She shook her head, taking another sip of cocoa. Again her brothers looked over their shoulders and this time the life ruining bastard had the balls to salute them with his beer and a cocky grin.

Rory discretely flipped him off. Connor's cocky smile quickly turned to a tight frown as his eyes once again narrowed on her. Her brothers turned their attention back to her, clearly wondering what she'd done. She just gave them an innocent smile as she sipped her cocoa.

"I don't understand," Sean said. "How did you both get the contract?"

Darting her eyes away, she said quietly, "We both got the contract. We'll be working with Highland Construction on this job."

Stunned silence met her announcement. She chanced a glance back up at her brothers, who were now looking at her as if she'd grown an extra head. She cleared her throat nervously and continued.

"We each got the contract with a twenty percent markup and a nice bonus if we finish by the November deadline," she said, watching as the information sank in.

Each of the men cursed vividly as they turned and shot another scowl to the man that once again smiled smugly in their direction. Slowly, her brothers turned back to face her, glaring.

"Why didn't you tell them we could do it without Highland Construction?" Sean demanded. This time when Johnny tried to snag her burger, Craig didn't stop him.

Great, the big babies were mad at her. Whatever. They'd get over it.

"Does it look like I want to work with him?" she asked, making them frown. "I didn't have a choice. Even if we hire extra men we won't be able to train them in time for them to be useful. We wouldn't make the deadline. If we did this alone we'd also blow our profit on extra equipment. Extra equipment I might add that Highland Construction has. All we have to do is go in, work our asses off just like any other project, meet the deadline and that's it. The only downside is that it will be with the bastard, but if I can handle it, then so can you."

Her brothers looked thoughtful as they considered what she said. Finally with a shrug, Craig said, "Fine, as long as he leaves us alone to do our job and lets us lead we won't kick his ass."

Chapter 3

"That's it, boy," Connor cooed as the hundred and fifty pound pain in the ass cocked his head to the side and studied Connor. "Come on, big guy, you know you want it," he said, holding the hot dog he dipped in peanut butter up higher as he moved it slowly from side to side.

The demon spawn that Rory liked to call a dog licked his lips hungrily as his eyes zeroed in on the tasty treat. Grinning, Connor leaned over and reached for the laptop bag that he'd foolishly set down on the ground ten minutes ago so that he could grab his briefcase and the stack of files only to turn around and find the pain in the ass lying across it.

Connor tossed the tasty treat onto Rory's property. The dog sent him one last glare before he took off. Connor wasted no time in grabbing his laptop, knowing the damn dog would be back. Sometimes it seemed as though the damn dog liked screwing him over more than Rory did.

He was just about to head inside his house when a familiar red four door sedan pulled into Rory's driveway. Hadn't he already chased this loser off? It had been what.....three or four weeks since he last saw this ass**le sniffing around Rory? Then again, most of the men Rory dated, all losers in his opinion, stopped coming by her house shortly after meeting him, which was the way he liked it.

But clearly he hadn't done his job if this one was coming back for more. As he watched the ass**le step out of his car as he smoothed his hair back and straightened his obviously new shirt and slacks, Connor couldn't help but wonder how dumb the man really was.

When the man spotted him, he froze and noticeably swallowed. A loud menacing growl had the man taking a step back. Because that too pleased him, he pulled the second peanut butter dipped hot dog out of the baggy and tossed it to the dog Rory dared to name, “Bunny.” With a grunt, the dog swallowed the treat whole, but never took his eyes away from the ass**le that refused to step away from behind his car.

Like that would protect him, Connor thought with a sigh as he walked over to the corner of his large white Victorian home, which happened to be a mere twenty feet away from the corner of Rory's house, an almost identical house. When the homes were built over two hundred years ago they had been identical in every way, except the direction of the layout was opposite in each house. The Master bedroom suite of each house had its very own open porch that extended past the walls of the house by ten feet and cut the distance between the two houses to eighteen inches.

It wasn't exactly a surprise that the house were built together since the houses had been built by identical twins. The brothers had built the homes for their wives only to discover later that their wives could not stand each other, at least that's what his realtor had told him. Whether or not it was true didn't really matter to him. All that mattered was that he could look forward to aggravating the piss out of Rory each and every night when she sat out on her porch to relax.

When he'd first bought the place, the small strip of land that separated the two properties held not only a tall wood fence that started at the street and ended at the back of the property, but large arboreta trees that were nearly as tall as the house, completely blocking Rory's house from his sight. Since he'd bought the house for the entertainment value, he of course had the fence and trees taken down the next day.

Rory had been pissed at the time, but she soon got over it and focused her attention back on fixing up her house while he did the same with his. It took him two years to get the house the way he wanted it, but it was well worth it. When he first bought the place he'd considered giving it a more modern look, but after his first night in the place he decided to go with what he thought it might have looked like when it was originally built. It took extra time, money and a lot of guessing, but he was happy with the results.

When he originally bought the property he planned on fixing it up and selling it off, having Rory around to torture was just a bonus, but once it was done he knew that he wouldn't be able to part with it. He knew it was the same for Rory. Although he'd never seen what she'd done, and god how he wanted to see what she'd done, he knew that she loved the house and also changed her mind about selling when the renovations were complete.

"Is Rory here?" the man asked as he shifted nervously.

"Is she expecting you?" he asked, leaning back against the house as he discretely reached behind the rosebush one of his ex-girlfriends insisted on planting and flipped the switch off of what he liked to call his “Little Box of fun” and settled his fingers over the three black buttons on the small panel.

"That's none of your business," the man snapped, noticeably bristling.

"Then I guess you'll just have to find out for yourself," Connor said with a careless shrug as he watched the man shoot him a scowl just before he stormed up the walkway and damn near jumped out of his skin when Bunny decided to block his path.

"Easy," the man said anxiously as he backed away from the dog. Even though it probably should be enough that the dog most likely made the man piss his pants, Connor felt that he needed a little more incentive to get the hell out of here and never come back.

"What the hell!" the man yelled as Rory's sprinklers came on full blast. Connor waited until the man ran back to his car, only falling twice and ruining his clothes with mud and grass, and was peeling out of the driveway before he turned her sprinklers off.

Best damn thing he'd ever built, he decided as he gave his partner in crime a mock salute and headed for the front door. It really was too bad he couldn't stand her dog since he did come in handy from time to time.

* * * *

"Why are you covered in mud, sweetie?" Rory asked as she bent down to cup Bunny's mud splattered face. When she caught a whiff of peanut butter and hot dog she knew exactly how her poor baby got all dirty.

"Connor," she bit out, momentarily forgetting that she couldn't kill him for at least five months.

"You called?" the annoying bastard said, sounding amused.

She looked up, not surprised to find him standing on his second floor porch, shirtless and holding a bottle of beer. Sometimes she wished that he hadn't cut down those damn trees. At least she could have pretended that he wasn't next door and probably would have enjoyed relaxing on her porch more if she didn't have to see him. Then again, he would have just found some other way to annoy her.