I’m ready to bail when Mary Anne walks through the front door with her kitty cat outfit that shows off her smoking hot fuckable body. She's got a tiny waist, and legs that go on for miles. My cock stirs as it always does for Mary Anne, except tonight I have to keep the overzealous reactions at bay, on account of the fact I’m in a skintight Captain America jumpsuit that covers me from head to toe. At least this costume comes with a trusty shield. It’ll cover my boner if things get out of hand. So far I've only seen one other guy dressed up as Captain America, but apparently he was a douchebag, trying to make a move on Jake's girl Cassie. Jake shut that shit down fast. Anyway, Mary Anne.
I’ve been into Mary Anne since high school, yet she still won’t give me the time of day. First, it was because I was too rich and pompous. Then it was because I played on the high school football team and she didn’t like jocks. After we ended up at the same college, she told me she hated that I was a jock on the college football team and headed for the NFL. It’s especially worse now that she’s interning at my father’s firm. There’s a power distance between us now, and where she used to just dislike me, now she reviles me.
Not that I make it any easier for her to warm up to me.
I remember a task I left her to handle back at the office. She was irritated about doing work that’s beneath her, but I didn’t care. Everyone has to start somewhere. I figure it’s as good a segue way as any to strike up a conversation with her tonight.
“How’s it going with my phone, Mary Anne?” I ask, stretching out her name as I sound it out, because I already know my exaggerated Southern drawl annoys her. “Please tell me you have it with you.”
I take a second to let my eyes graze down her gorgeous face and sexy as fuck body, everywhere from those cat ears down to her sky-high heels. She’s craning her neck up to look me in the eye. Those heels don’t hold a candle to my six-feet-five-inch height, so I practically block out the light of the chandelier shining down on her stunning face.
Mary Anne glares up at me, mad as hell, light hazel eyes already flashing with anger. “I don’t have it.”
“How is that?” I ask. “You left my phone in the office after I told you I needed it tonight?”
She shakes her head. “It ain’t in the office.”
“But you’ve resolved the issue for me, right?”
“Not gonna happen tonight,” she informs me.
I’ve known Mary Anne long enough to know that once she starts using contractions like ‘ain’t’ and ‘gonna’, she is far from happy. I should step away from the wildcat and give her some space, but tonight, I just can’t.
“You do realize that when you get back to the office, you’ll actually be working on this same problem, right? I want my smartphone as soon as possible.”
Mary Anne scoffs and grabs a flute of champagne from the tray carried by one of the uniformed servers walking by. She gulps down the entire contents of the glass before looking up at me again. “Listen, Levi. I spent hours trying to track down your phone today. Your personal phone, by the way, which has nothing to do with my internship. Everyone from the courier company, to our own office’s front desk and the smartphone company has been giving me conflicting information about where the phone is.”
I shake my head. I’m not really upset, but seeing Mary Anne blow a gasket is kind of a hobby. “You’ve got to be kidding me. How in the hell did you let this happen?”
“Don't even think about blaming this on me!” she shrieks. “I'm not the one who ordered a two-thousand-dollar phone and didn’t have the common sense to request a signature on delivery.”
“True, but you're the one who has to chase it down. It’s still technically on your to-do list, so deal with it.”
She huffs out an exasperated breath. “You’re…you are a real piece of work, you know that? And you wonder why I won’t go out on a date with you, you smug, arrogant…” she says, but holds her tongue and doesn’t dare spew out any more insults.
“And how's that working out for you? Because from where I'm standing, it seems like you’re enjoying every chance you get to fuck up your own career before it starts. You spend half a day on this little phone item, and now you’re ready to have a meltdown. Chillax, kitty cat. Tonight, anyway, because you’ll be right back on the task of finding my phone next time you’re back at the office.”
“No, I won’t. Go have a talk with your dad’s EA,” Mary Anne shouts over the sounds of Superstitious, some remake of an oldie. She seems to recognize the song and starts to laugh. The friend she walked in with earlier shows up. I don’t know her name, but Chad has some history with her. The blonde girl grips Mary Anne’s arm, silently nudging her. They have a short exchange before blondie walks away.
“Where was I?” she asks.
“Hating on me because I’m the boss’s son and you’re the lowly intern.”
“Do you really think I need to be reminded of that?”
“It’s a fact.”
“There you go again, Levi. Leveraging your importance and exhibiting the usual cocky bastard behavior I’ve come to know and love about you.”
“See, I always knew you had a thing for me, doll. You’d better hope that phone gets to me in pristine condition. It’s already a week late.”
“Yeah, yeah. This is not my first practically unpaid ‘Do everything I’m told with a smile on my face although I’m pissed as hell on the inside’ interning position.”
“I get it. I just don’t want the firm to have to say goodbye to you too early. You know my dad. He’s fired fully qualified, longstanding staff for less.”
She crosses her arms over her perky breasts. “Jesus fuck, you’re a class act.”
“That filthy mouth of yours does not take away the fact that I’d be sad to see you go.”
Her eyes narrow. “Since when do you care?”
I try to look offended by the suggestion. Still, I can’t help but acknowledge that my father and his EA treat her much worse. “You’ve got a college degree to finish. I won’t be the one to add ‘killing Mary Anne’s early attempts at improving her job prospects’ to the mile-long list of things you already feel are my fault.” For some reason, I don’t like how soft and weak my voice sounds while I tell her that. I clear my throat and add, “I need that phone, Mary Anne.”
She shoots me a look as though my name has just been placed at the top of her hit list. “Give me a break! You must feel so good about hanging the threat of early termination over my head.”
“I didn’t say I was going to have you fired.”
“Whatever, Mr. Eldridge. I’ll get right on your phone issue as soon as I’m back at my desk. I’m off the clock now. Beyond that, you and I have no other business.” She sweeps her eyes down my body, then she glances up at me again. “Enjoy the party, Captain Cocky.”
I rest a hand on her shoulder, and there’s a shift in her facial expression from the physical contact. Lust, maybe? I grin. “Save me a dance for later? Captain Cocky sure likes seeing you all fired up, pussycat.”
Mary Anne bites down on her bottom lip for a split second, but then she slaps my hand off her shoulder and turns on her high heels. I’m feeling satisfied as fuck at the way she storms off. I stare at her as she walks across the massive entryway to meet her friend, who’s standing at the foot of a grand spiral staircase. I shouldn’t just call them stairs. They’re a massive, magnificent, ornate architectural work of wrought iron, a geometrical masterpiece that on its own would dwarf entire suburban homes. That’s how my father would describe it.
Dad’s pretentious voice has no business being stuck in my head right now, so I shut it off and hold my gaze on Mary Anne. She reunites with her friend at the stairs, who is now standing beside Holly, the only daughter of my football team’s head coach. The three of them put their pretty little heads together for a chat, and the way they confer has me thinking they're not quite here to party. Not yet, anyway. Their stances and facial expressions mirror a serious corporate takeover negotiation
, or a special session of the United Nations Assembly, both of which I’ve witnessed from a safe distance due to my parents’ respective lines of work.
My suspicion is confirmed when Holly inches out what looks to be a can of spray paint from her purse, then returns it quickly. I figure some kind of prank is about to get underway, so when my buddy Carver steps over to tell me the guys are leaving, I tell him to go on ahead without me.
Carver gives me a fist bump and gestures over at Mary Anne and her friends. “You planning on a foursome or something?” he asks.
“Hell no. I wouldn’t take a chance with the coach’s daughter.”
“Good. I hear she’s letting loose as it’s her senior year, but you’re right. For any of us on the football team, tapping that piece of ass is right up there with failing a mandatory NFL drug test three times in a row. It’s career suicide. You’d best be keeping your distance.”
I nod. “True. And you have nothing to worry about. She’s not the piece of ass I’m fixing to tap.”
“Hey, I never said I’m interested in Holly,” he says, and I pick up some defensiveness in his tone.
“Whatever you, your gigantic dick, and Holly do in your private time is no business of mine,” I drawl, chuckling as I slap him on the shoulder. “I’ll just make sure I’m there to say an extra-long prayer at your funeral, because if you fuck with Holly, he won’t just kill you. He’ll revive you and then kill you all over again, just to make sure you got the message the first time. See you back at the frat house.”
Carver curses under his breath, and heads for the front door with Tre, Chad, Slade, Mo, and Clive. I look for Mary Anne again. I catch a brief glance of her as she and her friends disappear at the top of the stairs. My curiosity is piqued, among other things, so I ignore the chicks pawing at me as I walk through the crowd, and follow them to find out what they’re up to.
Chapter 3
Mary Anne
I shake my head when Holly says she hasn’t been to a party since freshman year. She’s a senior. What the hell has she been doing for her time here at LSU? I already know the answer to that. She’s been an overly studious bookish nerd for almost the entire time.
Almost.
Because she’s Daddy’s little girl.
Which I totally understand, considering that her father is the head coach of LSU’s football team, and Holly lived at home for the first three years of college.
It’s her senior year, and she’s been sharing a dorm room with me. That last fact should explain why she’s done a one hundred and eighty degree from her good girl thing. I’m no saint. Except now that I’ve been living with her, I realize that Holly acts one way to the outside world, but is really a closet freak for the men she lets get close to her. I mean, she's probably the only girl on campus who’s into more crazy shit in the bedroom than I am. That should have set off alarm bells in my head, but we still became friends. Tonight, I’m paying for that slight misjudgment. Our friendship may land me with a criminal record before the end of Halloween.
“Am I pulling off this horny devil costume okay?” Holly asks Wendy and me.
“I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch, Princess of Darkness,” I tell her knowingly, pushing away her black and red plastic devil’s pitchfork from my face. “Keep that thing out of the general direction of my eye sockets, will you?”
Wendy chuckles. She straightens out the cherry red devil horns on Holly’s head, and her eyes scan down her bright red, super short tailored dress with frills that fan out over her ass. “This works! You can totally pull off this costume at Christmas, too. Just switch out the horns, tail and pitchfork for a thick green or white belt to make it either a Santa’s naughty little helper outfit, or a bad elf costume.” She turns Holly slightly to check the back of the dress. “Nice. Spiral steel bones for waist cinching, nickel grommets, sturdy black lace-up back, detachable garter belts. This is a great find, hun. The corset bustier can make a wicked western cowgirl getup too, or a badass swashbuckler pirate. You’ve got some options with this one. Try not to misplace it, okay? I may need to borrow it sometime.”
I raise a hand to stop Wendy. On top of her shoe fetish, she’s a fashion diva, so we’re liable to be caught standing in the middle of the professor’s second floor for an hour or more if we don’t cut this blogtastic red dress review she’s relating to us.
“Let’s get this over with, shall we? Before someone catches on to what we’re up to,” I say, slipping past them.
Holly glares at me. “We’re doing this for the greater good of humanity,” she tells us emphatically. “Would you prefer for that devious little stuck-up bitch to never get a wake-up call about what she did to me?” she asks, referring to Reese Bateman, niece of the sibling professors whose home we’re standing in. Reese's mother, the professors' sister, is supposedly loaded, so Reese doesn't really stay here except for midterms and finals, weeks where everybody's practically living on campus. The rest of the time Reese stays with her parents. Reese stole Holly’s man back in third grade, and Holly never got over it. She’s really held on to a shit ton of resentment all these years, and now that she’s about to graduate, everyone who has ever wronged her is a target to finally experience her wrath.
“Look, I’m here, aren’t I?” I remind her, putting on my most sympathetic voice. “So is Wendy. We’re in, so let’s get a move on, okay? I don’t want to do any jail time. Plus Reese was eight. Maybe she’s a slightly different person, now that she’s twenty-one.”
“I’m with Mary Anne. Can we just get it over with now?” Wendy shrieks, but we both ignore her. “I think I saw Chad here, and I need to be gone before he tries to ask me out for the thousandth time.”
I nod. I’m not touching that discussion tonight. Wendy has been hiding from Chad for three years. She should have been a senior with Holly, but instead she’s a freshman with me, and the reason for her three-year hiatus has everything to do with the whopper of a secret she’s hiding from Chad, another rich kid on the college football team.
“All of a sudden you care about Reese now?” Holly asks me, also ignoring the Chad-sized elephant in the conversation. “You’ve never liked her.”
I raise my hand to my temple and take a long inhale. After the conversation I just had with Levi, Holly’s voice is giving me a headache. “Maybe that’s true. What I’m saying is we’re taking a risk, is all. And let’s face it. If we carry out what we’re about to do, we’ll be the mean girls.”
Holly pats my shoulder. “Okay. I don’t want to get on your bad side, firecracker. We ready?”
“Yes,” Wendy and I say simultaneously.
“Wait, wait!” Wendy adds, digging into her oversize purse. She fishes out her cell phone and stretches out her arm, getting into position in the middle. “A pre-lockup selfie is in order, ladies. And we’re under perfect lighting conditions. Smile!”
She takes a gazillion shots with both Holly and I plastering fake smiles on our faces. As far as I’m concerned, these shots are evidence of our conspiracy to commit a crime. Okay, maybe I’m overly nervous, and maybe it’s not a big deal for an invited guest to vandalize someone’s house. Still, I’m anxious and already frustrated over Levi, or rather, my consistent physical reaction to Levi. Just that little touch on my shoulder has me aroused and second-guessing whether I can make it one more day without giving in to him. Suddenly, what I need is a drink. Or a few.
“Synchronize your watches, bitches,” I announce, turning the handle on Reese’s bedroom door. “We’re going in.” I gesture over at Holly’s demon costume. “And if I get arrested, I'm telling the cops the devil made me do it.”
Holly follows me into the room next, with Wendy behind her, who turns the lock so we’re not disturbed while we’re up to mischief. The room is exactly as we expected it. Perfectly clean and organized, with pink everywhere. Holly pushes past me and heads for Reese’s closet. Opening the sliding door, she walks into the large walk-in space and looks around. “So much to work with. The thin
gs I’d do if I had time, but let’s just stick to all the pink stuff. For starters, anyway.”
We sit on the bed while one by one, Holly pulls out every pink item of clothing that Reese owns. She puts them in the center of the room. “That looks about right. Wendy, do you have the spray paint? Or should we just light it up?”
Wendy points up at the sprinkler system. “You’ll just get soaked. Stick to the spray paint.” She throws a can of forest green paint to Holly, who removes the cover and aims it toward the pile.
Before she can give it a shake, there’s a knock on the door. Wendy and I begin to panic, but Holly is just standing there, glaring at me.
“Mary Anne, get the door and keep whoever it is distracted until we’re done,” Holly belts out.
“Why me?” I ask, although I’m thinking maybe if it’s either Professor Henderson, I can claim I was an unwilling participant, or be the first one to make a mad dash out of their mansion before the cops show up. Suddenly, a kitty cat costume with no mask seems pointless. Next time, I’m wearing a mask. I jump up from the bed and tuck my clutch purse into Wendy’s bag on the bed. “Fine,” I tell them, rolling my eyes. “I’ll get it, but please don’t be pissed if I get lost or distracted in the hallway.”
I open the door a few inches, more than enough to see who's out there.
It’s Levi.
“What the hell are you doing? This room is occupied.” I look past him to check if he’s with someone. He’s not. “Go away, Captain stars and stripes,” I add, hoping the dig will expedite his departure.
He pushes his foot forward before I can shut the door fully. “I was going to say ‘Trick or Treat’.”
“I ain’t got neither for you… although I feel thoroughly tricked by the way you had me spinning my wheels for your phone all day,” I tell him. Insulting him didn’t work. So maybe guilt will.
His Sassy Intern (Insta-Love on the Run Book 6) Page 2
