LAUREN
“Fuck. Me.” I looked back and forth between the printout in my hand and the broken-down shack in front of me. It most definitely wasn’t the “quaint beachside bungalow” listed in the online ad. But I’d already signed the papers, sight unseen.
Great. I’d just dropped ten thousand bucks on a three-month lease for a piece-of-shit shack, crowded in a row with a bunch of other piece-of-shit shacks.
And was that seriously tinfoil covering the windows? Not cool.
“Technically, you mean ‘fuck us,’” Emerson piped in a little too enthusiastically. I loved my best friend, especially her willingness to ditch her family for the summer and spend her entire break with me before returning to the real world, but right now her enthusiasm was making my head pound. “And there are worse things than being fucked, not that you’d know anything about that. Besides, I like it. With a little work, it’ll be adorbs.”
“Okay, one, there’s nothing adorbs about it. It probably isn’t even up to code.” I eyed the window AC unit balanced precariously on a slanted two-by-four. “And two,” I complained. “Look around you, Em.” This was so not the California of my dreams—the one I’d been imagining since I was a little girl watching reruns of Baywatch. “The ad promised beachfront. As in, we would be stepping off our doorstep onto the sand. Do you see any beach?”
Emerson squinted, straining her eyes dramatically to see across the single-lane blacktop where the sun was just starting to set. She shielded her eyes with her hand and then squealed, “There! If you look in just the right place, in between those houses over there, you can see it!” She clapped her hands together and bounced up and down, thrilled for a quasi-glimpse of an almost-strip of the shore.
I tried to tell myself I should let some of Em’s positivity rub off on me. It shouldn’t matter where I’d be sleeping for the summer. All that mattered was that we’d finally left dry and dusty Arizona in the rearview mirror. I’d dreamed of this moment practically every single day of my childhood, when I’d submerged myself in the bubble bath, pretending I knew how to swim. Pretending I wasn’t afraid to learn how.
Now I could finally put those fears behind me.
“Come on,” Emerson gushed, digging through the jumble of bags crammed in the trunk and hauling out a couple of suitcases. “Let’s put on something slutty so we can scope out the local action.”
“Don’t you ever think of anything else?” I bent over and lifted the corner of the doormat, searching for the key the property manager told me would be waiting for us.
“Um, no.” Em sounded baffled. “Why? Do you?”
I laughed while I checked under the other side of the mat. Sure, I thought about guys plenty, but nowhere near as often as Emerson McLean did. Maybe I was just too jaded now, knowing how many men spent too much time—and too much money—watching a stranger undress on the Internet, instead of at home with their wives.
Not that I was complaining. Those men, with their seemingly endless pockets, were the reason Em and I were here in the first place.
I wasn’t necessarily proud of the things I’d done, but I wasn’t exactly ashamed either. The worst part was that it was sometimes hard to separate the real me from my online persona. Sometimes it would be nice to be an ordinary girl with ordinary baggage, like Em.
Emerson was the only person in the world who not only knew the things I’d done to make money—a secret she swore she’d take to her grave. But who also knew my other secret . . . one she considered a million times more scandalous.
Confession: I, Lauren Taylor, still carried my V card.
A fact Emerson intended to tease me mercilessly about until I “remedied” it. Because in Em’s eyes, that’s what virginity was: A disease in need of curing.
To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure she was wrong. On my birthday this year, I’d made a pact this would be the year. I was twenty-two, after all. I’d made it through high school and all four years of college without being swept off my feet. I was starting to think my soul mate wasn’t out there. Or worse, if he was out there, he was already attached to someone else and spending all his free time surfing the Internet for porn.
Yeah, I was definitely jaded.
So, soul mate or not, it was time. This was the year I would find a guy—he didn’t have to be Prince Charming, he pretty much only had to have his own place and decent breath. I was determined to get it over with. To stop holding onto my virginity like it was some prize.
It wasn’t. At some point everyone had it, and everyone—or almost everyone, anyway—gave it up.
It wasn’t like I’d never come close. I’d made out with some minty-breathed potentials. In the end, though, I’d always found some reason to back out before we sealed the deal—bad timing, no chemistry, or just plain not in the mood.
If I didn’t have Emerson cheering me on, I might die a virgin. But she wasn’t the giving-up type.
Before I got the chance to answer her about going out, there was a deep throat-clearing sound—a definite signal if I’d ever heard one. It came from somewhere to our right and I shot upright just as the distinctly male voice informed us, “Don’t mean to interrupt, ladies, but the keys aren’t there. Billy picked ’em up this afternoon.”
Spinning to face our new mystery guest, and meaning to argue that this Billy—whoever he was—had no business taking something that didn’t belong to him, I froze.
Any protests about Billy’s thieving ways evaporated on my lips. My eyes suddenly had a mind of their own, and even as I told myself to act like a grown-up, I caught my eyes raking the newcomer from head to freaking toe.
California just got a whole lot more interesting.
The guy in question didn’t seem to mind. He leaned casually inside the door frame of the house right next door to the one we were supposed to be renting—a house that appeared only shades more livable than our own, and I wondered if this was our new neighbor.
His swim trunks rested just the right amount of low over his waistline, and revealed what could only be described as the most chiseled set of abs known to man. And seriously, I was comparing them to great works of art, like the statue of David by Michelangelo, which had literally been chiseled from stone. From the bronze of this guy’s skin I was convinced he’d never heard the word sunscreen—not that I was complaining, since his too-deep tan flawlessly emphasized those sculpted abs of his.
“He’s just holdin’ onto them for you, nothing sketchy or anything. He’s harmless, really. Just doin’ his job,” Chiseled Abs informed us, looking from me to Em.
Clearly this guy’s presence had turned my brain to mush, because suddenly I had no clue what—or who, rather—he was talking about. I turned to Emerson for help, but she was too busy undressing him with her eyes to even notice I was still standing there.
I was on my own.
“Who?” I managed, unable to stop staring, even though my brain was screaming that I was being . . . I don’t know, weird.
“Billy.” Chiseled Abs’s brow dipped ever so slightly in an amused expression, and I got the feeling we weren’t the first girls to lose our shit over him. “You can call the landlord and ask, if you want. He asked Billy to pick up the keys when you were late.”
“Late,” I repeated distractedly. And then reality came crashing back and I realized what he was saying. He was right. I had told the landlord we would be there by five, but thanks to Em and her raisin-sized bladder, we’d had to stop at just about every rest stop along the way, and now it was well past seven. “Great, so now what?”
“It’s all good,” Chiseled Abs assured, offering us a wink. “Like I said, Billy’s got ’em.” A grin slipped over his lips then, all slow and lazy-like but perfectly timed and utterly intentional, and I knew—I knew, in that very instant—that Billy might be harmless, but there was nothing harmless about this guy.
Charming, yes. And fuckable, for sure—Emerson would probably bag him by the end of the summer. But guys like Chiseled Abs, who oozed sex and confidence, and who knew the effect they had on women, were rarely harmless.
I wasn’t like Em, who liked to twist guys around her little finger just because she could, and then toss them aside to move onto her next conquest. When I did find someone, he would definitely be a gentleman. Someone who read books and opened doors. Someone who said please and thank you, and remembered birthdays, anniversaries, and sent texts “just because.”
Someone who didn’t walk around half-naked. Definitely someone who didn’t spend thousands of dollars watching girls take off their clothes online. And someone who was totally and completely and truly harmless.
“Yeah?” I told Chiseled Abs, suddenly wishing I could slip inside the skin of my online persona, because whenever I was playing the part of Lola Bang—because, yes, I’d really called myself that!—I always felt a million times more badass than when I was just plain old Lauren Taylor. “Can you please let Harmless Billy know we’re here now, and we’d really like to get our car unpacked so we can call it a night?”
Chiseled Abs’s grin grew wider as he crossed his arms over the muscled planes of his exquisitely carved chest. And even though guys like him, the ones who thought way too highly of themselves, had never been my type, my stomach flipped just a little. I suddenly wondered if this was the real reason my parents had tried to talk me out of California my entire life. I wondered if my mom had never actually been afraid I would drown or be swept away by a riptide if I learned how to swim. But rather that she’d somehow known that if I ever did make my way to California, I’d discover the truth—that the boys were made differently here. They were carved from stone, and when they smiled at you they could set your panties on fire.
Frankly, if all the boys were like Chiseled Abs here, I would definitely need to invest in some new underwear.
“I have an even better idea,” he announced, his voice a husky enticement. He ran a hand over his muscular chest, and even though the gesture appeared absent-minded I wondered if it wasn’t calculated. “How ’bout you ladies come with me to The Dunes, and I’ll buy you both a burger and a beer? Consider it a welcome-to-the-neighborhood thing.” He sauntered toward us in a way that made it clear he probably didn’t get shot down all that often.
Emerson clapped her hands again, “Ooh, I love that idea!” she exclaimed.
I looked at the suitcase at my feet, hedging. “I don’t know . . . I really need to unload some of my stuff . . .”
“They got great microbrews,” he threw in, selling the place and his charm as he wiggled his brows. “And an awesome view . . .” and suddenly, I was seeing past the ridiculously hot veneer to the cheesy pick-up artist beyond. Maybe Michelangelo’s David was more like a velvet painting of Elvis after all. “Besides,” he added. “Billy’s tending bar tonight. We can get your keys while we’re there.”
And that was it. I was going to The Dunes whether I liked it or not.
Because clearly Chiseled Abs had worked his magic on Em too.
I was pretty sure there was a five-alarm blaze in her pants.
LAUREN
“I’ll take one of each, please!” Emerson enthused, squeezing my arm as her gaze swept up and down each of the guys standing in the crowd around the busy beachside bar. “Thankyouandamen,” she gushed all in one word.
Chiseled Abs, who it turned out had a real name he expected us to use—Lucas Harper—left us alone so we could claim a table while he went to grab some menus. He’d also chosen to put on a shirt, which Emerson considered a “serious buzz kill,” although clearly, she was finding new ways to console herself.
“Lo,” she enthused, calling me by my nickname and elbowing me to make sure I was paying attention. “Check out that one.” She wiggled her manicured nails in the direction of a hot surfer-looking guy who looked suspiciously like every other hot surfer-looking guy in the packed place.
He lifted his eyebrows at her, letting her know he’d noticed her too.
I slapped Emerson’s hand down. “Don’t encourage them. This place is a serious meat market.”
“I know,” she babbled. “Isn’t it great?”
Yeah . . . great. Except this wasn’t how I’d imagined my first night in California. I’d pictured Em and me on the beach with beers in our hands as we watched the sun go down.
Instead, after driving all day to find out our crappy bungalow wasn’t even on the beach, we were stuck here, at a crowded beachside bar. There was sand and beer, all right; the floor was sticky with a mixture of both. But all I really wanted right now was to get my keys from this Billy-whoever-he-was and get the hell out of here so I could unpack my things and throw on my favorite sweatpants.
I was more than a little surprised by how busy the place was, especially for a Tuesday night. The girl-to-guy ratio was somewhere in the three to one range, with girls crowding the small space, wearing everything from cropped tops and miniskirts, to bikini tops and leave-nothing-to-the-imagination cutoff jeans. The more skin the better seemed to be the name of the game.
So far, the California boys might have the Tempe boys beat in the looks department, but it turned out boys were still boys, no matter where you went. The guys here had basically the same moves. They sat back and watched the girls like hungry wolves, waiting for one of the lambs to wander away from the flock.
I spotted Lucas’s spiky hair as he expertly shouldered his way through the crowd to reach us. He smiled just as wolfishly as the rest of them as he clutched the menus under one arm and balanced three beer bottles in his hands. When he got to our table he set a bottle down in front of each of us and waited expectantly.
I glanced up at him and lifted a brow. “Um, thank you . . .” I stretched my gratitude out, giving him the ego stroke he was clearly anticipating. Then, when he didn’t produce the information I’d been hoping for, I prompted, “And my keys . . . ?”
“Yeah, that. I couldn’t get Billy’s attention.” He took the seat next to Emerson’s and threw the full weight of his attention—and his smoldering gaze—on her. “So tell me about yourselves. What’s your story?” he asked.
Em fiddled with the label on her bottle coyly . . . as if she’d ever had a coy bone in her body. “What do you wanna know?”
“Well, since you have a carload of suitcases and an impressive accent, why don’t you start with where you’re from?”
And like that, I became invisible.
Normally, this part didn’t bother me, the part where guys were drawn to Em like flies to honey. I didn’t blame them. She was the female equivalent of Chiseled Abs here. Plus, she was a puppet master—pulling guys’ strings with a well-placed pucker, a flutter of her eyelashes, and a lean in at just the right moment. She took flirtation to a whole new level.
I had my own secret weapons, I just preferred to keep mine undercover . . . like a superhero. Or a spy. If I’d tried Em’s moves, it would look like I had something stabbing me in my eye or had a problem with my mouth that needed serious medical attention. Stat.
Today, however, I wasn’t in the mood for a front-row seat to one of her impressive acts.
Em wrinkled her brow and gave her standard: “I don’t have an accent, silly.” Which came out so full of drawl she may as well have been wearing assless chaps and swinging a lasso. She actually had the nerve to giggle then, making me glare at her as I impatiently waited for either of them to notice I was still siting at the table, or for Lucas to stop flirting for a second so he could elaborate on the whole key issue.
He didn’t. Instead, he chuckled at Emerson while he took a long pull from his beer and eyed her hungrily. “Oh yeah, you totally do. Besides, even if you didn’t—which you do—your car’s sportin’ Arizona plates. So? Where you from? And I mean originally, because you definitely aren’t from Arizona, either.”
I had to wonder how many hours he’d spent in front of the mirror perfecting that fuck-me stare of his, because Em was totally buying into it.
“You caught us.” She shrugged, flashing me the same it’s not my fault look I had seen from her a hundred times before, like she was shocked anyone had noticed poor little ol’ her. “I’m from Dallas. Originally. Or just outside Dallas—a teensy nothin’ of a place called Highland Village. Lo here is from the suburbs of Denver. But we met at ASU.”
Arizona. I’d been glad to leave that dust bowl behind.
It hadn’t exactly been my first choice for college, but my parents had been insistent about me not straying too far. It they’d had their way, I’d have stayed within commuting distance. If I’d had mine, I would have landed in Florida or one of the Carolinas. Or right here in California. Anyplace with beaches and bikinis . . . and lots and lots of water.
So we’d compromised. Arizona met my mom’s number one (albeit unspoken) criteria: It was landlocked. But it also met mine: It was far enough from home to give me the breathing room I’d been craving. I could still visit home; it just meant that my mom couldn’t pop in without at least giving me a heads-up.
Meeting Em had been a bonus, the single best thing to come out of my stint at ASU. From the moment I’d walked into the dorm we’d been assigned to share our freshman year, Em had hooked her arm through mine and told me (totally straight faced) that her favorite color was “sparkles.” We’d been inseparable ever since.
“So, you, what . . . decided to beach-bum it for the summer?” Lucas asked.
Em shrugged, looking to me to see if she should elaborate. “Something like that . . .”
Uncomfortable with the way this conversation was headed, I reached out and tapped the table in front of Lucas, forcing him to stop ogling Emerson long enough to notice me. “About this Billy guy . . .”
“Uh, yeah . . . like I said, I couldn’t get his attention.” He pointed to the bar, where a cluster of scantily clad blondes congregated like there was a blowout sale on Prada bags. “Busy night,” he told me dismissively, shrugging to let me know he’d given it his best shot.
“Yet, somehow you managed to get our drinks,” I persisted, ticked that he wasn’t taking this seriously.
He sighed. “Different bartender.”
I looked again, this time following to where he was pointing, at the other end of the bar. It was far less crowded there, where a dark-haired girl was working behind the counter.
I huffed impatiently as I shoved away from our table. “Fine. I’ll get ’em myself.” Busy or not, there was no way I was walking out of this place without our keys.
I was on a mission. As I waded through the sea of tanned and toned bodies, it became more and more obvious I was out of my element in my worn blue jeans and Grateful Dead T-shirt. Whenever someone pushed me, I pushed back, trying not to be skeeved out by the fact that when I did, my hands met exposed flesh more often than not.
If you judged by looks alone, Emerson could easily pass for one of these California girls, with her straight-from-the-bottle blonde hair and those superlong legs of hers. It wasn’t until she opened her mouth and you heard her twang, or you learned of her undying love for Taylor Swift and spangled clothing, that you knew she really belonged deep in the heart of Texas.
Me, not so much. I wasn’t the typical California beauty, but I’d never really been the typical anything. I hadn’t inherited my mother’s sultry Cuban looks. Frankly, I didn’t even pass as Hispanic on the surface. But I also didn’t have my dad’s pale Waspy thing going for me either.
I’d landed somewhere in between mousy and uninspiring.
Still, I had my assets, and I’d learned how to best use them to my advantage. I’d just never been one of those girls who felt comfortable putting those assets front and center, at least not in real life.
I blamed my parents for my lingering hang-ups. They were great people, even if a little . . . let’s call it overprotective. I’d been given every opportunity a kid could dream of, ski lessons, great vacations—they even gave me a horse for my eleventh birthday. What little girl doesn’t want her own pony?
I had it all, as long as it didn’t involve beaches or swimming pools . . . anything deemed a drowning hazard. So there’d never been any reasons to run around in swimsuits the way other kids had. I’d never learned to be shamelessly uninhibited about my body.
But it wasn’t like I’d grown up Amish or anything either. Plus, I’d gone to school in Arizona, where it wasn’t just hot it was downright sweltering. Most of the girls came to class wearing midriffs and booty shorts.
Personally, I preferred observing all that skin from a distance. And this . . . this sliding between all the half-naked bodies . . . well, a can of Crisco might have made it easier.
By the time I’d made my way through the crush, I leaned against the bar and let out an audible sigh. I couldn’t decide if I deserved a trophy or needed a shower.
From the other side of the counter, I got a good look at the brunette bartender, and was struck by how stunning she was up close. Not a California girl in the typical sense, with her glossy curls and full scarlet lips that stood out against her porcelain skin. She looked airbrushed.
She’d just cracked two beers and passed them to a guy who handed her a twenty. She didn’t offer him any change in return, and when he started to complain, she arched a brow at him, letting him know this wasn’t a negotiation.
He opened and closed his mouth, and then, when she continued to stare him down, he took his beer and stalked away.
“He’ll be back. He always is,” she told me, the trace of a smirk transforming her expression. “What can I get you?”
Immediately, I liked her. I wanted to be her. Self-possessed. Poised. Fierce.
Bolstered by our new girl-bond, I figured she might be just the person to help me out. “I’m trying to find Billy!” I had to shout since it was louder over here by the bar.
Her smirk melted as she gave me the once over. Both eyebrows rose this time, and I tried to translate her expression. Bored? Tired? Unimpressed?
Then she indicated the swell of bodies squeezed together and clamoring for attention near the other end of the bar. “Yeah? Well, you and just about every other girl here.”
I followed her gaze to where Lucas had pointed earlier when he’d come up empty-handed after going for my keys.
It was like watching sharks locked in a feeding frenzy. I perused the mob of over-glossed lips and barely dressed bodies, as I tried to see what all the fuss was about. I finally managed to catch a glimpse of the bartender beyond them.
Billy, I presumed.
Something surged in my stomach, something primal and undeniable. I told myself it was probably just indigestion, even though I knew better.
Billy was magnificent.
Billy, with his tousled hair and wearing a T-shirt so snug there was almost no need to imagine the ripped chest hidden beneath. Billy, with his too-good-to-be-true boyish looks and who laughed in all the right places and flashed his Colgate-worthy smile. Billy, who revealed just the hint of a dimple as he slid drink after drink to the predatory girls who swarmed the other side of his bar.
Billy, who had the keys to my new place.
I crushed the butterflies in my stomach. This was no time to be thinking about strong biceps and sexy lips.
“Thanks,” I told the bartender who’d pointed Billy out.
Trying to channel some of her confidence, I stormed off in his direction. I wasn’t sure if I was seeing red because I was being forced to charge headfirst into a gaggle of beach sluts competing for some guy’s attention, or if I was really just mad at myself (and maybe at Em too) since this whole mess was our fault to begin with. If we’d been on time, I’d already be safely tucked away in my new “cozy beachside bungalow.”
Maybe I was jumping to unfair conclusions about this whole situation. Maybe these were nice girls who were just incredibly comfortable in their own skin—literally—the way Emerson was. Maybe hanging out here and flirting with the hot bartender was their way of blowing off steam.
Maybe I should stop being so judge-y and collect my keys so I could get a good night’s sleep, and in the morning I’d have a whole new (less cranky) perspective.
Managing to find an open patch at Billy’s end of the bar, I leaned over its sticky, over-shellacked surface. “Hey!” I had to shout so I could be heard above the roar. “You Billy?”
His attention snapped my way, but not before one of the girls whipped her head around to scowl down at me, her platform heels making her at least six inches taller than me. “Wait your turn!” Her voice was shrill and nasally.
There went my whole “nice girls” theory.
I opened my mouth to tell her to mind her own damned business, but she’d said her piece and was done with me, already icing me out as she turned back toward Billy-the-sexy-bartender. It was kind of awe-inspiring, how quickly her nasty expression transformed the moment she was eye to eye with him again. This girl had game face down to an art.
She gazed at him like she wanted to gobble him up, no hint that she’d never bared her fangs at me in the first place.
The bartender’s attention had jerked to me when I’d called out to him, but now he coolly examined me the way the dark-haired bartender had. I wondered if he noticed how much I stood out in this place, and if he was thinking I didn’t quite measure up to the other girls.
Then his eyes narrowed the slightest bit as he plucked a glass from the rack in front of him. “Name’s not Billy,” he said absently. He pulled the handle on the tap, filling the glass until foam spilled over the sides before handing it to the girl who acted like it was her job to run interference on his behalf. He winked at the girl. “On the house, Mona.”
She picked up her beer and took a not-so-demure sip, batting her false lashes at the bartender. Then she suggestively licked the foam from her overly lined lips. Her tongue made several more trips around the block, just in case the gesture had been too vague.
It hadn’t been.
“Thanks, Will. You’re a doll,” she cooed.
I stood there for a moment.
Will. His name was Will.
“You coming to the Sand and Slam Thursday night?” she asked, not yet ready to give up on him.
Will-not-Billy gave the girl a sheepish grin while my cheeks grew hot over my mistake. “Sorry—can’t. Busy,” he explained.
“Aw, you’re no fun! You’re always busy,” the girl huffed. She took another sip, her tongue doing that god-awful licking thing as it took another not-so-provocative pass around her lips. And when Bartender Will turned his back on her dismissively, she finally called it quits, casting me a good luck with that look, before tottering away on her sky-high platforms.
I didn’t move right away, so he caught me off guard when he spun back around and leaned across the bar toward me. I opened my mouth, thinking maybe I should apologize or order a drink or something, but I never got the chance.
“Who told you to call me Billy?” His tone and mood were far less banter-y than they had been just seconds ago, when he’d been giving free drinks to the Lip Licker. It only took me a second to make the connection I’d been missing.
Will . . . Billy . . . of course. I hadn’t been mistaken. Billy was short for William.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You are him?” My irritation at being here in the first place hit me full blast. “What the hell difference does it make whether you’re Bill or Billy or William . . .” My voice raised, and I couldn’t help noticing that my accusation had drawn the attention of several pairs of heavily made-up eyes. “Lucas Harper says you have my keys, and I want them.”
The noise that had been deafening only moments before died down to a dull roar, and now it felt like everyone was listening to us. To me.
I shot a glare at those around me and then snapped around to face Will again, but he’d already turned his back on me, snubbing me the same way he had Lip Licker.
“Hey! Are you listening? I said: Give me my keys!” I pounded my fist against the bar.
I no longer cared if I attracted a full-blown audience. I refused to be brushed aside.
But he continued to ignore me, and I searched for a way to get his attention. I wasn’t above throwing something at his head.
When I saw a giant bronze bell hanging above the bar, I reached for the cord and tugged it as hard as I could. The metallic clang vibrated loudly through the air, ringing hollowly in my ears.
“You!” I shouted at Will’s back.
That got him.
He whirled around and I pointed directly at him. “I need to talk to you.”