No Strings Attached (2 page)

That was Katie, then. Past tense. (Future tense, if she could swing it.)

For now? The present was just plain tense.

“‘Necessity is the mother of invention,'” Grandmother Charlesworth used to cliché.

Necessity had caused Katie to invent a mother of a plan back in May, when she discovered something Vanessa didn't even know yet: The plug was pulled on the family funds. The horrifying discovery had set Katie's plan in motion.

She needed to fake it, make everyone think this summer would be exactly like those old carefree Cape weekends,
three whole months worth!
Only this summer she'd be living in a luxury mansion with her best friend—without parental supervision!—shopping, sunning, and funning, sprinkled with large doses of worthy (read: wealthy) boytoys.

If nothing else, it would give her time and space to figure things out, and the chance to earn money of her own.

Her (ex) best friend Lily McCoy had rubbed mock tears from her eyes after Katie confided the real reason she needed
to bolt Boston, fly under the radar, and what they'd be doing during those long, lazy summer days.

“Working?” Lily had sputtered, barely able to get the word out. The privileged daughter of State Senator Louis McCoy had been incredulous. “Kidding, right?”

“Kid
dies
,” Katie corrected her. “We're going to be counselors at a day camp at the Luxor Resort. It'll be a goof!”

“And the punch line is?” Lily wondered aloud.

Katie laid out for her best friend what she'd privately dubbed “Plan A,” for Awesome. As long as they were ensconced in Lily's aunt's deluxe five-bedroom mansion-with-pool, and showed up at trendy clubs at night, who'd be the wiser?

“But what about sleeping in?” Lily had asked, realizing daily drudgery eliminated noon wake-up calls.

“Weekends! We can sleep away Saturdays and Sundays.” Katie tried to make it sound like that was a bonus.

“So let me get this straight,” Lily said. “Monday through Friday, we'll babysit snotty brats for drudge wages, and then … weekends we'll sleep? Forgive me if I don't see the Awesomeness of your plan.”

“Where's your sense of adventure?” Katie nudged her. “It'll be just like Paris and Nicole, only without reality TV cameras.”

“Right,” Lily had said skeptically. “And without being able to quit in midseason.”

That's when Katie played the guilt card. “
You
can quit, if
you want. It's not
your
entire life that's being yanked from under you like some cheap rug. You're not about to suffer. …” She paused for maxi-effect. “But you can be the hero, helping your bff in her hour of need.”

Laying the guilt-trip had worked. Eventually, Lily agreed to go along with the plan, help Katie keep up appearances, and earn coin. “Remember,” Katie cajoled, knowing she was about to hit on Lily's (Achilles') heel, “I got us
day
jobs—every night we'll totally go clubbing and meeting guys.” Lily McCoy was all about flings. Both a speed
and
serial dater, Lily's violet eyes were always out for a new conquest.

Just for security, Katie added the capper: “I'd do it for
you
.”

She and Lily had long ago pledged allegiance to each other, and the fabu-lives they cultivated, deserved, and treasured—no matter what deep, dark secrets they had to keep and cover up for each other. So it'd been set. A done deal. With Lily's help, Katie could have the life she loved, while figuring out how to escape the one she'd be coming home to in September.

Until, just like that! Poof! It got undone. Plan A had died an instant and painful death when her now ex-best ex-friend Lily McCoy drove a stake through its vibrant little heart and pulled out.

Lily's weapon of choice? The backstab, the betrayal, the “Something Better Came Along, and too bad for you” bludgeon. And it was all for a
guy
.

Bluntly: She wasn't going with Katie to the Cape this summer. She wasn't going to be a counselor alongside Katie at Camp Luxor. And she wasn't going to be able to offer her aunt's luxury mansion, either. She was really sorry. (Right.) But for what it was worth, she, Lily McCoy, would totally keep Katie's secret. She'd make sure everyone believed Katie was summering on the Cape, kicking it with heirs, scions, and trust-fund trendoids, their usual crowd.

For anyone else, the betrayal (for that's exactly what it was) would have been a deadly blow.

But Katie Charlesworth wasn't, had never been, anyone else. No one's victim, she—along with the mission the plan had been formulated for—was very much alive and kicking butt. It needed adjusting, was all.

Not for nothing was Katie called “The Kick” at Trinity High. She was the trendsetting, A-getting, acolyte-acquiring leader of her class. Katie's accomplishments were the stuff of popularity legend: captain of the tennis team, anchor of the debate team, she played offense on varsity soccer, pioneered the yearly clothes-for-the-homeless drive, and edited the junior class yearbook. Fashion-forward, Katherine Lacey Charlesworth was an authentic Boston blue blood without, so the myth went, a care in the world.

She was also hot. Not in that willowy Uma Thurman scary way—more “petite Reese Witherspoon as Elle Woods”
adorable. Small, but far from ana', Katie's athleticism gave her curves a muscular tone. Her fine, platinum hair and kelly green eyes were offset by freckles, and a toothsome smile. Katie projected confidence and accessibility, the can-do charisma kid. She was hard not to like but easy to envy (a few wannabes, like Taylor Ambrose and Kiki Vartan, pretended they didn't).

She did have a pretty (damn—Katie only cursed parenthetically) perfect life. She worked hard at it too. No way was she losing it now.

No matter her father's heinous life-changing screwup. No matter her mother's oblivion. No matter her once healthy bank accounts were now empty (which she wasn't supposed to know about). No matter Lily, the linchpin of her brilliant time-buying plan, had detonated the bomb too soon by backing out to stay in Boston with her latest tastycake. No matter Katie couldn't turn to any of her friends, or their parents' cushy Cape cribs—no one could ever know the truth—no matter, for the first time in her life, she'd have to go it alone.

Katie did what Katie does: She went to Plan B. Finding there was none, she created one. If it worked, the B would stand for Brilliant.

Technically, Katie wasn't old enough to get into a Cape Cod summer share house. But if she did, she would at least get to keep her job at the Luxor. Listing herself as eighteen, she
went online and found the cheapest option still available. She'd bunk with strangers, stragglers like she who, for whatever reason, had waited until the last minute, when all the decent possibilities were long taken, and signed up for the last share house left. It was in downmarket (according to everyone, anyway) Hyannis, not Chatham. It had five bedrooms; Katie made the fifth housemate. A full share was $2,000, but she was able to split that in half by finding someone to share her room with.

Katie twisted her neck to look out the rear window of the taxi. Rows of stately brownstones off Boston's prominent Newberry Street stared back. Would the mailbox still say
CHARLESWORTH
when she returned? In the hot, smelly taxi, Katie shivered.

Harper Jones plunked herself down on the rickety steps of the
wood-shingled cottage at 345 Cranberry Lane. Placing her journal in her lap, she stuck her pen in her mouth and once again attempted to catch her thick, springy hair in a ponytail. The flimsy elastic holder was no match for the strong ocean wind, which insisted on blowing curly coils back in her face. For emphasis, it knocked her bike to the ground.

She'd been the first to arrive at the share house. The front door was locked—a credit card could've opened it—and a peek through the windows confirmed no one had moved in yet. She thought she might occupy her waiting time by writing, but her surroundings weren't exactly inspiring.

The clapboard house looked like the neglected barefoot child on the otherwise beachy-keen Cranberry Lane, less
temporarily vacant as just plain abandoned. The front lawn was weedy and overgrown, a pile of local freebie newspapers lining the gravel driveway.

Yet Harper knew she was in the right place, this shabby shack she'd call refuge for the next three months. Katie Charlesworth's luggage—delivered just minutes ago, and for which she'd signed the FedEx slip—was proof of that. Five freakin' Vera Bradley suitcases jolted her into the realization that maybe—okay, probably—this hadn't been such a great idea. Too late now.

Harper would be rooming with Herself, the princess of the profligate and popular, queen of the quasi-wholesome and supremely superficial at Trinity High School. Why Katie had to resort to the desperate measure of posting a “want ad” for a roommate was a head-scratcher.

The first time they'd met—a week ago!—in the school library, Katie had scrunched her pert nose and tilted her head, genuinely curious: “So you really go here? And you've been here since sophomore year?”

Harper would've liked to pretend she didn't know Katie, either. But that'd be straining believability. At Trinity, Katie was known as “The Kick.” Half the school claimed her as a close personal friend, the other half wished they could. Harper didn't fit into either group. To her, Katie wasn't a person so much as a symbol—of everything Harper detested. Like:
permanent perkiness, fashion slave, trust-fund Tinkerbell, teacher's pet,
and
valedictorian-bait. File under: “Good things come to those who need them least.” On grades and test scores alone, Katie would probably be offered a free ride to college.

Spending the summer in Katie-twit-land was gonna blow.

But, Harper grudgingly admitted, it would blow less than a summer spent at home on Commonwealth Avenue, where she lived around the corner from the one person she could not bear, and was completely bound to run into.

Harper would not have survived bumping into Luke Clearwater. With or without his new girlfriend.

She shaded her eyes and surveyed. So this was Hyannis. Sounded like a shout-out to your rear end if you took a wrong turn at Pronunciation Junction. All she knew of HyANNis—not Hy-ANUS—was “Kennedy” and “compound.” And that, only from some random TV sound bite. Harper didn't follow celebrities, political or showbiz, never read fan mags or tabloid rags. She just didn't care enough to bother.

And if Hyannis was where the rich and famous came to play? Harper thought they could've done better.

New York, city of her birth and temperament, was the real deal—her real home, too. Always would be, no matter that three years ago she was uprooted, savagely ripped from her turf, her friends, everything that counted.

All because her mom, an actress-slash-activist, had gotten
the part of “Susie Sunshine” on a Boston-based children's TV show. The steady gig translated into college tuition for Harper. Hence, the family—all two of them—had packed up and moved to “BAH-ston.” Nothing good had happened since.

Certainly not her enrollment at the tootsy-snooty Trinity High School, a pricey private school for the talented and gifted. Except all you really needed to get in was money.

A fact that Harper's old lady refused to concede, insisting Trinity was the right place for her daughter. “You have a gift,” Susan Allen kept reminding her. “It's time you accepted it.”

Music. That was her gift, one she'd like to have returned.

Bored, Harper got up to stretch her legs. The house really was an eyesore, a pimple on an otherwise smooth ass of a beach town street. What royally pissed her off was the price! They were charging $10,000 for the summer! What kind of thieves, except those in the government, could get away with that kind of grand theft robbery?

Had to be its backyard. Every bit as ramshackle as the front, at least you got a fenced-in patio, two picnic tables, and a barbecue grill. Beyond was the beach. Walk out the gate, over the grassy dunes, and your toes were in the sand, the endless expanse of ocean big enough to swallow your troubles. Maybe.

The crunch of tires on the gravel driveway brought Harper back around front. A Volvo, boxy and staunch as a Republican, pulled up.

Out stepped J.Crew.

Or what Harper imagined the “real” Mr. Crew might look like: posture-perfect, square-jawed, sunglass-wearing, baseball-capped, decked out in polo shirt, faux-hunting khaki shorts, and Docksiders. In other words, straight-up and tight-assed.

“Ah, you beat me here,” preppy-boy square-jaw said, taking off his shades and extending a large hand. “I'm Mitch Considine. Welcome.”

Harper dusted off her cutoffs and introduced herself. Up close she noted crow's feet wrinkles around his eyes.

“I hope you haven't been waiting long. I was getting keys made.” Mitch dangled a large ring jingling with keys. “Six—one apiece.”

Harper nodded, unsure what she was supposed to say.

“So how'd you get here? Plane? Bus? Hitchhike?” Mitch asked genially, maneuvering one key off the ring and handing it to her.

Harper pointed to her racing bike, again prone on the ground.

“You biked from Boston?” He blinked, incredulously.

Harper stopped herself from laughing. There was not an ironic bone in J.Crew-clone's body. He got points for that. “Actually the bike's originally from New York, but I didn't bike from there, either. It moved with me to Boston a few years ago. Figured I might need it, so I took it on the ferry. I rode from the ferry here.”

“Good deal.” Mitch took the two steps to the door in one stride. “Try your key, make sure it works.”

“Have you been inside?” Harper found herself anxious suddenly.

“Just long enough to dump my stuff,” Mitch admitted.