Unbound (The Men of West Beach Book 2)

by Kimberly Derting

  Just having the conversation about sex had made me hot.

  “You know . . .” She put her hand on mine. “That night I was coming out of Lucas’s house . . . ,” her face screwed up painfully as her teeth gnawed at her bottom lip, “ . . . he wasn’t there.” She stared at me, waiting for my response. She looked like a little girl about to burst into tears any second.

  “Uh, yeah, I know,” I said, stopping her before the waterworks could start. No way did I want this turning into one of those girl-cry things. “He told me he lent you his key.”

  But her watery confessions didn’t end there. “But I wanted you to think he was. When you saw me, coming out and doing up my buttons, I’d been in there with Zane. I was unloading on him. Telling him what a terrible day I’d had, and he offered to split a beer with me. I spilled it all over my blouse. He was such a gentleman, helping me clean up. But then, when I was leaving, and you were there, I tried to make it seem like . . . you know . . . that Lucas and I had just . . .” She was rambling, and when she caught herself she took a breath and refocused. “The truth is, Lucas never really wanted me. We were a good match on paper, at least our parents thought so, but that was about it. He was being sincere when he said he ended things with me. I was just too finking dense to accept it. I thought if I could hang on a little longer, he’d realize what a mistake he made.” Her eyes welled again and she sniffled ungracefully. “She still doesn’t know, his mother. He was worried the gala would stir up feelings about Adam, so he wanted to wait to break the news to her.” She wiped her nose on one of the rough paper napkins. “She suspects though. That was why she called the whole thing off. She’s punishing him.”

  That woman, she really was a piece of work. She’d already lost one son, was she really willing to lose another to try to bend him to her will?

  I swallowed my distaste at the idea. “Can we just change the subject?” I slid a slice of pizza her way. “You should eat something. It’s never a good idea to drink on an empty stomach.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m so—” She didn’t finish. She picked at a piece of pepperoni, but didn’t actually put it in her mouth. “Can I tell you something else?”

  “You probably shouldn’t. No. It’s probably a bad idea.”

  And then she did anyway. “Your brother, Seth . . . he makes me tingle.” Her eyes looked down meaningfully at her own lap and her voice lowered to a whisper. “Down there.”

  So.

  Fucking.

  Gross.

  I searched for something sharp I could lobotomize myself with.

  “That’s enough sharing for one day.” I started stuffing pizza down her throat. Not literally, of course. But I managed to convince her it was a bad idea to work on an empty stomach.

  Once she choked down several pieces, the giggling (and the brain-stabbing confessions) came to an end. Thank God.

  That’s when we finally rolled up our sleeves and started going through the files and the plans for the gala, one detail at a time. It was painful to see how much work she and Lucas had put into it, only to have his mother pull the plug by canceling the deposits. She wasn’t just an ice queen she was a superbitch.

  But that was a matter for another day.

  For now, we had to figure out if any of it could be salvaged. If we could fix the mess she’d left in her wake. Not start from scratch, necessarily—we could still work with a lot of what Lucas and Aster had done. The foundation was solid.

  We just needed to fix the framework.

  We . . . meaning Aster and me. Working together. As a team.

  It was a bitter pill to swallow.

  I wondered for the millionth time, why I was even doing this. I mean, sure the whole “I had a dream” thing. I kept telling myself I was trying to be a better person now that I was working with Lauren at the rec center. That I was doing this for Lucas, because I’d witnessed the way his voice changed when he talked about his brother and the foundation. How he wanted to do something good with his life.

  But as much as I wanted it to be about my new do-gooder-y nature, it was more than that. The truth was, when I’d seen him that night outside his place and he’d told me the gala was off, it had sparked something in me. Something determined. That competitive streak in me had been rekindled. I couldn’t let his mother get away with destroying everything he’d worked for.

  “So?” I asked Aster, holding my hand out to her expectantly. “What do you say? You think we can pull this thing off?”

  She had every reason to be distrustful. A week ago she was the last person I would have considered partnering with.

  Ultimately though, she gave in and stuck her hand in mine. I didn’t point out that her handshake needed work—shaking hands with her was like holding a dead fish. But mentioning that would probably start us out on the wrong foot.

  We were already on pretty thin ice as it was.

  EMERSON

  Planning a gala was no picnic.

  I spent my days in my cubicle, crunching numbers for the rec center and filling out applications for grant money, and just generally social media-ing the shit out of every available platform to gain as much exposure as possible for the nonprofit.

  But that was the easy part.

  After I clocked out each night, the real work began.

  Aster, it turned out, wasn’t half bad as an accomplice. Now that we weren’t locked in a bitter rivalry over Lucas, I could see glimpses of her potential. Occasionally, I might even (reluctantly) admit that I liked her.

  Occasionally.

  Mostly though, she was a hard worker. As much as I’d once believed she was in this whole gala thing just to stay close to Lucas, I was starting to suspect we had more in common than I first realized. Much like the rec center for me, the gala seemed to have given Aster purpose. From the moment I’d met Aster, I guessed she came from money, but after working with her, I realized “money” didn’t begin to describe her upbringing.

  Aster’s family was richer’n Croesus—another Grann-ism. Apparently her family had their fingers in just about every pie, from oil to real estate to technologies. And because she’d grown up with every advantage, with nannies and chauffeurs and private tutors, even personal hairstylists, no one had ever expected anything from Aster except to shop and be pretty. Not exactly life goals for a girl with a decent head on her shoulders.

  Once Lucas had enlisted her help, Aster discovered she had a knack for this. Not just a knack, but that she enjoyed the feeling it gave her.

  Dare I say it? Giving back may have given Aster the warm fuzzies the way it had me.

  I asked Aster once, when we were three beers in again, why, if she was so loaded, she didn’t just put the deposits for the gala on her own credit cards. But apparently I’d hit a nerve.

  “My allowance isn’t meant to cover such expenditures,” she answered through tight lips.

  She didn’t elaborate, and the pinched expression on her face told me not to press it.

  The way I figured, her allowance could be spent on shoes and purses that cost as much as my new car, but not on charity fundraisers. Nice. Her parents struck me as being about as cuddly as Lady MacBitch.

  Theoretically, the plan we’d come up with was relatively simple. Logistically, however, it would require some world-class juggling skills.

  Thanks to some new connections I’d made, I had the food and the venue in the bag. And Aster, it turned out, was something of a savant when it came to securing the necessary permits and licenses. We’d had to come up with our own waitstaff, but that too turned out to be a nonissue. I offered to handle that one.

  The DJ was still on board, since, as I learned, Raphael Donestro was Lucas’s cousin. The Raphael Donestro. When I asked Aster why Lucas hadn’t bothered to mention the fact he was related to Raphael Donestro before, she said it was complicated.

  Made sense—with Lucas, everything was complicated.

  She explained that Lucas, Adam, and their cousin, Raphael had been thick as thieves . . . r
ight up until Adam died. Lucas had shut everyone out, even his closest friends, Raph included.

  Raph called bull doody—Aster’s term, not his—and refused to be ignored. He knew Lucas would come around eventually. So when Aster had asked him to DJ the gala, he’d jumped at the chance.

  That left us with just booze, flowers, and the matter of our silent auction.

  An open bar would have been perfect, if money were no object. But since money was a huge object, we scrapped that idea right off the bat. A cash bar it was. Thankfully, we happened to know someone who worked at a bar, and Zane scored us a meeting with the owners of The Dunes.

  Flowers were another matter completely. Who knew flowers were so finking expensive? Florists, that’s who. Because florists, at least in LA, were making a killing. Maybe they watered their flowers with diamond dust or the blood of virgins. Either way, Aster and I had practically given ourselves arthritis dialing every number in town, hoping to find one single shop willing to cut their rates for a worthy cause.

  But so far we’d come up empty handed. Nada. Zip. Zero. Zilch.

  That was okay, though. We’d just have to get creative. We could do this. Aster and I were smart, independent women. If anyone could pull this off, we could.

  That, or someone had just slipped some Ecstasy in my drink.

  “Where are we with auction items?” Aster asked, tapping the end of her pen against her lips after she crossed yet another name off her list.

  The event was a ticketed affair. In fact, they’d already sold out of the nearly five hundred tickets they’d been planning for. But the bulk of the money would really be raised from the silent auction. So far, we’d been able to reach most of the people who’d already agreed to contribute. But clearly Lady MacBitch had also been calling around, because at least half the donors had backed out.

  “Let me handle that,” I said, not entirely stoked about the favor I would have to call in, but I’d do it for the sake of the gala. For Lucas and for the memory of his brother.

  And to prove I could handle this.

  I braced myself, downing the last of my drink as I snatched up my phone and got up from the table. I found a quiet corner so I could swallow my pride away from Aster’s inquisitive ears.

  She had her demons and I had mine.

  The good thing about working so many long hours was that there was no time left in my days to think about Lucas Harper.

  Not one spare minute to dwell on the fact he was right next door. Doing things like stripping out of his clothes. Showering. Lying in his bed.

  Lucas, who I never had a single moment to think about.

  Who almost never made his way into my thoughts.

  Except every once in a while . . . like when I changed my clothes. Or showered. Or was lying all alone in my bed.

  Or, you know, when I breathed.

  It was ridiculous how he managed to find his way into every spare recess of my brain. How he filled every split second of free time I had.

  Aster had already admitted she’d only been at his house that night on an errand, and that was what I’d witnessed when I’d come home from Dallas. Maybe the problem had never been Lucas at all. Maybe I’d been looking for excuses the whole time. Reasons things could never, would never, work out between us so that when I left I wouldn’t have to feel . . . anything. No sadness. No guilt. I wouldn’t have to worry I’d made the wrong decision.

  But the truth was, this whole thing had to end sometime. I guess the real misunderstanding was over what we were—what we could ever be—to each other. Aster showing up on his doorstep that night had just forced me to rip off the Band-Aid sooner rather than later.

  Still . . . living next door to him these past weeks and not being able to do anything to scratch my ever-increasing itch for him was killing me.

  As I lay in bed, trying to shut my brain down for the night, the shrill screeches of laughter pierced the darkness. I waited for them to fade to nothing again, as they inevitably would.

  But not this time. This time, a girl’s voice cried out, “Lucas!” and I flinched, a cold tingling spreading through my chest.

  I was off the bed like a shot.

  There was nothing creepy about going to investigate a strange sound coming from outside your bedroom window, right? I was a single girl who lived by herself, there was no such thing as being too cautious. I had to make sure there was no funny business going on out there.

  But I was wrong, there was funny business, all right.

  Lucas and Zane were easy enough to spot—even their shadows had muscles. But it was the two girls with them who really caught my attention, one for each of them if I did the math right, and those were pretty hard numbers to screw up.

  I wanted to stab my eyes out.

  It was easy to see which lucky lady Zane had called dibs on because, as Grann would say, she was clinging to him like shit on a shovel. That is, if shit wore glitter hairspray and a leather mini skirt. Zane didn’t seem to mind, though. He had his tongue buried so far in the girl’s ear it looked like he was trying to taste her brain. For her part, the girl was squealing and begging for more.

  I couldn’t give a shit about Zane. It was Lucas I couldn’t keep my eyes off of. Lucas, who might not be quite at the brain-eating stage yet, but who wasn’t exactly an unwilling participant in this party for four.

  The other girl had definitely laid her claim on Lucas, and she was pulling out all the stops to keep his attention on her.

  She stumbled dramatically, a girl trick designed to convey that she was either too tipsy or too klutzy to walk without the aid of a big strong man. I rolled my eyes, wondering what dusty dating manual she’d pulled that one from.

  But Lucas fell for it, hook, line, and sinker, and offered his arm to support his teetering lady friend.

  Then the girl leaned super close and whispered something in his ear. Whatever it was, it was either really good—or really, really bad—because a wicked smile broke out over Lucas’s face. He said something back to her that made her laugh again and she fake batted her hand at him. She wasn’t fooling me with her coy act, though. She didn’t want him to leave her alone; she was exactly where she wanted to be.

  The possibility of me losing my lunch became very real.

  I couldn’t watch this, whatever weird mating ritual was unfolding in front of me. It was bad enough I couldn’t have him. I didn’t want to torture myself by watching someone else throw herself at him.

  I was about to turn away when Lucas glanced my way. His dark gaze fastened on mine and I stayed there, finding it hard to breath under his scrutiny. Then, almost methodically, he leaned down to the girl, and he kissed her.

  The kiss was long and deep and passionate.

  It was exactly the way I remember being kissed by Lucas.

  Drop the curtain . . . drop the curtain . . .

  Drop the everlovin’ curtain!

  But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Not until Lucas broke off the kiss and stared back at me again.

  He said something else to the girl beside him and she laughed again, but all I could think was that Zane was unlocking the door. They were taking their party inside, to the place where Lucas and I had always done our partying.

  Finally, I let the curtain fall on the train wreck happening in my own front yard, so I wouldn’t have to watch anymore.

  Lucas was taking that girl home. To his bedroom probably.

  It shouldn’t matter because there was no Lucas and me. We weren’t now—and really had never been—a “we.” He was free to entertain whomever he wanted, whenever he wanted.

  But it did matter.

  A whole lot more than it should have.

  LUCAS

  I wasn’t in the mood to get my dick sucked.

  Not that I didn’t appreciate the offer—all three times this chick had made it. But this wasn’t the girl I wanted down on her knees.

  I ran both hands through my hair because, Jesus, what the fuck was wrong with me? I should be begging this
girl to suck me off. A BJ was a BJ—that was just plain Guy 101. Part of the handbook we all signed off on when we were in junior high. If Zane knew I was about to turn down the sweet piece of ass he’d tossed my way, he’d revoke my guy card. He’d fucking run me out of Dodge with a pitchfork. The dude was from Iowa. I think they still did that kind of thing there.

  Plus, right about now, I was pretty sure my balls were the size of Iowa. I could use the release.

  She wasn’t half bad . . . the girl, I mean.

  And she was willing as fuck.

  At the moment, I was drunk as shit, which made it a million times easier to ignore the fact she wasn’t Emerson.

  Emerson.

  Damn. Why the hell did I have to think of Em at a time like this?

  “What’s the matter?” The girl had prodded when we’d been in the backseat of Zane’s car, while her hand had been inching higher and higher on my thigh. Her idea of enticement.

  Since when did I need enticing?

  “Nothing,” I’d told her, doing my best to convince myself that was the truth. There was nothing wrong with me, I just need to get my head in the game. I’d leaned back against the seat, trying to appreciate the feel of her fingers so close to my dick. I’d reached out and cupped the back of her neck. It was all the encouragement I could manage, still not able to bring myself to kiss her.

  When her thumb had flicked out to run the length of my zipper, she’d mistaken my groan for one of pleasure.

  If only that had been the case. But the sensation was closer to disgust. I should’ve felt something. A pretty girl was this close to rubbing me off. It should have moved. It should have been standing at full fucking attention.

  Whiskey dick, I told myself, wanting to believe my own line of bullshit.

  “You like that?” she’d cooed triumphantly.

  Thankfully, the car had jerked to a stop then, saving me from having to lie again. When we’d all piled out and I led her up the walkway, she’d laid it on pretty thick—the whole needing me for support act. I’d played my part, though, letting her shamelessly paw all over me.