Authors: Jules Barnard
“He will be, darling. Fred’s got a contract in East Asia he’s wrapping up, then we’re making it official. He’s
the one,
honey.”
I roll my eyes, but even I have to admit Fred is different from my mom’s past conquests. She’s been with him for two years. For Chantell, that’s the equivalent of a silver anniversary.
“Where exactly are you staying in Tahoe?”
“Fred booked us a suite at the Timber Lodge. We’ll golf and shop, and of course visit the casino to see you in your outfit.” She squeals, and I hold the phone from my ear.
Of course she wants to see my uniform. I’ve tried to get my mom to tone down the cleavage and miniskirts, while she’s been trying to get me to show off my curves—since I was twelve.
“I can’t wait,” I say, deadpan.
Thinking back, I wonder, was twelve the age my mom’s corruption of me came in earnest? Nope, that’s just when she no longer saw me as a little girl. In her mind, I had breasts and a period, therefore, I was a woman and should desire male attention. Only, I hate the kind of attention my mom attracts. That shit I avoid.
“The Timber Lodge is a nice place, Mom.” I stifle a yawn. “Call me when you’re in town.”
“Genevieve, you sound like a frog. Get some coffee, darling. You don’t have a man next to you, do you?”
“Mom!”
“No? Too bad. It’s been months since the last one. I figured you’d be ready to move on. That boy didn’t deserve you. He was—what’s that expression when someone is uptight?”
“Anal?”
“That’s it. He had no sex appeal. He walked like he had a rod up his—”
“Mother!”
“Was he gay?”
“What?
No.
He—he had a girlfriend. At home.” My voice trails off. I sort of wanted to keep that tidbit to close friends only. My mom is not someone I confide in.
The other side of the line is silent for a couple of beats before I hear her sigh. “I can only guide the cow to water, I can’t make it drink.”
What the eff?
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ve tried. Lord knows, I’ve tried to get you to reveal your inner beauty—”
“Through slutty outfits?”
“But did you listen?”
“Jesus, Mom. Some people would consider your form of parenting child abuse. Look, I picked a smart guy with average looks who didn’t party. I thought he was safe. It turns out he wasn’t. End of story. Everyone makes poor choices now and then.”
I’d waited three months to have sex with my ex, wanting to be absolutely certain he was a good guy before we took it to the next level. I’d learned in high school not to jump into relationships. At sixteen, the first boyfriend I slept with bragged about it to the entire swim team. My next experience wasn’t an improvement. Then came the A-hole. I look at sex as a downward spiral—it’s gotten worse with time.
Maybe I’m being too hard on myself; maybe the way I’ve chosen guys is all wrong. Whatever the problem, I’m over it. I can’t think about men right now.
An image of Lewis’s scarred mouth and dark eyes flashes in my mind.
I squeeze my eyes shut and huff out a breath. “Mom, sex appeal is overrated.”
“Oh, honey, I’m going to pretend those words didn’t come from a child of my flesh.”
“Stop talking about flesh and sex. Was there something else you wanted, or can I go back to sleep?”
“Still a grumpypants in the morning … Go to bed. I’ll call you later.”
I obsessively swivel my head like a psycho every two minutes, looking from the Zephyr Cove beach to the picnic tables near the parking lot to see if Nessa, or, more importantly, Lewis has arrived.
Cali is on her stomach, arms cradled under her head. “Told you we shouldn’t have come,” she says with her eyes closed.
After I returned from the dinner party last night, I explained what had happened with Lewis. Cali’s sage advice was to stay away from him. Her boyfriend had stood her up for their Skype date, so she wasn’t exactly on her game in the advice department.
“I already said yes to Nessa. That stuff with Lewis happened on my way out. It would have been weird to cancel on her last-minute. I didn’t want to come across as a flake.”
Cali yawns. “He might not show.”
I glance back once more. “Maybe.”
Even if he comes, I’m not avoiding Nessa to avoid her friend Lewis. That’s lame.
I force my gaze to the lake in front of me. Some of what happened last night was my fault. I stared at the guy; of course he would look at me. I’m probably overreacting.
Brushing coarse Tahoe grains of sand from my calves, I give myself a mental pep talk. This is no big deal. Nothing happened. He didn’t say he wanted to hook up. I mean, the tall athletic-looking guy could have lost his balance and swayed—toward my lips.
Shit.
He didn’t say anything with words, but something happened between us that had nothing to do with spoken language and everything to do with
body
language and sexual pheromones. I usually have to convince myself that sex is the right thing after I’ve carefully selected a guy. Only this time, I didn’t select Lewis—just the opposite. My body was all on board while I mentally waved the
wrong guy
flag.
Cali raises her head and blocks the sun with her hand, her mouth twisting. Damn, I thought she was asleep. “Don’t rule out Jaeger and Mason. They are both totally hot
—and available.
That’s a key factor right there.”
Mason is a bartender from work who has flirted a little with me. Cali and I have hung out a couple of times with him and his friend Jaeger Lang, who turned out to be an old buddy of Cali’s brother. Cali didn’t recognize Jaeger at first, because he put on like sixty pounds of muscle after high school.
Seriously though, Cali needs to simmer down with the matchmaking. I was depressed during our last month of college, and okay, I didn’t leave my apartment for a solid week, but I’m over the betrayal of the A-hole. Mostly. I don’t need a guy to make me complete.
And why is Cali throwing Jaeger my way? She is the one who flirts with him when we’re all hanging out. Nothing egregious, just like she has a little crush on him. I’m thinking Cali should replace her crappy boyfriend with—
Cali’s gaze snags on my book. “
My Troubled Vampire?
Jesus, Gen. What is that crap?”
I shake a bit of sand from the pages, which is exactly why I didn’t bring the Kindle. I’d have a coronary if anything happened to my all-access source of smut. “What? This is one of the best books I’ve read all year. The vampire has OCD. He’s compelled to swab the skin of his prey with an antimicrobial three times before he bites. The guy has issues.”
She sits up, her weight on her elbows. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Cali, there’s some deep stuff in here. The vampire’s habits tip off his prey. The poor guy is malnourished because of his psychological problems.”
She stares in stunned silence, then points— “Literature intervention.
Tonight.
That shit is garbage.” —and flops onto her stomach.
Not good. The last time Cali gave me a literature intervention she forced Faulkner on me. I fell asleep before I finished the first page, every time I tried to read it, for two weeks straight.
“Look, if I want to read for intellectual stimulation, I’ll pull out a psych text. Don’t you ever want to escape into a fantasy world?”
She looks up and squints. “Why would I want to do that?”
Right. Cali didn’t grow up with financial stability, but she had a dedicated, supportive mother. Not that Chantell was the worst mom in the world—the woman loves me—she’s just … different. Cali knows more than most people do about my mom, but not everything. No one knows the whole story. Not even me.
“Books were my escape growing up and they still are. I like to be swept into a world of happy endings.”
Cali grumbles something unintelligible about
quality
books,
then goes silent. I think she has finally fallen asleep, which is good because I could really use my fantasy world right now. Real life is too stressful.
Nessa arrived thirty minutes ago with the rest of her group, including Lewis. I’ve managed to avoid him. Mira has helped. She hasn’t left Lewis’s side for more than five minutes and grips him like he’s her personal life preserver.
Does he like that sort of thing? Seems clingy to me. I’m not jealous. In fact, Lewis appears to be avoiding me as much as I’m avoiding him, which is great. I haven’t caught him looking at me once. Which means I’ve been looking to see if he’s looking, and I need to stop.
Zach is at the barbecue, grilling all manner of deliciousness, smoke and beef-scented steam stimulating my salivary glands. Maybe I’ll have one more hot dog.
There’s a chance I have an unusually large appetite for a woman my size. Okay, my appetite is enormous. Cali has never commented on it, but guys I’ve dated have made rude remarks. Let’s just say those asshats didn’t last long. I don’t date guys who think women should eat like rabbits, and I’m on the slender side anyway. Well, except for my boobs.
“What’s up, Gen?” Zach says happily as I approach. He turns one of the hot dogs, revealing a golden brown underside.
I glance at the others we’re with. “Are you the only one who knows how to cook?”
He laughs. “They know, but I do it better,” he says with a saucy grin. He gestures to the food on the grill. “Did you want more?”
I open my mouth to speak, but Zach focuses on something over my shoulder. “Give me a minute, okay? I think Mira’s telling the story about how our high school football coach got busted for letting a freshman twerk on him. I gotta hear this.”
Zach hands Lewis the barbecue tongs—
where did he come from
? I glance behind to make sure I’m not seeing double, but it’s only Nessa and Cali with Mira. Zach heads off, calling over his shoulder, “Man the ’cue, Lewis. Back in a sec.”
Lewis scrapes the edge of the utensil, removing black soot. He turns several hot dogs in a row. “What can I get you, Gen?”
My mind goes blank. These are the first words he’s said to me since I met him, though I feel like we’ve said and done more, as if we rounded second base without hitting first. It’s awkward.
“Um, just a hot dog.”
He looks at me from beneath his lashes. “How long are you staying in town?”
Is he asking to get to know me, or making idle chitchat? “I’m going back to Dawson at the end of August.”
Lewis nods. “Planning on getting in any of those hikes?”
A reference to the conversation from last night? The one he wasn’t a part of because he and Mira were bickering? Had he been listening? “Yeah, and running. The trails sound nice.”
Lewis slips a hot dog on a bun using the barbecue tongs and hands it to me while Zach walks up, shaking his head, a wry smile on his face. His eyes narrow on the food I’m holding. “Another one? Nice.” He nods in approval. “I like a girl who can eat.”
Heat radiates off my face, though I know he meant the comment good-naturedly.
Lewis passes the cooking reins to his friend and walks around the barbecue, placing a hand on my shoulder. He leans down and I’m hyperaware of the heat from his touch, the scent of pine and soap—his lips inches from my ear. “Maybe I can join you sometime.”
I look into his eyes. Seductive, flirty. This is officially a hit-on—with his girlfriend a few feet away. It’s so wrong I don’t even know where to begin.
He studies my features, head tipping back at the expression on my face. “Enjoy the barbecue,” he mumbles, mouth contorting into a grimace possibly intended as a smile, and walks away.
I can’t believe this. Am I some kind of cheater magnet? I breathe in and out to steady the shaking in my arms and throw out the uneaten food, unable to stomach it right now. I scan behind me for Cali.
Lewis nears Mira, but he peers out at the lake, his face tense, one hand jammed in his pocket, the other gripping the back of his neck. A lock of chocolate hair sticks up on the side of his head as if he scrubbed it with his fingers. Cali glances between me and Lewis.
I walk over and pull her to the side. “I have to leave.
Now.
” If I don’t, I might combust out of frustration.
Lewis doesn’t seem like a jerk, but he must be if he has a girlfriend and is asking to spend time with me.
So why is he such a temptation?
We make a hasty exit no one seems to notice, except the one person I’m trying to avoid. The heat of Lewis’s stare follows me all the way to the car.
“You okay?” Cali asks.
I nod, but no sound comes out.
“Gen, what the hell was that?” She strains to see the barbecue area and the person I’m not allowing myself to look at.
“Something that has to stop.”
Slipping past the blackjack pit where Cali’s dealing this week, I walk up the few steps to the Mont Belle Lounge. A bartender with a reddish goatee and a receding hairline, dousing highballs with Triple Sec, glances up. The waitress across from him dismisses me with a glance and delivers her drinks.
“Execs are coming in for some kind of meet-and-greet,” the waitress tells me when she returns. Her name is Amber and she’s not handing off the lounge to me at the beginning of my shift like normal. “They need two of us for the party.” She pops a maraschino cherry in her mouth and chews while she talks. “I’ve got tables one through ten. You can have eleven through twenty, except fifteen. That customer’s mine until they leave.”
Like most Blue waitresses, Amber is pretty, with tawny, highlighted hair and blue eyes. She doesn’t look older than me, but she’s worked here a while. She has seniority, and that trumps all.
I glance at my area, located at the rear of the bar with the least amount of foot traffic. The only table occupied is the one Amber wants—and they have a bottle of Dom Perignon.
Of course. Dom sells for a couple hundred a bottle. The party will likely order another and Amber doesn’t want to miss out on a lucrative tip, even if technically she should hand over
all
my tables.
Sometimes I feel like I’m back in junior high. Everyone at Blue is out for themselves, cutthroat for popularity, or in this case, access to deep pockets.
It ends up not mattering. Executives soon jam Mont Belle, filling the tables, including my lowly ones in the rear. I’m happily adding up the tips I’ve earned so far and mentally applying it to my grad school fund, when the last person I want to see walks in.