Summer's Kiss (The Boys of Ocean Beach 1)

A huge grin appears on her face. “I knew it!”

“Shhhh!”

“Girl, we’re in a honky-tonk bar. There’s no such thing as being too loud.” She rolls her eyes. “Have you slept with any of them?”

“I spent the night with Justin—but no, we haven’t done it. I haven’t with any of them. We’re all taking it slow and…it’s nice.” She frowns. I frown back. “What?”

“They’re taking it slow?” She asks this in a confused, cautious voice.

“I mean, I’ve kissed them all and had some other, you know, activities with a few of them, but mostly clothes or bathing suits on.”

“Hmmm…” she looks out into the distance, across the waterway.

“What?”

She takes a sip of her drink and shrugs. “It’s not like them to go, as you say, slow. They’re kind of wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am types. Just for kicks. Sex is fun. No strings attached.”

“We are just having fun.”

She turns and glances inside. The guys are ribbing one another, playing darts. Two cute girls approach Whit and Justin, asking a few questions and giving a flirty grin. Neither react and send the girls on their way. Whit looks my way and winks.

“Holy shit,” Anita says. “Holy fucking shit.”

“What?” Now I’m alarmed. “What’s wrong?”

“They like you.”

“What?” I swear I’ve said the word ten times tonight, but Anita’s mind works at a different speed than my own.

“The boys like you. Like, really like you. All of them.”

“Well, that’s…” But I know it. I feel it, and that feeling is both parts amazing and terrifying. Amazing because I like them too and I want to explore every little thing about them—with them. But terrifying because France or no, my time here is limited. And they have dreams off this island and I’m sure as hell not going to be the reason they break them.

Anita clutches my arm. “I see that look on your face. Roll it back, girl. This is a good thing. These boys…they need to learn how to settle down. How to love someone. You may be the best damn thing to enter their lives.”

“But what if it’s the opposite? What if I come in here and crush their fragile ecosystem. Their Pact has worked. Why stop now?”

“I’m not so sure it has worked.” Her eyes dart over my shoulder and I’m sure it’s one of them. I take a deep breath and turn.

It’s not one of the guys.

It’s Mason, standing at the bottom of the deck stairs in the same jeans and wrinkled shirt from this morning. His beard has grown shaggier, the circles under his red eyes darker.

He bounds on the steps and starts yelling before I get a chance to do a thing. “I knew it. You’re not staying down here for long lost family or helping your mother with one of her trashy-grocery store novels. It’s about whatever guy is in that bar that you’re fucking. I knew from the start that you were a filthy whore. You teased and taunted me for months with that innocent act.” He clutches his head. “‘Oh, Mr. Lowery, I need help with this assignment. Oh, Mr. Lowery, you’re so smart.’ You got so inside my brain—so up on my jock—that I was willing to risk everything. My relationship. My career, just to get a taste of you.”

The truth, his truth, comes rushing out and I’m frozen by the onslaught.

Anita pushes past me. “What the hell did you just say?”

“I said Summer is a whore. A trashy, filthy, spread-legged whore.” He looks inside where the four guys and Bobby have now turned our way. “Which one is it? Which one are you fucking?”

In a blink, the deck is full of hot-headed men carrying pool sticks, with blazing eyes. I’m still frozen but Anita has jumped between the men and Mason.

“Absolutely no fighting,” her eyes level with each man. “This is under control.”

“He just called Summer a whore,” Nick argues. Whit paces behind him like a caged animal. Ivy and Maggie appear from inside the bar. Maggie approaches Whit and talks to him quietly.

“Which one of you is trying to steal my girl?” Mason says, his words are slurred. I realize he’s drunk.