Got the Life (A Nicki Sosebee Novel) Read online

  Got the Life

  (A Nicki Sosebee Novel)

  Jade C. Jamison

  Got the Life

  Nicki Sosebee has been working low-paying jobs ever since she finished school, but now that she’s older, she wants more. She’s a novice reporter trying to learn the ropes. Just as she’s getting her career goals on track, though, her love life gets worse and worse. Sure, she has no problems picking up good-looking guys for brief flings, but relationships? Out of the question. Maybe it’s because Sean, her gorgeous best friend, just can’t see her as more than a buddy. So when Sean encourages her as she pursues her first headline-producing story, Nicki realizes that her life’s pretty sweet…if only she can live long enough to see tomorrow’s front page.

  Nicki took a deep breath. He was getting too close, too close for her to concentrate. She could smell him…Sean always smelled like sandalwood and—well, Sean—and he was more potent today than usual. Maybe it was the thin sheen of sweat on his chest that also made his pecs look so fucking gorgeous? She gulped. Shit. She had no idea what to say. “Why do you care anyway?”

  His eyes stayed on hers. “Because you’re my friend, Nicki, and I know what these guys do.” Then his eyes dropped to her lips.

  She intended to call his bluff.

  “Bullshit. You wouldn’t just give your bike away for that. You know I can take care of myself.”

  His voice was low. “You’re right.” His eyes locked on hers again as he placed his hands on both sides of her face, drawing her into a kiss. Nicki thought her heart had stopped beating until she felt it thudding against her chest, as though she were a rabbit being chased by a fox. Her hands cupped his pecs, and she felt the damp warm sweat, felt the hard muscle respond to her hands. Tasting Sean and smelling him up close made the effects of the venti caramel macchiato this morning seem like drinking mother’s milk. God, he tasted good.

  The kiss ended and Sean pulled back. Nicki’s eyes stayed closed, her hands now touching only air. She couldn’t catch her breath, and she didn’t want the moment to end. She heard Sean say, “Shit. That didn’t happen.”

  Nicki’s eyes popped open. She was speechless. “Uh, yeah, I think it did.” She had a pair of dripping wet panties to prove it.

  Sean’s face was stone. “No, it didn’t.”

  Nicki’s tongue played with a molar on the left side of her mouth. She was getting ready to speak, trying to think up a good retort, when she heard a click click at the other end of the garage. Sean looked in Nicki’s eyes again, sending her some coded message, something she couldn’t quite register, and then his eyes darted back to his visitor. Then Nicki figured it out.

  She turned around for confirmation and saw Kayla, his girlfriend, extending a brown paper bag. “Lunch.”

  Sean smiled at her. “Thanks, babe.”

  Nicki made sure to leave just as Sean was biting into the sandwich. There was no way they could resume their conversation now. It would just have to wait.

  What readers are saying about the Nicki Sosebee series:

  Sara, 5-star review on Amazon for No Place to Hide: “hurry up with the next book! i’m really getting to like the characters & the sex scenes are way fun!”

  Gillian, 4-star review on Amazon for Got the Life: “I recently stumbled across this series after reading another book by Jade C Jamison . . . . I thoroughly enjoyed this book and the others in the series that are available, and can’t wait for the latest . . . to be released.”

  Anonymous, 5-star review on Barnes & Noble for Got the Life: “YOU HAVE TO GET THIS BOOK! IT IS AWESOME!”

  Sara, 5-star review on Amazon for Innocent Bystander: “The best Nicki book yet!!!! I love reading a progressive series like this & Jade’s talent & connection to her characters & the story are stronger each time. I’m really happy with the length of the story too. Enough for me to be satisfied & ready for the next chapter . . . . More please!”

  Funnychick, 5-star review on Amazon for Innocent Bystander: “I love love love Nicki Sosebee!!! I have all the books and I cannot wait to see what happens next. Must read this book but better yet go back and read it all from the beginning. She keeps you wondering what will happen next and I love how she brings back characters from past books.”

  BOOKS BY JADE C. JAMISON

  Tangled Web: A Steamy Heavy Metal Novella

  Stating His Case

  Fabric of Night

  Worst Mother

  MADversary

  Then Kiss Me

  NICKI SOSEBEE SERIES

  1 Got the Life

  2 Dead

  3 No Place to Hide

  4 Right Now

  5 One More Time

  6 Lost

  7 Innocent Bystander

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2011 by Jade C. Jamison

  Cover image copyright © Walt Stoneburner

  All rights reserved.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Visit Jade’s website:

  http://www.jadecjamison.com

  Follow Jade on Twitter:

  http://twitter.com/@JadeCJamison

  Send Jade an email:

  [email protected]

  Like Jade on Facebook:

  http://facebook.com/JadeCJamisonAuthor

  Table of 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

  Nicki’s Next Adventure

  Chapter One

  WHY DO ALL the bad boys have to be so fucking cute? Nicki Sosebee sat on a hard wooden pew in the Winchester County courthouse, shifting to relieve the pressure on her bottom. She lifted her pencil up off the stenographer’s notebook she’d been writing notes in and tapped the eraser against the paper. She shook her head. He might’ve been a bad boy, but he was sure nice to look at.

  The accused, a Mr. Jason Edwards, sat at the defendant’s table, a smirk etched on his flawless face. His dark brown eyes smoldered, and his light brown hair was spiked, but it was too short to seem extreme. What made Nicki feel warm all over, though, were his arms full of tattoos. For a reason she could never explain, she thought body modifications made guys look…well, hot. And Edwards? Well, he was of the four hundred degrees Fahrenheit variety.

  When Edwards first walked in the courtroom, the judge reprimanded him for not wearing proper courtroom attire. It indicated he wasn’t taking the proceedings seriously. Edwards had sneered but said nothing. Nicki knew the man had saved himself a contempt of court citation by biting his tongue—she’d sat in Judge Lewis’s courtroom before, and he didn’t let flippant remarks pass. One sarcastic statement and Edwards would have found his arraignment continued, his ass back in the same lame jail cell he was in just a few minutes ago. Instead, he’d likely walk out of the courtroom in just a few minutes, along with a date for a hearing. But hearing or no, he’d be a free man—temporarily, at least. His court-appointed attorney simply apologized and promised it wouldn’t happen again.

 
Nicki felt compelled to follow this case…and it wasn’t just because Edwards was nice to look at. It didn’t matter that a good many defendants she saw day in and day out in this courthouse were recovering meth addicts (some of them weren’t recovering and didn’t plan to anytime soon, however) who were nothing but bones and sunken cheeks or old alcoholics with lined foreheads and red noses. That was beside the point. No, instead it was because his case was something different. And different stories were the kind her editor would publish. He didn’t give a shit about the ordinary. Ordinary stuff found a small corner in the paper, if that, but the different stuff? Sometimes it could even wind up on the front page.

  That hadn’t happened to Nicki. Yet. That was one of her short-term goals.

  Nicki didn’t have many long-term goals. She didn’t like to think that far into the future. Talk about pressure. She liked the way a lot of her Zen friends approached life, living in the moment. She knew her own refusal to think too far ahead had nothing to do with Buddhism, but it was a good reason to give people when they asked. Really, though, she knew it was something else that kept her from looking too far, and if she wasn’t ready to face it, she certainly wasn’t ready to talk about it.

  She bit her lip as she caught herself staring at the half blank page on her lap. She had to pay attention to what was happening in the courtroom. Can’t have a front page story if you don’t get the facts straight. She adjusted in the pew again and paid attention to the proceedings. She managed to catch the defendant pleading “not guilty” and scribbled it down on the pad in her lap. Then she heard the low rumble of her cell phone vibrating in the pew next to her, indicating that she had an incoming call. She picked it up and looked at the screen. It was Sean. She noted it but set it back on the seat. He could wait.

  The judge gave a date for the defendant’s next hearing and set bail at $25,000. Edwards was taken into custody and escorted out of the courtroom. Well, she’d been wrong that he would get to walk, but it made his case all the more interesting. The judge must see Edwards as a risk, meaning this case was important enough to cover in the paper. Nicki jotted the date and amount and saw an entire row of people—Edwards’s family, she assumed—make gestures and mutter amongst themselves. They didn’t get loud enough for the judge to reprimand them, but she looked them over and wrote a couple of details for herself. Just as she looked up from the paper again, she saw her cell phone screen light up again. She pressed a couple of buttons to read the text message. Call me, the screen beckoned her. Nicki’s right eyebrow curled—Sean never texted. What was up with that? She sat through the next few arraignments of the morning—nothing big to report on, but those cases would probably be clumped together in a little paragraph all their own somewhere in the paper tomorrow. Those details weren’t her problem. Her problem was finding a story good enough to make the front page. And she thought Jason Edwards’s tale of family loyalty, criminal mischief, and four counts of arson might be the one. She planned to write a small blurb soon for the online edition of the Winchester Tribune and tomorrow morning’s paper edition. Then it was up to Neal Black, the editor of her hometown paper, to decide if it was good enough to print.

  She walked out of the courtroom into the cool, marble-floored hallway and quickly found her way outdoors. Ugh. It was hot outside. Arizona hot. It shouldn’t be this fucking hot in the Colorado foothills, Nicki thought. She began walking down the concrete steps to the sidewalk and decided she’d better go see Sean. Something important must have been going on for Sean to call and then text. She’d better put him out of his misery ASAP.

  Chapter Two

  NICKI LEANED HER back against a wooden table in Sean’s garage. Sean was tinkering on a motorcycle while talking to Nicki. Nicki was looking over at the most precious thing in the world to Sean: his custom-built Harley. He hardly ever rode the damn thing, but it was souped up, and he was constantly doing more to it, which was why its permanent home was in his shop. It was chrome and black with red here and there and contained over one hundred horses in its engine. But looking at that beauty couldn’t help Nicki concentrate. She was biting the side of her cheek, forcing herself to not say a word until she knew she could be calm. Anything you say can and will be used against you. Nicki tried to pay attention to Sean’s next words but found it difficult. Jesus. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. He must have gone and lost his fucking mind.

  He had a blue bandanna tied around his head like he usually did when he worked in the shop, covering that gorgeous head of dark blonde just-a-little-too-long hair. He kept looking up from the bike to make eye contact with her, those dark blue orbs piercing into her.

  “Wait,” Nicki said. “Did I hear you right?”

  Sean looked up from the bike, setting the wrench down on the small bench. “Yeah. Kayla wants us to move in together. But I wanted to see what you thought.”

  Nicki shook her head and raised her eyebrows. “Why don’t you ask your guy friends what they think?”

  Sean smiled that killer smile of his, his perfect white teeth disarming her. “You know why. Because they’re a bunch of insensitive assholes. Besides, even if they weren’t, they’ll tell me I’m pussywhipped even if they’d do the same thing.”

  Nicki smirked. “Well, they’re right. You are pussywhipped.”

  He sighed and picked up a socket wrench. “Is that what you really think?”

  God, she was pissed at him, but there was no way in hell she was going to show it. She wasn’t angry that he was thinking about moving in with his girlfriend. No, she was pissed that he was making her talk to him about it. But she had to be cool. “What do you want to do, Sean? Do you want to move in with her?”

  He shrugged his shoulders while sliding a socket on his wrench. “I don’t know. That’s why I need your advice.”

  Nicki walked closer to the bike between them. “Do you love her?”

  Sean resumed fidgeting with the bike, working the noisy socket wrench, and wouldn’t make eye contact with Nicki. “I don’t know. Maybe that’s part of it too?”

  He was worse than a girl. “Would you marry her?”

  “God, Nicki, why are you asking me all this shit?”

  “Because those are the things I would consider before moving in with someone.” She walked over to the bench and sat next to him. He finally looked over at her. “What are you thinking about?”

  He looked down at the tool in his hand, then looked in her eyes. “Well, it would save on rent, that’s for sure. And we spend a lot of time together already, so there’s that. And it would be nice to come home to her arms and a hot cooked meal.” So he wanted a slave. Or ready sex. Or both.

  But she sensed that he was wanting a reason to tell Kayla no. And Nicki refused to be the bad guy. If he didn’t want to do it, he needed to find those reasons within himself. “But…?”

  She heard his exhale. “But…I don’t know that I want to be around her 24/7. I’ve seen what it does to other people. I mean, Christ. You might as well get married if you’re gonna move in together.”

  Why had she decided to sit down next to him? She could hardly stand being this close, seeing the perfect cut of his longish soul patch and sideburns trimmed into not quite mutton chops, not quite a chinstrap beard but certainly longish sideburns, larger than most guys wore them, highlighting the sexy shape of his angled jaw. Sean had always been all about looking good and it drove Nicki crazy. She hoped he didn’t know she still thought about him that way. Of course he doesn’t, dumbass. Why would he ask her about his girlfriend if he thought she still cared? He’d only do it if he was an asshole. And he wasn’t. Usually. At least, he wasn’t being one right now. Nicki was fairly certain of that.

  She stood and cleared her throat, smoothing her denim miniskirt with her hands. “Well, I hate to tell you this, but I can’t help you. I feel like any advice I give you will be wrong.”

  Sean stood up, facing her, leaving the socket wrench on the bench. He grinned. “No worries. You helped.”

&nbs
p; God, it was no wonder she couldn’t get over him. Not only was he smart and fun with a great sense of humor, he was nicer to look at than an entire night of buff WWE wrestlers with their shirts off. He was wearing a simple white tee and faded blue jeans, but she could make out the definition of his chest. There was nothing soft about Sean. And his arms were well-inked, mostly in black with very little color. Even the fingers of his right hand were tattooed between his knuckles—each finger had one letter that spelled BAMF. He said it was his punching hand, so when he’d throw a right cross in a bar brawl, the recipient would know who took him down. She remembered when her parents first saw the tattoo and asked him what it meant. Her mother was not amused to discover that Sean considered himself one BadAss MotherFucker. Too bad for mom he couldn’t just cover it up. But she seemed to get used to it after a while. In that way, Sean managed to have Nicki’s mother captivated too. Nicki sighed. “If you say so.” She wondered what his decision was going to be, but no way in hell was she going to ask. She’d find out soon enough. “So guess what I was doing when you called.”

  “You were sitting in court.”

  “Oh. I already told you.”

  “No, that’s just usually what you do in the mornings anymore.”

  Nicki smiled. “Oh, that’s not good. I’m getting predictable in my old age.” Sean nodded, still grinning. “But I think I’ve finally got a case that might get me on the front page.”

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  “Well, there’s this guy who was arrested for arson. I have no idea how the cops figured it out, but apparently he burned some guy’s house to the ground.”

  “The dumbass was probably bragging about it on Facebook to his friends.”