Between Friends (Between the Raindrops #3)

by Susan Schussler

  Just then I glance up at Nordstrom and he’s staring at me, the two sisters still talking at his side. He shakes his head as if dismissing them, and they walk off into the club.

  “Hey blond chick with the brain, I need some air. Will you walk with me?” he says and my heart stops. He’s talking to me. Oh god, he’s talking to me.

  “Her name is Megan,” says Jon.

  I don’t care what he calls me. My fantasy guy can call me anything he wants. I’m just stunned he’s noticed me.

  “Sorry. Megan, would you come with me to get some air? I need someone to buffer,” Nordstrom asks.

  I agree and the next thing I know he’s grabbing my hand, saying, “I may have to kiss you, just to throw off the wolves. Is that okay?”

  “Yeah…whatever.” I look over to Sarah hoping she can confirm this is really happening. She just smiles. I’m pretty sure I’ve fallen asleep at the club and in my dream we’re going to end up in a private room with a just-the-right-height-bar. My stomach drops at the thought. He interlaces his fingers with mine and I have to rethink the dream theory. He’s never held my hand before in my dreams. He’s held other parts of my body, but not my hand. I look around and we’re not heading for a private room either, just the patio. He really does want air.

  I always thought Sarah was being paranoid when she said people watch her every move when she’s out with Jon, but she’s not. I feel the eyes of every woman in the club on me right now, as if I’m on a red carpet and everyone is dying to know my name.

  Two girls at the table next to the bench where we just sat down, raise their cell phones and take pictures, not bothering to turn off their flashes. How rude. I know he’s famous and all, but would it hurt them to at least try to be discreet. Liam’s arm is around me so I guess that makes me important somehow. This is the weirdest feeling and he doesn’t even seem to notice.

  “So what do you do when you’re not in class?” he asks as his deep brown eyes pour into mine.

  How does he know I’m a student? Is he a mind reader? I can’t even think. Breathe. In through my nose, out through my mouth. How am I supposed to answer? “What do you do when you’re not working?” I counter. Does he feel the spark I’m feeling? Or am I really just attracted to the character he plays?

  “I asked you first.”

  Oh my god, he’s hot. He looks so serious, but he has this sparkle in his eye that says don’t believe a word I say—definition of hot. “I snowboard in the winter and hang out at the beach in the summer. What about you?”

  “What color is your bikini?” He completely ignores my question. His smile is so damn cute. It’s hot and dirty, like he can see right through my clothes.

  “Why?”

  “I’m just putting a mental picture together.”

  “What if I don’t wear a bikini?”

  “All the better. Swims naked. Hot.” His eyebrows raise and lower, and his eyes glaze over as if he’s deep in thought.

  I smile at him, shaking my head and he taps his head gently against mine. He knows exactly how to play me.

  “So?” I ask.

  “What do I do?”

  I nod.

  “I club. I sleep. I hit the beach. I work on trying to further my acting career.”

  “You mean you work out?” I say trying to make him laugh.

  “Yeah. I’ll show you my favorite workout. Let’s go,” he says with his adorable smirk.

  “You don’t scare me. I’m in.”

  “I thought you were a nice Midwestern chick with a brain.”

  “Obviously, your bark is worse than your bite,” I say trying to goad him. I’m starting to feel more like myself until he leans in and runs his tongue lightly over my lower lip. His hot breath smells of peppermint and lime. It’s so enticing, I open my mouth to suck it in, and then his lips are on mine, pressing and claiming. Whoa. His tongue pushes inside pulsing electricity to the tips of my breasts. My hand brushes the scruff of his sexy, day-old beard, and he groans. Cupping the back of my neck, he pulls me in deeper. The kiss is effervescent. There is no other way to describe it. I’ve never been kissed like this, my whole body bubbles to attention. He sucks my lower lip into his mouth and bites down before pulling back slowly with a devious expression. That’s when I feel it—my bra pops apart. The bastard unfastened it when I was distracted. I didn’t even feel his hand under my shirt.

  “You’ve got some talent, I have to admit,” I say trying my hardest to glare at him without breaking a smile. He obviously knows how to kiss. “But if you were truly talented, you could put it back together, without me knowing it.” He’s an incredible actor to make me believe it was real. My whole body believed it. My mind reminds me I’m just a buffer to keep the girls away. Stupid mind.

  “Where’s the fun there?” he says with a very somber expression. He shrugs. “I’ll try.” He leans in and crushes his hot lips to mine again, all soft and firm at the same time. Then he’s laughing and pulling back. What the hell? I want to make out in the middle of the club. I don’t care that it’s just for show.

  “I can’t do it,” he admits, still laughing. “If I put my hand under your shirt again, it’s not going to be in the back.” His serious face lights with humor

  “Fair enough. I can fix it later.” He can ponder that while we sit here. As long as I don’t move too much, it will stay in place for a while.

  “So what are you going to be when you grow up?” he asks.

  “I’m getting a degree in secondary education.” There is no need for me to go into details about my double major in math. It just turns guys off. I don’t need to tell a guy I may never see again I have a gift with numbers, and education is only my fallback.

  He studies my face for a moment. “You’re serious?”

  “Yes. I did my student teaching last semester.” I smile at him shaking my head as I wonder what he’s thinking.

  “Oh god, that’s hot.” He stares at me with his mouth slightly open. “I can picture you with your short skirt and low-cut white blouse sitting on top of your desk—all badass taunting your students like Cameron Diaz in that teacher movie.”

  I push my shoulder into his and nudge him off the bench. He catches himself before he falls and I move back over to give him room to sit down. We’re both laughing. “Is everything a visual for you?”

  “Yeah. Little movies play twenty-four seven. That’s just how I see the world. Your students won’t have a chance.”

  “My students could be twelve.”

  “And you’ll satisfy their every wet dream.”

  “Eww. Don’t talk like that.”

  “So I finally said something that shocks you?”

  “Or disgusts me.”

  “Good. I like getting a reaction. What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”

  “I’m not telling you that.”

  “I’ll tell you mine.”

  “Okay, you first.”

  “When I was sixteen, my parents took a trip to Milan and left me and my little brother home with the nanny.”

  “How old was your brother?”

  “Ten. The nanny lived with us. It didn’t bother me that we were left with her. She was foreign and wanted to stay in the US, pretty easy to manipulate.”

  I look at him with what I hope is a “shame on you” look and he just shakes it off.

  “I had this huge party—three hundred people or so—hard liquor and beer everywhere. People were jumping off the roof into the pool. Someone smashed a second-floor window. We couldn’t find the dog for a week. I’m still finding out about junk that happened that weekend. Anyway, being the responsible sixteen-year-old host, I got totally shit-faced and woke up in my parents’ bed with the nanny.”

  “Eww.”

  “She was hot and only nineteen. It wasn’t some sick cougar crap. I did it to keep her quiet. She didn’t want to be deported and my parents would have made that happen if they found out. She helped me get everything cleaned up, got the window fixed, and never m
entioned it to my parents.”

  “So you never got caught?”

  “Well? Ten-year-old Seth documented the entire party with his phone. He even had pictures of the nanny and me in my parents’ bed. I smashed his phone, but he had already saved it somewhere. He’s been extorting money from me for almost eight years.”

  “I guess you wouldn’t want that to hit the internet.”

  “It doesn’t matter at this point. It can’t ruin my reputation. Do you seriously not know my reputation? You know I’m on TV, right?” He holds out his hand and I take it. “Hi. I’m Ashton Post from Impassioned.” His voice changes into the sultry baritone of his character and my panties drop to the floor.

  “I’ve seen your show,” I say, trying not to melt into a puddle because he looks and sounds just like Ashton Post. He is Ashton Post. I know Post’s reputation, but I don’t really know much about Liam Nordstrom’s. By the way he’s acted so far tonight, I imagine it is pretty bad. He’s made out with two different girls in the last hour, including me, and the eyes of every girl we passed on the way to the patio tracked him like the sky camera on a basketball.

  “I don’t read the tabloids so I don’t know your reputation. Let me get this straight, though. You keep paying your brother just so your parents don’t find out? I can’t believe your neighbors never blabbed or the police weren’t called. How can that be? In Minnesota, the neighbors would be all over it.”

  “I’m just lucky that way. I usually scrape by.” He smiles looking innocent. “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” He pushes his chin up, nodding to encourage me to spill my guts.

  “Wait. Was Jonathan at that party?”

  “Yep. A lot of people were at that party.”

  “So you’re protecting everyone else too. What you did wasn’t really that bad then.”

  “I slept with the nanny so she wouldn’t tell my parents about the party. It was calculated, planned—it didn’t just happen. I seduced her.” His brow furrows like he can’t believe I’m so dense.

  “But she was the nanny. She was older and she was in charge.”

  “At sixteen, I was more experienced than she was. I took her virginity, and she was never in charge. She never had a chance.”

  “Okay. That’s pretty bad, but I’m still not telling you my worst.”

  He turns to face me, straddling the bench and caging me with his legs as he gives me a death glare. “I just told you my deepest, darkest secret and, now you won’t share yours.”

  “It’s hardly a deep, dark secret, if three hundred people were at the party. You just managed to keep it from your parents.”

  He reaches up and fiddles with my dangling earring. He looks like he wants to kiss me again. “I like you, Meg.”

  “Don’t call me that.” I wrinkle my nose. Chase is the only person I have ever allowed to call me that. I told him I didn’t like it, but he called me it anyway.

  “It fits you. You’re honest and say it how you see it.”

  “Whatever,” I mutter under my breath. “It’s tolerable.”

  His lips fall into a hard, straight line and he looks at me, waiting. I know what he’s waiting for and I better give him something. “I don’t know if this is the worst, but it made me feel guilty, and it’s the only one I can think of right now.” I am not telling him my worst.

  A smile almost breaks on his mysterious face.

  “Once, I organized an intervention on a guy I had been dating. I got his parents, his grandparents, and even his priest involved.”

  “You really are a good girl, aren’t you? But you’re trapped in that hot, tight little body.”

  Did he just say that? I know the skirt I borrowed from Sarah is a little short on me, but compared to the rest of the anorexic girls in this place, I look like an overweight nun. Do I look like a nun? I glance down at myself. No, my cleavage is showing. I look hot. What the hell? “Shut up.” I slap his shoulder.

  “What’s so bad about an intervention?”

  “I told everyone about his pill problem. I had been dating him for three years and had watched him spiral to what I thought was rock bottom. His parents didn’t have a clue he was doing drugs. They just thought he was a slacker, but I saw how he’d changed. I couldn’t get him to go to treatment by myself. He trusted me with all his secrets and I betrayed him.”

  “Let me guess…he went to rehab, he got help and you lived happily-ever-after?”

  “No.” I glare, and he raises an eyebrow. “He refused to go. He continued to use and I broke up with him. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.”

  “Would you do it again?”

  “I don’t know. He eventually hit his rock bottom after the break up. The police found him unconscious in his car with vomit everywhere. His parents had him committed under the pretense he was trying to kill himself and he may have been. He was locked up for three days in a psych ward and they convinced him to get treatment. It was his only option. It was that or go to jail for possession.”

  “So why do you feel guilty?”

  “I have to believe he never would have gotten that bad if I hadn’t left him. I kept him balanced. He could have died and it would have been my fault.”

  “No. I don’t believe that.”

  “He sent me a text telling me there was nothing left for him. I ignored it. I didn’t even respond. I changed my number.”

  He looks at me his brown eyes calculating my words. “Did he come find you when he got out?”

  I shake my head. “No. I let him go. I moved on. I’m just a cold-hearted bitch. I couldn’t deal with it anymore.” I wish I could tell what Liam is thinking. His expression is so vacant. He probably thinks I’m a prissy chick who can’t deal with someone doing drugs. But that’s not it at all.

  “I went to rehab last year,” he says as he studies my face.

  “I was in a motorcycle accident and got hooked on prescription pain pills. It started to affect my sleep and work. I couldn’t see the problem. I thought I could handle it—they were prescription drugs, not something I bought on the street corner. The doctor kept refilling it and I didn’t think they could hurt me. But I was in a haze. Life happened around me and I didn’t care. Jon’s the one who convinced me I needed to break the cycle. I waited for production to end for the season, and checked myself in. Rehab was rehab, but I’m off the drugs.” He picks his drink up off the bench and takes a long draw, never taking his dark eyes off mine.

  “For being so dark and mysterious you sure are a sharer.”

  “Do you have a boyfriend, Meg?”

  “Single,” I answer without another thought.

  He curses under his breath, as if that wasn’t the answer he wanted. “You’re easy to talk to.” For a second, he looks like he wants to say more, then he glances around and asks, “Do you want to dance?”

  Are we still at the club? I feel like we’re in our own private room. This must be how celebrities cope. They filter everyone else out. The girls with the cell phones are still watching us. If I dance with him everyone will be watching and I’ll totally embarrass myself. I want to say no, but I can’t.

  “Sure.”

  He grabs my hand and pulls me off the bench. I stand and realize my bra is still unhooked. Planting my feet my arm stretches out before me and I yank it back, pulling him with it.

  “What?”

  “My bra!”

  “Come.” He drags me to the patio wall, near the door, and wraps his arms around me. As he assaults my mouth with his tongue, his hands slide under my shirt. Before I realize it, my bra is fastened and his hands are on my breasts. I pull back, breaking the kiss, and I look down to where his thumbs have found my nipples. I can’t believe he is doing this in the middle of a club, and I’m letting him. I grab his arms and squeeze them.

  “What?” He pulls his hands out from under my shirt and tucks them in his pants pockets. “I warned you,” he says with his dark, husky voice and a mischievous look. If he wasn’t so damn hot, I
would have broken his thumbs. He grabs my hand and nods toward one of the dance floors.

  I follow closely. It’s packed. I don’t have to worry about anyone seeing me dance. I can’t even see my own feet. His hands slide to my lower back and I attach my hands to his shoulders as the grinding starts. The techno beat pounds in every cell of my body. Within one song, we’ve moved across the dance floor and he’s pulling me up on the stage. What the hell?

  Then his feet start to move and he yanks me flush against his body. He whispers in my ear, “Just relax and have fun.”

  He spins me around in some crazy dance move. Oh my, he can really dance. He pulls me in with my back to his…um…front. His arm hugs across my stomach and his hips start to swing. I can follow this. I didn’t take eight years of dance for nothing, though that was a long time ago. My arms shoot up and wrap around his neck.

  “See you’re a natural,” he says. “I’m going to fling you. You ready?”

  I am so not ready, but I nod anyway, and then I’m flying across the stage, spinning. As I start to feel out of control our arms go taut and he yanks me back. It’s swing mixed with hip hop to a techno beat and it just flows between us effortlessly. We are amazing together. Two girls climb onto the small round dance floor with us. Liam drops my hand and turns his attention to them for just a moment. I turn my back and feign I’m pouting with my lip out, but my hips are still moving. He comes to me, grabs my hips and pulls me flush against him again. I thought Chase held the reins to my body, but I was wrong. With just a touch, my body knows just what to do, how to move. It’s as if Liam completes a circuit with me and parts of my body fire that I didn’t know existed.