Off-Limits Box Set

by Ella James

  “Wish it was that easy for everybody,” says the one who’s helping us hold baby.

  “Well, now, I’d say it’s a full moon, but I think it’s not,” says a blonde in a white coat, as she strolls in. “How’re you feeling, Mama?”

  “I don’t know.” Marley starts crying.

  “You’re some kind of champion,” the doctor says, and I agree: “She is.”

  The one named Holley laughs. “Baby’s rooting right off.”

  “I say just let him do it,” says the woman in the white coat. “Both of their oxygen saturation’s good.” I frown, confused, and someone points to something on the baby’s foot.

  “Well, Mama,” the doctor says after a moment underneath the blanket that’s covering Marley. She spreads it back down. “You seem like you’re doing pretty well. I’ll get you painkillers if you think you need them.”

  “No…” I look at Marley, and I realize she’s feeding our baby. She beams. “Not right now.”

  The doctor laughs. “I’d say you just had the ideal birth—except the hall part. Based on labor and delivery logic, this must mean you didn’t have a birth plan.”

  Marley smiles. I shake my head. “We’re not good at sticking to the plan.”

  The doctor shrugs. “That’s life. Holley is our on-call pediatrician.” I blink at the woman in scrubs right beside me.

  “You caught me as came back from my dinner break,” she says, smiling. “We’ll get some stats on baby boy in just a few more minutes, when he’s finished eating.”

  “Okay.” Marley’s voice is soft. Her eyes are wet.

  “How ya doing?” I ask softly, dropping down beside her.

  “Good.” She grins. I kiss her cheek.

  And then I take a take a long look at the critter in her arms: my son.

  She beams down at him. “Curly hair, just like you, Gabe.”

  I lift a hand to touch him, but it almost seems like sacrilege.

  “Do it,” she whispers.

  So I do. I stroke his wrinkled, reddish little forehead. It’s so soft. The baby opens his eyes slightly. Marley squeals. Then he closes them again, and keeps on eating.

  “Graham or Everett?” she whispers.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think he looks like someone else,” she murmurs. Her gaze shifts to mine. “He looks so much like you.” She blinks down at our baby boy, then back to me again. “What about Simon?”

  That’s my middle name.

  “I thought you didn’t like it.”

  “Now I do…” She kisses his curls. “Sweet Simon. Do you mind?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Simon,” she whispers. And it sounds like a secret. It sounds like the secret answer I’ve been waiting for.

  Later that night, when Mar and Simon are asleep, I write it down—in ink. There’s a tattoo place across the street that happens to be open at eleven. I ask for something basic. Classic, you might say.

  Marley. Gabe. Geneva. Simon.

  As I cross the street after, I notice a flashing sign on a small building beside the hospital. I look because at first I think it’s donuts. But when I stop to really look, I notice the sign says, “Diner.”

  When I get inside, I ask for pie. As it turns out, they’ve got seven flavors.

  “I’ll take one of each.” I can’t help grinning.

  “Someone’s lucky.”

  “Oh yes.”

  As it turns out, that someone is me.

  Copyright © 2017 by Ella James

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  One

  Lucy

  Eyeliner.

  The upper lid first? Maybe the lower lid…

  “Well, who told her?”

  So…not too thick. Just need to draw the line so that it’s there, but not obnoxious like a Halloween costume.

  “It was Mr. Vernon, at the crab shack!”

  Hmm. I lean in toward the mirror, widening both eyes so my eyelashes stand out. That looks right. Might need to wipe a little with a Q-tip.

  “Mr. Vernon! Had he seen him?”

  “I don’t know. Heidi didn’t say. Just texted me and said that ‘rumor was.’ I asked, and that’s when she said she heard from Mr. Vernon.”

  Eyeliner game strong. Now double check the eye-shadow. Maybe a little more brown right here in the crease of my eyelid…

  “Hmm, that might be true. Oh my God, and if it IS—”

  “I KNOW!”

  I twist a tube of mascara open and am pulling out the wand when Charley bumps her hip into my shoulder.

  “Shit.”

  I look down at the knuckles of my left hand—topped by a thick, black streak—then up at Charley.

  “What?” I don’t mean to sound so sharp. Sometimes over the last two years, bitchy became my default personality.

  Maggie and Amelia, seated at two of the other marble-topped vanities in my hexagonal, glass-walled powder room, peer over their bare shoulders at me.

  “What? I say again. “Is it my eyes?” I bat my lashes. “Eyeliner bad?”

  It’s been almost nine months since I put any on. I feel like my hands have forgotten what to do.

  “Your eyes look badass,” Charley says, still standing over me with her hand on her hipbone. She hooks a cherry-red nail around the side-strap of her thong and wiggles her ass a little, giving me a narrow-eyed look the whole time. A look that says she’s watching me, like they all are.

  I look pleadingly toward Mags—she’s topless, working on honey brown hair extensions—and Amelia, in a lacy pink bra and panty set, working on her lips.

  Maggie wiggles her dark, thick eyebrows. “We’re talking about your honey bunny.”

  Amelia beams, and Charley hands me a wad of tissue for my marked-up hand.

  “Dear Lord.” I scrub at the mascara on my knuckles. “Who’s my honey? Dare I even ask?”

  Charley leans down and wraps an arm around my neck, her huge boobs pressing against my back. She pushes a lock of my dark hair off of my ear and whispers, in her phone-sex voice, “Crown Jewels.”

  “Huh?” I wriggle away and frown up at her.

  “Prince Liam,” Mags cries. “Were you even listening over there?”

  “No, I was not.” I roll my eyes and turn back to my mirror to adjust the strap of my silky, mint green teddy.

  Years ago, primping for a summer night in this gorgeous room was basically the meaning of life. In the Hamptons, everyone knows where everyone else’s place is. Over the last three years, I’ve seen dozens of e-guides with our white-washed, wood-shingled home blown up and circled, a little arrow pointing at it, with flashy text reading: The Rhodes of Concord!

  The reality show about my family, pitched by Seacrest to E! as Kardashians in the Old South, started filming in September of my junior year of high school. I was a regular until two summers ago. Everyone else in my family—Mom, Dad, and my older siblings Belle, Celia, Tripp, and Bryant—is still involved.

  Most of the time, I’m able to forget about TRoC, but hearing Liam’s name takes me back to the time when I was eating egg whites, turkey, and broccoli for every meal and smirking on magazine covers.

  Youngest Rhodes sister—and the hottest? You decide.

  I glance down at my chest, covered by my thin teddy, then cast my gaze up at the room’s sleek window walls, as if maybe the prince is on the beach with all the other rubberneckers, watching us get dressed.

  My mom designed my dressing room, on the rear corner of the home’s second floor, with gorgeous glass walls, thinking I could see my makeup better in high light. Charley, Maggie, Amelia, and I were eighteen the summer we started stripping down to our underthings while we dressed after dusk. We noticed a bunch of little lights out on the beach and realized they
were cell phones. We’d drawn a crowd—an all-male one. Ever since then, guys gather on the beach behind the house with binoculars and cell phones every night we’re here in Southampton.

  I picture Prince Liam’s posse lurking on our lawn and swallow past my dry throat.

  “I was not listening,” I say again, drawing the mascara wand slowly back out. “What was said?”

  “You should really let me glue some on you,” Amelia interrupts.

  I sigh. “Okay. If you re-do all the other stuff.” I wave at my shadow and eyeliner.

  “No prob,” she says.

  I shift my gaze to Mags. “Prince Liam is not my man.”

  I see his package wrapped in charcoal spandex, there then gone in my mind’s eye, before I wave at Amelia. “Miss Stalker over there has dibs, not me. And anyway, isn’t he in Africa or something?”

  “He’s been in Africa, then Australia, then South America.” Mags’ pouty lips smirk as a long, straight hair extension falls over her shoulder. “I forget you don’t have Snapchat.”

  “Nope.”

  “But seriously,” Amelia tells me as she saunters over to the vanity beside mine, “we were saying that he’s here. And unlike some of us—” she sinks gently down into her chair, smoothing a thin hand over her flawless copper red updo— “you actually have a chance to get at that.”

  Charley pulls a bra on, looking like Marilyn Monroe in the reflection of the window out in front of me. “What Am means there is, she screen-shot that bulge pic he posted from that yacht last week and lady-wanks all day to it—so if you could just play wing-man for her when we see him, that would fucking rock.”

  Amelia’s fair skin reddens. “That’s not what I meant, Charley.” She opens her lash kit, letting her gaze linger on the rows of fake eyelashes and the little tubes of glue.

  I actually manage a laugh, because my best friend is adorable when flustered. “You want me to try to flag him over if we see him, Am?”

  I’ve been looking for a deeper reason to out tonight. Something beyond “getting back on the radar.” Maybe this can be it.

  Amelia presses her lips together, looking briefly into my eyes before her gaze tips back down to her lap. “I’m sure he won’t be there.”

  “Where else would he be?” Charley demands.

  Mags pops her lips together, blotting at her lipstick. “It’s true,” she says. “Everyone will be at Homer’s.”

  My stomach does a barrel roll. I shut my eyes and listen to my friends gossip as Amelia does my lashes. Declan Carnegie—a pro baseball player who’s a little older than us—is supposed to be a closet drug addict (“Out of control,” Charley says); Kendall Jenner and some model she’s cat-fighting will both be there tonight (gasp!); Taylor Swift’s house help told someone who works for us that she’ll be jetting in tomorrow.

  Everyone. Will. Be. There.

  I dig my nails into my palm and wonder why the hell I left seclusion. It’s been months since I’ve been photographed. I don’t need to draw attention now. And why the Hamptons?

  Because you’re fucking brave, I try to tell myself.

  Amelia notices my face and gives me a quick peck on the forehead. “Not everyone will be there tonight, Luce. Only the good guys.”

  I bite my lip, thankful Mags and Charley are focused on the finer points of party slut evening-ware.

  “So you don’t want Prince Liam for yourself?” Amelia teases me as she pastes a line of lashes above mine.

  “Um, hell no. No offense,” I tell her with my eyes shut.

  “You think he’s an asshole, don’t you?”

  I peek one eye open. “Do you really want to know?”

  “I already know. I know you, woman.”

  My stomach tightens as I remember that searing hot picture of the prince’s package.

  Prince Liam might be the first guy my vagina has taken a liking to in two years, but I do think he’s an asshole. My interest in him—my very secret interest—is purely as a slab of man meat and inspiration for my poor, neglected vag.

  “He seems like the world’s biggest dick, but remember, I think all guys are dicks these days,” I tell Amelia.

  Her fingers are gentle on my face as she pastes on more lashes. In the silence before she speaks, I can feel her sympathy. “I know. So someone’s going to have to prove you wrong.”

  I let my breath out slowly as she rubs her fingertip along my eyelid. “Well, I can tell you now, it’s not going to be some royal prick draped with coked-up models, wearing spandex.”

  Amelia’s body stills. “Spandex? What do you mean?”

  “That’s what he had on, isn’t it?”

  “Lucille… My dear Lucille…” Through my extra-long lashes, I can see Amelia’s face scrunch as she starts laughing. “You guys,” she squeals, her eyes crinkling as she beams at me. “Our girl here is a dirty little liar!”

  “I don’t know what that even means.” I give her the stink eye.

  “You said he was wearing spandex. That Instagram shot, the package shot, you know: the one TMZ called Crown Jewels in the headline. It did look like a speedo. But it was boxer-briefs, all melded around his jewels from where he climbed out of the ocean. Which you didn’t know, but you totally saw it. She looked for long enough to think it was spandex.” Amelia beams at Maggie and Char. “She was reading TMZ. Out in bumfuck Colorado. Our girl here was reading TMZ.”

  I snort, biting the tip of my tongue to try to keep my cheeks from going guilt-red. “You know my opinion on that bullshit rag.”

  But it’s no use. My friends are hooting like a bunch of over-active chimps.

  “She wants dem jewels!”

  “Someone needs a royal rumble!”

  “Damn, I hope he’s there!”

  “Everybody wants him,” Amelia cuts in, smiling. “It’s not that weird, Lucy Su.”

  I blow my breath out, feeling like an eighth-grade boy caught with my hand inside my boxers.

  “I think he’s disgusting. There is nothing impressive about royalty in the age of presidents and prime ministers. Especially not Liam the manwhore. He probably has genital warts.”

  I keep my tirade flowing as Amelia perfects my fake lashes.

  He is an asshole. I can tell. A rich, beautiful playboy with the morals of a jackass and the conscience of a fly. If that picture of him with two models on his lap and a rolled-up dollar bill behind his ear didn’t prove it, the one with Liam getting a back-rub from that French girl sitting naked on his broad back did. I remember the look on her face as she sunk her hands into those thick shoulders: as if she’d won a prize. Crown Jewels my ass. I bet he’s not even a grower. It might look big flaccid, but it’s probably four inches hard. Royals are inbred. Everyone knows that.

  It’s that smile of his that gets me—secretly, of course. It’s just so…cocky. And crooked. And charming. And real. His face is stunning—all regal cheekbones and princely lips—but when he smiles, he just looks mostly nice. Good ole average, nice-guy nice.

  I tell myself, as Maggie does my lips, that that’s the only reason I stalk his Instagram account. Because I’m processing. That’s what my therapist, Paul, would call it. Trying to decide if there are any nice guys left. So I guess it does make sense I pick the prince who fan-mailed me that one time, back when I was a college freshman. Paul would say this is a sign I’m moving closer to dating again.

  He would—if he knew.

  He doesn’t need to, though.

  Prince Liam might be hot as hell, but he’s just eye candy. I’m sure the fan mail was a bid to get inside my pants, back when the show was new and naïve Lucy Rhodes was the hottest thing on TV.

  I think of my cat Grey and make a mental note to check on him before we head out to the Carnegie mansion, site of tonight’s “it” party. If life goes according to my plans, I’ll have nine or ten more feline friends before I get my first gray hair.

  And no man.

  Never, ever again.

  I used to love this house. I was thirtee
n when we bought it—and thirteen was young enough, I guess, for me to feel like I grew up here.

  Some of the homes on Meadow Lane are weird: all fortress-looking, with big, gray stones and spiky iron fences; or covered with those wooden shingles—not just on the roof, but on the exterior walls, too. Some aren’t anywhere near the ocean, so you have to walk, if the owners even go down to the ocean. Other mansions are surrounded by huge hedge mazes. In other words—not beach houses at all.

  Our house in Southampton is perfect. White-washed clapboard walls, a wood-shingle roof, acres of lawn. Just lush, green grass, dotted by the occasional weeping willow. There’s a garden on the home’s south side that only grows white roses. Right behind the house, a huge pool with a waterfall in the middle, and a diving board Mom and Dad added when Tripp busted his head open diving off the pool’s side.

  When I think about this place, I can taste the wooden stick of a popsicle, feel my lips, all slick and shiny from the frozen goodness. I remember how full my closet used to get, mostly with sandals, back when we were teens. Dozens and dozens—one summer more than two hundred—pairs of sandals. Sunscreens, tanning oils, the scent of swim suit toasted in the sun. All of us lining up in front of the mirror wall in my bathroom, comparing tan lines.

  Charley, Mags, Amelia, and I would spend most of July here in Southampton. My older siblings only brought one friend each, but starting that first summer, I got Charley, Mags, and Amelia. Mom even had the designer re-model my room around us four. That’s why, to this day, I have two sets of lilac bunk beds.

  And that’s why I came back here this summer.

  Because I’m not giving up the Hamptons. I refuse.

  I repeat that to myself as we climb into Maggie’s robin’s egg blue Bentley. Charley’s riding shotgun. Amelia hung back so she could sit with me.

  “The fab fucking foursome,” Charley sing-songs as Mags starts around the circle drive.

  Charley, Amelia, Mags, and I met at Brandon Hall, a private school near Atlanta. We’ve been best friends since second grade. But Amelia and I are slightly closer to each other than we are to Mags and Charley. I’m not sure when it happened—over time, I guess—but I’m grateful for it as Mags turns up the music and Amelia leans over the console between our two seats.