Starlight (Peaches Monroe) (Volume 2) Paperback – September 2, 2013 (8 page)

He chuckled and leaned down to pull on a pair of shoes. “And if you took off running when I was in the other room, that would be very Peaches Monroe of you, wouldn’t it?”

I gave him an innocent look. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You were scrambling to get out of here when my ex and my sister showed up. I bet you do that a lot—run away when things get intense. We should work on that.”

To change the topic, I grabbed the red broom and started sweeping around the entryway. “I clean house real good.”

“More pancakes for me.” With a shrug, he opened the door and started to leave. “C’mon, Ursula.”

I let the broom clatter to the floor and put my hands on my hips. “What the hell was that about, with that name? Ursula is the fat, ugly sea witch from
The Little Mermaid
. Thanks a lot.”

“Ursula is a beautiful name, and I’ve never seen that movie. I never liked cartoons.”

I grabbed my purse and followed him out, muttering that he was the weirdest guy I’d ever met. Who doesn’t like cartoons?

We had breakfast at a diner, where the ridiculous waiter acted like he didn’t know what a mocha was, so I had to order a coffee plus a hot chocolate, then make a dribbling mess as Keith laughed at my dumb ass.

“You’re making fun of me,” I said. “Which makes this more of an average or typical date for me, and
not
the
best date ever
. I guess I won’t have the pleasure of seeing your bag-of-hair sister again.”

He reached under the table of the booth and squeezed my thighs just above my knees. “You’re going to have many pleasures today.”

I pulled some napkins from the silver dispenser on the table and sopped up the mess I’d made. Which reminded me… that morning’s bedroom sporting hadn’t turned me into a water feature. Perhaps that squirt-o-rama had been a one-time event, just to clear the ol’ peri-urethral ducts.

Looking across the table at Keith, I had the urge to ask him what he knew about the phenomenon. He seemed like the kind of guy who read books about sex. On second thought, he also seemed like the kind of guy who’d be obsessed with making the squirting happen again, just for the experience. Nope, this secret was going into the vault with the others.

“Where to after breakfast?” I asked. “Cruising Mulholland Drive in the green van?”

Keith smirked. “The van does have a sun roof. I have a few ideas in mind. How do you feel about roller coasters?”

“How do you feel about getting barfed on?”

“No Knott’s Berry Farm, then. Okay, Plan B it is.” He pulled out his phone and mumbled about making arrangements.

The waiter brought our food, and at the same time, the music cranked up a few levels.
Free Fallin’
by Tom Petty was playing, and I could hear the faint sound of people back in the kitchen of the restaurant singing along like it was their favorite tune.

Hearing
Free Fallin’
like this, I experienced something not unlike
déjà vu
. My mother loved the song, and the video played in my mind as Tom Petty sang about places in LA, including Ventura Boulevard, which had always sounded so magical to me, a girl in small-town Washington. He sang about good girls, bad boys, and broken hearts.

As I looked over at Keith, a chill went through me, giving me goose bumps all over. I was a good girl with a broken heart. Had I simply jumped from one bad boy to another?

“Yum,” Keith declared as he dug into his low-carb breakfast. With his young-looking face, he didn’t seem that dangerous, but I would have to be careful around him and guard my heart.

After breakfast, we drove to world-famous* Rodeo Drive.

*Their marketing and branding efforts must be working, because I can’t say or even think about Rodeo Drive without the
world-famous
modifier in front.

As we drove past Gucci, Prada, and stores I’d never heard of but imagined were equally pricey, I said, “Keith, I don’t know how much they’re paying you to stand around looking sexy in your underpants, but I’m sure not getting Gucci money.”

He laughed. “Don’t you want to go in and have a look?”

“Just to look? I’m not like you, all restraint and denial of pleasurable release. I don’t go to bakeries to sniff the icing, you know?”

He chuckled and kept driving. I continued to stare out the windows like the hick tourist I was. The palm trees and blue sky made every angle of Beverly Hills look like a postcard. Although I’d never been to the city before, so many buildings and streets looked familiar—I guess from all the TV shows and movies shot there. We drove past a brick building that looked like the nightclub Drake Cheshire—Dalton Deangelo’s vampire character—owned. Thinking about him didn’t feel good. The hurt around my heart extended so far, even my armpits ached when I imagined his lying face.

Keith parked the van, shaking me out of my funk.

“I’m not dressed for fancy shopping,” I said, feeling self-conscious about my casual clothes, which I was now spending the second day in.

“That’s why I brought you here, to my friend’s boutique. He has a fashion line, and he’s on the verge of moving to New York and making it big. I’ll move there and do the runway shows, of course.” The way he was grinning, I was pretty sure he was being sarcastic. From what I’d gathered during my short time in LA,
everyone
was on the verge of making it big and going somewhere.

“What’s your friend’s name?” I asked. “Something fashion-y, like Sergio? Or Mutt? Or… Jean-Ralphio?”

“Guy,” he said, pronouncing it like the Indian word for clarified butter:
ghee
.

Keith ran around to my side and opened my door, then helped me step down. The air outside the van didn’t smell as nice as the inside, so I asked, “What’s that smell?”

“LA.”

“No, it’s like… rotten eggs.”

“Maybe the Salton Sea is to blame. It’s a hundred and fifty miles from the city, but there are seasonal fish die-offs, and with shifting weather patterns, sometimes the anaerobic layers get oxygen, which causes the hydrogen sulfide gas to form, and… that’s more than you wanted to know, isn’t it?”

“You really are an earth muffin type, aren’t you?”

We started walking up the sidewalk. Keith looked troubled by what I’d said, so I corrected myself, saying, “Not in a bad way. I think it’s amazing you know about soil and stuff. My neighbor back home, Mr. Galloway, is always talking to me about the pH levels in soil. It’s always egg shells and coffee grounds, or something. I have no clue, despite working in a bookstore with a substantial gardening section.”

“Egg shells for calcium, and coffee grounds for nitrogen,” he said. “Now you know.”

“What about talking to plants. Does that do any good?”

“Plants are like people. Some benefit from conversation, and others continue to act like idiots, no matter how much you yell at them.”

“Excuse me?”

He chuckled. “I meant me, not you.”

He opened the door to a narrow store that looked like it had been built in the leftover space between two larger buildings, and we went into his friend’s clothing boutique.

If this were a movie, there’d be a montage here of me trying on the most amazing assortment of clothes, many of them flattering wrap style dresses. The prices were a little YIKES, but Guy took a shine to me and said if I bought one, he’d give me three more. I bought two dresses, and he kept stuffing more things into the bags until I begged him to stop. Keith tried to pay for everything, but I wouldn’t allow it, saying he was doing more than enough by giving me somewhere to stay and being my personal tour guide.

I walked out of the boutique feeling like I was in a fairy tale. Specifically, I felt like the side character who somehow cons her way into getting the makeover and goodies that were supposed to be for the main character, the skinny, big-lipped girl who weighs under a hundred pounds, in shoes.

With my shopping loot on one arm and my underwear model on the other arm, I wondered if there wasn’t an Anne Hathaway type somewhere wondering where her life-swag went.

When we got back to the van, Keith gave me a knowing look, like he
knew
I was having the best date ever, and he didn’t need to ask. He looked so smug. Why is smug so sexy? I swear, it’s like catnip for Miss Kitty when a cute guy looks so self-satisfied.

“Off to the second and best part,” he said. “Why don’t you change into one of those dresses?”

“Sure, I’ll just flash all of California with my body and get changed right here in the van.”

“They’re going to see everything on billboards soon enough.”

My voice small and squeaky, I said, “Billboards?” Had there been billboards in the agreement? Classic smart-girl move: I had my father read the modeling contract and didn’t pay that much attention. So much whimsy.

I muttered something about horses and barn doors, then wrestled out of my clothes quickly, while we drove along a quieter street. I slid into one of my new wrap dresses, a purple creation with leopard-print highlight details. The combination of purple and leopard-print sounds tacky, but I assure you, the dress was pure class. The knock-off version sold at K-Mart would have been tacky, but this was the original. A designer original, by Guy Weird-last-name.*

*Not his actual name. I’d happily give him full credit, if the logo on the labels wasn’t indistinguishable swirls.

For the next stop, we drove out of the city.

Keith could go ahead and look smug, because I was having a good time.

“How do you feel about gardening?” he asked.

“I’ve got a few potted plants, but sometimes I can’t tell weeds from plants.”

“I meant today.”

As the van pulled into the parking lot of a garden with an admission gate, I glanced back at the bags of dirt in the van and said, “You’re kidding me. We’re here on a landscaping job?”

He jumped out of the van and opened the back door instead of coming around to my side.

I wandered back with a confused scowl on my face.

“Catch.” He tossed a plastic bag of potting soil at me.

“I’m wearing a dress,” I wailed as I caught the bag. “I’ll help you plant some daisies or whatever, but let me get changed!”

With a bag of dirt on his shoulder, he stepped up to me and leaned down to whisper in my ear, “Follow my lead. We’re about to skip the long admission line.”

I looked behind him, at the chain of people snaking from the entry and through the parking lot.

“You’re a bad boy,” I whispered back.

“You should have taken Mitchell’s warning.” He gave me a peck on the lips, then turned and started walking confidently toward the entrance.

Why do I always get myself into these predicaments?
I stared after his adorable butt, which was so cute.
How cute was his butt, Peaches?
Cuter than a basket of baby bunnies at a carrot buffet.

I followed Mr. Cute Buns in, and was not at all surprised to be waved through by friendly, yet not-that-bright staff. To save someone a reprimand, I’m not going to name the park, and to keep you all from hating Keith Raven for the wrong reasons, I have to let you know he made a generous cash donation to the donation box in lieu of paying admission.

Okay, I lied. There was no donation made.

Keith is a bad boy with a cute butt. Sue me!

We dropped the soil off just inside the gates and started walking along the tour path, passing through a tunnel of tree branches that reminded me of The Arch of Swords, that old tradition of military weddings.

As we walked, Keith held my hand and named off every flower, shrub, and tree we passed.

“Enough with the Latin,” I said after twenty minutes of what sounded like a bunch of
Harry Potter
spells. “What’s the deal with you and Tabitha?”

He frowned, which I interpreted as his desire to have someone badger him until he cracked. Like what a therapist might do. If that therapist had no training and was me.

“She seemed so nice,” I said, impressing myself with the soothing, therapeutic tone of my voice. “You’re a little complicated, with the extreme gardening boner you have for shrubbery, plus the nearly-nude modeling, but you seem like a real catch. Why couldn’t you two crazy kids make it work?”