No Strings Attached (6 page)

Nate, blond, cute, and clever, if a bit on the short side—and just arrived via personal yacht—had offered to help. Extraordinarily friendly, he'd even escorted her back to the courts, and given her suddenly tongue-tied giggly girls a few tips.

Again, the warm feeling of having done the right thing, against the Lily-pullout odds, filled her. Katie was having an A-plus day.

Ooops. Points off for Harper. Make that an A-minus.

The entire way home in the Lincoln Towncar—a freebie Katie had wrangled from the Luxor's courtesy driver—her (up to now clueless) co-conspiritor had been in her face, demanding to know why Katie hadn't bothered informing her she'd be assuming Lily's cast-off job. Had Katie just assumed Harper was desperate enough to go along with any plan? Or was it Katie's superiority complex, figuring, like, who
wouldn't
be honored to hang with her all summer? After all, she was Katie-The-Kick, wasn't she? All this, and so much more, Harper had shouted at her as the courtesy car sped along the highway.

Had Harper given her the chance to get a word in, Katie could've told her it was none of the above. Throughout the
harangue, Katie kept her cool, knowing that no matter how furious the girl was, no way would she back out of their arrangement. Harper would stay the entire summer, be her co-counselor, pay half of the rent, and not be too nosy.

Katie's confidence was more than instinct. Katie had something on Harper. It was an unexpected find, an ironic and—when you thought about it—sickening coincidence.

At her first chance, when Harper went for a bike ride, Katie read through the girl's private journal. (Getting into other people's private papers, diaries, documents, and files, was a Katie specialty. That kind of intel came in very handy.)

But the Harper exposé? Juicy.

That boy Harper was pining over? The one she couldn't bear to be away from, even for an hour? Her erstwhile soul mate, the only one she'd ever loved, who had dumped her so suddenly, so violently, she'd felt (as described in the journal Katie read) “slashed open from chest bone to my belly, cut open and filleted, watching all the pieces of me gush out.”

This boy, the reason Harper had fled Boston?

He wasn't coming back.

Nor was Katie's own erstwhile bff.

Luke Clearwater was Lily McCoy's better offer.

Joss Wanderman stretched out on the sofa, tossed his guitar
across his belly, and took a long pull of Budweiser. He leaned back, savoring the suds and the moment. The first quiet one he'd had since arriving here last weekend.

That it was well past 4 a.m. did not guarantee peace. Not in this house of harridans, as he privately called it. The recriminations, sarcastic one-ups—even the laughing, bedspring-rattling, and moaning, not to mention those infernal ferret noises—knew no curfews.

The main reason Joss had taken the late shift bartending gig—okay, the second reason—was to keep hours that kept him away from his housemates. Housemates! Had he ever used that word? Yet, as he languidly ran his fingers over the six-string, he kinda dug the sound of it.

The idea of being in one place for a while was really what had appealed to him. He'd been on the road for the better part of the year, the past eight months a different city, different hotel every other day, or inside a tour bus. His lowly roadie status, even with a big-name rock act like Jimi Jones, meant he didn't get his own space. In hotels, he had a roommate. On the bus, up to six guys shared the two rows of triple bunks.

So when the tour ended and this came up, a three-month summer share gig, with a private room, he impulsively took it.

It was turning out that impulses were not his strong suit.

Since arriving last, he'd taken the only bedroom left. He didn't care that it was downstairs or that it lacked air-conditioning. Nor did the peeling wallpaper bother him, or even the fact that it didn't have its own bathroom. What bugged him were the paper-thin walls. And in the whole “one man's ceiling is another man's floor” category, his spanned both Alefiya's and Mandy's. The last thing Joss cared about was listening—and potentially being drawn in—to everyone else's drama.

Mitch had sought him out, the only other XY chromosome in the house. The do-good dude regaled Joss with his Big Plans for Life with Leonora: the well-heeled WASP who offered old-money stability; status; long, winding driveways leading to sprawling homes; luxury cars; leisure tennis and golf games; 2.3 children with names like Taylor and Tucker.

Joss had no quarrel with Mitch—the cat was cool. Besides, it was easy to tune out the soliloquies.

It was impossible to not know what was going on with the girls on the other side of his bedroom wall. Katie and Harper—jailbait, like so many groupies he'd seen. In his habit, Joss had renamed them: Smilin' Suzie Q and Angry Young Babe. How'd this deuce end up roommates, anyway?

SSQ, so clearly a pampered princess from the not-so-faraway land of the Boston blue bloods, was such a phony! She wanted everyone to think of her as radiant, cool, collected—like she wasn't repulsed by the shoddy share house and her random roommates.

It was the condescending tone she used with Mandy when “complimenting” one of her trashier outfits, or “supporting” Mandy's getting-into-showbiz goal. If SSQ believed she was hiding her “I'm so above all of you” attitude, she was mistaken. Joss saw the way her nose scrunched whenever she tossed one of Alefiya's half-eaten overripe plums or sweaty peaches left in the den; the disapproving eyes she cast on the carefree chick when she brought home a stray. Ali's strays often came with gifts—cannabis, for sure; maybe other substances—and stayed the night.

Just to fuck with SSQ, Joss was sure, AYB purposely got closer to Alefiya. He liked that about her.

Not that Joss took sides. It was his misfortune to be able to
see things from both points of view. He could make all the private fun of Katie he wanted, but he felt her pain, man. He knew the effort it took to put on a carefree face, to pretend everything was peachy keen, all the time. Why she was here, in this pit stop, let alone sharing a bedroom, was a head-scratcher, but he hoisted his beer bottle in a silent salute. He wished Katie well.

Deciphering Harper wasn't so easy. When she wasn't messing with Katie, she was making herself scarce. She wasn't here for the company, and she sure wasn't here for a hookup. Girls gave off vibes—he could always tell what they wanted.

He didn't know where the fury and subversive behavior came from. Not that teenagers, and he was sure she was one, needed a reason to be pissed off. But there was something about her that intrigued him. “Something,” as the Beatles famously said, “in the way she moves,” attracted him, was
familiar
to him. Like the way she stuck her lower lip out when she was pondering something; the way her eyes flashed when arguing with Katie; the unexpected dimples on those rare occasions she smiled; and those coltish, bordering on ungainly, strides even when her chin was stuck out defiantly.

Who did that remind him of? Between the beer buzz and the quiet, he settled in to ponder. His reverie was rudely interrupted by the slam of the screen door. He bolted up, saw her before she saw him.

Took in the angry slash of her mouth, the flashing eyes
furiously blinking back the tears, and the deliberate stomping of her heels. Mandy. Their very own menace to society was headed toward the steps.

Soundlessly, Joss lowered himself, hoping the high back of the couch would conceal him. If he could have, he would've rolled under it, disappeared until the coast was clear. No luck.

It must've been out of the corner of her mascara-smudged eye that she'd seen a flash. He heard her pivot on her clicking heels, away from the steps. Toward the sofa. There was no escape.

Before he could decide whether to acknowledge her or pretend to be asleep, she was staring down at him. Then she was bending over the back of the couch, making sure he got a load of her cleavage popping out of her waitress uniform. What, did she think he'd never seen boobs before?

“Whatcha' doing up?” she said, righting herself.

Joss propped himself up on his elbows. “Just got in from work. Looks like you worked the late shift too?”

He didn't really want to know the tawdry details of why Mandy looked like a train wreck, but he couldn't ignore her.

She sniffed and ran her fingers through her thick red hair. “Yeah, the late shift. You could say that.” She nodded at his beer. “Any more in the fridge?”

“It's labeled,” he warned, knowing there were a few bottles left with Mitch's name on them.

“Cool,” she said.

She flipped direction again, heading toward the kitchen. Now's the moment he could feign exhaustion, or simply slink away. He didn't. Not then, or during the ten minutes it took her to go upstairs and “freshen up” either.

When Mandy returned, she was barefoot and clad in a silky robe. She settled on the sofa. His sofa. She sat on the far end, to be sure, but crossed her legs so the robe would part, revealing shapely thighs. As if he didn't get the memo, she licked her lips suggestively after her first chug of beer.

Joss sighed. Could she be any more obvious? He hoped he wasn't, acknowledging that, sometimes, his body had a mind of its own.

“So Mitch says you're, like, a drifter,” Mandy said after a while. “True?”

He considered, plucked a string on his guitar. “I've been traveling a lot lately.” Joss had deliberately stayed away from discussions of his background. It wasn't hard to do. Most people were more interested in talking about themselves, if you asked. Of Mandy, he asked what had happened tonight, why she looked so upset when she got in.

She tried to sound casual, but her eyes darkened. “Let's just say the night was disappointing.”

“You're working for some catering company, right? Is that cool?”

Now she brightened. “Duck Creek. It's very exclusive.”

“Is it, now?” Joss feigned interest.

“They don't advertise, they only take recommendations. That means really stinking rich people,” she confided. “You wouldn't believe the mansions these people live in—and, for some of them, they're only summer homes! And the decor!” Or, as Mandy pronounced it, “DAY-core.” They have real antiques, and big paintings on the walls, and chandeliers. Like you see in movies, only real.”

Joss chastised himself. For Mandy, this was real. And hadn't he said he wanted to break out of his gilded cage and meet real people? He coaxed, “So your job is to butler food around, pass the hors d'oeuvres?”

“Well, that's what I'm doing now. But I'm not really a waitress.”

“You're working toward another career?” he guessed, working at keeping the jadedness out of his voice.

Mandy stared at him. All he saw were her lips. Joss felt his stomach do a flip-flop. When she got up to get more beers for the two of them, she passed in front of him, the hem of her robe lightly brushing his leg. Joss calculated Mitch's beer was all gone now. He opened it, anyway. Mandy was about to tell him something. Please don't let it be, “I want to be an actress/rock star/model. This job is temporary, until I get my big break.”

“I'm going to be an actress-model. And I only took this job …”

Joss swallowed, his eyes downcast. She'd finished explaining, was waiting for a response. He knew exactly what he should say: “Listen, I know those people, Mandy, and trust me, they're not going to help you. No matter what they say, or promise, this is not the way to an acting career. To them, you're a dime a dozen, a girl they'll string along, pretend to be interested in. Until they get what they want. Then they'll toss you away, like garbage.” Only what Joss heard himself say was, “That's”—he took another swig of beer—“interesting.”

“You bet it is,” Mandy said. “I've been working a long time for this opportunity. Getting myself in shape, and stuff. Now's my time.”

“So what happened tonight? Did someone stiff you?”

Mandy found that funny. Of course, she'd had a few beers by then. “You could put it that way.”

“What other way could you put it?”

She shrugged. “Miscommunication. I thought I was saying one thing. This producer—he's about to start a big movie—thought I was saying something else. His wife had another interpretation.”

Okay, she'd given him the opening to gently tell her that she might want to rethink this—her plan could only lead to disaster. But all that came out was, “I'm sorry.”

She nodded toward the guitar. “Are you a musician?”

“You could put it that way.” This was verbal foreplay. He hated himself for doing it. So he tried to repair, by talking. “I've actually been on the road with this rock band—I'm not in it,” he clarified at her real interest. “I do some fill-in licks, but mostly I'm a roadie. You know, carry the equipment, stuff like that.”

“What rock band?”

“Jimi Jones.”

Her eyes widened. “No shit! He's, like, a guitar legend. Would you play something for me?”

Joss's heart was thumping. “I don't want to wake anyone,” he whispered hoarsely.

“So play quietly. I'll come closer.” As she did, the ribbon tying her robe fell loose. And Joss couldn't refuse either of her requests.

Mitch arose extra early on Saturday morning, feeling pumped,
like Johnny Damon on a streak. He went over his mental to-do list during his run along the shoreline. He'd decreed today as the first official cleanup day: They'd been in the house just over a week, and it was time. To that end, he'd slipped copies of the who-does-what housework “wheel” under everyone's door last night.