Chapter 1
I wanted the blonde.
I have a bad habit of always being attracted to women who are unavailable. Emotionally unavailable. I don’t know why I do that or what it is. If it’s just as simple as wanting what I can’t have, or some deep-seated bullshit about needing to win because I’m one of five kids from a family that was the town joke.
It’s also a protective measure because I’m not parading a bunch of women through my son’s life. I keep it casual. But I could do that with unattached women too, though probably not as easily.
So mostly I think it’s just because I’m an asshole.
Whatever the reasons, it had gotten me into trouble in the past, and as I watched the rich blonde, Bella Bigelow, stumble up to the bar totally drunk on Friday night, I knew I was doing it again. Chasing trouble. I had met her once before and I had thought she was fucking gorgeous. All long legs and tan skin and juicy tits. A perfect face with a lean nose and plump lips that I wanted to suck on.
Her sister was fucking my twin brother.
But her sister wasn’t engaged to be married.
She was.
“What can I get you, Bella?” I asked, leaning on my elbows on the bar top so I would be closer to her. She smelled like a rich girl. All lotions and perfume and expensive clothes. It was amazing to me that someone could smell like money, but she did. Being a bartender in a tourist town on the coast of Maine, I had seen my fair share of rich girls up from Boston. This one shouldn’t be any different.
And yet, for some reason she intrigued me.
“A vodka cranberry,” she said, sounding a little defiant and more than a little drunk.
This was her bachelorette party, and apparently she was taking the last-week-of-freedom crap all very seriously. The first time I had met her she had been sweet and polite. Now she was loud and demanding.
“Sure.” I lifted up a glass and poured vodka in it, reminding myself that while I liked unavailable girls, I didn’t like drunk girls. Not in bed anyway. Too sloppy, too limp. I liked naughty girls who dove into misbehaving with their full wits about them. And their mouths open.
Drunk girls gave the worst blow jobs. It was a proven fact.
“Here you go.” After squirting in the cranberry juice, I slid the glass to her. “Seven bucks.”
“Put it on my tab.” She flicked her long hair over her shoulder and turned to go.
“You closed out your tab,” I reminded her. “Last round.”
She paused and frowned at me. “Then why do you still have my credit card?”
“I don’t.” Her platinum express credit card that read Bradley Alexander, presumably belonging to the rich fiancé, had been returned to her at least fifteen minutes earlier. “I gave it back to you.”
“No, you didn’t.” Now she just sounded belligerent. “What are you trying to pull? Are you trying to steal my credit card?”
That pissed me off. “No. I am not trying to steal your credit card. I gave it back to you. Check your purse.”
“I don’t have a purse.”
“Well, it had to appear from somewhere,” I drawled, using my typical charming voice, not wanting her to see that inside I was seething. My whole life people had been accusing me of shit just because I was a Jordan brother and my father was a thief and a career criminal. I resented the fucking hell out of it. “Maybe you pulled it out of your tight little ass.”
Her jaw dropped. She looked outraged. Yet…I knew she found me attractive. I had been noticing her giving me signals all night. She gave me sidelong glances. Her eyelashes batted. She licked her lips. I don’t think she even knew she was doing it, but her body language said she was curious about me. About me in her.
She took a huge gulp of her drink then shook her finger at me. “You can’t talk to me like that.”
“And you can’t steal that drink,” I said mildly. “Someone has to pay for it, and it’s not going to be me.”
“Put it on my tab,” she said. “God, you’re such a local loser.”
There are a lot of things she could have said that wouldn’t have bothered me. But that…that got under my skin. It was an old wound and she had just dashed salt on it with her pretentious stare and cutting words.
She stole the drink, whether she realized it or not. I had to assume she was too drunk to know where her credit card was and I could have let that slide. But once she purposely insulted me, I knew I wasn’t going to do the right thing.
Nope. I wanted to fuck her.
And I was going to make her want to fuck me.
“How about this drink is on me,” I said. “By the way, congratulations on your upcoming marriage. I wish you a very long life of happiness with your groom.”
Bella stopped and turned, a troubled look darting across her face briefly. She was wearing a romper with silky straps and a low V-cut in the front. Her hand fluttered over her exposed skin. “Are you making fun of me?” she asked.
I shook my head. “No. Just thinking your fiancé is one lucky motherfucker that he gets to make love to you every night.”
She looked shocked. And aroused. Her chest was heaving. I could see her nipples through the thin fabric. She saw my eyes drop.
But she didn’t say a word. She just clutched her drink and disappeared into the crowd, walking very fast.
I smiled as I adjusted my now hard cock behind the bar.
I gave it four days before she was willing to fuck me.
Five, tops.
“If someone was cheating on you, would you want to know?” I asked my sister, Sophie, as I lay on the couch at my parents’ summer house wishing for death.
My head was killing me and waves of nausea kept rolling over me. My stomach would clench, I would get hot and sweaty, swear I was going to vomit, and then it would thankfully pass after I swallowed multiple times and vowed never to drink alcohol ever again.
Only to start the sequence all over.
I got loaded at my bachelorette party. Which might not be that shocking for some people, but it’s not normally my thing. I’m usually good with a couple of glasses of chardonnay or maybe one vodka mixed drink. I had a horrible feeling I’d thrown back more like five the night before, and it was because of my worry that my fiancé, Bradley, was cheating on me.
Sophie was sitting in a chair across from me, looking pensive. She had just broken up with her hookup, Cain, the drunk half of the Jordan twins. I knew she was upset, but it was just a hookup. She would get over it.
This was the rest of my damn life.
“Yes, I would want to know,” she said with zero hesitation.
Easy for her to say. She wasn’t a week out from her wedding.
I sighed, closing my eyes briefly, tears burning behind the lids. My wedding. My perfect, beautiful extravaganza wedding, which was the culmination of every desire I had ever had. I wanted one day to shine, to be the beautiful bride that everyone admired and envied. I wanted to launch my life as a wife and mother, and the consummate hostess. I didn’t have Sophie’s intelligence. I didn’t have my father’s ambition. All I had ever wanted was to be was a mother, herding my crew in my Lexus SUV to soccer practice and lacrosse and throwing Pinterest-worthy birthday parties. I wanted a mix of both biological and adopted kids, and foster pets. A crowded, happy house of love.
Sophie thought it was stupid, though she never out-and-out criticized me.
But it was my dream, antifeminist or not, and now it was all in jeopardy because I was 85 percent sure Bradley was dining out instead of at home. “I think Bradley has a side slut,” I said, rubbing my temples, hoping my headache would magically disappear. “And he forgot his phone. It’s in my pocket and I need to look, Soph. I have to look.”
It was tearing my gut apart even more than the alcohol.
Bradley had arrived an hour earlier, taken one look at my hungover hot mess of a self, and said, “Jesus. I’m going golfing with your dad. Try running a brush through your hair while I’m gone.”
Which was mean and rude, but at the same time, I never let Bradley see me looking anything less than perfect, so honestly, it was partly my fault. I had set myself up to disappoint him at some point. You can’t keep that shit up forever. Eventually you have to be real. Today was about as real as it was going to get.
“Once you look, you can’t go back to not knowing,” Sophie said, slumped in the chair, pulling on her Harvard T-shirt like she felt sweaty. “So be very sure before you poke around that you’re prepared for the outcome.”
I sat up, my stomach roiling and my head throbbing. “Of course I’m not prepared! Who is ever prepared for that kind of information? But it doesn’t matter. I can’t get in his phone anyway, he has a password.”
I pulled it out of the pocket of my lounge pants and stared at the screen. It mocked me, flashing that he had text messages, but he had his phone set to hide who it was from or what it said. That right there seemed like an admission of guilt to me.
“I know his pass code,” Sophie said. “If you’re sure you want to look.”
I frowned at my sister. “How do you know his password?”
She shrugged. “I’ve seen him unlock his phone a hundred times. It’s not that difficult to figure out what it is from the repeated motion of his fingers. By the way, it’s a pass code, not a password.”
Numbers are Sophie’s jam. I shouldn’t be surprised, yet I always was whenever she revealed some new quirk. That meant she knew my password too. Or, excuse me, pass code. And Mom’s and Dad’s. Which was irritating, because for all her girl genius and alleged disdain of gossip, Sophie was nosy. I wouldn’t be shocked if she had gone through my phone just for kicks. But in this current situation, I was actually glad she was observant, despite her bitchy correcting of my error. That was Sophie though. She couldn’t help herself. I swallowed hard.
“Yes, I want to know. I have to know.” For weeks there had been women making comments on his social media, and for a split second the day before I had seen a Snapchat of him with a brunette before it disappeared from his story.
My sister just stared at me.
“What?” I asked, annoyed. “Tell me the pass code, for fuck’s sake.”
Her eyes widened. I’m not known for swearing. Normally it makes my insides squeeze. But right now I felt like hell, I was totally embarrassed by my behavior the night before, and I was worried I was making the biggest mistake of my life by marrying Bradley. “I projectile vomited last night. I’m not in a healthy head space. I need to know.”
“Okay. Fine.” She rattled off the numbers.
I punched them into Bradley’s phone.
“Once you look at those texts, he’s going to know,” she added. “Whether he is guilty or not.”
She had a point. But it was too late. Because there they were. Dozens of texts between him and someone he had labeled Best BJ. And then someone else known as Tight Ass. Not only was he cheating, he was objectifying these women big-time. He obviously didn’t care about them—they were just fun on the side. Was that better or worse? I wasn’t sure. The texts were all along the same line—crude descriptions of what they had done. What they would be doing.
I can’t believe you let me fuck you in the bar restroom, you dirty little whore. I love it.
I am a naughty, naughty girl.
You like that ass pounded hard, don’t you?
Only by your big juicy cock.
My vision blurred. The room started to spin. The phone fell out of my hand, clanking on the wood floor of my parents’ family room. I was going to throw up and it was coming fast. A tsunami of hurt and disgust along with a fair share of bile rose in my throat. I made it to the powder room, but the stupid motion toilet lid didn’t lift fast enough. I vomited in the sink, shaking with horror.
Sophie came in behind me. “Bella?”
I wiped my mouth on the hand towel and rested my sweaty forehead on my forearm, shaking and heaving. “Oh my God, Soph. Oh my God.” Everything inside me hurt.
Not only had Bradley been cheating, he was doing it without guilt. With glee. It was dirty sex, the kind he wanted to have with me, but we were never quite able to achieve because I was inhibited and he was impatient.
“That bad?” she asked, rubbing my back gently.
“I feel like I need a shower,” I said, raising my head slightly to look at her in the mirror. Sophie was pale, even more so than usual. “He’s having anal sex with women because I won’t.”
Her eyes widened. “Hey, don’t put this on you. Seriously. Just because you won’t do something sexually doesn’t mean he has the right to just go out and get it. Come on, you know that.”
I did. In theory. But I wanted to excel in all aspects of our relationship, and when it came to sex, I was a C-plus at best and I knew it. “Why is it always about the ass?” I wailed, forcing myself to peel my body off the vanity. “Guys act like all girls are taking it up the butt and just loving it. Is that true or a myth designed to get us all to offer up our booties like sacrificial lambs?”
“I imagine some women enjoy it. They can’t all be faking it to please a man. And gay men definitely seem to enjoy it, but to be fair, they have a prostrate that is being stimulated.”
God, my sister and her insufferable logic. I leaned against the wall, unable to hold myself up. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and knew that I had achieved an all-time low. My hair was snarled and tangled. My makeup from the night before was still clinging to my eyelids. I had tear streaks down my cheeks, dark circles under my eyes, puffy, bloated, dull skin.
I would cheat on me too.
Actually, totally untrue. I wouldn’t cheat on anyone, under any circumstances. It wasn’t in my DNA.
The doorbell rang.
I jerked. “Who the heck is that? Is it Bradley?” I couldn’t face him right now, I just couldn’t. I didn’t know how to feel, what to think. I pictured his handsome face, his charming smile, telling me he loved me, and I wanted to legit die. Just throw myself off a balcony and free-fall into the ocean.
“I don’t know. I’ll go see. Why don’t you go to your room?”
Because that was about a thousand steps away and there was no possible way I could make it. But the powder room was suffocating. The small area seemed to be closing in on me and I could smell the sour remnants of my stomach contents even after running the water in the sink. I needed fresh air and fortunately, Maine has an abundance of that. So I stumbled out of the powder room and to the French doors that led to the deck and the clean scent of the ocean.
I made it to a chaise and collapsed with a shaky sigh, stretching out and closing my eyes. I breathed in deep the warm summer air and tried to stop both my tears and my racing thoughts. I didn’t know what to do. As far as I knew, no previous boyfriend had ever cheated on me. This was uncharted territory for me and it sucked. It sucked bad. Like, really bad. I wished I could think of a slur heinous enough, but my brain and my mouth wouldn’t cooperate.
I heard footsteps and said, “Who was it?” assuming my sister had come outside.
She didn’t answer me.
I pried my eyes open. From my position flopped on the deck chair I was at knee level with the person. Who was definitely not Sophie. My sister had been in shorts and a T-shirt. This person was wearing jeans. And it was a man. I could sense his largeness invading my space. I also knew it wasn’t Bradley. The jeans were too…rugged.
Whoever it was, I wanted him to disappear. If he was here to repair something or build something or deliver something, I was not in the loop and Sophie could deal with it.
“Bella.”
A shiver rolled over me at the sound of that masculine voice. That whiskey-smooth, seductive manly voice.
Oh, damn it all to hell and back. That voice belonged to Christian Jordan. I don’t know how I knew it wasn’t Cain, Christian’s identical twin, who realistically could be there to see Sophie. But I just knew it wasn’t. It was Christian. Because from the first moment I had laid eyes on Christian a few weeks back I had felt very female flutterings deep inside my body that were strange, intriguing, and really seriously wrong.
I would have pretended to be asleep except my eyes were already open. I glanced up at him, horrified he would see me like this, sobbing and pathetic. Of course, he had seen me throw up on my best friend the night before. And then there was this morning when I had gone to the jail looking like Morning-After Barbie, with half my acrylics missing and my hair extensions jacked to hell. I had bailed him out after he and Cain had gotten into a fight because I felt bad for being an elitist bitch to him when I was super drunk.
But I didn’t want him here, not now. Not when I still looked like ass and had just had my entire world shattered.
Yep. He was still gorgeous. And yes, he still made my vagina tingle, which was mortifying. But he was just so hot. He had broad shoulders and short dark hair and a mischievous smile. I wouldn’t be female if I wasn’t at least intrigued by a bad boy.
But his timing was terrible.
“Hi,” I said, a lifetime of manners compelling me to speak. “How are you?”
He frowned. “Are you crying?”
That irritated me beyond belief. My manners evaporated. “No, I just threw water on my face in two perfect streaks down either cheek.”
His eyebrows shot up. I wasn’t known for sarcasm or snapping at people.
But I was officially done with this day.
And yet I apologized, because that’s what I do. “I’m sorry.”
Christian squatted down and shifted closer to me. “What’s wrong, Bella?” His voice was smooth, coaxing, sympathetic.
“Nothing.” But even as I denied it, fresh tears welled up in my eyes. “Where is my sister?” I asked. “Why are you here?” And how soon could he leave? I needed to be alone with a pint of ice cream. Or maybe a half gallon. I had to get my shit together before Bradley and my dad returned from golfing.
Christian Jordan being in my personal space was not helping me pull it together.
Then he did the unthinkable. He reached out and wiped the tears off my cheeks. His touch, warm, his hands, rough, startled me. I shivered. I tried to tell him he was crossing a line, that I was fine, to get away, something. Anything. But the words died on my lips. He looked genuinely concerned and it made my throat tighten.
“I came to pay you back for the bail money. But now I’m worried about you. Are you just hungover or is it something else?”
I found my voice, sitting up so his hands fell away from my face. I needed to be more in control for this conversation. Lying down felt too intimate. Too passive. “I’m just hungover,” I lied. “I have a headache. And this is really embarrassing. I look so ugly right now.”
Basically since birth, my mother had drilled it into me that you don’t let anyone outside of family see you not put together. This was so far from put together I wasn’t even sure what to call it. Call FEMA, because I was a federal disaster.
But Christian, still squatting down so he was face-to-face with me, just shook his head. “You are the type of woman who can’t even try to be ugly. You’re fucking gorgeous, Bella, but you know that.”
I didn’t. Not now. Not when I knew my fiancé was cheating on me with Tight Ass. Not to mention Best BJ. I felt devastated, unwanted. And ugly on the inside, full of hateful and bitchy thoughts, which were foreign to me and scary. Tears welled up in my eyes again and I was horrified. “Thanks,” I managed. “Now if you don’t mind, I’m not feeling good today. Sophie can show you out.”
Hint, hint. Go away.
He pressed a wad of cash into my hand, taking my fingers and wrapping them around the bills. “Thanks again for bailing me out. I didn’t want to sit there until Monday.”
“No problem.” I was a lot of things, but a bitch wasn’t usually one of them. I wasn’t proud of my behavior the night before. “I’m sorry again for being so rude to you.”
“No problem. Where’s your phone?”
“What?” I pushed my ratty hair back off my face, wincing when I saw the two jagged nails where I had yanked my acrylics off in a drunken fit of irritation when they prevented me from easily texting. “It’s in my pocket.”
“Let me see it.”
By nature, I’m an obedient person. Plus I wanted to appease him to get rid of him. I pulled out my phone and handed it over, wondering where the hell my sister was.
He held it up in front of my face to unlock it. I started to feel alarmed. “What are you doing?”
“Giving you my number. If you need a favor in return, let me know.” He stared at me, his gaze intense.
He had pale blue eyes that were downright hypnotizing. “Sure,” I said, with zero intention whatsoever of doing anything other than deleting his number the second he left. Christian was trouble and I apparently already had plenty of that in my life. “Thanks.”
I reached out and snatched my phone from his hands and gave him a wan smile.
“Text me so I have your number,” he said.
Glancing over to the door leading to the family room, I willed my sister to appear. I did not want to give him my number. “That’s not a good idea. I’m engaged. To be married.”
The corner of his mouth turned up. “I am aware of that fact.” He took my phone for the second time.
I gasped. “Hey!” Enough was enough. I stood up. He stood up too, and he had a substantial height advantage on me. I swallowed hard. “Give me my phone back.” I sounded like a prissy princess. I almost winced. But having someone picking through my phone was like a finger in my ass. I didn’t say you could go there. You had to ask first, and I would most likely say no.
“If you stomp your foot I’m going to laugh, I’m sorry,” he said. He looked amused. “I just am.”
He was really kind of a bossy jerk. “Can we just call ourselves even and go back to being casual strangers? I think that would be best.” I crammed the money he had given me into the pocket of my joggers. I held out my hand for my phone, afraid if I tried to grab it he would pull it back like we were in middle school. I had been terrible at those games with boys. I was notoriously gullible.
“Whatever you want, princess.” He handed me my phone back and gave me a smile. “Walk me out so I don’t get lost in this massive house.”
I didn’t want to do anything other than fall asleep for ten hours and wake up back to the real me instead of this hungover hell, but if I had to walk fifty steps to get rid of the sexy and annoying Christian Jordan, I would. “Right this way,” I said, sounding like a demented spa employee. I even gestured by arching my arm out.
Sophie was in the kitchen pouring herself lemonade and I shot her a dirty look, which she pretended not to understand. Sometimes she played the socially awkward card too often. I was on to her more than our mother was, who believed all of Sophie’s manipulations. I was in the middle of a crisis and she was pouring lemonade? What the hell?
Unfortunately, when I opened the front door, Bradley and my dad were coming up the front walk right toward the house. I stepped out, Christian right on my heels.
Bradley frowned.
A glance over at Christian showed he was grinning.
My father looked confused.
And I wanted to throw up again.