SweetHarts (5 Book Box Set)

by Kira Graham

  My V-card stayed unpunched, though, which makes Heath correct in his observation that all the guys I’ve been seen with are nothing more than friends. Dammit. That sounds really pathetic, and it is…

  “That whore has looser legs than a paper puppet,” I grumble, smiling when he grunts and quirks a brow.

  “What’s with the lonesome routine?”

  “Maybe I just don’t want to sleep with some idiot who could be in Mindy’s employ,” I point out, the half-truth causing a shiver to work its way through me.

  Honestly, that’s how the whole sex with Ares thing happened, anyway. I hit the club with Mindy late one night, got drunk, and almost went home with some random guy who said all the right things into my drunken, lonely ear. And then Ares swooped in like some avenging angel and saved me, and, yeah—you know the rest.

  I guess I’d just gotten so tired of being alone at that point that I was willing to take the risk. Until Ares pointed out the dangers to me and took me back to his place.

  “Smart, but not our style, babe,” Heath says softly, just as we turn into Jack’s and Honey’s drive, the SUV coming to a stop in front of the gates.

  I’m silent as he keys in the code for the gate, and I’m still silent as we make our way down the long, tree-lined drive, the other cars remaining outside the gate, as usual.

  “What is my style, then, Heath? Because I have to say that I don’t even know myself. I used to enjoy partying and having fun, but ever since those assholes all got married, or claimed by a Hart man, and Mindy turned out to be a homicidal maniac who’s stalking my family, I’m a lone wolf.”

  “Come on, don’t tell me that that’s what’s bugging you,” he argues, giving me a knowing look.

  “It isn’t. What’s bugging me is the fact that I can’t go anywhere or do anything without a minimum of three men watching my every move. It’s the fact that I had the person who has tried to kill or hurt my family, sleeping on my couch more than once, while I was sleeping in the other room, completely unaware of the danger. It’s about how I felt when I almost died, or thought I’d have to watch Sin die, and…and it’s about life,” I finish, blowing out a frustrated sigh. “It all just seems so pointless now, and this morning’s episode just made it clearer, I think. I haven’t done anything with my life.”

  “Well, what do you want?” Heath asks, pulling to a stop just to the right of the house.

  He turns off the engine and turns, his eyes taking me in from head to toe with a look I can’t decipher, but somehow know I don’t like. I don’t talk about my feelings, like, ever. That’s why I’m a therapist. I listen to other people’s problems, and it puts my own into perspective. Unless, of course, I end up talking to a psycho, and then it throws off the stability that I’ve managed to attain in my life. I know that most people look at my life and think that I’m a mess, but it takes a lot of work to achieve this kind of organized chaos.

  “How should I know? Do you know what you want, right this minute?” I ask, deflecting the question away from my own vulnerability because I don’t like the feeling.

  Heath pauses and considers my words, shocking the hell out of me when he tilts his head and gets a faraway, dreamy smile on his face.

  “I do. I want to find someone who will love my grumpy ass and like that I’m a little intense. I want to get married, have a family, and spend my days loving more than a job. That’s what I want, and it’s what I’ve wanted ever since I woke up in the hospital with shrapnel scars as souvenirs,” he tells me seriously, shaking off whatever dreams he’s spinning to pin me with a look of enquiry. “Don’t you want that kinda stuff?”

  Me? The family, the kids, the dog, and the mom car? I snort, almost laughing as I imagine myself driving a minivan with a bunch of innocent kids in the back, all in different stages of tantrum or screaming, and instead of the shiver of revulsion I’ve felt in the past, I smile a little and wonder what kind of personalities they’d have.

  Seth and Axel, Alex’s boys and the first of the new generation of the family, are already little terrors, and they’re not even a year old yet. Mine would be unholy and funny and as sneaky as hell, and just thinking about being a mom…

  It’s not quite as sickening as it once was.

  But that doesn’t mean that it’s what I want. Does it?

  “I don’t know, honestly. I’ve never really seen myself being maternal. Hell, I was supposed to babysit for Alex, and I conned Rosetta into doing it for me because I’d rather peel my own face off than change one of those diapers,” I admit, cackling a little because Rosetta called me that evening, cursing up a blue streak while retching so badly that I heard Zeus curse and promise to do the diaper change instead.

  Of course, Rosetta’s miraculous and instantaneous recovery could point to just how sick her mind is, but the point is that even loving those kids as much as I do, it was not enough to convince me to spend an entire night with them.

  “You’re plenty maternal. I’ve seen you with Ax and Seth. You love those boys.”

  “I get to give them back,” I throw over my shoulder as I open the door and hop out.

  I’m not as steady on my feet as I want to be, but when the front door bursts open and Uncle Jack, already sniffling, opens his arms, everything in my world rights itself and feels safe.

  Though how long that lasts is anyone’s guess.

  Chapter Three

  Tee

  “That’s bullshit! You should have kicked him in the balls, performed one of those twisting kicks you do so well, and dropped him like a bitch,” Cleo scolds me, her words coming out garbled around a serving spoon of cake that’s she’s got shoved into her pie hole.

  I shudder and watch as she uses the same spoon to dip into the ice cream, and then gag a little when she upends a bottle of chocolate syrup on top of the half-eaten cake, ice cream, and—oh God, is that a slice of cheese I see in the mix?

  “I couldn’t. Something happened to me. It’s called self-preservation,” I mutter, steering clear of the wasteland that is Cleo’s kitchen counter and taking a seat near the end, where the coffee machine is already belching out a latte for me.

  God, I really love how extravagant Adonis is, and I love even more that I can make myself free coffee and spend time pretending that I actually want to be here for Cleo. Not that I don’t love Cleo, but the bitch be wack. Right now, for example, she’s eating things that no human in possession of taste buds should ever eat together, is sporting a belly that is admittedly absolutely adorbs under her olive green and pink overalls, and doesn’t seem to know what a brush is. And she’s in seventh heaven.

  The fact that she’s told me at least four times that she isn’t pregnant, all without my once asking, has my lips twitching so hard that I eventually let my smile slip out while she makes snorting sounds over her food, as if she’s at the trough.

  “Self-preservation is just a synonym for the word coward,” she garbles, her eyes shining when I curse and level a glare her way.

  “Honey already called you, didn’t she?” I hiss, my disgust ending on a moan of delight when I taste my coffee.

  God. I love you, Adonis.

  Right now, I don’t love anyone else, though. Except Uncle Jack. Sort of. When I got to Honey’s and Jack’s, I got the welcome that every girl wants to get. He hugged me. He sobbed. He told me that I was the most important person in his life at that moment. And then he let Honey at me, which normally isn’t all that bad, except that today her hair was blue, and her eye shadow was orange, and, to be quite frank, I don’t think it was makeup but rather fury that turned her lids that color. They ticked all through her lecture to me about being fierce and being a strong woman, and then she almost exploded when I admitted to her that I did indeed need to change my clothes because I’d peed myself a little in my office.

  That’s why I’m here with Cleo. I needed to escape Honey and her fury, Jack and his cringing, silent looks of contrition, and also the fact that he kept offering me money to make up for his lac
k of support against his wife.

  Plus, coffee machine! I freaking love this thing.

  “‘Called’ is a mild word for what I had to listen to, cuz. She practically screamed over the phone, and then threatened to come over, which is not cool! My mom’s great, Tee, but she’s insane, and all she does is talk and talk and talk about my wedding,” she groans, her mouth now so full of chocolate that I have to look away in order to avoid heaving in her presence.

  God, these women are all pigs when they’re pregnant. Last week, I saw Rosetta literally squatting on a restaurant table over some food, like some wild beast with glowing red eyes. I don’t want to know what Cleo would look like if I so much as reached for something on the counter.

  “For obvious reasons, loser. When are you going to stop being such a loser and actually marry Adonis? The man’s so in love with you that I actually feel sorry for him,” I point out, my mouth gaping when Cleo drops the spoon and sighs, her shoulders slumping.

  “I’m trying. I’ve seen three therapists, two psychics, and even called that stupid frackin’ wedding planner to lock in a venue, any venue, for the end of the month and not tell me where it was. And yet even as I did it, I knew that I was going to break into her office, steal all the information I needed, and somehow release a swarm of killer bees in there to botch it,” she confesses, her lip trembling when she glances up at me and shakes her head. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me! I’m not afraid to marry Adonis. I want to marry Adonis. I just can’t…make myself go down the aisle. And I need to, Tee! Look at me!” she screams, waving a hand down at her baby gut. “I’m starting to show, and Mom is going to see it, and Lovey is going to cry, and Adonis—he just keeps smiling and loving me and telling me it’s all gonna be all right. This morning, I woke up, and he was kissing my belly, and when he looked up, he was smiling with tears in his eyes. And you know what he said?”

  “Uh, no,” I murmur, trying to keep my expression blank.

  “He said, ‘I’ll still love you if you’re four hundred pounds.’ He was pretending not to know, you know. And this may come as a surprise,” she whispers, leaning in conspiratorially, “but this isn’t me getting fat. I’m pregnant.”

  If Sin were here, she’d cackle and tell her that she already knows, ask her something offensive like, “Are you eating for ten?” and then run out laughing her ass off. Of course, Sin already did ask that question, which is why she’s not here with us—not since Cleo gave her a black eye and threatened to kill her. Slowly.

  “Um, ya don’t say? Congrats,” I mumble, swallowing a bubble of laughter when I hear Heath wheezing from the living room and cover the slip with a cough.

  “Thanks. But I can’t hide this forever,” she mutters, waving down at her little belly with a grunt of frustration. “And I shouldn’t. Adonis should feel free to get excited and do all that dorky stuff that I know he’s dying to do. He shouldn’t have to play this off just so I don’t have a panic attack!”

  Yeeeeah. I don’t quite know how to play this. If I tell her that she’s a selfish bitch, she might attack me, and while I have little to no morals about attacking a pregnant woman, ’cause that’s how I roll, I do draw the line at this one. Cleo looks innocent and ditzy, but I won’t ever forget the summer vacation I woke up with no hair, a hangover, and the word “gotcha” written on my forehead in permanent marker.

  It took two years for my hair to grow back into some semblance of style. And another six months for my pubes to stop growing in sparse and patchy.

  “Uh, have you considered…eloping?” I ask slowly, thinking that maybe it’s the whole wedding thing that’s setting her off.

  “We’ve tried! A week ago, I stowed away on his jet, popped out just as it landed, and told Addy to take me to one of those wedding chapels that are all over Vegas. We got halfway there, and then I bit him and ran like hell,” she whispers, her sigh so long-suffering that I almost feel bad for her.

  “Okaaaay. So a big wedding isn’t the issue?”

  “I want a fucking wedding fit for a princess, Nefertiti! I want to walk down the aisle in my dream dress and listen to Mom wail because she thinks it’s hideous. I want to see Adonis get all teary-eyed like a baby, ’cause I’m gorgeous and awesome, and I want to have a wedding reception so ridiculous that it’ll make the Kardashian wedding look like a trailer trash extravaganza. I deserve spectacular, you ass. And I will have it!”

  “When you’re ninety?” I ask derisively, dodging a glob of spitty cake when she hisses and turns molten eyes my way.

  “Don’t be fucking glib. I get glib from Sin, who has nothing to do all day because she’s a ‘housewife’ now. She calls me all day, making fun of me because she’s getting married before I am,” Cleo wails, throwing her hands into the air with a dramatic groan that has Heath’s shoulders shaking silently.

  Oy. This woman. She should have gone to freaking Broadway.

  “So, let me get this straight. You want a wedding that will rival all weddings—”

  “I want them all, Nefertiti! All the weddings I planned and will plan. I want all of that, wrapped into one day. I want every color, every invitation, every fabric and dress and wedding cake,” she whispers, leaning down and closer to me so that Heath won’t hear. “I’m greedy, Tee. And tacky, and Adonis will have a conniption if he sees everything I’ve planned out in my scrapbook.”

  Adonis, her fiancé and one of the coolest men I know, is a loving man who would do just about anything for Cleo. Except throw a tacky party. The man’s closet is jam-packed with clothes that he color codes, and he freaking accessorizes with the agility and style of a designer. He’s vain—admittedly—and he’s seven kinds of unimpressed that Cleo keeps buying what he calls “pest-infested secondhand clothes” in colors that…well, let’s just say that she makes Willy Wonka look conservative. Today, for example, she’s wearing those olive and pink overalls over a neon orange tee that has a hole in the left sleeve.

  I’ll bet Adonis shit a brick when he saw her.

  “Show me,” I tell her, groaning silently when she jumps down and scuttles off towards her bedroom, only to come back a moment later, moaning under the weight of a book that is so big and full of…stuff that Heath jumps forward to take it from her.

  When he sets it on the counter and doesn’t immediately leave again, Cleo huffs and rolls her eyes.

  “You men are so nosy!”

  “So? You women are bitchy. We’re even. Now, what the hell is this thing?” Heath asks, his eyeballs bugging out comically when I lose patience and flip it open to the first page.

  And then my own eyeballs bug out, because it isn’t a book at all, and by the time Heath and I have the massive sheet of poster board unfolded and taking up the entire kitchen island, I’m spellbound. And not in a good way. Cleo has her whole wedding planned out here, on one huge dream board that is filled, and I mean filled, with stuff. The board is orange—what little I can see of it, that is, and that isn’t covered in…

  “Sweet Jesus in heaven,” Heath breathes, meeting my eye before we both turn shocked gazes on Cleo.

  She titters guiltily and bites into her lip, her face turning a little green as she looks down at the board and sees…chaos. That’s the only word that I can use to describe what she’s got attached all over this thing. And circus. Definitely circus, because everything in here is…

  “You have every color imaginable on this,” I whisper, my mouth gaping open when I see elephants pasted at the edge, with a bride and groom on top.

  Sweet Jesus. Adonis is going to freak, because, and I say this with so much certainty that I feel my pits break out in a sweat for the man, I don’t think that Cleo will get hitched, ever, unless her greedy little heart has this exact wedding. This grotesque, disgusting eyesore of a wedding.

  “I—I mean, I tried to narrow it down, okay? But then I’d pick colors and change my mind, and then I didn’t like that the tables were so bare, and—and the cakes were all so good. All of them, so that I couldn’t
bear to think of having just one, and…God, Tee! He’s going to run a mile if he sees this. That’s why I’ve been trying to see the therapist, to talk to her about…helping me give this up,” she whispers, her tone imparting the truth as if it’s some big, dark, intolerable secret.

  Right about now, I’d agree, because wow, I am so not fucking wearing that bridesmaid dress, and when I say that, picture Joseph’s Technicolor dreamcoat fashioned into a Victorian-style dress with a fucking poof at the back!

  Not wearing that shit.

  Heath clears his throat and gives me a look, one I’ve seen enough times that I play my part, hug Cleo, and steer her away from the “dream board” that’s more like Adonis’s worst nightmare—I mean, her guest list is six hundred strong, for God’s sake!

  “You’ve, uh, given this a lot of thought. I always thought that you were afraid of commitment,” I say softly, peeking over my shoulder at Heath, who’s snapping pictures while wincing and shaking his head. “Did you start this in high school?”

  “Noooo! Seven months ago, after the third, fourth, whatever failed attempt. Alex, that rat bastard bitch, suggested that I drink a lot of booze, half-pass out, and concentrate solely on thinking about why I didn’t want to get married, and it hit me…I do. I really, really do, Tee. I want to marry Adonis because I love him, and I’d kill him if he ever left me for some other skank. I just—I want it to be everything!” she whines theatrically, her dramatic tone making me grin and roll my eyes as I lower her to the couch and sit down opposite her.

  “You know that you could just tell Adonis. Right?” I ask gently, stifling a laugh when she bangs her head back into the cushions and groans.

  “He’d have a fit. Have you seen his freaking closet? And his office? And his cars? The man is a style icon. He’s vain to a fault, and he’s unashamed about how superficial he is. He’s begged me, yelled at me, and then just dropped the whole wedding thing, but every single time we’ve made a go at it, he’s said one thing, Nefertiti. Classy. That’s his only condition,” she screams, waving offhandedly at the kitchen island and the nightmare she’s unleashed there. “That is not classy. That is a mix between the Vegas strip, a bordello, and P.T. Barnum’s wet dream!”