by Diana Gardin
“I’m heartbroken.”
She slammed the door behind her.
Reed sighed, heading out the balcony door and down the wooden steps toward his morning swim.
When he returned, shaking water and sand from his hair, he found Tate in a lip-lock on the couch with his guest.
Reed sighed loudly as he slid open the door. Tate always had a more difficult time loving ’em and leaving ’em. He always let them stick around the morning after, and sometimes they made the mistake of feeling like a girlfriend.
“Yo,” Reed greeted them. They ignored him completely, continuing their shameless devouring of each other in earnest like he hadn’t even spoken.
Reed shook his head and headed to his bathroom to shower and dress for the day. The woman he spent the night with wore a perfume typical of all the women he brought home. They all smelled so similar, he could almost identify his type by their scent. He could never identify the scent, which let him know that she’d be a good one-nighter. It was always a cloying mixture of faux fruit and floral, and it stuck to his skin like sticky tape. The rigorous swim in the ocean hadn’t been enough to remove it, and he scrubbed his skin raw in the shower trying to exfoliate the smell off of him. When he finally felt clean, he stepped out of the shower and stared at his face in the mirror.
He knew he was handsome—he’d had plenty of people tell him so all his life. His sister was exotically gorgeous, model material really, had she been interested. He was just as attractive, in a masculine way. Where she was dark, he was lighter. His eyes were a slightly lighter shade of blue, his hair a lighter shade of brown. Their skin was the same, pale in the winter and tan in the summer. He swam every day and played tennis all through high school, so staying physically fit wasn’t an issue. His muscles stood out under his tight T-shirts and fitted clothing, and women liked to reach out and touch them.
But, staring at himself now, he wasn’t happy with his appearance. His features were chiseled almost to a flaw, his lips were full, and the slight amount of dark scruff grazing his jawline drove women absolutely wild. But he was slowly learning that it had more to do with what was on his insides than what was visible on the outside.
Something was missing. Or maybe it’s just broken.
As he was dressing, a loud knock resounded through the condo from the front door, and Reed wondered if Tate’s guest had left yet.
He pulled on a dark blue plain tee over a pair of faded, worn jeans and walked out to the living room.
“Sam!” he greeted his friend. “What’s up, man?”
“What’s up is that we’re headed out to lunch. You up for it?”
“What are we, chicks?”
Sam shrugged. “I’m hungry. You hungry?”
“Yeah.”
“Then let’s go eat. Tate, you in?”
Tate was slumped over the kitchen counter with a mug of coffee gripped in both hands. He muttered a response in the negative, and Reed waved him off.
“You know he doesn’t actually wake up until two. Let me get my wallet and we’ll head out. I assume I’m driving.”
“Unless you wanna snuggle up to me on the back of the Harley.”
“Ha! My sister might be in love with that thing, but I like to keep four wheels on the ground.”
Reed and Sam both lounged in their seats in a seaside café that served sandwiches and kept the pitchers of sweet tea flowing freely. A light dusting of sand littered the sidewalk under their little round table.
“You and Aston going out tonight?” asked Reed, picking up his glass of tea to sip.
Sam rubbed the scruff on his square jawline and squinted into the sun. His huge, six-foot-four frame folded up into the medium-size wicker chair was comical, and Reed snickered as he watched him.
“I don’t know, man. Wedding planning is keeping us pretty busy.”
“I bet. I can’t believe you two made it all the way through college, what was left of it, without getting hitched.” Reed studied his future brother-in-law.
Sam and Aston had met a few years back when Sam had ventured onto the Hopewell ranch as a hired hand. He’d quickly worked his way up and into their father’s heart, thus turning Aston from a potential enemy to the love of his life. They’d been through a lot since they’d met, including Sam’s arrest for being wanted for murder back in Virginia a few months after arriving in Nelson Island. Sam had lost his girlfriend back home in the process, a girl he’d grown up protecting.
Sam was one of those guys who was just a born hero. He worked hard, lived on the right side of the line, and gave his entire heart to those he loved. And Reed loved him fully, like they were already brothers. Sam had been there for him many times over the past four years, always helping him out of tough situations and supporting his love of music completely.
If Reed was going to open up to anyone about what had happened a couple of weeks ago with Hope, and how it seemed to have changed something inside of him, it was going to be Sam.
Sam shrugged. “We like to do things right.”
Nodding thoughtfully, Reed sipped his drink and stared out toward the water.
“I think Blaze, Tate, and Tam wanted to head over to C-town and hit a club or a bar. I’m not feeling it.”
Sam stared. “You’re not feeling it? That phrase isn’t in your vocabulary, little bro. What’s up with you lately? These past few weeks you’ve seemed…different. Too serious, maybe. Where’s your head at?”
Reed heaved a sigh, propping a foot up on the chair beside him. “Man, I don’t even know. I feel kind of different.”
“How so?” Sam leaned forward and placed his forearms on the table, picking up his sandwich and taking a big bite.
Reed recounted the story of the night at the club when Reed had walked up on the alley to see Hope being roughed up by Tyler. He explained how he’d stashed her behind him and pulled a knife on her aggressor. Then he told Sam about giving her a ride home in the truck, and how he’d been thinking about her ever since.
“I feel really unsettled about the fact that I have no way to contact her now. Her whole demeanor that night screamed at me, man. She was tough and strong, but underneath that I could see this desperation. I think she needs help, but I don’t know what the fuck to do about it.”
Reed sat back, finishing his last words in a rush and gazing at Sam in earnest.
Sam nodded, smiling at Reed. “I’m proud of you, man. You did a good thing. When a woman needs help like that, you gotta step in and do the right thing.”
“Well, hell, Sam, I was raised right. I wouldn’t just leave a woman to get attacked in an alley.”
“I know you wouldn’t, Reed,” Sam answered. “I think you’re capable of a hell of a lot more than you give yourself credit for, though. Why didn’t you get her number and call to check on her after?”
Reed shook his head and ran a hand along his jaw. “I don’t know. That’s the problem. I wish like hell I had. But when’s the last time I asked a girl for her number? I don’t usually want to call them afterward. So even though the thought crossed my mind…I didn’t even know how to go about it, for God’s sake. I felt like I was fourteen again, just trying to feel some tits for the first time or something. I offered her my number, but she turned it down.”
He groaned, covering his face with both hands and dragging them downward.
“Yeah, but you didn’t try to sleep with this one,” Sam pointed out. “You rescued her. It’s different.”
“I know,” Reed said. “But if I see her again…”
“If you see her again, you think you’ll go man-whore Reed on her?”
Reed nodded. “Bingo. She’s hot, man. Like…lingerie-model hot, only shorter. She’s got this hair…never seen anything like it, it’s so long and…and her skin is this bronze color that makes me crazy, wanting to touch it. And her eyes…her eyes are this brownish green that keeps glinting flecks of gold in the light. And she was so petite, I think I could fit my hands around her waist…”
&nb
sp; Sam was rocking with laughter. “You got all that after one hour with her in the dark?”
Reed hung his hand, allowing his forehead to graze the table. He didn’t look up as he mumbled, “Shit. Yeah.”
“Well, if you see her again, and things go down with the two of you, I think you might just explode. I’ve never heard you talk about a girl like this, ever.”
“Shit,” Reed muttered again. “This is the last thing I need.”
Sam laughed. “You’re not singing tonight, right? The guys and Tamara want to go out.”
Reed nodded, his head still scraping against wood. “I’m not going.”
“No?”
“Nah. Dad has this business owners’ banquet or something in Charleston. He wants me to attend.”
Sam reached over and pounded Reed on the back. “Charleston is bigger than N.I. You probably won’t run into her again, and then things will get back to normal.”
Reed looked up hopefully. “You think so?”
Sam nodded with a quirk of his lips. “You better hope so. You can’t let this girl get anywhere near your bed.”
Five
Reed took a sip of fizzing champagne, trying his hardest not to look bored out of his damn mind.
It was difficult.
“Ah.” Gregory Hopewell smiled and leaned in toward Reed. “There’s Joseph Claremont. He owns Alpine Tech. You know, the software design company?”
Reed nodded, glancing at the ultratan face of the man his father was pointing out.
“We should speak to him about what his company can do for H.E.”
Nodding again, Reed took a larger sip of champagne, downing the drink without tasting it.
“You’re paying attention, right, Reed?” Gregory turned to face him, frowning slightly. “I usually bring Aston to these things. But now that you’re more involved with the company, I think it’s time you showed some more initiative.”
It was a speech Reed had heard a hundred times before. And he thought that showing up for work every day and completing his tasks there to the best of his ability was showing initiative. But he’d never be Aston. Working for Hopewell Enterprises had never been his dream like it was hers.
“Yeah, Dad,” Reed answered. “I know. I’m here, aren’t I?”
He was even wearing a plain black suit, against his better judgment. Gregory had insisted there be no “Reed fashion antics” tonight. Reed felt like he might suffocate.
His father led him around the room, introducing him to business contacts while everyone sipped drinks. There were hors d’oeuvres being served by waitstaff in crisp white shirts and black tailored pants.
While his father was deep in conversation with the mayor of Charleston, Reed stepped away to snag another glass of champagne and a crab puff from the tray of a passing waitress. The girl paused in her stride, staring at him with narrowed eyes.
He glanced at her curiously as she spoke. “Do I know you from somewhere?”
Sighing inwardly, he shook his head. The girl seemed about his age, maybe a year or two younger. When she wasn’t waiting tables, it was likely she frequented the clubs and bars around the city.
“I doubt it,” he answered shortly.
Normally, he would have jumped at the chance to tell her who he was, strike up a conversation that might end with her lying naked between his sheets. She was cute, her short dark hair streaked with blond, big gray eyes that seemed full of just the right kind of devilish merriment.
But tonight, his mind was elsewhere.
He watched her with an incredulous look on his face as she pretended to think hard, and then an imaginary lightbulb snapped on over her head and he nearly groaned in embarrassment for her.
“I know! You’re that singer! I’ve heard you around town….you’re ah-maze-ing!” She stretched out the word like it was something delicious on her tongue, and his stomach rolled. She looked him up and down, appreciatively, and then grinned at him. “You sure do look different tonight, honey. I almost didn’t recognize you!”
This was normally the kind of attention he just sucked up through a straw. It was ridiculously easy for him to garner the attention of any pretty girl in the room, and turn that attention into a night of wild monkey sex in his bedroom at the condo. Then the next morning, he undoubtedly felt the heat of the mistake he’d made, and the horror of what an empty shell of a man he’d become hit him like a brick wall.
Tonight, he just couldn’t do it. He was attempting to figure out how to separate himself from her when Sam strode up beside him. Aston was close on his heels, and she smiled widely at Reed.
“There you are,” greeted Sam, grabbing a glass for Aston off the waitress’s tray and turning his back toward her.
“Last-minute change in plans, little bro. I know how much you hate these things. Didn’t want to leave you hanging, did we, Sam?” Aston took the glass from Sam and sipped.
The waitress scurried away, throwing Reed one last longing look as she went.
Reed sighed, relief flooding through his gut, and sent Sam a silent thank you. Sam nodded, his face full of concern.
Aston was glancing between the two of them, and Reed could see that she smelled something fishy. He just hoped she’d leave it alone, wait until a later date to grill him about his newfound aversion to meaningless sex.
She raised an eyebrow in his direction, with one of those superior looks that could only belong to a big sister. He returned her gaze with a blank stare, and she frowned slightly to let him know that she indeed knew something was up and certainly had no intention of dropping it. Then she flipped her long, thick raven hair over one shoulder and combed through it with her fingers. All the while, she kept one eye on Reed and the other on Sam. Sam wrapped an arm around her to draw her closer, and leaned down to kiss her cheek.
Reed stared at them, unable to help himself. He’d spent many an evening with Aston and Sam, always marveling at how perfect for one another they seemed to be. Before Sam, Aston had been dating her high school sweetheart, and she had never looked at him with half the amount of adoration she bestowed upon Sam. And Reed had witnessed Sam with his childhood love story, Ever, here in Nelson Island years ago. The connection he had with her was nothing in comparison to what he shared with Reed’s sister. Their relationship was rock solid and full of a seething passion that drew them toward one another almost subconsciously. Even in a room full of strangers, they harbored an invisible connection that seemed to cloak them in a privacy all their own.
Reed thought it was a fluke. He didn’t think relationships like theirs existed for the rest of the poor folk bumbling around searching for their one true love. It was exactly why he wasn’t searching. His parents were actually madly in love, even though his mother couldn’t manage to keep her worldly gifts preserved for just his father. He’d witnessed it, and the havoc that was wreaked on their lives, as a small boy, and now he wanted nothing to do with any of it. Somehow Aston had managed to make it out of the muck their parents’ tumultuous marriage had stuck them in. It wasn’t going to happen twice.
Reed knew he was destined to lead a life that traveled one of two directions: never settling down and living fast and loose, or always miserably searching for the one person he was supposed to spend forever with.
He chose option one, a hundred percent.
“God, I would kill for that girl’s hair,” Aston mused. “I wonder how she gets it to be so shiny with all that length? Jesus, I think it’s to her waist. And that color? I don’t even think it’s fake. I think she’s a natural ombré: dark on top and blond at the ends.”
Reed tuned back into his sister and Sam just as she was musing about some unknown girl across the grand ballroom. Her murmur was admiring and distant as she stared at the object of her admiration.
Reed was still thinking about his parents when Aston’s words clicked in his brain. Jesus, I think it’s to her waist. There was only one girl he could think of with that kind of hair. As his head was whipping around toward a table on
the opposite end of the room for the first time all night, his eyes landed on the girl he’d been unable to pry from his thoughts since meeting her weeks ago. And the rest of the room seemed to fade away.
She was sitting at one of the large round tables set up for the sit-down dinner. Their own table was waiting for them nearby, and Reed shifted his eyes to see his father already sitting down, chatting with another man he didn’t know.
She was sitting next to a man in a suit, and Reed’s eyes narrowed as he inspected him. He expelled a breath when he realized it wasn’t Tyler, the man who had attacked her the night they met.
Then who is she with?
The thought startled him as it appeared in his mind, but it didn’t stop him from snapping to Sam and Aston, “Let’s go sit with Dad. I think it’s almost time for them to serve dinner.”
As they arrived at their table and found seats, his eyes settled comfortably on Hope once more. She hadn’t yet noticed his presence a mere two tables away, and he had the opportunity to drink her in unnoticed. Most of her body was hidden under the white tablecloth, but her torso was sheathed in a silver, sparkling dress with a very low neckline. Delicate sleeves fell off her shoulders, and her shining hair hung down her back. Her delicate neck was exposed, and he almost thought he could see the pulse beating softly underneath her flesh. His eyes widened, and a warm ache spread through his abdomen and up into his chest.
She was here. She was fucking beautiful.
And she was with another guy.
A waitress dropped off another glass of champagne at their table, and Hope grimaced at the sight of it. Frank was insisting she drink to stay loose and comfortable. Probably because he knew how pissed she was that she was here with him instead of out with Morrow for her birthday.
She’d had to text her friend earlier in the night to cancel after Frank dropped the bomb on her.
“You’re coming with me tonight. I have a banquet I have to attend for business owners around the city, and you’re a girl I want by my side to help schmooze some new clients.”