I flash her a quick smile before I head for the door and let myself out as quietly as possible. Feeling a little like a deserter, I jog toward my place and get another rude awakening. My Range Rover sits askance at the end of the driveway, like an abandoned getaway car. Heat having nothing to do with the jog crawls up my neck and into my face. Becca and one of her friends wanted to go to a club to meet up with a guy and complete a transaction, because I wouldn’t let her invite the guy here, but I was done—and pissed—so I said have fun and walked out the door before she could drag me into another argument. Apparently she took my departure as permission to borrow my ride. I really don’t know what was going through Bec’s mind, but I remember now, Kendall risked her neck to shove me out of the way of my own damn car and then confiscated my keys when I tried to get behind the wheel. I owe her epic thanks for what she did and an apology for putting her in a confiscate-my-keys situation in the first place.
I run up the driveway, which is damn steep, and anger builds with each stride. I know better than this. I’m not stupid. Why I’m sabotaging myself when I’ve got a shot at attaining something I’ve been working toward for years, I really can’t say.
Okay, that’s bullshit. I know one reason why. All I have to do is look at a calendar for the diagnosis. I wanted to focus on something other than the sorrow my whole family gets sucked into around the anniversary of my sister’s death. I’m not sure we’ll ever completely adjust to the loss, but I need to stop dealing with it in ways nobody would approve of—including her—because a chance to take over the hosting duties for a hit show like America Rocks doesn’t come around very often. Reckless behavior will get me aced out of that opportunity so fast I won’t need tequila to make my head spin. So yeah, I’m pissed at myself.
Pissed enough to slam through the front door without considering who I might wake. People might be crashed on my couches. I glance around the living room, relieved to see I have no lingering guests. Chances are I wouldn’t recognize them anyway. Most of last night’s festivities are still one big blur. Becca likes to party. We have people over, and next thing I know the place looks like a hotel suite with an open bar. My best friends and roommates, Dylan and Matt, think Becca’s using me—which she is—but they don’t object to hosting her and a group of her hot friends every now and again, which I think means Becca hasn’t cornered the market on using people. Even if they did object, neither of them was home last night, so whatever went down was totally on me.
Bec wanted to celebrate. She leaves today for a stint in NYC—some modeling jobs plus a meeting with a director interested in casting her for a film role—and she loves a proper send-off. I was happy enough to give her one. Happy for the distraction from my saddest memories. Happy to celebrate her success but also, to be brutally honest, happy to celebrate her leaving, which I know is a shitty thing to admit. She and I have been friends for a while, but it’s not the healthiest of relationships.
In case I needed more proof, I have this morning as a perfect example of yet another fun-filled evening that ended with me feeling the need to hit the eject button.
Not my best move, given I almost became a statistic in my own driveway. Were it not for fast action on my new neighbor’s part, I might be waking up in the hospital this morning. Or the morgue. I blink back to the moment she threw herself in harm’s way for me, a complete stranger, and a clearer vision of her takes shape in my mind. Wide set eyes, a stubborn little chin, and last but not least, Cupid’s bow lips curved into the patient smile of someone stuck dealing with a drunk-ass fool. She showed up out of nowhere last night, just like a guardian angel. I grab a bottle of Advil from the cabinet, shake two into my palm, add a third, and wash them down with eighteen ounces of Fiji from the fridge. Then I head back to the main room and start up the floating staircase along the travertine wall that separates the living area from the office and media room.
I stride into my bedroom and hit the lights, because I can’t see shit with the blackout curtain pulled over the floor-to-ceiling windows that frame a kick-ass view of Sunset Boulevard, Beverly Hills, and, on a clear day, the ocean. I have no idea how far the view extends today, because, once the lights come on, all I can see is Becca’s ass giving me a sideways smirk. She looks like she spent a month sunbathing nude in the Caribbean. There’s no discernible difference in skin tone anywhere on her body. Truth is it’s a spray tan. She would never subject the moneymaker to ultraviolet rays and premature aging. I waste a split second realizing I miss the strangely vulnerable look of tan lines—light skin never touched by the sun or a chemical facsimile thereof. I bet Kendall has tan lines. When some lucky bastard sees her pretty little ass, he’s seeing something she keeps private.
Not Becca. She lives her life at the other end of the privacy spectrum, and she couldn’t have staged a sexy, bed-wrecked scene better, except…her feet are filthy. Black stains her heels and balls of her toes, as if she ran a marathon through hell’s gutters last night. I’m equal parts concerned and disgusted by those dirty feet.
I’m also angry with her for pulling that stunt last night. She almost ran two people down and walked away like it was a big joke. Now she’s naked in my bed as if the use of her body somehow makes everything all right. I
pull the door shut behind me, not especially loud, but her head jerks up. She rubs her eyes, yawns, and settles her cheek on her crossed arms, adjusting the angle until tiger eyes find me from behind a screen of hair. “Hey. Where’d you storm off to last night?”
“Nowhere special.” Aside from arguing over drugs last night, I’d confided I’d done an audition for the new host of America Rocks, and instead of offering encouragement or asking me how it had gone, she’d said it was good experience to audition, even if the job is out of reach. Of all my friends, I thought she’d be the most excited, but the truth, I’m realizing, is that Becca’s main focus is Becca. There’s not much left over for anyone else.
My response earns me a pouty frown. “I waited for you, but you never came back, so I figured you were off sulking somewhere. You definitely wanted nothing to do with me. You didn’t even return my texts.”
I shrug, hit with the sudden realization that our friendship has run its course. We’ll always be colleagues, but I don’t want to pretend everything is okay when it’s not.
“I’ll let you make it up to me.” She does a leisurely little grind against the crumpled sheets.
“Will you?” I’m closing the distance to the bed before I realize I’ve decided to move, but it’s not desire compelling me forward, it’s disappointment at her assumption we’re both this easy.
The smile she sends me says she’ll let me do all kinds of things. “I’ve got a confession. Sometimes I pick a fight with you just for the makeup sex.” She stretches with the grace of a jungle cat and lifts her hips a few inches—enough for me to wonder what positions she assumes during what must be the most thorough spray tan sessions on Earth.
“Can’t.” I smack her ass to come off like a good sport, and over her gasp, explain, “Gunnar will be here in ten minutes.”
“Oh, baby.” She runs a finger over the pink mark left by my palm and then lets it drift lower. “Ten minutes is all we need. C’mon.” Her busy finger finds the target, and her eyelids lower seductively as she pleases herself. “I leave for New York this afternoon. Don’t you want something nice to remember while I’m gone?”
“Not this time.” Not ever again. I escape down the short hall leading to my closet/dressing area on one side and the master bath on the other. I veer toward the closet. “Gunnar’s not so easy to make up with,” I call out. “If I’m late, he will punish me in ways I don’t want to contemplate. Not even for you.”
“Fine,” she huffs just before I pull the pocket door shut.
I hear the shower kick on as I change into workout clothes. The coast is clear. I fly downstairs in time to answer the knock on the front door. My own personal drill sergeant stands there, and the first thing he tells me to do is move my car so he can park in the driveway. I say I can’t and make it sound like there’s a mechanical problem.
He calls my ride a piece of shit as he turns and jogs down the drive. I know the routine. Five-mile warm-up. I fall into step beside him, but my attention strays to my neighbors’ house. I scan the windows as we run past, hoping for a glimpse of my guardian angel, but all is quiet.
A picture of Kendall drifts through my mind. Arms crossed, eyebrows low, she’s looking down her small nose at me and struggling to hold back a reluctant smile. It’s possible I wasn’t a total dick, but I definitely owe her an apology-slash-thanks. I think about ways to thank her while Gunnar puts me through the paces. When he finally cuts me loose, I limp upstairs to my bedroom, relieved to see Becca cleared out sometime during the last two hours.
A shave and shower make me feel halfway human again. I pull on jeans and a blue-striped button-down and check myself in the mirror. Casual but respectable.
I head downstairs to find Dylan in the entryway looking slightly more debauched than usual. He eyes me from above the rims of dark sunglasses, offers an irritated, “Nice parking job, fuck-up,” and brushes past me into the living room. He drops into one of the low-slung leather sofas and tosses his Ray Bans on the glass coffee table. His eyes are closed before his head hits the armrest. “Think you could move it?”
“I’m working on it,” I answer, and glance at my watch. It’s late, even for Dylan. “Did somebody get lucky last night?”
He doesn’t bother opening his eyes, but his jaded smile answers for him. “I don’t think luck had anything to do with it.”
“The redhead from the club?” Dylan recently sank a choke-a-horse chunk of his trust fund into a new club on Sunset. He won’t say it out loud, but he wants to prove something to his dad, who has always been too busy running his own empire to give much notice to anything else. I think it’s come as a surprise to a lot of people, including Dylan, how personally invested he is in the day-to-day business of operating the place.
His smile stretches and he opens his eyes to slits. “Lisa. Her cousin from Mississippi is in town trying to land a job, so it ended up being a party of three, I guess you could call it.” He glances around the room still strewn with empty bottles, glasses, spilled snacks, and various other party detritus, and his eyebrow goes up. He trails a finger through the filmy layer of white powder dusting the table and then rubs it on his gums. “You were a busy boy last night, too.”