by Piper Lawson
We walked side by side toward the doors in silence.
Say something.
Like what? “How’d you like the picture of my dick?”
I reached up to scratch my neck.
Guilt clawed at me as we made our way through the airport. Through the doors leading to ground transportation.
How the fuck can she not talk? Most girls would have told me their life story by now. Including what bar they were working at to pay the bills in between Mentos commercials.
“How old are you, Jordan?” I asked finally, caving to the pressure.
“Twenty-four.”
Half the breath I was holding released as we crossed the tunnel to the parking garage. “Thank fuck. Listen. This is awkward as hell, so I’m just going to ask. Did you get a text from me last night? A picture?”
“Yeah.”
I winced. “I meant to send it to someone else. Which you figured. Since you showed up and it doesn’t look like the police are coming to enforce the restraining order you had issued overnight.”
“I assumed it was some kind of LA thing. ‘Welcome to the Golden State. Plenty of Vitamin D, legal marijuana and dick to go around.’”
I stared at her.
I take it back. She probably does get off to Sheer Mag.
“Yeah, well. It’s not something I do. In fact, that was the first—and probably the last—time.”
I fished the keys to my blue BMW from my pocket, unsure why I felt the need to explain myself.
“I can show you how to get in. The car has…”
She put her suitcase in the trunk, then waited for the passenger door to lift into the air at an angle before sliding inside.
The butterfly doors tripped most girls up, even the ones who were used to nice cars. Come to think of it, she’d seen my two best assets and hadn’t commented on either.
I shoved down the irritation.
Jordan pulled a pair of sunglasses out of her hemp bag and pushed them up her nose. “So Ava sent you some specs on stores, right? We need a boutique to launch for fall. Based on my projections, that means we need to lock this down inside of three weeks to give us enough time to stock, merchandise, advertise…”
“Do you not do small talk?”
“Huh?”
“Conversation. Warming up. Getting to know each other,” I prodded.
Jordan looked back at me, impassive. “What, did you want to talk about your cock some more?”
“Absolutely not.” I put the car in gear to escape her level stare.
What was this girl doing in business with my sister? They had nothing in common. She looked like she’d rather be at Burning Man than a New York fashion label.
“So. This your first trip to LA?” I tried. Jordan nodded. “And you’re from Manhattan.”
“New Jersey. I came to California once before with Lex and Ava.”
I approached the meter. She held out a bill from her wallet, but I shook my head, paying for the parking. The metal gate raised and we were off, flowing through the mess of overpasses that would eventually take us to the freeway.
“Where are you staying?”
She named an address and I nodded. “That’s more like it. I live in Santa Monica, so we’re practically neighbors.”
“How’d you get out of work to pick me up?”
“I’m a realtor, so I set my own hours. Plus I missed Ava’s birthday this year, which is why I offered. Picking someone up at LAX constitutes a grand gesture,” I explained. “Like a tennis bracelet. Or dinner at a Michelin-star restaurant.”
Jordan stared out the window as we blew past palms and a commercial mall. The scenic route was also the most direct.
Again with the silence.
“Anything you want to ask me?” I offered finally. “About the city, the landscape…anything. I’m at your disposal.”
“OK. Why does your hair have a stripe buzzed down the back?”
I nearly hit the brakes. Instead, I navigated off the highway and into the parking lot of a café. The mirror from my phone, together with the one in my car, revealed the scene of a massacre.
What. The fuck.
“I look like a skunk,” I breathed, my lungs squeezing. “This girl Kia always does my hair. She’s the best.”
“Did Kia have a stroke?” Jordan watched with the impassivity she’d probably come out of the womb with.
Was that…the corner of her mouth twitched.
“This?” I breathed. “This is not funny.”
“It’s a little funny.” Jordan pushed her sunglasses up on her head. “But I can fix it.”
She slid out of the BMW and crossed to the café door without waiting for me.
3
Jordan
I might not be the most social person in the world, but I have a memory for faces.
The guy in the family photo and the man who picked me up were different people.
Family Photo Guy had been good-looking and friendly. The man who showed up at LAX was definitely not as advertised.
First, Ethan was taller than me, which is rare enough. I hate looking up at people. It’s like I lose my power.
But I couldn’t help looking up at him.
I’d forgotten how much older he was than Ava and Dylan, but it was obvious in the way he talked, and the way he held himself.
The light caramel skin above the top button of his shirt matched the strong forearms sticking out of his rolled-up sleeves.
His face was square, framed by an underwear model’s sharp jaw. (Sometime, somewhere, a rule was made that states that the less a guy wears in front of a camera, the better his jaw is.)
Ethan Cameron could model a straw.
There was less of Ava and Dylan in him than I’d expected. He had the straight nose and firm mouth that seemed to be a Cameron hallmark. His eyes were light, a robin’s egg blue enhanced by the relentlessly blue sky California sky. But where Ava and Dylan had dark hair, Ethan’s was sandy brown and made you wonder if it was as soft as it looked.
Well. What was left of it.
“I can’t believe you waited nearly an hour to tell me about this,” Ethan grumbled as we stood in line at the café.
“I saw two pictures of you before this morning. Neither featured the back of your head.”
Ethan shot me a look, then checked his phone. “Shit. I’m supposed to show a house in an hour. But I can’t show up looking like this. I have to reschedule.”
I glanced past Ethan to the tables lining the café. Five girls and one guy had checked him out since we got in. Remarkably, it wasn’t his hair they were looking at.
Maybe they were looking at his clothes. The midnight blue pinstripe dress shirt was open at the collar, and his jeans probably cost more than the tailored suit pants his New York counterparts would’ve been wearing.
Or maybe they’re wondering what’s under the clothes. Neither the shirt nor the jeans were too tight, but because he was so damn hard everywhere, the fabric clung to him. It showed off every muscle when he folded his arms, shifting impatiently on his feet. The ropey muscles of his forearms made it look like he could as easily be building a boat as steering his beautiful car. I suddenly wondered what Ethan would look like working with those hands, those arms.
Skunk, I reminded myself.
Hot skunk, a primitive part of my brain rebelled.
Thank God I’m immune. I mean, I can appreciate a good-looking guy. But it doesn’t make me buy a bra that pushes my boobs up to my collarbone, or start curling my hair, or end every sentence with a hysterical giggle.
The barista beamed at Ethan when we reached the front of the line. “Hey. Double non-fat soy wheatgrass SuperShot?”
Ethan’s mouth curved. “You got it. Have I been in here before?”
She giggled.
Hysterically.
I tacked my order onto his, but as far as the barista was concerned I could’ve been Ethan’s lapdog.
“So I’m calling you on it,” he asked, turning to
me as we waited for our order. “Your plan. How are we fixing this?”
“I’m hungry. And you have crazy eyes. You’re not driving like that. Once your blood pressure stabilizes, you can drop me off, swing by a barber—” I flashed a local Yelp entry I’d pulled up while the barista had been flirting with him “—and be back in your office only missing, what…one appointment?”
He frowned. “What is it you do again with my sister?”
“I’m in charge of retail. And I fix things.”
Ethan and I carried our orders to a high-top table.
“You fix things. Fashion things.”
“Travesty adopted me last year. I met Lex through the magazine she was working at.”
“And before that?” He took a sip of his drink.
“I did some work with my dad after college.”
Ethan grimaced. “School wasn’t for me. Never had the attention span to sit at a desk.”
“Ava’s not big on desks either.”
“Yeah, well, Ava’s talented as fuck. Dylan’s athletic, Kate’s smart. I’m the black sheep. Defying convention through mediocrity. Try it,” he insisted.
“Mediocrity?”
“No. The shot.” He pushed the concoction toward me.
I wrinkled my nose. “I don’t do green.”
“What? Come on.”
I sniffed it and gagged, drawing the attention of the two well-dressed women at the next table. “It smells like mud and bacon grease. You paid five bucks for that?”
“It was supposed to be seven, but she likes me.” He turned the cup around so I could see the barista had written her number on the side.
“I think she peed in it.” I took a sip of my iced coffee to neutralize the smell, then reached for my muffin, breaking off the top in one piece and biting into it.
Ethan watched me, entranced. “I can’t remember the last time I saw a girl eat a muffin.”
“I sacrifice small animals to pagan gods, too.”
“That I’ve seen.”
I can do small talk when I have to. But most of the time I’m happier to sit in silence than spout off on non-consequential things.
Ethan seemed like he’d rather die than stop talking.
He did pick you up. The least you can do is come up with something other than religion or gun control.
“So what’d you do to deserve the buzz cut?”
“Nothing!” My companion grimaced. The expression did nothing to lessen the impact of his good looks. If anything, his eyes looked even brighter and his jaw even sharper. “Kia and I are friends. I took her out once or twice.”
“’Took out.’”
“Yeah. We got a drink, got acquainted with the backseat of my car.”
I glanced outside to the tiny BMW. “How do you even manage it? You know. Logistically.”
Ethan shrugged, downing the rest of his drink. “Angles.”
Guys like Ethan have never been my speed, before or after Colt. But his blue stare warmed on me, and I felt something shift in my stomach.
It wasn’t the muffin.
“Come on,” he goaded. “You’re dying to weigh in on this. You’re one of those girls who has an opinion on everything but pretends they don’t care about anything.”
I took another bite, washed it down with iced coffee. “OK. So you slept with some girl in your car, and—wild guess—I’m going to assume she’s not the only lucky winner of fifteen minutes of backseat glory.” Ethan frowned but didn’t disagree. “Did Edward Scissorhands know?”
The fitted shirt followed his body as he shifted forward, pulling tight across his shoulders. “I have three rules. One, I don’t lie to girls. Two, I don’t make promises I can’t keep. Three, they don’t regret it when it ends.”
“You can’t control whether they regret it, Ethan. That’s up to them.”
“Listen, Judge Judy. We’re adults. We have a good time. Nothing I’ve ever done to a girl—in my car or anywhere else—is cause for regret. In fact,” he went on, “life is too short for regrets of any kind. Most of us never regret the things we do. We regret the things we don’t.”
“Spoken like the poster child for genital herpes,” I mumbled into my cup.
“What was that?”
“Nothing. I just think we’re as likely to regret the things we do as the ones we don’t. Especially if sex is something you go around handing out like a business card.”
He tilted his chin down, his blue eyes boring into mine. “So then what’s your rule?”
“My what?” I shifted in my seat as I watched him take a sip.
“For guys—girls?—you fuck. No wait, let me guess. They have to be worthy. I’m thinking entrepreneur. Loves their mom. Headlines a punk band on weekends but doesn’t miss a 401K contribution.”
I was relieved when my phone beeped. I glanced down at it, grateful for an excuse to get out of the conversation. “We should go.”
Ethan was polite the rest of the drive, pointing out areas of interest. Twenty minutes later, the BMW pulled up outside the low-rise glass building that matched the address on my phone.
“Corporate housing, huh?” Ethan whistled as we got out.
Before I could tell him he didn’t need to come up, he was dragging my suitcase behind him to the front door. I got the key card from the guy working on desk and we crossed to the elevator.
I reached for the button at the same time as Ethan, and our eyes met. He pulled back and I hit eight.
The elevator was glass, and the wall behind it was too, revealing hills dotted with houses. Beyond it, the Pacific beckoned.
It was beautiful. I’d see it coming in on the plane but it was even better like this.
“So you never told me what you’re looking for in a store,” Ethan prompted.
I turned away from the view and leaned back against the wall. “Did you get the brief from Ava?”
“Sure.” Ethan lifted a shoulder, noncommittal.
“Well, let me give you a refresher. We’re opening our first LA store, and our second store overall. We want a great location. Accessible. Our place in SoHo’s eight hundred square feet plus half that out back for working and storage. And we need to find something stat. Before the wedding, if we’re going to have enough time to open by next season.”
“And why are you doing all this?”
The elevator doors opened and we started down the hall.
“We have some presence in LA through boutiques that carry Travesty, but we’re ready to grow. Our plan is to go global. Make the leap to Europe once we’ve built out our sales, established that we can make enough of an impact on our own—not just alongside other brands.” A low-grade electricity buzzed through me. We hadn’t said those words to many people, and every time I did it was thrilling.
And scary.
Taking this company, a dream of Lex and Ava’s since before college, and turning it into a household name wasn’t the same as working for my dad. Despite the successes over its first few seasons, Travesty was still a small player on the block. A baby really.
But it was Lex and Ava’s baby, one they’d poured their hearts and souls and every spare penny into. Some days they still questioned whether Travesty would ever make it big.
I knew it was going to be huge. Playing a part in that wasn’t just exciting, it was humbling.
“I’m not asking about Travesty. I’m asking about you. Why are you here, now? See,” Ethan went on at my confusion, “faceless companies don’t rent boutiques or buy houses. People do. And I want to know what you’re about.”
I studied his curious expression for a moment before sliding the key card in the door. “I’m about the job. There’s not much else to know.”
The place was all light-colored hardwood, white cabinets in the kitchen, neutral furnishings, and lots of art. I dropped my bag and crossed to the floor-to-ceiling windows that ran the length of the living room and open-concept kitchen.
A handful of buildings occupied the land between us and the oce
an, but we were high enough up that we could see the stretch of blue, unobstructed.
“Shit,” I breathed.
“Indeed,” Ethan agreed, materializing beside me. “What kind of business is your dad in again?”
“A few different ones.”
“Right. Some of the best views are over there.” He pointed out and up the hills.
“That where you live?”
“No, but some of my clients do. My place is right there. Three blocks off the beach.”
I scanned the horizon. It was too beautiful to be real.
“I don’t get it. Who even lives here?”
“Here’s the thing about Angelenos, Jersey. We’re all imports. People like you, looking for something more.”
I turned toward Ethan, ready to protest. I forgot my words with those blue eyes suddenly too close, too bright on mine.
It hit me why I was uncomfortable around him. It wasn’t his looks, or even his confidence. It was that Ethan wasn’t the easy-mannered yes-man I’d expected. There was a restless energy beneath the surface, like he was looking for something he’d lost and wouldn’t be satisfied until he found it.
I knew what that felt like.
“I’m taking you out tomorrow,” he said, his voice stroking down my spine.
I blinked. “What?”
“I’ll pull a few listings tonight. We’ll get you into a new place faster than you can say Wilshire.”
I trailed him to the door. It pained me to admit the back view of Ethan Cameron was as good as the front. Which promptly reminded me of what felt like a lifetime ago, when my neighbor on the plane had fallen asleep. I’d glanced around before opening the picture on my phone.
Half of the shot was chest and abs. The hard body Lex remembered had only gotten better. Every last inch of Ethan was tanned and cut as he stretched out on a dark bedspread. My mind had turned the photo into a video, picturing the muscles flexing, contracting.
I should’ve been disgusted.
I wasn’t. Instead my insides had been clenching for an entirely different reason.
I’d never seen a guy that cut. How did you even get lines there? Flipping car tires? Aerial trampolining? Steer wrestling?
And then there was…the rest. Was it normal for guys to be that long and thick? Not that I had tons of experience, but fuck.
