by K. M. Scott
She smiled and rested her chin on my shoulder so our lips were nearly touching. “You’ll get it someday. New things take time.”
I hoped her words meant more than just figuring out this whole friend thing.
* * *
THE HOUSE we rolled up to could only be described as breathtaking. An enormous Victorian home right on the waterfront, it made me feel like we’d traveled back in time to the days when all of Tampa looked like this. I’d seen paintings of neighborhoods full of homes just like this in my faculty mentor’s office, who in his spare time liked to trace the history of the area’s more distinguished families. He’d never talked about the March family, but if this house had been theirs for more than a few years, Dr. Taduch would know about them.
Stefan climbed off the bike first and held out his hand to help me off. “Welcome to the March House.”
“You grew up here? Wow!” I wanted to say more, but that’s all that came to my mind as I filled my eyes with the view of the gorgeous house in front of me. How wealthy were the Marches?
“Yeah, it was pretty great living here. Cash and I used to love running up and down the hallways when we were little. Then when we got older, we’d dare each other to do dumber and dumber things in the water. We’re lucky we’re still here.”
“It’s stunning, Stefan. Just stunning.”
“I’ll give you the grand tour later. For right now, let’s relax on the beach.”
“Lead the way. After tonight, I could use some relaxing. Any chance there’s a hammock?”
“Sure! We’ll probably fall asleep, though. It’s pretty relaxing down there just listening to the waves.”
Stefan walked toward the beach, but I stopped, unsure this was a good idea. He wasn’t getting the idea of how to be a friend, and I wondered if I’d been duped into coming here just so he could put the moves on me as a captive audience.
He got about twenty yards ahead of me and noticing I wasn’t right behind him, turned around. “You coming?”
I could have asked him what the hell we really were doing here, but what was the point? The guy wasn’t going to hurt me. He hadn’t shown himself to be a rapist or ax murderer. The worst that would happen would be he’d put the moves on me and I’d have to shoot him down again. He stood there staring at me as all this ran through my head, his brown eyes and their sexy look beckoning me.
“Yeah. Let’s go.”
As long as I didn’t fall for those eyes and all the other incredibly hot parts of him, I’d be fine.
My feet slid into the cool, damp sand, the tiny grains getting between my toes, and I leaned back on my elbows to look up at the night sky dotted with stars. A typical early November night, a tiny chill cooled the air as it brushed my skin.
I looked to where he lay on the sand next to me. “It’s gorgeous here, Stefan.”
“Yeah, it is.” His eyes widened a little as he looked at me, and he said, “Is it okay if a male friend takes his shirt off when he’s sitting on the beach with a female friend? I don’t want to break any of these friend rules, which by the way, there seem to be a lot of.”
The man could seduce a woman with just that cuteness of his. Even if I didn’t want to smile, I couldn’t help it when he said things like that. He waited for me to answer, to give him permission to take his shirt off, so I pretended to think about it for a minute and then answered, “I guess. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before, so I don’t think it would break any friend rules.”
I knew what he was doing. Between the cute and charming thing and the sight of his perfectly ripped half-naked body, he thought I’d forget all about this friend nonsense and sleep with him right here on the beach. As he stripped off his shirt to reveal his toned pecs and abs, I couldn’t help remember the feel of him against my body as we made love that night in my apartment. As much as my head told me no, the rest of me wanted that again.
No! Do not let yourself get seduced by all these things, Shay! You may want to play him, but Carrie was right. He’s out of your league and the only one who’s going to get played is you.
With a smirk that made me want to kiss him or punch him—I couldn’t decide which—he said, “Either you’re staring because you like what you see or…well, I can’t think of another reason why you’d be staring.”
His comment shook me out of my silent adoration of his body and I rolled my eyes, hoping to convince him that I didn’t want him more than anything else in the world at that moment. “You know, if you’re going to get all those tattoos, you shouldn’t be surprised when people look at them. Isn’t that the point?”
Stefan looked down at his arms and torso and shook his head. “No. I don’t get them for anyone else but me. If they were for everyone else, I’d get cartoon characters and Chinese symbols all over my body.”
“Instead of mythological beasts and half-naked women.”
There was that smirk again. It made me feel like he thought he had my number and all he had to do was give me one of those sexy trademark Stefan looks and I’d be on top of him begging him to fuck me.
“For someone who’s only seen me naked once, you seem to know a lot about my tats.”
I felt my cheeks grow hot under his direct stare. That’s what he wanted, though. He wanted to seduce me with his tattoos, his muscles, and every other delicious part of him.
Quickly, I changed the topic before he was successful. “So if we’re going to be friends, Stefan, maybe we should know something about one another.”
“More than how incredible we were in bed together?”
I rolled my eyes again. I knew it! This was all a ploy to get in my pants again.
“I’m guessing by that look that you think we should know more about each other. Ask away. I’m an open book.”
“What’s your favorite thing to eat?” The instant the words came out of my mouth, I regretted them. Stefan was just going to say something sexual and my first attempt at being friends would be ruined.
But then he surprised me.
“Meatloaf.”
“Meatloaf?” The man came from a family that lived in a multi-million dollar waterfront house with its own beach and meatloaf was his favorite thing to eat?
“Yeah, meatloaf.” He leaned back onto the sand and folded his arms behind his head. Looking up at the stars above, he continued, “Sometimes when my father was gone, which was most of the time, my mother would let the cook go for the night and she’d go into the kitchen and make us the most delicious meatloaf you’ll ever taste. I have no idea what she does to make it so good, but I think she puts some kind of tomato sauce and pepper in it. Whatever she does, I love it.”
“Wow. I figured you’d say something like caviar or escargot.”
Turning to look at me, he made a face like he’d just eaten something rotten. “No thanks. Neither one of them even sound good. What about you? What’s your favorite food?”
“Blueberry pie.”
“I don’t know the rules for this game, but I figured the favorite food had to be something you love more than anything else. How often do you have blueberry pie?”
“Not often enough. And there aren’t any rules to this. Just has to be your favorite food. Still want to stick with meatloaf?”
Stefan nodded. “Yep. Still my favorite, hands down.”
“Ok. What’s your favorite place?”
“Right here on this beach on a warm fall night under a clear sky. And if you’re going to ask me when, the answer is right now.”
“Don’t ruin this with cheesy seduction talk, Stefan.”
He rolled over on his side to face me and propped his head up on his hand. “I wasn’t. It’s the truth. Remember, we’re supposed to be honest.”
“I don’t believe that. You’ve had twenty—how old are you anyway?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“You’ve had twenty-seven years of experiences, and you want me to believe this is your favorite with me right here on this beach?”
“Why not? Yo
u’ve seen what my life is about. I spend my nights in a bar watching everyone have a good time, and the only enjoyment I’ve ever found from it was chasing women. Do you know no one has ever asked me what my favorite food was? No one has ever asked me what my favorite anything was.”
“I’m sure your family has,” I offered, wondering if the person staring up at me was as lonely as he sounded.
“You mean Cash and Kane? I’m just the pain in the ass little brother to them. I create problems they have to clean up. And they never let me forget it.”
“Well, what about your mother? Moms are always good for that kind of stuff.”
His face lit up at the mention of his mother. “Yeah. She doesn’t ask, but if I tell her I’m coming over she’ll make me that meatloaf she knows I love. I’m her favorite.”
“You’re the youngest. Moms always love the baby most.”
“I think it was more that Cash was my father’s favorite, so she didn’t want to see me left out.”
And with that, his smile faded away and an uncomfortable silence settled in between us. I didn’t know how to deal with this Stefan. The asshole who I thought of as a borderline misogynist I could handle. The decent guy at work I liked. The man who rocked my world in bed I had to resist falling for. This Stefan, though, made me want to take him in my arms and ask what his favorite everything was. He just seemed so alone that I had to fight reaching out to make him feel better.
But I did fight that urge, as overwhelming as it was, because no matter who he was right now, there with me as the water gently lapped against the shore just a few feet away from us, the reality was Stefan March was that player I’d intended on playing. Even if I didn’t want him to be.
Even if I really wished at that moment he was the guy next to me who I could fall for.
He looked up at me and quietly asked, “Do you think people can change, Shay?”
“What kind of change are we talking about?”
“The kind that matters.”
I looked at him, unsure of what he meant but knowing people don’t change. “Leopards can’t change their spots, Stefan. They are who they are. Like in the story about the scorpion and the frog.”
Chuckling, he shook his head. “Who?”
“Haven’t you ever heard of the story about the scorpion and the frog? The scorpion asks the frog for a ride across a stream, and the frog says no because he knows he’ll sting him and he’ll die. The scorpion promises he won’t. Why would he, right? He’d die too. The frog is convinced and lets him get on his back, but halfway across the stream the scorpion stings him. The frog can’t believe it and asks him, ‘Why would you do that? Now we’ll both die.’ The scorpion simply says, ‘This is my nature.’ He couldn’t change who he fundamentally was, so they both died.”
“So you don’t think people can change?” he asked, his brown eyes wide with interest in my opinion on what seemed very important to him at that moment.
I thought about it and shook my head. “No, I don’t think they can. You are who you are, no matter how much another person wishes you weren’t that person.”
“What if the part of you that you wanted to change wasn’t who you really were? What if it was just something that wasn’t really you?”
“What do you mean?”
He took a deep breath and blew it out slowly, frowning as he sighed. “You’re smart, but what if you weren’t and you were just pretending to be smart? You could change to be a different way because what you were changing wasn’t the real you.”
As tortured logic went, that wasn’t bad. I couldn’t argue with it, at least, even though I had no idea where he was going with this. “I guess if someone was trying to shed a façade, then that kind of change would be possible.”
Stefan nodded his approval and smiled, obviously pleased by my answer. “Maybe it just takes the right set of circumstances for a person to change.”
“Maybe.” I didn’t know what to say because anything I believed about people changing went completely against his positive ideas about the subject. I’d never seen anyone really change. Not for anyone or anything. Not even for love.
Looking out at the water, I moved to change the subject. “I like it here. It’s quiet. After all the noise from the bar each night, this feels so relaxing.”
He ran his finger through the sand toward me and lifted a handful of it up, dumping it out on my thigh. “You know what I’ve always wanted to do? Bury someone in the sand.”
“You’re creeping your new friend out, Stefan.”
Scooping up another handful, he poured it out over my knee and smiled up at me like he was proud of his handiwork. “I’m not trying to kill you, Shay. I’m just saying I think it would be fun to bury someone in the sand like they do in the movies. Haven’t you ever wanted to try that?”
I brushed the sand off my leg and onto his arm. “No. I have a deathly fear of being trapped in anything, even sand. Small enclosed spaces, elevators, even those tiny Italian cars freak me out.”
Even as I sat there explaining how I dreaded the very thing he wanted to do, he scooped up another handful of sand and then another, dumping both on my shin and nearly covering it. “Sounds like you have a fear of being out of control, if you ask me.”
I kicked my leg and sent sand flying everywhere. “Thanks, Dr. Phil. I’m thinking in a past life I was trapped in some enclosed space, like a mine shaft or a box, and smothered to death, so I’ll thank you not to cover me in any more sand.”
Brushing myself off, I stood to move away from him, but he grabbed me by the ankle. “Don’t leave. I promise not to bury you in the sand, okay?”
I looked down at him as he gave me those puppy dog eyes that never failed to soften my heart and smiled. “Promise?”
He grinned up at me, like he was having fun. “I promise. Scout’s honor. But I still want to do the whole bury someone in the sand thing, so what about if you covered me instead? I don’t have any fear of being trapped by a few grains of sand.”
“You want me to cover you with sand?”
Jumping up, he unbuttoned his pants. “Yeah, but not in these. Give me a second.” And with that, he stripped them off and threw them over the back of a beach chair before he turned back to face me wearing only his boxer briefs. “Okay, I’m ready. Let’s do this!”
I watched as he sat back down and lay flat on the sand really wanting me to bury him. I’d never seen him like this. He seemed genuinely happy—not like he was at the club, usually because he was up to no good there but happy, like he didn’t have a care in the world and playing in the sand was the best thing he’d ever thought of.
“For the record, even burying someone in sand sort of creeps me out,” I admitted as I sat down next to him.
He picked up some sand and threw it on top of his knees. “I’m a willing participant, but if it makes you feel more comfortable, only cover up to my waist. Sound good?”
The real sense of fear that had been building inside me since we’d begun this conversation ebbed a bit at the thought that at least most of him wouldn’t be trapped. Scooping up a tiny handful of sand, I tossed it onto his muscular thigh next to me. “Okay, that makes this a little easier. This still seems silly, though.”
As I began in earnest to pile the sand on his legs, he leaned back and crossed his arms behind his head, totally relaxed about being immobilized at my hands. “What’s wrong with something being silly? Life is too fucking serious, Shay. You have to enjoy yourself.”
“I enjoy myself. You make it sound like I don’t,” I said as I finished covering his ankles.
“I’m just saying life is too short. Take all that school you’ve done. If the world ended tomorrow, what would it matter?”
His condemnation of what I’d devoted so much of my life to, even if he was just joking, bothered me. Turning to face him, I tried to force myself to keep my words light like his, but I couldn’t. He’d picked the wrong topic to tease me about.
“If the world ended tomorrow
, I’d be proud of the work I’d done. My research might someday help cure disease and save lives. What have you done that can measure up to that?”
Instantly, the hurt from my words showed in his eyes. I hadn’t meant to be such a bitch, but there it was. Regret surged through me, but before I could apologize, not for the meaning of my words but the delivery, he laughed. “You’re that same person who put me in my place the first time I met you. Fair enough. I haven’t done much of anything that can measure up to the important work you’ve done. You’re not wrong.”
“I’m sorry for saying that, Stefan. That wasn’t fair. I should be able to be proud of my work without looking down on yours. I’m sorry.”
Touching my hand, he shook his head and smiled. “No, you’re right. I run a nightclub. Not much of anything to change the world there.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. I guess I’m just touchy about my work. I don’t mean to be a bitch either. I know I was the first day. One would think after all the time I’ve spent in clubs that I’d be more easygoing with that kind of stuff.”
“You are who you are, Shay. And I’m who I am. That doesn’t mean we can’t have fun, though, so get back to covering me in sand before the sun comes up.”
His easy dismissal of my defensiveness made forgiving myself easier, but as I got back to the task of burying him in the sand, I couldn’t help feel that he’d forgiven me too easily. Whatever thoughts I had about that, though, disappeared as I reached the tops of his thighs and saw the outline of his hard cock pointing up toward his stomach under his boxer briefs. I felt his stare on me as a rush of heat flooded my cheeks.
“Almost there. Just a few inches more and I’ll be completely buried.”
I turned to see him grinning at me. “Enjoying yourself?”
“Immensely.” His gaze traveled to his cock and he winked at me. “And I can’t wait to see what you do with that.”
