Girl Crush(20)
The swimsuit covered the necessary bits, but not by much. Although I had to admit, I loved it and wished we were heading out to the beach where it could be appreciated. The white fabric made my tan appear darker, and the cheeky bottoms showed just enough of my rear end to be tasteful but hot.
Beck slapped my bare ass when I bent over to pick up my clothes and fold them neatly in a pile on the bed. I gave her a teasing grin, but it was all in good fun. She wasn’t trying to sleep with me, and I wasn’t looking for anything other than sun.
Somewhere around seven, the daylight started to hide behind the horizon, and the air cooled. My stomach growled for the first time since the incident this morning, and I finally felt human enough to eat. Vitamin D had amazing healing properties. Lying next to the pool, Beck pulled out her phone and ordered food, and asked them to bring it around to the back when they got here.
“They’re not going to do that.”
“Trust me. Delivery driver pulls up out front and sees this house…they walk around back because they know they’ll get a hefty tip.”
“Oh, shit. Beck, I don’t have my purse with me.”
She shrugged one shoulder and dropped her unnecessary sunglasses back onto her nose before leaning back. “I charged it to Collier’s credit card anyhow.”
“What?” Even the birds stopped chirping when they heard my shrill cry. “No. Beck, you can’t charge stuff to your brother’s credit card. That’s insane.”
She blew me off with a wave of the hand. “I do it all the time. He doesn’t know the difference.”
Somehow, I doubted that. He seemed the type to itemize every bill with matching receipts. There was no point in arguing. Collier had my purse, I had no cash, and Beck had already ordered. I decided to throw caution to the wind. He wouldn’t be here to see me, so he wouldn’t know I’d been the one she fed. Beck could deal with the fallout on her own.
That was until a furious Collier stomped out onto the patio. I saw Beck’s face before I saw him. My back was to him, and I was standing on the edge of the pool about to jump in when his voice roared around me. “For the love of God, Beck. Stop using my fucking credit cards to entertain your girlfriends. And tell them to stop parking in the fucking driveway. They can use the pad on the side of the house.”
My ass had been on full display, my long, brown hair cascading down my back. I wanted to be shocked by his tone, but this was exactly what I’d tried to avoid when Beck promised me he wouldn’t be there. When I turned to see his face, Collier had on the remains of a tuxedo I would bet my left breast had been tailored specifically for him. His hands roosted on his hips, the jacket draped over his bent arm, and the bowtie hung undone around his neck. My mouth gaped open at the sight. Thankfully, no drool dribbled out during the interaction.
When he realized who I was, his sneer turned into a smirk, and his eyes scanned the length of me before settling back on the top that did little to cover my pebbled nipples. Before I could even say hello, Beck started barking back at her brother.
“Stop being such a cheap ass. It was only dinner, and Giselle is just a friend.”
“Friend, my ass. She’s out making twat sandwiches as fast as she can eat them, just like you are.”
The gape in my jaw went from dumbfounded to disillusioned—I hadn’t had a single tangy treat. But all this guy knew was I’d shown up when his sister was half dressed the first night we’d met, then he’d seen me hump Roxie’s leg like a damn dog last night.
“No one’s eating twat sandwiches, including you. Jesus, you need to get laid. Maybe if you spent half as much time looking for someone to enjoy life with instead of ways to make more money than you can spend, you wouldn’t be such a miserable old miser.”
I had not a clue what to do here. Standing stock-still between the twins, they shouted over me, each insult more painful than the last. I didn’t have siblings, so I had no idea if this was normal, but I was uncomfortable as all hell. Slowly, I backed away from the pool and managed to make my way around Collier without either of them stopping to take a breath.
Just before I took a step through the French doors back into the house to make my getaway, Beck screamed at her brother, “Way to go, asshat. The best thing that could happen to you just witnessed your ability to go from appealing to appalling in thirty seconds flat.”
I couldn’t process the words and move fast enough, so I chose to focus on escape. Once inside, the air conditioning assaulted my heated body. A chill raced from the top of my spine to the base, and my skin felt tight like I’d been baking in the sun all day. The marble was cool on the bottoms of my feet, but nothing topped the icy-cold way Collier hollered my name after I shut the door to the guest room.
I quickly stripped out of the wet swimsuit in a race to put my clothes on and run to my car, but just as the bikini bottoms hit the floor, Collier charged into the room. I turned to face the door, assuming it was Beck. And there I stood. Naked as the day was long, while Collier turned every shade of red imaginable.
5
“He just stood there and watched you get dressed? Without so much as a word? No apology?”
I shrugged. He had sort of just stood awestruck, but I’d gotten dressed faster than he could have realized what was going on, and tore out of his house like a bat out of hell. I hadn’t bothered to call Veronica when I screeched out of Collier’s driveway. I sent her a text and told her I would be at her house in minutes and to prepare Trish. I hadn’t had time to think about what I was doing. I just knew my head was all kinds of fucked up, and I needed my best friend.