New Adult Romance Box Set

by Emme Rollins, Julia Kent, Anna Antonia, Helena Newbury, Aubrey Rose

  And loving it.

  Chapter Eleven

  Darla

  I woke up to an empty hotel room, the heady scent of sex and sweat, and a huge pile of $20 bills on the nightstand.

  Oh, no, they didn't.

  Fury rose up in me like a Browns fan watching the Steelers beat them at a home game. A pile of money and just—poof? Those fucking assholes. Use me for the most intimate act ever in my life and then throw a pile of cash at me like I was some kind of hooker in a Reba McIntire song?

  They did.

  I swept my hand across the nightstand and the twenties went everywhere, like demented butterflies from hell, floating effortlessly and flipping in the air, wafting to and fro before settling to the ground in seconds. Those seconds were all it took for a growl of pain and betrayal to rise up in my throat, the bile of disgust and heartache rising, too, until I was choke-coughing and sobbing all at once. Naked, covered in dried sweat and mingled sex scents, the rumpled sheets felt like handcuffs, the mirror a jury about to indict me for the crime of being too stupid to live.

  They used me. Got their jollies and left me alone in a hotel room in my own hometown with a stack of money? How could Trevor go from writing a love ballad about me to doing that? And Joe—what was all that horseshit about feeling real with me, realizing he didn't need to follow his mom's every command, and how I made him see new doors of life that could open?

  There's the open door, asshole. You opened it, threw back a sum of money that washed your conscience, and took off.

  A growl of pain came out of my mouth, a keening sound I never heard before, and I shoved a pillow over my face to stop from having someone who worked there—someone, inevitably, that I would know—find me like this. Every part of me that had felt so complete, so full, so wise now echoed in the empty room. I had fallen asleep covered in men and woke up abandoned.

  Overnight, my world changed, just like it had eighteen years ago. Slightly panicked, I sat up and looked around the room, searching for—

  Nope. It was gone. Trevor took Daddy's guitar along with my self-respect.

  No, Darla, you handed them both to him on a silver platter.

  Only one person could help me now. I stood, the sheets like sandpaper against my bare skin, the natural line coming in around the curtains enough to light my way to my purse, to find my phone. Autodial.

  Josie.

  “Hello?”

  She needed to be able to hear dog whistles to discern the sounds coming out of me. “I can't believe I did this and they left,” I screeched, the words mingled with a sob. The result was a juicy hiccup covered in a high-pitched screed.

  “Whoa! Darla. Slow down. What's wrong? Are you hurt?” Her voice went into that deadly calm she got during emergencies. Made her a damn fine nurse.

  “Not physically.”

  “Who left?”

  “Joe and Trevor.”

  “The guys from Random Acts of Crazy?”

  I nodded, now getting a really good look at the room. The floor was littered with $20 bills. Littered. Jesus, how many did they leave? The more my eyes tracked and inventoried, the angrier I got.

  “Darla? You there?” Her voice was firm again. Oh, shit. She couldn't see me nod.

  “Yes. And yes, the guys from the band.”

  “They went home?”

  “Yep.” That made the tears come, big, bulbous tears like a little kid's, pooling then spilling over in great mounds of salt water, pouring down my face and dotting my bare chest.

  “What happened? Are you OK? What did they do?” Her voice trailed off, concern coming through loud and clear.

  “They up and left me alone here at the truck stop hotel,” I bellowed.

  “They wha—” As if chopped off with an ax, her voice just stopped cold. “They left you.”

  “They.”

  “They?”

  “They—yes, they. It's a fucking word, Josie. It means two or more people.”

  “MORE?” The implication in that shout was pretty fucking clear. Whatever I said next would cement, forever, in our relationship the fact that I was a sexual deviant.

  “No. Not more. Just they as in two guys.”

  “And you...?”

  “We. Yes.” The next words out of her mouth had the potential to break me in two and destroy me. Josie knew damn well what I was saying without me saying it. A glimpse of myself in the mirror showed a red-eyed, sobbing mess wearing a mop of crazy, frizzy blonde hair, twisted in sheets that still smelled like both men, their musk and Joe's citrus scent filling my lungs with a kind of grief that doesn't go away just because you force it to the back of your mind and pretend it's not there.

  I didn't want to be sad. I wanted to embrace my anger and dance with it, tell myself they were loser shitheads who were just getting in a good ménage fuck for the fun of it. Yet there was no way that was true. Not after how emotional last night had been.

  “Oh, honey,” Josie said. “Do you want a job?”

  “A job?” What? I pour my heart out to the only person in my life smart enough to understand nuance and weirdness and that pesky threesome aspect, and she offers me not sympathy, not a lecture, not a drop-shipment of five pounds of chocolate, not an exorcism, but a job?

  “I've always told you that if you want to move out here you can, Darla. But you always said you needed a job along with a place to live. I'm changing jobs and can hire someone to work as my office assistant, and I'm offering it to you. The whole shebang—a place to stay and a job. What do you say?”

  My mind was reeling from the threesome, from waking up alone, from calling Aunt Josie to get a sympathetic ear and now she was offering me a place to live and a job? In Boston? Trevor and Joe lived in some suburb of the city, so I'd be close to them. And maybe we really could pick up where we left off.

  Mama had Jane working for her as a personal aide. Uncle Mike was here enough to help, too. Even if this really was the big old kiss off (without the kiss) from Trevor and Joe, maybe it could work.

  Absentmindedly, I started picking the $20s up off the floor. After I hit twenty and there were more, I became mesmerized, bending down to get each one until they were all in a neat pile in my hand, all while Josie chattered on about the new job, being a roommate, and something about her best friend having a baby and the business funded by her boyfriend.

  $600. There were thirty $20 bills there. My ego didn't know whether to continue to feel slighted or whether it should crow proudly. $600 was a lot of money for a one-night fuck in a threesome.

  I guessed.

  “And I know you'll claim you can't leave Aunt Cathy, but you know that's just a chickenshit excuse you've been using for years to avoid changing your life. You're too timid, Darla. You need to take more chances.”

  I made a strangled sound in my throat, counting the twenties again. Why $600? What did that number mean to them?

  It was just all too good to be true, minus the fact that Trevor and Joe had just treated me like a high-end call girl. But it was true, and if I didn't grab the chance while it was being dangled before me, I knew I'd regret it for the rest of my life.

  Just as I was about to open my mouth and accept, she jumped in and said, “Hint: the correct response is a breathy 'OMIGOD AUNT JOSIE YOU ARE THE BEST.'” She made a derisive snorting noise that I realized I'd co-opted years ago. “Not this silent, pensive shit.”

  “What's the catch?” My suspicious nature kicked in, well-honed from far too many years of living in this dysfunctional shithole where suspicions was as required a trait as oh, say, breathing.

  “No catch. Just start when you come out here, maybe in a week or two?”

  “So what's the company?”

  Silence. Josie was never silent. Ever. The woman was as constitutionally incapable of being quiet as I was of not making stupid decisions.

  “Josie?”

  “It's not pole dancing.”

  “Well, thank goodness, because the only pole I dance on is—”

  �
�Too much information, Darla Josephine. TMI.”

  “You're not really giving me enough details to leap and leave behind my entire life, you know.”

  Another snort. “I'm going to guess that right now you're either getting ready to go work at the gas station where the highlight of your day will be changing the urinal cake in the men's room, or you're trying to find a way to keep wiring the cable line from your neighbor so your mom can watch Pawn Stars again.”

  Damn that woman. She knew me too well.

  “When you put it that way,” I said through gritted teeth. “It's kind of hard to say no. But you have to give me something. What does this company do?”

  More silence. Pins and needles began creeping up my shoulder blades. Fear wasn't the prevailing emotion, but more a sense of unease, that Josie wasn't being forthright and that was, itself, just screwy enough to make me want this damn opportunity more.

  Finally, she said in a controlled, professional voice, “Let's just say you're a perfect match for the job.”

  “OK, Aunt Josie,” I said. “You got a deal. Give me a week or two and I'll be out there.”

  The squee of joy on the phone made me pull my earpiece four feet away so I could stop the ringing in my eardrum. “Darla Jo, it's the best decision you've ever made.”

  “I've made some whoppers.”

  “Yes, you have, and this one's not one of them.”

  I took a deep sigh and looked at the rumpled sheets on the bed, the twenties strewn across the bedside table, smelled the odor of Trevor, and Joe, and me in the air of this little hotel room. “Yeah,” was all I could say.

  She asked me a couple questions which I answered with a handful of words and we got off the phone, agreeing to talk more later.

  And then I saw the note.

  Block letters that said on one side: DO NOT BE MAD.

  Heh. A little too late. My heart did a two-step in my chest as I bent down to pick it up.

  Dear Darla,

  We had to leave town, fast, and we didn't want to wake you up. Yes, we're wimps. Go ahead and gloat. The $600 was the most we could take out in cash with each of our ATM cards. It's for you to come out to Boston. We figure your car can't make it that far, but you can buy a plane ticket.

  You're the best random act of crazy we've ever committed.

  Come.

  Ass and Bigger Ass

  They could not have surprised me more if they'd made Mavis appear with a wedding band on one chicken leg. All the anger and outrage I'd felt earlier was still there—it was just this vestigial thing I didn't need anymore. A deep, long sigh made its way out of my mouth like a yoga breath.

  Ohm.

  Ohm.

  Home.

  Trevor and Joe had no idea what I'd just done. I was moving to Boston now. Moving! Relocating with a job and a place to live and my breathing became labored. Boy, was it stuffy in here. Then I began wheezing and realized there was nothing wrong with the room.

  I was panicking. Is this what it felt like to get what you really wanted, when you let your mind run loose and silly concocting dreams? In what world was it possible that they could come true? No one I knew ever told me that.

  My breathing slowed as I willed it to behave, breathing in and out like a woman in labor. Which was apt—I was birthing a new life, right?

  And after a birth you need a shower. Might as well enjoy the room until check out. I didn't have to be at work until five tonight.

  Slowly, I cleaned myself up, luxuriating in the strong jets from the shower, water pressure we couldn't attain if we pinched every pipe leading into the house and used bellow on the water main. Taking care around the tender spots, the hotel's rough washcloth and cheap soap were not really helping matters. Putting my dirty clothes back on felt like desecrating some sort of holy body and everything was so tender, so aware like I was coming out of being sick and suddenly hyper focused on every movement, every layer of feeling like waking up anew. That's exactly what had happened, right? I'd crossed over from one kind of living to another and now, soon, yet again, that bridge would be traversed.

  I had to go home and tell Mama that I was moving to Boston. I had to go quit my job, which certainly wasn't something I dreaded, just an item on the mental checklist of things that I was making in my head. Fully dressed, face washed, hair combed with my fingers as much as I could making it look a little less Phil Spector and a little more just a curly mess.

  I looked around, grabbed the money that Trevor and Joe had left, stuffed all but one twenty in my pocket and threw the spare on the bed. I knew one of the people I'd gone to high school with, probably Kathy Matthews, would be the maid for this place and finding a twenty on a bed as a tip was about as close to winning the lottery as she could get around here.

  I didn't know if Trevor and Joe really meant it but if they did, I was on my way. And if we weren't meant to be together, I had Josie as a fallback.

  If she didn't work out—I had myself as a fallback. Always.

  The click of the door locking behind me drove home the reality that it was over. Not that the window was closed into Trevor's and Joe's life, but that this particular episode of our co-existence was over and that whatever I decided in the next few weeks would just be about picking up the pieces and moving on—whatever moving on meant.

  Not having their arms around me, not having them here to stare at whenever I wanted, at my whim, not having Trevor and Joe to talk to, or to freak out about, or to listen to felt weirder than having them here, their presence so much a part of the real Darla that when they were gone it felt like my “real” life was the fake one.

  Dragging my feet, I walked out to the parking lot, digging for the keys in my pocket, deep in my own thoughts. When I reached my little shitbox I looked up to find a completely naked Trevor spread across the hood of my car with a straw hat covering his groin.

  “I didn't know Toyota made hood ornaments quite like that,” I sputtered.

  “It's a custom job, Ma'am.”

  “Ass.”

  “If you say so,” he said, peeling his body off the hood of my car and turning around, mooning me. Is it mooning if you're already naked? Two truckers sucking on cigarettes gaped and guffawed.

  “Put your clothes on!” I hissed.

  “Not before I kiss you.” And then he did, my new hood ornament shoving into much of my thigh. His lips said so much, the kiss a redeeming, carefree symbol of hope.

  He bent down and retrieved his pants from the puddle of clothing next to the driver's side, more truckers gathering to gawk. Great. Mike would hear about this in an hour or less.

  “Where's Joe?” I asked, looking around. “And your note sucked.”

  He mugged. “Sorry. I thought we were leaving. I didn't know how else—”

  “You could have woken me up.”

  “I didn't want to. You were so beautiful, so peaceful, so...” he stepped forward and began to stroke my upper arm, “so sated.” He said the words like little pinpricks directly into my clit.

  “Get your clothes on now,” I said through gritted teeth, my whisper rising to a loud roar, “before the cops come and get you.”

  “Who's gonna come? Davey?” he cracked, but he complied, slipping that gorgeous skin into his own faded jeans, throwing on his clothes that Joe had brought.

  I heard one of the truckers mutter, “Nut job,” and I thought blowjob, which made me want to drag Trevor back into the hotel room for another quick episode of my real life.

  “Anyhow, what happened?”

  He stepped closer and I swear to God my heart started beating with his, my lungs breathed when he breathed, my body moved when his moved. I was a goner. What I thought would not end well was going to begin quite nicely.

  “Joe took off. Got a text from his mom saying she reported that he had stolen the BMW. Plus,” Trevor added, “I think we freaked him out.”

  This time it was my turn to do that body relaxing thing that I'd seen them both do so much, all of my muscles from the
neck down loosening. I willed myself to do it and damn if it didn't help, resetting me somehow, giving me clarity. “Did it freak you out Trevor?”

  In the space between my words and his answer there was a kind of peace. My core knew that whatever he said, it would be all right.

  His hands curled around my upper arms and he stared into my eyes earnestly. “We wouldn't have left you the money and the note if we didn't mean what we said.”

  We got in my car. As I pulled out of the parking lot, I absentmindedly got back on the highway, forgetting what the rest of my day held. Did I work today? Did I have a shift? I'd have to go home and check, probably need to call in and ask, and then face the embarrassment of having my boss needle me about it. And then there was Trevor. He held my hand like we were drowning, and he hummed his new song as the wind whipped through the open windows.

  I didn't care about work. Really, there was nothing that I could possibly care about less right now. Boston? Moving with Josie? It seemed like a pipe dream and as I tootled down I-76 a freakishly familiar sight greeted my tired eyes.

  Lightning could not strike twice in the same place. That was a fact, right? Because there, on the side of the road, stood a very naked Joe Ross wearing nothing but...you guessed it—a guitar. My daddy's guitar.

  What the fuck?

  I pulled over about fifteen feet from him, turned my car off and climbed out. The opening chords of I Wasted My Only Answered Prayer floated through the air like the white moth yesterday in the clearing where Trevor and I had made love. Joe's entire body was on display for anybody who drove by and I looked back, hoping to God no cops were on patrol in this stretch right now. The BMW was about twenty yards away, lonely and patient, looking not one bit stolen at all.

  “What are you doing?” I called out.

  He strummed a couple cords and then said, “What comes naturally.”

  “How much peyote did you eat?”

  “I'm not high on peyote, Darla.”