by Abby Brooks
“Thanks, Ellie,” he said, sauntering toward the door. “You’re the best.”
“Back atcha, my friend.”
Ellie tried her best to put James out of her mind. Sure, the night with him had been fun, but imagining him as the perfect man was better than getting to know him and finding out he was just like every other human with a penis…a self-focused asshole.
Chapter Five
James
James hopped into his truck, a black beast that put his brother Ian’s Tundra to shame, and made the short drive to Hurricane’s. The Ducati sat where he’d left it, gleaming like the masterpiece of engineering it was. Pulling out his phone, he sent a text to Oliver and Ethan.
Morning, bitches. Meet me at the bar.
The bouncing lines appeared almost immediately with a response from Oliver hot on their heels. Drinking already?
James didn’t reply. The bar wasn’t open and if his buddies took one second to think for themselves, they’d know that. He didn’t reach out to invite them to drink. He needed them to drive his truck back to his house so he could take the Ducati to the gym.
A detail he held back until after they arrived.
“You dick.” Ethan pulled the bill of his hat down low.
James shrugged. “Who’s driving Black Betty?”
Oliver held out his hand for the keys. “You realize this means we’ll both have to drive to your house. Me in the truck. Ethan in his piece of shit. Then he’ll have to drive me back here to get my car. Then we can go home.”
“You guys are the best.” James tossed Oliver the key and Ethan flipped him the bird.
“Better than you deserve.”
James shook his head. “You and I both know that’s not true.”
That was the glory of having more money than anyone else you knew. People were willing to do just about anything to stay in your good graces.
From an early age, James learned that not everyone wanted to be his friend because they liked him. More often than not, friendships popped up because people hoped his money might rub off and they’d get to live a lifestyle of the rich and famous by proxy.
After years of being taken advantage of, he learned it was better to take advantage first. There were a special few who loved James because of who he was not what he could do for them. They were a different story altogether. He would bend over backwards for those people.
Ethan and Oliver came into his life just as Erin walked out, and it quickly became obvious they were not members of the precious few.
After watching his buddies drive away in a cloud of thumping bass, James started the Ducati and gave the throttle two quick cracks before backing out of his space and tearing away with a practiced twitch of his wrist. When the bike lurched forward, his stomach protested with a queasy lurch of its own, but he wasn't in the mood to submit to a hangover. It was a beautiful day for a ride.
When he’d woken up in his own bed that morning, he’d been thoroughly confused. Even more so when he found himself still dressed except for his shoes, even though he was pretty sure he remembered having his hands all over some class-A titties the night before…some sweet thing stretched out on top of him, his mouth devouring hers. When he’d finally pulled it together enough to stumble down the stairs and found Ellie’s note, he’d been more than a little embarrassed.
Ellie Charles.
The woman who sold him coffee every Sunday.
The girl who had been in at least one of his classes every year through school.
The chick who was just a bit curvier than he liked, with wild dark hair and a bluntness she didn’t know how to rein in. The total opposite of rail-thin, platinum blonde Erin, the woman who’d held the keys to his heart for the last decade.
Thinking of Erin turned his stomach again. He rolled back on the throttle and the bike shot forward, eager to be unleashed. Bliss didn’t have a gym, so it was a long, quiet ride out to a town that did. With the warm sun on his back and the wind rushing past him, the sea glistening to one side and a long straight road ahead of him, it was easy to forget all the reasons he was broken. He wasn’t going to let thoughts of Erin creep into his head and ruin the day like she had every day for the last two months.
James pulled into the gym parking lot and walked inside, his helmet tucked under one arm as he nodded a greeting to the guy at the front desk. His phone pinged as he pushed the locker door closed, a text from his older brother, Ian—the guy who had everything in his life fall into place just as James’ fell apart.
All Ian wanted to talk about was his upcoming wedding. He wanted James to be his best man, but James wasn’t interested.
The whole marriage thing was doomed anyway. Ian and his fiancée only dated a few months before popping the question and sure, the couple was ridiculously happy, but James had learned firsthand that true love didn’t exist. Not the kind that could survive years of being with the same person day in and day out. Marriage and everything that came with it was the biggest scam of modern living.
How could Ian not see that?
With a shake of his head, James tossed his phone back in the locker and headed for the free-weights. Any response would just lead to a slew of questions about how he was doing, which would inevitably cause Ian to hit him with a litany of life advice he didn’t need and wasn’t interested in.
James had a long day ahead and if he didn’t shed that fucking hangover, it was just going to feel that much longer. The last thing he needed was a lecture from Ian.
After the gym, he had a multi-hour private session scheduled with his MMA trainer—another of the bad decisions Ian was always going on about. Those private sessions took a toll on a normal day, leaving him bruised and hurting in places he didn’t know could hurt. He wasn’t looking forward to how he’d feel after what he’d done to himself the night before.
But there was no point avoiding it—he had essentially the same thing planned with Ethan and Oliver later that night—that was how self-destruction worked. Those two were terrible influences. That was a huge part of the fun.
He had a lot of wasted time to make up for. He’d spent a decade with the same girl, making safe decisions, doing the so-called right thing. His current life plan included sweating it out at the gym all day, learning how to take his share of hard ass blows to the body and how to throw them right back. Followed by another night at the bar, laughing with a bunch of assholes and picking up women.
As long as he was too drunk to think about Erin by the time he got back to the house that used to be a home, he was good to go.
As long as his body ached more than his soul, he could cope with waking up alone in the room she designed.
Besides, everyone had the right to make a few bad decisions in their life, didn’t they?
“What about that one, right there, with the legs?” Oliver pointed across the bar at a waifish brunette who kept hitting James with that look…the one he’d learned meant she was more than a little open to him coming over for a visit.
“Nah. Too skinny. I want something to really grab hold of.” James flashed back to a very blurred memory of Ellie’s breast in his hand.
“What about her friend? That blonde isn’t bad.” Ethan waited for James to respond and finally put his whiskey down. “What’s with you, man? A chick is just a place to put your dick. When did you get so picky?”
James took a long drink of his beer and inwardly cringed at how sore his arms and back were already. His knuckles throbbed from forty minutes of pummeling the heavy bag earlier. “Just been a long day.”
“Nah, nah, nah.” Ethan waved his hands and shook his head, a look of disgust igniting a flare of anger in James’ belly. “You’re not gonna get all mopey again. I can’t handle another round of so-sad James.”
“Your brother on your case again? About the wedding?” Oliver took a drink.
James just nodded.
“Fuck him,” said Ethan. “He’s being a dumb shit and you know it.”
James did know it.
Love sucked. “Yeah. He is. But don’t talk about my brother that way.” He leveled a finger at Ethan and emptied his glass before signaling to the bartender that he was ready for another. The amount of alcohol currently in his system was nowhere close to numbing him enough to matter.
“Your family still nagging you about how worried they are and shit?” Oliver asked.
James nodded as the bartender sat a fresh pint on the bar in front of him, then picked up the glass and took a giant swig. “All the time. I think they’re afraid I’m gonna self-destruct.”
“Well, here’s what you do.” Ethan sat back and folded his arms over his chest. “You get one of these girls…” He gestured around the bar. “Any of them, and you pretend to settle down with her. Take her to your brother’s wedding. Make her feel good. String her along until your family backs off, then dump her and move on.”
James didn’t necessarily feel like breaking anyone’s heart. If he followed that advice and strung some unsuspecting girl along, who knew? She might go catching real feelings for him and everything would end up messy and hard to deal with. That wasn’t something he was interested in at all.
But what if he found someone who would pretend to be his girlfriend? Go into it with her eyes open. Then there’d be no mess when it was over. No broken hearts. No pieces to pick up. Just a nice, simple, business-like relationship reaching its natural conclusion. He could handle that.
He scanned the bar, suddenly on the hunt for anyone he might want to spend more than a night with.
“There you go,” said Oliver, noticing the change. “Our boy’s back.”
James ran his hands through his hair. “I just don’t think there’s anyone who could hold my interest tonight.”
“What? You could have any girl here. Just pick one and work your magic.”
James scanned the crowd again. For some reason, his mind kept wandering back to Ellie Charles. He’d love to work his magic on her.
Chapter Six
Ellie
Ellie stared at the clock hanging above the counter at Good Beginnings. It was nearly ten in the morning and the day had been slow. So slow she’d called her friend Tessa and begged her to keep her company. They perched on the counter, nibbling on baked goods from the pastry shelf.
“Is it always like this on a Tuesday?” Tessa asked, picking the blueberries out of her muffin and popping them into her mouth.
“Tuesdays are slow, but not usually this slow. I cleaned…” Ellie looked around the café. “Like, everything before I called you. Twice. I cleaned it twice.”
Tessa studied the blue smears left on her fingers. “You’re lucky I love you so much. I worked late last night, and I still really want to be in bed.” She sucked her fingers one at a time, pulling them out of her mouth with little smacks of appreciation.
“No, you don’t.” Ellie poured Tessa another cup of coffee. “You want to be here, getting free food from your best friend.”
“I guess this is better than laying around in my pajamas for another couple hours.”
Ellie poured herself a cup and picked a bite off Tessa’s muffin. “I’m gonna wind up as fat as Steve always told me I was if I don’t stop.”
“What you need to stop is talking like that. Steve’s an asshole and you’re better off without him.”
“I really am,” Ellie agreed and picked another bite off Tessa’s muffin. Steve was Ellie’s long-term boyfriend…right up until she found the confidence to dump him. Or, as she preferred to think of him, her long-term parasite. She’d never really loved him and had only gone on a date with him because he’d been an old friend who hit hard times. She didn’t want to be one more thing kicking him when he was already down. And then somehow, he managed to stick around until they wound up living together. Without a job of his own to help pay the bills—he seemed all too happy to let her support him while he charged loads of debt on her credit cards.
“I still don’t understand what you saw in him.”
“I didn’t see anything in him. I didn’t even like him. We’ve been over this.”
Tessa crammed a bite into her mouth. “Sure,” she said around the mouthful of food. “But you gotta admit that it doesn’t make any sense when you say that. He lived with you for three years and you didn’t even like him. Show me the sense in that.”
Maybe it had been a bad idea to invite Tessa to help Ellie kill time. “There’s no sense to show you. Never has been. Never will be. I just got caught up trying to help him and couldn’t figure out how to get myself out. Now, shut the hell up about it because I’m tired of trying to explain it.”
“No need to get all defensive. You were just doing that thing where you put other people’s needs in front of your own. I get it. But that doesn’t mean I’m not gonna tease you whenever I have the chance. Maybe make you think twice before you let someone take advantage of you again. You’re better than that.”
“I know. Believe me. Lesson learned. Hell, I’m still learning that lesson every month when I can’t figure which bills not to pay because I don’t have enough to cover everything.”
“Steve should be helping you with those.”
“Agreed, he should. You’re welcome to tell him that yourself. Maybe he’ll listen to you more than he listened to me.”
Ellie went in for another bite of muffin and Tessa slapped her hand away. “Get your own. I was lured here with the promise of good food and hot coffee and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let you eat it all right off my plate.” Tessa sat up as Ellie reached into the display to grab something for herself. “How was your date the other night?”
Ellie puckered her face and shrugged. “Another no show.”
“That sucks.”
“I guess.” Ellie’s shoulders slumped as she studied the floor. “I think online dating is just a bust for me. This guy lived like forty-five minutes away. I wouldn’t want to drive that far to hook up with someone I met online. And I bet most guys are gonna feel the same way.”
“That’s not true, though!” Tessa hopped up on the counter. “Your guy is out there. I just know it.”
“Maybe. Or, maybe I just need to stop looking so hard and accept being alone for a while.” Ellie considered telling her friend what happened with James the other night. Tess knew how long she’d had the hots for the guy and would just about die to know that she’d made out with him in his bed. But, considering the circumstances that led to her being in his bed, she didn’t really feel right making light of it. Gossiping about poor James Moore, drinking away his broken heart…it just seemed wrong.
The front doors swung open and Tessa jumped off the counter. Ellie sighed in relief. Even if Tuesdays were typically slow, it made her all kinds of nervous when there wasn’t a single customer in the café. She could just hear dollar bills bleeding away with every tick of the clock.
Tessa spun around, eyes wide, face happy. “You’re never gonna believe who it is,” she whispered. “It’s fate, Ellie. Fate.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Ellie asked.
Tessa just bit her lip and raised her eyebrows, excitement showing up in a cute shrug of her shoulders.
Confused, Ellie peeked around her friend to see who had come in and her heart did a funny little stutter step when she saw James taking off his sunglasses and hanging them from the collar of his T-shirt. He was clean-shaven, but that only made his dark eyes stand out all the more.
He lifted a hand. “Hey, Ellie.”
She tried to cover up her surprise with a joke. “Wow. It’s still not Sunday and you’re back again. You keep this up and I’m going to lose track of what day it actually is.”
“Who says a man can’t break old habits?”
Ellie thought of James throwing back shot after shot at Hurricane’s, staggering out of her car and curling up on the steps inside his filthy house. Clearly, he’d been breaking all kinds of old habits. And not for the better. “Next you’re gonna tell me you want tea instead of coffee.”
Tessa giggled and carried her plate to a table near the window while James held up his hands. “Now, you just hold on a minute,” he said, clearly appalled. “Let’s not take this too far.”
“Well, then, one large house blend coming right up.”
James sauntered up the counter and leaned forward, crossing his arms and revealing the sleeve of tattoos spiraling up from his forearms and disappearing under his T-shirt. They really were beautiful, patterns and colors tracing their way across his skin. “Actually…” He glanced back at Tess, then lowered his voice. “I hoped I could talk to you about something. I’m kind of glad that you’re not as busy as you usually are.”
That makes one of us, she thought as her belly twisted into knots over the money she wasn’t making that day.
Hiding her concern, she set his coffee in front of him and leaned against the counter. “What’s up?”
James smiled and part of Ellie melted.
Okay, all of Ellie melted.
Who could keep their cool in the presence of such a gorgeous man, aiming all his sex appeal directly at them?
“I have a proposition for you.”
“A proposition, huh?”
“Yep.” He took a deep breath and while he kept his smile plastered in place, the look in his eyes made Ellie think he was nervous. And seeing him nervous made her nervous. “I was wondering if we could make a deal. An arrangement, really. A…business arrangement.” James swallowed hard and Ellie braced herself. “See, my family is all twisted up with worry about me ever since Erin and I called it quits. They think I’m falling to pieces.”
“And you think you’re not falling to pieces? Because, from what I saw this weekend, they might be right.”
James’ eyes darkened with anger and Ellie immediately regretted opening her mouth. When would she learn not to speak everything she thought?