I let him kiss me, shivering as he ran light fingers along my bare back. He was a good kisser, his lips soft on mine. He wasn’t forceful at all, just cajoling, and I found myself thinking about how Tristan’s kiss had been, how it had demanded more from me that I’d known I wanted to give, and how I’d wanted to give more than I could afford to. Even thinking about another man the whole time, though, I could see that Jared knew what he was doing.
Still, it felt wrong, and I found myself quickly regretting it. This was Tristan’s brother, and as much as I wished that I didn’t, I had feelings for Tristan, and this was wrong. It was a nice kiss, but that was all. Just nice was nothing like what I felt for Tristan, which meant that the kiss, as meaningless as it was, was giving the wrong impression. I couldn’t date Jared. It was naive of me to even have considered it.
I pulled back.
“I’m sorry,” I told him quietly. “We shouldn’t.”
“I know,” he said with a smile. “This isn’t a date. Still, I had to try.”
I rolled my eyes, less worried about leading him on after that statement.
“That came out wrong. What I meant was…I like you, a lot. I think about you way too often, and I’d like to spend more time with you. I won’t try that again, not until you want me to.”
I sighed, hating what I had to admit, but knowing that it was the only fair thing to do. “I don’t think we can ever date, Jared. Tristan and I are just friends, that was the truth, but I do have feelings for him, which makes this wrong.”
Even in the dim light, I could see his mouth tighten, and his brows draw together, but he nodded. “Okay. Okay, I understand.”
“Please don’t tell Tristan that I said that. He doesn’t know.”
“Of course.”
We suffered through a long, awkward silence before he spoke again. “Do you still want to swim?”
“Yes. If you do.”
“Yeah. I still want to be friends. All of the stuff with Tristan doesn’t change that. We’re friends, right?”
I smiled, which drew a small smile from him. “Yes, we’re friends.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The backyard of the mansion was just as impressive as the front, and the pool was colossal. But it wasn’t our first destination.
We fell into the line that led to the margarita bar. I was ready for one, after that awkward conversation.
“I’m so sorry—”, I said.
“I’m sorry,” Jared said at the same time.
We smiled at each other.
“I won’t make this awkward,” Jared said quietly.
“Good. Thank you. I hate awkward.”
“Agreed,” Jared said. As he spoke, a very pretty blond man clapped him on the shoulder from behind.
Jared turned to see who had grabbed him and grinned. “Mean Dean,” he said, his tone laced with affection.
Mean Dean was gorgeous, in a pretty boy sort of way. In fact, I’d have said he was the prettiest man I’d ever seen, if I’d never laid eyes on James Fucking Cavendish.
Dean was just a few inches taller than me, and lean bordering on slender, even compared to Jared. I doubted he had a six-pack, like the brothers, but his face was his attraction. Almost white blond hair, tan skin, cornflower blue eyes, and the face of an angel would have made anyone do a double take.
Still, right from the beginning, there was something I didn’t like about his smile.
He grinned at Jared, stepping closer to us. Someone behind us made a loud comment about him cutting into the line, but he pretended not to hear. “Glad you could make it, Diet T.”
Jared stiffened at the nickname.
I raised my brows, instantly curious. These guys and their nicknames…
“What does Diet T mean?” I asked.
Dean turned a rather greasy smile on me. “Have you met his brother? Isn’t Jared like the diet version of Tryst? Skinnier, less handsome, less smart, less talented. So we call him Diet T.”
Jared looked uncomfortable, and just that easily, Dean went right to my shit list.
“And what’s your nickname?” I asked Dean.
“I’m Mean Dean. And who are you, my lovely?”
“I’m Danika. Where does Mean Dean come from? It sounds like they went easy on you in the nickname department.”
“I don’t remember how the nickname started. So you’re Danika… I’ve heard about you. Going out with both of the brothers, huh? I think I just thought up your nickname! We’ll call you Number One, because you’re the band’s first groupie.”
As he spoke, he gripped Jared’s hand, and I saw a small baggie pass from one man to the other.
I was irate, for more than one reason.
“Quit being an ass,” Jared muttered to his friend.
“Oh, relax. I’m only joking,” Dean said.
It was pretty easy to see where the Mean Dean nickname had come from. He was a vicious motherfucker, but then again, so was I, if provoked. “You’re awfully clever for a drug dealer,” I told him, my smile sweet, my tone, not so much.
His grin only widened. “I’m not a dealer if I’m giving it away. Want some, Number One?”
“No thank you,” I said through my teeth, stifling the urge to make up a rude nickname for him. There’s nothing more immature than name calling, I told myself firmly. “So you’re just a drug pusher, not a dealer? That’s much better…”
Dean looked at Jared, still smiling. “She’s feisty. I like that. When do I get my turn with her?”
“Sorry, I’m not into chicks,” I told him, deadpan.
That killed his grin, and widened mine.
“She’s got a point,” a laughing female voice said from behind me. “Dean is almost pretty enough to interest me.”
I turned to see a petite, black-haired girl with doll-like features. Her makeup was heavy, ran toward goth, and she was covered in tats, but it was obvious that she had a very pretty face, and a pretty smile.
“Finally going to take me up on my offer, Frankie?” Dean asked.
“I said almost, Dean. And almost isn’t enough for me to deal with a penis.”
Frankie held out a hand to me, giving me a very warm look. “Danika. Tristan told me about you. Nice to meet you. I’m Frankie.”
I shook her hand, trying to smile, though I still wanted to punch Dean in the face. “Nice to meet you. Jared was just telling me about your reality show.”
She wiggled her brows at me, her smile self-deprecating. “Hopefully it doesn’t bomb.”
“I’m sure it won’t,” I reassured her. “Especially if it’s at the Cavendish Casino. That place is hot right now.”
“Let’s hope you’re right. You’ve probably seen some of my work. I’ve done almost all of the ink on Tristan’s back, and his arms. And I’ve done quite a bit of Jared’s, too. Whenever he’s done having a private chat with Dean, I’ll show you.”
I glanced over to where the two men had been, and saw that they’d moved several feet away, and were speaking quietly to each other.
“Jared’s great, but Dean can be a pain,” Frankie said, her voice pitched low.
I nodded. I thought that was putting it nicely.
“So do you have any ink?”
I shook my head, reading from her smile where she was going with the question.
“Is there anything you really want? I’d be happy to help you make all of your tattoo dreams come true.”
I chewed on my lip. I had been thinking about that, especially recently. Something about staring at Tristan’s tattoos way too often had made me start to want my own. “I’ve toyed with the idea of getting a little cherry blossom branch on my back.”
Her grin widened. She clearly sensed a victory. “We’ll have to work on that. I’ll show you some of my designs that will blow your mind. You don’t even have to let my camera crew tape it, though I’d love it if you did.”
I blanched. “TV? I don’t know…”
“It’s not as bad as all that. Just think a
bout it.”
My eyes narrowed on her. “You do this all the time, don’t you?”
She shrugged, a very engaging twinkle in her eye. “I love putting my mark on beautiful people. Call it a personal quirk.”
“Tristan’s ink is the best I’ve seen.”
“Why thank you. Have you seen Jared’s?”
“I haven’t gotten a close look at any of it.”
“But you have gotten a close look at Tristan’s? Interesting…”
I shrugged, my mouth twisting wryly. “I don’t know if interesting is the word. Frustrating would be more apt.”
She laughed. She started to say something, but it was interrupted by some woman behind me loudly calling her name.
I turned to see a blonde woman descending on us. She was Vegas pretty, with hair bleached platinum blonde, a face that reminded me a bit of a Bratz doll, and bombshell curves that no one could have mistaken for natural. Still, she filled out her pink bikini in a way that would have made any straight guy look twice.
Frankie smiled at the woman, but there was a noticeable chill in her eye that hadn’t been there before.
“Natalie,” Frankie said. “Long time no see. What are you doing here?”
She pronounced the Natalie strangely, the a’s made into ah’s. I guessed that Natalie was one of those women that tried to make a pretty normal name sound exotic, but it just came out sounding a little stupid.
“Frankie, I can’t tell you how I excited I was when I heard you were getting your own show! I’ve been dying to talk to you!”
“Oh yeah?” Frankie asked, disinterest practically pouring off her in waves.
“Well, I’ve been wanting to get a tattoo for ages.”
“Really?” Frankie was clearly skeptical.
“And I think it would be great for my career to have it done on your show.”
“Career?” Frankie asked.
“I’ve gotten into modeling,” Natalie said smugly.
Only in Vegas, I thought. Natalie was a good three inches shorter than me, which made her unlikely model material, no matter how pretty she was.
“I take it you and Howard didn’t work out.”
Natalie shrugged. “We’re still seeing each other. Nothing exclusive anymore, but he’s been good to me, and I won’t forget it.”
“Sure, yeah.” It was so obvious to me that Frankie couldn’t stand the woman, but Natalie seemed oblivious to it.
Natalie’s gaze sharpened on something behind Frankie, and I’d have sworn it turned predatory. “Is that Jared Vega?” she asked softly.
Frankie didn’t bother to hide her eye roll. “It is.”
“Is Tristan around? Those two are usually inseparable.”
Frankie’s smile was just a flash of teeth. “Nope.”
“Damn. I needed to talk to him.”
“You could always call him,” Frankie offered.
Natalie flushed. “I don’t have his number. Could I get it from you?”
“Sorry. Can’t do that. I’ll let him know you wanted to talk to him, if you want.”
“Fine,” Natalie said, her tone dismissive, then abruptly walked away.
“That was…interesting,” I said, wondering what to make of the blonde woman. She hadn’t been openly rude, just strange.
“Natalie wouldn’t know how to be anything but self-serving. A lot of conversations with her end like that. When you’re no longer useful to her, she just walks away.”
“Hmm,” I said.
“She’s a gold digger. You know the type. What she said about her ex, Howard, says it all. That was gold digger code for, we’re not dating, but I give him a blow job every time he pays my bills. Howard is almost sixty years old, by the way.”
“Yuck,” I said, watching the bombshell blonde approaching Jared and Dean. “She has to still be in her twenties.”
“She is. And that’s not even the worst of it. The whole story is just awful. She was Tristan’s high school sweetheart.”
That made my heart twist painfully in my chest.
“The fact that he won’t date, that he only hooks up, is at least partially because of that twat,” Frankie said.
That word made the side of my mouth kick up in spite of the way her statement made me feel. “Twatalie made him like that?”
Frankie threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, I like you. Yes, she did. Or at least, I blame her. Twatalie started seeing Howard when she still had Tristan’s ring on her finger.”
I went from mildly disliking Natalie to openly hating her guts with that one sentence. I couldn’t have said which made me hate her more; the fact that she’d been engaged to Tristan, or the fact that she’d cheated on him.
“That twat,” I said softly.
“Exactly,” Frankie agreed.
We reached the front of the line, and a very friendly bartender got me two margaritas, and an entire tray of tequila shots for Frankie.
I eyed up the shots dubiously. “Please tell me those aren’t all for you.”
She shrugged. “For us. I don’t like to drink alone. How hard do you think it will be to get Jared away from his pretty boyfriend?”
I glanced over at the two men. Natalie was gone, but they hadn’t stopped talking quietly to each other. “They don’t look like they want to be disturbed.”
“Well, then, let’s start without him. He’ll find us when he’s done.”
We hopped into a shallow corner of the pool, setting the drinks on the edge.
She talked me into a tequila shot, and I downed it with a grimace.
“So I know that Tristan had to work tonight. Does he know that you’re here with his brother?”
“He doesn’t.”
“Be careful about that. I know you aren’t dating, but it feels…messy to me. Those two are close. It would be a pity to drive a wedge between them.”
I sighed. “I know. I thought about dating Jared, but I’ve decided tonight that it’s not happening. It just feels wrong. I don’t want to come between them, and I don’t want to lead Jared on.”
“Have you told Jared that? He seems to be sporting a big crush.”
“I told him. It was awkward, but he was very nice about it.”
“He’s the nicest guy in the world, but I worry about him.”
That surprised me, but before I even asked, I knew what she was referring to. “Why?”
“I worry about both of the Vega brothers, but I especially worry about Jared. He’s just too open to anything, you know? He doesn’t seem to have a slow down button when it comes to drugs and alcohol. Neither of them do, but Tristan at least sticks mainly to the booze. I don’t think there’s anything Jared hasn’t tried, and at some point, you can’t just call it all experimenting.”
“Does Tristan know?”
Frankie sighed, looking like a worried mother in spite of her age. “He knows. He’ll be the first to say it’s normal to try things. When you’re smoking joints with your mother before you’re twelve, it’s hard to get perspective about it.”
I grimaced. “I went to dinner at her house, and saw some of that. I’m a total prude about drugs, and I know they’re grown-ups now, but that raised some red flags for me.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I love that woman to death, but that’s just messed up, and it isn’t even the half of it.”
“Dean handed Jared a baggie of something the second he showed up,” I told her, my voice pitched low, since Jared was approaching the pool.
“See now, that’s the shit that worries me. Dean will get him anything he wants, with no thought to what’s good for him. And I can guarantee that wasn’t just a baggie of weed.”
We dropped the subject as Jared joined us in the pool, and Frankie went over every piece of ink she’d done on his skin, which was considerable.
“Mama’s boy,” I teased him gently when she pointed out a tattoo for his mom that he’d done on his chest.
It was an anchor with the word mother etched into it. I thought it said a
lot that he’d chosen an anchor to represent his mom, though to me it said something far different than what he thought it did. Lucy had trained me to look for signs of codependency, and permanently marking your body with the fact that someone was dragging you down was about as obvious as it got.
“Absolutely. Until the day I die, I’ll be a mama’s boy. She’s my best friend.”
In spite of my reservations, a little ‘aww’ escaped me at such sweet words coming out of a grown man.
“Tristan is a mama’s boy, too, but not as bad as this one,” Frankie told me, as she ran her hands down Jared’s abs, tracing over the scaled dragon she’d done.
My brow furrowed as I studied the intricate dragon. It was golden, and so elaborate that I had to study it carefully to catch all of the details. It was a lot like one she’d done on Tristan’s shoulder, but Jared’s dragon had one extra quirk that made me roll my eyes.
“Is that dragon smoking a joint, or a cigarette?” I asked, my tone wry.
“Guess,” Jared said playfully.
“Well half of it is in the water,” I complained.
“Here.” He hopped out of the pool, perching on the edge so I had a better view.
I moved close, getting between his legs to study the smoking dragon. “I can’t believe you put a dragon smoking a joint on his stomach,” I said to Frankie, my tone accusing, when I saw for certain what it was.
“I tried to talk him out of the joint. But he insisted. There’s also a marijuana leaf on his hip, though that wasn’t me. I explained to him that people almost always regret drug tattoos. When he’s older, with kids of his own, he’ll never be able to tell them to say no to drugs without looking like a hypocrite.”
“I wouldn’t tell them to say no. I’ll be a cool ass dad.”
“See now, everyone says that, until they have children,” Frankie explained. “Your priorities will change, I guarantee it.”
I glanced up at Jared when he had no response to her statement.
He was looking towards the house, an expression of frozen panic on his face.
I knew who it was before I turned to look. My hands fell from Jared’s stomach, where they’d been innocently tracing a tattoo.
Bad Things (Tristan & Danika #1) Page 15
