Live for Me (4 page)

I was afraid if I looked at him, he would read too much on my face. How vulnerable I felt, despite my desperate conviction and desire to be independent.

“She’s expecting us to go to bed together.”

My gaze snapped up from the dog to him, palms instantly sweating. My eyes widened, I couldn’t help it. He wasn’t flirting. He wasn’t being suggestive. He was just stating a fact that the dog would expect her master to have a woman with him. It had nothing to do with me.

There must be a lot of women ready and willing to share his bed.

Heat bloomed on my cheeks and I was grateful for the dark room so he couldn’t see my embarrassment. My sudden desire. My awkward reaction.

“I guess she’ll have to choose then. She’ll pick you.” I was confident she would.

So when I started walking in the opposite direction I was surprised to hear toenails clicking on the hardwood floors and dog tags jingling. A glance back showed Amelia crossing the room to me. “Oh!”

He gave me a mocking salute. “I relinquish my traitorous dog to you. Though I do tend to kick her by accident, so I’m sure it’s partly that and partly that she has good taste in companions.”

Before I could absorb the compliment, he added, “She always hated my ex-wife, go figure.”

“Did you kick her too?” It was out before I could stop it.

But Devin gave me a sly smile. “Just to the curb.” Then he retrieved his bag off the floor and sauntered up the stairs, raising his arm in a casual wave. “Good night.”

“Good night.” I fast walked to my room, trembling hands jammed in my pockets.

In my new room I shut the door behind me, locked it, and flicked on the light. Amelia jumped on my bed.

I promptly pulled out my ancient iPad I’d bought for a steal and started seeing what I could find out about Gold Daddy.

And who exactly he had been married to.

Shucking my jeans, I slid beneath the covers, onto crisp, cool sheets. They felt amazing and expensive as they caressed my skin. As I pulled up an image of Devin on my iPad, I spontaneously yanked my tank top over my head and rocked a little under the comforter, sighing at the luxurious sensation of clean and quality sheets next to my near nudity.

“Oh, God,” I breathed, when I saw Devin onscreen dressed in a tux and sunglasses. So damn sexy. So damn rich. It was astonishing to see him there on a gossip news website, leaving the Grammys, a cocky grin on his face, and to know that he was upstairs in bed. Right above me.

Real.

Did he sleep naked? In his underwear? I’d never been so close to either a rich guy or a good-looking guy. It was overwhelming, exciting. I wouldn’t have thought I’d be star struck, and I wasn’t. Not exactly. It was more surreal than anything else. Like before now the world on my computer screen wasn’t real. Those people didn’t exist outside the box of the Internet. Yet they did. He did.

And he liked doughnuts and studied me with an unnerving intensity.

Staring at his smile onscreen, wishing I could see behind the sunglasses, I shifted my legs restlessly. I was turned on, I couldn’t help myself. The sheets were cool, the privacy compelling, the image of the man delicious. Tentatively, I slipped my fingers down between my thighs and stroked myself to a hot, wet arousal. The more I thought about Devin upstairs, the more I relaxed, and let myself enjoy the intimate contours of my body, my underutilized sexual desires clamoring for escape.

Conscious of having Amelia as an audience, I kept the covers up to my chin, my breathing even. I was used to being quiet.

When I came, my eyes were closed and I was imagining him over me, his lips pressing hot kisses on my sensitive flesh. As the tremors of ecstasy slowed, I turned my head to look at him again.

My screen had gone dark.

And suddenly I felt more alone than ever before.

Fingering the note on the kitchen island, I stared down at Devin’s bold handwriting.

Got called back to NYC. Text me if Amelia is a problem.

He’d left his number then signed it “DG.”

Next to the note was the dog’s leash and instructions on how much to feed her. Behind that was the box of doughnuts with “Finish these” written on the box.

I had come into the kitchen fully dressed, nervous to see him, yet undeniably excited. To find the note was deflating. My first thought was somehow he had known, sensed, that I thought he was hot and it made him uncomfortable. Like somehow he knew that I had been lying in bed, touching myself to thoughts of him. In his house. On his sheets.

So mortifying.

Not that he knew. He couldn’t know. But in the morning light, I still felt totally self-conscious and ridiculous.

I had dressed in jeans, a sweatshirt, and my Converse, and I took the leash off the counter, determined to take the dog for a walk and stop acting and feeling like an idiot. It was better this way. I did not need Devin Gold hanging around inadvertently fostering my socially awkward crush.

“Come on, Amelia,” I said, bending over and clipping the leash to her collar. I couldn’t believe that Devin had entrusted me with his dog. I had never owned a pet and I had given myself a ten minute online crash course on the Labrador breed and their needs first thing when I’d woken up. It was second nature to me to reach for my iPad and do research about anything and everything. It had been my lifeline to the outside world for years, and I figured I knew a little bit about a lot of things. Jack of all trades, master of nothing.

I had wandered online for hours every day, but had never done much of anything. My life experience was nonexistent. Unless you considered using a box of Clairol to dye an old lady’s hair a life experience.

As I took the dog and we walked across the yard, down towards the ocean, I wondered what New York City was really like. I’d seen it in a million movies and TV shows, had read about it online, but what would it be like to be standing in Times Square? What did it smell like? Would I feel less singled out, less obvious, less the biracial abandoned foster girl in a city where there was every color and kind of human being in existence?

It wasn’t likely I’d find out anytime soon.

But my research had shown that Devin owned not just the house I was staying in, but an apartment in Manhattan on the Upper East Side. He’d paid 3.3 million for the three bedroom pre-war apartment four years earlier. He had also married Kadence Creed a year after that, the daughter of his mentor, Owen Creed, a legendary music producer. According to TMZ they had split up six months earlier after a trip to Mexico for Devin’s thirtieth birthday. I figured three years was the average life span of an entertainment industry marriage.

Like milk, they soured quickly.

As we walked, or more accurately, Amelia dragged me over the brown grass, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and quickly found the picture I’d discovered the night before of Kadence and Devin at their wedding. It was a Vegas ceremony and she was wearing a short dress, her boobs bursting out of the top. She looked like she had strolled out of the Playboy mansion and right on down the aisle. Big hair. Big acrylic nails. Big eyelashes. Everything was large and fake and exaggerated.

It grossed me out that this was the type of chick he would go for. But for all I knew, maybe she was super sweet. Maybe she cooked dinner for him and thoughtfully walked the dog and laughed at all his jokes. Somehow I doubted it.

I was being judgmental because I thought not only was he good looking, he was interesting. And I was jealous. Just flat out, plain old, pointlessly jealous. Kadence had money and success. An exciting life.

I had five bucks, no family, exactly two friends, and a future that stretched ahead of me as an endless struggle to survive. Yesterday I had arrived at Richfield full of hope, appreciative of the beautiful place to stay, the decent income I could stash away to hopefully start online college classes, grateful for the quiet.

Ready to be left alone.

Now I was alone.

And somehow Devin had tainted that, made it not good enough.

I also hated to see that it was true- that women who primped themselves into living Barbies got the guy. You never saw a rich dude with a librarian.

Or a short girl from Vinalhaven.

It made me angry.

Fuck him. Screw him and his designer sunglasses and his ridiculous need to have a box of doughnuts available to him at all times. Because clearly being denied anything when you wanted it was a foreign concept to Gold Daddy. Big pimpin’, take his coin, and buy the world, yo. Fucking tool.

Leaning down, I picked up a rock and hurled it off the cliff with all my strength. It fell so far to the water below that I never even saw the splash.

My phone rang in my hand. It was Cat.

“Hey,” I said, breathless, but wanting someone to talk to.

“Hey! How goes the housesitting? Is it like insanely beautiful there?”

“Yes. The house is amazeballs.” I always cranked up the teen speak with Cat because it drove her crazy. She thought it made me sound cliché.

If you say you’re going to take a selfie I’ll stab myself
.

Yeah. He popped right back into my head.

“I’m so jealous. Heath is outside chopping wood right now because this house is so damn drafty. I can never get warm. I bet you can crank the heat up and he’ll never even notice. You’ll be living in a sauna all winter. Your skin will glow like a Neutrogena commercial.”

Sitting down on the hard ground, I let Amelia lick my hand. It tickled, but there was something about having a connection with another living creature that was awesome. I could see the appeal of having a pet. The dog was great company, a silent and constant companion through the night and that morning. “The heat is on a timer. It’s all controlled electronically through software. So he can basically control the heat in the house from his offices in New York City.”

The tech geek in me loved that. But it also suddenly occurred to me that if the house was wired that way, most likely there were cameras monitoring the property. Was I living in the Big Brother house? Didn’t they have to disclose that to me? Though I wasn’t sure who the mysterious “they” was. But again I remembered the night before with pure horror. Even if they couldn’t tell what I was doing under the covers, I was still staring endlessly at Devin’s image on my computer screen.

Holy shit.

Somewhere in some glass tower in New York was a team of his employees smirking over me? Watching me lie in bed researching Devin. Watching me eat a doughnut this morning that I totally didn’t need in two offensive and gooey bites.

“That sucks.”

“Do you think the house could be monitored by cameras?” I asked Cat. “Is it illegal for them to do that without telling me?”

“I have no idea. I mean, it’s his private property. But if he had cameras sweeping the house, why would he need you there?”

Good point. “Squatters? He and his assistant seem weirdly convinced drug addicts will break into any empty house and start cooking meth.”

“That must be a New York thing. But if the cameras showed someone breaking in, the security system would alert the cops and they would come. You totally wouldn’t need to be living there if he had that much technology rolling.”

“I don’t think my job is to keep it safe from an invasion. I think it’s to make sure that when he is feeling random and wants to show up whenever it won’t be dusty and he’ll have food to eat. I have a list of stuff I have to keep stocked in the pantry at all times and let me tell you, the dude likes wine and sugar.”

“A man after my own heart.”

I took a deep breath and confessed. “He showed up here last night.”

“What? On your first night? That seems creeper. Are you okay? What’s he like?”

That was a more loaded question than she could ever imagine. The ground was making my ass numb. I stood up and brushed at the seat of my jeans. “He’s not what I was expecting. He looks like a model for a cologne ad. Rugged and sexy. He came with his dog, drank a glass of wine, ate a doughnut, built a fire, slept here, then left this morning.”

“Rich people are freaks. Why did he come all the way from New York for like a twelve-hour stay?”

“He said he got called back to the city, whatever that means.”

“He didn’t hit on you, did he?”

Amelia was tugging hard on the leash, so I started walking again. “Cat, I love you, but you need to stop with this idea that there are actually men hitting on me. It doesn’t happen. Ever.”

“You’re just blind to it. You’re so used to tuning out criticism, you tune out compliments too without realizing it.”

And she was biased. That was all there was to it. “He did not hit on me. His ex-wife looks like one of the real housewives. I don’t think I’m his type, so you can rest assured my hymen isn’t in jeopardy.”

“Don’t joke about that. I worry about you.”

Sometimes you just had to laugh, or you would sob. “I’m fine. I’m living in a big ass house with a fully stocked fridge. I have a queen bed and I’ve never seen so many scented candles in my life. I’m better than fine. I’m awesome, actually.”

I was. Fuck Devin Gold and his amber eyes that made me feel inadequate. Fuck my insecurities and my fears.

“Hold on. I’m getting a text.”

I pulled my phone out and touched the screen to read the text from a number I didn’t have saved in my contacts.

Just an FYI, not returning to Richfield this week. Probably won’t be back until December.

Obviously Mr. Gold. Who also obviously assumed I had immediately saved his number in my phone since he didn’t say who he was in the text.

Another text buzzed.
If A is a problem let me know
.
I can come back for her
.

“Let me call you back,” I told Cat, after putting the phone up to my ear. “It’s the master of the manor texting me.”

She made a snorting sound. “Nice. Okay, call me later. And send me pictures of his house.”

“No!”

“I’m not going to post them online. I just want to see the inside.”

“You can just come over, you know.”

“Are you allowed to have people over?”

Now that she mentioned it, I had no idea. “Let me get back to you on that.”