No Strings Attached (23 page)

Harper closed the book and drew her knees to her chest. “Did my sneakers fit you?”

Katie said sheepishly, “I didn't think you'd mind. I took a long walk, and I didn't have anything appropriate. Turns out we're the same size.”

“Who'da thunk it?” Harper quipped. “So, what do you want?”

Katie twined her fingers and stretched her arms out. “I said I needed a friend. Why can't you just be one?”

“I assume this is your normal strategy—if you don't get what you want, or like what you hear, you just keep at it.”

Katie smiled at her ruefully. “It's worked in the past.”

Harper couldn't suppress a grin. “And yet? You need to be so over the past. We both do.”

Katie smiled—maybe Harper was warming to her after all. “Lily and Luke?” she dished. “Just so you know? They deserve each other. If your ex really is into her, he's headed for a crash-and-burn. Lily's wicked, already planning on kicking him to the curb. And if you take him back”—Katie wagged her finger at Harper—“you're a fool.”

Harper widened her eyes. “Never. But—whoa, why would I take advice from you? Do you even like the guys you've been going out with this summer?”

Katie considered. “Not Brian, he turned out to be a bore.
Nate? Maybe. He's got the whole kindness vibe, and he wears it well. But I don't … exactly see … the two of us together. No matter what happens.”

“So basically, you're just using him, too,” Harper concluded.

“God, Harper, everyone uses everyone. How do you not know this by now?” She flung back her head, exasperated.

“I won't—can't—believe that.”

“Oh right. You believe in love for its own sake. Oh, wait, didn't that get you in trouble already?” Katie gave her long look. “You're going to do it again, aren't you?”

Harper's eyes flashed dangerously. “What are you talking about?”

“Joss. You're crazy in love with him. It's totally obvious.”

Harper abruptly switched off the bedside lamp. “Darkness falls. Night-night, roomie.”

“There's something you might want to know about him,” Katie said.

Harper flipped the light back on.

At that exact moment, a voice startled both of them. “What, Katie? What would she need to know about me?”

Katie whirled around, Harper sat straight up.

From the doorway, Joss took a tentative step into their room. “You're about to tell Harper that I'm not who I say I am? That I've deceived her?”

“What are you doing here?” Harper and Katie said as one.

“I live here, don't you remember? So go on, tell her,” he goaded Katie.

From the day she'd first seen Joss Wanderman, standing in the doorway of the share house—not unlike his studied-casual pose right now—Katie knew she knew him from somewhere. It'd come to her, she'd been sure of it. And then just the other day? Two and a half months later? It had.

It was from a feature article in the society section of the
Boston Globe Sunday
magazine. About J. Thomas Sterling, one of the richest businessmen in the country, a savvy venture capitalist who'd built an empire to rival the Trump Organization. Many times married and even more sought after, J. Thomas wielded power like an ax, using and abusing it to cut down his enemies and threaten those who might be. The only reason she'd happened upon the article was that Lily had e-mailed it to her, suggesting she check out the “number-one son” in the article's family portrait. “Josh Sterling,” she'd written, “
Apprentice
material, hottie, and available. Someone to meet, don'tcha think?”

The photo, maybe two years old, showed a young collegiate, conservative and preppy, short brown hair, wearing an argyle sweater under a Zegna sports jacket. Patriarch J. Thomas was smiling broadly, his arm around his son's narrow shoulders. Joss—or Josh—looked massively uncomfortable. Like he'd rather be—

“Anywhere but there.” Joss was telling his story to Harper.
“That life was never what I wanted. So I split, stayed under the radar, haven't looked back.”

“I take it,” Harper speculated, “your father wasn't exactly down with the music thing.” She nodded at the guitar Joss held.

“Not so much,” Joss confirmed. “I'm the only son, heir to the throne. I'm supposed to ascend, run the organization, not haul equipment in exchange for getting to play backup for—”

“Does your father know where you are?” Katie interrupted.

Joss had been staring at Harper, trying to gauge her reaction to the exposé, but he switched his attention to Katie. “I'm sure. J. Tommy has the resources to find anyone. I'm guessing he's lying back, giving me my space—confident I'll come crawling back.”

“Will you?” The question came again, from both girls.

Clutching the neck of his guitar, Joss sank slowly onto Katie's bed, the unoccupied one. “A month ago? Two months ago? I would've said never. No way, José. Keep the money, drive the limos off a cliff, I don't need any of the perks. To quote an old rock guy, ‘It ain't me, babe.'”

“And now?” asked Katie cautiously. “You would go back? Did something change?”

Joss had returned to trying to read Harper's face. But she wasn't giving it up. He lifted the guitar into his lap, flicked his fingers across the strings. “A lot has changed, actually, in the past three months.”

Katie crossed her legs and shifted her position. Harper remained still. She wondered if Harper hated Joss for lying, for deceiving her about his background. She wondered if Harper had been waiting for something like this, something she could use to convince herself that Joss was just another Luke, an unworthy jerk.

Joss finally said, “I didn't mean to deceive you.”

An expression crossed Harper's face, and Katie read it perfectly. She was more in love with him than before!

“You didn't deceive anyone,” Harper confirmed. “I think we all got to know who you really are this summer. I think that's what you wanted all along.”

Deep, Katie thought. And then wondered, what now? Will Joss unburden himself and tell Harper his other big secret? The not-so-worthy one? The one Harper would find truly contemptible, and hurtful.

“There's something else you should know.” Joss leveled his gaze at Harper. “Something I'm not proud of.”

Katie jumped up, pivoted, and dashed from the room. He was gonna do it, stupid fool. She so didn't need to hear it.

Only, due to the thinness of the walls, the silence in the rest of the house, and—okay, if she had to admit it—her own keen interest, she heard everything.

Joss outed himself about sleeping with Mandy.

Harper outed her real feelings. Disgust, jealousy, rage. And
now—the excuse she'd been looking for for cutting him off.

Joss fell all over himself explaining, apologizing, trying to make Harper understand that it had happened, and was over, before he'd realized his feelings for her. That he'd been a jerk.

Katie had to strain to hear the rest. From Harper, it sounded like, “Of course.”

From Joss, it was all about, “I gave in to temptation, but then I met you. And no one tempted me after that. Harper, wait …”

The light went out in the room. Katie heard Joss's defeated footsteps heading away. Despite the darkness and the distance, she could absolutely read Harper's mind: close call.

Mitch's life flashed before him. Only not the way it's always
described in books or shown on TV—that moment when you know you're dying. Not like a movie on rewind, or a comic book strip of halo-lit snapshots, and certainly not, as he'd heard more recently, a PowerPoint slide presentation in the great beyond, hitting on his accomplishments, defeats and goals.

He'd have chosen any of those above what was happening now! Mitchell James Considine's autobiographical death scene was coming at him as a rush of ocean waves—cold, overwhelming, disorienting, inescapable.

A scene would appear—he and Beverly, six years old, being chased by playground bullies—then, roar up in front of him like a Scooby-Doo monster with its claws extended,
before simply curling in on itself and enveloping him.

One after another they came at him, relentlessly. The day his father, grizzled and drunk, kicked them out of the apartment. Mitch, at eight years old, scared and shaking, climbed up the fire escape, and snuck in through the window to let his mom and sister inside.

A moment in the puke-green school cafeteria, when third-grader Sarah Riley didn't have her food stamps, and chose to go hungry rather than let anyone know. Mitch gave her his sandwich, insisting he wasn't really hungry, anyway.

His lungs screamed and he couldn't breathe. He was so cold.

Next, the pants were too short, his red socks were sticking out, everyone was laughing at him. Splash! A wave of shame hit as he watched himself now, self-consciously crossing the stage to receive his high school diploma. He knew, but did not see, his mom in the back row of the auditorium, beaming with pride as he was named class valedictorian.

His arms strained, ached with the effort of keeping up with the waves. More were coming.

An image of his mom, returning home late, haggard from scrubbing other people's floors—the name
DORA
stitched to her gray uniform; the pinkie pact he'd made with Bev, swearing they'd get out of the projects, and then, from far away, another image was coming toward him. But who was that? A girl, her face blurred, because she was twirling like a ballerina,
swirling around him, faster and faster, crashing down now and sucking him under.

“Mitch! Mitch! Can you hear me?”

He heard only in gasps and gurgles, “Mitch, I'm almost there!” He strained toward it, but it was too faint, and he was too far away.

“Mitch, I'm coming! Hang on!”

Who was coming? What could he hang on to?

The other swimmer! Instantly, Mitch flashed to the present. He was the lifeguard. And he'd seen someone out there, a child, arms flaying, needing him. How many times had the boy gone under? He remembered being panicked, scampering down the lifeguard post, racing into the water, and swimming out as far as he could. He thought he'd called out, “Where are you? Hang on, I'm almost there!”

He couldn't find the drowning swimmer. The boy was too little, and the ocean was too big; it was all too much. He was the lifeguard, and he was lost.

An innocent kid would die today, maybe had already. Because Mitch Considine hadn't been fast enough.

Another wave. But, unlike the others, this was just a white, foamy screen, no snapshot of his life appeared on it. This wave was far more powerful than the others, sucking him into blackness. So was this it, finally? He'd gone under for the last time.

Mitch felt a new sensation, something tough and sinewy,
yet soft and familiar. If this was death, it was more comforting than he'd thought it could be. It felt like someone's arm—God's?—strong and sure, bent at the elbow, wrapping itself halfway around his chest, locking in under his armpit.

It was pulling him, tugging him, yanking him, even … not down, deeper into the cold, black pit … but up. Pulling him back.

“No, I have to save him. I have to save …” Mitch wanted to say, “Stop! Forget about me, there's a child out there who needs to be rescued first.” But no words were actually leaving his mouth. It was dark where he was now.

Her lips were soft, lush. Not like Leonora's, whose kisses felt like little pecks, teasing, perfunctory, always leaving him wanting more.

Whoever was kissing him now
was
giving him more—

Breathing life into him.

He coughed. Blinked. He looked straight into the sun, and saw the outline of an angel, a halo suspended above long waves of copper hair. “Mandy? Is that you? Are we …? Wha … wha … happened?”

He heard someone, not her, respond, “She saved your life, man.”

Other voices chimed in, so many that they overlapped each other, broke into one another, confusing him.

“How lucky can a guy get?” “Mouth-to-mouth from the hottest babe on the beach?” “Oh, man! It's like
Baywatch
, only real!” “You one lucky sumbitch, y'know?”

Mitch wanted to get up, but his head was too heavy to lift. He managed to turn his cheek onto the soft sand. Kneeling next to him was another lifeguard, Doug or Drug or something—Mitch had never been sure—seriously freaked. “Got here as soon as I could, Mitch,” he panted, “you are lucky this chick was here. I wouldn't have made it.”

This chick? He didn't mean Mandy? That wasn't possible. So who was she? Where was she? Mitch tried to turn his head the other way, but it was too much work.

Doug gripped his arm. “What made you go out there, man?”

To rescue a drowning swimmer, why else? He'd seen small arms waving, going down, being sucked under. Had he been hallucinating? “There wasn't …?”

He coughed. “No one was drowning?” he finally spit out.

“Just you.” Consciousness had returned fully. He'd know that voice anywhere. It matched the vision he saw, the haloed redhead. Mandy ran her fingers through his hair. Then she handed him a towel. “Here, blow your nose, you'll be fine.”

Mitch exhaled and felt his body uncoil. He was safe now.

“Okay, show's over, you can all leave.” Mandy booted the looky-loos, then whispered, “You fell asleep, you dumb lug.”

“You were here?” Mitch asked stupidly. “I didn't see you.”

“I was sunbathing next to the lifeguard station. I waved, but you were asleep, so I let you be.”

“You should have woke me up,” he said weakly. “It was irresponsible.”

“Yeah, well, I made an executive decision,” she cracked. “You needed your sleep more than I needed an even tan. I sat on the beach and took watch for you. No one was even in the water.”