But I knew her. I could sense it deep inside of her. She needed this as much as I did. She was so tamped down, the release would be so intense, so explosive. And it would happen, between us. It was only a matter of time.
Wednesday our parents arrived back from Baja. Surprise! They were going to throw a Bastille Day party that weekend. Of course, since neither of them were even remotely French. Made perfect sense.
Jewel showed up that night, not meeting my eye, all but camouflaging herself with the furniture. I guessed her mother had called her to tell her about the big celebration of French independence. Jewel had returned to be the dutiful daughter.
Candice fluttered around, in her element. She loved the planning, the arrangements, the chaos of pulling it all off in 48 hours. Manic, I realized. She must be fun when she swung the other way. I bet Jewel had had a real party growing up with that one.
“I’m going to need both of your help!” she declared to me and Jewel Friday night, her eyes wide and sparkling. “We have a whole team of people descending on us tomorrow. We’re going to all need to pitch in. And I’m going to be at the salon until five.”
I saw Jewel roll her eyes and I snorted down a laugh. Apparently “all” pitching in didn’t mean her. Classic.
“Isn’t this a riot?” Candice exclaimed, clasping her hands together.
“Do you even know what Bastille Day is?” Jewel asked.
“Oh, little Miss bookworm, I’m not going to let you spoil this for me.” Candice poked Jewel on her nose.
Those two couldn’t be more different. But I knew that was Jewel’s whole deal. She was terrified of becoming her mother. That’s why she hid her appearance, shunned men, stayed inside burying her nose in books. At every fork in the road growing up she’d probably asked herself, “What would my mother do?” And then she’d chosen the opposite.
Didn’t she realize that she’d never be like her mother? Jewel had more substance in her pinky fingernail than Candice had in that entire fluffy head of hers. But I got it. People in glass houses couldn’t throw stones. I knew about the all-consuming need to prove how different you were from your parent. I had a thing or two to say on that topic.
Saturday morning, Candice was in a state. I’d hit the gym early and came back at noon to witness a full-blown fit.
“It’s not fair!” she’d wailed out by the pool.
Jewel was standing next to her, patiently rubbing her back. I had the impression she’d done it before. “It’s going to be OK, Mom.”
“But how could they do this to me?”
“Everything all right?” I asked, stepping into the scene.
Candice wailed, “No! Nothing’s all right!”
Jewel looked up at me with a mixture of annoyance and resignation. “The florist has cancelled.”
Candice moaned as if she’d lost her entire family in an earthquake. Jewel and I met eyes and we both knew exactly what the other was thinking.
“I’m sure it’ll be fine, Candice,” I offered.
“It won’t be!” she cried. I wondered if she thought someone had called out ‘ready, set, action’ and started filming. She was clearly going for an Oscar with her performance.
“I’m not sure you heard her correctly.” Jewel looked at me, deadpan. “We’re here trying to commemorate the storming of a fortress that freed political prisoners and launched the abolition of feudalism. How are we supposed to do that without flowers?”
I spit out the water I’d been drinking. That girl had a mouth on her. But all that sarcasm sailed right over her mother’s head.
“I know,” Candice agreed. “It’s a disaster.” She sniffed. “Unless,” she looked up, tears streaming down her face, ready for her close up. “Unless you two can help.”
“What do you want, Mom?” Jewel had clearly been ready for this moment.
“Well.” Candice sniffed again dramatically, but bravely drew herself up, marshaling her strength. “The flowers are all going to be delivered at 2, but I have to be at the salon at 1. If you two could take the lead on setting out all the arrangements…”
“Wait, the flowers are going to be delivered at 2?” Jewel asked, confused. “I thought the florist cancelled?”
“Well, the flowers are still being delivered. But the florist I hired to decorate and arrange the poolside setting cancelled.”
That was what all this fuss was about? “I can move around some flowers,” I said.
“You can?” Candice rose up, joy glistening in her eyes. She was a real piece of work.
“We got it, Mom.” Jewel rolled her eyes again and headed back into the house. My guess was she could only take her mother in small doses. I got that.
“Two o’clock!” Candice called after her. “They’ll give you a diagram.”
§
The flower arrangements were no joke. Some stood almost as tall as me with huge reedy, spiky things sprouting out from giant pots. I needed a dolly.
“A little to the left.” Jewel had a map on a clipboard and was giving me directions. But she was having a hard time with it because she kept laughing. The plants were practically attacking me, leaves getting my eyes and mouth as I tried to wheel them around.
“What the hell is this shit?” I asked, trying to move my face to the side.
“It’s so perfect!” Jewel collapsed laughing. “They’re so hideous.”
I grunted, setting the pot down where I hoped it belonged. “She couldn’t have gone with regular flowers?”
“Candice always needs to make a splash.” We both stood and surveyed the monstrosity. It looked like crap someone had gathered from the woods after a large forest fire. I bet it had cost a fortune.
“Let’s go get fifteen more!” Jewel declared, turning around and marching over to the grand entrance of our Bel Air estate. It had a wide, circular driveway, the kind designed to accommodate a few hundred party guests and the required valets. The delivery vans had left all of the floral arrangements out front. I’d figured some others would pitch in, Candice had a full staff here setting things up, but everyone seemed to have their marching orders complete with an army-commander style organizer barking instructions through a microphone attached to a headset. She clearly didn’t realize Jewel and I as Family of the Manor. She started giving us orders, too, telling us to pick up the pace and get this place organized like it was a matter of life and death.
I’d seen this kind of shit before, many, many times growing up, but it had always seemed stupid to me. My father always found women who ate it up, though, eager to throw his money around on lavish parties. And I guessed I couldn’t get too high up on my horse. I’d made the most of plenty of them, open bar, girls looking for a good time. I’d always been happy to oblige.
I knew I could blow this off. I didn’t have to do any manual labor for my new crazy stepmother. But Jewel was another story. I wanted to spend some time with her. So I put my shoulder to the wheel and hauled those arrangements to the back, one after another, Jewel bossing me around. She’d tell me to move it over an inch, no over there, fucking with me. I let her do it, let her think she was in charge. I liked watching her move, let her walk in front of me as we headed to the front entrance. Her ass in yoga pants was a thing of beauty. I could watch that TV channel for hours, the way her hips swayed, the soft swell of her ass cheeks, perfectly round and inviting for a bite.
Once we moved on to the smaller arrangements, I decided it was time to strip down. The L.A. sun was out as usual, temp hitting the high 80s, and I’d worked up a sweat. The t-shirt came off.
I stood next to Jewel as I did it and took my time peeling it off. I wanted her to take a good, long look. Sure enough, after I balled it up and tossed it onto a nearby bench, when I checked back in she was staring at me just the way I liked, mouth slightly parted, eyes a bit glazed.
“You can touch, you know. You don’t have to just look.” I flexed one of my biceps to tease her and was rewarded with her eyes growing bigger as she bit down on her lip.
But she tore her gaze away. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she chided me, but her voice sounded a little breathless.
“Are you going to send me to detention?”
“What?”
“You sound like a school teacher. You need to loosen up, relax, live a little.”
She rolled her eyes. “Says the guy who’s never done anything but party.”
“I used to be that way. Not anymore.”
She paused, looking at me with those searching green eyes. “You have been working hard this summer.”
“You think?” I’d done nothing but work hard, morning, noon and night, training my body and mind. No booze, no drugs, no sex, not even any late nights. I sounded like Jewel.
We kept at it, moving flowers, checking each other out, bickering. I could feel the tension building between us like it always did.
“Can’t you put on a shirt?” she fumed, exasperated, as I stretched in front of her like a jungle cat.
“Why, is it bothering you?” I gave her a wicked grin, my thumb looped at the elastic waistband of my athletic shorts. So easy to ease down my hips. Her eyes tracked down to my thumb and I could almost feel her thinking the same thing.
But she whispered, “No.”
“Then don’t worry about it.”
The caterers arrived and set up shop, building four separate serving stations. A couple of the waitresses were eyeing me and I winked at them. Jewel gave a disgusted groan.
“Jealous?” I asked.
“As if.”
“You don’t want me looking at other girls. But you’ve barely been home all week.” I toted yet another arrangement toward the pool deck. “Who’d you stay with?” I finally asked the question I’d had on my mind. I didn’t want it to be Mike.
“Why do you want to know?” she threw back, cagey.
“Were you with another guy?”
She huffed with exasperation. “Like you’re not sleeping around with those… ring girls.” She spat out the words.
I eased down a vase of flowers and turned to her, stepping close so I could look straight in her eyes. “I haven’t been with anyone all summer.”
She looked down and fidgeted with the clipboard like she didn’t know what to do with her fingers. I’d give her something to do. Her t-shirt clung to her breasts, molding around her feminine curves and swells. I could smell her, standing close, and it practically made me feel drunk.
“I was at my friend Maria’s,” she whispered.
Murmuring low, I told her, “there's only one girl I'm interested in.”
“Hey there!” One of the waitresses came over to flirt. She smiled up at me, oblivious to the fact that she was interrupting. “It’s so hot out.” She fanned herself and openly admired my bare chest, glistening in the sunlight. “I thought you might want something to cool off.” She held up a Popsicle.
I took it from her. “Thanks. Do you have one for Jewel, too?”
Her face fell and she flicked a nasty look toward her competition. “Yeah, sure.” She turned to go get one.
I turned my attention back to Jewel. It hadn’t really ever left, and her eyes still searched me, riveted. “Why have you stopped partying, Tuck?” She looked like she was desperate to get to know me better. I hadn’t felt that too much before. A lot of girls were desperate to get with me, hang with my father’s fortune or bag a hot new MMA champ. But I hadn’t met too many who really wanted to get to know me.
“I’m training to be a pro fighter. I have to take that seriously.”
She nodded, her green eyes taking me in, seeming to understand more than I was saying.
“And I needed to make some changes,” I added. “Someone once told me I was a spoiled rich daddy's boy.”
She flushed, tilting her head down at the memory. She had been harsh.
“I needed to hear it,” I reassured her.
The waitress brought Jewel a Popsicle, practically shoving it into her hands.
“Thanks,” Jewel said to her back as she’d already left.
In the hot July sun, our pops began melting almost instantly. We started in on them, licking and sucking. A trickle of red juice dribbled down Jewel’s chin.
“Here, you’ve got—” I reached out with a finger and swiped her skin, then brought the sweet juice to my tongue. Her gaze fixed on my mouth, watching me suck. Nearly in a trance, she brought out her tongue and licked, sucking gently with a look in her eyes that got me instantly hard. She wasn’t thinking about that pop any more. She was thinking about licking and sucking me. I watched her take the Popsicle into her mouth, swirl her tongue around it, then draw it in between her perfect pink lips. Her eyes burned me with heat and more juice traveled down at the corner of her mouth.
“Let me,” I murmured, leaning down and bringing my tongue to her sweetness. Slow and deliberate, I licked at the corner of her mouth. Her lips parted instantly, inviting mine.
“Yo! Flowers!” The Commander barked at us. “Keep it moving! There’s more to go!” We broke apart, panting. For now. But that night, I’d come back for more.
CHAPTER 17
Jewel
The whisper-weight, slippery silk of the dress hugged my skin, melting along every curve. I’d taken a long, hot bath earlier that evening using salts and rubbing my skin in leisurely circles with a loofah. Now it felt soft and inviting to the touch.
I'd never worn anything like this dress before. There wasn't much to it, just a simple tie at the top. Backless, it dipped down low along the small of my back. A light band of silk stretched across my rear, then ended shortly after to reveal my long legs up to mid-thigh. The front had a V, dipping low, revealing cleavage even though I wore no bra.
I’d bought the dress on a whim and still couldn’t fully believe I’d done it, or that I honestly planned to wear it out tonight, in public, to the party. That afternoon I’d careened wildly down the freeway on the hunt for something to wear. Thanks to my mother, I knew exactly where to go. The boutique wasn't cheap, but their killer inventory plus a credit card did the trick. I clearly wasn’t the first woman in L.A. who’d showed up in their shop late on a Saturday afternoon, frantically needing to look just right for a party that night. The salespeople knew how to hook me up. They even had a salon next door, how’s that for planning?
On impulse, I ducked in. The dress left nothing to the imagination. I knew I couldn’t wear my usual granny panties, so I’d bought a lacy whisper of a thong. Twenty minutes later I walked out of the salon, feeling naughty and somewhat shocked at what I’d done yet again. I’d gone completely bare.
Who was this woman before me in the mirror, the bombshell with the killer curves and red hair? It must be the same sexpot who’d given a blowjob to a Popsicle earlier that day. What the fuck was wrong with me? I was acting crazy, as if I were in heat, completely worked up and desperate for Tuck, his hands, his lips, his body.
I slipped into some high-heeled sandals, also new that day, and decided to twist my hair up into a jeweled clip. I let a few tendrils artfully escape down to my bare shoulders. I could imagine Tuck reaching up and undoing it, unbinding my hair and untying my dress.
But I looked in the mirror and promised myself I wouldn't let anything happen between us tonight. I wouldn't let him touch me. And I’d keep away from all popsicles. Maybe I could find a cute guy to talk to? That would occupy my time.
Plus, bonus, it might make Tuck jealous. A wicked smile crept across my face. I wanted him to want. I had to watch girls drool all over him all the time. Those waitresses today had practically jumped him right in front of me. Maybe it was time for a little payback? Tonight, I wanted him to drool over me. I'd never felt this kind of power before. I’d tamped it down, frightened of what it could do, but tonight I wanted to let it out. I wanted to torture him the way he tortured me, let him yearn and look but not touch.
I knew I was acting crazy. Earlier that week I’d run away to Maria’s, crashing on her couch to avoid even seeing him. Thankfully she had a million
roommates and no one even seemed to notice I was there. But now here I was, fantasizing about making him want me, hoping he’d lose his mind over seeing me in this dress. I see-sawed back and forth, teetering hot and cold, right in the middle, four weeks into the summer, four weeks left to go. I didn’t know what would happen next.
Downstairs, when my mom saw me she squealed. "You look so pretty!" I smiled, if a little rueful. She’d waited twenty long years to say that to me.
"I went to that boutique on Robertson. The one you showed me."
"You did!?" She gasped and looked at me with light shining in her eyes. "Oh, Jewel! Let's go shopping together!"
My poor mom, she seemed like she’d been dying to ask me that question. I must have disappointed her so many times. I’d never really thought of things from her perspective. I wondered if sometimes she felt like I shut her out.
But just as I was about to suggest “how about tomorrow?” she was off again greeting some guests. There went our moment of mother/daughter bonding. Time to network!
But I didn’t stand around playing my tiny violin of self-pity for long. It was hard to do that when you felt like a princess at the ball. Everyone smiled at me. Waiters came up to offer me champagne. Gone was the invisible nerd I always felt like, and in her place stood a siren.
A movie-star-handsome guy in a tuxedo sauntered over to me.
"Where have you been all my life, beautiful?" he asked, charm dripping off of him with his blond hair, blue eyes and a cleft in his chin.
I threw back my head and laughed. "Does that line actually work?"
He laughed. "I don't know. You tell me. How am I doing?"
I smiled at him. He was pretty cute in a sunny sort of way. Nothing compared to the sexy dark storm clouds that raged around Tuck. But still, what did that 70s rock song say? If you can’t be with the one you love, honey, love the one you’re with.
He chatted me up, amiable and engaging, asking me where I went to school and how long I’d done yoga. He went to school at USC, which shocked me…not. It seemed like the magnet school for every rich kid in L.A. This guy screamed rich kid, which normally annoyed me but he was pretty good at making me feel like everything I said was enchanting and hilarious. And I couldn't help but notice the way his eyes kept flickering over my body, admiring me.
Off Limits: A Stepbrother MMA Romance Page 15