Spectacular Rascal: A Sexy Flirty Dirty Standalone Romance (3 page)

No way. You can’t back out of this, Aidan,
Bash shoots back immediately.
Even if I didn’t plan on shacking up with Penny and keeping her in bed for the next four days, I can’t swing this one. Beth needs someone to scare the shit out of her ex. That’s not in my wheelhouse, and you know it. I’m excellent at what I do, but I don’t inspire fear at first sight.

I sigh. It’s true. Bash can be a cold, hard, son of a bitch when he needs to be, but at first glance he looks like the kind of guy who’s going to shake your hand and ask the location of the nearest whiskey bar, not hunt you down and cut your heart out for fucking with his girl.

Though he would. I know if anyone threatened Penny, Bash would do whatever it took to keep her safe. He proved that when he stole a horse and rode after her like he was channeling John Wayne. But his badass doesn’t show on the surface, which means I’m stuck with Beth for the next month, or however long it takes to convince her ex to back off.

I pause near the entrance to the subway and type out a quick—
Got it, I’ll take care of Beth. Enjoy your time with Penny
—as another wave of malaise washes through my chest to settle heavily in my stomach.

A part of me wants to blame the lady lawyer and her special intervention needs for the crappy sensation. I don’t enjoy taking a week off from my real work for new client orientation. Tattooing is my passion; this gig for Bash is just a way to fast track the funds I need to open a second location of Ink Addicts. But this woman I’ve never met isn’t the problem.

The problem is the look on Bash’s face when he saw Penny today. I’ve never seen that exact expression before, not in almost twenty years of friendship. All the Bash swagger and smartass joking fell away, and there was nothing in his eyes but pure happiness. In that moment, there was no one else in the world but Penny, the woman who is his everything, the friend who knows all of his secrets, the person he needs more than the air he breathes.

Bash has been in love before, and I did my share of hanging out with him and his last steady date, but I’ve never seen him look at anyone the way he looks at Penny. It’s like the answer to every question is right there, in that curvy little body. In those big brown eyes. In the arms of the person who has proven to him that who he truly is, deep down beneath all the bullshit, is enough.

More than enough.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been with anyone who made me want to show my deep-down side. It’s been even longer since I let myself start collecting those moments, those memories, those pieces of a person that, little by little, make you wonder if this is it. If this is your shot at something more than a casual connection. If this is the person who is going to prove that love isn’t a lie or a fairy tale or something that starts to die the moment it’s born. That love is real and that it can last, even though every couple you know is faltering, fading, or broken beyond repair.

Not anymore. There’s nothing broken or fading about Bash and Penny.

I grunt as I shove my phone into my back pocket, reminding myself that it’s too early in the game to make a call on Bash and Penny. They may have had a perfect working relationship for two years, but love is a completely different animal.

Whenever I hear about a lion tamer torn apart by the cats she trained since birth, or a man savagely murdered by the chimpanzee he saved from poachers, I think about love. Love is a wild, untamed creature. And no matter how beautiful or seductive it is, it can’t be trusted not to wake up with a fur ball up its ass and decide to rip your face off.

On the subway ride home, I hold tight to that truth, and by the time I reach my apartment in the West Village the shitty, melancholy, “what if you’re missing all the good stuff” feeling has faded, and I’m my old self again.

I stay that way until ten a.m. the next morning, when I walk into Buvette for my first meeting with Beth Jones and see a woman sitting in a corner table, sipping a cappuccino, watching me with cool green eyes that are way too fucking familiar.

CHAPTER THREE

From the collected notes of Curved for her Pleasure

and Polka Dot Panties

Dear Curved,

I’m not sure you’ll ever read this note—as a lowly freshman, I have no way of knowing if the hole in the butt crack of the union soldier statue is really where the Dashers place top secret messages or if you’re just messing with me—but I figured I would give this a try.

If you’re hiding in the bushes filming me while I climb the statue and take its butt virginity with this piece of paper, I can only hope that you won’t show the footage to anyone outside the club. I’ve accepted embarrassment as part of my new lot in life, along with my polka-dot-pantied nickname, but there are people in my world who would NOT be amused by anything involving me and a man’s butt.

Even if the man in question is a statue.

Anyway, just thought you might want to know the reason it was so easy for me to find the real trail today. Your dasher trail markers are solid, but every time you lay a false trail, your footprints get deeper and closer together. Anyone who knows the first thing about tracking can take one look at the first few feet of the branch and tell if it’s a real trail or a trick that leads to a dead end.

So basically, you’re going to have to step up your fox game if you want to fool this hound. ;)

Thanks again for letting me join the group. I can’t remember the last time I had this much fun.

Best,

Polka Dot Panties

Dear Panties,

So what you’re saying is that you’re an Apache scout trapped in a skinny white girl’s body. This is good to know, and I’ll do my best to stop making things easy for your polka-dotted ass.

Thanks for the heads-up and don’t worry about anything Dasher-related being shared outside the club. As you can probably tell already, we’re merciless when it comes to dishing out shit, but we’ve always got each other’s backs.

Your reputation is safe with us.

Welcome to the motley crew,

Curve (C to my friends)

P.S. The soldier lost his butt virginity a long time ago, but it was sweet of you to worry.

Too sweet.

You need to cut that shit out or the rest of the hounds are going to have you for breakfast.

Dear Curve,

Gotcha.

Thanks for the note, the reassurance, and the warning. But don’t worry about anyone having me for breakfast. My polka-dotted ass and I are tougher than we look.

See you on the trail.

Try to make me work for it this time?

Sincerely,

Panties

Dear Panties,

I will remind you of your smart-ass note when you’re begging me for mercy on Saturday. I’m devising something with seven levels of pain just for you.

Get ready to cry like a freshman,

Curve

CHAPTER FOUR

Beth Jones is Panties.

Panties is Beth Jones.

My mind makes the connection quickly, realizing that any other explanation for Red sitting at the corner table where I’d arranged to meet my client, wearing the green shift dress my client said she would be wearing, is farfetched.

For years, I’ve wondered about Panties’s real identity. But I resisted the urge to Google my way to a name to go with the memory of the girl who pushed me into becoming the craftiest fox the Penn U Dashers ever had. The girl who was one of my best college friends, and who haunted my dreams for months after that night in the woods when I almost made her mine.

I hadn’t wanted a name or any more intimate details. I’d wanted to put her in the past and forget that I almost called off my plans to study with a master tattoo artist to spend the summer buried balls-deep in Red. Forget that it took so long to get her out of my head, or that there are still nights when I find myself alone and nothing the Internet has to offer in the way of erotic stimulation will do.

Nights when I jerk off to the memory of her smell and her taste and the hitch in her voice when she whispered that I was the only one she wanted. Nights when I wonder if it was the fact that we were young and stupid and went out of our way to be fools together that makes me remember her with a tight feeling in my chest, or if it’s something more, something I missed out on, something I might never find again if I don’t switch up my game.

And now here she is, meeting my gaze across the busy-for-a-Monday-morning French café with a cool, guarded expression that is nothing like the confident, secretly vulnerable Panties I remember, and all I want to do is turn and walk away.

It hurts to see her like this, with her pretty mouth tight around the edges, her eyes shuttered, and a tense curve in her shoulders that is becoming all too familiar. My first two clients had that same curve at the top of their spine, like they were perpetually ready to curl into a ball and hide. That curve assures me that Red hasn’t booked a Spectacular Rascal intervention as an excuse to connect with an old college friend. She’s here because she is Beth Jones, an attorney well versed in the law, who is still unable to protect herself from an ex-lover who refuses to take no for an answer.

Thanks to Bash’s slacking the past couple of weeks, I don’t know much about Beth’s situation, only that she’s being stalked by an ex who wants her back, and that she needs someone “dangerous” on her arm to convince the guy to back off.

No, I don’t know much, but I can tell she’s in deep. She’s in trouble, and for some reason she thinks I’m the person who can help her out of it. But I’m not. Bash was clear about the rules of engagement from the beginning: never confuse fantasy with reality, never develop a personal relationship with a client, and never let things go further than a kiss.

Panties and I have already gone further than a kiss. Much further. I know the sounds she makes when she comes and the way her fingers feel wrapped around my cock.

Which means this intervention is over before it begins.

“I know this seems strange,” she says as I stop in front of her table. Her voice is as husky and confident as I remember, making me hope her situation hasn’t reached Dire status. It might take some time to get her booked in with Bash, and I don’t want her to be stressed out or in danger while she’s waiting for help.

“But I seriously had no idea you worked for this company when I contacted your boss,” she continues, fingers curling around her mug. “It’s just a crazy coincidence.”

“You’re kidding.” My brow furrows. Red was never a liar, but the chances that someone I know would accidentally become my third client are pretty fucking slim.

She shakes her head. “No, I’m not. Bash helped a friend of mine send her ex to prison for securities fraud last year. She referred me to Magnificent Bastard Consulting, and when Bash heard the details of my situation, he suggested that I take a look at his associate’s file. I had no idea it was you until I saw the pictures.” Her lips quirk on one side. “Nice portfolio, by the way. I like the shot by the railroad tracks, the one where you’re glaring at the camera with your neck veins popping out.”

I narrow my eyes. “Are you giving me shit?”

She sees my narrowed eyes and raises me an arched brow. “Did you have makeup on your stomach in those pictures?”

“The makeup lady ambushed me with eye shadow,” I admit with a shrug, smiling as Red’s husky laugh fills our corner of the café.

“Then, yes, I’m giving you shit. Just a little bit.” Her grin banishes the tension from the corners of her mouth and strips the years from her face, making her look like the Panties I knew, the girl who always had my back, no matter what. “How have you been, Curve?” she asks in a softer voice. “It’s been a long time.”

“It has. And I’ve been good. Really good,” I say, my smile fading as that sad, shitty feeling from yesterday sweeps in.

I don’t enjoy meeting Red again like this.

And I’m going to enjoy telling her that I can’t help her even less.

CHAPTER FIVE

“So are you going to sit down?” Red’s gaze shifts pointedly to the empty chair across from her before returning to me. “Or is this Spectacular Rascal thing something you only do standing up?”

“I didn’t choose the name,” I say, instead of the dozen other things I should be saying. I pull out the chair and settle in, promising myself I’ll only stay long enough to catch up a little before I let her down easy. “Bash is in charge of the marketing, the detective work, and all the rest of it. I’m just the muscle.”

“I doubt that. But you have committed to the beefcake thing, haven’t you?” Her eyes skim down my chest, where I know my tight black T-shirt is displaying my well-earned pecs to their best advantage. “When I first saw the pictures, I wasn’t completely sure it was you. The face was the same, but the Curve I knew looked more like a soccer player than a gladiator.”

“I took up weightlifting after college.” I resist the urge to flex beneath her gaze. I’m not a cheesy, ’roid-chomping meathead, but something primal inside of me wants to give her a reason to keep checking me out.

“You certainly did.” Her attention returns to my face, uncertainty flickering in her green eyes. “I’m sorry I sprung this on you out of the blue. I should have told Bash that we knew each other. But I was afraid that if I did, you wouldn’t come. And I really do need someone like you.”