Dating Trouble (Grover Beach Team Book 5) (18 page)

If so, I had no right to whine about it. The rules of this game were clear from the beginning. The fact that I’d changed my mind had nothing to do with him. Well, no, that wasn’t quite true. It had everything to do with Chris, but it didn’t mean the new rules applied to him, too.

I sucked in another lungful of his scent and sighed. He’d succeeded. This past week, I’d gotten to know a side of him that had me utterly smitten…and confused. I really had fallen for playboy Chris Donovan.

At a subtle cough, I jerked around, abruptly dropping my hands with the shirt. My gasp of utter mortification echoed in the room.

Chris leaned against the doorjamb, arms casually folded over his chest, a taunting smile riding his lips. “Would it make you feel better if I pretend I didn’t see that?”

In fact, the only thing that could make me feel better right now was a shovel in my hand so I could dig myself a hole and disappear. Why did fate hate me so? Hadn’t I suffered enough yet?

“Hey now, don’t look so bashful,” Chris teased and walked toward me. “It was just a matter of time until you fell for my irresistible charm.” With a gesture at the t-shirt in my hands, he added, “And scent.”

From the sound of it, he meant it as a joke, but I knew better. He was right, it had only been a matter of time. I took a wary step back, not ready for any teasing, and knocked into the island behind me.

Trapped and with a pounding heart, I watched him prowl closer. Where was Ethan? He should come and save me!

“I won,” Chris said in a lower voice than before and took the shirt out of my shaking hands, tossing it aside. I thought he’d read my mind and was referring to our challenge, but he continued, “Ethan has to do the dishes.” Looking over my shoulder at the clean counter, he shrugged. “I see you already did his job. Nice.” His gaze moved back to my eyes. “So we can go straight to dessert…”

He scrutinized me as if I was a piece of cake on his dessert plate. His hands lifted to my hips, his fingers hooking through the belt loops of my jeans. Slowly, he pulled me against him, the length of my body flush with his. Even our thighs touched, and I clasped his upper arms to steady myself.

“We have about twenty seconds for us,” he purred.

When he dipped his head down a little and leaned his brow to mine, I sighed. Here I stood, about to make the second mistake today, and no one came to stop me. How was I supposed to protect my heart from this playboy if I kept stumbling into his kisses?

His lips had barely brushed mine when, down the hallway, the back door slammed close. “Make that five,” Chris growled. To my absolute astonishment, he pressed a hard kiss on my mouth, then let go of me altogether and headed around the kitchen island.

I stood rigid, struggling to rein in my ragged breathing as Ethan walked through the door. He stopped at the sight of me, and I blurted, “Hi!”

“Hi,” he replied, pulling his brows into a puzzled V. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah! Sure! Why?”

Obviously, Ethan was going to explain to me that my jumpy behavior was the reason for his wondering, but I didn’t give him the ten seconds he’d have needed for it. Instead, I made my legs move and rushed past him, down the hallway, and locked myself into the bathroom, falling against the door with my back.

Breathe
, I told myself. All is good. The light above blinded me as I gazed at the ceiling. This was not the best moment to panic over being kissed by the wrong guy. There was enough time to do that later, at home, where no one would notice.

But then, a small voice spoke up at the back of my mind. Maybe Chris wasn’t the wrong guy after all. He wanted to kiss me again, which meant he probably enjoyed our first time…as much as I did, right? And if he liked it, maybe he wanted to repeat it more often. What if I was all wrong and maybe he’d changed the rules of our challenge for himself as well during the past few days? His text messages had become a lot more sensitive, and when he’d touched me today, it didn’t feel like a meaningless brush-off.

I rubbed my hands over my face, adjusted my shirt and squared my shoulders. Walking back to the kitchen proved a long way with legs as shaky as mine. On the threshold, I stopped, casting a shy glance into the room.

Ethan was working the coffee machine, filling three cups with classy smelling cappuccino and adding a cream top to all of them.

Chris placed two plates each with a square piece of cake on the table. When he went for the third, he took a detour to where I stood, reached for my hand, and pulled me along with him to the seat I’d already deemed mine in this house. With a gentle push and a smile, he made me sit down before he headed for my dessert plate.

Kiwi wedges framed this piece of cake, and one half of a strawberry cut in the shape of a heart sat in the middle. The upper part was dipped in chocolate. I dared a probing sideways glance at Chris, which he returned with a half-smile before he cut a piece of his cake with his fork and ate it.

Grapes and strawberries formed a pattern on his piece, while banana eyes and an orange wedge grinned from Ethan’s. Chris’s creativity when it came to desserts was certainly unsurpassed.

“Thanks for doing the dishes, by the way,” Ethan said to me. “You know you didn’t have to do that.”

“Of course. But between watching two hunky guys playing basketball or doing dishes…” I laughed. “Well, I guess I’m just weird.”

“Only a little.” Ethan smiled back at me. “I’ll drive you home for it later.”

“No. I can drive her home,” Chris said around another bite of cake.

Ethan licked his fork clean. “No, you can’t.”

“Sure can.”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

Flashing him an evil grin, Ethan stated, “You’re grounded.”

“Ah, fu—sh—
craaap
.”

Glad I didn’t have cake in my mouth, I laughed out loud. Half an hour ago, when the guys were playing outside and he thought they were alone, he didn’t bother to swallow his four-letter words like that.

Actually, I wouldn’t mind if Chris was the one driving me home tonight, but I didn’t want him to get in trouble with his mom later, so I happily accepted Ethan’s offer.

Taking my plate and cup to the sink, I said to Chris, “Well, thanks. That was a very…interesting and delicious dessert.” Ethan was in the room hearing every word, so I didn’t say anything else. As long as things hung at the edge between Chris and me, I didn’t want Ethan to know what had happened on this kitchen counter while he was gone. First, Chris had to come clean with his intentions concerning me. Maybe a text later or a chat on the phone would help clear the situation. Excitement gripped me at the thought of what he was going to write me tonight.

Chris nodded. He secretly stroked my hand with the back of his as I walked past him. “Good night, sweetness,” he whispered so only I could hear.

“ACTUALLY, THERE’S A reason I wanted to drive you home tonight,” Ethan said as we climbed into his car. For a split second, I was afraid he’d seen everything and was cornering me for letting his brother kiss me, but only he cast me a sheepish grin. “You’ve been to my house so often now, I’m dying to see
your
room from the inside. Think it’s okay if you show me?”

A queasy feeling churned my gut. Saturday evening. Both my parents would be home. There was a fifty-fifty chance we’d find my house in a peaceful mood when we arrived, but I didn’t dare get my hopes high on that.

However, when we got to my place, Dad’s car was gone. Maybe his boss had called him to an urgent meeting with clients. At times, Dad did work on weekends, so this wasn’t all that strange. Tonight, I thanked God for the saving grace and welcomed Ethan to my house with a happy smile.

My mom was dying to meet him since she’d heard of our first date. I searched for her downstairs but she was nowhere around.

“Mom?” I yelled. No answer. A little disappointed, I turned to Ethan. “She’s probably taking a bath. Come on.” I quietly ushered Ethan upstairs to my room, not wanting to disturb her.

Ethan ambled around the room, marveling at my huge collection of books and CDs, then he plopped on the bed, feet dangling off the edge. “I like it.”

“There’s just no Wii or Xbox in here,” I mocked.

“That’s okay. We can watch a movie instead.” He bounced on my bed, grinning. “It’s cozy.”

A car pulled up the drive to the garage underneath my window. A quick glance proved my suspicion right, my dad had come home. “Come on,” I said to Ethan. “I want to introduce you to someone.”

Ethan came to the window, too, and gave me a quirky look. “I’ve never been introduced to a girl’s father. Is it weird that I feel uneasy now?”

I laughed, taking his hand, and pulled him to the door. “I promise not to use the word boyfriend. He’ll leave his shotgun in the closet then.”

“Ha. Ha. You do know how to make a guy feel comfortable, don’t you?”

I opened the door and instantly froze. Mom must have heard him coming home, too, and she beat us downstairs. The first thing she shouted in a volume that could take down a house was, “You can’t always run away when things get tough, Richard!”

Filled with horror, I turned to Ethan. The shock in his eyes ceased the moment his gaze met mine. Embarrassment and pain surging through me, I let Ethan pull me back inside. He closed the door, but my parents’ voices still carried to us like the walls were made of paper. Their horrid accusations slinging back and forth grated on my emotions. God, why couldn’t they just be silent for once?

I didn’t know what to do, but my shaky knees wouldn’t hold me much longer.

“Susan—” Ethan said in a compassionate voice, stroking my forearms. “I’m sorry. But it’s okay. It’s not your fault they’re fighting, and I heard worse when my father still lived with us.”

“It’s not—it’s just—” Squeezing my eyes tight, I covered my face with my hands. “This is so embarrassing.”

“Don’t worry. I don’t care, really.” He sighed. “I shouldn’t have insisted on coming here.”

When his touch left my arms, I opened my eyes to see what he was doing. Checking the window again, he cast me a grimace over his shoulder. “It’s not too high, I could escape this way, but I’d land on your dad’s car.”

He wanted to jump out? My awkward reaction must have shocked him more than my parents’ fight. Was it that obvious I wanted him out of the house? But jumping…?

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I told him. “You’d break your neck.”

“Mm, maybe. But I’m afraid you’ll never speak to me again if we sit through their argument.”

He might be right. How did we get into this horrible situation?

Ethan took on a determined expression all of a sudden. He walked back to me, took my hand, looked me sternly in the eyes, and said, “You know what we should do now? We go downstairs, get out, and we’ll go have a coffee. In a couple of hours, when you come back, things will have cooled down, and everything will be fine again.”

He had no idea what he was saying. Nothing was going to be fine in this house tonight. I was going to sleep at my grandpa’s place like I did so often, and worse, I would never again look at Ethan without feeling the shame I felt right now. But I let Ethan drag me out of my room and down the stairs anyway.

The shouting got louder the closer we got to the living room. There was no way we would get past them without being seen. Porcelain hit the wall. I don’t know which of the two vases on the mantelpiece Mom had broken, but from the tinkling sounds, a sea of shards now covered the floor.

My first thought as Ethan and I stopped in the doorway was,
Aha, it was the white vase
. Then I met my mother’s thunderstruck gaze and said, “Mom, Dad, this is Ethan.”

Thankful for Ethan’s hand holding mine at this moment, I squeezed it tight for support. He returned the pressure, stroking his thumb across my knuckles in a gentle, soothing way.

“Darling,” my mother squeaked.

My father came forward, raking a nervous hand through his hair. His lips moved, too, but with the terrible ringing in my ears, I couldn’t hear what he said. Swallowing hard, I pushed Ethan on and out the door. With every intention to follow him, I only stopped when my mother cried out my name, sounding the worst kind of sorry I’d ever heard.

My hand slid from Ethan’s and I turned back to her. Maybe everything after that wouldn’t have happened, if he had held my hand tighter…

My chest quirked with shallow, painful breaths, and I fought against tears of shame and anger. “Why can’t you behave like normal parents?” I screamed at both of them. “Just for one freaking night? Why do you always have to fight? Mom! Dad didn’t kill Grams, for heaven’s sake!” That must have hurt her more than anything my father ever said to her. I didn’t care. I couldn’t stop myself at that moment.

Ethan reached for my hand from behind, but I yanked it away and exploded once again. “And Dad! Why do you always have to give her reasons to be angry with you? Why can’t you two talk things out like normal people? Did you decide to make my life hell on purpose? So I can't even have friends over? Because if so, you did a great job! I hate you!” Tears spilled over. “Both of you!” And for this very short episode in my life, I meant it.

*

Ethan held the front door open for me. I slipped through and tiptoed to his room. After the terrible argument in my house, going into town held no appeal. At my request, Ethan had driven us down to the ocean instead, where we’d strolled along the beach for what seemed like hours. He offered to take me home after that, but the truth was I couldn’t face my parents just yet. As he randomly cruised through the streets, exhaustion beat at me and my eyes started to close. Ethan suggested it was best if I crashed at his place. That was at two o’clock in the morning.

We didn’t make a sound, just kicked off our shoes, and Ethan stuck out his arm on the pillow so I could snuggle up to his chest for the comfort I needed not to fall apart. He pulled the bedspread over us and caressed my hair. I passed out within minutes.

Dawn was breaking through the windows when I woke up again.

Still lying on his back with his arm draped around my shoulders, Ethan quietly dozed next to me, his chest heaving and falling with deep, even breaths.

Gently, I shook him until he opened his eyes. “I need to go home,” I whispered.

To his credit, he sat up, wide awake in seconds. “Why? It’s Sunday. No school. And you texted your mom last night, so she knows where you are. At least stay for breakfast. I’ll drive you home later.”

“No.” I shook my head, grimacing, and climbed out of his bed. “I don’t want anyone from your family to find me here—it doesn’t feel right.”

Ethan frowned at me, but got up and put his shoes on, too. I was already at the door and sneaked out into the hallway. The coast was clear. Ethan followed me, whispering, “Not my family. You just don’t want Chris to find out…”

Right. Maybe I shouldn’t have told Ethan that Chris kissed me last night, but some things just come up when you walk along the beach together for hours. “I don’t want him to ask stupid questions,” I whined. Turning around, I touched his arm and gave him a pleading look. “This is really something I’d like to keep between you and me.”

With a sigh, Ethan relented. “Fine. I won’t say a word about it.”

“Thanks, Ethan.” And since I’d slept in his bed—more like in his arms—last night, there really was no barrier between us any longer. Flinging my arms around his neck, I buried my face in his shoulder.

He patted my back, then quietly opened the front door and led the way to his car.

*

Ignoring the apologies from my parents, my mom’s tears, and my dad’s sorrowful face, I ran to my room and locked the door. Right now, I didn't want to talk to them. Not after they’d destroyed what should have been the perfect ending to a lovely date last night.

Arms folded on my pillow, I hid my face in them and sulked. There was nothing that could have lightened my mood…

Or maybe one thing could.

I pulled my phone from my pocket and glanced at the screen. Still no new messages. My heart sank once more.

Chris hadn’t sent me a single text last night. The first time, in two weeks, that he didn’t tell me good night this way. I sniffed. Maybe he hadn’t because he’d told me his usual finishing line at his house already. At the memory of how his hand had softly brushed against mine before I left, a small smile made it to my lips. There must be a reason why he hadn’t texted me. Certainly he was going to message me again tonight.

But I didn’t want to wait that long. Something had happened the previous week—something I didn’t know how to deal with. For a while, denying it to myself seemed like the best idea. But when Chris had kissed me, and all these butterflies caused chaos inside me, there was no doubt left. I had fallen for Ethan’s brother, and much deeper than I’d ever anticipated.

Proof was that not twelve hours had passed since the last time I saw him, and I missed him already. That was bad. More than bad. It was shocking.

What had happened to my solid “your charm will get you nowhere with me” attitude?

Oh, but I knew what had happened. Somebody coated it in molten chocolate and made me swallow the whole damn thing.

When all these sweet memories came up again, I chanced my luck and typed a message to Chris.
Good morning. Are you still asleep?

Usually, he was fast with his replies. Not this time, though. Minutes ticked away and turned into half an hour. My attention continued to wander back to the screen, checking for new messages. Nothing. Curled up on my bed, I waited and my anxiety grew as the half hour dragged on into a couple more, me still staring at the damn phone in my hand. My heart had become a walnut in a nutcracker by that time.

He must have seen my text. So what kept him from answering? A lazy morning? Or was I just not worth any more of his time? He’d gotten what he wanted after all. Aside from teaching me a lesson in how irresistible he was and how he got every girl to fall for him, getting serious with one had never been his intention. He’d made that clear from the beginning.

I’d been a fool.

But hope dies last, they say.

Somehow I convinced myself he’d just send a text later today. In the evening. Yeah, at his usual time. To tell me good night and call me sweetness, like he always did. Feeling a little better, I came out of my room around noon to eat lunch with my parents.

As soon as they saw me, they came around the table and wanted to hug me or something, telling me how sorry they were for sure, but I held them off with a raised hand. “Don’t! Really, I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s just eat. I’m hungry. And my head hurts. Mom?” I rubbed my temples. “Can I have a painkiller later?”

“Of course, honey.” She gave my hair a caress when she set my plate of spaghetti in front of me. It was nothing as good as Ethan’s steaks—or Chris’s dessert—but I ate enough to keep me going for the rest of the day and night, because I didn’t intend to come down again today.

The evening came and passed, it was just shy of midnight, and still there was no text or call from Chris. Not even after I’d sent him a good-night message at five to ten. If nothing else, this was enough to convince me that the only one who’d fallen for someone in the past few days was stupid me.

As punishment for being such an idiot, I should’ve prohibited myself from my beloved liquor-filled pralines, but to be honest, they were the only thing that kept me from bursting into tears that night.

Ethan had called me earlier to check how I was doing, but he’d said nothing about his brother. And I didn’t ask.

After the silent treatment all Sunday, I almost didn’t expect to see Chris at school on Monday morning. But he must’ve had a class close to mine first period, because this was the time when we’d met most often in the hallway in the past…and again today.

With my books under my arm, I walked to science, keeping an eye out for Sam or Nick. Distraction would do me one hell of good today. So, dammit, where were they?