The Libby Garrett Intervention (Science Squad #2)

by Kelly Oram

  by Kelly Oram

  Also by Kelly Oram

  Serial Hottie

  The Avery Shaw Experiment

  Cinder & Ella

  The Jamie Baker Series:

  Being Jamie Baker

  More Than Jamie Baker

  The V is for Virgin Series:

  V is for Virgin

  A is for Abstinence

  The Supernaturals Series:

  Chameleon

  Ungifted

  Scion

  Don’t miss the latest news from Kelly Oram. Sign up to receive e-mail notifications for all her new releases, events, sales, and giveaways. SUBSCRIBE.

  Published by Bluefields Creative

  Copyright © 2015 by Kelly Oram

  Edition 1.0

  Edited by Jennifer Henkes (www.literallyjen.com)

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  ISBN: 978-0-9966388-1-4

  For Cara.

  Libby

  Owen Jackson is a sexy beast—and I would know, since I’d just spent the last eighteen hours or so getting up close and personal with every square inch of his scrumptious, glorious body. On top of the washboard abs, perfect pecs, and buns of steel, he’s basketball player tall, with deliciously creamy brown skin and light green eyes. And the man has dimples, big ones that make you just want to poke him in the cheeks every time he smiles.

  Trust me when I say he is physical perfection.

  Holding open the door to the cell phone store, he pressed a phone into my hand and followed me out onto the sidewalk of the strip mall. I think he said something to me about the new phone, but I didn’t hear it. My brain was still lost in last night. And this morning. And an hour ago…

  I’d mentioned to Owen that my parents were spending the weekend up on the mountain, and he showed up on my doorstep last night, claiming he missed his wildcat and needed a tutoring session. I tutored him, all right; all night long and well into the morning.

  A finger traced lightly up my arm. “What are you thinking, wildcat?” His low, smooth voice was a dangerous purr that pulled me from my daydreaming with a violent shiver.

  I usually try to contain myself around him because he’s what you’d call afraid of commitment and would hightail it back to his college full of beautiful girls in an instant if he knew how deep my attachment to him was. But I couldn’t help the smile that spread across my face. “I was just thinking that I’m the luckiest girl in the world. Thanks for the phone.”

  I held up my new phone and snapped Owen’s picture for my contacts. As I typed in his number, his grin turned wicked. “It was the least I could do.”

  This was true. He was the one who’d tackled me, fully clothed while my phone was in my pocket, into the hot tub. It was his fault my old phone was toast, and, unlike him, I’d never be able to afford a new one.

  “So,” he asked, heading for his car, “are you ready to go home and get lucky all over again? I only have so much time left before I have to get back.”

  I grabbed his hand before he could step off the curb. “Wait. We’re next door to Jo’s.”

  He pulled his hand from my grasp, but stopped walking and glanced at the storefront window next to the cell phone store. “The coffee shop?”

  “Not just any coffee shop. Jo’s Cup o’ Joe. It’s my favorite. I can’t pass it and not stop in.”

  Owen glanced around the parking lot and then scanned the crowd inside the shop. Since it was too late for lunch and too early for dinner, the place was pretty quiet. Seeing that it wasn’t crowded, Owen relaxed. I didn’t understand the tension, but I didn’t question it, either. He’d always been that way. For such a popular guy, he’d never liked crowds. He cherished alone time, and that was how we always spent our time together. Not that I minded being alone with him.

  Grinning, he held the door open for me. “Well, if it’s your favorite, then I suppose we have to stop. I could use a cup of coffee, too.”

  Jo’s was practically my home away from home these days. I’d been coming here for years, but about seven months ago my best friend, Avery, started working here, and now I visited almost daily.

  I recognized the two people working. The younger guy was the manager. He was only a year or two older than me, and sort of sexy in a rough-around-the-edges way, but he wasn’t the person my eyes were trained on as Owen and I walked to the counter. Working the espresso machine behind him, his coworker, an older Indian woman, was practically undressing Owen with her eyes. She had to be pushing forty, and yet she shamelessly ogled Owen even with me standing right there. Not that I blamed her, because of that whole perfect-physical-male-specimen thing Owen had going for him. But still, I was tempted to gouge her eyes out.

  Thankfully, it was the guy who stepped up to take our order. When we reached the counter, I leaned against Owen, shooting an annoyed glance to the still-staring cougar using the espresso machine. As my arm rested against Owen, he stepped aside and leaned against the counter. The move nearly made me lose my balance.

  I resisted a sigh. Even more than crowds, Owen hated any kind of public displays of affection. Behind closed doors, he couldn’t keep his hands off me. When we were out, he kept his distance. I told myself he was just shy, that he simply liked his privacy. I told myself that he just hated the attention because he always got so much of it from being a star on his college basketball team. I told myself that over and over again. But my stomach still twisted in on itself every time he hid our relationship.

  Owen noticed my frown and pulled some cash from his wallet. “Let me pay for your coffee this time.” In a lower voice, he added, “I owe you since I wore you out so thoroughly today.”

  My gut unclenched, and I smiled. “And all last night.”

  “True,” he said, looking at me through hooded eyes, as if remembering all the specific details of last night. “So your coffee’s on me today.”

  “Not coffee,” a deep voice interrupted, surprising both Owen and me. Avery’s manager was frowning at us. I guess he didn’t appreciate hearing about our wild night when we were supposed to be ordering. Once he had our full attention, he nodded toward me. “She likes the caramel apple cider.”

  Annoyed with me or not, I smiled at the guy. Of course he knew what I liked—he’d been serving me the same drink for years—but I loved that he acknowledged it. They had such great service in this place.

  Owen wasn’t nearly as thrilled. With a narrowed gaze, he looked the coffee man up and down. He wasn’t impressed. Avery’s manager was short for a guy—only a little taller than me—and a bit on the skinny side. Owen could squash him like a bug if he wanted to. The guy was decent looking—nice dark eyes and matching dark hair buzzed short. But standing next to Owen? Well, it wasn’t really fair to compare them. It wasn’t fair to compare anyone to Owen.

  Owen looked at the guy’s eyebrow ring and then focused on the wicked tattoo sleeves that started at his wrists and ran up his arms until they disappeared beneath the sleeves of his Jo’s T-shirt. “What are you, some kind of skeezy stalker?” he asked the guy.

  The coffee man’s jaw clenched. I was horrified on his behalf, but I couldn’t help grinning a little. Owen’s reaction had my h
eart pounding. It was territorial. And it gave me hope. “Your jealousy is noted and appreciated,” I told Owen, “but don’t be a jerk. He’s not a creep. I’m just in here all the time, and I always order the same thing.”

  I flashed the guy behind the counter my best smile, hoping it would soften Owen’s insult. “I apologize on my friend’s behalf. He’s an athlete. You know how they are. And you were correct with the caramel apple cider.”

  His expression eased a little. “With cinnamon and nutmeg, right?”

  I laughed. “Spot on, Coffee Man. Make it happen.” Drumming my fingers on the counter, I winked at him. “S’il vous plaît, with a cherry on top.”

  My playful please broke the tension enough that the guy behind the counter grinned at me. The smile made me do a double take. It surprised me for two reasons. One: he was always so serious. In all the times I’d been in here, I’d never seen him smile. And two: it was a gorgeous smile that reached all the way up to his eyes and softened his usually hard features. It gave him a boyish quality, shaving a few years off his appearance. I felt compelled to match it with a wide grin of my own. “Whoa. You should use that smile more often. It really ups your real estate value, if you know what I mean.”

  Surprise flashed in his eyes, and Owen sputtered. “What the hell, Libby?”

  “What?”

  “Why are you flirting with that loser?”

  The glare Owen shot me thrilled me more than words can describe. My heart thrummed again. I hadn’t meant to upset him, but I loved the anger rolling off of him. I hadn’t realized I could make him jealous.

  I took a defiant stance and shrugged off his concern. “That was not flirting. I was merely stating a fact.” I waved a hand at the guy behind the counter. “Did you see his smile? It was so pretty it was practically a weapon of mass destruction.”

  Avery’s bad-boy manager reared back, shocked by the compliment. “Seriously,” I said to him. “Smile more often. I guarantee your tip jar will triple, Coffee Man.”

  “It’s Adam,” the guy blurted suddenly.

  I did another double take. He met my gaze, as if determined to make me take real notice of him. Something about his stare intrigued me. Something that made me want to keep talking to him. After a pointed glance at his name tag, I smirked. “So I see, Coffee Man.”

  Owen’s hand clenched into a fist at his side, the cords of muscles in his arms pulled so tight it looked painful. I liked that he was jealous, but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so I placed my hand on his arm and said to Adam, “Would you add a large cup of regular coffee for this glorious specimen of male perfection next to me? And a couple of those low-fat bran muffins?”

  A little of the light left Adam’s eyes, but Owen relaxed. “Decaf,” Owen said, wrinkling his nose. “And make one of those muffins a walnut brownie. She might have to stomach that healthy crap, but I don’t need to be on a diet with her.”

  I sucked in a sharp breath. It was no secret that I had a weight issue—anyone with eyes could see that—but Owen had never actually spoken of it before. Until now we’d left that elephant under the bed, both doing our best to ignore the fact that my body would never be in the kind of shape his was. He hadn’t called me fat just now. Not technically, anyway. But it hurt all the same.

  Feeling an intense stare, I looked up and blushed beneath Adam’s keen gaze. There was judgment in his eyes. I glanced away out the front window.

  “Anything else?” Adam asked. His voice was strained, and he was punching the buttons on his register so hard he was likely to break the machine.

  I wasn’t sure what to make of his anger, but it embarrassed me. My lungs were tight, and something inside me felt as if it were about to crack. I needed a minute to compose myself. “I’ll be right back.” I escaped to the women’s room without looking at either of them.

  . . . . .

  As I splashed cold water on my face, trying to relieve the stinging in my eyes, the door to the women’s room opened, and someone much too tall and too masculine for a ladies’ room slid inside, locking the door behind him. When Owen stepped up behind me, I glared at him in the mirror, then patted my face with a paper towel.

  Owen wrapped his arms around my waist and dragged me back against his chest. “Babe, I’m sorry,” he whispered, pressing his mouth to my neck.

  His lips were magical against my skin. They warmed and tingled everywhere they touched, and had the ability to turn my brain to mush. It was why Owen got away with a lot of the stuff he did. But I was really upset this time. Fighting a shudder, I frowned at his reflection again. “You can’t just act like a giant sphincter and then expect to make everything better with kisses.”

  He dragged his mouth across my neck, trailing his warm breath along my skin, and kissed the sensitive spot just behind my ear. “Libs, I didn’t mean it. I was mad. That skinny little prick was hitting on you while I was standing right there. When you started flirting back, I lost my head. I’m sorry, babe. You know I don’t really think like that.”

  I wanted to believe him, but I’d never been stupid. My cursed brilliant brain wouldn’t let me swallow the lie. Twisting in his arms so that I could face him, I looked up into his eyes. He was so tall he felt a million miles away. “Don’t you?” I asked.

  His face fell into a pout. “Kitten…”

  I bit the inside of my cheek as a reminder to myself that I was mad at him. But when he gave me that look…and called me his kitten…

  Despite my weight, Owen picked me up and set me on the counter as if it were the easiest thing in the world, barely straining the muscles in his arms. He nudged my legs apart and stepped between them as his hands slid around my waist. “You know how much I appreciate this body, Libby. I think I’ve more than proven that to you over the last year.”

  He ducked his head and started kissing my neck again. It was heaven. And it was hell. “If you like my body so much, and you don’t want me flirting with other guys, then why won’t you be my boyfriend?”

  As it generally did, that question killed the moment. Owen pulled back with a sigh and looked down at me, his expression careful. “Babe, we’ve talked about that. It’s not a good idea right now. With you still in high school and me up at UVU, a steady relationship would complicate things. We have a good thing going here. Do you really want to screw it up with a crappy long-distance label?”

  Long distance? UVU was barely twenty minutes away. Avery and Grayson managed just fine. But I knew it was pointless to argue with him, so I lied and told him what he wanted to hear. “No.”

  The lie worked. His smile became sincere again, and he started running his hands up and down my thighs. I shivered in spite of my disappointment.

  “Let’s just get through the rest of the year,” Owen said. “Then we can see what happens when you and Avery come up to school in the fall.”

  I knew full well the offer was a brush-off. He wasn’t going to go exclusive with me. Not even once I was attending the same college as him, living in a dorm just a few minutes’ walk from his. But what could I do? If I didn’t play by his rules, he’d stop seeing me. “Okay, but you could still stay home tonight and come over tomorrow when my parents get home. You don’t have to be my boyfriend, but you could at least meet them.”

  He sighed again. “You know I can’t. I told you, I have a thing tomorrow.”

  My traitorous brain wondered if his “thing” was a date with another girl.

  “But I don’t have to leave right this minute. In fact…” Owen brought his mouth down to mine. After a deep kiss that spiked my heartbeat, he grinned against my lips and said, “Leaving is the last thing I want to do right now.”

  His hands gripped my hips and he pulled me tight against him, leaning into me to push his kisses deeper. It was getting really hot in that women’s room, really fast.

  Not that I’m not down for a little Harlequin romance action—especially when it’s starring Owen Jackson, Sexy Beast—but a public bathroom? That’s gross. “Owen, wait.�
��

  “I don’t want to wait.” Owen’s hands found their way beneath my shirt and threatened to take it off, while his mouth moved down my neck, heading for my cleavage.

  Granted, the restroom in Jo’s was pretty fancy—one of those single ones with nice tiled floors and counters and a fake plant in the corner—but it was still a bathroom. “Not here, Owen. I watch Discovery Health regularly. I know what kinds of nastiness call a public restroom home—even a clean one like Jo’s.”

  Owen’s response was a growl. He wrapped my legs around his hips. “I need you now, wildcat.”

  His intensity was mind-numbing. After a few more kisses, his hands set me on fire and I gave in. “There’s a break room,” I gasped. “In the back. Avery’s brought me back there before. No one ever uses it. It has a couch.”

  Owen needed no further explanation. With one more deep kiss, he threaded my hand in his and peeked out the door. When the coast was clear, we slipped into the back of the coffee shop.

  Adam

  Why do girls always want douchebags? It doesn’t matter what type of girl—gorgeous, plain, nice, mean, insecure, confident, smart, dumb—they’re all the same. Stick a girl in a room full of guys, ask her to choose one, and she will inevitably fall for the cockiest, rudest, most selfish, arrogant jerk present. There are entire websites dedicated to this baffling phenomenon, but no one can figure out the answer. I sure as hell can’t. There probably is no answer. “I seriously don’t get it,” I grumbled to myself.

  Looking up from the espresso machine, Imani watched me slide my manager’s key into the register to void out Libby and Owen’s abandoned order. When she realized what I was talking about, she smirked. “You mean the couple that was just in here? I thought that about them, too. How did a girl like her ever land him? I wish I knew her secret.”

  Imani sighed dreamily, proving my point about chicks and pricks. I hadn’t been wondering how his girlfriend got him. I was wondering what she was doing with him. I couldn’t blame Imani for her confusion, though. Libby Garrett isn’t exactly what you’d consider beautiful in the conventional sense.