  His eyebrows shot up, and he quickly covered the kids’ ears, pressing their little heads to his hips. “Look, I don’t know what I did to piss you off this time, but this is Maya and Damon’s business, not yours. So let’s just get out of their way and let them work this out.”

  “How can you say that? You probably think he was justified in what he did, don’t you?”

  He shook his head and rolled his eyes. “The fact is, you’ve only got one side of the story and your own bias. You don’t know what he’s going through.”

  She fisted her hands as heat rushed to her cheeks. Was the son-of-a-bitch actually suggesting there was a good reason for Damon’s beating his wife nearly to death?

  Kellen had the good sense to look nervous. But, he was hiding behind children, so she couldn’t hurt him. Yet.

  Just then the back bedroom door opened and Maya came out. Addison was rolling her suitcase with one hand and supporting Maya around her back with the other. Maya’s left eye was swelled shut and there was bruising along her right cheekbone. Her lips were cut and swollen and her nose broken. Addison had apparently cleaned the blood away.