Wild Abandon

by Jeannine Colette

  Wild Abandon Copyright © 2016 by Jeannine Colette

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Design by Sarah Hansen, Okay Creations, www.okaycreations.com

  Editing and Formatting by Jovana Shirley, Unforeseen Editing, www.unforeseenediting.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing, 2016

  www.JeannineColette.com

  For Lauren Runow and Autumn Hull

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  chapter ONE

  chapter TWO

  chapter THREE

  chapter FOUR

  chapter FIVE

  chapter SIX

  chapter SEVEN

  chapter EIGHT

  chapter NINE

  chapter TEN

  chapter ELEVEN

  chapter TWELVE

  chapter THIRTEEN

  chapter FOURTEEN

  chapter FIFTEEN

  chapter SIXTEEN

  chapter SEVENTEEN

  chapter EIGHTEEN

  chapter NINETEEN

  chapter TWENTY

  chapter TWENTY-ONE

  chapter TWENTY-TWO

  chapter TWENTY-THREE

  chapter TWENTY-FOUR

  chapter TWENTY-FIVE

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  CHECK OUT MORE BOOKS IN THE ABANDON COLLECTION

  PROLOGUE

  CRYSTAL

  With a large piece of wood between my legs, I stroke the base, eliciting a deep groan from inside.

  No, not that kind of groan and definitely not from that kind of wood. I’m not that kind of girl. Not that I’m opposed to sex. On the contrary, I quite enjoy it. I just don’t believe in sleeping around. If I slept with every guy I went out with, I’d bed fifty different men a year.

  The wood in question is my cello, which I am playing during the cocktail reception at an upscale wedding.

  On an estate just outside New York City, serenading wedding guests with a John Legend ballad, I scope the area for any available bachelors.

  There’s a handsome fair-haired groomsman wearing a midnight-blue tux, standing by the caviar. I push my shoulders back, tilt my head, and give him my best smile, all while stroking the neck of the beautiful piece of maple and spruce nestled against the fabric of my long navy dress. His shoulders swivel in my direction. Excellent body language. Good signals. So far, it looks like I’ve hooked myself a—

  No, wait, a woman in a Givenchy dress has just approached, wrapping her arms around his waist, like a homesteader in the West, staking her claim—burying his stick in her land, if you will.

  As a single woman in New York, I’ve found all the good men are taken. And, if they’re not, it’s because they don’t want to be…by anyone.

  The only way to find an available man anymore is through online dating. My apps of choice are Match or Bumble, my days filled with swiping right and adding men to my Hive. Problem is, I end up with more duds than studs. You know how people say there are plenty of fish in the sea? At thirty years old, I’ve realized, if they’re still swimming, they’re there for a reason. That reminds me, Plenty of Fish is another good app.

  The more I talk about the havoc of dating in the big city, the more my best friend, Naomi, begs me to move out to the West Coast. She thinks I need a reboot, and living with her will do the trick.

  “Excuse me,” a voice croons from just above where I’m sitting.

  I look up to see an attractive man with a boyish grin and a double-breasted suit.

  I bat my lashes as he leans down to speak in my ear as I play, “I hope I’m not being too up-front when I say, you are a very beautiful woman.”

  As far as opening lines go, I am totally okay with being told I’m beautiful. What comes out next is usually the issue.

  I mouth the words, Thank you, and give a slight shoulder shrug to show a bashful quality. Not that I’m bashful, but playing coy never hurt anyone.

  He leans a touch closer, pulls a card out of his pocket, and holds it up between us. “I’d love if you could provide some private entertainment this evening. I’m in room seven on the third floor.” His voice is smooth, suave, and making my stomach turn.

  With a swift motion, as not to disrupt my music playing for too long, I take the card and place it in the Campari cocktail in his other hand. I am no man’s entertainment.

  He stalks off with a sneer, probably to find his next target of the night.

  I heard on the radio that men like going to weddings because the women are all starry-eyed and filled with romance, so it makes for an easy lay. I might be looking for romance in my life, but I don’t give in that easily. In fact, my criteria are quite specific. If he doesn’t measure up, I won’t settle down.

  Been there, done that, and it left me with a broken heart and an annulment.

  Looking around at the reception, I see people who are dressed up, here to celebrate the love of a man and a woman. I know it’s total cheese, but I love weddings. Not just weddings. I enjoy every party I am invited to, and I show up with a pretty dress and a gift off the registry. I don’t roll my eyes at having to participate in bridal shower games where you have to cover yourself in toilet paper, and I am genuinely happy to learn the sex of your baby when you open a giant box, and a bouquet of pink or blue balloons come flying out.

  I love seeing the groom tear up when his bride walks down the aisle or that first dance when it’s just the two of them in their own bubble. I can picture them now, huddled up in the bridal suite, whispering promises of forever to each other and planning their glorious—

  “I can’t believe you wore fucking sneakers to our wedding!”

  My internal thoughts of romance are interrupted by the sound of a screeching woman bellowing louder than the music. My hand almost stops playing when I regain my professional wits.

  “All you care about is this perfect wedding. You don’t give a shit what I want!” a man’s voice echoes.

  The voices are coming from the open windows of the bridal suite that overlooks the veranda. All the guests’ eyes and ears are trained on the source of the outbursts.

  The man continues, “You wanted the ice sculptures, the band, the seventeen bridesmaids, and the horse-drawn carriage. I gave you whatever you wanted. All I wanted was to wear an awesome pair of Jordans with my suit! Don’t you even care about what makes me happy?”

  Stomping feet—I assume, garnished with three-thousand-dollar Christian Louboutins—are creating a new tempo for the cocktail hour that is supposed to be reserved for love ballads.

  “You ruined my wedding!”

  “It’s my wedding, too!”

  “No.” Stomp. “It’s my day, my day, my day!” Stomp, stomp, stomp.

  I am not an impulsive woman.

  I have decorum.

  I have composure.

  Never in my life would I dream of ruining someone’s special day.

  That’s why I don’t know why in the world I stand up and scream toward the open window of the bridal suite, “Shut up, you stupid, ungrateful cow!”

  All eyes on the veranda are no longer fixed on the window. Instead, they’re all glaring at me.

  Yes, me.

  When the deafening silence of the mom
ent registers in my brain, I smooth the pleats of my dress, take my seat, and continue playing. This time, it’s Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World.”

  Safe to say, this is not my finest hour.

  And this is not my finest morning.

  I wake up with a throbbing in my brain and heaviness in my gut. I slowly open my eyes and have to blink a few times to get my bearings.

  This is not my apartment.

  Oh no. What have I done?

  Well, apparently, I broke cardinal rule number one: Never go home with a man on the first date.

  This is bad. This is very, very bad.

  I attempt to roll over, but a man’s leg is draped over me, and I have no idea whose it is.

  No, wait. I do.

  It’s Ian, the architect from Manhattan, whom I connected with online.

  After getting fired from my weekend job for the ridiculous outburst, I went home and logged into Facebook. If I thought my day had started poorly, well, what I saw on Facebook made sure it ended with some pretty bad choices.

  Ian: Tell me, Crystal, what is it you want tonight?

  Me: I want to forget.

  Forget, I did, and now, I’m remembering more than I wanted to forget. I have an odd vision in my head of Thor and his hammer that I can’t shake. For some reason, I have a vague memory of—

  Yep, there it is.

  I look down at Ian’s thigh where he has a tattoo of Thor with his arm outstretched up into Ian’s groin, holding on to his, ahem…hammer. Yes, Ian refers to his package as his hammer. And he is Thor.

  That would be about the time I passed out—thank God. At least I still have my bra and panties on.

  I don’t want to wake him and have the awkward will-I-or-will-I-not-see-you-again or—God forbid—the let’s-pick-up-where-we-left-off-last-night conversation because, honestly, I have no intention of seeing him again.

  Gently, I roll over but am trapped by his lower leg wrapped around my calf. Holy crap, you’d think his legs were made of lead. I peek down and see my creamy skin being weighed down by his hairy, muscular leg. I try to pry my calf from the offending appendage, but this only causes him to moan in his sleep and inch closer to me. With one quick motion, I pull my leg from his and fly off the bed, leaping up from the floor.

  Looking down at Ian, I can see how I was attracted to him last night. Light hair, rugged face, and a chin dimple. I mean, who can resist a chin dimple? But that was about as attractive as he got. His excessive discussion on the size of his erect buildings made me think he was overcompensating for something. And then I saw the tattoo. Yeah, making it look like a hammer doesn’t actually make it as large as one.

  I scamper across the room in search of my clothes—a red shift dress and black heels that were haphazardly thrown on the floor. I pull the dress on over my head and put my shoes on as I rush out the bedroom door. In the midst of my scurry, I nearly collide with someone in the hallway. My hand flies to my chest to control my rapid heartbeat.

  “Hey, you’re the lady Ian brought home last night.” A young girl is standing against another bedroom door, wearing a bra and boy shorts.

  I try to ignore the fact that she called me lady and not girl.

  Makes you wonder what a thirty-five-year-old guy with a tattoo of Thor near his junk is doing, living with a college coed—strike that. I don’t want to know.

  “You were a lot of fun last night,” she says.

  I vaguely remember talking to her about my ex—the reason I was out, making bad decisions, in the first place.

  “I hope I can still party like you when I’m thirty,” she says.

  I cringe and feel the need to explain myself, “I don’t make a habit of this sort of thing.” I point my thumb to the door behind me and the sleeping Ian behind it.

  The coed giggles and curiously eyes me. “Yeah, me neither.” She leans forward and gives me an exaggerated wink. “It was a good time until you started crying about how your eggs are going to shrivel up.”

  Yep, time to leave.

  I bail out the front door and pray I’m not too far from home.

  The sun is even brighter than I thought, the city is louder than it needs to be, and from the stares I’m getting, I look way worse than I should.

  I spin around and catch my reflection in a storefront. Matted hair that was pressed straight is now sticking up. I reach up and try to smooth them when I see the caked up mess that is happening under my eyes. I lick my fingers in an attempt to get rid of the raccoon-eyes. I smooth my fingers over my skin until I’m raw, and then decide a hot shower and a lobotomy are the only things that will make me look and feel like myself again.

  Screw it. I stand up straight, chin up. Wearing a cocktail dress and five-inch heels on a street in downtown Manhattan, I do the walk of shame.

  In New York City, you can pretty much do anything and not get noticed. I could wear a rainbow wig on my head and ride a unicycle while reciting excerpts from The Vagina Monologues, and no one would look twice. But a woman strutting down the street in last night’s threads with a face that screams, I slept with a stranger, and everyone seems to notice. Seriously, from the bread deliveryman to the early risers heading to SoulCycle, I’m like a magnet for attention. Even the homeless guy on the floor is giving me the side eye.

  I reach in my purse and grab my phone. I need a distraction on my trek home, and Naomi is the only one who can provide it.

  “Hello?” a groggy female voice croaks on the other end of the line.

  I stop and smack myself on the head. “Holy shit. I’m so sorry. It’s got to be five a.m. in Napa.”

  “It’s four. Please tell me you’ve been abducted, and you’re calling for the ransom because I’m seriously considering not paying it.”

  I slump my shoulders a tad, feeling awful for waking up my best friend. “I’m not even thinking straight. Go back to bed. I’ll call you later.”

  “No, no.”

  I can hear the rustle of the sheets as her body crawls out of the bed she shares with her husband—a normal person you should be sharing a bed with, not a one-nighter you met on the Internet.

  “Are you out of the house already? It sounds like you’re…” She pauses, and I brace myself for the revelation to hit her. “Crystal Reid, are you doing the walk of shame?” Her tone is shocked yet utterly amused.

  “No,” I say rather defensively, “I’m just out, grabbing a coffee.”

  “You have never been up this early on a Sunday. You went to the bar last night, and you are just now getting home. Oh my God, this is so unlike you. In the fifteen years I’ve known you, you’ve never had a one-night stand.”

  “Shut up. My head hurts, my body is sore, and I feel really messed up about it right now.”

  “You sounded pretty upset in your voice mail last night. You kept on mentioning Campari, cows, and Steven being a fucker. Wanna talk about it?”

  Yes, after humiliating myself at work, I went home and learned that, while I was on my way to being an old maid who yelled at brides on their wedding days, my ex had officially moved on with his life.

  “He got married, Nay. And he has a baby,” I state, still so confused as to how the man who had said he never wanted children actually went and had a child. Looks like he just didn’t want to have one with me.

  “Crystal, I thought you were over this.”

  How could I ever be over the man whom I’d eloped with after a whirlwind romance, only to find he duped me into thinking he was someone else, someone I could share my life with? Hell, I even moved to another state to be with him.

  “If I had the right mind, I’d…” I pause, my shoes halting on the pavement, as an odd pang of shame washes through me. No, not from calling a bride ungrateful or from the almost one-nighter that will never be lived again. It’s something else.

  A memory.

  My phone.

  Facebook.

  Last night.

  I pull the phone away from my ear, open my Facebook Messenger app, a
nd say a silent prayer, Please tell me I didn’t do what I think I did. Please don’t let me see that I—

  I did.

  Rolling my head back, I look at the sun and put the phone back to my ear. “I drunk-messaged him.”

  Naomi lets out a sigh. “Drunk Facebooking is never a good idea. Did you at least write something good?”

  I almost lie and make something up. Instead, I groan and unenthusiastically answer her question, “I wrote, You ducker. You duckity, duck, duck ducker.”

  Naomi lets out a loud laugh. I can picture her grabbing on to her sides as she bellows over in hysterics. “Oh my God,” she says, mid laugh. “What is wrong with you? Why would you write something like that?”

  “Stupid autocorrect wouldn’t even let me drunk-message my ex properly.”

  Naomi is winding down from her laughter. Her sympathy genes are clearly missing in this conversation. “I’m sorry, but that is hilarious.”

  Okay, fine, it is pretty funny. But she could at least pretend to feel bad.

  She must sense my silence as annoyance because her tone changes as she says, “You need a reboot, babe. Get out of that city. Come to the West Coast and recharge your soul. Trust me, it’ll be your Eat, Pray, Love moment.”

  “And where would I live?”

  “With me. You can crash on the futon in my office. It’ll be like old times.”

  “I’m a little old to be sleeping on a futon.”

  “You’re a little old to be drunk-texting your ex.”

  Thank goodness she can’t see the face I’m making at her correct yet unappreciated statement.

  “Thanks, but I’ll pass.” Approaching my building, I rest the phone on my shoulder as I take the keys from my purse and open the front door.

  “Think about it. Offer is always on the table. Now, let me get some sleep because some people have to get up and feed children in the morning.”

  I push the front door open and start the climb to my third-floor walk-up. “You only have one child, and she could probably raise herself since she’s so independent.”

  “True,” she concedes and then adds, “Come to Napa. You’ll love it. Okay, that’s the last time I’m asking…today.”