“You know it’s true, man. This dude can pick. More than just the other night in the field, I’m tellin’ ya. Makes the ladies’ panties fall right off.”

We all laugh. Trick looks at me and rolls his eyes. “Don’t believe a word he says.”

“I’m not even playin’! I’ve got the acoustic in my trunk. Play something and see if panties don’t drop. Just not these panties,” he says, hugging Jenna playfully. “Hers, you can have.” He grins at me and winks.

Rusty really is an adorable guy. And pretty hot, too. Jenna has a good eye. His hair is a dark red and his eyes are bright blue. They pop in his face. He’s got a great physique and his grin is contagious. In my opinion, though, his best feature is his personality. Of course, I’m a little biased, though.

I look at Trick, who is watching me. A bit of a smile still lingers on his perfect lips. “Do you want to hear me play? I promise your panties are safe.”

All warnings instantly forgotten, I think to myself that I don’t want my panties to be safe from him. I want him to tear them off. With his teeth!

Just the thought of that makes me blush. His smile widens again. “You’re really gonna have to quit doing that.”

“That’s it. I’m getting my guitar. Maybe I can speed things along a little for you two.”

“Ignore him,” Trick says quickly.

The funny thing is, Trick seems more determined to keep me at arm’s length than I do. And that’s so backward! I should be the one reminding us both that I have a boyfriend. But I’m not. What’s worse is that I have no desire to remember.

I’m gonna have to do something about that. It’s so wrong!

Rusty comes back with his guitar. He takes it out of the case and hands it to Trick with a pick.

“Show ‘em what you got, Trick.” Rusty sits in one of the four chairs and pulls Jenna onto his lap. “I’m keeping this one close just in case it works on her, too.” He winks at Jenna and she giggles. She’s eating it up.

Trick takes a chair and I choose the one across from him. He puts the leather strap over his shoulder and settles the instrument across his body. He plucks the strings a few times to make sure it’s in tune, makes a couple of adjustments and then starts picking out notes.

My father is a fan of classic rock, so it doesn’t take long for me to recognize what he’s playing. He hums along at first, his voice adding depth to the acoustic sounds. And then he starts singing. I become every bit as mesmerized as Rusty promised I would.

The song is “Wonderful Tonight” by Eric Clapton. His voice is perfect for it—a little scratchy and gruff, hauntingly soft and sexy.

After the first few lines, he looks up at me, singing every word and playing every note as if I’m the only person in the room. His eyes never leave mine.

I barely notice when Jenna and Rusty get up and walk away. My only thought is Please don’t let him stop playing!

When he strums the last note, we sit and stare at each other in complete silence for what feels like a short forever. His lips are curved the tiniest bit, but there’s something so sad and melancholy about his expression, it gives me a pang somewhere around the vicinity of my heart. I can’t help but wonder what he’s thinking.

He doesn’t leave me wondering long.

“Tonight was a mistake.”

Of all the things I don’t expect to hear, that has to be way up near the top of the list. And I’m confused by it.

“Why? I think it seems like they’re getting along fine.”

“That’s not what I mean and you know it.”

I suppose I do. I just didn’t want to think that’s what he meant.

“Why? We’re not doing anything wrong.”

“You shouldn’t even be here. You have a boyfriend.”

I’m instantly irritated. And defensive. And hurt.

“Me? Well what about you? Who was that girl you were snuggled up to at Lucky’s the other night? She certainly didn’t look like just a friend!”

To my utter distress, I feel tears sting the backs of my eyes like pinpricks of humiliation.

Trick laughs, a short bitter kind of laugh that almost says “ha!”

“She was…heh, she was not nearly enough. That’s who she was.”

“Not nearly enough for what?”

Trick’s eyes burn holes into mine. I think at first he’s not going to answer me. And when he does, I almost wish he hadn’t.

“Not nearly enough to make me stop thinking about you.”

I don’t know what to say to that. I don’t know what to say to any of it, partly because it’s true. I do have a boyfriend and I shouldn’t be here.

But I want to be. More than I want to be anywhere else.

As if on cue, as if he somehow picked the very worst (or very best) time in the history of the world to call, my phone rings. I dig it out of my pocket and see Brent’s face dominating the lighted screen.

I look at Trick. He looks at me. Now I know why his smile seemed sad and bitter.

“Go,” he says, tipping his head toward the house.

Not knowing what to say or what to do, I get up and walk away, clicking the talk button as I go.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX - Trick

I feel like shit. I never would’ve thought it would be that hard to watch Cami walk away like she did. But it was. God, it was!

I sat there for at least ten minutes after she left, just to make sure she wasn’t coming back. When it became obvious she wasn’t, I left Rusty’s guitar on one of the chairs and headed for Sooty’s hidden stash of “painkiller”. His tastes are limited and all I could find was bourbon, but it did the trick. All I wanted it to do was drown Cami from my thoughts and I knew any form of alcohol could accomplish that if I drank enough of it.

In the last year, it seems the thing I was constantly trying to drown out was my bitterness at having to leave school to work at a thankless job. That and anger at my father for leaving us the way he did. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to get over that.

But the last few times I’ve sought solace in the bottom of a bottle has been because of a red-headed devil that seems bound and determined to torture me.

The bad thing about bourbon, at least for me, is that the hangover is absolute hell. All morning, my head has suffered with every thump of the horses, every bright ray of sunshine and every plaguing thought of Cami.

I hear a familiar voice and look up the small hill at the main house. It irritates me that I hope to see Cami walking toward the stable and that I’m disappointed when I see she’s not.

You’ll never learn, will you?

Instead, she’s walking around the pool. She’s wearing a bikini, but her bottom half is wrapped in some sort of skirt-type thing. Of course, she looks edible in it. She looks edible in everything.

She hollers something else, something I can’t understand and I see a short, older woman come to the door and ask her a question. I figure it must be Drogheda, the housekeeper.

Cami answers and then settles onto a lounge chair, turning her face up to the sun. Purposely, I turn away—away from the house, away from the temptation, away from her. It can’t happen and that’s that. Might as well get over it and move on.

I’m still telling myself that when I hear voices again, and one of them is much lower. I look back over my shoulder and see her douche of a boyfriend making his way around the pool to her.

With an intimacy that hits me like a sucker punch to the gut, I watch him bend down and kiss Cami. And it’s not a little peck either. Even from a distance, I can see that he wants to devour her. Of course, it makes me furious, but I can’t really blame the guy. I want to devour her, too.

When she pulls away, he taps her back and she scoots forward. He swings a leg over the back of the chair and sits behind Cami. Pulling her hair over one shoulder, he leans down and kisses her neck before he starts massaging it.

I see him whisper something in her ear. She nods and says something in response. Like watching a train wreck, I can’t look away from the scene. I’ve never been so jealous of someone else in my entire life. I’ve been fortunate in that there have been few things I’ve ever wanted that I couldn’t have. And none of those things were girls.

Until Cami.

I reason to myself that’s why I want her so badly. It’s a matter of wanting her so much simply because I shouldn’t, because I can’t really have her. But even as that part of my brain works to try and convince the rest of me, I know it’s not true. It has nothing to do with something so superficial. I want Cami for other reasons, reasons I’m not quite willing to admit yet because they come with consequences. Nasty ones.

An engine starts up and I see a station wagon backing out of the garage. Must be the housekeeper again. Everyone else is gone.

I look back to the couple and see that Brent the douche is also watching the car drive away. It must’ve been what he was waiting for. He wastes no time in taking full advantage of the alone time.

Fury boils in my blood when I see him pull one strap of Cami’s suit off her shoulder as he kisses her neck a little more aggressively. Cami shrugs that shoulder, a clear indication she’s not into it, but he doesn’t take the hint. He reaches around and slips his hand underneath her bikini top. It’s all I can do not to run up there and kick his ass.

I grit my teeth. I know I should stop watching them, but I can’t.

Cami grabs his hand and pulls it away, but rather than giving up, he moves it down to where her wrap is tied at her waist. She moves it again and he stops kissing her.

He leans back and it’s easy to see by his body language that he’s not happy. But neither am I. I still want to rip off his arms.

Cami says something to him and he leans back, crossing his arms over his chest. She turns and continues to talk. She moves her hands animatedly. I’m beginning to learn her body language, and I’ve never seen this before. I wonder if it means she’s upset. That’s the impression I get.

After a few seconds, the douche of a boyfriend flings his hands and stands up. He walks off and Cami pushes her fingers into her hair. I get the feeling she wants to pull it in frustration. But she doesn’t. Instead, she gets up and stalks off, too.

I’m a little disappointed that she’s chasing after him. I’m still chastising myself when I hear someone tearing down the driveway. I know it must be him. Another minute or two later, I hear a door slam. I look back toward the main house and Cami’s walking back to her chair by the pool. She’s carrying some kind of little square kit that has handles. Curious, I let my focus shift completely to her again.

She sits down and unzips the kit then angrily pulls her foot toward her. She takes a bottle out of the kit, pours something on what looks like a cotton ball and then starts swiping at her toes. My only guess is that she’s giving herself a pedicure, or whatever it’s called. For some reason, watching her do something so girly and intimate is fascinating. And very alluring.

I glance at her face. Her brows are drawn down tight over her eyes and she’s muttering. Whatever happened with the douche, she’s not happy about it.

When she’s finished swiping at all ten toes, she rifles through the kit again and brings out a bottle of red polish. I could see it a mile away it’s so bright. She shakes it angrily before unscrewing the cap. She leans over to carefully brush some on one toe. She must’ve messed up, though, because she gets the piece of cotton again and wipes it off. She holds her hands out and looks at them before she closes the bottle and lays her head on her bent knees.

She’s absolutely motionless. In my head, I can almost hear the soft sounds of her crying and, even though she’d be crying over a douche, it still bothers me. A lot. Before I can even begin to think of how stupid it is to go to her, I’m already halfway to the pool.

As quietly as I can, I open the wrought iron gate we used last night and close it behind me. Cami doesn’t budge. She’s perfectly still and perfectly quiet, not even making the soft crying sounds I’d imagined she would be. When I stop in front of her, she slowly lifts her head. Her eyes meet mine. They’re dry and she doesn’t look away.

Without saying a word, I bend down and lift her legs, pulling them across my lap as I sit down.

“Here,” I say, holding my hand out for the little bottle she’s still clutching. She frowns, but she hands it over anyway. I shake the bottle again, like I’ve seen women do before, then I unscrew the cap. “Talk to me,” I urge as I bend down to paint a bright red streak on her first toe.

“There’s nothing to say.”

Bullshit!

“You’re upset. Now talk to me. Tell me what happened. Maybe I can help.” She snorts and I look back at her. “What? You think just because I’m not a Harvard grad I’m smart enough to give a little good advice?”

“Don’t be ridiculous! You’re probably every bit as smart as Brent, maybe even smarter.”

Something about the way she said it, the expression on her face, makes me think she actually believes that. I clear my throat and swallow the smile that’s pulling at my lips. It bugs me that what she thinks of me matters. It shouldn’t. But it does.

“Well then, spill it.”

I return to painting her toenails. In the quiet before she starts talking, I am berating myself for being a complete imbecile. I need to stay away from this girl, so what do I do? I go and get myself all wrapped up in her. Literally. Every nerve and hormone in my body is locked in on her warm body so close to mine and the knowledge that all I’d have to do is pull her into my lap and…

“Talk!” I bark, a little more sharply than I’d intended. She has to say something, to talk about that douche boyfriend of hers or she’ll soon have something else to rest her legs on. Or any other body part she might want to rest on it.