No Small Bet

Saint Johns, FL 32259 Copyright © 2023 by Samantha Christy All rights reserved, including the rights to reproduce this book or any portions thereof in any form whatsoever. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. Cover designed by Coverluv Cover model photo by WANDER AGUIAR Cover model – Vinicious F. Contents 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 Chapter Thirty-six Chapter Thirty-seven Chapter Thirty-eight Chapter Thirty-nine Epilogue Chapter One Hawk The doorbell rings. I ignore it and roll over in bed. Nobody I know is stupid enough to come to my house this early. Just when I doze off again, the pounding on the front door starts. It mimics the throbbing in my head. I’m no stranger to hangovers, but at least I have the luxury of sleeping them off whenever I need to. “Hawk!” someone screams loudly enough to reach my bedroom at the back of the house. Sitting up, I curse the sharp pain behind my eyes. “Someone better have fucking died,” I say to no one as I pull on wrinkled sweatpants that lie in a ball next to my bed. I check the time. 7:09 am. Too goddamn early. And on a Monday. Everyone at work knows not to expect me on Monday mornings. If I decide to go to work on a Monday, it’s always in the afternoon. Same with Fridays. As far as I’m concerned, the weekends start on Thursday and don’t end until I say they end. Ambling my way to the front door, I squint (which hurts like a mother) to keep out the morning light streaming through the massive picture windows in my great room. I stop and peek at my newly constructed pool including all the impressive bells and whistles and landscaping that go along with it. I wasn’t about to let Quinn Thompson have the best pool in town. My setup puts that pussy-whipped cowboy to shame. Not that my beef is with Quinn, per se, but his wife is best friends with Tag. And Tag is a Calloway. McQuaids hate all Calloways; therefore I hate Quinn by association. My fuzzy brain reminds me that my mother is a Calloway, something I’ve tried to ignore these past dozen or so years. She’ll never let me live down the fact that I was the only one of her children who didn’t attend her second wedding—to none other than Jonah Calloway, uncle to my archenemies Tag, Jaxon, and Cooper. And I’ll never let her forget that by marrying into that derelict family, she effectively cut ties with me. This town has a proverbial line drawn right down the middle that stems back to a bet made by one of my ancestors and a Calloway. It resulted in our town, that previously bore the name McQuaid Plat, being renamed to Calloway Creek. It’s bullshit. We own this town, yet their name appears on a crap ton of it. If you’re a McQuaid, it’s incumbent upon you to hate the Calloways. If you’re a Cruz, it’s more than likely you hate them as well, even though they are technically Calloway descendants in addition to being related to us McQuaids. Conversely, if you’re a Montana or an Ashford, all basically cousins to the Calloways, you hate all the McQuaids. There are some exceptions to this. Namely my rich-as-shit idiotic grandfather, my brainwashed sister, and of course Jonah and my mom, who all try to keep the peace in their own pathetic ways. The doorbell rings again, this time in quick succession. I complete my walk to the door, still pissed as hell that someone has the balls to wake me. I make a mental note to have a gate installed at the beginning of the driveway. “Hawk!” a shrill voice shouts from the other side of the door. I rip the door open. “What the ever-loving fuck could be so goddamn important at the butt-crack of dawn?” It’s Melissa Greer. She visibly deflates when she sees me. I scan her from head to toe. Her hair is unkempt, her makeup scarce, her eyes as puffy as a blowfish. The shirt she’s wearing is wrinkled as if it were yesterday’s, possibly picked up off the floor before doing a walk of shame. Melissa Greer doing a walk of shame? Doubtful, but I suppose stranger things have happened. It would explain the hair and the makeup, but not the eyes. Unless maybe she was dumped after a one-nighter. Oh, shit. Did Hunter or Hudson one-and-done her and she’s come here to chew me out as if I give two shits what my brothers do? And then there’s her knuckles which are red from pounding on my door. “Christ, Melissa. You look worse than I do and I may have downed an entire bottle of tequila last night. What the hell is it?” I turn away and shuffle into the kitchen, not really caring if she follows or not. Thankfully, I had the good sense to program my coffee maker to come on early. A fresh pot is waiting for me as if it knew I’d be up at this ungodly hour. I grab a cup from the cabinet, not bothering to offer one to Melissa, who may or may not be behind me. My answer comes when a kitchen chair scrapes across the hardwood. I don’t have to turn around to know she’s sitting. I hear her weight crash upon