“All right, then,” I said, backing away from these two before I had to witness any more. I held up the mug. “Gift from my dad.”
“Wow,” Lila said in a monotone. “How thoughtful.”
“Lila,” Tess hissed. To me, she added, “Thank you for this. And tell your father thank you. He’s been so great to us.”
“You paid him for six months,” Lila reminded her. “Why wouldn’t he be great to us?”
I stared at Lila at a loss for words. Her answering glare was filled with challenge. Jeez, what had I ever done to this girl?
Without breaking eye contact, I addressed Tess. “Is your sister always so personable?”
Tess gave a snort of laughter. “This is one of her good days.”
Lila rolled her eyes again, and just like that, I was freed from her challenging look.
“Yeah, well, if you guys don’t need me here—” I started
“Wait,” Lila said, straightening in the doorway. “Are you going to do anything about this smell?”
“Lila,” Tess answered. “I told you, it’s just some mothballs. I’ll take care of it.”
Lila crossed her arms. “We just paid six months’ worth of rent for what will likely be a week’s stay—”
“You don’t know that,” Tess interrupted.
Lila ignored her as she faced me with that haughty look that made me want to...
Kiss her.
No, not kiss her. Well, maybe kiss her. She was gorgeous, there was no denying that, and it would be gratifying in the extreme to see some of that spoiled rich girl haughtiness replaced by dazed passion.
But there was no way in hell I’d be the guy to kiss her. She’d probably stab me in the heart with those stilettos if I tried.
Besides, her words were just starting to register. “What do you mean this is only for a week?”
Tess rushed to step in front of me, as if to keep her sister from replying. Probably worried that her sister would say something embarrassingly rude… again. “We don’t know how long we’ll be here.”
“Oh, please,” Lila said. “Have a little faith. You might not think I’m much of a sister or a daughter or a human being, for that matter, but even you have to admit that I’ve got a way of getting what I want.”
Tess gave a short laugh. “Yeah, because you’re a spoiled brat.”
Lila made a tsking noise. “Now, now. No need to be jealous, Tess. Daddy loves us both equally… even if he does treat me better.”
I watched this little sibling squabble with equal parts revulsion and fascination. For all their toxic words, there was little heat. Almost like this was the norm for them. For all I knew, it was. I shook my head, ready to make my escape again. Let these psychos figure out their own shower handle.
But Lila had other ideas. Her eyes trained on me, and I saw this shift in her. She went… soft. I didn’t know how else to put it. Her shoulders sank down, and she tilted her chin. Her lips softened from that incessant sneer to a luscious pout, and her eyes…
Oh man, those eyes.
I suddenly and profoundly understood the meaning of the term “bedroom eyes.” Her gaze locked on mine and it was filled with promise. When she started moving toward me, I froze. Every muscle went rigid with desire as she sashayed in those heels, her tongue flicking out to wet her pouty lips as her blue eyes kept this eye contact that went beyond intimate to something else entirely.
We could have been the only ones in the kitchen.
We could have been the only people on the planet.
When she was close enough that I could reach out and drag her into my arms, she stopped. That breathy, low voice of hers seemed to melt over me. “See, Jack? You’d give me what I need, wouldn’t you?”
Yes. I would give this girl anything she asked if she kept looking at me like that, if she kept coming closer, if she leaned forward and whispered in my ear. My blood was on fire, and lust had me in its grips. I found myself staring at those lips—pink, puffy, soft, and covered in lipgloss. What would they taste like?
When I glanced up and met her gaze again, the fire was doused just as abruptly as it had ignited. Her eyes were filled with laughter at my expense. Her gaze was filled with cruel mockery and a conceit that made me burn in a whole other way.
This time, it was the burn of humiliation.
“See, Tess?” she said to her sister, her eyes still locked on mine. “I’ll have us out of this hellhole and back to civilization in no time.”
She’d called my home a hellhole.
Hellhole?
Who did Lila Baker think she was?
I slammed a paint can down and reached for another from the back office where the surplus products were kept.
“How’d it go upstairs?” my dad asked from behind me.
“Great. Just great,” I muttered. I didn’t have the heart to tell my father the things that girl said. We might not have had a lot of money, but we did our best to make the upstairs apartment clean and functional.
It was where my father’s parents used to live, and where he’d grown up before he and my mom bought a house a few blocks away. How could I tell him that his precious new tenant thought it was Hell on Earth?
“How long are they staying here?” I asked, my mind replaying that bizarre conversation between the sisters.
My father shrugged. “They weren’t sure, and I didn’t want to pry.”
“Why not?”
He shrugged again, his smile apologetic. “It seems like a sorry situation, don’t you think? The fact that those two are here on their own, uncertain of their future. I mean, that poor girl you met today will be starting her senior year at a new school with no family or friends around.”
He shook his head as if the thought pained him. Leave it to my dad to somehow make the ice queen pitiable.
My father’s gaze turned thoughtful. “She seemed sad to me.” He glanced at me. “Did she seem sad to you?”
I thought back to her snide comments to her sister and then to that unexpected little seductress routine. I cleared my throat. “Sad wasn’t the vibe I got.”
He nodded, but he didn’t seem to hear me. “That girl needs a friend.”
I stared at him in horror because I knew what was coming. “No. No way.”
Dad held his hands up in defense. “I didn’t say anything.”
I gave him a knowing look.
“Okay, fine. Maybe it would be nice if you showed her around, introduced her to some of your friends…”
I shook my head. “No way.”
His silence was telling. My father wasn’t one to scream and shout, but his quiet disapproval could be felt for miles.
I held back a groan. The next thing coming would be, “What would your mother say?”
The only thing worse than quiet disapproval was calling upon the judgement of my saintly mother. My saintly dead mother.
“Those two girls are sitting up there in that bare-bones apartment,” he continued with another shake of his head.
It was his use of the word ‘two’ that gave me pause. Lila-the-diva wasn’t the only Baker girl up there, and Tess had actually seemed nice. Normal, even.
Just because her sister was a witch didn’t mean she should pay.
It was the thought of Tess up there all alone with the manipulative blonde sister that had me caving. “Okay, fine. I’ll go up there before I head out to the lake.”
My father beamed and clapped me on the shoulder. “That’s my boy.”
I nodded. Yeah, yeah.
A little while later after stocking the paint shelf, I did as I’d said. Tess opened the door upstairs, thankfully, and her eyes widened in surprise at the sight of me. “Jack, what are you doing here?”
I shoved my hands in my pockets. “I’m headed to a party at the lake—just an end-of-summer thing. I thought maybe you might want to come?”
She bit her lip, her brown eyes clouded with indecision behind her glasses as she fidgeted with the long sleeves of her shirt. “Oh,
um. That’s really nice of you, but I don’t think—”
“Everyone will be there.” I added that in quickly because holy crap, what if she thought I was asking her on a date? That was exactly what I didn’t need.
She stopped her fidgeting, her eyes flickering up to meet mine. “Everyone?”
I shrugged. “Yeah, most of the seniors from Pinedale High, at least.” From the sounds of it, Amber had invited the whole school. If it wasn’t for her last text, “Brandon won’t go unless you go,” I wouldn’t have been going at all.
But if I had to go—and let’s face it, Amber’s text had been friend-guilt at its finest—then at the very least I ought to use the party to help this nice girl escape her horrid sister, right?
Tess blinked at me, the effect owlish thanks to those coke-bottle lenses. She shoved them up her nose and sniffed. “Hang on just one second, okay?”
She ran off into one of the two bedrooms and shut the door behind her with a quiet click. Well, okay then. I took another step into the living room and looked around.
Oh crap, my dad was right. This was sad—everything about it.
The furnishing was sparse, but it wasn’t just that. It was how few boxes there were sitting around, how little effort had been put into unpacking and making this a home. Not a picture to be seen—though granted, they’d only been here for a few hours.
Even so, there was something incredibly desolate about the scene around me, like this was a home without a heart.
The same door snapped open, but instead of Tess, it was Lila standing in the doorway, one arm resting against the door frame above her head like she was posing for a photo shoot.
And she should have been.
My mouth watered at the sight of her—all perfect curves and graceful lines. A crazy, heady combination of seduction and innocence in short shorts and a tiny top that revealed a sliver of her flat stomach.
Her smile was wide and sunny, almost like she hadn’t been a diva earlier or tried to seduce me to prove some point to her sister. “Thanks for inviting me, Jack. I’d love to go.”
Four
Lila
Jack wasn’t happy about me going with him. Did I care? No. Of course not. I wasn’t here to make friends, and even if I were, I had more than enough guys looking down on me without adding one more to the roster, thank you very much.
He helped me into his truck. Yes, a truck. A beat-up, old red thing that looked like it should have been put out of its misery years ago.
His hand came to my waist as he helped me up. I will give him this—he had good hands. Solid. Warm. Just the right amount of rough callouses.
But there would be no more of that. I was a woman on a mission, and this guy was just a means to an end. When he got into the driver’s seat, I glanced over at his profile. Oh yeah, Mr. Judgy over here was pissed that I was tagging along. I knew very well he’d meant to bring Tess.
So did Tess.
But I was the one sent here to do a job. She was just here as Daddy’s spy. No doubt she’d already called to tell him that I was on my way to meet Brandon.
Hopefully.
If he wasn’t at this party, I was going to be so pissed. The last thing I wanted to do with my last days of freedom was go to some boring lake party and hang out with a bunch of hicks.
On cue, my phone dinged. Another photo from Siobhan and Evie, my besties. They were currently in Ibiza partying it up, which was exactly where I should be right now. I scowled down at their kissy faces mocking me from my phone.
Evie: Wish you were here!
Yeah, right. They were probably laughing it up at my expense right about now while they drank champagne on some billionaire’s yacht.
I knew this because that’s what I’d done last summer when Siobhan had been the one left out in the cold.
Of course, Siobhan had been on a family vacation in Tuscany last summer, which was why she’d had to miss out on our annual girls’ week. Hardly the same thing as having to miss out because one was stuck in… I looked around.
Nowhere. I was officially nowhere.
“Where are you taking me, exactly?”
He glanced over at me with arched brows. “Never seen trees before?”
Not this many. No. At some point, when I’d been stewing over my latest taunting text from my friends, he’d taken a side road off the main street and straight into the trees that lined the highway.
“This isn’t even a road,” I said.
“It’s a dirt road,” he said.
I shot him a look of disbelief as the truck bounced its way over what had to have been a tree trunk and a boulder. “Like I said, this isn’t a road.”
His lips hitched up on one side, and my breath got stuck somewhere between my lungs and my mouth, so I was temporarily speechless.
“Relax, Princess,” he said, turning his attention back to the questionable road. “I know where I’m going.”
I stiffened at his use of my nickname. “Don’t call me that.”
He shot me a look, and I caught the smirk that went with it.
Jerk.
After a tense silence, I let out a little squeak as the truck did another massive bounce over some rocks. When he shot me another look of amusement, I snapped. “Excuse me for being nervous about going into the middle of who knows where with some dumb hick I barely even know.”
Okay, perhaps that hadn’t been the right thing to say.
Diplomacy was never really my thing.
I saw his hands clench the steering wheel. “You didn’t have to come,” he muttered.
I turned to face him, clutching the edge of my seat. He faced me, and that only made me more nervous because good God, man, look at the freakin’ road!
He spoke slowly, seemingly unconcerned at the fact that we were driving through trees. “I said, you didn’t have to come.” He arched one brow. “In fact, you weren’t even invited.”
I opened my mouth and then clamped it shut. Of course I hadn’t been invited. Sweet, darling, mousy Tess had been invited. No doubt because she sparked pity wherever she went. Poor Tess. I held back a snort. Yeah, right.
Poor Tess held all the reins, and she knew it.
But not for long. Things would change once I was making the money, and once I had the power of fame to wield over her mousy head. Once I got a lead role on a hit TV show, she could go back to her world of business classes and nerdy frat guys, and my dad could finally start treating me with respect.
Win-win.
I gripped the edge of the truck’s bench seat as we careened over a ravine—at least that’s what it felt like.
All I had to do was find Brandon MacMillan and make him mine.
Five
Brandon
I always felt bad for any new kids who came to Pinedale, so when Jack pulled up and helped a hot blonde out of his truck, my first thought was to pity her. My second thought was holy freakin’ hell, where had Jack found this chick?
“Who’s this?” Amber asked, sidling up next to me.
I shrugged. “No idea.”
Amber tilted her head to the side. “She’s pretty.” She looked up at me. “Don’t you think?”
I met her gaze. Was this a trick question? There was no doubt about it. The girl was empirically hot. Like, super model hot.
And she was headed our way.
Most of the others from our group of friends were already lying out by the lake. The sun was out, the wind was down, and Amber had been right—this might be one of the last true tastes of summer we had left before school started and then winter set in.
Fall was so short in Montana, it didn’t even bother a mention.
For the blonde’s sake, I was glad she only had to meet me and Amber straight off. She should ease into this close-knit world she’d just been brought into, otherwise…
Well, I wouldn’t say she’d be thrown to the wolves. It wasn’t like Children of the Corn around here or anything. But like I’d said, this community was small and it was close-k
nit. Outsiders were outsiders, until they weren’t.
Luckily, I’d been born here, but even with a family name that went back generations, I’d had to go through a transition of my own. Even now, all these years later, I was referred to as that kid from California by some of the old folks in town.
So yeah, maybe there were reasons why I still didn’t feel like I totally fit in. But if I didn’t fit in, then this girl stood out like a circus clown.
“Hi.” Amber stepped forward first, stretching out a hand. “I’m Amber.”
The blonde’s answering smile wasn’t exactly fake, but it was about ten times less enthusiastic than Amber’s. Then her gaze flickered over to me, and everything about her shifted. Her smile grew, her eyes warmed, and something in her seemed to soften at the sight of me.
Wariness kicked in even as I matched her smile. “Brandon. Nice to meet you.”
“Lila,” she said. “And I know who you are.”
Whoa. The girl was Marilyn Monroe meets Grace Kelly—all seductive voice, killer body, and an air of untouchability that made you want to bow down at her feet.
Her words registered belatedly, and I felt a heat creeping up my neck—an embarrassment I hadn’t felt in ages.
For all my complaints about the small-town life in Pinedale, it did have its perks. And the fact that everyone was over my short-lived fame was one of those perks. No one mentioned my father other than to talk about what a great rancher he was, and not even the most annoying class clowns at my high school found it funny to mock my childhood career anymore.
My mom and I had achieved what we’d set out to do when we’d moved back here for good all those years ago.
We’d been forgotten.
But apparently, not by everyone. Definitely not by this outsider.
“You do?” I rubbed the back of my neck and glanced over at Jack, who watched this Lila girl closely, his eyes narrowed like he was wary she might pounce.
I took a small step back. Jack was one of the more laidback guys I knew—not exactly happy-go-lucky but unconcerned by what was going on around him. His role in this little world of ours was the smart aleck who watched it all from the sidelines. Usually with a smirk. He was a watcher. An uninvolved voyeur as he bided his time before getting out of town. He was also overly protective of me. Even when we were toddlers and my dad would bring me here for holidays and breaks in shooting, Jack had been my best friend. My protector. The closest thing I had to an older brother, even though we were nearly the same age.
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