by Lynne, Donya
“Honestly, TART was just supposed to be something to keep me busy and give me a little fun while I tried to figure out my next step,” she tells me. “It was just supposed to be a quirky line of graphic T-shirts, but it quickly grew into another full-fledged business. Now we sell a lot more than just T-shirts. Tank tops, blouses, dress shirts, shorts, skirts, sundresses, and a whole line of yoga and workout wear that yoga and Pilates studios all over the country have picked up and sell in their showrooms.” She winks and leans toward me like we’re old friends sharing secrets. “Off the record, Amazon already wants to buy TART, but I’m not ready to sell. Not yet.”
“Why not?”
She folds her legs under her. “For a lot of reasons.” She starts ticking them off, and I hear just a hint of the southern accent she mentioned on her questionnaire that she’s worked so hard to get rid of. “To begin with, they only want to pay me half of what they paid for Rats, but TART is already off to a faster start than Rats was, so it’s worth more, in my opinion.” She brushes back her long, wavy hair, which hangs at least a foot past her shoulders and looks like she just walked out of a commercial for professional haircare products. It’s dyed black with strips of purple and blue, but I can tell from the thin line of roots showing at her scalp that her natural color is more of a caramel blond. “Secondly, I’m not done doing what I want with the company. I’m still having fun with it. When building the company begins to feel more like work and less like fun, then I’ll consider their offer. By then, I’ll have made TART a lot more profitable and can negotiate a better deal with a higher sale price, one more like what they paid me for Rats.” She shrugs as if it’s all just play money anyway. “I figure that after another two to four years, I’ll be ready. Then I can really make an impact on the world.”
She’s already made a huge impact on the world, but based on the questionnaire she filled out for me, she wants to do even bigger, more important things than just sell shoes and shirts. Such as help the world’s homeless, bring clean drinking water to people in underdeveloped countries, and free women from religious oppression not just in obvious locales like the Middle East, but even from right here in the United States.
As the daughter of devout evangelical parents, she has a plethora of firsthand knowledge of just how emotionally, physically, and spiritually imprisoned women in that segment of the population are. “I want to make sure my little sister doesn’t get caught up in all that bullshit,” she wrote on her questionnaire.
To look at Taylor and hear her talk, you wouldn’t think she has enough money in the bank to last ten lifetimes or that her heart is big enough to love the whole world. She looks more like a biker chick than a philanthropist.
She’s wearing jeans that are ripped at the knees and have frayed hems, and her blood-red, scoop-neck top, which is made of luscious, buttery fabric that flows over her supple curves in the most figure-flattering way, is sheer enough for me to know she’s wearing a black lace bra. Monochrome mandala tattoos extend up both arms, across both shoulders, and end with a dream catcher centered at the base of her neck.
Simple brown leather flip-flops sit on the floor where she abandoned them immediately upon taking a seat across from me, and at least two inches of gemstone-and-leather bangles of various colors and sizes rattle every time she moves her arms. The words “Dream Big” are tattooed in flourished letters on the backs of her fingers so that I can read them when she holds up her hands.
And while her hair, skin, and clothes make visions of punk rockers dance in my head, her porcelain face, unmarred by piercings or acne scars, with its full lips, perfect cheekbones, adorably upturned nose, and big blue eyes, is that of a model. Even without five layers of makeup shading and contouring her features, she could be on the cover of Vogue, Cosmopolitan, or Marie Claire.
And, yet, none of it—the money, her striking face, her amazing body—has gone to her head. For all her window dressing, there is a quiet, no-nonsense humility about her that I’m struggling to reconcile with how she looks and the raw manner in which she speaks.
How she got this way after growing up in the evangelical community is anyone’s guess, but finding the answer to that question will have to wait for another day. She’s here to talk to me about this hot sex she’s had.
And it’s time we got down to it.
I glance at her questionnaire. “So, why don’t you tell me how you and”—she calls him Ry, but I pause and look more closely at his full name—“Ryker met.” I meet her gaze again. “I’m curious how you went from hating each other to being each other’s go-to for great sex.” In my professional opinion, that made for quite an intriguing leap.
“He never hated me,” she says, correcting me. “In fact, he wanted to get with me from the moment he saw me.” She leans back in the plush easy chair, settling her hands on her thighs. “I hated him. And there was no way I was going to give him what he wanted. Ever.” She grins slyly. “Until I did.”
Chapter Two
Taylor’s Story . . .
Azure sky, warm day, cool breeze, low humidity.
It was the perfect June afternoon.
The kind of afternoon you didn’t spend inside.
“I’ll see you guys tomorrow,” Taylor told her design team as she closed her laptop and pushed back from the conference room table.
Meeting adjourned.
They had just spent an hour reviewing new T-shirt designs for next season, as well as which designs had performed the best—and worst—in the past six weeks. As always, nonperformers or those that barely broke even got the ax, while those that flew out of the warehouse and into customers’ hands at record speed received an increase in production.
The strategy was a proven profit booster. It had taken Rats profits into the stratosphere, and it was doing the same for TART. Every T-shirt remaining in her lineup was a bestseller. Even the bestsellers from her first run a year ago were still selling well.
“You going home?” Nate asked. Nate was her top designer. He had come up with more bestselling graphics for the company’s line of T-shirts than all her other designers combined. He was also a powerhouse when it came to social media marketing.
He had also asked her out no less than a dozen times, each one earning him a polite, “You know I don’t date my employees, Nate.” To which he always replied, “Then I’ll quit.” To which she always replied, “No, you won’t.”
These exchanges always ended in friendly laughter, but Nate’s attraction was real. He had assured her more than once that he wasn’t interested in just sex. That even though he was five years younger than she was, he was ready for a commitment.
And therein lay the problem, didn’t it?
Taylor didn’t want a commitment. From anyone. Just sex would be fine with her, except not with Nate. If she had just sex with him, he would think it was more.
So that was a hard no. If she got lucky, Nate would realize she was never going to cave and would meet someone else who could commit to him.
Twenty minutes later, she arrived home, wrapped her hair in a loose knot on top of her head, and changed into her favorite yoga outfit—black knit leggings with a pair of skeleton hands on both ass cheeks, and a matching sports bra with the skeleton hands covering her breasts. The seams down the sides of the leggings were stitched with heavy, pale-gray X’s, and the jacquard fabric included a snakeskin-like pattern, as well as patches of light gray that blended with the black, making the material appear to shimmer from a distance. There was even a mock skull “belt buckle” sewed into the front of the extra-wide waist.
While the gothic design hadn’t been a huge seller for TART and got cut from her product line after only one run, Taylor loved it. Just went to show that her preferences weren’t always those of her customers.
She grabbed her yoga mat from the home gym in her basement, then made her way back upstairs and out to her all-season room. As she stepped outside, she hit a switch on the wall, and the mechanized screens all whirred to life and
opened. The refreshing breeze flowed freely through the space, making Taylor smile and close her eyes. Not much else pleased her on a perfect day than spending time in the open air.
As she unrolled her mat and began stretching, a duck flew past on its way to the pond that separated the row of homes on her street from the ones on the next street over. Apple and cherry trees that had long since blossomed and were now fully engulfed in bright-green leaves dotted the terrain around the elongated, oval pond, and a wide, paved walking path that was a half mile around circled it. There was always someone out there walking, running, jogging, or even Rollerblading. But no bikes. The community covenants didn’t allow them on the trails, only on the roads.
The pond and trees created a natural, relaxing barrier, providing a touch of privacy from her neighbors across the way so she could sit outside and not feel like she was being watched all the time. Which made for more enjoyable evenings sitting on her patio with a cool drink.
She was ten minutes into her yoga routine, about to make the final transition into a challenging pigeon pose, when music blared from one of the houses on the other side of the pond.
Groaning, she unfolded herself and stood, instantly murderous. So much for a nice relaxing afternoon doing yoga to a soundtrack of birdsong.
Who in the hell had decided to show off the size of his stereo equipment? And with hardcore rap crap like that, which came with visions of testosterone, sweat, and men flipping tractor tires and hauling five-hundred-pound iron chains slung over their shoulders up and down the steps in a football stadium, it was a he giving the whole city a concert, not a she.
“Asshole,” she muttered under her breath, shaking her head.
It had to be the new neighbor. Taylor had seen the moving van a few days ago. Some hotshot football player was the rumor. A running back or tight end who had been traded to the local team for a couple of draft picks or some shit. He was supposedly going to carry the team to a Super Bowl this year.
Well, Taylor didn’t care if he were Tom Brady, she was going to have a word with him about the acceptable decibel level in this neighborhood.
Tossing open the door from her all-season room, she trotted down the stairs leading to the patio below, grumbling to herself about the idiocy of big dumb jocks who thought they were God’s gift because they could carry a football a few yards at a time and occasionally score a touchdown.
This was an elite community. The homes here weren’t just homes, they were mansions with property values in the millions of dollars. There were gates at both entrances that required a code to open, with the intention of keeping out the riffraff. Riffraff who tended to play their music too loud and party too hard.
Like Mr. Too Cool For Rules blaring Lil Nas X two houses down.
She’d moved into a gated community to get away from people like this, not closer to them. She wanted quiet, peace, relaxation, not this . . . noise.
Hitting the path around the pond, she marched her skeleton-handed ass around to the back of the new neighbor’s home and charged up the steps leading to his driveway.
The music—which was so loud it was like sitting in the front row at Ozzfest—came from a pearly white sports car parked in front of the four open bays of the garage.
Drawing closer, she saw a rack of fifty-, seventy-five-, and one hundred-pound dumbbells against the far wall of the garage. There was also a top-of-the-line stationary bike, a treadmill, a workout station, and a pair of benches. A muscled body with tattooed arms and one bulging tattooed calf lay back on one of the benches, feet pressed into the epoxy floor, a bar loaded with six forty-five-pound plates extended above him.
Hello.
She couldn’t see much of his face, but he had long black hair pulled into a man bun and skin that wasn’t the right tone to be African American, but not Caucasian either. Samoan maybe?
Hell, his skin could have been green with purple polka dots. All she cared about was returning peace and quiet to her neighborhood.
“Hey!” she yelled.
He didn’t even flinch. It was like he didn’t even hear her.
Her fiery gaze shot around to the sports car with its open doors and one-hundred-twenty-decibel sound rattling nearby windows. Was it any wonder he couldn’t hear her? He had a full-fledged rock concert in his driveway.
She glanced back at him as he strained to crank out another rep without a spotter. Buffoon. Didn’t he know not to push that kind of weight without someone nearby to lend a hand if his muscles gave out? Then she looked back at the car.
If he wasn’t going to do something about this noise, she was.
She charged to the car, leaned inside, and flipped off the radio with a satisfying flick of her fingers.
“What the hell?” The man’s gruff voice was followed by the abrupt clank of metal on metal as he re-racked the bar.
Now she had his attention.
And once she’d pulled herself out of his car and spun to get her first glance at his towering, muscular frame as he stormed out of the garage, he had hers.
He whipped off the elastic band holding up his hair, and a river of tight ebony waves cascaded over his shoulders, reminding her of that guy from the Pittsburgh Steelers. The one in the Head & Shoulders commercials. Troy Polamalu.
She barely managed to catch her jaw before it hit the ground.
Collecting herself, she raised her chin and crossed her arms over her chest. “‘What the hell?’ back at you,” she said, voice raised. “Your music was so loud the astronauts on the International Space Station could probably hear it!”
He was holding his shirt in one meaty fist, gifting her with a slab of abs she could wash laundry on to go with his thighs, which were the size of tree trunks. His arms bulged like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s.
Good thing he was a football player, because he was built like a gladiator who could rip his opponent in half with his bare hands. But if he ever wanted to change sports, Taylor’s recommendation would be basketball, because this guy was tall enough that he could slam-dunk without even catching air. And the members of the other team would race to get out of his way rather than be steamrollered by all that muscle.
But if that didn’t work out for him, he could also become a movie prop. Like, say, a boulder. The guy was huge.
He glanced at the sparkling white sports car, then back at her as if he hadn’t a clue what she was talking about. “Sorry.”
Now her mouth did fall open. “Sorry? Really?” She planted her hands on her hips, not caring that he stood almost a foot taller than she did, which was saying something since she was five-ten and some change. “Is that all you have to say? Sorry? Haven’t you ever heard of earbuds?” She pointed aggressively at her own ears. “If you want to go deaf, do it alone. Don’t take the rest of us with you.”
He held up his free hand as if to proclaim his innocence and ward off silver bullets, offering her a small but disarming smile. “I was just testing out the new stereo in my car.”
“News flash, asshole! It works!” She flung her arm up. “The whole neighborhood can probably attest to that by now.”
“I was going to turn it down.”
“When? After someone was forced to call the police.”
Not that she would have, because she was ballsy enough to go directly to the source herself, but most of the residents here were more passive-aggressive than that. They didn’t want to be the one to speak up and speak out for fear of upsetting anyone who they might want to turn into a client later. Everybody who lived in this neighborhood was a multimillionaire, and most people were too greedy or slaves to their money to want to upset a member of the club.
Taylor didn’t give a fuck about upsetting a member of the club, abs of steel or not. She spoke up when speaking up was warranted.
But one of these wealthy pussies living around here would have dialed the cops. Who knew, maybe someone already had. Someone always did when things got a bit too loud in their hood.
He wiped his heather gra
y T-shirt over his sweat-glistened face and chest, and one corner of his mouth lifted with what appeared to be amusement as he looked her up and down.
“Is something funny?” she asked, doubling down on her crossed arms with a cocked hip and upraised eyebrows.
He gestured toward her with his shirt. “I, uh . . . I just like your outfit.”
Well, whaddya know? Bigfoot had good taste.
The towering wall of sculpted muscle that reminded her of Roman Reigns spliced with Jason Momoa strolled forward, stopping a few feet away.
“My name’s Ryker,” he said, extending his right hand. “My friends call me Ry.”
She glared down at his hand, not about to have her demand for neighborly respect swept under the rug by his polite attempt at friendship, his breathtakingly piercing brown eyes, or a smile so sexy it should come with a warning not to operate heavy machinery when under its influence.
“How nice for your friends, but I think I’ll just call you Noise.” She turned and marched toward the steps leading down to the pond. Things had suddenly become uncomfortable, and she wanted to get out of there before he did something stupid, such as—
“Hey, don’t be like that.” He laughed good-naturedly, rushing after her. “What’s your name? Let me apologize by taking you to dinner.”
—that. Something stupid like asking her to dinner.
Whirling around, she jammed her finger against his chest as he barely stopped before running her over. Her gaze stretched upward so she could look him in the eye. Damn, he was tall.
“Listen, Noise”—she mockingly stroked the single syllable of the nickname she’d given him, if only to shore up her defenses against the animal attraction he stirred to life inside her—“just because you gave me your name doesn’t mean I have to give you mine.”
He laughed again. Actually laughed. “Fa’afetai, Le Atua!”
Taylor had no idea what he’d said, but her insides somersaulted delightfully at hearing a foreign language roll off his tongue with expert fluency.
