Pamela Morsi (6 page)

The dining table was set for three and Viv confessed that she’d invited her son to join them.

D.J. clearly recalled Vern’s suggestion that Viv was trying to fix her up. Well, the woman was welcome to try, but D.J. was sure there was little danger of it working out. Over her dating years, she’d been fixed up with friends, brothers, cousins and colleagues. The spark was never there. She almost regretted even knowing “the spark” existed.

When they heard the sound of a car door outside, Viv became almost giddy with excitement.

“That’s going to be Scott,” she said. “I know you two are going to be great friends.”

D.J. nodded vaguely and pasted a benign but welcoming smile upon her lips as she turned to the back door.

“Hey, Mom,” her son called out as he opened the screen.

The glare from the sun momentarily obscured his visage, revealing only a tall male stranger with broad shoulders and a white shirt. Then he stepped inside.

D.J.’s heart leaped for one instant before the blood drained from her face. The one man in the world that she
never
wanted to see again had just walked into the room as if he were right at home.

South Padre Island (Eight years earlier)

T
hree women, friends and roommates from college, stepped through the open doorway of the Naked Parrott. The place was crowded to the point of crazy and everyone there seemed young, loud and intoxicated.

It was exactly the atmosphere that D.J. wanted. Her brain was buzzing happily after a few drinks, and on the edges of her peripheral vision were teeny-tiny stars that seemed to appear and explode at irregular intervals. This was the third such joint on tonight’s tour of beachside pickup bars. The evening was no longer young. And D.J. was determined to be likewise.

Beside her she heard Heather whisper, “Total meat market.”

“Perfect.”

The three young women had consumed several glasses of bubbly alcohol before they’d even left the motel room. It was D.J.’s birthday, and that was a cause for celebration after what had been a long spate of depressing and drear months. But bouts of laughter earlier in the night had eventually turned into tears of self-loathing, and finally to steely-eyed determination. D.J. had confessed, to the two women who knew her best, how much she lagged behind her contemporaries and how inadequate she felt. She’d admitted to feeling stuck, as though her life was on hold, still waiting to really get started. So with their can-do, problem-solving attitudes, plus an impressive amount of alcohol, they conspired to change all that tonight. It was time to take action.

“You don’t have to do this,” Terri pointed out as they hesitated at the front of the bar. “It’s a crazy idea.”

D.J. was unwilling to hear any last-minute voices of reason. “It’s a crazy idea whose time has come,” she said. “I’m twenty-one and I haven’t been a teenager yet.”

“This seems like a terrible place to become one.”

At that moment, a girl at a nearby table wearing a cropped tee and bikini bottoms accidentally, or on purpose, poured beer down her chest, revealing her breasts in a way that was more exposed than actual nakedness.

The men around her laughed, cheered and applauded the behavior.

Terri efficiently guided them away from the scene.

“I could do something like that,” D.J. suggested.

“You won’t have to,” she assured D.J. “You look good enough that setting your hair on fire won’t be necessary to draw attention.”

D.J. did look good. In fact, she looked amazing. Terri and Heather had made sure of that. The makeup alone had taken nearly a half hour, and a second bottle of champagne, to apply. Her typically ponytailed hair was not only hanging long and loose down her back, but Heather had sprayed in some shiny blond highlights. She’d also loaned her “lucky” sequined bikini top. The glittery eye-catcher drew attention to D.J.’s not completely insubstantial assets. The leather skirt was Terri’s idea.

“When all the other girls are in skimpy swimsuits,” she’d said, “a skirt can be an advantage, especially if it is short enough.”

The one D.J. was wearing couldn’t have been much shorter. And the five-inch Plexiglas heels they’d gotten her as a birthday gift made her legs look a mile long.

“Those shoes definitely say ‘Do me!’ loud and clear,” Terri told her. “If a guy can’t read that, he’s too stupid for you.”

“It’s the stupid ones I want to attract,” D.J. said. “A smart guy would be able to see right through me.”

“No worries there,” Heather assured her. “On spring break, all the guys are stupid.”

As they were weaving through the crowd of hot, sweaty bodies smelling of beer, seaweed and suntan oil, D.J. caught sight of herself in the mirrored wall behind the bar. If she’d not been standing between Heather and Terri, she’d never have recognized herself. That was good. That was very good. Tonight she was someone else. Dull, boring Dorothy Jarrow was back at school tonight, nose stuck in a book, undoubtedly. This sexy-looking stranger wouldn’t dream of wasting her last night of spring break that way. This stranger was some ridiculous girl-gone-wild.

She knew she could act. She’d won a major role in the Hockaday/St. Mark’s Fine Arts production of
Oklahoma.
Of course, it was her singing voice that won them over, but she’d been able to competently embody her character. She enjoyed acting, pretending to be someone else. And she could do that here, tonight, in this place.

With resolve, D.J. raised her chin and flashed a big, fake smile on her surroundings. If a woman was looking for a good time, half of the search was to act like she was having one.

Terri ushered them to the far side of the room where a row of booths was raised two steps above the main floor, giving the occupants a clear view of all that was happening below. She went over to a group of four very drunk, slightly sunburned girls who were already seated in the choice booth.

“Which one of you is Jennifer?”

The four looked at each other stupidly.

“Nobody’s Jennifer, I’m Ginny...”

“Oh, then it must have been you,” Terri said. “There’s a quartet of really hot guys outside that said they met you on the beach today. They’re looking for you.”

With a shriek of excitement, the young women vacated the booth, which Terri, Heather and D.J. immediately took over.

“I didn’t see any hot guys outside,” D.J. pointed out.

Terri grinned. “There are always hot guys outside somewhere. We need this perspective to find your Mr. Right.”

“Not Mr. Right,” Heather corrected her. “Mr. Right Now. Mr. Right Tonight. Mr. I-Know-How-To-Do-You-Right.”

All three women fell into giggles.

They ordered drinks and surveyed the occupants of the bar.

“When it comes to plucking men out of a crowd, it’s all about balance,” Heather told her. “If you pick one who’s in the middle of a tight testosterone group, you run the risk of being taken for granted or handed off. But if you go for the total loner boy, he could be, like, a Freddie Kruger or something.”

“What?”

“Heather, you’re going to scare her silly,” Terri said. “Look, we’re sticking close until you send us away. Don’t go anywhere you don’t want to go. Don’t do anything you don’t want to do. If you’re feeling threatened or you simply change your mind, holler out a name and we’re right beside you. Now let’s check out your choices for Birthday Surprise from a nice safe distance.”

It didn’t take them long to get the measure of the men in the room, and each of the women had her own preferences.

“The dancing dude is the one,” Heather announced. “Look at those moves. If he can make his body flex like that standing up, just think what he can do in the sack.”

“She doesn’t need an acrobat,” Terri disagreed. “I like the gentle giant sitting at the bar.”

Heather’s brow furrowed. “He looks slightly biker to me. He’s probably got his whole gang outside.”

D.J. thought they both looked...well, pretty ordinary. She wasn’t attracted to either of them. But this night wasn’t really about attraction, it was about efficiency. She was ready to get past this last step into adulthood as simply and conveniently as possible.

“What about the guy with the ‘hook ’em horns’ in the chair near the dance floor?” Heather suggested. “He’s big and quiet and not nearly as scary.”

“He’s quiet because he’s about to pass out on the floor,” Terri said. “She doesn’t want somebody she has to sober up.”

“Well, there’s always the guy behind you,” Heather said. “He’s been nursing the same beer since we got here. And he’s looking over the crowd just like we are. Maybe he’s looking for you, D.J.”

Terri and D.J., who were sitting across from Heather, slowly turned to get a look at the man in the booth behind them.

He was definitely hot, D.J. decided immediately. His Foo Fighters concert tee was stretched across very broad shoulders. He was muscled, but without the thick-neck look that some guys get. And he had a handsome face with strong, masculine features and neatly clipped sandy-brown hair. Totally gorgeous.

“Nice,” Terri whispered beside her.

D.J. hoped that wasn’t a word that defined him.

Although he was attractively tanned, a day at the beach meant a certain amount of redness in the cheeks of light-skinned visitors. There was none of that. He definitely hadn’t spent the afternoon in sun and surf. He hadn’t come on spring break for the beach. He’d come for the girls.

Just then he caught sight of her. Their eyes met. D.J. would have sworn that an actual spark of electricity passed between them. She had felt it. Then again, maybe it was another one of those exploding stars. Her initial reaction was to look away, but she didn’t. She would not be cowed by her own uncertainty. Instead, she raised her chin and looked him over, unsmiling, assessing.

That brought his eyebrow up.

She held his gaze. That’s what sexy, confident strangers did with men. They held the gaze. They held their own. And she was playing her role perfectly.

Then he smiled at her. It was a beautiful smile. Warm, welcoming and incredibly sexy.

“Oh, no,” Terri said. “He’s not the one.”

“He might be,” D.J. told her.

“Don’t do it. He’s probably an Eagle Scout.”

“You’re kidding, right,” Heather said. “He’s got serial killer written all over him.”

“What?”

“That’s exactly what they look like,” she insisted. “They’re always clean-looking, the boy-next-door type.”

“You’re crazy,” D.J. told her.

“She is,” Terri agreed. “But still, he’s not the one for you. You’re looking to get laid, not fall in love. This guy is one you could fall in love with.”

D.J. thought about the spark. Terri was probably right.

“Look at the guy at the table right below us. Now he looks like a genuine guy. A little bit pudgy, but he’ll work harder to make it good for you.”

“Terri, he’s got a
World of Warcraft
tattoo,” Heather pointed out with derision.

“Well, at least it’s not Dungeons & Dragons,” Terri said.

Heather laughed. “The D&D tat is probably under his shirt.”

D.J. hardly looked at the tattooed option. She glanced back behind her again. The guy in the booth was still looking at her. Still smiling. He seemed pretty comfortable. As if he knew exactly what he was doing. He probably made hookups six nights a week in places like this.

“Come on,” Terri said, standing and pulling D.J. up beside her. “You can’t really decide from this distance. Let’s go dance.”

Terri and Heather took turns hanging out with her on the dance floor, making the rounds, meeting the guys at the bar. D.J. completely threw herself into the new alter ego. She was a wild child, sexy through and through. Every moment was choreographed to portray the unrestrained, sultry and very available woman she wanted to be tonight. She even added a kind of Ado Annie east Texas twang to the performance, and it seemed as if the men around her were completely buying it. She was going to get her pick. She was going to get to choose. It was a heady sensation of power for a young woman who’d felt powerless for far too long.

She was catching her breath from a very athletic pairing with “dancing dude” when suddenly the hot guy she’d seen in the booth stepped in front of her. He filled the entirety of her vision until there was nothing except him.

“Oh...hi,” she said, forgetting the fake drawl.

He was even taller than she’d thought, and his dark brown eyes looked down at her with warmth that seemed to penetrate her skin.

“I think you’re going to have to dance with me,” he said.

“Have to?” she replied with a smirk. “Why would I have to?”

“Because I came here to party with pretty girls,” he answered. “And that’s what I want to do. But you sparkle so brightly I can’t even see anyone else.”

“Sparkle?” she asked and then, realizing what he must be referring to, D.J. put her hands on her hips and deliberately pushed her bikini-covered breasts forward. “It’s called sequins,” she pointed out.

He smiled. “That, too.”

She was almost paralyzed as he raised one long tanned finger to the spot where the ties for the halter top crossed her collarbone. Then, never touching her skin, he gently traced the direction of the strap down her chest all the way to the hollow of her cleavage.

The electricity was there again, but this time it was more like a lightning strike, and in places typically kept safe from that sort of thing.

“You don’t need sequins,” he said. “You sparkle from deep inside.”

The bottom fell out of D.J.’s stomach. Her knees turned to Jell-O. She felt suddenly sober and didn’t like it. She’d come so far, and she wasn’t going to allow fear to back her down. Desperately, she clung to her sexy vamp persona. She tossed her hair and gave him her best impression of a worldly-wise grin.

“Be careful,” she warned him. “If you get too close you might get glitter all over you.”

His eyes narrowed with arousal, then he grinned and pulled her into his arms. “I’m willing to take my chances.”

As a new song began, D.J. felt her hips moving to the beat. “I think
you’re
going to have to dance with
me,
” she said. All around them people jumped and gyrated, when suddenly he brought his mouth down to hers. As their lips touched, the voltage zizzed through her, hot and quick and scorching. She kissed him back with all the expertise she could muster and with all the enthusiasm of the starving. The kiss was everything she’d ever imagined and more, so much more. She didn’t want it to end, she didn’t want to let it go. She persisted, making the most of the moment. It was exactly what she needed and she tried to make it last.

When they finally came up for air, she felt drunker than any champagne could make her.

“Wow.” She felt more than heard him breathe the word against her temple.

She could have easily said the same, but why waste words? Instead, she edged closer to him, letting the desires of her body do all the talking. They swayed together to music that may as well have been in their heads.

“This is so what I’ve needed,” he whispered. Her arms were wrapped around his neck. His hands low on her hips. She wiggled against him, encouraging free rein. A moan escaped from deep in his throat and she felt a brush of lips against her hair. Then he pulled away slightly, as if needing to put distance between them.