I was all sweaty, my yoga bra was stuck to me, and I was wearing really short shorts. I wouldn’t have dressed like this, showed so much skin, if I knew I was running into him today. But here I was.
And he didn’t even look.
Like would it kill him to check out my boobs or objectify me just once?
Okay… so maybe he did check me out that one time. And that other one time. But those totally didn’t count. The first time, he didn’t even know it was me. And the second time… he didn’t mean it. He was just driving home his piggish point. Trying to win a stupid argument.
I growled and swiped my phone off the top of the dresser, turning up the music. Then I stomped out, slamming the door behind me like a cranky toddler.
Dumbass (noun): A person who acts like a dumb ass.
Yep, I was the definition of a dumbass when it came to Xander Rush. Unfortunately. There was just something seriously screwed up in my head—and my body—when it came to that man.
But I gave up on the poolhouse idea. I went back into my brother’s house, pissed right off.
Because Xander won that one.
He always won.
I strode through the fancy foyer, grabbed my purse from the kitchen, and climbed the wide, curving staircase to the second floor. Photos of my brother’s former band lined the wall over the stairs—and Xander fucking smirked at me from every one of them.
These days, the only signs that a very talented former rock star lived in this house were the framed photos of his former band on the foyer walls. The same ones that had been there for the last five years.
And the single framed platinum album that hung on the wall over the landing, halfway up the staircase. I didn’t even have to look at it. I knew exactly what it said.
Presented to Cary Clarke to commemorate the sale of more than 1,000,000 copies of “Stand and Fall.”
My brother had earned three more platinum albums since that one, as a music producer. But the Stand and Fall platinum album was his first, earned when he was lead guitarist and co-songwriter in Alive. Each member of the band probably had one of their own just like it.
There were four guys in Alive; my brother, Xander, Dean… and Gabe. Gabe’s parents probably had his platinum album now, mounted proudly on their wall.
And with that thought… the sadness hit, like it always did. It still did, whenever I thought about Gabe.
At the top of the stairs, I paused to glance at the closed door to my right. The one that led down the hall to my brother’s bedroom. The bedroom he hardly ever used. Most of the time, he just slept in the studio downstairs.
He did everything in the damn studio.
I turned and headed to my left, where a door stood open to the hallway on the east side of the house. The hall no one ever used but me. I was the only houseguest my brother had had in the last four years.
It was so eerily empty up here.
I walked into my room, and startled at a movement on the bed.
“Freddy!” I dropped my purse and rushed to him. My brother’s cat gave a little mew, stretching. He’d been napping in a sunbeam on my bed, like he was waiting for me, and purred as I scooped him up in my arms.
“Ooooh, I love you, snuggle monster,” I told him, snuggling my nose into his neck fur and inhaling his clean cat scent.
The feeling was mutual. He head-butted my chin gently, kneading my arm flesh with his soft paws. He even kept his claws in when he kneaded me; Freddy was considerate like that.
“Did Cary feed you today?” He rubbed his whiskers against me and purred, so I figured he wasn’t starving. “You gonna hang out with me?” I placed him gently on the bed. He sat down on his furry butt and watched me with big green eyes as I grabbed my purse from the floor.
My brother’s three-year-old cat was a giant, fluffy, silvery-white Maine Coon with a permanent starry-eyed expression and the sweetest, gentlest disposition. He was a total cuddlewhore, and he was pretty much my favorite thing about staying at my brother’s place.
I was kind of honored he was in my room. Usually he stuck pretty close to Cary.
I sighed and looked around the room. It was the largest bedroom on this side of the house. The one I always stayed in when I slept here. Rose had prepared it for me, opening the windows to air it out and turning down the blanket on the bed. She’d even left candies on the pillow. She’d been doing that for me since I was thirteen.
There were some books on the shelves, a few clothes in the closet. I had a few toiletries in the bathroom up the hall. I stayed here in the summer sometimes, when I was home from school, but I didn’t keep many things in this room.
Sometimes I was here to try to keep an eye on Cary. Sometimes I was just getting a break from Mom and Dad’s.
Other times… Well, the view from my window had a pretty clear view of the poolhouse.
Sometimes I came by at Christmas, too. For a bit. But Xander was usually away over the holidays, or he stayed with his parents, did family stuff.
And it was too depressing staying here over the holidays… so alone.
“Guess it’s just you and me this summer, snuggle face,” I told the cat, and he flicked his tail slowly back and forth, watching me like everything I said was so totally on point, he was already onboard.
If only more males were so agreeable.
I went to the floor-to-ceiling window and looked out at the poolhouse below.
And there was Xander. He was standing at the edge of the pool—in all his gorgeous glory. Slutty fuchsia swimsuit and all.
It covered pretty much nothing but his dick, and he looked way too good crammed into it. His whole damn body was a work of art. And it was literally covered in art. He had tattoos all over his upper body, and all down one muscular thigh…
Why did his stupid leg tattoos have to be so next-level sexy?
He glanced up and saw me in the window, staring at him. He could probably feel me gawking.
He waved. Like a dick.
I shut the curtains. Would’ve loved to dramatically slam them in his douchy face, but they were on a smooth glider with a pull string, so it was slow and awkward.
Fuck me.
Could my summer get any worse?
Here I was, moving in with my brother, putting my life on hold for him, and he wouldn’t even see me.
And now there was a hot rock star—correction: filthy manslut—staying in our poolhouse. And I had several problems with that hard fact.
Problem number one: I hated his guts.
Problem number two: My brother would freak if I even thought about touching him.
Problem number three: I wanted to touch him. Badly.
Conclusion: Sometimes it really sucked to be me.
Chapter Two
Xander
Shit… She really did despise me.
I just kept telling myself that was a good thing. I’d been telling myself that for the last three weeks, every day since I last saw her, over and over again, like some fucked-up mantra.
Maybe eventually I’d believe me.
I watched Courteney disappear as the curtains on her window slid shut. Then I dove into the pool. I swam a few laps, then got back out, restless, and toweled off. Her curtains were still closed.
No sign of her.
What did I want, though? For her to come out here and start yelling at me again?
Yeah. Maybe.
I went back into the poolhouse. Peeled off this ridiculous banana hammock—it was flossing like fuck. Who wore this shit?
Not me.
I just couldn’t resist the temptation to put it on, try to get a rise out of her. And damn, did it work. Pissed her right off. I could practically see the smoke coming out of her ears through the window.
I tossed the thing in the bathroom wastebasket. Pretty sure I had Dickhead Dean to thank for it. Now I knew why he’d come by to see Cary last night—while I was out.
I took a quick shower, then grabbed some underwear from the half-empty drawer. Apparen
tly I’d interrupted Courteney midway through her purging mission.
But she had to know it would take a hell of a lot more than tossing my clothes in a garbage bag to evict me.
She couldn’t evict me. It wasn’t her damn house.
And I wasn’t here to see her.
I was here to see Cary. And yes, I’d seen him on Saturday. If I knew she was gonna show up, maybe I wouldn’t have stayed. But now that I was here, and I was hoping to see Cary again soon… I wasn’t exactly in a hurry to take off.
I opened another drawer, searching for my shorts. Empty.
Opened the next one. Empty. Opened the one at the bottom; socks.
And a pair of huge, hot-pink panties.
Dickhead Dean, for sure.
Then I started digging through the first garbage bag. All mixed in with my stuff, I found the treasury of “gifts” my lead singer must’ve stashed in my drawers. For Courteney to find, un-fucking-fortunately.
Every fucking ridiculous sex toy you could imagine.
And granny panties. Lots of them.
Aaand then I found the fucking granny porn. Some dirty old lady fetish magazine.
Actually, there were three of them.
Totally reeked of Dean’s handiwork. For a lead singer in a decently successful rock band, Dean Slater had way too much spare time on his hands.
It took me a while to locate some shorts and a sleeveless shirt in the depths of one of the garbage bags. I pulled them on, then took a good look around. The bedside table was covered with Courteney’s cleaning supplies. There were more garbage bags on the other side of the room, stuffed with what had to be the bedding that she’d stripped off the bed.
I glanced at the vacuum. The tongs. The rubber gloves still lying on the bed.
She’d really been putting her back into this. Her little bra top had been soaked with sweat and all clinging to her when I found her. Her juicy tits, squished out the top, were gleaming with perspiration, and her long blonde hair, falling out of her ponytail, was stuck to her face.
Not to mention her honey colored eyes, blazing with all the murderous loathing.
She wanted me out of here, bad.
Not a good start.
She could go right ahead and hate me—and clearly she did—but the last thing anyone needed here was a civil war between us.
Time to call a truce, and clearly, I was gonna have to be the grownup here and wave the white flag. God knew she wasn’t gonna do it.
Because she’s barely a grownup.
I’d just have to work around the she-hates-me thing. Take the high road. All that shit. Because it really didn’t matter if Courteney Clarke was colder than a witch’s tit toward me.
Didn’t matter at all.
No reason to be an asshole about it, either way.
Cary’s little sister.
I headed into the house, looking for her. Found the front door open, Courteney in the driveway, unloading stuff from her little blue BMW.
She stiffened when she saw me coming.
She’d changed into cutoff sweats and a baggy white T-shirt. Showered, maybe. Her long hair was wrapped up in a messy, half-damp bun. The girl seemed to give zero fucks about fashion, and yet she always looked gorgeous.
Sweaty, disheveled, fucking swimming in sweats… didn’t matter.
I tried not to look directly at her.
“Want some help bringing your stuff in?” Seemed like the right thing to offer. Cary definitely wasn’t going to. Loved the guy, but the shit he missed out on while he buried himself in his cave…
“No thanks,” she snapped.
I helped anyway.
She ignored me.
I carried a bin of books and a bag of clothes, the last stuff in the car, following her up the stairs, into her room. I’d been in here before, though not when she was ever here.
And yes, I knew that made me a creep on some level. But hey, the opportunity was there.
It wasn’t like I went through her drawers. I didn’t touch anything.
I dumped the stuff on the bed as she set her bags down. Then I openly checked out the room, like I was seeing it for the first time. Cary had it decorated for her when he first bought the place. Everything was white, girly and virginal, which was probably how he saw her then. And probably still did.
I pushed the curtain aside and took a look out the giant window, checking out her view of the backyard and the pool below.
And the poolhouse.
My bedroom window was right there. The shades were open and the sun was glaring off the glass. But if the light was just right, at a certain time of day—and definitely at night—no doubt, there’d be a front row view of my bed, stage center.
I glanced over at Courteney.
The contempt and resentment was oozing off her as she stood by the door, waiting for me to leave.
Her impatience just made me root myself right to the floor.
“Nice view,” I said. Because I couldn’t really help giving her a hard time, could I? Nope. Not exactly my nature to pass up such a golden opportunity. “I’ll try to remember to close my shades.”
Yeah, that did it. I could feel her hackles raising from across the room, like switchblades snapping open, one at a time.
“Trust me,” she gritted out. “I’d rather put out my own eyes with a soldering iron.”
Colorful.
“Then I guess I’ll just leave them open.”
Her honey eyes burned at me like churning pits of lava. Damn, the girl had eyes. Courteney Clarke had that whole if-looks-could-kill thing down pat.
Just made me want to piss her off more.
See what happened next…
Jesus. What the fuck was wrong with me? Why did I have to poke at her?
Because it’s fucking fun.
Shit. Who was the grownup here?
Cary’s little sister was twelve fucking years younger than me. Old enough to vote and fuck whoever she wanted, sure. But she’d graduated high school like a month ago and she couldn’t even drink (legally). She was still halfway a kid and I was acting like one.
Fuck, she brought it out in me, though.
I wandered over to her bookcase. Tapped my knuckle against the spines of her books. Required reading for school, maybe, because who read this stuff for fun? Gone with the Wind… Great Expectations… Wuthering Heights… All these tragic love stories were mixed in with biographies of everyone from Einstein to Hitler to Amelia Earhart.
“A little light reading?”
“Some of us like our reading materials to have actual words in them.”
I glanced at her. “Guess there’s no point in telling you those magazines aren’t mine.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re right. No point at all.”
“Dean came by.”
She shifted. It was subtle, but she dropped the attitude maybe one degree. “When?”
“Last night.”
“To see Cary?”
“Uh-huh.”
She pressed her lips together.
“You haven’t seen Cary lately?” I ventured.
“A couple of weeks ago,” she muttered, not looking at me. And I could see how that bugged her. Just like it did when I told her I’d seen Cary on the weekend.
Couldn’t blame her for that. And I didn’t love that it put that look on her face and Cary wasn’t here to see it. That he didn’t even think about how it might hurt her when me and Dean got to see him, and she didn’t.
“We’re just checking in on him,” I offered. “You know… Everyone’s back from tour, just want to make sure he’s okay.”
It was true. He wasn’t okay. But at least we were checking in.
The usual.
“I appreciate it,” she forced out. Her pretty features hardened as she tried to look like it didn’t bother her as much as it did.
And suddenly I felt like a total dick standing here in her room, making her uncomfortable.
There was a line, even for a g
uy like me.
“I’ll, uh, let you unpack.”
She didn’t look at me as I made my exit.
I went back out to the poolhouse and started unpacking my shit from the garbage bags. I tossed Dean’s “gifts” right back in, arranging my own stuff back in the drawers. The whole place smelled like lemons and lavender. At least I’d gotten a partial cleaning out of it. I didn’t usually let Cary’s housekeeper clean up after me much, because I knew he’d pay for it.
What was Courteney doing here, anyway?
Trying to move into the poolhouse, with so much of her stuff…?
I wondered, as I got settled into the poolhouse—again—if maybe I should bring a few more things over from my place. I’d only brought enough for maybe a week. When I’d showed up on the weekend, I didn’t really know how long I’d be here this time. Figured I’d stay for a few days, then go back and forth between here and my place.
But really, it kinda depended on a few things.
Cary, mainly.
And what I was gonna do about my band situation, now that I was officially home from tour.
I’d been with my band, Steel Trap, for almost four years. Every time we came home from tour, I’d either stayed at my condo downtown or came to stay here for a while. Or I went back and forth. But the last four years, I’d been away much more than I’d been home.
This time, I really couldn’t say when I’d be leaving town again.
Steel Trap had had some success as a band, though not nearly as much as I would’ve liked. And I wasn’t even gonna bother pretending that I was happy with them anymore, especially on our most recent album and tour. Our two guitarists basically ran the show, and on this album I’d definitely felt stifled, creatively. Disrespected, personally.
Unappreciated.
Not at all the way I wanted to feel in my band. Straight up, I was way too fucking talented to put up with that shit, and if my bandmates didn’t know it by now? Fuck them. They’d learn.
When I left them in the fucking dust.
Now that the tour was over, I really didn’t know what was next for me. I knew, though, that I had to make a clean break from Steel Trap; the timing was right. All my friends outside the band had told me to do just that. Including Cary.
Filthy Beautiful: A Players Rockstar Romance (Players #2) Page 3
