Pride (2 page)

But it was time to face facts. These last few weeks she’d read plenty of good books, watched all her favorite movies, taken so many “relaxing” bubble baths, she was starting to grow gills—and enough was enough. She was bored. Bored out of her mind.

It’s not like she needed to spend every minute of every day with Harper. Miranda was a best friend, not some parasite who needed a constant infusion of Harper’s energy to thrive. They needed
each other,
equally—or so Miranda had thought. Apparently, she’d thought wrong. Because here she was, alone.
Again
. On yet another Saturday night, playing Internet solitaire while Harper lived it up with the love of her life. So much for late-night rendezvous at the bar of choice, or Sunday brunches where they dissected every moment of the lame night before. No more of the late-night distress calls Miranda had complained about so much—never admitting, even to herself, how good it felt to be needed.

Not that Miranda begrudged her best friend her happiness—not much, at least.

“You wouldn’t believe it, Rand,” Harper told her. Constantly. “Its better than I ever could have imagined. Having him there for me? Always? It’s amazing. It’s so perfect. You’ll see.”

Sure, Miranda would see for herself. Someday. Maybe. Until then, she was growing intimately familiar with the whole outside-looking-in thing, turning herself into an impeccable third wheel in under a week. She’d always been a quick study.

Harper refused to elaborate on how it had happened, how one day Beth and Adam were going strong, and the next, Harper was the one in his arms, Beth kicked to the curb.

Not that vapid blondes like Beth ever stayed single for long—thirty seconds later, there she was, Kane Geary’s latest conquest, floating along by his side as if she’d been there all along.

No, it was girls like Miranda who stayed single—for what seemed like forever. In all the years she’d longed for Kane, had he given her a second look? Had he ever once considered that her wit and charm might be worth ten of his bimbos, despite her stringy hair and lumpy physique?

No—guys like Kane, they never did. Probably, never would.

Her computer
dinged
with the sound of a new e-mail, and she opened it warily, expecting spam. More offers to increase her girth or introduce her to some “Hot XXX Girls NUDE NUDE NUDE.” Who else would be sitting in front of their computer on a Saturday night but the people trying to sell that shit—and the people who actually bought it?

LOOKING FOR LOVE IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES?
read the banner headline.

Great. Even Cyberspace knew how pathetic she was.

Join
MatchMadelnHaven.com,
Grace’s first teen Internet dating site! Find your true love with the click of a mouse! After all—you’ve been lonely too long….

You can say that again,
Miranda thought bitterly. And, for just a moment, she considered it. No one would ever have to know, she reasoned, and maybe, just maybe, this was her ticket to coupledom. Maybe there was someone out there, just like her, waiting for the right girl to come along. Could she really complain about being alone if she hadn’t done everything in her power,
everything,
to fix the problem?

And then she caught herself, realizing the depths to which she was about to sink.

What are you thinking?
she asked herself sternly, shaking her head in disgust.
You’re not that desperate
.

At least, not yet.

They ate in silence.

The dining room table was large and long, too big for just the two of them. Kaia sat at one end, her father at the other, and for most of the meal, the quiet was punctuated only by the distant chattering of the maids in the kitchen and the occasional clatter of a silver Tiffany fork against the edge of Kaia’s Rafaelesco plate. She saw her father wince at each
clang
and
scrape
—it didn’t inspire her to be more careful.

Kaia would rather have been in the cavernous living room, eating take-out in front of the flat-screen, liquid-crystal TV, as usual. When you got down to it, she would have preferred to be back home in New York, eating in a chic TriBeCa bistro. Even holing up in her New York bedroom with a three-day-old bag of Doritos would have been preferable to having even one more meal in Grace, CA. Good food didn’t change the fact that she was in exile, a prisoner, beholden to her parents’ stupid whims. She didn’t want to be stuck in the desert, stuck in his pretentious,
Architectural Digest
wannabe house, and she certainly didn’t want to be stuck at the hand-crafted mahogany dining room table facing the man who was keeping her there. And despite her perpetual inability to read him, she was pretty sure he didn’t want to be there, either. Yet there they sat, one night a month.

And the night stretched on, interminable.

“So, how’s school?” her father finally asked.

“I wouldn’t know,” she answered lightly.

“Kaia …”

The warning note in his voice was subtle, but clear.
He talks to me like I’m one of his employees,
she thought, not for the first time.

“School’s fine. Delightful,” she offered. “I go every day. It’s a truly wonderful experience. I’m simply learning ever so much. Is that what you want to hear?”

He sighed and shook his head. “I just want to hear the truth, Kaia. And I want to hear that you’re happy.”

“Sorry to disappoint,
Father,
but those are two different things—and, at the moment, they’re mutually exclusive. You and Mother have seen to that.”

His lips tightened, and Kaia braced for an angry response, some of that famous Keith Sellers temper, quick as lightning and just as deadly, but he kept it together. Barely. “This year isn’t supposed to be a punishment, Kaia.”

“Then why does it feel like one?”

“It’s supposed to be a break,” he continued, as if she hadn’t spoken. “To give you and your mother some space. To give you some time to think about what you want your life to be.”

“I want my life to be back to normal,” Kaia spit out, immediately regretting it. She’d vowed not to let her guard down. Bad enough that she’d almost cried on the day he’d cut up all her credit cards—and
had
cried on the day her mother had shipped her off to the airport. She’d refused to give them the satisfaction of knowing she cared.

“Oh, Kaia. I wish I could help,” he said, almost sounding like he meant it. “Maybe if I spent some more time at home….”

“You really want to help?” Kaia asked, allowing a note of near sincerity to creep into her voice. She’d been waiting for the right moment for this, and there was no time like the present—right? “How about a temporary reprieve,” she suggested. “Winter break’s coming up, and I thought, maybe, just for a couple weeks—”

“You are
not
going back to the East Coast,” he cut her off. “Not for two weeks, not for two days—you know the terms of our agreement.”

“Agreement, right,” she muttered. “Like I had a choice.”

“What was that?” he snapped.

“I said, if this isn’t a punishment, why do I feel like I’m in prison?” she asked, loud and clear.

“Katherine, that’s quite enough whining for tonight.” His measured tone masked an undercurrent of tightly bottled rage. The famous Keith Sellers temper was famous for a reason.

“It’s
Kaia,
” she reminded him.

“I named you
Katherine,
” he countered, rising from the table. “I
let
you call yourself by that ridiculous name, but you’ll always be Katherine, just like I’ll always be your father, whether you like it or not.”

“Trust me, I know,” Kaia snarled. “If I could change that, along with the name, I would have done it a long time ago.”

By the time he roared at her to go to her room, she was already out of her seat and halfway up the stairs.

Just another warm and fuzzy family dinner at the Sellers house.

Bon appétit.

It was almost midnight before Kaia’s father had gone to sleep and she was able to sneak out of the house. She was still fuming about the way her parents felt they could run her life. They were mistaken. They could ship her across the country and strand her in the desert, but they couldn’t stop her from slipping out of the mansion, driving twenty minutes down the deserted highway, pulling to a stop in front of a squat, nondescript, gray house, and scurrying up the walkway, head down to shield her face from prying eyes. They couldn’t stop her from throwing open the door and falling into her lover’s arms.

Her
lover
—she liked the sound of that. She’d had her share of guys, but never one she’d call a
lover
. The term was too adult, too mature for the puny prep school boys she’d toyed with back east—it was reserved for a man. And now she’d found one.

“Je m’oublie quand je suis avec toi,”
she murmured into his neck.

I forget myself when I’m with you.

He hated when she spoke French to him; it was too much of a reminder of his day job, and of their roles in the real world, beyond the walls of his cramped apartment, where he was a French teacher, she a student. He didn’t want to remember—and she never wanted to forget.

The delicious scandal, the secrecy—why else was she there? It didn’t hurt that he was sophisticated, worldly, movie-star handsome, that at least when they were alone in bed together, he treated her like a goddess—but really, the thrill of the forbidden had always been, and remained, the biggest draw. He was too shallow, too vain to be anything other than an object of illicit desire. She had no fairy-tale illusions of love—and knew he felt the same.

It’s why they worked so well together.

“What are you thinking?” he asked idly, though she knew he didn’t really care.

“I’m thinking you’re a superficial, conceited, despicable human being, taking advantage of a sweet young girl like me.” To Jack Powell, she could always speak some form of the truth—because the things they said to each other would never matter. Neither of them was in this for good conversation.

“And you’re a callous, duplicitous, licentious girl who’s out only for herself,” he retorted in his clipped British accent, and kissed her roughly “I can’t get enough of you.”

It was a match made in heaven—or somewhere a bit farther south.

chapter
2

“This … isn’t …
so
… bad …,” Harper lied, panting for breath with every word.

Miranda slammed the big red button on her treadmill and nearly toppled to the ground as the moving track stopped short beneath her feet.

“Are you kidding?” she asked, glaring at Harper. “This has got to be the worst idea you’ve ever had.”

Harper pushed her sweaty bangs out of her face and grimaced—she would never have suggested scamming Grace’s only gym into giving them a free trial workout if she’d known it would be so much
work
. After all, working, on the first day of winter vacation? It went against everything she believed in.

But it would be worth it, she reminded herself, and began pedaling the stationary bike even faster. Harper usually steered clear of physical activity (unless you counted the kind that took place behind closed bedroom doors). But she’d always told herself that an aversion to exercise was a choice, not a necessity—if the time ever came that she needed to be in shape, she’d been sure it would be a snap.

The time had come. But the only thing snapping would be her bones, if she managed to fall off the exercise bike one more time.

“Maybe it’s time to throw in the towel,” Miranda suggested. She made a face and gestured toward the soggy towel she’d been using to wipe away her sweat. “Literally.”

“No way.” Harper smiled through gritted teeth. “We’re just getting into the groove.” She looked hatefully at the lithe bodies effortlessly working the machines all around her. Losers, all of them, judging by their baggy T-shirts, saggy shorts, and mis-sized sports bras—and yet none of them were gasping and panting like a wounded animal. Like Harper.

“So what’s with the new work ethic?” Miranda asked, turning the treadmill back on and, with a sigh, continuing her plodding jog to nowhere.

“Hello—school ski trip coming up? Need to get in shape? Remember? Are you burning off calories or brain cells?”