Temptress : a Single Dad Small Town

Romance (Whiskey Dolls Book 5)

Jessica Prince
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TEMPTRESS
 WHISKEY DOLLS

A SMALL TOWN, SINGLE FATHER ROMANCE

JESSICA PRINCE
 Copyright © 2023 by Jessica Prince
www.authorjessicaprince.com

Published by Jessica Prince Books LLC

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and
retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
 C O NT E NT S

Discover Other Books by Jessica

About Temptress

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
Epilogue

Check Out More from the Whiskey Dolls

Discover Other Books by Jessica
About Jessica
D I S C OV E R OT H E R B O O K S B Y J E S S I C A

WHITECAP SERIES
Crossing the Line
My Perfect Enemy

WHISKEY DOLLS SERIES

Bombshell
Knockout
Stunner
Seductress
Temptress

HOPE VALLEY SERIES:

Out of My League
Come Back Home Again
The Best of Me
Wrong Side of the Tracks
Stay With Me
Out of the Darkness
The Second Time Around
Waiting for Forever
Love to Hate You
Playing for Keeps
When You Least Expect It
Never for Him

REDEMPTION SERIES
Bad Alibi
Crazy Beautiful
Bittersweet
Guilty Pleasure
Wallflower
Blurred Line
 Slow Burn
Favorite Mistake

THE PICKING UP THE PIECES SERIES:

Picking up the Pieces
Rising from the Ashes
Pushing the Boundaries
Worth the Wait

THE COLORS NOVELS:

Scattered Colors
Shrinking Violet
Love Hate Relationship
Wildflower

THE LOCKLAINE BOYS (a LOVE HATE RELATIONSHIP spinoff):

Fire & Ice
Opposites Attract
Almost Perfect

THE PEMBROOKE SERIES (a WILDFLOWER spinoff):

Sweet Sunshine
Coming Full Circle
A Broken Soul

CIVIL CORRUPTION SERIES

Corrupt
Defile
Consume
Ravage

GIRL TALK SERIES:

Seducing Lola
Tempting Sophia
Enticing Daphne
Charming Fiona

STANDALONE TITLES:
One Knight Stand
Chance Encounters
Nightmares from Within

DEADLY LOVE SERIES:

Destructive
Addictive
 ABOUT TEMPTRESS

Who knew the grumpy single dad next door would turn out to be The One?

As Sloane Chambers stood at her window and creeped on the new guy moving in next door, she was
immediately drawn to the tattoos, muscles, and the way his jeans hugged his perfect . . . frame. But
when she caught him hacking up her rose bushes with a chain saw, the battle was on.

For Silas Bridger, moving to a new town and starting a new job was his chance for a fresh start. He’d
already failed at being a husband, but he was determined to make things right with his teenage
daughter and be the father she deserved. Which meant there was no room in his life for complications.
Especially in the form of his gorgeous, sassy next-door neighbor.

When the attraction to Sloane becomes too intense to ignore, that line he kept firmly drawn is crossed.
But there is no way he’ll let a handful of passionate, earth-shaking encounters turn into something
more. He’s done with the dreaded L-O-V-E, or at least that’s what he tells himself. Because Sloane is
quickly becoming the kind of complication he may not survive.
1
 SLOANE

M y new neighbor was moving in today. The moving truck had shown up earlier, blocking half
of my driveway, but I didn’t really mind. It wasn’t like I was going anywhere. They’d been
unloading for a little over an hour, but so far, I hadn’t seen any sign of the person who would be
replacing the elderly woman who’d lived there before, Lucille Kleiner.
I loved Lucille. She had lived next to me since I bought my house a few years back. She was a
total badass. An old woman knocking on the door of ninety who had lived an extremely colorful life
and loved to share stories with me when I visited once a week for Martini Hour. She’d still had a ton
of get-up-and-go for a woman her age and had been in impeccable shape, but the fact of the matter
was, she’d needed help when it came to some things, and an assisted living facility was just easier.
I visited her regularly, so I knew firsthand that her new place was posh. It was more like a five-
star resort for seniors in the foothills of small-town Virginia than a nursing home, and I wouldn’t have
been surprised in the slightest if the place housed more than a few celebrities who wanted peace and
quiet at that time in their lives.
I’d been sad when she informed me she was moving, but luckily, she was still close enough I
could visit once a week for martinis and gossip. It had been a joy to live next to Lucille these past
few years, so I could only hope that the people replacing her were half as nice.
I hadn’t been home any of the times they’d come to look at the house before and after the offer was
made, and Lucille didn’t know anything about them beyond the fact they’d offered her asking price
without trying to haggle over things such as repainting and other cosmetic touches, which was
surprising. Lucille decorated how she lived, bold and loud. Each room of her house was painted a
different eclectic color. There were no grays or beiges or neutral tones to be found, and I couldn’t
image it working for anyone other than Lucille.
Apparently, they were eager to get moved in, something about the start of the school year coming
up. I was excited to have a family next door and was looking forward to meeting them.
For the fifth time that morning, I peeked through the slats in my blinds, hoping to get a view of the
new owners, when a large, black SUV with heavily tinted windows pulled into the driveway and
came to a stop.
My lips pulled into a smile of anticipation as the passenger door was thrown open and a girl who
I’d gauge to be in her early teens climbed out. She had long, straight hair that hung past her shoulders,
the strands streaked with different shades from deep caramel to the palest blonde that you could tell
was natural, a gift from the sun. She was dressed in cut-off shorts and a cropped tee that showed a
figure that hadn’t quite matured yet. Our houses were close enough that I could make out her features
well enough to see the girl was destined to be a looker. Even with the unhappy, pinched scowl
marring her pretty face.
I was able to see the driver of that big SUV once he rounded the hood and Oh. My. Sweet. Lord.
Above. My new neighbor was gorgeous. Tattoos of varying designs covered his arms starting at his
wrist, up defined forearms corded with thick veins, and beyond rounded biceps before disappearing
beneath his gray T-shirt that fit him well enough to show off a broad chest and shoulders. Perfectly
worn jeans hugged tree-trunk thighs and a lean waist.
“Holy momma,” I breathed as I leaned close enough to fog the glass with my breath. I pulled back
and wiped it clear with the side of my fist and studied the man as closely as the distance between our
houses would allow.
His dark hair was clipped short on the sides, only an inch or so longer up top, a style designed for
easy maintenance, but one that worked very well on him. I couldn’t see his eyes due to the mirrored
sunglasses, but I could tell he had sharp features and a strong, square jaw. And he looked equally as
unhappy as the girl when the two of them met at the front of the SUV.
I could just make out his mouth moving as he said something to the girl, and from her body
language, it looked like whatever it was only made her mood worse. With her back to me now, I
couldn’t see her face to gauge her reaction, but she crossed her arms over her chest, cocked a hip, and
threw one leg out. It was the classic pissed-chick stance.
She must have said something in return, because a moment later, the guy’s chest rose and fell on
what looked like a huff before he braced his hands on his trim hips and dropped his head forward,
giving it a shake.
The two of them were incredibly entertaining to watch. If my best friend, Asher, had been there
just then, the two of us would have been imitating their voices and trying to make up what we thought
they were saying.
Speaking of Asher, my cellphone started to ring. I pulled it out of my back pocket and looked
down to see her name dancing across the screen.
I quickly swiped and brought the phone to my ear so I could get back to my peeping. “Hey. What’s
up?”
“The new neighbors arrive yet?”
“Do you have ESP or something? I’m literally watching them this very second, and omigod, Ash!
You should see this dude. He’s basically the stuff of every woman’s wet dream.”
She whistled through the line. “Snap pics. I want to see.”
“Hold on.” Ever the loyal friend, I held my phone up and zoomed in, then snapped pic after pic
before shooting them off in a text. “Incoming.”
I went back to my stalking as I waited for her to open her text. Less than a minute later, she was
back. “Damn, Sloane! You weren’t lying. That guy is hot enough to fry an egg on.”
I heard her boyfriend in the background say, “You know I’m standing right here, right?” he
deadpanned. “Just want to make sure I didn’t become invisible in the past thirty seconds.”
“Ah, honey. You know there’s nothing for you to worry about. I’ve been yours since you rescued
my drunk ass from that biker bar the day I ran out on my wedding.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. My bestie’s boyfriend wasn’t lacking when it came to looks either. And
like my new neighbor, he too was covered in tattoos. Asher and I had that in common. We were both
drawn to a man with ink. You wouldn’t have guessed given her ex-fiancé had been the picture of
country club preppy. Fortunately, they jilted one another—long story—on their wedding day, opening
the door for Asher to find her actual soul mate in the form of a sexy tattooed veterinarian.
I heard the sound of kissing through the line for a few seconds before Asher’s attention returned to
me. “Who’s the girl in the picture?”
“I think that’s his daughter,” I answered. “Her back is to me now, but when she first got out, I
could see her face and she looks young.”
“You see a wife or mom anywhere?”
My gaze occasionally darted back to the SUV to see if anyone else emerged, but it looked like it
was only the two of them, and they appeared to still be arguing.
“Not that I can tell.” I leaned in so close I practically smushed my face against the glass. “I can’t
tell if he’s wearing a ring from this distance.”
“Then you know what you need to do, right? You need to go over there and introduce yourself to
your sexy new neighbor. Then you’ll at least be able to spot whether or not there’s a ring.”
She was right. “I will. But they only just arrived, and it looks like the dad and daughter are
arguing. I think I’ll give it a bit so I don’t interrupt anything.”
“All right, babe. Keep me posted.”
I promised her I would and clicked off just as the girl slammed her arms down at her sides,
locking her elbows and clenching her fists as she threw her head back. I could almost hear what she
would likely be saying with that posture. It was probably along the lines of what I’d said to my own
father a million times growing up. “God, Dad!”
A moment later, she stormed into the house. The man stayed behind, either oblivious or uncaring
of the movers passing back and forth, witness to whatever had just gone down.
His expression and the way his shoulders slumped as he pinched the bridge of his nose was
exactly how my own father would react to me storming off after the earlier mentioned, “God, Dad!” It
was the look of every father of a teenaged daughter since the beginning of time.
Instead of following her into the house, he leaned back against the front bumper of his SUV and
crossed his thick arms over his equally thick chest and watched as the movers worked.
I decided it was the perfect time to go over and introduce myself to my new neighbor. I grabbed a
bottle of wine from the rack on my kitchen island and headed for the door.
Making a pit stop in the powder room off the kitchen, I gave myself a once over in the mirror.
There wasn’t anything special about my thin cotton tee and pale gray joggers, but the top showed a
hint of cleavage, and the pants made my behind look good. Well, the pants and the fact that my job as a
dancer for the popular burlesque club, Whiskey Dolls, kept me in peak shape.
It was my day off, so I was in my comfy clothes with no makeup, but my new skin care regimen
was giving my complexion a nice glow, and my hair was still looking good after my trip earlier that
week to Pure Elegance, the best salon in the county. I lived one town over from Hope Valley, but the
drive was worth it to have Nona work her magic. She’d chopped five inches off my light chestnut hair
so it rested right at my shoulders. Without the added weight, I had volume for days, and was really
pleased with how it still had that shine that seemed to only be accomplished in a professional salon.
I gave my locks one last quick fluff, then headed into the sunny day. I moved through the strip of
lush green grass between our houses, letting my right hand gently crest over one of the bright pink
roses on the bushes that I’d planted on the property line a couple years back. I’d always loved
gardening and Lucille had always been a fan of beautiful flowers, so I’d planted the roses for both of
us. I’d been tending and caring for those bushes, and now they stood tall, thick, and full of lush green
leaves, the stems speckled liberally with bright, happy pink flowers.
My own yard was filled with them as well, along with a ton of other plants and flowers.
“Hi,” I called out as I crossed over onto his property. A moment later, my bright yellow flip flops
slapped against the concrete of his driveway. I lifted my hand in a wave. “I’m your new neighbor,” I
told the man, pointing over my shoulder at my house. “I just wanted to stop by and introduce myself,
welcome you to the neighborhood.” I held out my free hand for a shake. “I’m Sloane Chambers.”
The man didn’t straighten from his position, still leaning against the front of the SUV, and he didn’t
uncross his arms from his chest, which, now that I was up close, I could tell was just as cut as the rest
of him. I was willing to bet he was sporting a six-pack at the very least. I could also see that the ring
finger of his left hand was bare, not even a hint of a tan line indicating he’d taken one off recently.
That finger had been bare for some time.
Asher would be happy to hear that.
He swiveled his head toward me, keeping those mirrored shades in place, and I couldn’t shake
the feeling he was giving me a once over, but it felt more like being under a microscope than a look of
interest. I was used to men looking at me the second way.
Sometimes I enjoyed it when I was in the mood for a little fun flirtation, and sometimes it grated,
but such was life, right? I wasn’t above admitting I knew how to attract a man. I had skills—and a
vagina, which basically meant I was magical—and if a man caught my eye, I’d use those skills to reel
him in. And I would have been lying if I said I wasn’t throwing a bit of that magic out just then to see
how my sexy new neighbor would react.
But judging by this guy’s flattened lips and the crinkle I could see forming between his brows, he
was unaffected.
His head dipped down as though he were looking at my offered hand, but he didn’t bother taking
it. “Silas Bridger,” he grunted in a deep baritone that held a hint of rasp, like he’d been a lifelong
smoker.
I cleared my throat, suddenly feeling a bit awkward. “Well, um, it’s nice to meet you, Silas. I saw
a very pretty young woman go inside. I take it that’s your daughter?” He answered by cocking a single
brow high on his forehead but otherwise remained mute. “I’d love to give you and your daughter and
wife an official welcome by making a home cooked meal for you guys.”
“Don’t got a wife, and no thanks.”
Well that answered one question. But also, ouch. Was this dude a robot or something?
Remembering the bottle of wine I gripped in my hand, I extended it out to him. “This is for you. A
housewarming gift. Hope you like red.”
He did that head dip thing again, looking at the bottle from behind those sunglasses. Finally, he
pushed off the SUV, but instead of turning to face me full-on, he started in the direction of the front
door.
“Don’t drink wine,” he called without a backward glance. “Got shit to do.” Then he was gone.
And I was left wondering what the hell just happened.
2
 SILAS

T he pounding in my head certainly wasn’t improved by stepping out of the sunlight into my
new home. Somehow, in the time between my last walk-through right before closing and
now, I’d forgotten the hideous paint job in pretty much every single room of the house.
The red living room walls reminded me of the elevator scene in The Shining. The dining room
was orange—and not like the pale color of sherbet either, but bright, eye-searing, stab-you-in-the-
temple orange. The kitchen was a neon yellow that reminded me of puke. And those were the common
areas. The bedrooms were worse. I didn’t want to know the number of peacocks that had to have been
plucked to make the teal color of the master bedroom. The room I’d designated as my daughter’s—
simply because it was the farthest from mine, and I knew that would make the emo-pod creature that
had eaten my lovely, sweet daughter happy—was the least offensive room in the house in a deep
forest green. My soon-to-be-study was fucking fuchsia, for Christ’s sake, and the last bedroom was
royal blue.
It was a goddamn nightmare, something you’d expect to see in a Candy Land fever dream, and it
was going to take me forever to prime and paint it all.
I was sure there were better houses out there, in fact, I was damn near certain of it. But after too
many months in a cramped apartment, I’d wanted the square footage, and this was the only place that
provided that while being close enough to my new job and in the school district Kim and I had agreed
on for Darcy. Plus, research had shown that the neighborhood was quiet, safe, and family friendly.
Otherwise known as boring, which was perfect.
I was due to have a little more boring in my life, what with my daughter officially full of raging
teen hormones and attitude that had her going from sweet and affectionate to the goddamn Hulk in two
point five seconds.
The sound of angry teen girl feet stomping down the stairs caught my attention, and I looked up
just as Darcy turned on the landing and stopped to glare down at me.
“So? What do you think, baby girl?” I asked, damn well knowing the answer already.
“It’s terrible!” she exclaimed, throwing her arms wide before letting them fall and slap against
her sides. “I mean, it looks like we just moved into some kind of demented carnival fun house or
something,” she crowed, throwing a hand out toward the wall. “I can’t believe you made me move
here. It sucks! I miss my friends!”
With that declaration, she turned on her heel and stomped back up the way she’d just come down.
A second later her bedroom door slammed shut.
I tried to do what my ex-wife Kim had suggested, inhaling deeply and counting to ten before
letting the breath out in the hopes of keeping calm. If there was anyone on the planet who knew what I
was going through, it was Darcy’s mom. Only, she’d had to deal with it for so much longer, and now
that I knew what she’d suffered through all those years, I was honestly considering putting the woman
up for sainthood.
My cellphone rang, and I let my breath out on a huff, feeling anything but calm as I pulled the
phone from my back pocket.
As if my thoughts of her had conjured her up, Kim’s name flashed across the screen. Dodging
boxes and avoiding the moving team still unloading my and Darcy’s lives into our new home, I
swiped to answer the call and brought the phone to my ear.
“It’s so bizarre you’re calling right now.” I grabbed the handle on the back door and twisted it
open, stepping out onto the back porch for a little privacy. “I was just about to call you. Remind me,
what do I do if Darcy accidentally gives herself alcohol poisoning? Do I pump her stomach here, or
do they handle that at the hospital?”
“Very funny, asshole.”
I chuckled at her put-out tone. “That’s what you get for being a transatlantic helicopter parent.”
Kim huffed indignantly, and I could picture her rolling her eyes. “I’m not that bad.” A crack of
laughter burst past my lips, followed by her heavy gust of breath. “Fine, maybe I am that bad. But can
you blame me?” Her tone changed, sadness infusing her words. “I’ve never been away from her for
any amount of time. I just . . . I miss her.”
I felt a squeeze in my chest. “I know, sweetheart.”
The two of us might not have worked as husband and wife any longer, but we’d both agreed that
was no reason for there to be animosity between us. We weren’t in love with each other anymore, but
that didn’t mean love wasn’t there. It just lacked the romance required to make a marriage work. We
still cared about each other, and we were determined to make this co-parenting gig our bitch. The
truth was, we were better off as friends, anyway, and as friends, we’d been able to develop a new
level of respect for one another.
I’d met Kim right before going into the Army. I’d come back from my first tour and proposed right
then and there. I’d gotten her pregnant between deployments. Then I became a Ranger, and because of
my job, I’d missed nearly every major milestone in our marriage and my daughter’s life. I’d been on
an op in the middle of the fucking desert when Darcy was born. Crouched on a rooftop in Kandahar in
the dark of night, watching my target through night-vision binoculars on my wedding anniversary.
There were recitals and plays and sicknesses I’d missed, time I was never going to be able to get
back.
I could admit I wasn’t the best husband or father. I’d made service to my country a priority above
all else, including my family, yet, every time I came home, they’d both greeted me with open arms.
My absence hadn’t been the cause of the divorce, in fact, it was the opposite.
After an explosion embedded a piece of shrapnel in my back too close to my spine for the doctors
to risk going in to pull it out, I’d been informed I was no longer fit for duty. It was ironic, really. The
docs left it in to keep me safe, and the Army didn’t want me anymore because it was in there.
It was after I’d been home for a year, struggling to re-acclimate myself to civilian life after
thinking the service was it for me, that Kim realized she’d liked it better when I was gone than when I
was home. Our marriage had worked for so many years because I was never around. The sad fact
was, once I got home, it became obvious that neither one of us knew the other at all.
The whole process of separating our lives from one another had been civil. I gave her the house
since it had been her and Darcy’s home more than it was ever mine, moving myself into a shitty two-
bedroom apartment until I could find something more permanent. I’d gotten a call from a former
Ranger buddy of mine, a guy by the name of Marco Castillo. He’d gotten out earlier than I had, but
we’d stayed in touch. He knew all about the struggle of trying to live the civilian life after serving for
so long, so when he heard about a job that matched my skill set better than the miserable nine-to-five
I’d been trapped in for a year and a half, he'd put in a call.
I’d talked it over with Kim since the new gig would take me an hour or so outside the city we’d
been living in, but she knew how much I hated the place I’d been working, so she pushed for me to
take it, to do something that made me happy. It was what she’d always done.
However, after I accepted the position, she had been offered a promotion to her dream job. The
problem was, it required she be out of the country for a year, setting up a branch of the company in
London. She’d dreamed her whole life of traveling but had given that up so she could carry all the
weight on the home front while I spent most of my time overseas, living my own dream.
It was her turn now, we both knew that.
That was why this goddamn eyesore of a house had been an impulse purchase. In order for Kim to
travel to London, we’d agreed that Darcy would live with me. That meant I needed somewhere
permanent for us to live so she’d feel settled. And that needed to happen before the start of the new
school year.
Needless to say, none of these decisions had made my daughter happy.
“I don’t think it comes as much of a surprise that I was a pretty shitty husband, doll face.”
Kim snorted through the line. “You weren’t that bad,” she said, and I could hear the smile in her
voice.
“You’re being kind. Anyway, you spent so many years letting me pursue what made me whole.
Now’s your time, Kim. Do this for you, yeah? Christ knows you’ve earned this.”
She sniffled through the line. “I know, but mom guilt is a very real thing. I feel like—like I’m
abandoning her.”
I wasn’t sure what I’d done right in a past life that I’d been lucky enough to make a child with a
woman as amazing as this one, but I knew how good I had it in the co-parenting game. I’d heard
horror stories. I counted my blessings that things weren’t like that for us. “Oh, honey. That couldn’t be
further from the truth, and the rational part of you knows that. It’s only one year, not a dozen of them;
it’ll fly by before you know it. If the ache for home gets too bad, I’ll put you on a plane for an
extended weekend myself. But just know, I’ll be sending your ass back too.”
She laughed, sounding a little lighter.
“For fuck’s sake, Kim. This is your time to be a little selfish, yeah? Find some British prick—but
one with good teeth—and let him fuck you until you can’t walk. Enjoy yourself.”
“You know the whole bad teeth thing is only a stupid stereotype, right?”
“Don’t give a fuck, doll. Just have fun. Live life. You have my word that I’ll keep our daughter
alive until you get back.”
“Thanks, Si,” she said softly. “Speaking of . . . how is she?”
I heaved out a sigh. “You mean besides sullen, grumpy, and pissed at the world?”
“Yeah, all that. Actually, now that I think of it, maybe I’m dodging a bullet by missing out on the
teen angst and drama for a while.”
I felt my lips curve into a smile. She wasn’t wrong about that. “Well, she hates me, she hates the
house, she hates the town and the neighborhood—”
“So what you’re telling me is she’s a normal, hormonal teenage girl.”
My chin jerked back. “Jesus Christ. Are you telling me this shit is what you all go through?”
“Believe me, Silas, being female is drawing the short straw in so many ways. Such as the fact that
the world hasn’t exploded into nothingness because we exist, yet you assholes with penises refuse to
give us the credit we’re due.”
“True words, doll. True words.”
“And she doesn’t hate you,” she said reassuringly. “She loves you like crazy. She’s going through
a lot right now. Her world’s basically been turned on its head. Once she finds her footing again, her
moods will level out.”
I hoped so, because every time she looked at me like I destroyed her life, I felt like someone was
shoving a goddamn fire poker through my chest. “I’m going to hold you to that.”
She let out a breath. “You do that. And thanks, Silas. I feel better after our talk.”
“I’m glad, honey.”
“So, how’s the move going? You met any of your neighbors yet?”
I thought back to the woman who lived right beside me, the total fucking smoke show, and felt my
jaw getting tight. That hadn’t been expected, that was for goddamn sure. It wasn’t often I got caught
off-guard, but seeing her flouncing across my driveway, a body built for sin and a smile that would
make most men fall to their knees, I’d been stunned speechless for a moment—or several moments.
Then I caught her scoping out my left hand, specifically, my ring finger. I saw the flair of interest
in her honey-brown eyes and the tip of her tongue peeked out to run across her bottom lip enticingly
as she looked me up and down.
She was good, I’d give her that. She knew how to snap her hips side to side enticingly as she
walked, how to bat those eyelashes and smile coyly. One look at her pouty bottom lip and I knew
without a doubt that she was a woman who was used to getting what she wanted, and she enjoyed the
hell out of playing games in order to get it. She probably led men around by their dicks on a regular
basis.
But I wasn’t that guy. I didn’t have the time or inclination for those kinds of manipulations. I had a
kid who hated the very air I breathed to focus on. The last thing I needed was the complication of this
woman, my neighbor, making me consider getting my dick wet for the first time in too damn long.
I’d pawned off the responsibility of raising Darcy on Kim for too long. I was past due to step up
to the plate, and there was absolutely no room for distractions. And that was exactly what Sloane
Chambers was: a distraction on mile-high legs with a killer rack and an ass that didn’t fucking quit.
For some reason, thinking about my new neighbor made me incomprehensibly grouchy. Not that I
wasn’t already a grumpy bastard most of the time anyway. Just ask my daughter. But I didn’t
understand my reaction to the woman I didn’t know from Adam, so I decided right then and there it
was probably for the best to avoid her at all costs.
“Nah, nothing so far.” I didn’t know why the hell I’d lied, and I didn’t care to think too hard on it,
not with a disaster of a house and a miserable daughter to deal with.
Best to push it and the woman out of my mind.
“Okay, well I’ll let you go, I’m sure you’ve got a lot to do. And I promise to try and be less of a
helicopter from now on.”
“I’ll do you a favor and not hold you to that.”
She pushed out a snort. “Thanks for that. Don’t let Darcy forget about our Zoom call later this
week. I’m missing her face desperately, even if all she’s using it for lately is to frown.”
“I’ll remind her. And I’ll take some pics, text them to you later.”
“Okay, Si. Be safe and be happy. Talk soon.”
I could handle the safe part, but it was the happy I wasn’t so sure about. My happiness was tied
directly to the girl inside. Her heart beat in time with my own, so as long as she was unhappy, so was
I.
I just hoped I could get through to her.
3
 SILAS

L owering the paint roller into the tray of primer, I wiped the sweat off my forehead with the
back of my hand and took a step back to survey my handy work.
It looked like shit.
Fortunately, it was just the primer, so I didn’t really care, but it was more than a little concerning
that the red was still showing through. I could only hope it wouldn’t bleed through the nice, pale gray
I’d gotten to paint the whole house with.
“Hey, Darce,” I called up the stairs. I waited twenty seconds for an acknowledgement that didn’t
come. “Darcy!” I hollered.
I heard the creak of her bedroom door opening, followed by a voice full of attitude. “God, what?”
It had been like this for the past three days. Once the movers finished and took off, Darcy had
closed herself up in her bedroom, only coming out when I all but forced her. Even then, she hardly
talked to me, and once I released her from the torture of my company, it was right back to her room,
like I didn’t exist.
Would it have been nice to have a little help painting these god-awful walls? Yeah. But I was
picking my battles, and I’d chosen to let this one slide. Plus, I would have been lying if I said it
wasn’t a little nice to have a reprieve from the constant attitude.
I only had a few more days until I started my new job, and I wanted to get as much of this done as
possible before that time. I wanted to make this as close to a home as possible before my new job
took me away from Darcy. She’d start school the following week, and I wanted her to feel settled
before that time came. It was the least I could do for her after uprooting her entire life. I figured if I
could at least get the main living spaces and her bedroom finished, she’d stop hating the new house so
damn much.
Personally, I could live with a bedroom the color of gangrene and an office that looked like a
unicorn shit all over the place. I wanted to get this done for her.
“Come take a look at this.”
She let out an exaggerated, “Ugh!” that was followed by her stomping down the hall and stairs.
She stopped at the landing, arms crossed over her chest, foot tapping indignantly, like she was in the
middle of something life-alteringly important. “What?”
I let out a huff of my own, quickly reaching the end of my rope. “Can you come all the way down,
please?”
She rolled her eyes so hard, she looked like something out of a scary movie. I half expected her
head to start spinning in a circle. Instead, she stomped down to the base of the stairs and resumed her
closed-off, pissy stance. “All right. I’m down here. What’s so important?”
 Keep your cool. Keep your cool. Keep your cool, I chanted inside my head. My relationship with
my daughter was tenuous, to say the least, and most of that was my fault. She’d spent the first thirteen
years of her life hardly knowing me, then all of a sudden, I was just there. I’d seen it in her face every
single day since having been discharged, she was still unsure how to act, or what to say. Unsure of me
in general.
And I couldn’t blame her one damn bit.
To her, this had to feel like she was living with a stranger, so as often as she made me want to
scream or pull my goddamn hair out, I forced myself to keep calm. I couldn’t image what this whole
upheaval had been like for her. I was sure it was scary, especially with the one constant in her life
now four thousand miles away.
It broke my fucking heart every time she looked at me with contempt or wariness. I kept reminding
myself to be patient, that this would take time, but I would eventually guide us there. I’d earn her trust
one of these days. I hoped my heart could survive the wait.
I placed my hands on my hips and looked around at the primed living room, hallway, and
stairwell—everywhere that had been painted blood-spurt red. “So? What do you think?”
Darcy’s eyes rose higher on her forehead. “What do I think of what?”
I shot her a bland look. “You’re kidding, right? I know it still looks like shit, but even with just
one coat of primer, it’s a serious improvement from what was here, don’t you think?”
She scrunched her nose as she took everything in before saying hesitantly, “Dad, I don’t think you
did a very good job. Is it supposed to be so . . . streaky?”
I bugged my eyes out at her, feigning offense. “Are you serious? This is a job on par with the
professionals. I can’t believe you’d say that.”
The giggle that wrenched itself free from her lips was a healing balm for my soul. The sound was
so beautiful, so light and happy, that I nearly fell to my goddamn knees. Pure music to my ears. “No
offense, Dad, but I don’t think there’s a professional painter out there who would hire you, not in a
million years.”
I sucked in a dramatic gasp and placed a hand to my chest. “You take that back right now.”
She giggled again, shaking her head and slowly moving backward as I creeped in her direction. “I
can’t. It’s the truth.”
“Then you’ll live to regret it.” I snatched the paint roller from the tray and bolted for her. She let
out a shrill scream that morphed into a hysterical laugh as she turned to run, but I was too fast for her.
With one long swipe, I painted a primer-white stripe from her head all the way down her back.
She stopped, sucking in a gasp so large, she stole most of the oxygen in the room. With her arms
extended out at her sides, she slowly turned, her jaw hanging open and her eyes bugged out. “You did
not just do that!”
It was a damn good thing I’d laid down drop cloths everywhere, because a second later, Darcy
snatched up one of the clean, unused brushes and dunked it right into the can of primer, flinging a thick
streak of white wide as she charged at me.
Her laughter gave me life as we attacked each other with paint until we were both covered,
clothes and skin streaked with white. Darcy’s eyes were dancing, the smile on her face so big I felt
like the pieces of my heart that had been in tatters at her unhappiness were stitching themselves back
together.
She got me good, right down the center of my face, just as her cellphone began to chime from her
back pocket. And that was all it took for her to completely forget we were having a moment for the
first time in longer than I wanted to think about.
 She dropped the paintbrush, and it landed on the drop cloth with a sickening splat. I watched her
face, seeing the instant whatever she read on her phone sucked all that joy right back out of her.
“Everything good?”
My little girl disappeared in an instant, replaced with the sullen, moody version I’d had for far
too long now. “No. It’s not good,” she spat, the miserable frown overtaking the beautiful smile she’d
just given me. “That was Kelsey texting to tell me that Ryan Summers asked Jeanie Smith to be his
girlfriend.”
It was like she was speaking a totally different language. My brow furrowed, the drying primer on
my face pinching my skin tightly as I frowned in confusion. “And that’s bad?”
“Ugh! Yes, Dad! That’s awful! I had a crush on Ryan all summer long, and Kelsey said he was
going to ask me to be his girlfriend. But then you made me move here and ruined my life!”
For the love of—I pulled in a calming breath through my nose before responding, careful to keep
my tone neutral. “Sweetheart, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Your mom and I already told you
that you can’t date until you’re sixteen.”
She shot acid at me from her eyes. “You don’t get it!” she shouted, throwing her arms up. “God,
you’re the worst!” she issued as she stormed up the stairs. Then she landed the killing blow, gutting
me open right before slamming her bedroom door shut. “It should have been you that left, not Mom! I
hate living with you!”
4
 SLOANE

I was elbow deep in soil, working in the flowerbeds in my backyard, when the sound of the
neighbor’s back door opening and slamming shut drew my attention from the weeds I’d been
pulling.
Over the past few days, I’d caught sight of my sexy new neighbor as he came and went a couple of
times, but there had been no more attempts at conversation since my efforts to welcome them to the
neighborhood had been so rudely rebuffed.
I didn’t know what the hell the guy’s problem was, but he’d been a total asshole. I told myself to
ignore him; pretend he didn’t exist.
Only curiosity had me creeping over toward our shared fence, dusting the dirt from my gardening
gloves as I leaned forward to peek through the knot hole in one of the boards. Almost every inch of
him was covered in white paint, but that did nothing to hide the sadness and defeat etched into his
features and the way he held his big, strong body. I would have been lying if I said it didn’t tug at my
heart a little as I watched him brace his hands on his hips and tilt his head back toward the sky, or
when he heaved out a sigh and dropped it forward, giving it a disheartened shake.
I didn’t know what he was struggling with, but it was clear that whatever it was, it weighed
heavily on him.
He moved to the hose coiled on the holder and pulled a few loops free before twisting the handle
until water poured from the nozzle. I blinked out of my stupor when he stripped out of his shirt and
began to soak himself down, washing the paint off his chest, face, and head in the middle of his
backyard.
My mouth went dry as the Sahara at the sight of all those rippling muscles and the tattoos that
were drawn into golden tanned skin. If I thought he was a sight with his shirt on, it was nothing
compared to what he looked like without it.
Most of the paint was gone thanks to his backyard rinse, but there were still flecks of it here and
there he’d have to scrub away. And on that thought, my mind went straight into the gutter. I pictured
the man standing naked under the shower spray, working soap across his skin. He was a man’s man,
meaning he’d probably used his hands to work up a lather, nothing as froufrou as a shower puff or
even as functional as a washcloth. I bet if I were to run my hands across his body to scrub him clean,
all those muscles would feel like rocks beneath my palms. I could imagine rubbing across his
chiseled stomach like a washboard.
God, he really was gorgeous. It was such a shame he was a world-class jerk.
I swallowed to relieve the dryness in my throat as he tossed the hose aside and cranked the water
off. His bicep clenched and bulged when he lifted his hand to rake it back and forth over his short
hair, sending droplets of water flying.
Even that was sexy.
His chest heaved, his thick, rounded pecs riding and falling on a weary inhale before he turned,
facing the back door. He stared at it as if he were steeling himself to go back inside. I counted the
seconds, all thirty of them, before he finally disappeared back inside, none the wiser that I’d been
spying on his personal, private moment.

“I think I might be a dirty, creepy, peeping Tom.”

At my admission, Asher stopped in the process of uncorking a bottle of wine and blinked once.
Twice. “I’m sorry. What?”
I chewed on my bottom lip, then told her about the scene I’d witnessed the day before. “I felt like
an asshole for spying on the man when he was having a moment. I really did. I just couldn’t make
myself stop.” My lips pulled into an eek. “That’s really weird isn’t it?”
She worked the cork out of the bottle with a pop as she gave my questions some thought. “Well,”
she started as she poured us each a glass, “it’s not the sanest behavior. But I don’t really blame you. I
saw the pictures.” She shrugged casually, took a drink, and rounded the island, passing the second one
to me before taking a seat on the stool beside mine. She’d come over after our Whiskey Doll
rehearsal for a bit of gossip and wine, and I’d finally opened up about the less than stellar first
meeting with the dude next door. “The guy is five-alarm hot. I don’t think you can be held accountable
for staring when he’s shirtless.”
I nodded, my eyes big. “Yes, exactly! And I have to tell you, shirtless?” I blew out a whistle. “It’s
something else. I think I stared for so long because I was frozen in place by the sight of him.”
She sipped her wine thoughtfully, her gaze traveling to the kitchen window that faced next door.
“You really haven’t talked to him since that first time?”
I shook my head. “Nope. Not once. I’ve tried giving him the benefit of the doubt that maybe he
was stressed from the move or something. But the few times I saw him in passing and waved, he just
kept right on going like he didn’t see me.”
She raised a brow in question. “Maybe he didn’t see you?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Oh, he saw me. He’s just an asshole.”
She gave me a sympathetic look. “I think maybe it’s still a little early for you to make snap
judgments. I mean, you don’t want to get into a war with your neighbor, right? Maybe he really and
truly is having a stressful time of it.”
I thought back to the pain and sadness in his eyes when I’d been spying. Maybe she had a point.
I’d always been the kind of person to see the best in everyone, even to my own detriment sometimes.
I’d been burned more than once because I’d been so set on believing in someone who didn’t deserve
it.
You’d have thought that would jade me, but I was an eternal optimist, something my mother
sneered at regularly.
“When will you learn, Sloane?”
“You can’t trust people, Sloane. You’ll just end up broken-hearted.”
“You’re so naïve, Sloane.”
“One of these days, you’ll see. You’ll let someone in who’ll crush you, and I’ll be there to say I
told you so.”
That last one was a particular favorite of hers, said so much I couldn’t help but think she was
giddy at the idea of being able to say that to me one day.
I didn’t need a therapist to tell me the reason for my optimism was because I was desperate to go
so far in the other direction of my bitter, cynical mother, that I could never be anything like her. It
killed me that she let heartbreak and a hard life sour her to anything good. For as long as I could
remember, she’d clung to the bad, feeding it until it festered and turned her into a miserable shell of a
woman.
I wouldn’t be like that. I would never be like her.
So I told myself that Asher was right. I needed to give him the benefit of the doubt. He probably
was a good guy.
“You’re right,” I said, nodding resolutely. “I’m jumping the gun. I should give him another
chance.”
We held our wineglasses aloft and clinked them gently against each other. “Cheers to that, and to
hopefully discovering your neighbor isn’t a shithead.”
I could drink to that.
5
 SLOANE

A sher was wrong.

My neighbor was such a shithead!
My tires squealed as I whipped my car into the driveway and slammed on the brakes. I was in
such a state at what I was witnessing that I forgot to put the thing into park before I threw the door
opened and tried to climb out.
“Son of a bitch,” I mumbled as my car started drifting backward while I had one foot hanging out
the door. I was going to run over my own damn foot if I wasn’t careful.
Pulling my foot back into the car, I slammed the gear shift into park and yanked up the parking
brake for good measure before leaping out and running toward the destruction my neighbor was
currently causing.
“Hey, what the hell?” I shouted, but he couldn’t hear me over the sound of the freaking chain saw
he was wielding. I waved my arms above my head frantically, yelling to catch his attention as he
butchered the rose bushes I’d tended for so long between our houses. “Hey, knock it off! What the hell
do you think you’re doing, you selfish prick?” I yelled at the top of my lungs, the last three words
spilling out right after he caught sight of me and turned off the stupid saw.
He pushed the safety glasses covering his eyes up into his hair and pulled down the bandana he’d
been wearing as a mask, letting it pool around his neck. Any other day, I would have taken in the way
he swiped at the sweat on his forehead with the back of his hand or the way his forearms flexed while
wielding the dangerous tool and thought it was sexy as hell.
But that was not the case just then. I was too busy staring at my massacred roses.
“Excuse me?”
At his question, I blinked and dragged my attention away from the carnage, an unexpected surge of
rage flooding my veins, a feeling that was totally out of character for me. “What the hell do you think
you’re doing?” I shrieked, stabbing my fingers at the mangled bushes. “Have you lost your mind, or
are you really that big of an asshole?”
He blinked slowly, staring at me in befuddlement like I was speaking a different language.
“What?”
“You’re ruining my rose bushes, you insufferable bag of dicks!”
It almost looked like humor flashing in his eyes just then, but that couldn’t have been right,
because this man clearly didn’t have a sense of humor. Or a soul, apparently.
“No, I’m not,” he stated plainly. “I’m cutting down my rose bushes. They’re on my property, after
all.”
I slapped my hands down on my hips, infuriated. “No, they’re not.”
 “Yeah. They are.”
“Says who?”
The way the corner of his mouth trembled, it almost looked like he was fighting back a smile, but
again, no sense of humor for the plant murderer. “Says the survey I had done before buying the place.”
He hooked his thumb over his shoulder. “I have the paperwork inside if you want proof. But I can
assure you, these shrubs are well over the property line.”
My shoulders deflated a tad as some of that righteous anger seeped away. I had a sneaking
suspicion he was right, even without seeing the survey. After all, when Lucille had lived here, it
wasn’t like either one of us paid much mind to such things as property lines. It wouldn’t have
surprised me at all I’d crossed that invisible barrier when I planted the roses.
But still . . .
“Okay, fine,” I relented, but maintained a snarky tone. “Say you’re right.”
“Which I am.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, deepening my glower. “Say you’re right,” I repeated, stressing
each word, “and my roses are on your property, what the hell do you have against pretty flowers, huh?
Are you just that big of a jerk you have to destroy something beautiful for shits and giggles?”
His brows rose high on his forehead. “Shits and giggles?” he repeated with a bewildered laugh.
“It’s a saying,” I snapped. “Now stop avoiding the question. Why are you ruining these beautiful
bushes?”
He mimicked my stance, his lips curving up in a grin that, damn it, looked really freaking good on
him. “I’ll answer your question if you answer mine.”
With an air of impatience, I rolled my eyes and waved my hand in annoyance as if to say, ask your
damn question already.
“You look your fill when you were staring through that hole in the fence the other day?”
Oh shit.
My eyes nearly bugged out of my skull. “I wasn’t—that’s not—I didn’t—”
“You’re not as stealthy as you think you are, sassy.”
Sassy? What was that? And why did I like it so damn much?
Also, son of a bitch at being caught!
“I—I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—” My face felt like it was burning from the inside, and I just
knew my cheeks and neck had to have been beet red. I cleared my throat, guilt making it feel tighter
than usual. “Sorry,” I murmured. “It won’t happen again.”
He arched a brow like he wasn’t sure he believed me, and if I were being honest, that was a
promise I wasn’t quite sure I’d be able to keep. He made for such good people watching, no woman
in her right mind would have been able to resist.
Fortunately, he put me out of my misery by changing the subject before I could do anything else,
like melt into a puddle of shame and embarrassment. “As for the roses, I’m cutting them down
because my daughter’s allergic.”
Well, damn it. I hadn’t been expecting that.
“Oh.” I pulled my bottom lip between my teeth and bit down, feeling like a world-class asshole
for the scene I’d just made. I looked back over my shoulder at all the plants and flowers filling my
yard, worry creeping in and forcing my brows to pinch together. “Um, just roses specifically, or all
kinds of flowers?” I loved my pretty yard. The bright, cheery colors made me happy, even on the gray,
dreary days. But I didn’t want to risk making an innocent kid sick so I had something nice to look at
when I stared out my window.
 “Just the roses. The rest of what you’ve got is fine,” he answered, reading the concern on my face.
“Oh, um . . . okay.” That creeping guilt came on even stronger.
I’d perved on the guy through the fence like a psycho. I’d gotten into a shouting match in the
middle of the front yard over flowers that were planted on his property. I’d called him ugly names.
And I’d put his daughter at risk.
Oh my god!
I was the shitty neighbor! Not him.
I had not seen that coming.
Well, this is embarrassing as hell.
“Dad?” My head whipped over to the young teenage girl standing in the open doorway next door,
a look of concern on her beautiful face. She hesitantly stepped farther out onto the porch, her eyes
bouncing back and forth between us. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, honey. Everything’s good.”
She looked like she wasn’t sure, so when her worried gaze flitted over to me, I smiled, lifting my
hand by my waist in a tiny wave. “Hi.”
She offered a small smile, her shoulders loosening a little. “Hi.”
“Do me a favor, baby girl, and grab the card from my wallet and order some pizza for dinner,
yeah?”
“Okay, Daddy.” She pointed another smile, this one bashful and adorable. “Bye.”
My heart melted a little bit as I issued a soft, “Bye,” right before she turned and skipped back into
the house, leaving me alone with her father once more.
“She’s beautiful,” I said, unable to stop the words from tumbling out because it was the god’s
honest truth.
“Thanks,” he said on a grunt, and when I turned my attention back to him, I saw the earlier humor
had drained away, replaced with the flat, emotionless man I’d met that first day.
I cleared my throat, looking away from him to the mangled rose bushes. “Well, um . . . I guess—
that is—sorry,” I finally managed to spit out. “For calling you names and . . . you know.”
He arched an arrogant brow that made my eyes narrow in a scowl. “Peeping on me through the
fence?”
I crossed my arms over my chest, using indignation to hide my humiliation. “You know, a
gentleman wouldn’t keep bringing that up.”
He let out a bark of humorless laughter. “Sassy, I’ve been called many things. But a gentleman
certainly isn’t one of them.”
For some unknown reason, that statement made my belly flutter. My body was reacting to this guy
in totally inappropriate ways. I needed to get the hell away from him before I did something even
stupider than starting a fight when I had no leg to stand on and turning into a weirdo creeper.
“Whatever,” I grumbled, spinning on my heel and stomping back toward my house.

Silas

I placed the chainsaw on the shelf in the garage and pulled off my work gloves, tossing them aside
before toeing off my boots and rushing into the house. I needed to finish removing that bush, but that
would have to wait until later—preferably when my tempting-as-fuck neighbor wasn’t home.
That was exactly why I’d gone out there to do it earlier, because her car hadn’t been in her
driveway. I assumed she’d be at work and I’d have a good few hours to clear out the bushes. But
she’d come screaming up the driveway and jumped out of her car, dressed in the tiniest fucking yoga
shorts I’d ever seen and a cropped tee.
There was no denying the woman was gorgeous, but with all that smooth, tanned, toned skin
showing, it was damn near impossible to keep my tongue in my mouth. It was best if I just kept my
distance.
I rounded the corner into the living room and found Darcy hanging over the back of the couch, her
face pressed against the front window, staring in the direction of Sloane’s house.
“What are you doing?”
Darcy glanced over her shoulder at me before turning back to the window and separating the slats
in the blinds with her fingers for a better look. “That’s our neighbor?”
I moved into the kitchen, the open floor plan making it so I could see directly into the living room
as I washed my hands at the sink.
“Yep.”
“She’s really pretty.”
I arched a brow as the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I wasn’t sure I liked
whatever direction my daughter’s mind was going. Something told me it would make avoiding the
woman next door that much more difficult.
“I guess,” I replied, keeping my tone emotionless.
Truth was, the woman was too fucking beautiful, especially for my own good. That was a huge
complication I couldn’t afford to have, not when my main focus needed to be repairing the
relationship with my daughter.
It didn’t matter that the sight of her jogging down the steps to her car day after day made my dick
stir. Or how I’d caught myself imagining moving behind her whenever she was bent over in her yard,
pulling weeds, and thrusting into her. It didn’t matter that the times she’d smiled and waved, doing her
best to be polite, I’d felt like I’d been punched right in the gut, because, Christ, but she had a beautiful
smile.
None of that mattered.
The only thing that did, the most important thing in my entire world, was Darcy. A relationship,
even one based solely on sex, needed to be pushed so far into the back of my mind it was as if it
didn’t exist.
I moved to the fridge, pulling out a bottle of water and unscrewing the cap. As I brought it to my
lips and drank deep, Darcy moved off the couch and came to sit on one of the barstools across from
me.
“You’re telling me you don’t think she was pretty?”
Fuck yeah, I thought she was pretty. But I sure as hell wasn’t going to admit that to my fourteen-
year-old daughter. “What I’m telling you is that I haven’t given it much thought.” It was amazing how
easily that lie rolled off my tongue.
I wasn’t sure if she bought it, but she moved on. “Well, is she at least nice?”
Was she nice?
At that question, I thought back to the fire in her eyes when she caught me taking my chainsaw to
the bushes on my property. With how she’d come at me, I’d expected a knock-down-drag-out, but as
soon as I mentioned my daughter’s allergy, the fight had drained right out of her. Not only that, but I’d
seen the way she had turned around and looked back at her yard, her thoughts registering so clearly on
her face they might have been running across her forehead in blinking neon letters.
I’d been trained to read people, and it had taken nothing to know what was playing in Sloane
Chambers’s head. She’d worried that her yard was dangerous for my girl, and something in my gut
told me that if I hadn’t put her mind at ease, I’d have come home one day to find she’d dug everything
up.
I thought back to her smile, small but completely genuine, when she’d looked at my daughter, and
that cute-as-fuck wave.
Yeah. She was nice. Sweet enough to give you cavities, actually. Which didn’t help things one
goddamn bit.
I finished off my water and tossed the empty bottle into the trash can across the kitchen. “I don’t
know. I’ve spoken all of five words to the woman.”
I didn’t know why the hell I was lying to my girl, but I wasn’t going to dig into it just then. This
was my last day before starting my new job, and there was still too much to do to stand around talking
about a neighbor who shouldn’t matter.
Fortunately, the pizza arrived a short while later, and my girl forgot all about her curiosity of the
woman next door.
I, however, couldn’t say the same, because later that night, once Darcy was long asleep in her bed
and the house was locked up tight, I took my fist to my cock and stroked it until I came with the image
of Sloane’s ass in those fucking shorts on the backs of my eyelids.
6
 SLOANE

A sher came dancing up to me at the end of Whiskey Dolls rehearsal, a massive grin on her face.
“So?” she started giddily. “How are things going with Sexy Neighbor Guy? Any progress there
since we last talked?”
“Shh,” I hissed with big eyes, worried someone had overheard, but I should have known it was a
waste of time. I loved these women, but when it came to gossip, they were like freaking bloodhounds.
It didn’t matter how quiet we were, if there was a piece of news they considered juicy, there was no
keeping it from any of them.
Alma skipped over to us, sliding to a stop and plopping down on the floor right beside me,
excitement dancing in her eyes. “Ooh, who’s Sexy Neighbor Guy?”
Naturally, that caught Layla’s attention, who grabbed Marin’s hand and pulled her over. “Did
someone say sexy neighbor?”
In no time, every Whiskey Doll in the studio was gathered around, eager to know what was going
on.”
Damn it.
Marin let out a little squeak. “Are you seeing your neighbor?”
Sweet merciful hell.
Alma waggled her brows lasciviously. “That’s so hot. A neighbor booty call? Talk about
convenient.”
“I’m not sleeping with or seeing my neighbor,” I insisted.
Delanie, a sweet, romantic-at-heart, believer in fairy tales, looked at me hopefully. “Well . . .
maybe you will, eventually. That would be so romantic, don’t you think?”
Alma rolled her eyes playfully and teased, “You’re just saying that because you’re all disgustingly
happy and in love right now.”
Delanie’s whole face lit up, her cheeks flushing a happy, rosy pink. She’d been sickeningly happy
since her boyfriend, a mechanic from Hidalgo, proposed to her a few weeks back. She was in the
midst of wedding planning bliss, and everything was sunshine and rainbows. We were all beyond
happy for her, but she’d been bitten by the same bug most happily committed woman were. The one
where they wanted all their friends to be just as in love as they were.
I reached out, wrapped my fingers around her hand, and gave it an affectionate squeeze. “That’s a
sweet thought, but it’s not going to happen, believe me.”
Her expression fell as Asher spoke up. “I take it that means the situation hasn’t improved?”
I let out a sigh and dropped my head back, rolling it on my shoulders to stretch it out after the
workout I’d just gotten in rehearsal. “You could say that,” I answered, thinking about the situation
with the rose bushes the day before. “It may have come to my attention that I’m the problem neighbor.
Not him.” I admitted, pulling my bottom lip between my teeth and chewing on it as embarrassment
washed over me for the millionth time since my last run-in with the gorgeous man.
Alma’s face pinched into a look of puzzlement. “How is that even possible? After Delanie, you’re
the sweetest person I know. And I only put her first because I’m half convinced she’s actually a
cartoon fairy-tale princess come to life.”
“Aww,” Delanie cooed, smiling affectionately.
“What makes you think you’re the problem neighbor?” Asher asked.
I explained the situation with the rose bushes, and how I’d rushed from the car spewing mean
names before even giving him a chance to explain.
Marin reached across and patted Layla’s back when she began to choke on the drink she’d just
taken from her water bottle in an effort not to laugh. She pulled her face into a wince as Layla
continued to cough and sputter. “Yeah, calling the guy a bag of dicks might not have been your best
moment.”
I still cringed at that one in particular.
“It’s nothing you can’t come back from,” Layla insisted reassuringly, once she’d stopped choking
and was able to speak.
I lifted my shoulder in a shrug as I tugged at the hem of the cropped tee I’d pulled over my sports
bra. “Maybe. But I’m not sure there’s any coming back from being caught peeping on him through a
hole in the fence.”
Asher sucked in a breath that quickly morphed into hysterical laughter. “He caught you?”
“Yep. Called me out on it after all the name calling,” I muttered glumly.
“Oh, we’re going to need the full story on that one,” Alma announced with a shit eating grin, but
before they could start peppering me with a million and one questions, our boss and the owner of
Whiskey Dolls, McKenna, came into the studio.
“Hey, girls. I’ve got someone here I want you to meet. This is our new head of security, Silas
Bridger.”
Oh, you had to be shitting me.

Silas

When Marco had called me about a job working as the head of security for a club called Whiskey
Dolls, I’d initially blown him off, thinking the position was nothing more than a glorified bouncer. But
then I’d done a bit of research and discovered that Whiskey Dolls wasn’t just any nightclub. It was the
most popular burlesque club in the tri-state area, if not even farther.
I’d called Marco back to ask for more details and discovered the job was a lot more intensive
than I’d originally thought. As it turned out, the place had garnered no small amount of fame over the
years, and the women who performed there were viewed as local celebrities.
The owners of the club, a married couple named Bruce and McKenna, had apparently had issues
not too long ago with a former employee, and wanted to make sure the dancers were safe. As the new
head of security, I’d have a team of guards under my command whose main job was to ensure the
safety of these women. When I found out how much the position paid, I’d nearly swallowed my
tongue.
I hadn’t understood why these two people were offering that kind of compensation, but I wasn’t
one to look a gift horse in the mouth. I’d interviewed over the phone and had been offered the job by
the end of the call.
Now I was on the premises for the first time, meeting my new bosses face to face, and, after being
shown the ropes, I understood why this position was so damn important to them.
McKenna spoke as I scanned some of the letters they received here at the club on a pretty regular
basis. “As you can see, there are a lot of weirdos out there.”
That was putting it mildly. There was no shortage of hate mail, letters from religious fanatics who
claimed they were all destined for hell for engaging in the sin of lust and such to women accusing
them of turning their husbands on by dancing provocatively.
Most of those were laughable, nothing but rantings from bitter, unhappy people with nothing better
to do with their time, but there were some that raised my brows. I hadn’t seen a single performance
there, but from some of these letters, they were talented enough to have garnered fans that bordered on
worrisome. It wasn’t surprising, given their level of fame. But it spoke to Bruce and McKenna being
good, solid people that they wanted to look out for their crew like this.
“We’re just so glad you took the position,” McKenna continued as I placed the letters back on the
desk that would officially be mine starting tomorrow. “These girls aren’t just our employees. I’ve
been friends with most of them for years.”
Bruce hooked his arm around his wife’s shoulder, pulling her into his side. It was funny to see
such a small, lithe woman cuddled into the huge bear of a man.
“These girls are Mac’s family. We’ll do whatever you suggest if it means keeping them safe.”
“I appreciate your faith in me,” I told them. “You’ve already got a great setup in place. That’s
obvious.” With the exception of restrooms and the women’s dressing area, practically every inch of
the club, inside and out, was covered by security cameras. “But if it’s good with you, I’d like to look
through the résumés of the team you’ve already got in place. Just to see if I come across anything that
sets off any alarms.”
It wasn’t long ago that a security guard on staff had been infatuated with one of the dancers. I was
determined to make sure nothing like that would happen again.
McKenna nodded. “Of course. Those men officially fall under your authority. You have final say
when it comes to hiring or firing. Marco spoke highly of you so I’m confident your judgement will be
best.”
I had to admit, I was glad these two didn’t plan on micromanaging every little thing I did. The
freedom to do my job without interference from people who didn’t know the first thing about this kind
of shit was a relief. “Then I think this is going to work out great. I look forward to working here.”
Bruce gave me a jerk of his chin in quiet approval while McKenna smiled brightly. It was clear
my joining the staff was a relief to her, and I was glad to provide that for her.
“Come on. I’ll give you a tour of the club and you can meet the security team, then I’ll introduce
you to the girls once their rehearsal is finished.”
I followed the tiny, spunky blonde through the club taking it all in, and I had to admit, the place
was cool as hell. The wood was a deep, warm cherry and the booths and chairs were upholstered in
rich red leather and crimson velvet curtains were draped from the walls. The whole thing pulled off
that cool prohibition vibe I dug.
I met the guys working security, and while most of them seemed cool enough, there was no
missing the discomfort with a couple of them. Those were the résumés I was going to study the
closest.
Afterward, we headed to the back of the club past the offices and stock rooms to a large room
with mirrors on the walls and dark wood floors. A cluster of women were sitting around toward the
back of the room as I followed McKenna inside.
I vaguely thought I heard her introduce me to the group, but all I could focus on was the woman
sitting at the center of the group. My sassy little neighbor was staring in my direction, mouth agape
and eyes wide as saucers.
Suddenly, the microscopic shorts and tiny tops made perfect sense, as did the fact she had the
sexiest body I’d ever seen. Her ass alone had been plaguing my thoughts since the first time I saw her
a week ago.
“Ladies,” I said, tipping my chin in acknowledgment while my gaze stayed rooted to Sloane. I
couldn’t have looked away if I’d tried. “Sassy,” I greeted.
I didn’t miss the curious back and forth glances from the other women in the room.
“Do you two know each other?” McKenna asked.
But before Sloane could answer, the brunette sitting beside her sucked in a breath. “Wait. That’s
him isn’t it?”
Another woman turned to Sloane, eyes wide. “That’s Sexy Neighbor Guy?”
I didn’t bother masking the smirk that tugged at the corners of my lips.
“Yep, I can see it,” a third woman announced.
“Did you hear him call her Sassy?”
“Yeah, that was cute.”
They continued on like that, speaking about me like I wasn’t standing right there. I didn’t have the
first clue what Sloane had told her friends about us, but despite my determination to avoid the woman
at all costs, I couldn’t help but think this was certainly an interesting development.
7
 SLOANE

T he sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach grew worse as I climbed out of the car and
gathered the bags of groceries stashed in my trunk. It was the same twisting, sickening
feeling I experienced every time I had to make a visit to my mother’s house, however, since she had
been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, I found myself doing more and more for her. I brought her
groceries once a week and cleaned her house at least once a month because the pain was too bad for
her to do it herself.
The doctor had given her a medication that was supposed to help manage that, but she refused to
take it. I wasn’t sure if it was stubbornness that kept her from taking those pills or simply that she got
some sick sort of pleasure out of having me wait on her hand and foot. My gut told me it was the
latter. She didn’t seem to have a problem getting herself to and from the bars regularly, or to the little
corner store down the block when she was out of smokes. But I knew that pointing that out to her
would only start a fight, and I didn’t have the time or energy for that.
With my arms loaded down, the handles of the plastic bags digging into my skin, I struggled with
the knob before finally getting the front door open and stepping across the threshold.
“Hey, Mom. I’m here,” I called out as I moved deeper inside, the dank smell of stale cigarette
smoke clinging to the air and latching onto my skin and hair, making my eyes water and my stomach
lurch.
She rounded the corner, a lit cigarette dangling from her lips, the ash at the end so long it
crumbled off and fell to the floor where it would stay until I inevitably came to clean her place
myself.
“About time,” she grumbled, falling into the recliner in front of the television and picking up the
remote. She began flipping through channels without giving me a second glance or offering to help me
unload her groceries. “You’re late. I thought you’d forgotten about me like usual.”
I closed my eyes and pulled in a deep breath before remembering the stench of cigarette smoke. I
stifled the need to cough and lumbered into the kitchen so I could put the heavy bags down and give
my arms a break, only every inch of counter space was laden with dirty dishes and trash.
With a huff, I bent forward and set the bags on the floor. “I’ve never once forgotten about you,” I
said, feeling the sting of her accusation burrow beneath my skin.
“Could’ve fooled me,” she muttered.
I knew my relationship with my mother wasn’t healthy. I needed to put up serious boundaries if I
wanted to stop getting my heart smashed to pieces on a regular basis, but it was obligation that had me
coming back time after time. That and the hope that maybe, just maybe, one day she’d be the mother I
always wanted. The one I’d so desperately needed growing up instead of this shell of bitterness and
anger.
She’d been like that since my father took off. I’d been so little I didn’t even remember what the
man looked like, but even though his face had faded from my memory, the heartbreak he’d cause my
mom somehow festered and grew until it took over everything.
“You think I don’t know you’re ashamed of me, but I do. You’d love nothing more than to pretend I
don’t exist.”
I tried my hardest to focus on my breathing, holding an inhale in my lungs as I silently counted to
ten before blowing it out. It was the same thing time after time. The only emotions my mother seemed
capable of directing toward me were guilt and misery. No matter what I did, it wasn’t enough. I was a
lousy daughter, I didn’t care about her, and on and on. There was simply no winning with her.
It was a shot to the chest every time she accused me of not caring about her, but over the years, I’d
gotten used to the manipulation. Still, that didn’t mean the pain wasn’t there.
“That’s not true. I’m here right now, aren’t I?”
She harrumphed. “Like you don’t wish you were somewhere else. Just like your father. I’ve never
been good enough.” With that, she shifted her focus to the television playing one of the gameshows the
loved so damn much, her way of basically saying she was done with the conversation, whether or not
I was.
Attempting to defend myself would have been pointless, so I didn’t even try. Instead, while her
show played on in the background, I started work in the kitchen, scrubbing dishes and throwing away
trash. I wiped down the counters and emptied ashtrays of crushed cigarette butts. The garbage can
was overflowing in the cabinet beneath the sink, so I took it out and cleaned up something
unidentifiable yet nasty that had spilled everywhere.
When I opened the fridge, I was overcome with the smell of rotten, moldy food so nauseous it
made me gag. I had to breathe out of my mouth as I tossed the spoiled food out and scrubbed the
shelves and bins with bleach.
Of course, if I said anything to her, she would have said it was my fault for buying the fresh
produce she let go to waste without a care. I knew it was useless to try and get her to eat better, but I
couldn’t help myself. I could have very well flushed that money down the toilet for all the good it did.
If it couldn’t be cooked in the microwave, heated in a saucepan, or slapped between two pieces of
bread, my mother didn’t want any part of it.
Once the kitchen was no longer a pit, I stocked the fresh groceries and heated up one of her
preferred frozen meals. I took it out to her, setting it on an old, tattered TV tray and took a step back.
“Okay, Mom, you’re all set. There’s fresh food in the fridge, the pantry’s stocked, and I cleaned the
kitchen. You need anything else before I head out?”
She hadn’t spoken a word to me in the past hour as I cleaned the mess she made, but at my
question, she scoffed and rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “No, you just go. Go and leave me here
all by myself like you always do.” The sneer she gave me as she finally looked my way made my
insides shrivel. I couldn’t remember the last time she’d looked at me with any kind of affection. All
I’d seen from her for years was animosity. “Just like that bastard father of yours. Both of you always
leaving me behind.”
How I could be anything like a man I didn’t even know was beyond me, but it was her favorite
insult.
Having reached my quota on the number of insults I could take, I hooked the strap of my purse
over my shoulder and bent to kiss my mother’s cheek. Just as she always did, she turned her face
away from me.
 I hid the pain that caused and said my goodbye, pushing the word past the painful lump that had
formed in my throat. “Bye, Mama. I love you and I’ll see you next week.”
She didn’t respond. She never responded. And even though I knew that would always be the case,
that tiny coal of hope inside of me had never fully burned out. Instead of letting it roll off me, it never
failed to burn like a lash to my skin.
Without another word, I walked out the door, knowing that even though I shouldn’t, for no other
reason than my own sanity, I’d be back next week. I climbed into my car and backed out of her
driveway, pointing it in the direction of the one place I knew would heal the wounds my mother
always inflicted.
While my mom’s house reeked of cigarettes and bitterness, Lucille’s flashy apartment smelled the
same way her home always had, like Chanel No. 5 and warm chocolate chip cookies and love.
The instant she opened her door, the pleasant smells enveloped me.
“Oh, my darling girl!” Lucille threw her arms wide, the silky sheen of her long, flowy black and
gold caftan glimmering beneath the florescent lights of the hallway. She pulled me into a hug that went
a long way in fighting back those all-too familiar demons that always clung to me after a visit with my
mother. “What a pleasant surprise. I didn’t know you were coming to see me today.”
We ended our embrace and she stepped aside so I could enter the small apartment of the
retirement community she now lived in. It was decorated the same as her house had been, bold and
loud and full of interesting things. Framed photos and movie posters covered the brightly painted
walls. Two very heavy, very ornate curio cabinets held fine china and vintage perfume bottles—the
kinds with the fancy aspirators—as well as more pictures and knickknacks she’d picked up from her
travels all over the world.
“I’m sorry. I should have called ahead.”
She waved me off. “Nonsense. You know very well you’re welcome here any time. It’s just had I
known I could have had that sweet boy Grady run to the store to pick up some more vodka. He loves
running little errands for me. I’m afraid I hosted a small get-together the other night, and, well, my
liquor cabinet took quite the hit.”
I gave her an admonishing look that morphed into a grin. “Lucille, Grady is a nurse here, not your
personal chauffeur.” Though it didn’t surprise me one bit that she had a member of the staff—
probably more than one—wrapped around her little finger already, or that she was hosting parties
with the other residents. God only knew what a bunch of octogenarians could get up to with that much
booze in their systems.
She clasped my hand in both of hers, her skin warm and soft, like crepe paper. She gave it a pat
and said, “Have a seat darling. I’ll make us both a cup of tea. How’s that sound?”
“Sounds perfect.” I moved over to the plush peach velvet couch, kicking off my shoes and curling
my feet beneath me while she set the kettle to boil and went about making tea for both of us.
There were two things Lucille took very seriously: her martinis and her tea. When she claimed to
be putting the kettle on, she meant putting together a full tea service.
A few minutes later, she came into the living room carrying a gilded silver tray complete with a
fancy pot and beautiful matching delicate cups and saucers. She placed it on the coffee table and
poured us each a cup, then took the tall, deep hunter green wingback chair catty-corner from me.
“Okay, sweetheart. Tell me what happened.”
“Why do you think something happened?” I asked as I poured a splash of milk into my tea and
stirred in a single sugar cube.
She gave me a look that warned me not to bullshit her. I should have known better. There wasn’t
much I’d been able to get away with when it came to Lucille. As sad as it made me when I really
thought about it, Lucille was more of a mother to me than my own.
And just that thought brought back the cloud of sadness that had started to dissipate and those
ever-present tears in my heart grew a little bigger.
“Oh, darling. You saw her today, didn’t you?”
It was uncanny how well she was able to read me, and truthfully, I didn’t know what I would do
without this incredible woman. I was so lucky to have her in my life.
I cupped the delicate cup in my palms, relishing the warmth that seeped through the china into my
skin. “I had to take her groceries,” I defended weakly.
Lucille placed her cup and saucer on the table and stood from her chair, moving to sit on the
couch beside me and offer comfort. “Of course you did. Because you’re a kind, loyal, big-hearted
person. I take it things didn’t go well?”
I let out a humorless scoff. “Of course they didn’t. This is my mom we’re talking about. If there’s
ever a chance to throw a guilt trip my way or make me feel like shit, she won’t hesitate. This time I
was “just like my father” for leaving her there all by herself.”
Lucille’s expression went hard, and it had nothing to do with the Botox she got on a regular basis.
If there was one thing that pissed this wonderful woman off in a very big way, it was how my mother
treated and spoke to me.
“The fact that she could say that to you, knowing that waste of oxygen abandoned not only her, but
you as well, speaks to her character—or lack thereof, darling. Not yours. You are a beautiful woman,
inside and out, and if she can’t see that, it’s her loss.”
I sniffled, bringing the fine china cup to my lips and sipping the steaming liquid inside. “I know. In
my mind, I know everything you’re saying is right. I try to brace for her bitterness, but she still
manages to get to me every time. It’s like I have no backbone when it comes to her.”
Her features fell, her eyes shining with sympathy. “Oh, my sweet girl, that’s not true at all. It isn’t
that you lack a backbone, it’s that you’re the most loyal person I know. When you love someone, you
love them wholly. That is such a wonderful quality for a person to have. But being loyal doesn’t mean
you have to allow someone to hurt you over and over. One of these days you’re going to wake up and
realize that relationship isn’t worth the tender heart, just because she’s your mother doesn’t give her
the right to make you feel bad about yourself. And when that day comes, the only person who will be
losing anything is her. Just give yourself a little grace, darling. You’ll get there.”
I wasn’t a hundred percent sold on that, but hearing the determination in her voice certainly
helped. “You really think so, huh?”
She plucked her teacup up and sipped, watching me over the rim. “Oh, honey. I don’t think, I
know. Because you may think you lack a backbone, but when I look at you, I see the strongest woman
I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing.”
This right here, her wisdom and her passion and her faith in me, were all reasons why I’d come to
love this woman so whole-heartedly. Why, whenever I was in pain, she was the first person I wanted
to see, because I knew she could make it better in no time at all.
“I love you, Luce. I hope you know that.”
She waved her hand. “Of course you do, I’m quite fabulous, darling.” I giggled and cozied deeper
into her couch. “And I love you just the same.” She placed the teacup down and clapped her hands
together, giving her brows a waggle as she demanded, “Now, tell me all about the new neighbor.”
Another random document with
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occasional uncaused and arbitrary deviation from its path, as a
means of bringing atoms into collision and combination. Thus with
them “freedom of indifference” was the result of physical difficulties.
In the Christian Church the doctrine seems to have owed its wide
—though not universal—acceptance to equally non-ethical difficulties
of a theological kind. If God “foreknew from all eternity” the
transgression of Adam and all its consequences, how could it be
compatible with His justice to punish Adam and all his posterity for
faults foreseen by Adam’s Creator?[201] The difficulty of reconciling
the divine omniscience with the divine justice was supposed to be
avoided—in truth, it was only evaded[202]—by assuming that man
was created with a “free will of indifference,” so that obedience would
have been just as easy as transgression if man had chosen to obey.
In our own time the problem has assumed a rather different
complexion, owing to the enormous developments of mechanical
physical science, which began with Galileo and Descartes. Rigid
causal determination being assumed as a first principle of physical
science, the question arose whether the assumption should not also
be extended to the psychical sphere. If so extended, it seemed to
strike at the roots of moral responsibility, by making all human acts
the inevitable “consequences of circumstances over which we have
no control”; if not admitted, the rejection of the principle of rigid
causal determination has often been thought to amount to the denial
that there is any principle of rational connection in the psychical
sphere. Hence, while persons specially interested in the facts of the
moral life have frequently inclined to the more or less radical denial
of rational connection between the events of the psychical series,
others, whose special interests have lain in the direction of the
unification of knowledge, have still more commonly thought it
necessary to hold that human action is determined by antecedents in
the same sense and to the same degree as the occurrences of the
purely physical order.
It will be our object to show that these rival doctrines of
Indeterminism and Determinism, or Necessitarianism, are alike
irrational, alike incompatible with what in practice we understand as
moral freedom of action, and alike based upon the false assumption
that rigid mechanical determination is itself an actual fact, and not a
mere postulate of the special physical sciences, valid only so far as it
is useful. But before we enter upon our task, it is necessary to begin
with a statement as to the real meaning of ethical freedom itself.
Until we know what we mean by the kind of freedom we, as moral
beings, desire and think we ought to have, it will be useless to ask
whether we are or are not free.
§ 2. “Free” and “freedom” are manifestly what are called by the
logicians “privative” terms; they denote the absence of certain
restrictions. To be “free,” in whatever special sense you may use the
word, means to be free from something. What, then, are the typical
limitations which, in practice, we resent as making us unfree? They
seem to be, in the main, the following:—(1) We are not free when
our limbs are actually set in motion by an external physical agency,
human or non-human. And the reason why we are then unfree is that
the resulting movements of our bodies do not express a purpose of
our own. They either express the purpose of some other being who
moves our limbs as seems good to him, or, as in the case where we
are set in motion by the “forces” of the inanimate world, express no
purpose at all that is recognisable to us as such. And in either case
we have expressed no purpose of our own by our movements; they
do not truly belong to us at all, and there is therefore no freedom. It
is not necessary that the result of the movement should be one
which, if it had been suggested, we should have declined to entertain
as a purpose of our own. We might perhaps, if left to ourselves, have
done just what another man or the system of physical forces has
done for us. Still, so long as the deed, whatever it was, was done for
us and not by us, so long as it corresponded to no actual purpose of
ours, it was not a free act.
(2) Again, we are not truly free when we act in ignorance (not due
to previous free action of our own)[203] of the special circumstances.
Here there is, as there was not in the former case, a genuine act. We
actually purpose to do something, but what we purpose to do is not
the deed which results from our movements. E.g., if I shoot a
comrade by mistake for one of the enemy, it is true that I purpose to
shoot, and so far the shooting is an act, and a free act, of my own.
But I did not purpose to shoot my comrade, and so the result, in its
concreteness, is not the expression of my purpose, and I
consequently regard myself as not fully free in doing it, and therefore
not morally accountable for it. So far our analysis coincides with that
of Aristotle, previously referred to.
(3) Again, I am not acting freely where the circumstances are not
such as to admit of the formation of purpose at all. For this reason,
merely automatic action—if there is such a thing—is not genuine
action, and therefore not free.[204] Impulsive action without reflection,
again, comes under this category. It is, of course, accompanied by
feelings of satisfaction, and if impeded gives rise to craving, and so
cannot be called simply non-purposive. But in genuinely impulsive
reaction, where the possibility of reflection is excluded, there can be
little clear awareness of the concrete character of the purpose that is
being put into execution, and hence such action is not truly free. And
in practical life, though we are certainly held morally responsible for
impulsive action, in so far as it is thought we might have modified it
by previous habitual practice of reflection or by avoiding a situation
which we had reason to think would deprive us of the power to
reflect, we are never held as fully accountable for the deed of
impulse as for the reflectively thought out and deliberately adopted
purpose.[205]
Further, we feel ourselves unfree when we fail to execute our
purposes, either from sheer inability to attend to a consistent scheme
of action, or because we attend equally to purposes which are
internally incompatible. This is why the “democratic” man, whose
interests are an incoherent medley without logical unity, and the
“tyrannical man,” or, as we should now say, the “criminal type,”
whose passions are constantly at war with one another and with his
judgment, are regarded by Plato as the typically unfree beings. To be
really free, in the last resort, we must have purposes which are
coherent and abiding. And it is thus no paradox to say that
unfreedom in the end means, in the main, not knowing your own
mind, while to be free is to know what you mean.
§ 3. We may now draw some important consequences from this
review of the facts upon which every valid interpretation of freedom
has to be based. (1) Freedom, as Locke said in that famous chapter
“On Power” which is still the classic discussion of the whole subject
as far as English philosophy is concerned, “belongs to the man, not
to the will.” The proper question to ask is, “Am I free?” not “Is my will
free?” or “Have I a free will?” For “freedom” and “will,” as the facts
enumerated above show, are but the negative and the positive name
for the same property, the property of acting so as to put what we
first possessed as our private purpose into execution in the world of
sensible fact. I “will” when my outward deed is thus the expression of
my purpose; in the same case, and in no other, I am “free.” Thus to
“will” and to be “free” are one and the same thing; a will which was
not free would be a will which was not the translation into sensible
fact of any one’s purpose, and thus no will at all. Thus the question,
“Are we free?” might be also put in the equivalent form, “Can we
ever will anything?” and to the question, as thus put, experience
gives a ready answer. For we certainly do conceive purposes, and
we certainly, in some of our movements, do translate those purposes
in act. And therefore we may say that freedom is undoubtedly, in the
only sense in which it is desired, a fact of immediate experience.[206]
(2) If we retain the expression “freedom to will” by the side of the
phrase “freedom to act,” it can only be in a very special sense. It is
clear that not only may my outward deed be a translation into fact of
my present purpose, but my present purpose itself, as a psychical
event, may also be a translation into fact of a former purpose. This is
largely the case with all results of deliberate self-training and
discipline, and to a less degree with all acquired habits. Thus, e.g.,
the movements by which I write these lines are the expression of my
preconceived purpose to write the present paragraph, but that
purpose itself, as an event in my history, is similarly the expression
of a former purpose to compose a work on Metaphysics. Thus there
is a real sense in which we can agree with Leibnitz in criticising
Locke’s dictum that we are free to act, but not free to will. For the
mental conception of a purpose is itself an act, and in so far as it
translates into existing thoughts and feelings a previous purpose it
may be said itself to be “freely willed.”[207]
(3) Freedom, in actual experience, is always limited, and,
moreover, admits of the most various degrees. As to the first point, it
follows immediately from our consideration of the circumstances
which make us unfree. If to be fully free means that your outward
deed is the full expression of an inward consistent purpose, then we
can see at once that complete freedom is, for all finite beings, an
infinitely distant ideal. For it means (a) that I am not hampered in the
execution of my purpose by vacillation of interest or conflict of
incompatible interests within myself; (b) nor by the establishment of
“habitual” reactions so nearly mechanical as to repeat themselves
out of season unless checked by special reflection; (c) nor by the
limits set to my power to “act or to forbear” in the physical world by
the action of my fellows and of “brute” nature.[208] Hence only an
experience which is absolutely devoid of internal conflict and
external, partly discrepant environment, in other words, only the
experience which is the infinite whole, can be in all its detail entirely
and absolutely free. From the possibilities of internal lack of unity of
purpose and external collision with rival purpose which are
inseparable from our position as finite beings, it must follow that we
are never more than partially or relatively free.
And that the degree to which we are free varies with the nature of
our purposes and their relation to the environment, is also manifest.
There is an indefinite plurality of such degrees, ranging up from the
total or all but total absence of freedom in the case of directly
constrained motion up to the case of cordial co-operation with the
other members of a relatively self-supporting social group in the
conscious and systematic execution of an elaborate and coherent
scheme of action. To indicate the principal distinctions among such
grades of freedom which are of practical importance for law and
morality is the task of systematic Ethics, and need not be attempted
by us here. We may add that our investigation has made it apparent
that true moral freedom, of whatever degree, is no inalienable
heritage into which men step by the “accident of birth,” but—in the
main and as an actual possession—a prize which has to be won by
the double discipline of self-knowledge and self-mastery, and of
social comradeship, and may be, and is, forfeited by the neglect of
the arts by which it was first gained. No doubt one man’s inherited
disposition may make the practice of self-control, or again of social
fellowship, easier to him than to another, and to this extent we may
say that we are born with a greater or lesser “capacity for freedom,”
but of its actual possession we have all to say, “with a great price
purchased I this freedom.”
 (4) Finally, our examination of the facts of morality enables us to
define true freedom. We are free, as we have seen, just so far as our
experience is the embodiment of coherent and permanent interest or
purpose, and freedom is, like “will,” simply an abstract expression for
the teleological unity which, in varying degrees, is an essential
feature of all experience. Hence we can at once see that freedom
does not mean “absence of rational connection” or “absence of
determination,” but does mean, as so many recent philosophers
have told us, for us finite beings, self-determination. I am most free
when acting for the realisation of a coherent rational purpose, not
because my conduct is “undetermined”; in other words, because
there is “no telling” what I shall do next, but because it is, at such
times, most fully determined teleologically by the character of my
inner purposes or interests,—in other words, by the constitution of
my self. The more abiding and logically coherent my various
purposes in action, the freer I am, because it is my whole self or
system of rationally connected interests, and not the insistence of
others, or some passing whim or impulse which I may forthwith
disown as no part of my “true self,” which is getting expression in my
outward deeds. And if it were possible for a finite being to become
absolutely free, as we have seen that it is not, such a being would, in
the very moment of its entire deliverance, become also absolutely
determined from within; its whole life, as manifested to the outsider
in the series of its deeds, would become the perfect and systematic
expression of a single scheme of coherent purposes.
§ 4. We see, then, that such a genuine but limited freedom as is
really implied in the existence of morality is not only compatible with,
but actually demanded by, the principles of a sound Metaphysics.
From the side of morality we meet with the demand that human
beings shall be, in part at least, creatures whose outward acts shall
be the genuine expression of individual purpose; from the side of
Metaphysics we have already learned that just this teleological unity,
genuine though imperfect, is the essential nature of every finite
experience. We are now to see how a problem in itself quite simple
leads to insoluble difficulties and to the rival absurdities of
Indeterminism and Determinism when it is perverted by an initial
metaphysical blunder. The initial mistake of both the rival theories
consists simply in taking rigid mechanical determination of events by
their antecedents in accord with the principle of Causality as an
actual fact, the divergence between them only concerning the extent
of the sphere of existence for which such determination prevails.
According to the indeterminist, the action of conscious beings forms
a solitary exception to a principle of determination which is
absolutely valid for all purely physical processes. According to the
determinist, there are no exceptions to the principle, and our
confessed inability to predict the course of an individual life or a
period of history from general laws in the same way in which we
predict an eclipse or a display of leonids, is due merely to the greater
complexity of the necessary data, and the temporary imperfections
of our mathematical methods.
It should be noted that there is no substantial disagreement
between the more sober representatives of the two views as to the
actual facts of life. The indeterminist usually admits that in practice,
when you know enough of a man’s character and of the influences
brought to bear upon him, you can tell with some confidence how he
will conduct himself, and that social intercourse, education, and
penal legislation would be impossible if you could not. Similarly, the
determinist admits that it would be very rash to treat your predictions
of human behaviour in practice with absolute confidence, and that
the unexpected does frequently happen in human life. The dispute is
solely about the philosophical interpretation of facts as to which there
is virtually universal agreement. According to the determinist
interpretation, if you were put in possession of the knowledge of a
man’s “character” and of his “circumstances” (and it is assumed that
it is theoretically possible to have this knowledge), and had sufficient
skill to grapple with the mathematical problems involved, you could
calculate his whole behaviour in advance, from the cradle to the
grave, with infallible precision. According to the indeterminist, you
could not do so, and your failure would arise not from any theoretical
impossibility of obtaining the supposed data, but from their
insufficiency. Our behaviour, he alleges, is not exclusively
determined by the interaction of “character” and circumstances; even
with the complete knowledge of both these elements, human action
is incalculable, because of our possession of a “free will of
indifference” or power to act indifferently according to or in violation
of our “character.” You can never say beforehand what a man will do,
because of this capacity for acting, under any conditions, with equal
facility in either of two alternative ways.
I propose to show briefly that the determinist is right in saying that
conduct is completely determined by “character”—if the term be
understood widely enough—and circumstances, but wrong in holding
that this makes infallible prediction possible; on the other hand, that
the indeterminist is right in denying the possibility of such prediction,
but wrong in the reason he gives for his denial. Infallible prediction is
impossible, not because of the existence of “free will of indifference,”
but because the assumed data of the prediction are such that you
could not possibly have them until after the event. Finally, it will be
pointed out that the two errors both arise from the same false
metaphysical theory that the causal principle is a statement of real
fact.[209]
§ 5. Determinism. To begin with the view of the determinist.
Human conduct, he says, must be, like other processes,
unequivocally determined by antecedents, and these antecedents
must consist of (a) character and (b) external circumstance. For (1)
to deny the causal determination of our acts by antecedents is to
deny the presence of rational connection in the psychical sphere,
and thus to pronounce not only Psychology, but all the sciences
which take psychical events as their material and attempt to discover
rational connections between them, in principle impossible. Thus the
very existence of Psychology, Ethics, and History proves the
applicability of the principle of causal determinism to “mental states.”
(2) This is still more evident if we reflect that all science consists in
the formulation of “laws” or “uniformities,” and that the formulation of
“laws” rests upon the principle that “same result follows under same
conditions”—i.e. upon the principle of causal determination.
(3) Further, if psychical events are not so determined, then
Psychology and the mental sciences generally are inconsistent with
the general principles of the mechanical physical sciences.
(4) And, as a matter of fact, we do all assume that psychical
events are causally determined by their antecedents. In Psychology
we assume that our choices are determined by the strength of the
motives between which we choose. Hence, if you know what are the
“motives” present to a man’s choice, and the relative strength of
each, the determinist thinks the prediction of his conduct is reduced
to the purely mathematical problem of the solution of an equation or
set of equations. That our present mathematical resources will not
avail for the unequivocal solution of such equations is, on this view, a
mere temporary defect incidental to the present condition of
mathematical science. In principle the equations must be soluble, or
“there is no science of human action.”
(5) And in practical life we do all assume that it is possible to
predict with considerable confidence the effect of typical conditions
upon the aggregate of mankind, and also, when you have the
requisite data, the effect of a definite set of conditions upon an
individual man. Thus we count upon the deterrent effects of
punishment, the persuasive influence of advertisement, etc.; and
again, in proportion as we really know our friends, we believe
ourselves able to answer for their conduct in situations which have
not as yet arisen. Why, then, should we suppose it theoretically
impossible, if adequate data were furnished, to calculate the whole
career of a man or a society in advance, as the astronomer
calculates the path of a planet from its elements? These are, I think,
the chief of the stock arguments by which Determinism has been
defended. (With the purely theological argument from the
absoluteness of the divine foreknowledge I have already dealt in
passing, and do not propose to refer to it again.)
§ 6. It is not difficult to see that the logical value of all these
arguments is nothing at all. They fall of themselves into two groups,
one based upon the general view that all rational connection, or at
least all such rational connection as is significant for our knowledge,
is mechanical causal sequence, the other upon an appeal to the
supposed actual practice of the mental sciences. We may deal with
the first group (arguments 1 to 3) first. It is certainly not true that
causal determination by antecedents is the only form of rational
connection. For there is manifestly another type of connection, which
we have already seen to be fundamental for the mental sciences,
namely, teleological coherence. And we have learned in our
preceding books that no truly teleological or purposive series can
really be mechanically determined by uniform causal laws of
sequence, though it is often convenient for special purposes, as in
the physical sciences, to treat such a series as if it were
mechanically determined. Whether this type of procedure will be
valid in the mental sciences, depends upon the further question
whether our interest in the study of mental processes is of the kind
which would be satisfied by the formulation of a number of abstract
uniformities or laws of sequence, and the neglect of all those
features of real mental life of which such laws take no account.
In the physical sciences, as we saw, this mechanical scheme was
valid only because we have an interest—that of devising general
rules for dealing with typical physical situations—which is met by
neglecting all those aspects of concrete fact which the mechanical
scheme excludes. But we also saw that the nature of our interest in
psychological investigation was predominantly (and, in the case of
the study of voluntary action, exclusively) of a different kind. Our
interest in these investigations was to obtain such a teleological
representation of psychical processes as might be made available
for the appreciative judgments of Ethics and History and their
kindred studies. Thus, even admitting the possibility of treating
psychical life for some purposes, by abstraction from its teleological
character, as if it were a mechanical sequence, the abstraction would
be fatal for the purposes of the concrete mental sciences, and is
therefore inadmissible in them. A teleological unity in which we are
interested as a teleological unity cannot, without the stultification of
our whole scientific procedure, be treated in abstraction from its
teleological character.
This rejoinder to the first of the determinist’s arguments is at the
same time a refutation of the second. It is true that any science
which aims exclusively at the discovery of “laws” or “uniformities”
must adopt the causal principle, and must resolutely shut its eyes to
all aspects of concrete fact which cannot be resolved into
mechanical sequence of “same result” on “same conditions.” But, as
we saw in the first chapter of this book, the characteristic task of
Psychology, except in those parts of it which appear to be mere
temporary substitutes for the Physiology of the future, is not the
discovery of “laws of mental process,” but the representation in
abstract and general form of the teleological unity of processes
which are the expression of subjective interests. Psychology, then, in
its most characteristic parts, is not based upon the causal postulate
of mechanical science, but on the conception of teleological
continuity.
Our answer to the determinist’s third argument is therefore that we
admit the truth of the allegation that Psychology and all the more
concrete mental sciences which make use of the symbolism of
Psychology, because essentially teleological in their view of mental
process, would be inconsistent with the mechanical postulates, if
those postulates had any claim to admission into mental science as
its ruling principles. We deny, however, that they have any such
claim to recognition. Being, as we now know that they are, mere
methodological rules for the elimination from our data of everything
which is teleological, the mechanical postulates are only legitimate in
Psychology so far as Psychology desires mechanical results. How
far that is, we have learned in the first two chapters of the present
Book, and we have found that the initiation of purposive action is not
a process which Psychology can fruitfully treat as mechanical.
§ 7. Turning now to the determinist’s allegations as to the factual
procedure of the mental sciences, we may make the following
observations:—(1) As to the argument from the psychological
treatment of “motives” as the determining antecedents of choice, we
say that it is either an empty tautology or a fallacy, according to the
sense you please to put on the much-abused term “motive.” Choice
is causally determined by the “strongest motive”; what does this
mean? If the “strongest motive” simply means the line of action we
do in fact choose, the argument amounts to the true but irrelevant
observation that we choose what we do choose, and not something
else. But if “motives” are to be regarded as antecedents causally
determining choice in proportion to their strength, as mechanical
“forces” determine the path of a particle in abstract Mechanics, we
must suppose the “strength” of the various “motives,” like the mass
of an attracting body, to be previously fixed, independent of the
choice they determine. In other words, the determinist argument
requires us to hold that alternative possibilities of action are already
“motives” apart from their relation to the purpose of the agent who
has to choose between them, and moreover have, also in
independence of the purpose or “character” of the chooser, a
“strength” which is in some unintelligible way a function of—it would
not be easy to say of what, though it is incumbent on the determinist
to know. And this seems no better than rank nonsense. An
alternative is not a “motive” at all, except in relation to the already
existing, but not fully defined, purpose of some agent, and whether it
is a “strong” or a “weak” motive depends likewise on the character of
the agent’s purpose. The attempt to conceive of “motives” as
somehow acting on a mind with an inherent “strength” of their own,
as material particles attract other material particles proportionately to
their masses, is so palpable an absurdity, that nothing more than the
candid statement of it is needed for its complete exposure.
And (2) there is an equal absurdity inherent in the determinist view
as to the kind of prediction of conduct which is possible in concrete
cases. We have seen already in our Third Book that no infallible
prediction of the course of events in an individual case is ever
possible. Mechanical calculation and prediction we found to be
possible in the physical sciences simply because they deal with the
average character of a vast aggregate of processes which they
never attempt to follow in their concrete individual detail. And
trustworthy prediction of human conduct by the aid of “causal laws”
was seen to be of the same kind. Your uniformities might hold good,
so long as they professed to be nothing more than statistical
averages got by neglecting the individual peculiarities of the special
cases composing them, but nothing but acquaintance with individual
character and purpose would justify you in making confident
predictions as to the behaviour of an individual man.
Now, when the determinist says, “if you knew a man’s character
and his circumstances you could predict his conduct with certainty,” it
is not this kind of individual acquaintance which he has in view. He
means that the “character” of an individual man could be reduced to
a number of general formulæ or “laws of mental action,” and that
from these “laws,” by simply putting them together, you could
logically deduce the man’s behaviour. To see how irrational this
assumption is, we need only ask what is meant exactly by the
“character” which we suppose given as one of the elements for our
supposed calculation. If it means the sum-total of the congenital
“dispositions” with which we are born, then—apart from the difficulty
of saying precisely what you mean by such a “disposition”—the
determinist statement is not even approximately true. For (a) though
it may be true that a man’s behaviour in a given situation is an
expression of his “character,” yet the “character” is not the same
thing as “congenital disposition.” Disposition is the mere raw material
of the “character,” which is formed out of it by the influence of
circumstance, the educational activity of our social circle, and
deliberate self-discipline on our own part. And the “character” thus
formed is not a fixed and unvarying quantity, given once and for all at
some period in the individual’s development, and thenceforward
constant; it is itself, theoretically at least, “in the making” throughout
life, and though you may, from personal intimate acquaintance with
an individual man, feel strongly convinced that his “character” is not
likely to undergo serious changes after a certain time of life, this
conviction can never amount to more than what we properly call
“moral” certainty, and is never justified except on the strength of
individual familiarity.
(b) This leads us to our second point. If—to suppose the
practically impossible—you did know a man’s “character” with the
knowledge of omniscience, you would clearly also know every act of
his life. For his “character” is nothing but the system of purposes and
interests to which his outward deeds give expression, and thus to
know it completely would be to know them completely too. But—and
this is what the determinist regularly overlooks—you could not
possibly have this knowledge of the man’s “character” until you were
already acquainted with the whole of his life. You could not possibly
thus know “character” as a datum given in advance, from which to
calculate, with mathematical precision, the as yet unknown future
acts of the man in question, because, as we have seen, the
“character” is, in fact, not there as a given fact before the acts
through which it is formed. Your data could at best be no more than
a number of “dispositions” or “tendencies,” and from such data there
can be no infallible prediction, because, in the first place,
“dispositions” are not always developed into actual fixed habits; and,
in the second, your data, such as they are, are incomplete, seeing
that “dispositions” may, and often do, remain latent and escape
detection until the emergence of a situation adapted to call them out.
So that, even if it were true that complete knowledge of a man’s
original stock of “dispositions” would enable you to calculate his
career from its elements, it would still be impossible to be sure that
your knowledge of his “dispositions” was complete.
Thus, if a “science of human nature” really means a power to
calculate human conduct in advance from its elements, we must
admit that there is not and can be no such science. As a fact,
however, what we really mean by a “science of human nature,” when
we speak of it as possible or as partly existent already, is something
quite different. We mean either Psychology, individual and social,
which is simply an abstract symbolism for the representation of
teleological process in its general nature, or History, which is the
detection of coherent purpose in human action, after the event; or,
again, Ethics and Politics, which are appreciations of such purpose
by an ideal standard of worth. Not one of these sciences has ever
attempted the calculation of human action in advance by general
laws; such forecasts of the future as we do make, with rational
confidence, are palpably based, wherever they are of value, on
concrete experience, our own or that of others, and not upon the
principles of an imaginary mechanics of the human mind.
§ 8. Indeterminism. With the fallacies of the indeterminist we must
now deal more briefly. This is the more possible as Indeterminism,
though common enough in popular moralising, has never won
anything like the position of the rival doctrine as the professed creed
of scientific investigators. The essence of the indeterminist position
is the denial of the principle affirmed alike by the doctrine of self-
determination and, in an unintelligent travesty, by the determinist
theory that conduct results from the reaction of “character” upon
circumstances. Seeing that, if all human action is mechanically
determined in advance by its “antecedents,” and is thus theoretically
capable of being deduced from its “elements,” there can be no true
moral freedom, and, not seeing that the essence of true freedom is
teleological as opposed to mechanical determination, the
indeterminist thinks himself compelled to assert that human action is,
in the last resort, not “determined” even by human character. There
is a “free will of indifference” inherent in human nature, in virtue of
which a man’s acts, or at least those of them in respect of which he
is morally “accountable,” are free, in the sense of being independent
of his character.
Freedom, according to this view, consists in the ability indifferently
to adopt either of two alternative courses; so long as one alternative
is closed to you (whether by your “character” or by external
circumstances makes no difference according to the indeterminist),
you are not “free” and not acting as a moral and accountable being.
You are only acting freely in following your purpose when you could
equally well follow its direct opposite. The arguments by which this
doctrine is supported, over and above the general contention that
determination by antecedents is incompatible with moral
responsibility, are chiefly of the nature of appeals to immediate
feeling. Thus we are told (1) that when we act from choice and not
under compulsion we always have the immediate feeling that we
could equally well act in the opposite sense; and (2) that it is a
matter of direct experience that, in resisting temptation, we can and
do act “in the line of greatest resistance,” and that the “will” is
therefore independent of determination by “motives.”
The detailed discussion of the actuality of the alleged facts
belongs, of course, to Psychology, and I do not propose to enter into
it here. But it should be manifest that, even admitting the facts to be
as the indeterminist states them, they do not warrant the inference
he bases on them. Thus (1) it is no doubt true that I often am aware,
in resolving on a certain course of action, that I could, if I pleased,
act differently. But the conditional clause by its presence makes all
the difference between teleological determination and no
determination at all. It is, e.g., no genuine fact of experience that I
am aware that I could violate all the habits of a lifetime, practise all
the crimes I most abhor, and neglect all the interests to which I am
most devoted. I could do all this “if I pleased,” but before I could
“please” I should have to become a different man; while I am the
man I am, it is a manifest absurdity to hold that I can indifferently
express in my behaviour the purposes which constitute my
individuality or their opposites.
 (2) The argument from the successful resistance of temptations is
equally fallacious. We have seen already that the determinist
assumption against which it is directed, namely, that conduct is
mechanically determined by the inherent “strength” of “motives,” is
itself unmeaning. “Motives” are, if they are anything, another name
for the interests which constitute our character, not external
influences which “work upon” that character, and thus their relative
“strength” is nothing independent of character, but a new expression
for the structure of the individual character itself. But the counter-
argument of Indeterminism is just as unmeaning. To talk of the
“conquest” of temptation as the “line of greatest resistance” is to use
the very same unintelligible mechanical analogy as the determinist
uses in talking of the antecedent “strength” of a “motive.” There are,
in fact, only two possible interpretations of the indeterminist’s
contention, and neither of them supports his conclusion. Either the
“resistance” of which he speaks must be measured by our actual
success in resisting the suggestion to act, and in that case the very
fact that we do not yield to the temptation shows that for us yielding
would have been the “line of greatest resistance”; or else
“resistance” must be measured by the extent to which the rejected
alternative still persists as a psychical fact after its rejection. Then
the alleged experience simply amounts to this, that we can and
sometimes do, in obedience to training or conviction, refuse to act
upon suggestions which as psychical facts have sufficient intensity to
remain before the mind even after our refusal. And this, interesting
and suggestive as it is, seems no particular reason for denying the
teleological determination of our conduct.[210]
The real metaphysical objection to Indeterminism however, is not
that it is an unprovable and unnecessary hypothesis, but that it
involves the denial of rational connection between human actions.
By declaring that conduct is not determined by character, it virtually
asserts that it is chance which ultimately decides how we shall
actually behave in a concrete case. And chance is simply another
name for the absence of rational connection. This is illustrated, e.g.,
by the use we make of the conception of chance in the various
empirical sciences. Thus, when I say that it is a matter of chance
what card I shall draw from the pack, what I mean is that the result
depends in part upon conditions which I do not know, and therefore
cannot use as data for a conclusion in favour of one result rather
than another. I do not, of course, mean that the result is not
conditioned at all, or that, with a sufficient knowledge of the
conditions it might not have been calculated in advance, but merely
that I in particular have not this sufficient knowledge. Hence the
admission of chance in the relative sense of “conditions not at
present accurately known” does not conflict with the fundamental
axiom of all thinking, the principle that all existence is a rational unity
or scheme of some sort. In fact, since we never can know the
“totality of the conditions” of anything, it would be true to say that
there is an element of chance, in this relative sense, in all concrete
actualities.
But absolute chance, such as the doctrine of an indeterminate free
will maintains, would amount to the simple absence of any rational
connection whatever between the facts which are alleged to issue
from such a will. This is why the indeterminist view leads in the end,
if consistently carried out, to the same metaphysical absurdity as the
determinist. From failure to see that rational connection, such as is
presupposed when we impute praise or blame to an agent on the
score of his conduct, means teleological determination, both the rival
theories in the end deny the rational interconnection of human acts,
the one replacing it by the fiction of a purposeless mechanical
“necessity,” the other by the equal fiction of a “blind chance.” And the
two fictions are really the same thing under different names. For the
only piece of definite information that could be extracted either from
the assertion that human conduct is mechanically determined, or that
it is the result of chance, is the conclusion that in either case it is not
the expression of coherent purpose.
§ 9. It is thus obvious that Indeterminism fails, in precisely the
same way as the opposing theory, to afford any theoretical basis for
moral responsibility. True, I cannot be “responsible” for deeds which
are the outcome of a purely mechanical system of antecedents,
because such deeds, not issuing from the purposes of my self, are in
no true sense mine; but the same would be equally true of the
results of an indeterminate free will. As not owing their existence to
my purpose, those results are in no real sense “my” acts, and the
choice of the name “free will” for their unknown source only serves to
disguise this consequence without removing it. Only as issuing from
my character, and as the expression of my individual interests, can
acts be ascribed to me as “mine” and made the basis of moral
approbation in censure of my “self.”
Thus we see that the determinist and the indeterminist are led
alike to impossible results because of the common error involved in
their point of departure. Both start with the false assumption that the
causal determination of an event by its “antecedents”—which we
have in our earlier books seen to be a postulate ultimately not in
accord with reality, but permissible in so far as it permits us to obtain
useful results by treating events as if they were thus determined—is
ultimately real as a feature of concrete existence. Having thus at the
outset excluded genuine teleological determination from their
conception of the world of change, both theorists are alike debarred
from the correct understanding of those psychical processes for the
comprehension of which teleological categories are indispensable.
In the terms of theories which treat determination as purely
mechanical, the factors which manifestly are the determining
conditions of conduct, namely, character and the alternative
possibilities of action, inevitably come to be conceived of as the
temporal “antecedents” of the act which issues from them. And when
once this notion of character as a sort of pre-existing material upon
which “motives” from without operate has been framed, it matters
little in principle whether you take “character” and “motive” by
themselves as the complete antecedents by which action is
determined, or add a third “antecedent” in the form of an inexplicable
arbitrary “free will.” In either case all possibility of a truthful
representation of the freedom actually implied in moral accountability
was surrendered when the “character” which expresses itself
through an act, and the “motive” which is another name for that
character as particularised by reference to circumstances, were
falsely separated in thought from each other, and then further treated
as the temporal antecedents of the act in which they are expressed.
In our own treatment of the problem of freedom we were able to
escape both sides of the dilemma, because we recognised from the
first that the categories of mechanical determination are not the
expression of real fact, but limitations artificially imposed upon facts
for special purposes of a kind which have nothing in common with
the ethical and historical appreciation of human conduct, and
therefore irrelevant and misleading when applied out of their rightful
sphere.

Consult further:—H. Bergson, Sur les données immédiates de la

conscience; F. H. Bradley, Ethical Studies, Essay 1; W. R. B. Gibson,
“The Problem of Freedom” (in Personal Idealism); T. H. Green,
Prolegomena to Ethics, bk. i. chap. 3, bk. ii. chap. 1; W. James,
Principles of Psychology, vol. ii. chap. 26; Will to Believe (The
Dilemma of Determinism); J. Locke, Essay concerning Human
Understanding, bk. ii. chap. 21 (on Power); J. Martineau, Types of
Ethical Theory, vol. ii. bk. i. chap. 1; J. S. Mill, Logic, bk. vi. chap. 2
ff.; J. Royce, The World and the Individual, Second Series, lect. 8; H.
Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, bk. i. chap. 5; Lectures on the Ethics of
Green, etc., pp. 15-29.

200. See Methods of Ethics, bk. i. chap. 4, § 6 (pp. 72-76 of 5th

ed.).
201. So Omar Khayyám—

“Oh Thou, who didst with pitfall and with gin

Beset the Road I was to wander in,
Thou wilt not with Predestined Evil round
Emmesh, and then impute my Fall to Sin.”
(Fitzgerald, ed. 4, stanza 80.)
And our own poet—

“Thou madest man in the garden; thou temptedst man, and he

fell,” etc.
(For the original of the stanzas on Predestination in Fitzgerald’s
Omar, see, e.g., the Persian text of Whinfield, quatrains 100, 126,
197.)
202. Evaded, because, even granting the satisfactoriness of the
solution for the special case of Adam, there would still be the
problem of reconciling the alleged “free will” of his descendants with
their inheritance of “original sin.” The more rigid Calvinism, with its
insistence on the natural corruption of man’s heart and the
absoluteness of predestination, seems to secure logical consistency
at the expense of outraging our moral convictions. Like so many
popular theological problems, this of the conflict between God’s
omniscience and justice arises from a misconception of the issue. It
is only when the category of time is illogically applied to the ex
hypothesi perfect, and therefore timeless, nature of God that God’s
knowledge comes to be thought by as fore knowledge before the
event, and thus occasions the difficulty which the “free-will” theory
was intended to remove. See on this point, Royce, The World and
the Individual, vol. ii. lect. 8, and compare Bradley, Ethical Studies, p.
19. Of course, the case would be altered if we thought of God as
finite and imperfect, and therefore in time. But there would then be
no longer any reason for believing either in His omniscience or His
omnipotence, and so no problem would arise.
203. Remember that abstention from acting is itself action, just as
in Logic every significant denial is really an assertion. Hence our
proviso meets the case of wilful neglect to inform myself of the
material circumstances.
204. The only automatic acts of which we really know the
psychical character are our own “secondarily automatic” or “habitual”
acts. It is, of course, a problem for the casuist how far any particular
reaction has become so completely automatic as to be no longer an
occasion for the imputation of merit or guilt.
205. For purposes of law it may often be impossible to draw the
distinction, and we may have to acquiesce in the rough-and-ready
alternative between entire accountability and complete non-
accountability. But in passing moral judgment on ourselves or others
in foro conscientiæ, we always recognise that accountability is a
thing of degrees. On this point see Mr. Bradley’s previously quoted
article in Mind for July 1902.
206. It must, however, be carefully noted that will in the sense in
which it is equivalent to freedom must be taken to include what some
writers, e.g., Bradley, call a “standing” will—i.e. any series of acts
originally initiated by an idea of the resultant changes, which is