Crushed (13 page)

The kiss was supposed to be a mechanical,
this is how it’s done
demonstration, and instead I’d been about thirty seconds away from peeling off her ugly cover-up thingy.

A cover-up that she’s still wearing. Guess I probably should have mentioned that when I made the deal about her wearing the bikini: wearing something on top didn’t count.

I curse softly as I realize that my reasons for wanting Chloe to be in that little bikini and nothing else aren’t nearly as noble as they were yesterday.

I want to see her. All of her.

Worse, I’m afraid I want to get my hands on her.

Like I said. The kiss was a fucking mistake.

From my corner of the deck, I watch as she puts a hand down too roughly on Scott’s knee, and then laughs much too loud.

Now, Chloe’s natural laugh is a gusty, noisy affair. So add the extra energy of a
fake
laugh behind that? The noise she makes rivals the fireworks show we’re due for later.

I take a sip from my beer and watch.

Clearly it’s not the kissing part that Chloe needs help with. It’s the
lead-up
to the kissing.

I’m so busy watching Chloe and the crazy bed-head curls that she keeps flipping around that it takes me a moment to register that someone’s trying to get into the cooler that I’m resting one of my feet on.

“Sorry,” I mutter, moving farther along the railing. I’m on one of the lower levels of the deck. The party’s just now getting into full swing, so most everyone else is on the upper level, greeting the Bellamys and not-so-subtly checking out what everyone else is wearing.

“No prob,” the guy says, opening the lid to the cooler and pulling out a Corona. “You want another?”

I glance down. It’s Devon fucking Patterson, holding out a Coors.

“Sure,” I say, even though my current bottle is only a little under half-full.

He uses one of the nearby bottle openers to open both, before handing me mine.

I think he’s just being decent, but instead of heading back up to the main deck to hang with his people—or his girlfriend—he mimics my posture, shoulders propped up on the railing, an outsider looking in.

For several minutes we say nothing, and I wonder what his angle is. The guy’s always been polite, but we haven’t had a real conversation.

Chances are he’s casually checking me out as competition, although I don’t know if it’s competition for Kristin or competition for Chloe. He may have the hots for Kristin, but he’s not unaware of the younger sister.

It’s strange, actually, that my first thought upon seeing Devon isn’t
hey, we’re brothers!,
but
stay away from Chloe.

This whole fucked-up thing with Chloe and her weird love triangle, or love square, if you count poor Scott, has almost had me forgetting the reason I agreed to this stupid holiday in the first place.

Meeting my real father.

As though reading my thoughts, Devon turns his head and studies me. Not in a weird way, and the glance is brief and casual, but I can’t help but wonder if he knows.

Knows that I’m his half brother but that I’m too chickenshit to say a word about it.

But the words out of his mouth aren’t what I expected.

“You know I’ll kick your ass if you hurt her, right?”

What the hell is this?

I glance at him, but his eyes are already back up on the main deck, his expression pleasant and easy as though he hasn’t thrown out a token threat.

It’s only when I follow his line of sight that I realize what he’s talking about.

Who
he’s talking about.

“Chloe?”

He takes a sip of beer. “Whom else would I be talking about?”

Whom
. He’s a
whom
guy.

Devon clearly has no idea that I’ve had a boner for his
girlfriend
for the past month. Not her mouthy sister.

Although . . . Kristin is losing her appeal quickly.

And I’ll tell myself over and over that it has nothing to do with that kiss with Chloe until I believe it.

“Chloe and I are friends,” I say.

He gives me a skeptical look. “Friends.”

“Yup.” I continue to stare straight ahead. “Sort of like you and she are
friends,
right?”

He laughs. “It’s not quite the same.”

“Yeah? How so? Because I don’t secretly want to jump her bones?” I ask.

It’s a bullshit question. I know it’s out of line. It also might be a lie, because I’m not sure I don’t want to jump her bones, too, now that I know how she kisses. But I don’t let my brain go there.

I expect him to deny it, but he surprises me by shooting me a level look. “You don’t know anything about it.”

I shrug. “So tell me.”

As soon as I say it I want to punch myself. My tone had been almost . . . pleading. It’s not like he’ll want to talk to me.

We’re not brothers by anything other than a technicality.

I didn’t come to Texas for fucking brotherly bonding.

He takes a swallow of beer, staring straight ahead. “Chloe’s different.”

Shit. So I guess we’re going to share after all. I tell myself to remain silent. I don’t want to get in the middle of this. Any of this.

“Different how?”
You idiot.

“Well for starters, what the fuck is she doing draping herself all over Scotty?”

“Maybe she likes him.” I say.

He laughs incredulously. “
Nah.
”

I shrug as though it doesn’t make a difference to me. Because it doesn’t.

“I don’t know why she’s lost weight,” he grumbles. “She looked just fine before.”

“Maybe she wanted someone to see her as more than
fine
.”

Devon seems tenser now than when we started, and I can’t help but keep pushing.

“Where’s your girlfriend?” I ask.

He grunts. “Pissed at me. Again.”

“Trouble in paradise?”

He gives a half smile. “Hasn’t been paradise in a long time.”

“Then why you in it?”

He shoots me an incredulous look. “We really doing this? We haven’t exchanged five words before now.”

I don’t respond. Guy doesn’t want to talk, I’m not going to beg him.

Even if for a minute it had felt like a flashback to my old life. A life where Ethan and I could talk about stuff that mattered.

“You know Kristin’s trying to lure you into her web, right?” he says, apparently deciding to keep talking after all. “Using you to make me jealous.”

Interesting. The guy’s smarter and more observant than he lets on.

“Is it working?”

Devon tilts his head back, closing his eyes against the heat of the early afternoon sun, and says nothing.

Then he does. “Damn. Must have misplaced my shades.” Followed by “You always wanted to be a tennis pro, St. Claire?”

I get it. Subject change.

I snort. “Hardly.”

He looks at me. “Then why you doing it?”

“Why do you care?”

He rolls his shoulders. “Don’t. Just trying to figure my shit out.”

“The shit, in this case, being law school versus your girlfriend.”

Devon’s eyes narrow slightly. “Chloe told you.”

I lift a shoulder. “She mentioned it.”

He shifts again, his attention returning to Chloe. I, too, seek her out, checking in on her progress with Scott, and she seems to have relaxed into her femme fatale roll a little bit, because her smile’s easier, her gestures more natural.

Scott’s eating it up, exactly as planned.

Devon makes a low grunting noise, and I realize
that
part is going according to plan as well.

I decide to push him just a bit further. For Chloe’s sake.

“Kristin know how you’ve been looking at her sister?”

His head whips around. “I thought we made that clear. Chloe’s a friend. Period.”

“Same here,” I say easily. I pause. Then, “Sure is easy to talk to, though. Fun to be with, you know?”

Devon doesn’t respond.

“Curves in all the right places, too.”

His jaw tightens.

And then . . .

God bless Chloe, it’s like she’s secretly reading my mind, because I couldn’t have timed it better if I had a bug in her ear. Scott stands, extending a hand down to her, which she grabs, looking up at him with one of those wide, genuine smiles.

And then, before I’m quite prepared for it, she reaches down for the hem of that bulky white cover-up and tugs upward, pulling it up and over her head until she’s standing there in that damn red, white, and blue bikini.

For just a second, my vision goes blurry and my mouth goes dry. Chloe is . . . luscious. There’s no other word for the way her full breasts strain the blue-and-white-starred top, or the way her waist nips in, or the full curve of hips.

Then she takes Scott’s hand and lets him lead her down toward the dock, and Devon and I get an eyeful of a red-and-white-striped bikini bottom that doesn’t quite cover the white globes of her rather amazing ass.

“Jesus,” Devon says. He sounds stunned.

I feel a little surge of pride at a job well done, both in my time pushing Chloe at the gym, and for shoving her out of her comfort zone.

But around that sense of triumph is a little stab of something else.

Something that feels alarmingly close to possessiveness.

Chapter 14

Chloe

I could seriously
kill
Beefcake for talking me into this.

I might as well be naked.

Even worse than that, I don’t want to be naked around
Scott
.

I mean, the sweet kid is trying really hard to be a gentleman, and I give him credit for that. Sure, his eyes went a little big when I pulled off the safety of my cover-up.

And, yeah, I’d caught his eyes wandering a little when he thought I was distracted. But mostly he treats me the same when I’m mostly naked as when I’m fully clothed.

Scott Henwick is a nice guy, but he doesn’t exactly get my lady-parts revved.

Now, the hypocrisy of this isn’t lost on me. Here I am bemoaning the fact that society requires you to be tiny with shiny smooth hair and perfect teeth in order to get noticed, while at the same time, my eyes keep skipping over the nice, plain guy to, well . . .

Michael.

And Devon.

But mostly it seems to be Michael St. Claire that I keep seeking out in the crowd.

Damn that kiss.

“Want me to grab you something to drink?” Scott asks, handing me a beach towel. Two of my cousins stare at me aghast as I pull my plump, dripping body up the ladder onto the dock. Apparently the unspoken rule with wearing this damn tiny bikini is that it’s not supposed to get wet.

Well, fuck that.

It’s like ninety-something degrees.

And I
like
swimming. Granted, I usually do it while wearing one of those slimming, all-black, cover-up-as-much-as-possible suits, and then only when I think most everyone else is distracted by the margarita bar that my parents bring out in the late afternoon.

So although I’m tempted to grasp at the towel Scott holds out and wrap it around me as quickly as possible, I force myself to accept it casually, as though it doesn’t make a difference to me whether I have a towel to cover up my butt or not.

“Sure, drink sounds great,” I say with a smile at Scott.

He smiles back, and my gut clenches a little, and, abruptly, I realize that I can’t do this.

I can’t use someone else to get what I want. Scott’s a decent guy. He deserves a decent girl. One who doesn’t lust after her personal trainer while longing for her sister’s boyfriend.

Yikes. When did I become such a hussy?

I’m using the towel to wring out my hair, careful not to rub it since that makes it fuzzy, as I contemplate how to back out of this thing I’ve started with Scott.

Then
he
comes at me. Beefcake.

Michael has yet to take off that tight T-shirt, and I’m glad. I don’t think I can handle seeing his abs just now.

Unlike polite Scott, Michael makes no secret of the fact that he’s checking me out as he moves toward me. I narrow my eyes at him, and he grins.

“I see you held up your end of the bargain,” he says, coming to a stop in front of me, oblivious to the fact that my cousins and their ditzy friends are so checking him out from their perch on nearby chaise longues, clearly trying to figure out why he’s talking to me.

“Yeah, well, you haven’t held up yours,” I snap, feeling irritable.

“How do you know?”

I glance around while holding out my hands. “Do you see Devon anywhere around?”

His expression is unreadable. “I’m working on it.”

Having done as best I can with my wet hair, I start to wrap my towel around me all the way up to my armpits, but with a rare surge of bravery I settle for wrapping it low on my hips instead. Beefcake’s eyes follow the motion of my hands as I tie it in an awkward knot.

“You look good, Chlo.”

I swallow. He doesn’t mean it in a sexual way. I don’t think. But he does sound admiring, and it makes me feel . . . fluttery.

“Well, if you’ve done this after a month, just think what we can do by the end of the summer,” I say, faking confidence I don’t at all feel.

He jerks his chin in the direction of my breasts. “Sure. But the treadmill and squats aren’t responsible for those.”

In spite of myself, I laugh, slapping him on the chest with my palm as I walk by. “You are such a guy.”

He grabs my elbow before I can move past. “I am. You shouldn’t forget it.”

I halt. “What the heck is that supposed to mean?”

He gives me another of his unreadable, brooding looks. Yup,
definitely
a guy all right. Emotionally impaired and everything.

“Have you seen my sister?” I ask, ignoring whatever heated moment just passed.

“She’s been in and out of the house,” he says, falling into step beside me. “I think she and your boy are in a fight.”

“Seems to be happening a lot lately,” I mutter, mostly to myself. Despite the fact that I don’t think Kristin deserves Devon, I am a little worried about her.

“I’m going to go find her,” I say. “You good if I leave you?”

“Sure.” He nods in the direction of one of the upper deck levels where some of my mom’s cougar friends sit sipping pinot grigio under an umbrella. “Some of my clients have been asking me to come talk.”