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  Reece rested a hand on Pepper’s jean-clad thigh. It was casual, but there was something possessive in the touch. It hinted at a shared intimacy and that sparked a deep longing awake inside me. I had never known that kind of intimacy. I was no virgin, but some things still felt so foreign to me.

  “I can’t wait to see it,” I said.

  “We’re moving in next week.”

  Next week. My stomach dropped. “W-wow. Really?”

  A house. That seemed so permanent. So grown-up. I looked between the two of them, marveling that Pepper had this. That she had found the one. Love. I had no doubt, looking at them, that they were the real thing, and I felt a little foolish for thinking that I had had that with Harris. Now I knew. I never had that.

  Pepper nodded, her arm draped around him, her fingers idly rubbing his muscled shoulder through his T-shirt. “Yeah.” The word slipped past her smiling lips.

  “Congratulations,” I repeated. “I’m so happy for both of you.”

  Pepper looked back at me. “I know we planned on living together again next year—”

  “Don’t worry about that. Emerson and I can put in for a single. Or maybe see if Suzanne wants to join us.” Assuming Emerson wasn’t moving in with Shaw.

  “When are you heading back for the summer?” Pepper asked. “I wish you didn’t have to go.”

  “Yeah. Me, too.”

  “Then stay.”

  “My mom would flip. And I don’t have a place to stay anyway.” Emerson was staying at her dad’s condo in Boston. At least that was the cover story. She would be at Shaw’s most of the time. Her dad was hardly ever in Boston, so he wouldn’t know.

  “Oh! I just had an idea.” She looked at Reece eagerly. “Georgia could stay in your old apartment above Mulvaney’s.”

  He shrugged and nodded at me. “Sure. It will be vacant. You could stay there a couple months.”

  “That’s really nice of you, but Mom has a job lined up for me back home for the summer.”

  “If you need a job over the summer, you could work at Mulvaney’s,” Reece offered. “We have two spots opening up for the summer.”

  Working at a bar? My mom would have a coronary. “Thanks, but I kind of have to go.”

  Pepper wrinkled her nose. “To that bank you don’t want to work at. You’re going to work there?”

  Admittedly, Reece’s offer was tempting. Staying here over the summer. Having an apartment to myself. Working at Mulvaney’s—having a job where I didn’t have to wear a suit and be “on” and impress everyone so they would go back and say great things to my mother about me. It sounded like heaven.

  Reece must have seen something in my face. “Think about it, Georgia. Since Pepper and I just bought the new house, the apartment is there if you want it. And with the second Mulvaney’s open across town, we’re looking for new staff. If you need work, it’s there.”

  I nodded. “Thanks. I’ll think about it.” And I realized they weren’t just words I was uttering to placate him. I really would think about it. Long into the night.

  I went for pizza with Reece, Pepper, and Suzanne from down the hall. Emerson and Shaw met up with us, too. Thankfully, I didn’t feel like such a third wheel with Suzanne there.

  Over slices of Greek and Hawaiian pizza, we all talked about our summer plans. Suzanne was going home part of the summer to house-sit while her parents went on a month-long Mediterranean cruise. I sighed internally. I wish my parents would go on a month-long cruise. Maybe then going home wouldn’t feel like such an impending tragedy.

  Pepper and Reece talked animatedly about their new place and the newly opened Mulvaney’s across town. Okay, Pepper was mostly the animated one. Reece just watched her with a sexy smile on his face.

  Aside from the garage Shaw would soon be opening, Emerson and Shaw were excited about a new client who had just commissioned three bikes from them—and Emerson had an offer from a fancy gallery in Boston to feature a collection of her work next month. The happy vibes were almost smothering me.

  My phone rang once as Emerson was coaxing me into sharing a slice of tiramisu with her. A glance down confirmed what I already suspected. It was Mom. I let it go to voicemail, determined to enjoy dinner out with my friends.

  When I returned to my room later, I played Mom’s message. It was a reminder for me to call Mr. Berenger first thing Monday morning.

  Sighing, I got ready for bed, telling myself I’d call him Monday afternoon after my morning classes.

  Settling into bed, I stared into the dark. Thin orange light bled in through the blinds’ slats. I focused on my to-do list for tomorrow and Monday. Study for exams. On Monday I needed to meet with my advisor regarding my course selection for next year. And now I needed to call about the bank job.

  Sighing, I rolled onto my side. I needed to get some boxes and start thinking about packing up my stuff, too. Just three more weeks and the semester would be over. There was plenty else to occupy my mind . . . so why did I keep thinking about that kiss? Why did my mind keep going back to Logan? His face was there so clearly. The searing blue eyes. Those lips that were always grinning—except when I was kissing him. And when he was kissing me back.

  My hand dragged up my stomach to cup my breast. I was a healthy C cup. There was more than enough for my hand, but I wondered how I would fit in Logan’s palm. And that made my breath catch. My fingers brushed my nipple and then squeezed it harder. A small whimper escaped me as my mind played over last night.

  I wiggled on the bed, an ache starting between my thighs as I worked my fingers over my breast. My lips tingled, remembering the press of Logan’s warm mouth on mine, moving surely . . . his tongue. Wishing it had been more. Wishing I hadn’t run away.

  Idiot. Wrenching my hand off myself, I rolled over onto my side, punching my pillow with my fist twice, feeling somewhat better and vowing to forget about Logan. He was not the kind of guy I needed to fixate on. I knew the kind of guy that worked best for me . . . If I found him, great. If not, then I was just fine alone. I had a bright future with or without a guy in it.

  I drifted off to sleep, feeling angry at myself, which was probably a bad idea. I slept fitfully, weird images plaguing me.

  I was drowning in my dream, tangled up in an ocean full of pearls. I kept waving to the lifeguard standing on shore, who was Harris one moment and then Logan in the next. Finally hearing my cries, Logan dove into the pearls and swam out to me, but before he could reach me I went down, choking, lost in a sea of pearls.

  MONDAY ROLLED AROUND AND I got so busy that I didn’t get around to calling Mr. Berenger. At least that’s what I told myself. Tuesday arrived, though, and I still didn’t call him.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about Reece’s offer to stay in the apartment above Mulvaney’s. It tiptoed around me, gnawing at the edges of my thoughts every day. I turned it around in my head, trying to rationalize how I could make it work, how I could do something like that without my parents totally flipping out on me. Simple. I couldn’t.

  When Mom called Wednesday night to check on whether I had called about the bank job, my excuse sounded lame even to my ears.

  “Sorry, Mom. My study group ran late. By the time I got out it was past five.” I caught a glimpse of myself in the full-length mirror hanging on my door. I was a horrible liar. If Mom could see me, she’d know. My brown eyes had gone really big under my eyebrows and the color faded from my skin—like I was surprised at the words coming out of my mouth.

  “This isn’t like you, Georgia. I asked you to call him on Monday. I’m starting to wonder if you even want this job.”

  “I do,” I insisted, grimacing a little at my lying reflection. My bothersome eyebrows, several shades darker than my blond hair, lifted high as I made my excuses.

  “Well, I certainly hope so. Because your father and I certainly aren’t going to let you sit around all summer,
hanging out by the pool and getting pedicures. Even Amber has her summer lined up lifeguarding at the neighborhood pool. Responsibility, Georgia. We expect nothing less from you.”

  When have I ever done anything less than be responsible?

  I bit back the caustic reply . . . and others that scalded the back of my throat. I’ve been the perfect daughter. I’ve done everything my parents ever told me to do. Everything they expected. In high school, when Mom insisted that I give up the guitar and drop out of choir for the debate team, I did. When they said I should be a business major, I did that, too. When had I ever given her a reason to think I needed a lecture on responsibility?

  “I’ll call him in the morning,” I promised.

  “I hope so.” She sighed. “Don’t disappoint me, Georgia.” Laced beneath the words I hear the words she never says, but are there just the same.

  Don’t fail me like your father did.

  My real father. Not the man she married when I was three. No. The father who left me when I was two months old because he couldn’t handle the responsibilities of a wife, child, marriage, and job.

  My birth father had been a musician. I never met him. He took gigs anywhere he could get them and lived in his van. When I showed an aptitude for music, Mom only allowed me to pursue it until high school. She insisted that with my heavy course load, something had to go and music was it. I knew, though, deep down, that Mom hated that part of me because it reminded her of my father. So I had let that part of myself go, almost ashamed of it, wanting only to please my mother and stepfather.

  Don’t be him. That’s what she was saying. Without saying the words, that’s what she always managed to say. What I always heard.

  And I wouldn’t. Long ago, I had vowed to be the opposite of that man. The kind of daughter Mom needed me to be. Someone she could be proud of. Responsible and solid. The kind of girl who went to college and married a lawyer or doctor and took summer internships at a bank.

  Harris’s voice echoed in my mind right then. Boring.

  Sounds from the room next door drew my attention and I knocked lightly before entering Pepper’s room. She was changing from her work clothes into a pair of frayed denim shorts.

  “Hey,” she said, snapping up her shorts. “How’s it going?”

  “Good. Where are you headed?”

  “I’m meeting Reece at Mulvaney’s. We’re going to Logan’s game.”

  Everything inside me tightened at the mention of Logan. “He plays baseball, right?”

  “Yeah. It’s the playoffs. We missed the last couple games . . . been so busy with opening the new Mulvaney’s. I think Reece feels bad he hasn’t been there for him lately. He can’t miss this one.” Her freckled nose wrinkled as though she smelled something foul. “Their father won’t be there. I don’t think he’s left the house in months.”

  Reece and Logan’s father was confined to a wheelchair as a result of a car accident several years ago Not that that was the reason he wouldn’t go to his son’s game. He was a bitter man who spent most of his time drinking, and wasn’t the most supportive or attentive father even before the accident that put him in a wheelchair.

  Pepper grabbed her messenger bag and paused on the way to the door. “What do you have going on tonight?”

  I shrugged. “Pretty studied out for exams. Guess I’ll just start packing up a couple boxes.”

  “Oh. Want to come?”

  Did I want to go to a high school baseball game? Did I want to sit in the stands with a bunch of parents and high school kids and gawk at a teenage boy like some kind of cougar reliving the moment I had kissed him and he had kissed me back?

  With another shrug, I nodded once. “Sure.”

  Chapter 5

  THE GAME HAD JUST started when we arrived, and I could tell Reece was anxious to get a seat in the stands. Not an easy feat. It was loud and crowded and we had to climb to almost the very top of the stands and squeeze in between students.

  “There he is.” Pepper motioned to the field, pointing eagerly and bouncing on the balls of her feet.

  I searched, my heart hammering in my chest and then seizing altogether when I spotted him. I didn’t know a lot about baseball, but I knew he was the pitcher. Standing on the mound, he stared intently at the player coming up to hit. I’d never seen him wearing a baseball cap before and damn if it wasn’t a good look for him.

  He rotated a baseball behind his back with the sure movement of his fingers. He held himself still, waiting with seeming idleness, but there was a coiled energy about him that brought to mind the explosiveness of our kiss with a rush of awareness that left me breathless and turned on sitting there on the hard bleacher seat.

  I fidgeted, drinking in the sight of him. I’d never seen him so alert, so serious.

  Except that moment following your kiss. He’d looked serious then. He’d looked intense, his blue eyes deep and probing and so sexy it hurt.

  This Logan was unsmiling as he stood stock-still on the mound, his lean body rigid like a gun cocked and ready to fire.

  The batter squared off in front of the base, tapping his bat once and lifting it in readiness, hands flexing as he adjusted his grip.

  A hush fell over the crowd as everyone waited, watching. I didn’t even breathe. I leaned forward, curling my hands around the edge of the bleacher.

  Then Logan let go. His body uncoiled, leg winding up and then back down as he released the ball.

  The batter swung, missing.

  The crowd surged and cheered, myself included. Then silence fell again. Even from this distance, I could read the batter’s scowl. Logan adjusted his cap and rubbed a palm along his snug-fitting pants. I tried not to stare at his butt, but in those pants? Impossible.

  I wasn’t his only admirer either. As he threw the ball again and the batter missed for a second time, a group of girls a few rows below us screamed his name and followed with several catcalls.

  Pepper shook her head with a laugh. “That’s our Logan. No heart is safe.”

  My cheeks heated and my skin hurt. I didn’t know why. It’s not as though my heart was in danger. Just my lips.

  The rest of the game passed with me riveted to wherever Logan was on the field. Whether he was up to pitch or hitting the ball, my gaze tracked his lithe movements.

  At one point, Reece pointed out some scouts sitting in one of the lower rows.

  “Are they here for your brother?” I asked.

  “Logan already committed to Kellison University.”

  “That’s where he’s going in the fall?” Then he would officially be in college. A new college with a new crop of girls for him to divest of panties. He was a jock. They’d treat him like a superstar on campus.

  It was a good reminder of just how different we were.

  “Yeah.” Reece nodded, looking very much like the proud older brother. “We’re going to miss him.”

  “It’s not that far,” I said. Forty minutes at the most.

  “Yeah, but he won’t be working at Mulvaney’s anymore. He’ll be caught up in school. Playing ball.” Some of the pride slipped then and Reece looked a little sad that his brother would be moving on.

  Pepper sensed this, too. She covered his hand with hers and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “We’ll always be family. This is a good thing. He needs to get out from under your dad. And Rachel. Time for him to live a life of his own.”

  Rachel? I understood the reference to his dad, knowing most of the Mulvaney backstory. Logan often got stuck in the caretaker role for the cantankerous man, driving him places and taking care of the house when he wasn’t at school or work. Mr. Mulvaney would finally have to hire someone or accept help from his sister and stop relying on Logan. But Rachel? He had said she was just a friend. Obviously, she was more than that.

  “Speak of the devil.” Pepper nodded toward the dark-haired girl walk
ing up the stands, searching for a place to sit. She was still dressed in head-to-toe black, her lips that bright coral-red from the other night. She still possessed that hard, almost untouchable beauty.

  Students recognized her. They nodded in her direction as she made her way up the steps, her heavy boots clanging over the metal. I couldn’t hear their words, but they were followed with laughter and sly glances.

  “Rachel!” Reece called, waving her over. Her hard expression gave the faintest crack. She smiled the closest thing to a smile I had seen on her face yet, but that smile slipped when she spotted me. Clearly, she remembered me.

  A panicked flurry of butterflies erupted in my belly. Would she mention the kink club? I still hadn’t said anything about it to Pepper, and I didn’t want it to come out this way.

  Reece scooted down, making room for her.

  “Hey, Rachel, this is my friend, Georgia,” Pepper introduced.

  “Hey.” She nodded once at me and then looked away to the field as if I was of no interest. I released a breath.

  “Hello,” I returned. Apparently she wouldn’t out me.

  Through the rest of the game, I felt Rachel sliding glances my way. I caught her looking several times. It was with great effort that I trained my stare straight ahead. I also made a point not to be overly exuberant in my cheering so she didn’t read anything into it. She was probably wondering why I was here. Suddenly I was wondering that, too.

  What would Logan think when he saw me? That I was sniffing around because I liked our kiss? Because I wanted an encore? God. I flushed hot with embarrassment.

  The rest of the game passed with Logan’s team pulling ahead. They won 7–5, largely due to Logan.

  Everyone stood and began filing down the stands. In the crush, a few people slipped between me and Pepper and Reece, putting distance between us.