The Love Square (9 page)

He knew that crazy look in her eyes, the one she reserved for when he challenged her. He’d once deemed it “going Nebraska,” and it kind of stuck. Clare was definitely about to go Nebraska on him.

The light turned green, and Dylan started to drive again. In his peripheral vision, he saw Clare tucking her arms under her shirt and wiggling around.

“What are you doing?” he asked, gazing between her and the busy street. Two seconds later, her hands reappeared, dangling a pink bra.

“What the…?” Dylan started. Completely distracted, he snuck glances at Clare as she pulled the bikini top under her shirt, right there in the passenger seat. “Can you wait until we get to the beach and go to the changing room?”

She tied the strings around her neck and moved her hands up under her skirt. She lifted her hips and wiggled more, then held her underwear. He couldn’t help noticing they matched her bra. “Just living a little, Lusty.”

He glanced sideways at her while she shimmied into the bikini bottoms, grateful when they finally hit a red light. “Are you trying to kill us?” he asked. “I’m driving here.”

Dylan watched as Clare held her shirt away from her body and looked down at her chest. “Yeesh,” she said. “Is this some kind of push-up top?”

Dylan stared at her until he thought he heard sounds of honking horns in the background. He allowed his gaze to wander down to her chest.

“Dylan, drive. It’s green.” He continued to stare, so she pointed toward the traffic light. “Drive.”

“Oh, right,” he said.

“You’re the one who’s going to get us killed,” she said.

“Well, Clare, you can’t say something like that and expect me not to look. You’re so distracting, you’re a menace to drivers everywhere.”

“Me? You’re half-naked on a billboard! Talk about a distraction. I swear there are more accidents caused by that billboard than cologne sold. Someone should do a study.”

Dylan spent the rest of the ride thinking about traffic laws and advertising studies to get his mind off Clare’s body, but when they finally made it to the beach and she stripped down to her bikini, it was no use.

Clare fidgeted with her top. “Maybe you should tell Gretchen to go a little bigger next time. This isn’t going to work.”

Dylan spent a minute gawking. The blood-red bikini contrasted with her blonde hair and her white skin. He’d never seen so much of Clare.

“You’re staring at my chest. Maybe I should keep the shirt on.”

“I’m not.” Dylan looked away, fiddling with his own suit. “It’s your pasty-white skin. There’s a glare off you.”

“Yeah, right,” she said, searching through the beach bag Dylan kept stocked for them. “Speaking of which…” She threw him a bottle of sunblock. “Can you do my back?”

With her back to him, Dylan used the opportunity to check out her out, ass to elbows, as he rubbed her shoulders. He paid attention to every inch, thought about counting her freckles, felt her softness, her smoothness.

His experience with his ex, combined with the emergence of his assertive female fans, had turned him off to the point he’d become voluntarily celibate. But feeling Clare’s soft skin, he suddenly missed women.

Dylan relaxed a little as he got used to the sight of Clare without clothes, and felt triumphant when he got her into the water. She complained the whole time, claiming she saw sharks, got stung by a jellyfish, anything to get out of the water, but he encouraged her to stay. She wasn’t a bad swimmer, just a little skittish, and soon they were out past the waves.

Dylan kept hold of Clare’s hand. She was so little, he thought she would drift away or get sucked under, but she was strong for a petite woman. They held hands, faces to the sun, and floated with the current.

“You happy, Nebraska?” he asked.

“Completely. I’m in the ocean.” They smiled at each other, and Dylan squeezed her hand. “You?”

“I’m feeling peaceful. Pacified by the Pacific. And you, of course.”

The tide pushed them closer to shore, and when Dylan’s feet touched bottom, he hoisted Clare onto his back, and she wrapped her arms and legs around him. The contact between their bodies heated Dylan’s cold skin. He hadn’t been physically close with anyone since his ex, and Clare’s nearness pushed Dylan into sensory overload.

Clare rested her chin on his shoulder as her arms circled his back. Her wet hair tickled his neck, and her breasts warmed his back. Dylan wondered if she was unaffected by their closeness. “Guess what?” she said into his ear. “I took next weekend off.”

“Oh yeah? Now you can come to New York with me for the premiere! I’ll show you the city. You can see the Atlantic too.” The publicist had been hounding him for weeks about getting a date for the premiere. Dylan only wanted to go to see Alex and Steve and hang out in the city.
Total bonus if Clare can come
,
he thought. “You can meet my   friends—”

“No, I can’t go with you.”

Disappointed, he put Clare down when they reached the shallow water. As they walked to their blanket, Dylan kept hold of her hand. “You can’t?”

She shook her head. “I’m going to Nebraska for the weekend.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Oh, um, yeah. I think it’s time I visit, though. Mama’s been calling me a lot. Then there’s Lucas…”

Lucas.
Dylan had forgotten about him. He dropped Clare’s hand. “Oh yeah. I bet they miss you,” he said, although if Clare were his fiancée, he would have been to LA at least ten times already.

“I have to take care of some things there, you know. Check in on everything. My flight leaves after yours and gets back around the same time, so maybe we can drive to the airport together?”

They settled on their blanket. “Yeah, sure,” Dylan said. “I wish you were coming to New York with me, though. You’d get to meet Alex and Steve.” He had told Clare a ton of his high school stories about the three of them.

“Maybe I’ll meet them someday,” she said.

Dylan watched her lie back on the blanket and scanned her body from her toes up to her wet hair. He tried to forget that she’d be leaving California someday in the not-so-distant future to get married.

He pulled a water bottle out of the duffel bag and tapped her on the arm with it. “Thanks,” she said, leaning up on her elbows.

They sipped their water and watched the waves.

“Yikes,” Clare said, looking down at her body. “I have to put my top back on. My boobs are even distracting me. Where the heck did Gretchen find this thing? Victoria’s Secret?”

Dylan grinned and checked her out. “Gretchen deserves a bonus.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Hey, you get to see me mostly naked all the time, between the beach and the billboard.”

“But I don’t sit there and drool at you like you are doing. Well, not in public, anyway,” she teased and whacked him with her water bottle. Then she dug out her shirt and pulled it over her bikini top.

“No, you get into car accidents,” he answered as he lay back on the blanket. “Are all the girls in Nebraska as cute as you?”

“Not even close. Are all the guys in Hollywood as sweet as you?”

“No. Let’s stop flirting and nap,” he suggested, closing his eyes to the sky.

“You got it,” she said, and they soaked up the rays and shared the ocean air.

Chapter 7

Alex

“When was the last time he visited New York, anyway?” Steve asked.

Steve and Alex had met at Hank’s to make plans for Dylan’s upcoming arrival. As soon as Steve walked in, Alex made fun of his red hair, styled in the typical neat and clean businessman’s haircut, and flicked the fifteen-year-old scar over Steve’s eye, courtesy of a fight on Alex’s behalf with a rival school’s baseball captain.

“I can’t remember,” Alex said. “That bastard’s been living the dream life out in LA with all the pretty people for so long. I hope he’s still himself when he comes back.”

“D-Barnes? Hollywood will never change him. What are we going to do with him when he gets here?”

They planned an outing to a beach club in the Hamptons. Steve had a rental a few miles away, so they could crash at the house afterward. The Hamptons were a pain in the ass for Alex—he had a game in Brooklyn that afternoon—but the three of them being together again was a big deal, and he wanted to do it right.

“If Jenna’s coming, ask her to bring Penny,” Steve said.

“I wasn’t sure if we were inviting the girls. You’re into Penny? Now that I think about it, the two of you would be perfect for each other.” Penny hated Alex, and Alex wasn’t thrilled with her, either. Figures Steve would be attracted to her. They were both Type A workaholics with no life. Perfect match.

“Tell Jenna to ask her about me,” Steve said.

“What is this? Middle school?” Alex used hand signals to order another round of beers.

“If this were middle school, Dylan would steal her before anyone else had a chance,” Steve said, accepting his beer from the bartender.

“That son of bitch. Remember how we used to work to get a girl to pay attention to us, then Dylan would show up and, wham! She’d be all, ‘Who’s your hot friend?’”

“At least you had the jock thing going for you. I was the redheaded dork who hung out with you two.”

“You were the smart one. We all knew you’d be successful and put us all to shame. Smart Steve, good-looking Dylan, and me? The neglected middleman.”

Steve laughed. “It’s one thing for Dylan to be so fucking good-looking, but what sucks about it is he’s so damn nice. If he were an asshole, it would be so much easier to hate him. I wish someone would marry the guy and take him out of the competition.”

Alex never understood Dylan as far as women were concerned. Any other guy who looked that good would have a head the size of Manhattan. Dylan seemed oblivious to the attention, which just made the women crazier. “He can’t get over his shitty ex cheating on him. I don’t know if he’ll let anyone take him out of the competition,” he said. “Since his breakup, he assumes all women are like Maggie.” He chugged his beer and ordered another. “What’s going on with you? Any women in your life?” he asked as Steve laid down cash for their next round.

“Nah. You? How’s Jenna been since her revelation and your rejection?” Steve had called Alex “a complete and total moron” for rejecting Jenna. Alex didn’t disagree.

“She’s the same as always. She’s been doing this online dating thing, which is driving me crazy.”

“Ah, jealous, huh?” Steve asked.

“Worried mostly, that some psycho’s going to kill her and throw her in a dumpster or something.”

“Yeah, yeah. You tell yourself that.”

Alex grabbed two menus and slid one toward Steve. “I don’t know. I’m a fucking mess.” He rubbed his forehead as he looked down at the menu. “I’ve never met anyone like her, but she deserves better than me. What can I give her? I would fuck up, and then she’d end up hating me like they all do. Then she’d leave, and I can’t take that risk.”

“Did you ever think maybe you wouldn’t fuck up with her?” Steve waved the bartender over and ordered a cheeseburger. “If she’s the one, dude, that’s it. What are you so afraid of? That you’d screw around on her?”

Alex thought about it. “No. I don’t think I would. But it’s hard for me to believe in the happily ever after that she’s looking for. What if she gets tired of me? Chances are, I’ll never make the major leagues and I’ll be traveling around making no money, and then I’ll get old…I have nothing to offer her.”

“Asshole, that’s how you are now and she still wants to be with you, even when you’re sleeping around in front of her face all the time. Obviously, she likes what you are, God only knows why,” Steve said. “She’s not your mother, Al. You can trust her.”

On Alex’s fourteenth birthday, his mother took off and left him to be raised by his Uncle Anthony. His uncle took good care of him, taught him how to catch and fostered his baseball career, and in essence became his father. Before he died, his uncle revealed that Alex’s mother suffered from severe depression and he thought she lived in Florida. It took Alex years to stop searching for her online and checking the mailbox in hope there’d be a note for him. Now, more than a decade later, could he still be stuck on that?

The bartender lurked. “Order something,” Steve demanded, shoving the menu at Alex.

He ordered a grilled chicken sandwich. “Speaking of chicken,” Steve said when the bartender walked away, “don’t be such a chickenshit with Jenna. She’s not going to wait around forever. You never know when one of these online guys is going to work out. It’s only a matter of time.”

Steve was right. Jenna was going to find someone and move on with her life. But Alex wasn’t entirely upset about that idea. If she found someone who could make her happy, he could go on living his life the way he wanted to without any emotional ties. Yeah, he’d be jealous and he’d miss her. He could admit that. But at least he would know she was taken care of, that she wasn’t an option anymore, and he could push out the love he felt for her without risking himself or their friendship. Fizzling out would be better for them than an explosive breakup. Maybe if the guy wasn’t a douchebag, they could all be friends.

Yeah, right
, he thought as he finished off another beer.

***

Jenna

Jenna knocked on the bathroom door, yelling over the sound of the shower, “Alex! It’s me.” She opened the door, and a cloud of steam rushed out.

“Almost done,” Alex said. “Come in and talk with me.”

“The steam’s going to mess up my hair. I’ll wait downstairs. Hurry up.” She shut the door and went back to her apartment. Penny would arrive soon, they’d pick up Scott and Dom, and then the five of them would cram into Penny’s Lexus for the trip up to Long Island.

Of course, Alex was nowhere near ready. His game had gone into extra innings, and now he was rushing around like an idiot. She knew he’d be hungry after his shower. The man was always hungry. He’d have to wait to eat. Then again, she could throw something together for him for the sole purpose of speeding up their trip.
Eh.
He’ll live.
Cooking was not an option in this dress.

Jenna danced around her apartment, psyched to go out. For one thing, it meant no rehearsal. Although Scott would never admit it, Jenna knew he looked forward to a night off. With four weeks to go until nationals, they rehearsed nonstop. For another thing, they’d be away from Brooklyn, near the beach with the fancy people. With a new scene and new crowd, who knew what the night would bring?

Especially with her looking so awesome.

Jenna admired herself in her bedroom mirror one last time and fluffed her hair. She felt extra pretty, pleased her reflection didn’t show her usual “exhausted dancer in ratty dancewear” look. Instead, it revealed a hot, single woman in a kickass, light blue dress and strappy silver heels. The top of the dress draped over one shoulder, and the skirt flowed around her thighs. She did her makeup too, but not too much. Since she and Scott had starting tanning for the competition she didn’t need it. She wondered if she came off looking slutty, decided she didn’t, and declared her style as “sexy with a touch of class”—a perfect look for the night.

Her apartment door clicked. “It’s me,” Alex yelled. She heard him open her fridge. “I’m starving.”
So predictable.

“We don’t have time to eat,” she said from the bedroom. “Come here and see me.”

Alex appeared in the doorway, and Jenna spun and flipped her hair. “Well?” she asked in her best sexy voice.

Those teal eyes scanned her up and down. He did this thing with his eyebrows when he liked what he saw. She could tell he was liking. “You look incredibly hot,” he said, which made her happy.

“You too.” They had gone shopping for his outfit the week before. She’d convinced him to go with a blue shirt to bring out his eyes and show off his physique, perfectly fit gray pants, and real shoes, instead of his usual sneakers. His black hair was short, almost shaved, for baseball, but it suited his face.

For a moment, she felt that pang of wanting to be with him, but it passed when she pictured him at Hank’s saying, “I can’t.” Still, she couldn’t shake the desire to hook up with someone, anyone at this point.

The doorbell rang, interrupting their mutual admiration session, and Alex followed Jenna into the living room. When she opened the door to Penny, Alex huffed and resumed raiding the fridge.

“Jenna, you are too gorgeous for words. I’m not standing next to you tonight. You’re like a six-foot goddess,” Penny said, walking past her into the apartment. When she saw Alex, she said, “Alexander,” in her most formal voice.

“Penelope,” he said just as formally. “How are you this fine evening? You are looking lovely.”

Although his words dripped with sarcasm, Penny did look lovely. A black dress draped her super-skinny frame, spaghetti straps holding it over her narrow shoulders. Her red lipstick softened the harshness of her jet-black bob.

“Thank you,” she said as she turned her back on Alex and rolled her eyes at Jenna. “We ready?”

“Can we stop for food?” Alex asked.

Jenna and Penny sighed.

“It’s rush hour anyway. Traffic’s going nowhere. You know I worked today. I’m starving.”

“Your work is playing a game, and you don’t look like you’re starving,” Penny said as Alex grimaced behind her back. “We still have to get Scott and Dom.”

“I’ll call and ask if they want anything to eat.”

“You aren’t eating in my car,” Penny complained.

“You are such a nag,” Alex said.

This is going to be a long trip.
“Okay, you two. Knock it off. Alex. Go over to the pizza place and eat a pie or something. And don’t get any sauce on your shirt. Better yet, take off the shirt. You can go in your T-shirt.”

“Take it off?” he whined.

“Off. We’ll pick you up in twenty minutes. Got it? Twenty minutes, which starts now. I’ll give you your shirt later. Penny, call Scott and tell him the growing boy needs food and we’re going to be delayed. Good?” She looked between her friends.

“Sounds good to me,” Alex said as he unbuttoned his shirt.

They watched him strip to his T-shirt, his biceps straining against the sleeves of his Fruit of the Loom. Jenna mentally photographed the perfect
V
of his back to his waist as he rushed out the door. “See you in twenty,” he said as he left.

“Phew,” Penny said, fanning herself dramatically. “Does he have a bod or what? He’s the best-looking asshole I’ve ever met.”

“Tell me about it,” Jenna said, sighing. Turning her attention back to Penny, she asked, “So what’s the plan for tonight? Are we looking for men?”

“Hell, yeah.” Penny’s serial-dating prospects had fizzled over the past few weeks. “I plan on hooking up. You won’t, though,” she said as she walked into the bedroom and looked in the mirror.

“Why not?” Jenna said. “What’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing. But you don’t do that,” Penny said. “Since I’ve known you, you haven’t hooked up for a one-nighter.”

“You sound like Alex. Sorry I’m not easy like you two,” Jenna teased. “You know Alex’s friend Steve, who helped with the move? Alex said he has the hots for you.”

“A redhead, huh? That sounds promising. Maybe you should try Alex again.”

“Nah. Been there, done that. I feel too good to deal with rejection tonight. There have to be other fish in the sea, right? Maybe some of them will swim to the Hamptons.”

Penny looked her over. “You’re not going to have a problem hooking a fish tonight, Jen.”

Jenna paced, excited to get the night moving, while Penny called Scott. Finally, a half hour later, she hopped into Penny’s car and directed her down the block to the pizza place, where Alex stood outside on the curb in his T-shirt scarfing down a slice.

They honked as he shoved the rest of the slice down his throat, then he walked around the car to the driver’s side. He insisted on driving, complaining he couldn’t fit in the back comfortably. Penny grumbled but gave in and slid next to Jenna. Soon, Dom shoved himself next to the girls, and Scott sat in front with Alex.

The ride to Long Island took forever. The women and Dom, a journalist in the fashion industry, talked about shoes, trends, and clothes while Scott and Alex fought about traffic patterns and directions. After a two-hour drive, with Penny yelling at Alex for driving like a maniac, they arrived at the club.