Embraced at Seaside

by Addison Cole

  They agreed to meet for dinner later. After Clark left, he zipped off another text to Jana. We’re going to be more than bed buddies. You might as well accept it.

  IT WAS ONLY one o’clock, and Jana had already met with Brock for her workout, taught three dance classes, and spoke to the local newspapers about ads that Marco wanted to run offering discounts for the next cycle of classes. Their classes ran in eight-week cycles, and he made a heavy marketing push a few weeks before each new registration period. Or rather, Jana handled the marketing push. Not for much longer, though. The thought comforted her enough to carry her through the busy afternoon ahead.

  She’d been going back and forth about opening her own studio. Hunter and the girls made her feel like she could do it, but handling all of Marco’s work plus teaching classes, she wondered how it would be any different if she owned the studio.

  She’d already been through the pros and cons a million times, and she knew there were more pros than cons, but still she wavered.

  Her phone vibrated, and she didn’t have to look at it to know it would be from Hunter. She’d never answered his text about being more than bed buddies. What was so wrong with being bed buddies? Her stomach twisted. Why was he suddenly affecting her this way? The one thing she’d always been sure of was her sexuality. It was the one area she could control in her life, and she’d used it well, to clear her head, to handle her emotions. Now Hunter was trying to take that away from her and make her not only say she wanted him, but if she was reading him right, he wanted her to date only him, too.

  She was perfectly happy being bed buddies, and then he had to go and turn all nice and romantic. The Wicked Oyster? A walk? Mind-blowing kisses? She should be leaping off of cloud nine directly into his insanely muscled arms. Instead, she was beginning to panic. She wasn’t dealing with Marco, who deserved a swift kick in the rear. She couldn’t even commit to opening her own studio. Her mind flip-flopped like a fish out of water. How could she move forward with a relationship with Hunter? She couldn’t commit to him until she could at least commit to herself.

  Hours later, after teaching three more classes, dealing with an annoying mother who always tried to hurry her daughter out of class early, and answering the studio emails, Jana finally checked her phone messages.

  After seeing that the earlier text wasn’t from Hunter, but from Bella, and a message from Leanna shortly thereafter, she clung to a thread of hope as she opened Bella’s message.

  Bad news. Theresa looked over the bylaws for Seaside, and apparently we’re not allowed to rent out that space. It can only be used for community gatherings.

  Jana’s jaw dropped open. Tears burned in her eyes, and a lump of sadness clogged her throat. She hadn’t realized that she’d been clinging to the hope of renting the space as desperately as she must have been.

  She pressed her lips together, unwilling to fall apart over something she hadn’t even seriously considered doing a week ago. It was a silly dream.

  She forced back the tears and responded to Bella’s text. That’s okay. I knew it was a long shot.

  Wiping a tear that slipped free, she opened a group text to Harper and Sky. I need to go out. Meet me at Undercover?

  She was contemplating texting Hunter, when her phone vibrated with a text from Sky. Of course. What’s up?

  As she sent her response to Sky—Rec center is a no go—she received one from Harper. Just wrapped up my work. Meet you there!

  She forced a smile as more unwanted tears tumbled down her cheeks. She could always count on her sister and Sky. She tried to regain control of her emotions and reread Hunter’s text from earlier: We’re going to be more than bed buddies. You might as well accept it.

  She considered answering him honestly—No, Hunter, we’re not. I’m a mess, and right now I need a bed buddy more than ever. After last night, she figured if Hunter read that response, he’d want to know why, and why wasn’t something she could understand, much less make him understand.

  Instead, she texted an answer he couldn’t argue with. We make great bed buddies. Why mess with perfection? She bit back the pain that caused, which was made worse by the guilt threatening to strangle her over the blatant lie. But how could she offer him anything else?

  She was working through administrative paperwork for the ads she’d scheduled when he responded.

  Exactly. We’re perfect together.

  Yeah, they kind of were, but how long would Hunter really be happy with just one woman? She wasn’t sure she even knew how to be someone’s girlfriend anymore. She sent him a response that she hoped would end his pursuit for more. She wanted to be with him, but her life was complicated enough, and what they’d had before she’d been dumb enough to challenge him to be romantic wasn’t complicated at all. They had hot sex. No questions, no strings. It was perfect.

  Last night was fun, thank you. But I think I liked you better when you promised me sunsets and gave me pleasure.

  She turned off her phone, crossed her arms over her desk, and rested her forehead on them. Jana hated liars, and she hated people who hurt others.

  Right then, she hated herself most of all.

  Chapter Fifteen

  UNDERCOVER WAS PACKED. Hunter had forgotten that it was open mic night. At the moment, a redhead was butchering a Maroon Five song. Hunter and Clark had ordered a pizza and a pitcher of soda and they’d been talking for the past two hours, but every time Hunter brought up Nina, Clark skirted the issue. Hunter felt himself losing patience, and he knew it wasn’t Clark’s fault. It was the messages he’d received from Jana. She liked him better when he promised her sunsets and gave her pleasure? What the heck was that supposed to mean? She was the one who wanted sunsets. He wondered if he would ever understand women.

  He topped off their drinks and looked at Clark. Clark wasn’t a drunk, and the soda tonight was more to make a point than anything else, but he was getting the impression that there was more to his and Nina’s separation than he was letting on.

  “Just tell me this,” Hunter said. “I’m trying to figure out how two people who loved each other so much that they couldn’t imagine a future apart ended up where you two are now.”

  Clark shook his head and splayed his hands toward the ceiling, as if he had no idea. “I’ve been wondering the same thing for months. It’s like…” His eyes searched the bar, but Hunter could tell he wasn’t searching for someone. He was searching for answers.

  “You really don’t have any idea? You just woke up one morning and realized you felt trapped? You had to get out?”

  Clark’s brows drew together, and he stared into his drink for a minute before answering. “You know how you guys heat up the metal, and then you pound it on the anvil until it’s the way you want it?”

  “Sure.”

  “And when it cools, sometimes you have to reheat it and reconfigure it because you’re not really happy with what you got out of it?”

  Clark was speaking Hunter’s language. This he could understand. “Yeah.”

  “Well, you know I adore Nina. My love for her hasn’t changed, and to be honest, going through this—” Clark looked away, his eyes suspiciously damp. When he looked back, his voice was stronger. “Going through this has made me see her in a whole new light.”

  “But you hardly see her anymore. You’ve spent more time getting hammered than you have with Nina.” That might not be true, but it was pretty close.

  “Maybe so. But do you know how much I miss her? Do you know why I poured my guts out to a stranger?”

  Hunter shook his head, hoping Clark wasn’t going to admit he’d cheated on Nina, because that was something Hunter didn’t think he could get past. Loyalty was everything when it came to family.

  Clark leaned across the table and said with a serious tone, “Because I’m afraid that if I tell Nina how I really feel, it will make me seem weak and pathetic, and she might not take me back. But I have to get this off my back or I’m going to go crazy.”

  Hunter l
ooked at him for a long time before responding. As much as he didn’t want to hear that his buddy had cheated, Clark was like family to him, and he couldn’t turn him away. “What did you do?”

  “Why do you jump to that conclusion? I didn’t do anything. I left for the exact reasons I told you I did. But come on, Hunter. How pathetic is that?”

  “I don’t get it. If you left because you felt like you were boxed in, like you weren’t appreciated or noticed and you missed being intimate with your wife, why didn’t you just tell her? Hire a babysitter? Fix it?” Hunter glanced up toward the bar. He could no longer see Colton serving drinks, or the stage for that matter. The crowd was standing room only, and his mind moved to Jana again. When they’d decided to come to Undercover, he’d hoped she might be working, but she was nowhere in sight.

  “Because on the surface it was all those things.” Clark leaned back. “But it wasn’t until I was talking to that chick on the phone that I realized the rest, and the rest of it is what makes me really look like a jerk.”

  “You lost me. What’s the rest of it?”

  “I’m spilling my guts about how Nina doesn’t notice me anymore to this woman, telling her how nice it is to hear someone ask me how my day was and stuff like that, and she moves straight from that to asking me if my wife still has sex with me. She says that’s how I’d know if Nina loved me.”

  Hunter swallowed the bile rising in his throat. “Please tell me you didn’t discuss the details of your sex life with her.” His mind turned to Jana. Those were the types of details he’d share with Grayson or Clark about any other woman, but the thought of sharing those intimate details with them about Jana? That made his blood boil, and she wasn’t even his wife.

  “No, I didn’t, but it made me realize that I have no business hanging around women who want to date. I know I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, but I just realized it. My life isn’t about other women and partying. The idea that love is defined by a roll in the hay made me sick. Seriously, I mean, I love sex, but that’s not love. My life is Nina and Billy, and it may have taken me a while to understand it, but sex doesn’t equate to love.” He finished his drink and said, “The whole time I was talking to that woman I was thinking, what would Nina think if she found this number on my phone and called to see whose it was? That’s why I got drunk last night. I could barely stand to be around myself.”

  “So fix it, Clark. You know what you need to do.”

  “Yeah, I know what I need to do. But I’m not sure Nina will take me back when I admit the truth to her. And I will admit it to her, because otherwise we don’t have a chance of fixing what’s wrong between us. I don’t need a counselor to tell me that. But, Hunt…I’ve always been Nina’s man, you know? The one she looks to when she needs something, or when she’s down, or, all the time, and suddenly I wasn’t that guy anymore. She had Billy to care for, and she didn’t need me as much. She’ll see how selfish I was, thinking about myself and my needs when I should have sucked it up and dealt with it.”

  They talked for a while longer and agreed that Clark needed to take whatever steps were necessary to spend more time with Nina. He wasn’t ready to move back in, because he feared they’d fight too much, but he was going to try harder and make more time for her, and that made Hunter feel a whole lot better.

  They stood to leave, and a familiar voice sang out. Hunter’s eyes shot in the direction of the stage. It was too crowded to confirm that the voice singing the Taylor Swift song was Jana, but his pulse was racing, and that was all the confirmation he needed.

  “‘Out of the Woods,’” Clark said. “I don’t like Taylor Swift, but man, if that isn’t the perfect song for tonight.”

  “I’ll catch up with you at home,” Hunter said to Clark, and pushed his way through the crowd so he could see the stage.

  Jana, Sky, and Harper were center stage, singing into the microphone, and holy cow, Jana was wearing the skimpiest, tightest, reddest dress he’d ever seen and sky-high heels that made her gorgeous legs look a mile long. She wore a million necklaces and bracelets, and as she sang, she broke away from Sky and Harper, strutting across the stage like she was the star. Every guy in the place was practically drooling over her—including Hunter.

  JANA WAS THREE sheets to the wind by the time they arrived at Undercover. She’d received a text from Bella asking her to stop by. Jana had stayed for several glasses of wine as they all commiserated about losing the rec center space. Jenna and Amy decided that Jana should get ready to meet Sky while she was there, and they’d picked out her outfit, because according to Jenna, Nights like this call for drastic measures. They chose one of Leanna’s dresses, which Bella had a field day with. I always knew Leanna was a closet slut, to which Leanna responded, Only for Kurt, thank you very much. By the time they were done, she was wearing a dress that was too tight, too short, and too red. Her outfit was completed with a pair of Bella’s screw-me heels. Jenna had gone from cottage to cottage collecting jewelry, and voila! Jana looked like a prostitute, and in her inebriated state, that made her feel crazy sexy. Several more glasses of wine later, Sky showed up to get her. Apparently the Seaside girls knew how to take care of their own. She hadn’t even realized they’d called Sky.

  Now, as she danced across the stage, she owned the look and the song. She, Sky, and Harper sang their hearts out. Jana sang the chorus, knowing she was nowhere near out of the woods in any respect. She was so deep in the woods she couldn’t see past the stupid trees, and that frustration fueled her voice.

  She scanned the crowd, watching the hungry eyes of every man in the place, which made her feel good and bad at once. She closed her eyes to sing the next verse, and when she opened them, the crowd before her parted like the Red Sea, to reveal broad shoulders and angry eyes. Eyes she’d know anywhere. Eyes she’d dreamed of every night for months.

  Hunter broke through the crowd, his expression thunderous. Jana was in no mood to be judged or lectured. She was in the mood to forget the mess of emotions she’d gone through in the last twenty-four hours, and she knew of only one surefire way to do that. A good hard screw.

  Hunter was good at screwing. Mighty good.

  She set a heated stare on him, ignoring the storm brewing in his eyes, and put all her energy into the song. When the music stopped she was breathing hard, and utterly powerless to tear her eyes away from the smokin’ fire before her. She was vaguely aware of Sky and Harper pulling her off the stage and stumbling to keep up as they dragged her through the crowd to a booth in the back near the bar.

  “Holy cow. That was incredible, Jana!” Sky was yelling to be heard over the crowd, but Jana could barely hear her over her pounding heart.

  She glanced back toward the stage, desperately seeking Hunter. Had she conjured up his image because she wanted him so badly? Her eyes scanned the crowd, and her heart plummeted. Just as she was turning back, her eyes locked on Hunter, stalking toward her with a look so dark it could only be called predatory.

  “I told you she was a great singer,” Harper said. She sipped her drink and turned, following Jana’s gaze. She turned back quickly, eyes wide, and reached for her sister’s hand. “Jana…”

  “Look! Hunter’s here.” Sky jumped up and went to hug him.

  Hunter barely raised his arms, never taking his eyes off Jana. She was sobering up really fast. Sky didn’t know she and Hunter had hooked up, other than the very first time. Oh geez, that first time was coming back to her now. The tequila. Rolling around naked on the beach. Sex in the car. In his room. The confessions. Oh geez! The confessions. He’d never been in love, never wanted to settle down. And hers…I’d be the suckiest girlfriend on the planet. She’d warned him of her weakness well before she’d forgotten his name and called him every other name she could think of.

  He slid into the booth beside Harper, across from Sky and Jana. The rest of their first tryst replayed like a movie in her mind. He’d called her on not knowing his name, and she’d thrown it back in his
face. Oh, like you remember my name? They’d been drinking all afternoon, and after their last round of tonsil hockey in the backseat of his car, they’d had to call a cab to get to his place. Even drunk he’d remembered her name. They’d argued—what else was new? And then he’d told her his name again and demanded she remember it. Did he ever not demand? Then there was more sex. Yikes. The man had sex like the Energizer Bunny. That was when it had gone downhill. Midway through she’d called out the wrong name again. Several times.

  She swallowed hard at the memory, hoping to push it far, far away, and tried to concentrate on what Sky and Harper were saying about dancing. Why was Hunter here at the table, anyway? Looking at her like he owned her and she’d wronged him?

  Sobering up was short lived. She drew her shoulders back, feeling empowered by the alcohol. She refused to let that first night she’d spent with him make her feel weak, or the way he was looking at her now make her feel bad. She was having a great time, and she was going to continue.

  “That was so fun!” Sky said. “Wasn’t Jana amazing, Hunter?”

  “Yeah. Incredible.” The smile that spread his lips bordered on merciless, in a dark, sexual kind of way. Or maybe that was the alcohol twisting her interpretation.

  Harper pushed Hunter out of the booth so she could get out. He stood behind her, eyes still locked on Jana as Harper leaned across the table for Jana’s hand. “Dance with me,” Harper said.

  Even drunk, Jana could tell her sister was trying to rescue her from knocking heads with Hunter. Why did they always knock heads, when all she wanted to do was fall into his arms while he undressed her, whispering dirty promises in the dark?

  “Yes, let’s dance!” Sky slid out of the booth.

  Jana followed her out, and as soon as Jana was free from the booth, Hunter grabbed her around the waist and growled, “Yes, let’s dance.”

  He didn’t give her time to respond as he nearly lifted her off her feet on the way to the dance floor. She looked over her shoulder just in time to catch the look of surprise in Harper’s eyes before Hunter spun her in his arms and crushed her against him.