by Poppy Parkes
Reader Praise for Poppy Parkes
“Instructions: 1.) Buy this book. 2.) Get thee to a beach, preferably one where nice cabana boys bring you umbrella drinks so that you don't have to be bothered to get up. 3.) Spend the day inhaling this book.”
“…Loved this quick little steamy read.”
“…I look forward to reading more from this talented author, whose work I highly recommend for all.”
“HIGHLY RECOMMEND!”
“This book hooked me from the get go. I just couldn’t put it down. I fell in love with these characters and omg what a story. Just a perfect read.”
“…So sweet and sexy and had me smiling from ear to ear.”
Bodguard X2
A Flirt Club Book
Poppy Parkes
Copyright © 2020 by Poppy Parkes.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is intended for adult audiences 18 years and older only. All characters are consenting adults 18 years and older only.
Contents
The Oops Club
Aria
Duncan
Finn
Aria
Duncan
Aria
Finn
Aria
Epilogue
The True Love X2 Series
Also by Poppy Parkes
A Love Note For You
Acknowledgments
About the Author
The Oops Club
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Aria
I didn’t mean to become an overnight internet sensation.
Really.
And yeah, I know that when people say that, they’re usually lying. They almost always want it, and worked hard to get it.
I didn’t.
What I do work my ass off on is my music — I mean, my serious music. My genre-bending rock ’n’ roll work that’s sometimes a little folk and always as raw and badass as I can manage.
“Hit It, Beyotch” is not that. But it’s what everyone knows me for.
I’m Aria Mack, the Rebecca Black of my generation and YouTube star and object of viral hate that spans the globe. I wish every damn day that I was not.
This is not what life after high school was supposed to be like. I’m nineteen, and the world should be my oyster. Instead, I’m holed up in the sumptuous loft above my parents’ four-car garage like I’m on house arrest.
Which I guess I kind of am. I can’t go out without getting recognized anymore, and I’m sick of it.
Plus it’s kind of scary, to be followed by paparazzi or heckled by viewers of the music video that ruined my life.
And by kind of scary, I mean really fucking scary.
So I stay home, practice the guitar, ukulele, and piano, and try to write the music that I actually love. Which is what I’m doing right now, sitting in the sunny picture window plucking at my guitar, humming. I’ve got a pencil and a stack of blank staff paper at my side on the window’s bench — everything I need, if only the muse would show the hell up.
It’s not easy, trying to write when I know the whole world hates me.
And sure, I get that every teenager has times when they think the entire world is laughing at them.
It’s just that in my case, it’s the truth.
I scribble down a few notes, strum a few bars, then write those chords down too. Leaning back, I play everything I just committed to paper, then groan.
Because it’s terrible.
Just like every song I’ve written since my sort-of-but-not-really-self-imposed isolation began.
“Frick,” I inform the tiny potted succulent that’s hanging in the window.
Pulling out my phone, I see that Lilah texted a photo of me, her, and Daisy, our other friend that makes up what my mom cringingly calls The Triple Threat Threesome.
Why has no one informed the woman that the word threesome should only be used when two hot guys are going down on one very lucky girl? And while I wouldn’t mind being that girl — it’s kind of my ultimate sexual fantasy, actually — I absolutely do not like my mother using that word to describe to me and my friends.
Ew. Just . . . ew.
But she’s not wrong about the triple threat thing. I don’t know if it was fate that brought three musically-inclined girls together as kindergarteners in our posh private school, or if our friendship helped urge us each on in our interests, but we all rock when it comes to music.
No pun intended.
All three of us have singing chops. Lilah and I are both skilled guitarists, Daisy is an awesome drummer, and we all know our way around a piano. The idea of us forming a girl band comes up every so often, but never too seriously. I think we’re all worried that doing something like that together would ruin our friendship. I mean, if it could happen to GLAM and One Direction and The White Stripes, there’s a good chance it would happen to us.
So we’ve all pursued our musical aspirations separately while supporting each other. Lilah and I were in the front row when the metal band Daisy plays drums for debuted. Me and Daisy coached Lilah through the stressful internship she had with a local record company last summer. And both my friends attended the coffee house I performed acoustic covers at last fall.
I open the text from Lilah and grin.
Remember this? her message reads beneath an old Snapchat shot of us that she must have saved. She’d taken it the day after high school graduation, when we’d gone up to the lake for a week of celebrating. In the picture, we’re all sitting on the dock in our bikinis, leaning our heads in together, Lilah holding her phone at an arm’s length to capture the shot. Lilah and I are sandwiching Daisy, and my wild blonde hair is caught on the wind, sweeping over Daisy’s straight copper tresses and Lilah’s dark pixie cut. I smile at our happy faces frozen in time, remembering how good it felt to be bathing in the sunshine with my besties.
Glancing out the window, a little shiver of anticipation comes over me. It’s spring, and getting warmer every day. Soon it will be hot, and hot weather means lake season — my favorite time of the year.
Then I sigh. Because I can’t go to the lake this year. I can’t go anywhere.
I turn my phone off without replying. What is there to say? Have fun without me, I’m trapped at home forever and ever. I’m not exactly thrilled about my current predicament, but I’m not about to be that much of a buzzkill for my friends. If I sent a text like that, Lilah would show up at my door in fifteen minutes flat with a case of beer she stole from her parents’ fridge. And Daisy would call me to cheer me up but would end up crying, empathetic soul that she is.
I’m not an asshole.
So instead of whining by text, I turn back to my guitar. I try not to think of the whole “Hit It, Beyotch” thing and fail miserably.
The music video started out as a gift, turned into a joke, and then transformed into the monstrous thing that is currently ruining my life.
For my birthday a couple of months ago, my parents had given me a Make Your Own Music Video session at the local recording studio. Which is, yeah, super cheesy.
But t
hey were excited about it, and it was actually kind of adorable. They wanted to give me a chance to explore the music industry. And while the session wasn’t exactly the stuff platinum record labels are made of, it wasn’t all that bad.
I’d said I would do it, more for them than for me. I know my big break isn’t going to come from my wealthy daddy buying my way into the industry.
I told my friends about it that night. Daisy and I were sleeping over at Lilah’s house, and we’d been sipping at the bottle of rosé Lilah had swiped from downstairs.
“That’ll be super fun,” Daisy had said through her hiccups.
Lilah laughed. “Or lame.”
“Definitely lame,” I’d agreed. “But . . . maybe a little fun too?”
Lilah had leaned close. “Know what would make it even more fun?”
Daisy and I had both shaken our heads in synchrony.
“Writing a pop song for the session,” Lilah had whispered like she was revealing some great secret before dissolving into laughter.
I’d wrinkled my nose. “Pop? Gross.”
“No, think about it,” Daisy had said seriously, to my surprise. “That’s what those kinds of vanity sessions are all about anyway — making the unskilled masses feel like they could be a pop star.”
“But I’m not the unskilled masses,” I’d pointed out. “I could record one of my own songs — one of the good ones, not some dumb pop song I pulled out of my butt.”
“What would happen to the rights for that song then?” Daisy had said, Lilah nodding along in vehement agreement. “They might be gone. Studios pull all sorts of shady shit like that. Better to be safe and go with a song you don’t care about.”
“She’s right,” Lilah had chimed in. “Don’t forget, I interned there. I mean, I interned on the more serious music side, but I know how those sessions go too. They’re kind of for, like, music tourists.”
My friends’ advice had seemed solid. So I went into the session a couple of weeks ago with some ideas for a stupid pop song already scribbled on a crumpled note in my jeans pocket.
And Lilah And Daisy were right about a few other things too. The session was lame, and Razz, the guy running it, acted way too excited about every single one of my ideas. But that morning I channeled my inner Britney — like, a Britney who can’t dance to save her life and who definitely would never carry a snake around at all, much less on stage — and came up with “Hit It, Beyotch.”
During the afternoon of my vanity session, Razz did my makeup and wardrobe and had me perform “Hit It, Beyotch” about fifty zillion times in front of different backgrounds, and sometimes in front of a green screen.
At the end of the day, Razz had sent me off with a fake plastic record with my name printed sloppily on it in gold paint marker and a USB drive with the music video on it.
I watched it for the first time with my parents. They were thrilled and I was mortified. Mom stole the plastic record and hung it on the living room wall while I escaped up to my room to tell Lilah and Daisy all about my ridiculous day.
When I tried to share the music video with them, the file was too large to send. So I’d uploaded it to YouTube, set the privacy setting so only they could see the video, and giggled about it with my friends.
In the morning, I woke up to the sound of notifications hitting my phone.
A lot of them.
Like, a lot.
It hadn’t taken long to realize that somehow, my private video of “Hit It, Beyotch” was very much public. I’d been hacked, I guess, but I was too preoccupied with how freaking mean every single comment on the video was.
Daddy couldn’t buy you talent, so he did the next best thing, said the first one I read, and it hit me like a fist in the stomach.
U suck, said another.
The comment that read, You’re cute, HMU if you wanna be my sex toy, was the one that made me delete the video.
But it was too late. It had already been downloaded and re-shared by content aggregators.
I’d gone viral in the very worst way.
The crappiest part is that, for all the traffic and attention “Hit It, Beyotch” is getting me, nobody is watching the recordings I’ve shared of my real music, the stuff I actually care about.
Which maybe is fine. Because I haven’t been able to write shit since all this went down.
Outside I hear the grumble of a truck and peer out the window to see my mother accepting a misshapen manila envelope from the UPS guy through the wrought iron gate that surrounds our property. As he drives off, my mom heads toward the garage, looking up at me and waving.
Eager for any kind of human contact, I set my guitar on its stand and leave the loft, practically running down the outside stairs to meet my mother.
You know things are bad when a teenager wants to have gal pal time with her mom.
“You’ve got a package,” she says, waving the manila envelope at me.
“Sweet,” I say, accepting it. “It must be the new guitar capo I ordered.”
I tear into the package and shove my hand inside, expecting to produce a new acoustic clamp. But instead, I pull out a small bouquet of dried pink roses. They’re bundled with a tattered band of lace from which a note dangles. My heart clambers up my throat as I read it.
I think you’re pretty.
That’s what the note says. Just that.
I stare at it, beginning to shake so hard that Mom grabs my shoulders.
Someone’s found me. Somebody from online. They know where I live. And that changes everything.
My eyes dart around us as if I’ll see a stalker leering at me from behind a bush.
“Aria, what is it?” Mom demands, eyebrows knitting with worry.
Wordlessly, I hold out the bouquet. She takes it and looks at the note. Her eyes fly to mine as the blood drains from her face.
“This,” she says, now trembling as much as I am, “is too much. First the online comments and people being rude to you in public, then the paparazzi, now this. Something will have to be done.”
She wraps an arm around my shoulders and leads me to the main house, sending the bouquet hurtling into one of the trash cans outside the garage as we pass.
Even though I have no idea what she or anyone can do about how much the online hate for me is escalating, creeping into my real life, Mom’s words comfort me. I know that tone of voice well. It means that she’s determined to get her way, and fast.
I just hope that she can, that it’s even possible. Suddenly the world feels very unsafe, even behind the locked gates of my family’s home.
Duncan
Charles Mack slides a photograph of his daughter across my spotless desk along with a dusty bouquet of crumbling flowers and an empty manila envelope.
“Aria has been harassed, followed, and publicly maligned. But this,” sighs the man in a suit so crisp I can practically hear it crackle, “this is something else.” He nods at the bundle of flowers.
I turn the bouquet and read the note. “So your daughter’s got an admirer,” I say dryly, shaking my head.
“Can you help us?” Charles’ wife, Amanda, leans forward. “Can you protect her? We’ll pay anything to keep her safe.”
“I never thought when we gave her that recording session that something like this would happen.” Charles rubs his worry-creased brow. “Not much scares me. But my teenage daughter having a stalker? That sure as hell does.”
I pull the photograph of the Macks’ daughter to me. Her stalker isn’t wrong — the girl’s damn pretty. She’s got tousled blonde hair, a rosebud of a mouth, and dark eyes that I could fall into — hell, that I already find myself falling into.
Which makes me suck in my breath and lean back abruptly. Because me and the female kind? We don’t mix. Not since an accident in the line of duty nearly took my life and left me with a thick stump where my proud cock used to be.
It didn’t take me many clumsy attempts at romance once I recovered to discover that women do not want a man
who’s crippled in this way. Since then, I’ve tended to my manly needs myself and have trained myself not to be drawn in by any female, no matter how gorgeous.
Looking at this photo is the first time I’ve felt my dick stir without my encouragement in a decade.
Of course, it’s completely inappropriate. This girl is barely legal, and definitely off-limits. Her wealthy family is about to pay Elite Security Services an ungodly amount of money to secure my expertise.
I glance at Finn Adair, my newly hired twenty-two-year-old partner who’s standing behind the Macks just inside the office door. The feelings I’m having? They’re something I’d expect of a youngster like him, not a crotchety fifty-something who’s long ago given up on ever again enjoying the pleasures of the fairer sex.
Adair cocks his head at me, auburn hair falling across his forehead, green eyes questioning. The kid’s young, but he’s got good instincts. It’ll be good to have him as backup in the field.
I’ve run Elite Security Services solo for the past thirty years, opening it up after I dropped out of the police academy when I was around Adair’s age. The badge came with many rules, too much danger. I know how to fight, how to protect, and I’m a damn good shot, but it turns out I didn’t much care for riding around in a cop car at all hours while other people tell me how to do my job.
But lately, I’ve felt my reflexes slow and my snap judgment grow as blunt as my ruined cock.
So I hired Adair.
If he turns out to be as good as I have a feeling he is — as I’ve already seen he is, in the last few jobs we’ve worked together — I’ll consider passing the business onto him when I retire.