Don't Speak (A Modern Fairytale, #5)(15)

“I might put in a good word?”

Laire nodded, trying for a hopeful smile. “If we talked to him together. Maybe we could explain that my working in Buxton isn’t so very different than you working in Ocracoke. Just a summer job for extra money.”

“Buxton ain’t Ocracoke, Laire, and you know it,” Kyrstin reminded her dryly.

“Please,” said Laire softly.

As she watched her sister’s face soften, she thought of Erik Rexford, and her heart pinched with guilt. When Kyrstin helped her sway their father this afternoon, she’d also be unknowingly complicit in helping Laire make her date with the governor’s son—a fact that would have affected Kyrstin’s willingness to help. A job was one thing. Dating a dingbatter was another, and there’s no way on God’s green earth that Kyrstin, who was happy on Corey, would approve.

“I’ll do it,” said Kyrstin, surprising Laire with her quick and sudden alliance, “on one condition.”

Laire held her breath. Here it comes . . .

“You make me somethin’ supersexy for my weddin’ night.”

Throwing her arms around her older sister, Laire promised to make something so dirty, it would bring Remiel Poisson to his knees.

***

Too bright.

The sun was way too bright.

Erik groaned and flipped onto his stomach, staring down at the concrete pool deck though the plastic slats of the lounger and wishing his head would stop pounding.

“Anyone have an Advil?” he muttered.

Hillary laughed from two chairs down. “Poor Erik.”

“Don’t joke,” said Vanessa from beside him. A soft, warm hand landed on his back, rubbing soothingly, and he knew it was hers. It was the type of thing she was always doing—rubbing his back or holding on to his arm. Van was super touchy-feely and always had been. It didn’t mean anything. Besides, it felt nice. “Birthday boy here drank his weight in Champagne! I’m not surprised if his poor head is achin’ a little.”

Pete, who lounged on Erik’s other side, asked, “Where’s my sympathy, Van? My head’s achin’ too!”

“Are you the birthday boy, Peter Donaldson? No, I didn’t think so. You’ll just have to fend.”

“Damn!” exclaimed Pete, chuckling ruefully. “Cold woman!”

“You need someone to rub your back?” Hillary asked Pete, her tone trying for kidding but sounding too hopeful to stick the landing.

“Why? You offerin’? Ha-ha. No, thanks, Hills,” said Pete, still laughing. “I think I’ll go sit in the hot tub a spell and warm up from the chill over here.”

“By all means,” said Vanessa, her fingers still sliding up and down Erik’s back. “Go sit in your own warm filth.”

“Ha! Like Fancy Rexford would allow any filth at Utopia Manor.”

“She allows you,” said Vanessa under her breath.

“I heard that, Van,” said Pete. “But, honey, we both know the Donaldsons have been in North Carolina longer than the Osborns, so you can stuff it.”

“Stuff it,” muttered Vanessa in a cultured Southern accent. “Such a gentleman. You are crude, Peter Donaldson.”

“Aw, Van, you can kiss my crude . . .”

The word ass was swallowed by the splash of a body entering the hot tub.

“He’s so antagonistic,” said Van with a humph, her fingers massaging the kinks in Erik’s lower back.

Erik, Pete, and Vanessa had met in preschool at Saint Paul’s Lutheran in Raleigh, attended the Branchbrook Academy for lower school, and completed middle and upper school together at the Asheville Christian School, a boarding school that had educated at least one of the parents of each. They’d essentially known one another from the cradle: Three Musketeers who’d historically had each other’s backs while bickering like siblings.

But over the past three years, since they’d headed off to college, their relationships with one another had changed a little, becoming more nuanced and complicated. First of all, for the first time in their lives, they lived apart. Erik attended undergrad at Duke, while Vanessa was at Wake Forest, and Pete was at UNC–Chapel Hill. They still saw each other during holiday breaks and spent time together on the Outer Banks every summer, but something indefinable had changed between them.

Vanessa, who’d always been a pretty, blue-eyed brunette, had blossomed into a beauty. She had phenomenal tits and a rounded ass, but was also slim and tall, willowy and elegant.

Pete, who was blond, blue-eyed, and as burly as a linebacker, still argued with Vanessa every chance he got, but the way he looked at her had changed, and even Erik had noticed. Pete had always had a soft spot for Van growing up, but that soft spot had changed into something bigger and more possessive in the past year or two.

Erik had noticed that Van had filled out, of course, but his feelings for her had never deepened from friendship. He still saw her as a pseudo-sister. A really pretty sister, yeah, but still . . . a sister. He had zero sexual attraction to her. She was just . . . Van, his lifelong friend.

“You need an Advil, honey?” asked Van, close to his ear. “I can go grab you one.”

“You don’t mind?”

“Not a bit,” she said, caressing his back a final time. “I’ll be back in a jiff.”