Dirty: The Complete Series (Secret Baby Romance Love Story) (199 page)

I saw her shoulders shake and then watched
as she took a deep breath and stepped onto the elevator. She let the doors
close between us without turning around to face me. I guess that’s for the best
since seeing her only made me want her that much more.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE

SUMMER

“Are you sure you don’t want me to go with
you?” Matt was lying on my bed watching me pack. He had his arm up over his
head and his t-shirt had pulled up to show a slice of his flat belly. I wish he
would stop that. Matt’s my best friend and I usually don’t think about him like
that. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Maybe it has something to do with
seeing Drake two weeks ago. If anything, that horrible experience should have
turned me off of men for a while. Instead, I seem to be in a continuous state
of horny. I almost want my virginity back
–
it was easier before I knew that I
was missing.

“I’m sure. You can’t afford two weeks off
work.”

“What did Jace say when you told him?”

“What do you think? It was so laced with
expletives that it was like one long fuuuuuuck!”

Matt laughed and the muscles in his
stomach rippled. Damn it, Summer! Stop looking at him like that, it’s
incestuous, almost. “He’s got the hots for you.”

I looked at him like he’d grown an extra
head. “You’re insane. He hates me.”

“There’s a fine line. He’s mad because he
knows he can’t have you.”

“Really, you think?”

“Yeah, I’ve seen how he looks at you when
you’re not looking. He wants you.” I thought about how angry Drake was with me
when I saw him. Was he angry because he couldn’t have me? Was it about me or
his ego? I doubted that Drake ever wanted anything or anyone he couldn’t have.

“Whatever,” I rolled my eyes. “You can
keep your clichés. He told me not to bother coming back to work. That doesn’t
sound like a man who wants me.”

“I’ll bet if you walked back in there,
he’d take you in a heartbeat. He wants you, I’m telling you. I’m a man, I know
these things.”

I sucked in a dramatic breath and tried to
look shocked as I said, “You’re a man?”

He picked up a pillow off the bed and
threw it at me. “Maybe I should prove it to you.” I was looking at his face
when he said that, and he looked completely serious. Maybe we had both lost our
minds. My eyes involuntarily went to his crotch. He had a visible erection. I
told myself not to go there just before I heard myself say,

“How would you do that? Are you going to
show me your pee pee?”

He busted up laughing. “My pee pee? No
wonder you’re single.”

I picked the pillow up and threw it back
at him. “You’re single, too, and you couldn’t handle me.”

“I know. Why do you think I’ve never made
a pass?” He wasn’t laughing any longer. He had a lustful look on his face and I
knew it wasn’t a good idea to continue this. Trying to lighten the mood before
changing the subject, I said,

 
“I
wasn’t sure why you never made a pass. I thought maybe you were gay.”

That brought him up off the bed. He
grabbed me around the waist and threw me back on the bed. Then he straddled me
and tickled me while I tried to fight him off. When he finally stopped, I realized
that I was staring up into desire in his blue eyes and his now fully erect cock
was pressing into my belly through his pants. “Summer.”

“Don’t say anything else, Matt. Please.
I’m sorry. You’re the only friend I have. I shouldn’t have played with you like
that. We can’t do this.” He started to say something and then changed his mind.
He stood up off of me and headed for the door. “Matt, are you upset with me?”
He had every right to be. I was horny and hadn’t thought about the consequences
of flirting with him. I did have to think about what they would be if I slept
with him. More than likely, I’d lose my best friend, and I wasn’t willing to
risk that.

He stopped and turned around to look at
me. He didn’t look angry or even particularly hurt as he said, “No, Summer. I
started that.”

“No, I did.”

He smiled. “We are a lot alike, and it’s
why we make such good friends. Whoever started it, I’m sorry. The truth is,
I’ve been attracted to you since day one. I never acted on before because I could
tell right off the bat you were hurting over someone. Then you told me about
your surfer, and I saw how much you still loved him. I didn’t want to be your
rebound guy, but I was hoping…” He stopped there and shook his head.

“What were you hoping, Matt?”

He took a deep breath and breathed it out
slowly before saying, “I’m ashamed of myself, but I was hoping you got the
closure you needed when you went to see him a couple of weeks ago.”

I smiled at him. I love this man. I wish I
could be in love with him, but he’s right about us being a lot alike. Even if
we decided to try it, it would probably never work. “You don’t have any reason
to be ashamed of yourself.”

“Yes, I do,” he said. “When you came back
so hurt and angry, I was glad. I mean, I wasn’t glad you were hurting, but I
was glad you hadn’t made up with him. I know you’re still in love with him, so
what kind of asshole best friend does that make me?”

I went over to him. I wanted to hug him or
touch his face but I wasn’t sure if that would make things worse so I didn’t
do, either. “You’re not an asshole, at all. You’re one of the best men I’ve
ever known and I’m proud to call you my best friend. I have so much respect for
you. I admire and appreciate your honesty. I love you, and I honestly wish I was
in love with you sometimes. I look at you like I did today and I think about
how hot you are and I want you. But thankfully, my rational side is still
stronger than my hormones. I don’t ever want to do anything to screw up our
friendship.”

He grinned. “So you don’t believe in
friends with benefits, I’m guessing?”

I couldn’t help but smile back at him.
“No, but if I did, you would be the first to know.”

He was the one to touch then. He put his
hand on the side of my face and for a second, I thought he was going to try and
kiss me. His own rational side seemed to kick in then and he said, “Holler at
me when you’re ready to go to the airport.” I nodded. When he left the room, I
went over and dropped down on the bed. Life was much easier when I was a virgin
street urchin. Men are so damned complicated.

*******

It was twilight when my plane landed at
JFK airport in New York. I haven’t been back to the city since I left it six
years ago and as just a little girl. The sun still illuminated the shimmering
pink haze of pollution that permanently shrouded it as I looked out from the
back of the taxi. As the car crept along in the traffic up to the top of the
interstate, the silhouette of the skyline came into view. The thick haze hung
low and covered it like a curtain. Instead of sky-scrapers, it looked like a
jagged mountain range. The only difference between the two was the thousands of
lights that glittered across it.

I was surprised, but I didn’t feel any
sense at all of nostalgia for this place. Granted, Grandfather and I had lived
out on the Island in a simple little cottage on the white beach, but we had
come to the city often, and when I was a little girl, I loved it. Now I just
couldn’t wait to get back home. I did realize how lucky I was after all that
had happened to finally have a home to be sick for. I was also beginning to
realize that Drake was right. I’d been a selfish little brat. If not for him, I
would have entered that contest and made a complete fool out of myself. Or, I
would have gotten caught stealing that board by someone else and I would have
gone to jail. Either way, everything I had, I essentially owed it to him. I
hadn’t ever believed that Drake and I would last and somewhere deep down, I had
planned on leaving from the beginning. It hurt less to be thousands of miles
away from him and I didn’t have to depend on my impulse control as much.

As we exited the freeway and started
making the slow crawl through the city, I took in the hustle and bustle of the
people on the streets as they moved in and out of the boutiques and markets
that lined both sides. I cracked the window and breathed in the smells. It was
an eclectic mixture of smoke, food, booze, and salty air. I listened to the
loud exchanges of its citizens. New Yorkers are notoriously loud and
aggressive. They always sound like they’re mad at each other, when in fact
they’re usually only talking.

The homeless people moved along the
cracked and dirty sidewalks alongside the others, appearing to be hardly
noticed by the average citizens that rushed past or stepped over them. The only
subtle indicators that the “normal” folks knew they were there was the way they
clutched tightly to their purses when they passed them or kept their hands in
their pockets to guard the wallet that probably held more money in cash or
credit than many of the invisible people had ever seen. I had to be thankful I
grew up here. Had I not, it may have been the place I ran to when I was ready
to disappear. It is a big draw for runaways, only because a kid on the streets
of a city filled with millions of people was hardly noticeable. Sadly, many of
the teenagers that do disappear in this city, turn up later as piles of bones
and rotting flesh. I have the feeling sometimes that someone has been watching
over me all of these years and although I’m not a religious woman, I find a
sense of spiritual relief by believing that it’s my grandfather and hoping that
he was at least proud of what he saw these days.

The cab pulled up in front of the hotel
and double parked. Before I even climbed out of the back, he had my bags out on
the sidewalk and a bell hop was loading them onto his cart. I paid the cabbie
and thanked him before I followed the bellhop into the lobby. It was huge and
the white tile floor had gold flecks in it. The furniture was made of thick oak
and covered in soft, velvet cushions. A year ago, if anyone had told me I would
have reservations in a place like this, I would have told them they were
insane…or cruel. Now that I’m here, I feel a little bit guilty when I think of
all of those desperate, hopeless people I’d just seen on the streets.

I checked in at the desk and went up to my
room. The bellhop left my bags, and I remembered to tip him, and as soon as he
was gone, I soaked in the big marble tub. I leaned my head back into the smooth
curve where it joined the marble tiles on the walls and thought about Drake.
Once again, he was who I had to thank for all of this. The day that I saw him,
he told me he’d found my grandfather’s money and insisted I take the business
card of the lawyer here in New York that handled the accounts. I had left there
in tears that day and cried all the way back to Oregon. Once I got home, I went
straight back to work and occupied myself with arguing with Jace and studying
for my finals. That first week was so busy that I hardly had time to take a pee
break, much less think about the mess I’d made of the opportunities I’d been
given.

It was the following Monday, the first day
of Spring Break and my first day off at the diner in a week, when I finally
unpacked the suitcase I’d taken to California. I knew when I packed it I was
only supposed to be there for less than a day, but I think I had been holding
out a little hope that somehow Drake and I would figure things out. As I was
putting my things away and lamenting the fact that I still loved this man, I
found the card. When Matt got home from work three hours later, I was still
sitting at the table staring at it, wondering what I should do.

“What do you have there?”

I picked the card up off the table and
fingered the gold embossing across the top of it. “Drake gave this to me. He
said this man handles my grandfather’s money.”

“Oh, your grandfather had money?”

I furrowed my brow and stared at the card.
“Drake seems to think he did. I guess it makes sense. He was big time on the
surfing circuit. He was sponsored by some of the biggest names in surfing. But
he was one of those people who never really acted like he had a penny to his
name. When I took off all of those years ago, it never occurred to me that he
had any money.”

“So, are you going to call the lawyer?”

“I don’t know. Do you think I should?”

“Why wouldn’t you? Aren’t you his only
living relative?”

“As far as I know. But what would I do
with money?”

Matt laughed at that. “The same thing
everyone does with it, honey. You can live a comfortable life. You can start a
business. You can travel the world. You can have a family. You can do whatever
you want to do with it.”

“Wouldn’t that be hypocritical of me?”

He looked confused. “How would spending
money that is yours make you a hypocrite?”

“I’ve spent years resenting people with
money. I’d hold out my little cup and a woman holding a four hundred dollar
coach purse would run by without putting so much as a dime in it or the man
behind her in a three thousand dollar suit would drop me a dollar. Instead of
appreciating it, I resented him because I knew he had so much more to give, he
just had no desire to. Besides, I’d be spending money my grandfather worked for,
not me.”