Smoke (Archer's Creek Book 5) Read online

  Smoke, Archer’s Creek: Book Five

  Copyright © 2019 by Gemma Weir

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Cover design by Hart & Bailey Design Co

  Interior design by Champagne Book Design

  Echo (Archer Creek #1)

  Daisy (Archer’s Creek #2)

  Blade (Archer’s Creek #3)

  Echo & Liv (Archer’s Creek #3.5)

  Park (Archer’s Creek #4)

  Smoke (Archer’s Creek #5)

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Also by Gemma Weir

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Epilogue

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  I wasn’t sure who to dedicate this one to; I’ve kind of run out of people!

  So [insert your name here].

  This one is for you.

  “Fuck you,” I scream at the top of my lungs.

  “God, Riley, could you be any more melodramatic?” Greg says, rolling his eyes at me while he stares at himself in the mirror, his fingers carefully styling his hair.

  “Are you kidding me right now? I saw how she was hanging off you. Her tits were rubbing on your chest and you were just letting her do it.”

  Greg’s eyes flash to me in the mirror and he exhales a slow, audible sigh as though I’m exasperating him. “I can’t help it if women find me attractive. These are your issues, not mine. You know what I look like, and my followers like to get close to me when they have photos taken.”

  “Her hand was on your dick,” I shout.

  Greg tilts his head to the side and sighs again. “It was over the fabric, Ry. Why are you making such a big deal about this?”

  My mouth falls open and I gape at him, unable to fathom how he can think this isn’t a big deal. “How would you feel if some guy had his hands on my tits?”

  I watch as his eyes fall to my chest and he scoffs, a pitying look flashing across his face. “No guy is going to grab at your tits, you’re virtually flat chested.”

  Heat fills my cheeks and right at this moment I hate him for picking on my biggest insecurity. My boobs are not that small, but Greg is a tits man and to him anything smaller than double D cup is not worth mentioning.

  “Are you done with this drama now, because I really need to get ready?” he says in the most condescending tone possible.

  “I’m not being dramatic. I’m explaining that it’s not okay for women to grab at your junk and rub themselves all over you.”

  Sighing even more dramatically, he drops his hands from his hair and turns to face me. “My fans are important to me. I can’t tell them they can’t touch me just because you don’t like it.”

  “You have a personal training blog; you’re not a movie star! Asking people to be respectful of the fact you’re in a relationship is completely acceptable.” I cry, my voice shrill.

  “We’ve spoken about this. It’s better for my profile if I appear to be single and available.”

  “But you’re not single.”

  “Well…” he says, elongating the word.

  “What? We’ve been together for a year-and-a-half,” I shout.

  “Yeah, but it’s not like we’re serious or exclusive,” he says with a shrug.

  “Are you fucking kidding me? Of course we’re exclusive. We agreed not to see other people two weeks after we met. We’ve been talking about moving in together for months. Why are you pulling this bullshit now?”

  “Riley, my star is rising. I can’t be tied down to an anchor. You know this. We’ve talked about my career and how quickly I plan to become a household name.”

  “Are you telling me you’ve been dating other women?” I ask, my voice catching.

  “Not dating, I don’t have time for that. But variety is the spice of life, and when my fans see me, they all want a piece. There’s plenty of me to go around.” he says, heat flaring to life in his eyes.

  I don’t think. I just grab the closest thing to me and throw it at him. The shoe bounces off his head and falls to the floor with a thud. As he screams and runs to the mirror to examine his face, I dash through his apartment, collecting up anything that’s mine. With my arms full of my belongings, I walk back into the living room.

  “What the hell, Riley? Look at my face, just look at it,” he shouts, spinning toward me.

  The small red mark on his forehead makes me wish I’d hit him with something harder. “Fuck you; you fucking piece of shit. You aren’t famous. You only have five thousand followers on Instagram and your abs look flabby,” I scream, as I throw open his front door and stomp through it, leaving Greg—my now asshole-ex-boyfriend—behind.

  One month later

  I see the step, honestly, I do. It’s just that my brain forgot to tell my legs and before I can process what’s happening, I’m falling. My purse drops from my shoulder, hitting me in the hip, and I hit the floor with a thud, my head bouncing off the carpet and slamming my glasses into my face.

  Rolling onto my back, I stare up at the ceiling and exhale a slow, frustrated breath. Why am I so bloody clumsy? My siblings are graceful and poised and yet I literally stumble my way through life, tripping over my own feet and any obstacle that happens to be in my way.

  Greg used to hate that I was always falling. He thought it made him look bad when we were out together. Fuck Greg.

  Sitting up slowly, I shake the dazed and confused feeling from my head, push my glasses back into position and rub at my shoulder. Great, another bruise I’ll have to explain to my parents the next time we Skype. Won’t it be great to see the disappointment on their faces when I tell them I fell over AGAIN.

  My parents are wonderful people. They raised two successful sons and when they flew the nest, they started all over again by adopting me and my sisters. People have gained sainthood for less than my mom and dad have done for this world. But as brilliant as they are, I still can’t help but notice the quiet sighs and chagrin on their faces when they look at me.

  My biological parents created me and my sisters on their Prom night at the Holiday Inn, with the help of two six packs and some spiked punch. By the time my birth mom reali
zed she was pregnant and told her family, she was too far gone to be able to rectify the problem. So me, Anna, and Tiffany were born two minutes apart at the Sacred Heart hospital in Pensacola, Florida.

  From what I’m told, she took one look at us and then informed the nurse that she wanted to go home but didn’t plan on taking us with her. I suppose as babies, it should have been easy to find a family to adopt us, but triplets are more than most normal families can cope with and so we were almost two before Mom and Dad found us and took us home.

  I had an idyllic childhood from then on. My parents are reasonably wealthy and we had everything we needed to make us well-rounded, and successful members of society. My two big brothers embraced the addition of three baby sisters wholeheartedly and so we were one big happy family.

  After high school, Anna went to Princeton, and now she’s at med school training to be a doctor. Tiffany married her high school sweetheart at eighteen and right now she’s pregnant with baby number two; and me, well I went to UCLA.

  I wouldn’t exactly describe myself as the black sheep of the family, but I’m definitely the odd one out. Anna was born first. She’s smart, focused, and so poised that I’m in awe of her. If I didn’t love her so much, I’d kind of hate her. Tiffany came next. Cheerful and always happy, she’s the most amazing mom and she loves being a homemaker with her babies. I was the last to be born and honestly, I think I got what was left. The three of us are identical in looks: we all have brown hair and blue eyes, we’re all slim and tall. Unless you know us, it’s impossible to tell us apart. But where my sisters got the grace and smarts, I got a passable intelligence, a love of computer games and all things geeky, and an inability to stay upright.

  I know my parents love me just as much as my siblings, but I can’t help but notice how much they wish I was a little more like my sisters. I’m a nerd. After studying computer programming at school, I now work as a freelance game designer, writing code for first-person shooter games. I’m not saving lives, or repopulating the world. I’m creating the games that my mom describes as the reason why the youth of today are all turning into psychopaths and terrorists.

  “Are you okay?” A voice asks from behind me.

  Pulled from my inner diatribe, I turn and look toward the voice. An older man is leaning toward me, his brow furrowed with concern.

  “I’m fine,” I say, pushing myself up from the floor and making my way back to my feet. Smoothing down my shirt and jeans, I smile at him. “I was just cursing my shoddy DNA.”

  The man chuckles, his eyes looking me up and down a little too thoroughly.

  Eww.

  “I should get going; there are so many more things for me to fall over before I get home,” I say, picking my purse up and slinging it back over my shoulder.

  “I could always give you a ride?” the guy offers, licking his lips in what I’m guessing he must think is a flirtatious gesture, but actually just looks a little creepy.

  “I’m good, but thanks for the offer.” I say, before turning and rushing away. Glancing over my shoulder, I check that he’s not following me. He’s not, but I swear his eyes are on my ass.

  Pushing open the building’s door, I emerge into the bright sunshine and shield my eyes, wishing I’d remembered to bring my sunglasses with me. The apartment I share with my roommate Maddie is only a few blocks away, but after having just fallen on my ass once, the walk feels like a risk I can’t be bothered to take. Stepping to the edge of the curb, I spot a cab and hail it, then wait for it to pull up to the sidewalk, before I open the door and slide inside.

  I give him my address and sit back, rubbing at my shoulder again. My cell buzzes, letting me know I’ve had a new email and I pull it from my purse and click into the email app. There are several new emails and the first is from the client I just finished a project with, thanking me for the work I’d done and asking me to pencil in the start of a new project in six months time. I type out a quick reply asking them to let me know the exact start date and telling them I’d be happy to work with them again if it didn’t clash with something already in my schedule.

  The second is from my sister Anna. She’s so busy at med school that we rarely get a chance to talk except for email. I scan her words, smiling at the angry diatribe about her hatred of her current instructor and how in love she is with the girl who just moved in next door to her. I love my sister. When she told us that she was a lesbian, I think I was the only one who wasn’t surprised. I’d watched her stare longingly at Michelle Marshall from afar for years. My parents might have been a little shocked, but they rolled with the punches and my mom started introducing her to her friends’ daughters instead of their sons. I wish my parents were a little more easygoing with me. They made no effort to disguise their dislike of Greg, although now I suppose I should probably have paid more heed to their opinions. They were right. Greg was a dick.

  The cab pulls up to my building before I get a chance to type out a reply, so I pay the driver and haul me and my purse up the three flights of stairs to my apartment. When I open my door, the sound of arguing pulses from Maddie’s bedroom. My roommate is in a perpetual state of annoyance with everyone at the moment. If she’s not arguing with her boyfriend, it’s her family, or her work colleagues, or her agent. She’s an actress and right now she’s rehearsing for a play where she plays, you guessed it, the perpetually angry daughter of a viscount, or something along those lines. I’ve lived with her for two years now, so I’m used to her method acting drama, but this is most definitely the worst role she’s immersed herself in.

  Dropping my purse onto the kitchen counter, I grab a bottle of water from the refrigerator, a banana from the fruit bowl, and head for the relative safety of my room. When I applied to rent the spare room, she told me about her acting prep and we agreed on the rule that my room was a drama-free zone and she had to drop the role and be her normal self if she wanted to speak to me. I think that rule is the only reason I’ve been able to put up with her for this long. If Greg wasn’t so much of an asshole, we could have been living together, and I wouldn’t have to hide in my room to get away from Maddie’s antics. I could sit on my couch or hang out in my kitchen. But instead, I’m single, freshly tested for STD’s, and stuck with an angry method actor.

  Flopping down onto my bed, I take a drink of my water and pull my cell out of my pocket, clicking into my sister’s email and typing out a reply.

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Subject: Have you spoken to her yet????

  Hey, Big Sis,

  I’m sorry your new instructor is a douchebag. How long is this course? Remind me, is this part of your rotation? You know I’m terrible at keeping up with where you are, (this wouldn’t happen if you weren’t such a smarty pants who had to go off to med school to save people and blah blah blah).

  So the new neighbor… Is she hot? Does she know you exist?? Have you even actually spoken to her? Or is this infatuation from afar?

  Have you heard from Tiff recently? Do we have to organize another baby shower? Chad texted me the other day to say that she was doing okay and that her ankles haven’t swelled yet. When I talked to her, Tilly started screaming in the background, so all I got was that she and the baby were fine, then she had to go.

  My triplet vibes are telling me that she’s exhausted, because the other day I had to take a nap in the middle of the day and I figure that must have been her, not you. I’m gonna sic mom on her, but maybe you could call her and do your doctor thing to make her rest up or something before I have to call the parentals?

  I have news… Greg and I broke up. Don’t gloat, I know you hated him, but I liked him. Turns out you were right; he’s an asshole and I just wasted the last year-and-a-half of my life on him.

  I’m between contracts at the minute. I just finished up that troll hunter game I was telling you about and I don’t start that WW1 game for another two months. I planned to take some time off, but Maddie
is in full-blown method actress mode and the angry bitch she’s encapsulating is driving me mad.

  If you have any free time, I might come visit for a couple of days, so let me know what your schedule is like.

  Love you sis.

  Riley xo

  Clicking send, I go back to my Inbox and delete all of the random spam mail that ends up in there no matter how many times I click unsubscribe. Then I click into the email from my recruiter friend Pierre, who basically keeps my diary busy and my bank account full, and has done since he helped me find some of my first game coding projects when I was just starting out.

  I scan the email. It’s a contract for a small, up-and-coming game company. They want me to act on a consultant basis to review what they have so far and oversee their current coders to assess how they’re doing. It’s just for a couple of months and the money is ridiculous. The only downside is that they want me to work out of their offices. Being freelance allows me to work remotely, so I can stay in my pajamas all day, or work from the co-op office downtown if I want some human company.

  Normally I wouldn’t even consider this job. I worked for a big developer when I left school, but I hated it and that’s what prompted the move to freelance. The corporate office environment isn’t conducive with my best work; but having a consultant role would look good on my resume and the figure they’re offering for a couple of months work is astronomical.

  I reply to Pierre, telling him about the company I just finished up with wanting me on their next project and asking for the location of the consultant role. If it’s in Alaska or something it’s a definite no, but it could be in Hawaii or somewhere tropical and that would be awesome. A change of scenery and some sun would do wonders for my post-break-up melee.

  Dropping my cell to my bed, I change into my fleece pajama pants and a huge t-shirt I stole from an old boyfriend years ago, and flick on my T.V. My obsession with superhero shows has hit an all-time high since I got Netflix, and right now I’m bingeing an amazing show about dysfunctional superheroes.