“I’ll see you later.” And just like that he’s gone, disappeared into the bathroom and running the shower.
I strip off my clothes, figuring I’ve only got a few minutes because Harley doesn’t waste water. I rummage through my bag and find one of the few bathing suits that my mother approved of. It’s a black 50s-style Marilyn Monroe halter suit, with the ruched front panel that hides all my flaws. It’s not like I have a paunch or anything, but as I mentioned earlier, I ain’t getting any younger, and gravity is a fucking bitch who needs to die a very slow and very painful death at the hand of botched surgery.
I wiggle into my suit, throw on a cover-up and grab a towel, and then I make my way out of the room and down to the pool area. There are bodies everywhere, tons of kids with bright neon pool donuts, their parents tanning by the poolside. I head straight for the bar, order a Blue Hawaii, and ask them to keep ’em coming. And then I stretch out on a lounger and sun myself as if heat stroke and skin cancer aren’t possibilities.
After I’ve drained dry my third cocktail, some douchebag blocks my sun. I open my eyes, prepared to ask the person to move on, politely of course, but then I get dripped on and since I can’t tell if it’s water or sweat—or God forbid some other type of bodily fluid—I feel bolder than I ordinarily would about expressing my annoyance.
“Hey, asshole,” I say, sliding my sunglasses onto my head. My mouth drops open.
“Rose, I thought that was you,” says a very familiar voice.
I know who this is without looking at his face, and the reason I haven’t looked at his face yet is because I’m stuck. My eyes are literally glued to the bulge outlined against his wet swim trunks. It really doesn’t help when my gaze trails a little higher and I’m greeted with a very nice six-pack. Roaming just a little bit higher now, I see two perfectly defined pecs, tanned with lovely bitable oval-shaped nipples. I have a thing about nipples. Too small, and it’s a major turn off. Too big, and I’m wondering whether or not you’ll be the one to breastfeed my children when I eventually have them. But this guy? He has the Holy Grail of nipples, not too large, not too small, not all shriveled up, even though he clearly just slid out of the pool, and certainly not ones that prove his age.
I know his age, or thereabouts, as he’s a regular of mine. Just like I know he’s happily married, because I’m the girl who gets to arrange his lucky, lucky wife the huge bouquet of lilies every week.
“Oh god, Mr. Carter. I am so sorry,” I say, sitting up and folding my legs under me.
“It’s fine.” Warm brown eyes study me as he smiles. Mr. Carter looks like he just stepped off the set of a Hugo Boss commercial. He’s always dressed impeccably in a tailored suit, his dark hair graying at the temples. He might be closer to fifty than thirty, but the man is fine, and seeing him ditch the suit for a pair of swim trunks? Yowza. When I tell Izzy—my employee of one year, and the closest thing I have to a girlfriend—about this, she will lose her shit. “I came and dripped water all over you; I was an asshole.”
A nervous laugh bubbles up out of my throat. “I’m … I’m really sorry.”
“Relax, Rose, and how many times must I tell you to call me Dermot?”
“Dermot, right. Sorry. Again.” I shift on my recliner, itching to reach for my cover-up because while I know he’s happily married, and while I might be a good fifteen years younger than him, I still become skittish around this silver fox. Seeing the fantastic body beneath the suit doesn’t help with my own self-consciousness, and I make a mental note to buy a thigh master when I get home and use it. A lot.
From dawn ’til dusk, work keeps me busy. There are buckets of water to be refreshed and bunches of flowers to be sorted, and with all those trips in and out of the van, it’s not like I’m sitting on my ass all day letting it get bigger, but there’s nothing like a tropical vacation when you’ve been working on your winter fat stores by benching a pint of Ben & Jerry’s a day to really boost your self-esteem.
“So what are you doing here?” I ask at the same time as he says, “What brings you to Waikiki?”
“I’m here with a friend.” I tuck my hair behind my ear and shield my eyes in order to see him better.
Dermot crouches down beside my lounger. “And where is she?”
I give a nervous laugh and pray he hasn’t seen the bright red spots of color that flare on my cheeks. “He’s up in the room.”
Dermot’s brows shoot up, but he schools his features and politely says, “Is he a friend friend?”
While I know it’s none of his business, I find myself answering anyway. “My best friend, actually.”
“Kind of a romantic destination for friends, isn’t it?”
“Actually we’re on his honeymoon.”
He laughs, and then his eyes grow wide when he realizes I’m not kidding. “I’m going to need you to repeat that for me.”
“I know, it seems totally skeezy, but it’s really not. His fiancée left him at the altar, and he’s really sad right now so…”
“So you just thought you’d tag along on his honeymoon and torment him some more?”
“I’m hardly tormenting him,” I protest but he interrupts.
“Trust me, if he’s seen you in that suit, then he’s definitely tormented.”
Now it may be the sun beating down upon us, the three drinks that I’ve had, or the fact that the alcohol barely had time to leave my bloodstream before I began pumping it in again, but that actually makes me a little swoony. I know it’s a line from a married man, but it’s a man, a very handsome man, and it’s been a lifetime since anyone complimented me like this. So this bitch is gonna swoon like a whore in church at the second coming of Christ, and no one can say shit about it.
“It’s nothing like that.”
“Whatever you say, Miss Perry,” he says, the barest hint of a smile forming on his lips. He runs his hand along the wet, rigid indents of his abs and my eyes slowly follow the movement. “Well, it’s good to see you, but I should get washed up and ready for dinner.”
And I’m going upstairs to take a really cold shower. “Enjoy,” I tell him.
“Let’s do drinks while we’re here, yes? You’ll bring your friend friend who in no way wants to fuck you.”
I gasp at the abruptness of his words. Don’t get me wrong—I swear like a damn sailor, but it’s so unexpected from Dermot, so base and primal that my head is automatically filled with visions of him shoving me onto my hands and knees in his hotel suite and taking me from behind. Jesus. I squeeze my thighs together to ward away the ache between my legs.
“I’ll let the missus know and she can finally meet the woman who creates such beautiful bouquets for her every week.”
“Sure, sounds great.” I plaster on a fake smile. I can’t think of anything worse than meeting his lovely wife when I’ve just fantasized about her husband coming inside me. Who the hell does that?
With a nod, Dermot leaves and I hold my breath as I watch him go, right up until he disappears into the lobby of our building.
Somewhat guiltily, I cast my gaze up to our balcony. Harley stands there watching me, and though I can’t be one hundred percent sure from this many stories away, he looks pissed. I give him a nervous wave and he turns and stalks back into the room. Okay. Clearly he’s not feeling any better after a shower and a nap. I want to go to him, but I know he needs time so I slide my sunglasses back into place and close my eyes.
When I’ve had entirely too much sun, and the noise from the other vacationers makes me stabby, I gather my things, head to the bar and grab a couple of takeaway frozen margaritas, and ride the elevators back upstairs. The curtains are drawn, the AC is blasting cool air around the room, and Harley is lying on the bed completely naked.
Holy shit. I can’t see anything other than his firm ass, long, muscled torso, and brown curls that are spread out around him as he lies face-down on the pillow, but it’s enough. He hasn’t even bothered to pull the sheet up, and as I stand there gaping at him, I gulp
back half of my margarita in one go.
My gaze slides down his length and back up, and I jump when I realize he’s staring at me. I also lose a little of my frozen margarita. “What are you doing?” he whispers.
“Er … I …” I decide words are no longer my friend and I drown out any other pathetic excuse I might have had by swallowing down the rest of my margarita and consuming half of his. I set my empty cup on the counter above the bar fridge and offer him the half-drunk margarita.
“I brought you booze,” I say cheerfully, when I’ve recovered my composure. He sits up in order to take the drink from my hand, and he’s not the only thing sitting up because his cock is awake, hard, and practically waving at me. “Oh.” I shield my eyes. I may or may not have peeked through my splayed fingers though. “You’re um …” I point towards his groin with the other hand. “You’re … er … you’re—”
“Jesus, Rose. It’s okay; you can say I’ve got wood. You should know better than anyone that it doesn’t bite.”
“Why are you naked?”
“I was sleeping. You know I can’t sleep with clothes on.”
“Yes, but I’m here.”
“And you’ve seen it before.” He shrugs. “You two were getting close on the plane a few hours ago—are you really freaking out about my junk now?”
“I’m not freaking out.”
“You sure?” He grins, and I have to fight the urge to throw something at his head. “’Cause it kind of looks like you’re freaking out.”
“I am not freaking out. I see penis all the time.”
“Really?” He stands up, and I find an awful lot of interest in my phone sitting on the counter because I can see in my peripheral that it’s coming closer. “When was the last time you touched one?”
“Not long ago,” I snap. “Would you put some clothes on please?”
“Jesus, you’re uptight.”
“I’m not uptight.” We’re touching now, his body leaning into mine, his erection hot as it presses against the fabric of my cover-up, and I find I didn’t even need to leave the room in order to get my suit wet.
“You know you can touch it if you want?” Harley whispers. “Be like old times?”
“I don’t want to touch it,” I say. Oh, but I do. I want to touch it so bad that my hand practically twitches. “Put some fucking clothes on, Harley.”
“You know you’ve always been cute when you’re flustered.” He presses a kiss to my temple.
I swat him away. “Shut up.”
Harley snags the set of shorts he had on earlier from the pile of clothes on the floor and slides them on. “We’re gonna need more booze.”
Yes, we are.
Chapter Five
Rose
Age thirteen
“Hey,” Harley says, walking through the back door instead of scaling the fence that separates our yards the way he normally would. I ignore him as my hands dig into the rich soil, sifting it through my fingers as if the small clumps of earth were grains of sand. Running out. Time is always running out. “Your mom told me about your grandma.”
“Did she tell you I wanted to be alone?”
“Do the parentals ever tell us anything useful?”
I shrug. “My mom told me about the birds and the bees once; it’s how I learned that bees were tiny little flower rapists, and I made it my mission to swat the bastards every time I saw one.”
“I knew you hated bees for a reason.” He laughs, sitting down beside me in the soft grass and picking up a seed pod. “What are we planting?”
“Paperwhites, Grams always loved those.”
“I remember.”
Harley uses his hands to smooth away the top layer of soil and teases the roots before laying it in the shallow bed he created. I love that he knows how to do this without being told because he’s watched me plant bulbs from the narcissus family for years, and he paid attention, even when I thought he wasn’t. Sometimes I think he enjoys gardening as much as I do, though he’d never admit it. I pick up a bulb, disrupt the roots and place it in the soil beside his.
We work in silence until all the bulbs are planted and I sit back with tears in my eyes because in thirty days we’ll have flowers that my Grams would have loved, only she won’t be here to see them. “Do you think we know when we’re about to die?”
“Jesus, Rose,” he says softly. A beat later, he stands up with his hands on his hips and in his best Peter Pan accent—which is always perfect because we’ve watched that movie more times than we’ve jumped off my parents’ balcony onto the trampoline below—he says, “I’ll never die.”
“Yes, you will. One day we’ll all die.” I pick up the watering can and shower the bulbs so the roots have a better chance of growing. “I just hope I go first.”
“Why?” Harley glances down at me with an eyebrow cocked and a troubled expression.
I set the can on the grass and brush my hands off on my clothes. I don’t bother going inside to wash them, because I’ve always loved the feel of soil caking in the whorls and loops of my fingerprints. “Because I wouldn’t want to be here if you weren’t.”
“Then we’ll die together,” he proclaims, pulling me to my feet and climbing up onto the trampoline, forcing me to go with him or lose an arm in the process. He turns us to face the empty backyard and shouts, “To die will be—”
“An awfully big adventure,” we both finish, as he falls onto the trampoline and I fall right alongside him.
Harley pulls me into the crook of his arm and kisses the top of my head. “I’m sorry about your grandma, Wendy.”
I shove at his chest for calling me that stupid name, but just as I’m reminding myself to be as indifferent as Peter and as courageous as Tiger Lily, I burst into tears. Harley holds me close. I like the feel of his arms around me.
Through wet lashes I stare up at him, and he does the most surprising thing ever—he kisses me. At first it’s nothing more than the gentle press of his lips against mine, but within seconds it changes into more. His tongue pushes into my mouth and slides against my own, coaxing as I lay there paralyzed with fear. For years I’ve dreamed about this moment. I’ve dreamed that he’d kiss me, and that it would feel like fireworks exploding. But now that the moment is here, I’m frozen.
He places his hand on my cheek and rubs his thumb back and forth. I like the way this feels, this tender touch, so new, so different. Sparks form low in my belly, shooting off in every direction until I feel it—the fireworks every Hollywood movie ever promised me. I take his face in my hands and force his lips back to mine, but a gasp ruins it all.
I scramble to one end of the trampoline. Harley scrambles to the other and my mom laughs her light, tinkling laugh. “Don’t stop on account of me, darlings.”
Mortified, I bury my face in my hands and feel Harley’s weight shift off of the trampoline. Dirt is smeared on his cheeks from my fingertips, and it makes me smile because they look like a brand. “That’s okay, Evelyn. I have to go practice drills anyway. I’m trying out for the team on Monday.”
“You are?” I’m not sure why, but there’s a hard edge to my voice when I ask this question. Harley used to play in the pee wee league in elementary school, but he hurt his knee at nine years old and Rochelle forced him to give it up. He hasn’t talked about it since, though I know he must miss it. I guess it’s not really a surprise that he’d go back now that he’s older, it’s just that he usually talks to me about these things.
“Yeah. You’ll come watch, right?”
I nod, but don’t say another word. I don’t want him to go back to playing football. It’s a dangerous sport at the best of times, not to mention for younger players who take multiple hits to the head. I don’t say any of this, because as Harley watches my reaction, I know he doesn’t like what he sees, which I guess is why he hasn’t told me before now.
“I’ll see you later?”
“Yeah, later,” I agree, and watch him turn and walk up the steps toward my mom.
She’s talking about my muddy fingerprints on his face. To my abject horror, Mom licks her fingertips and starts cleaning his face with her spit. “Mom, no!”
“Oh hush! Harley’s practically a son to me.”
Oh my god, she did not just say that.
He smiles as he looks back at me, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. Harley jumps the fence instead of walking through the gate like a normal person, and immediately afterward my mom squeals and throws herself on the trampoline beside me. Harley likely hasn’t even cleared the yard yet and Mom is humiliating me even more by kicking her feet in the air and announcing loudly to the world that her daughter just had her first kiss.
I want to bury myself in the soil alongside Grammy’s paperwhites until I’ve grown too old for the awkwardness of first kisses, embarrassing moms, and boys next door who steal your breath with a single look.
Okay, so maybe I’ll never be too old for that last one.
Chapter Six
Rose
“Wake up, Wifey,” Harley shouts. Crawling up the bed, he straddles my hips. I groan and close my eyes, and not just because the light pouring in from the open curtain makes permanent eye damage a real possibility, but also because he’s squashing my tiny bladder.
“Get off,” I grumble.
“Well, I thought we’d save that for tonight, but okay…” he peters off and begins unfastening the button on his pants.
“You’re disgusting.” I shove at his chest and buck my hips in an effort to unseat him but this only brings him closer, until his arms form two strong barricades on either side of my head. He leans in, and I wedge my arm between us and bury my eyes in the crook of my elbow. Not that it isn’t nice to see him in a better mood—the man has been mercurial since we arrived, standoffish and snappish one day, emotionally drained and almost needy the next. I’ve tried my best to be what he needs, but I honestly don’t have a clue what that is. I don’t think he knew either. Still, better mood or not, I had a little too much wine with dinner and I can’t deal with the practical joker right now. “Go away, Pan.”
Harley & Rose Page 3
