Sandcastle Beach--Includes a Bonus Novella

by Jenny Holiday

  They all crowded onto the elevator, chattering a mile a minute.

  These intense doses of her best friends, where they dropped everything and just reveled in each other’s company, were among Elise’s favorite ways to spend time. Usually.

  She had been more than a little distracted today.

  But she wasn’t going to be one of those women who bailed on her friends for a man. And she really did want to show off her first big solo design job.

  “Hold the elevator!”

  Elise reflexively did so, sticking her hand out to stop the door closing.

  “Thanks.”

  Oh crap. It was that woman Stacey. Jay’s ex-girlfriend. Or not. Depending on who you believed.

  “Hey!” Stacey seemed a little too happy to see her. “Elise, right?”

  “Yes, hi. I’m just taking my friends up to Cohen & Smith to show them my work. Jay said I could.”

  She wasn’t sure why she added that last bit. Jay had given her a key to the office long ago and told her to come and go as she pleased, but it wasn’t like Stacey needed an explanation.

  “I’m sure he did.” Stacey was looking way too amused for a casual elevator encounter.

  Elise was starting to get annoyed. So this woman was Jay’s ex. So she was stunningly beautiful and accomplished. Just because she had a history with Jay didn’t mean she had to lord it over Elise.

  Her irritation must have shown on her face, because Stacey said, “I’m sorry I was so weird and bitchy that day we met.”

  Uh, what? That was the last thing Elise had expected.

  “It was because I get kind of possessive of Jay. And not because we dated, but because we’re old friends. I mean, we did date, but he was right, it was only for, like, five minutes. I mean, the way he kisses.” She made a face like she’d smelled something bad. “Like, chill out, dude. It’s like he only has one degree of intensity, and that’s, like, a hundred. But you know, right?”

  Elise’s face heated. “Um, no, I don’t know, actually.”

  Stacey grinned. “Well, you’ll see.” Elise started to protest, but the elevator stopped at Stacey’s floor. She paused halfway out. “You’re exactly his type.”

  “What…type is that?” Elise couldn’t help asking.

  “Smart. Capable. Independent.”

  Well, crap. Elise was shocked that she came off that way to someone like Stacey. Shocked and pleased. Maybe she was moving along faster than she’d realized on the whole self-transformation project.

  She was trying to think how to respond when Stacey stepped fully off the elevator. As the doors started to close, she winked and said, “I’ll be seeing you around, Elise.”

  Her friends—she’d forgotten about them for a second there—were silent until the elevator closed fully and started moving again. Then they lost their minds, exclaiming, talking over each other, and—crap. She was going to have to do some explaining.

  The offices were dark. She’d kind of hoped someone might be burning the Sunday-night oil, thereby saving her from the interrogation she was about to be subjected to, but no such luck.

  “Can I at least show you the lobby first?” she asked weakly as she held the door for everyone.

  “No, you cannot,” Jane said. “I can’t concentrate on your brilliance until I know who that woman is and why she thinks you would know how your client kisses.”

  Wendy sank into one of the chairs in the lobby. “I concur.”

  Gia did the same. “I don’t know who that woman was, but I do know that Elise likes this Jay guy. A lot.”

  Elise sighed. Gia was already onto her, which she’d known. And now that the other two sensed that something was afoot, they were never going to let it go.

  So she sat, too, and told them everything. About the sexual tension, the postponed booty call. But also about how awesome his confidence in her work made her feel. About his take that her rift with her parents said something about her character. She didn’t spare any detail. The more she talked, the more embarrassed she became that she’d kept all this from them in the first place. It was just that this…thing with Jay wasn’t like any of the relationships she’d had in the past. It felt different. Private.

  “Look at you!” Wendy exclaimed when she was done. “New apartment, new company, new boyfriend.”

  “Oh no.” Elise hurried to correct her. “He’s not my boyfriend. We’re just going to sleep together.”

  Hopefully several times.

  “I see,” Jane said. “You guys lie around playing board games and cuddling, but he’s not your boyfriend.”

  “Yeah, I would almost buy that, except for the cuddling,” said Wendy. “You don’t cuddle with your fuck buddies.”

  Crap. Wendy would know. She was the queen of long-term casual relationships.

  “You especially don’t cuddle with your fuck buddy when you’re not actually fucking,” said Gia.

  Panic started to seize Elise. “Oh my God, you guys. I can’t have a boyfriend.”

  “Why not?” Jane asked.

  “I’m in the middle of establishing my business, and, well, this sounds dumb, but I also feel like I’m establishing myself, you know? As an independent person. For the first time in my life.”

  “So?” Wendy asked.

  “Well, I’ve spent my whole life dependent on my father. Now I’m going to switch to a boyfriend?” If that was even on offer, and there was no evidence it was. So she wasn’t sure why they were even having this conversation.

  “Oh my God, Elise, you are so dumb sometimes,” Gia said.

  “Not according to Stacey.” Wendy cackled in that way she had.

  “Look,” said Gia. “You don’t want a boyfriend? I’m cool with that. I, of all people, am cool with that.” It was true. Gia was unapologetic about her allergy to commitment. “But don’t cast Jay in the same mold as your father. From what you’ve said, Jay…Ugh, I can’t believe I’m going to say this.” She made a gagging gesture. “Jay lifts you up. Helps you.”

  Was that…true?

  “It’s okay to let someone help you,” Jane added.

  Elise didn’t know what to say. They were all silent. Just for a moment, but it must have been too much for Wendy, because she stood, clapped her hands, and said, “Well, this has been a great talk. Let’s see some decor and shit.”

  The “great talk” was still rattling around inside Elise’s head when she said goodbye to Gia at the airport. Gia had tried to order Elise to call Jay, insisting that she would take a cab, but Elise wouldn’t hear of it. She always drove Gia to the airport at the end of her visits. Maybe she had some thinking to do about the little bombs her friends had dropped on her earlier. Maybe they had made some points that were worth considering. But she absolutely refused to be the kind of person who ditched her friends for a guy. Even if she was becoming someone else, she refused to be that girl.

  As she sat in her car outside the terminal, she told herself that it was too late to text him. He wouldn’t be expecting it anyway. She’d texted him yesterday when she found out Gia was coming to town and outright told him she wouldn’t be able to see him until Monday. And they’d both known what she’d meant by “see.”

  But damn, she wanted him. So desperately.

  She also missed him, which was a little alarming—it had only been forty-eight hours since he’d left her place. He’d slipped out of her bed Friday night close to midnight, whispered to her not to get up as she half dozed, kissed her on the forehead, and let himself out.

  Oh God. Was she falling for him?

  And could that be…okay?

  The girls had made a pretty convincing argument that it could.

  But anyway, she was getting ahead of herself. She had no idea what his thoughts on the matter were. They’d agreed to have sex tomorrow, and she was more than fine with that, even if nothing else happened.

  She glanced at her phone. Ten fifteen.

  Really, though, what could it hurt to text? If he was asleep, he wouldn’t answe
r. Right?

  She was a fool. She opened her message app. Are you available to receive a rug delivery?

  She laughed at herself. The line was so awkward and cheesy, yet somehow perfect.

  The reply came instantly, and it sent a shiver up her spine.

  Jay: Hell yes.

  Jay: I’ll be right there. I just need ten minutes to get myself organized, and then I’m out the door.

  Elise: Actually, I’m already in my car. Is it okay if I come to you?

  That would give her something to do. Forward motion. And it would get them together sooner—she didn’t need ten minutes to get ready to go.

  Jay: Of course. You haven’t been here, have you? I’m at 12 Bellair, unit 1803.

  She glanced at herself in the rearview mirror. She was really going to do this.

  Elise: Should I pick up some condoms?

  Jay: I have some.

  Elise: I’m clean, actually.

  She wasn’t sure why she sent that last text. It wasn’t normal to forgo a condom when you were having casual sex. Which was what they were having. Right?

  Jay: Right. Me, too, but pregnancy…

  Yes. She forgot that other people had to worry about that. She sighed.

  Elise: Not a concern. That surgery I had took with it one ovary, and apparently the other side isn’t in great working order.

  He didn’t reply, which seemed weird. Had he somehow been put off by the notion that she was unlikely to be able to conceive? Since she’d known for years she almost certainly wouldn’t be able to have kids—biologically, at least—it was something she’d come to accept. She’d become rather matter-of-fact about it, even. But okay, infertility probably wasn’t a topic to introduce into a hey-we’re-going-to-have-some-hot-sex logistics text thread. She should probably do some damage control.

  Elise: Sorry to drop that on you. Not even sure why I brought it up. It’s not relevant. It’s not like we’re going to get married.

  They were going to get married, was the thing—if Jay had anything to say about it, anyway.

  He was standing in front of his bathroom mirror. He had hightailed it in there to brush his teeth when the first booty call text arrived. Now he was staring at himself like he was looking at a fantastic mythological animal, at some exotic creature he didn’t recognize and couldn’t name.

  The revelation had arrived in his head fully formed, an automatic response to her breezy assertion that they weren’t going to get married. It came with a rush of possessiveness. In keeping with the animal metaphor, he felt like some kind of primitive ape beating its chest, pointing at his mate and claiming her. Mine.

  As revelations went, it was a big one. But not as big as the one that hit him right on its heels, an aftershock a thousand times more powerful than the original: he wanted to marry her regardless of her fertility status.

  Holy shit.

  Elise Maxwell, the woman he wanted more than anyone else, had just told him she couldn’t get pregnant. This should have been the best news he’d ever received. And it was. But she could have just texted him about her desire to have fourteen kids, and he still would have wanted to marry her.

  What. The. Fuck.

  He almost laughed, it was so absurd. They would have had some shit to work out if that had been the case, but he would have been online in an instant, cruising through listings for relationship counseling. Which he was pretty sure meant…

  He was in love with Elise Maxwell.

  Of course he was. It was so obvious now that he did laugh. Stared at his reflection, at this man who looked familiar but had suddenly become a stranger, and cracked right up.

  He had always experienced love, or affection, or whatever it was he’d had with his past girlfriends, as a more gradual thing. There would be an initial attraction, then a getting-to-know-you process. Feelings developed gradually. Like immersing yourself in a cold pool one body part at a time, taking time to adjust to the new sensation before progressing any farther.

  This was…not that. This was jumping into the deep end and not even realizing you’d jumped until you were already there, sputtering for breath and swimming for your life.

  So much for his decades-long insistence on women who’d aged out of their childbearing years. He’d met Elise, and all that discipline had just tumbled down like a poorly constructed Jenga tower.

  Although it turned out the collapse didn’t matter. The universe had given him exactly what he wanted, in the form of exactly who he wanted. He must have been a saint in a past life.

  She was his dream woman. She was everything he wanted—and nothing he didn’t want.

  He was going to marry Elise Maxwell.

  Though that was too creepy and intense a declaration to make so soon. So he would amend that thought: from here on out, he was making it his mission to be the kind of man that Elise would want to marry. Someday. Eventually. There was no hurry—another side effect of the no-kids thing was that there was no ticking clock hanging over them.

  Oh, they were going to have so much fun. A lifetime of fun.

  It was a weird feeling, imagining with such calm certainty a future in which he was married to a woman he had yet to have sex with.

  His phone buzzed, drawing him out of his fantasies.

  Elise: On my way.

  Shit. He hadn’t replied to her last text, so consumed had he been by his own swooning.

  Jay: Sorry I disappeared for a minute there. Re birth control: we can do whatever makes you comfortable.

  He grinned and added a final thought.

  Jay: And hurry.

  By the time the doorman was calling up to Jay’s to tell him she was on the way up, Elise had lost some of her nerve. Her time with Jay had been one extended, scorching bout of foreplay. But then it had been derailed by her period. Would it be like an actual train derailment, where the momentum was all gone and they had to somehow get themselves going again? A bit of self-doubt started to worm its way into her mind.

  Okay, more than a bit. A lot of self-doubt. At her worst, on the worst days of the worst months, she felt broken. The feeling always passed. But she’d let him see her like that, at a low—if not at her absolute worst—which somehow felt more intimate than the prospect of having sex with him.

  The elevator made its way up to the eighteenth floor, each peppy ding an ice pick that chipped open the pit in her stomach a little bit more.

  There was also the part where she hadn’t done this for a long time. And, to be honest, she hadn’t ever slept with someone she liked so much.

  Which was a dumb revelation, because she’d had long-term boyfriends before.

  There was just something about Jay that made the stakes feel ridiculously high. Jay blew every other man she’d ever met out of the water.

  She paused outside his door. Well, paused wasn’t the right word, really. It was more like balked. She had her hand up, poised to knock and everything. But what was she going to say to him? What if she—

  She hadn’t knocked, but the door suddenly swung open almost violently. He surged forward for a second, before he registered that she was standing right there. Then he reared back so as not to crash into her. But he’d overcorrected, and he had to grab the door frame so he didn’t fall over backward.

  It should have been funny. She probably would have laughed. She was pretty sure that’s why she had opened her mouth—to laugh. But then he grabbed her and pulled her to him, making her reconsider.

  Maybe she’d actually opened her mouth so she could stand up on her tiptoes and press it over his. So she could slide her tongue inside without any prelude so that they were finally—finally—kissing.

  He groaned and took control. One hand came to the back of her head, the other snaked around her waist, and he feasted on her. His lips were hot and demanding, and as his tongue battled hers, her mind lurched back to the Dirty Scrabble game. To his threat to lick her clit, specifically. It suddenly felt like he already had: moisture pooled between her legs, and she rolled her
hips in search of desperately needed pressure. Her first attempt was thwarted by their height difference, and she only managed to grind up against the front of one of his thighs. It was pressure, but not focused enough, not hard enough. It was almost worse in a way, because all it did was ratchet her need up even higher. “Unnh.” The frustrated moan slipped out as she tried again to mash herself against him.

  “Look at you,” he muttered as he pulled her into the apartment, which put some distance between them, distance that she did not want. “So frustrated. So beautiful.” He kicked the door shut.

  She bared her teeth at him because frustrated hit it on the nose—though it occurred to her that this move probably wasn’t reinforcing the whole beautiful thing.

  “Aww.” He took her hand. “How can I make it better?”

  She would have thought he was being annoyingly smug, that he was playing her, except she’d felt the evidence of his arousal just now. She might not have aimed properly to get what she wanted, but the hard, insistent length of him had dug into the soft flesh of her belly. His pupils were blown out, too, black circles surrounded by the thinnest slice of that Bahaman Sea Blue, and she could see the pulse racing at the base of his throat.

  He wanted her as much as she wanted him. The difference was that he had a better rein on his lust. He wasn’t having a tantrum like she was. He was still exercising his famous restraint. Discipline.

  It was almost unbearably hot. She suspected he could do more for her with the crook of a finger than other men could with their full arsenals.

  “I don’t know,” she said. She hadn’t been trying to make her voice breathless, but what came out was sort of Marilyn Monroe–esque. She had no doubt he would do whatever she asked to “make it better,” but suddenly the idea of narrowing down this vast, unswimmable sea of lust she was floundering in to a single, specific, actionable request seemed an impossible task.