You’re right when you say that I prefer not to deal with people face-to-face. Better to avoid snap judgements. And I’ll admit I might have been guilty of that myself already.

As we’ve already established, I can be a grumpy ole bastard. And I know that’s supposed to be a bad thing but why is that? The way I see it, a grump is someone who speaks his mind and points out when something is stupid or someone’s being an idiot.

Sure, I could keep my mouth shut, but what’s the point of that? Maybe part of the problem with today’s world is that people are afraid to tell it straight anymore, terrified to point out when the emperor’s wearing no clothes.

Believe me, there are a lot of naked emperors parading around these days.

P-1

Chapter 11

WARD

‘Goddamnit I’m coming. Just gimme a chance.’

The doorbell rang again and Ward hobbled across his living room to answer it. To find a gorgeous woman dressed in yoga clothes standing there. Tall, lean and athletic with dark hair in a long ponytail and olive skin, her huge brown eyes looked him up and down as she moved past and uttered, ‘You look like hell.’

Well, she wasn’t wrong about that. He’d only been off the pain meds for a few days and already found it impossible to think about anything else other than when he’d be able to take another.

‘Excuse me? Mind telling me who the hell you are?’

‘Shelley, the one Johnny sent.’

When Johnny had told him he was sending someone over to help him navigate what he was going through, his friend had been insistent that Ward committed to the process one hundred per cent.

‘Anything less, and you’re just going to be wasting everyone’s time – and Shelley’s a girl who doesn’t like having her time wasted.’

But Johnny hadn’t told him that the physical trainer looked like this. Easily five foot nine and with such a hot body, in any other situation, Ward would hit on her, only for the fact that she was there to help him and Johnny had warned him about any funny business. To say nothing of the fact that she also looked like she could easily beat the shit out of him with one hand.

‘Yeah,’ he told her now. ‘I feel like hell too.’

Shelley looked around his place, taking in the sparse furnishings, trophy display on the sideboard, plasma TV on the wall and closed curtains, and when she turned back to him, she said, ‘Yeah, this is about what I figured.’

He scowled. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I got filled in on your backstory, so I already knew what I was going to find here. Turns out I was right.’

Ward felt himself start to get annoyed but he took a breath. ‘What were you right about?’