No Strings Attached (3 page)

Inside, the house was every bit as craptastic as it was out: musty, dusty, dank, and dark. Harper's eyes watered; Mitch sneezed. A foyer led into a room too small for the furniture squeezed in it: two sofas, a recliner, club chair, coffee tables, floor lamps, and TV sitting on the fireplace mantel.

“Behold the living room,” Mitch announced. “The kitchen's that way”—he paused—“ah-choo!

“We've got three bedrooms on this floor, plus a bathroom,” he continued. “Two more bedrooms and another bathroom are upstairs. There's a basement with a washer and dryer, room to park your bike. Ain't much, but it's all ours, all summer long.”

“And it's beachfront property, so that's something,” Harper added.

“Hey, we were lucky to get this at the last minute,” Mitch agreed, removing the baseball cap and running his fingers through his short-cropped blond hair. “I didn't expect to be here this summer.”

“Ditto.”

Mitch mentioned other plans that had fallen through,
his scramble to secure this house
and
find enough people to share it with. “I'm going to go pick up some cleaning supplies,” he said. “Just so you know, all house expenses are shared. I'll spend only what we need to get this place livable. No worries, I've done this before.” He winked and put his cap back on.

Confident and competent, as befitting J.Crew, Harper thought.

“We'll go over the house rules later, after we're all settled in,” Mitch added, heading out the door. “I'll just go bring in your luggage.”

Rules? There were rules? Harper hadn't considered that—or much of anything else in her haste to leave Boston. When Luke broke up with her, she assumed she'd go to New York, where she had friends, support. But when she saw the posting on Trinity's website, something crystallized. Better to spend the summer where no one knew her, and no questions would follow her.

Maybe not talking about him would lead to not thinking about him.

Her ex-hippie mom was cool with the arrangement, since a job at a day camp came along with Katie's offer. And Harper promised weekly cell phone contact. The only thing Susan Allen had given her shit about was not taking her guitar.

Mitch hauled the luggage in, which took two trips. “I suggest,” he panted, “you snag the room with the biggest closet.”

“It's not mine,” Harper quickly clarified, “the luggage.”

Mitch was confused. “Oh, I figured you sent it ahead.” He checked the label. “Katie Charlesworth. That's your friend, right? Well, anyway, I'll leave it here and the two of you can deal.” He slipped another key off the ring to leave for Katie.

“Hey, Mitch,” Harper called as he headed out, “thanks. That was cool of you to drag it all in.”

Our Lady of the Designer Luggage arrived soon after. She was sweaty, and obviously tired, but chipper. “Ugh! What they charge for taxis here is a sin,” Katie complained as she trudged up the front steps, hauling yet another obscenely bulging suitcase. “I had the driver drop me off a few blocks away, when the meter reached double digits. I totally hiked the rest of the way.”

Was Harper supposed to empathize? If Katie had blown her allowance, wouldn't Mumsy and Popsie back on Beacon Hill just send more? For that matter, why did Katie even need to work this summer, let alone spend time in a shitpile like this?

Ms. “I'm-The-Kick”
was
disappointed in the dwelling.
Harper could tell by the almost-frown. “So,” Katie said, “are we the first ones here?”

“Not exactly.” Harper told her about Mitch and handed her the key.

Katie chuckled. “Sounds like we've got a House Witch already!”

“A what?”

“I was reading about share houses online. Apparently, someone has to be Large 'n' In Charge. That person gets to pay a smaller share of the rent. And ours is a
guy
, a Den Daddy. How sweet. Guys are much more maneuverable.”

Harper was ready to retch—and bolt. She and Miss Know-It-All weren't going to last out the day, let alone the season. “You'll notice he schlepped all your stuff in,” Harper dryly pointed out.

Katie surveyed. “Let's find the biggest bedroom.”

It turned out to be one of the upstairs rooms. Its twin beds, covered in red, white, and blue nautically themed quilts, were set under Cape Cod–style dormered windows. A double closet faced the beds, perpendicular to a desk and swivel chair. Must be quite a comedown for Katie, Harper mused, again wondering how the privileged princess ended up here.

The girls hauled Harper's duffel and Katie's stuff up the stairs, sneezing, coughing, and sweating the entire time.

“Air! We need fresh air,” Katie declared when they were
done. Harper flipped on the ceiling fan as Katie threw the room's two windows open.

That's when the hurricane hit.

Fierce and unrelenting, it arrived wrapped in a miniskirt and whirled right smack into the room, shrieking, “What the hell are you doing here? This is MY room. Get out.”

“What part of
get out
didn't you understand?” In her five-inch
-high spike sandals, Mandy Starr towered over the twerpy twosome, sizing them up as she stared them down. High school chickadees, she'd bet, who'd scored a parent-free zone for the summer. It had to be illegal for the training-bra set to be here—so they'd lied about their ages. A useful little factoid. No way were
they
getting the room she'd staked out—via Web photos—for herself.

The pale blonde in the designer flip-flops and hot pink tank top chirped, “I didn't know this room was reserved. There was no sign or anything.”

Mandy shot her the bird. “How's this for a sign?”

The other one, the coffee-complexioned Birkenstock granola girl—“ethnically ambiguous,” a phrase Mandy had once
heard—struck a hands-on-hips “bring it” pose. “We got here first.”

Mandy thrust her own shapely hip out. “Which counts for a pile of shit. Scram, before I expose the both of you as underage.”

Score! The flash of real fear in blondie's eyes told Mandy her instincts were sharp as ever. This one had grit, though. Wiping her hands on her Mui Mui capris, she extended her arm for a handshake. “Listen, we're going to be housemates, and this is off to a really negative start. I'm Katie, this is Harper. And you are—?”

“Pissed off.”

Princess Paleface accepted defeat, and backed off. “We'll find another room, no harm, no foul.”

Mandy wasn't certain the one with the gray-blue peepers would go down so easily. What kind of a name was Harper, anyway? Upon further inspection, Mandy hazarded another guess about this pair. No way were they friends. The underage thing was only part of their deal. The rest? Runaways maybe?

The caramel-complexioned one looked like she was ready for a fight, but the conflict never came. She growled, grabbed a couple of suitcases, and stomped out. The ones Katie couldn't carry—where did she think she was, the freakin' Hilton?—Mandy kicked out into the hallway.

Finally! She slammed the door and allowed herself a long, slow exhale. Mandy needed out of the too tight miniskirt and the pinchy sandals. She dropped backward onto one of the beds and decided to unpeel completely. Then, just for fun, she unpacked her black lace teddy, the expensive one, and slipped into it. The breeze from the ceiling fan tickled her bare skin. It felt good.

Mandy noted small cracks in the plaster, dust ribbons in the crevices, and made a mental note to tell Mitch to get with the Swiffer and make like Sally Housewife. That was his job, right? For that matter, the windows could use a good scrubbing, and the rug a thorough vacuuming.

Okay, so this dump wasn't Trump Palace. Straight up, to Mandy Starr, it might as well have been. She had a real good feeling about this place, like it was “Go,” and she was about to roll the dice. She'd been ready for a long time.

The whole gig had come by chance. Some random girl had darted into Micky D's, ordered the low-carb sucker meal from her, and all of a sudden started squealing that she and Mandy used to know each other. “It's me, Bev—don't you remember?”

She blathered on. It was just to shut her up that Mandy took an unscheduled break (for which her cheap bastard boss would dock her, no doubt) to sit and listen to Beverly Considine, who used to live next door to her. Whatdya know, a few hundred blahdee, blah blah blahs later, one thing led to another—the other being this summer share thing that Bev's brother was organizing.

At first, Mandy had been all “what's in it for you?”—skeptical. Curiosity had led to her boss's computer, where she'd Googled “Hyannis.” Possibilities popped up. Like resorts where showbiz types vacationed. Like marinas, where yachts delivered old-money types, and mansions, where politically connected bigwigs owned summer homes. Something else about Hyannis appealed to Mandy.

Kennedys. Talk about your money, status, and all that jazz. And weren't there a lot of them?
Star
magazine always had pictures of hale, hearty, fun-loving Kennedy hotties with coin and connections.

Thinking about the juicy months ahead energized her. She sprang off the bed, found a pop station on the radio, and began rearranging the room. Singing and shaking her booty along with “Hey Ya!” she dragged the nightstand away from the wall and pushed the twin beds together. That'd work. Mandy wasn't planning on too many nights alone in this room.

She unpacked the rest of her clothes. She'd only brought the barest of essentials, accent on the bare. The ratio of teddies to tops, cute undies to outerwear was 2 to 1. The one eyesore in her closet was the dumb-ass uniform that Duck Creek Catering had sent her in advance.

Not that Mandy was complaining. She'd been lucky to snare the job. The quick online search had brought up mainly day camp gigs. Right, like she wanted to wipe the asses of
snot-nosed rich brats. There were “exciting opportunities” like the one she already had McDonald's, but she was tired of customers asking if she could—“heh, heh”—supersize it for them.

Just when she was about to tell Ms. Do-Gooder from the old days what she could do with her share house opening, up popped a position with some la-di-da caterer, whose clients ranged from the rich to the richer. Mandy was in no way qualified for the gig. She'd slipped her friend Theresa a fiver to invent a résumé and pose as a reference.

Ah, well, at least the uniform was black. She could say the top button had been torn off when she got it.

She was in the middle of creating a workspace for her makeup, accessories, and toiletries when her cell phone rang. She didn't recognize the number, and answered warily. “Hello?”

“Sarah?”

Oh. Her. “Wrong number—”

“Sarah, it's Bev. Don't hang up. I just want to see if you got to Hyannis okay, how the house is.”

No one called her Sarah anymore. When would Beverly Considine get that memo?

“Can't hear you, bad cell reception,” she lied. “I'll call you later.” She turned the power off and headed down the short corridor to the tiny bathroom.

Mandy washed her face and checked the mirror. Despite her wan complexion and freckles, she looked older than her
nineteen years, but damn, a whole lot better than the way she used to look. She'd take the “after” version over the “before” any day. It was good enough to net what she'd come for.

Barefoot, Mandy padded back to her room. Her hand was on the doorknob when she heard footsteps climbing the stairs. Male footsteps.

Mitch Considine, ever the good guy, lugging a very large, thin, rectangular box up the stairs.

“Mitchell! I wondered when the welcome wagon would come a-knocking.”

At the sight of her in her black lace teddy, Mitch's jaw dropped. He nearly sent the package bouncing down the steps.

Mandy laughed. “You can put your eyes back in their sockets, mister. How 'bout a hug?”

He blushed and stammered, “I … hi … you look … wow.”

“So I guess you majored in speech at that fancy Ivy League college, huh?” Mandy teased, pleased with his reaction to her. Not that ol' Mitch was any slouch in the looks department. He'd grown up hale and hunky, even if the word “prep” was tattooed on his forehead. If she hadn't known better, she might've put
him
on her hit list.

Mitch collected himself. “So, hey! Welcome. I'm glad this worked out. I came up to give you this.” He motioned at the package.

She smiled. “My full-length mirror. Where I go, it goes.
Maybe you can help me hang it in my room?” She posed suggestively—in a way she suspected might cause a boob to pop out the top of the teddy.

Flustered, Mitch thrust the mirror toward her. “Sure, later maybe. So listen, we're barbecuing at six, then all sitting down for a house meeting.”

“Whoop-de-fuckin' do.” Mandy twirled her finger in the air. “Can't wait.”

“C'mon, Sarah. Don't be snide,” Mitch warned.

“Hello! Sarah doesn't live here anymore. There is no Sarah. Think you can remember that?” To punctuate her point, Mandy thrust her extremely shapely leg out and let it brush against his.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, trying not to look. “Just … well, put some clothes on before you come down. Mandy.”

“Not to worry, Mitch,” she whispered, leaning in to trace her finger down his chest. “I'll play nice with the other children.”

She stood the mirror against the wall and unpacked the rest of her stuff. Her CD player, the food scale she brought everywhere, and her most cherished possession: her Scrapbook of Dreams. She stood it up on the night table. It was full of photos she'd clipped from magazines and newspapers—pictures of her quarry, her future. In addition to the
Star
mag Kennedy candids were shots of famous actors, producers, and directors, people she idolized and had made it her business to meet, people who, Web
research had shown, often “summered” on the Cape.