Beguiling (Tempting #2) (2 page)

“
C
ongratulations on vet school
.” A thick hand patted my shoulder, the fingers accidentally getting tangled with my hair and pulling it taut. I half smiled and half winced my response before quickly moving among the clusters of people.

“Scarlet, check on the rolls, won’t you?” My mother’s voice spun me around as I was headed to the back deck, away from the talk of church and din of my father’s favorite jazz.

I nodded and turned toward the kitchen, but was stopped on my way.

“Scarlet, just the girl I wanted to talk to.”

I took a deep, silent breath in through my nose. “Hi, Mrs. Freeman.” I gave the neighbor a smile and kept my face free of frustration.

Her eyes were heavy-lidded and she seemed to sway a little in place. She leaned toward me and squinted, before she opened her mouth and washed me with the scent of peach-scented liquor. “Congrats, honey. You must be so excited.”

It was the same thing I’d heard fifty times already—the words rearranged a little—but the conversation was the same. As was my answer.

“Thrilled.” I clasped my hands in front of me, feeling the pull on the neckline of my sleeveless black dress.

“What are you studying?”

It also wasn’t the first time I’d heard that question, which only illuminated the fact that the people attending my graduation party weren’t
my
friends, but friends of the family; people who sent you Christmas cards and brought casseroles when there was a death, but not people who actually knew you.

“My degree is in animal medicine,” I said blandly. I squeezed my hands together. “I’m going to vet school.”

“Oh, that’s right.” Mrs. Freeman nodded, a smile stretching her cardboard skin. “You must be excited.”

As you already said, Mrs. Freeman
, I thought. Luckily, my mom stepped in to talk with Mrs. Freeman and mouthed “rolls” to me with a nod to the kitchen.

I took the back way, from the living room through the foyer, the dining room, and the kitchen, wanting to bypass the audience that awaited in the living room and adjoining family room.

The kitchen was blissfully empty and quiet. After pulling the rolls out of the oven and setting them on the island, I walked to the sink first and opened the window above it, letting the early June air wash over my face. Bracing my hands on either side of the sink, I just stood there for a minute as I breathed. The party was my mom’s idea; she was always the one to entertain the neighbors and the members of dad’s congregation. Which was great for Tupperware parties, maybe, but not exactly what you’d expect for a college graduation.

The repetitive questioning and kind smiling and the weight of expectation from everyone around me had been nearly too much to bear. In high school I’d been the valedictorian, and in college when they’d announced I was salutatorian of my class, the feeling of failure had made my mouth slack. I'd put so much pressure on myself that letting everyone around me pile on their hopes for me was suffocating. I’d taken a full load of classes for three continuous years so I could graduate and move on, and after having the last couple weeks off, I was finally realizing how stressed out I’d been that entire time.

I sighed, the action causing tension at the top of my dress. I looked down at the matte black fabric that stopped at my knees. With its round neck and straight line to my knees, it absolutely did not scream, “I just graduated from college and I’m celebrating!”

“Where’s the good stuff at?”

I whipped around, gripping the sink now at my back. Leo, the neighborhood manwhore, started opening cabinets opposite of me and I swallowed hard.

“Not there.”

He turned around, raising an eyebrow. His blue eyes narrowed on me. “Come on. I know your mom used to keep a good booze cabinet.”

His implied familiarity raised my hackles. I crossed my arms over my chest. “How would you know that?”

He closed the cabinet above his head and leaned over the island that separated us. As his hand reached for the rolls, I leaned over the island and slapped his hand away. He eyed me and we engaged in a momentary standoff until he made a gruff-sounding noise and moved away from the rolls.

Not wanting to be so close that I was sharing the air with him, I backed up to the sink again. He grabbed a handful of grapes from the fruit bowl in the center and tossed them, one by one, in his mouth. “It’s that cabinet, isn’t it?” he asked, tilting his head at the cabinet to my left that did indeed house my mom’s stash.

Before I could answer, I watched as his eyes slid over me.

“Or do you want to keep all the top shelf stuff to yourself?” He pointed a finger at my dress before popping another grape in his mouth. “I didn’t realize this was a funeral.”

Whenever I was annoyed, the blood rushed to the surface of my neck, making it red. I felt it doing that now, as Leo laughed at me. “It’s a party. But maybe that’s too hard for your thick skull to register.” I uncrossed my arms only to cross them again once I didn’t know what to do with them. I pushed off from the counter.

“You wound me,” he said with a hand to his chest. “And whose party? Yours, or your parents?”

He knew it was mine. We both knew he was just ribbing me. From anyone else, I would have tolerated it. But from the tormentor of my high school days, it was just aggravating. “It’s mine.”

“Probably should tell Old Man Freeman’s wife, because girlfriend is getting down on the schnapps out there,” he said, jerking his thumb out to the party. “She’s taking your spotlight.”

“Yeah, well she can have it.” I tightened my arms across themselves and scratched at my elbows, feeling the nerves from being in the same room as Leo getting to me.

"You're going to vet school?" he asked, and I actually heard the sneer in his voice.

"Yeah, so?"

"You don't even have a pet, what makes you think you can take care of animals?"

My blood was boiling, and I itched at the skin around my neck to keep me from saying anything in return. That was what he wanted after all—to make me cause a scene at my own party.

He resumed opening cabinets, poking through my mother’s many party platters. “Where are your friends?”

“Liza is working,” I began before I stopped. I watched as he turned around with a question on his face.

“Liza? Life of the party Liza? You’re still friends?” His insinuation that I was not the life of the party was not lost on me.

Why did he have to be such a dick?
The sharp edges of my teeth clamped down on my tongue, keeping the words in my head until I didn’t want them in my head anymore. Not with him smirking at me like that. “Why are you such a dick?”

Leo held up his hands in surrender. “It’s just a question,” he said. “Chill.” He moved around the island and walked right into my space. The shock of having him so close, my gaze meeting that sharp jawline and my mouth inches from a heavily muscled shoulder, caused my eyes to bulge. Leo was a manwhore, and for good reason. He smelled just like what a man should smell like. Swallowing the traitorous saliva that pooled in my mouth, I raised my eyes to his.

“It
is
up there, isn’t it?” he asked, completely oblivious to my struggle with hating him and being attracted to him at the same time. I didn’t want to have the same effect on him—of course not. Because we hated one another. But having a near-meltdown from the sharp angles of his jawline wasn’t convenient when he was close enough to breathe on me.

I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Instead I stood there, just breathing in his scent and trying not to let the flush spread to my face. Being a redhead with pale skin was a real pain in the ass sometimes.

His eyes searched mine, waiting. And then his lips spread, carving those terrible, sexy dimples into his cheeks. He reached up, opening the cabinet.

His eyes were hooded and his smile was a lazy kind of sexy. Like he knew who he was, he knew his appeal, and more significantly, he knew the effect it was having on me.

“Come on, Jennings, let’s make this a real party.”

The clack of approaching heels distracted me and I recognized the hushed voices approaching.

On impulse, I put my hands on Leo’s torso and pushed—not wanting my mom to see him rifling through her secret stash—but I caught him off balance and he crashed into the island, immediately wincing and grabbing his hip as he eyed me darkly.

“What the fu—”

Quickly, I slapped a hand over his mouth, interrupting him, just as my mother said, “Oh, there you two are.”

Leo’s hand came up, covered the hand I was still holding to his mouth and then, with his eyes on mine, he bit my palm and a second later swiped his tongue over the bite, almost soothingly. But the warmth in his eyes made something in my stomach flutter. My pulse galloped and my eyes widened before I snatched my hand away and obviously wiped it on my dress, giving him all the hate I could muster in my eyes.

“Leo?”

As if suddenly realizing we weren’t alone, Leo spun around. “Oh, hey moms.”

My mom’s face instantly warmed, the crinkle around her eyes showing her affection for Leo. And I mentally rolled my eyes, because doing it in front of my mom and company would be inappropriate. He had that innate charm about him—I was sure he could charm the pants off of Mrs. Freeman, especially now that she was feeling the schnapps.

“It’s so nice to see you two together,” Leo’s mom, Annette, said as my mom handed her a bottle of water from the fridge.

My mom used the bottle in her hand to point to each of us. “Yes, it is. We were just talking about you both.”

Annette smiled at each of us. “We were discussing your summer plans.”

My head bobbed back and forth between them, like a ping pong ball, and I couldn’t quiet the buzzing in my head that this was
not
a good thing.

“Since Scarlet has summer classes…”

Oh, no.

“And Leo,” Annette raised her eyebrow at Leo, “is car-less and has summer workouts…”

This is going to be bad.

“And Scarlet is saving money for vet school…”

I braced myself for the hell they were about to unleash.

“We thought it only makes sense for Scarlet to give Leo rides into the city…”

“And then Leo can pay her gas money.” Annette looked pointedly at Leo as she delivered that, and I was sure I saw Leo visibly shrink under her focus—which was impressive considering his sheer size.

I wanted to throw up. I wanted to scream,
hell no
. I wanted to push Leo a little harder into the island because our moms’ announcement and the lingering sting on my palm made me all the more angry with him.

Instead, I pulled my shoulders back and swallowed my frustration. I smiled, nodded, and said, “Sounds great.”

T
here weren’t
many things that could make me feel like a chump. One surefire way? Standing in my driveway while I waited for my stick-up-the-ass preacher’s daughter neighbor to pick me up so she could drive me to workouts. Yup. That was definitely the number one way.

Of course, it wasn’t like I could be mad at anyone but myself. I was two seconds away from just going inside to call one of the guys, even though it was out of the way for pretty much anyone who was still in town to come and get me, when Scarlet honked the horn from her driveway. I narrowed my eyes. Of course she would make me walk to her instead of coming to pick me up.

It was early enough in the morning that I had my pants on over my shorts, but while I walked very slowly down the driveway toward Scarlet’s house, I yanked my long sleeved shirt over my head and pulled it down. When I paused to zip up my backpack again, Scarlet laid on the horn with one loud, piercing burst. I couldn’t stop the grin, because even though I’d failed spectacularly at getting her to be even remotely nice to me at her party, she was going to be stuck with me twice a day while she played my chauffeur.

Her car was a modest one, a maroon Toyota Corolla with a rust spot on the passenger side bumper. Opening the back door, I tossed my backpack next to her laptop messenger bag. Before opening the passenger door, I stopped, bracing my hands on the roof for a second. I wasn’t a complete misogynist, okay? It wasn’t like I hated a woman driving me around, but the second I shut that door and buckled myself in, I’d be giving her control of my life. A woman who was more likely to let me get t-boned by a semi than be kind to me.

The window framing my stomach rolled down.

“Are you going to ride that way? Holding on to the side of the car? Because you might ingest a lot of bugs with that giant mouth of yours.”

I tsked my tongue when I opened the door and sank into the seat. Her lips twitched when I was practically eating my knees. Jerking the handle of the seat, I pushed it back as far as it would go, hissing a little when the bruise on my side twinged.

“Good morning to you, too, Sunshine.” I clicked my seatbelt and grinned over at her. “You’re looking especially chipper today. Excited to see me?”

She may have rolled her eyes, but I couldn’t really tell given that she didn’t look anywhere near me. After she pulled off of our street, I waited a few minutes of heavy silence before I leaned forward to turn the radio on. She smacked my hand away from the dial.

“Ouch. You know, you hit me a lot. Are you sure you don’t have any unresolved anger issues I should know about? I’m not sure how I feel about riding with a crazy person.”

Instead of answering, Scarlet let out a heavy sigh while she merged onto I-90.

“Oh, and my hip hurts like a bitch, thanks. That will be fun when I’m doing pass drills and some lineman decides to sack my ass.”

Nothing. Not even a glance in my direction.

“So, vet school, huh? You like cutting up animals? Isn’t that the number one trait of a sociopath?”

“Yup,” she said, eyes straight ahead on the road. “That’s exactly it, Leo. I’m racking up thousands and thousands of dollars in student loans and spending years of my life studying veterinary science because I’m a sociopath.”

I gasped. “You do know my name. So very surprising.”

“What’s surprising is that you know what a sociopath is.” Finally she cut her eyes over to me, lifting her eyebrows. “I assumed any word with more than two syllables would trip you up.”

I pointed a finger forward. “Eyes on the road, cupcake. Can’t have you crashing now. Then we’d both have to ride the bus.”

Scarlet shook her head slowly but did what I said. We rode in silence for a few more minutes before she gave me a quick look.

“What?” I said when she didn’t say anything.

“Nothing.”

“Just checking me out then?”

She huffed out a laugh, one that meant she did not find me funny in the slightest. “So what happened to your car? I mean, if I’m stuck with you all summer, I deserve to know why.”

Shifting in my seat, I actively ignored her, flipping through my phone.

Scarlet laughed, a light tinkling sound, and I glanced up to see if she was smiling, but I must have missed it. “So let me guess,” she continued in my silence, “you were getting it detailed, and the person hand-etching your initials in the custom leather got it wrong, and they have to go skin a new cow to start over.”

Annoyance licked up my skin, but I just smiled. “Yup, got it on the first guess, genius.”

“You’re seriously not going to tell me?”

“Not if you’re going to be so damn judgey.”

Obviously she heard the defensive edge in my voice, because she looked over at me and our eyes held.

“Okay, I won’t. I promise.” And she sounded sincere, the dark brown of her big eyes looking honest enough.

So I shrugged my shoulders, glancing away because the way she was holding my gaze made my skin feel tight. “I crashed it. Totaled it, actually. And normally my parents would just pay to fix it or buy a new one, but my dad is feeling like teaching me a lesson, I guess.”

“You guess?”

Honestly, this was quickly feeling like the longest car ride ever. What should have taken thirty quick minutes already felt like three times that long. I didn’t talk about this shit with people. Ever. I don’t think I’d ever even told Adele, my best friend, how much it chafed that my own parents didn’t think I was capable of anything other than chucking a football across the field.

But for whatever reason, I knew that Scarlet wouldn’t laugh at me if I told her this.

“Football is my job, right?” And she nodded, so I continued, glad she got it. “And because it doesn’t make me any money, I know my dad thinks it’s just something fun I’m doing in college since I happen to be good at it.” I paused, trying to filter my thoughts before they all spewed from my mouth in a rushed confession.

Scarlet looked over at me when she stopped the car at the red light of the off ramp for our exit. “What does that have to do with your car?”

“You know my brother, Grant?” She nodded and I dropped my head back onto the headrest. “He’s already a VP at my dad’s company, and when Dad retires in ten years, we all know Grant will take over. It’s what he wants to do. So, my older brother is the serious one, you know? I’m the football player. And when I totaled my car and they said I could wait until the fall to get a replacement, it was like they were saying I needed to deal with something challenging for once in my life. Like I’d never done that before.”

She scoffed, the sound coming out of her mouth quickly. “You have?”

“Yeah, I have,” I snapped, easily pissed off at her disbelief. That tone, that mocking tone in her voice, uncapped whatever filter was over my tongue. “You think it’s easy growing up and knowing that your own family doesn’t expect much of anything from you? I assure you, it’s not fucking easy.”

My cheeks flushed hot from snapping the words out, but the mortification that swept through me was worse, knowing she didn’t deserve that being dumped on her shoulders.

“Leo—”

“Sorry,” I interjected. “That wasn’t very nice.”

Scarlet paused, giving me another narrow-eyed look, but this time it wasn’t a glare. It was definite confusion. And then she smiled, nothing big, just a tiny curve of her lips.

“No, it’s wasn’t,” she agreed, still with that little smile on her face.

I shifted in my seat. “What’s so funny?”

“Not funny. Not precisely. Just ironic.” She glanced over at me when I pointed at the parking lot she needed to pull into for workouts.

“What’s ironic?” I asked while she pulled the car to a stop.

“Your family doesn’t expect much from you. And my family expects
everything
from me.” The look on her face when she said it was so serious, and kinda sad, that I clamped down on whatever joking comment I might have made next.  

The pause that came after her admission felt important somehow, like the fact that we’d shared something personal, something honest, was uncomfortable in equal measure for each of us. A blush covered her cheeks and she dipped her head down so fast that a large swath of red hair slipped over her shoulder and fell in a curtain.

I swear, I couldn’t help the instant hardening of my cock at the sight of the long, shiny strands. The only thing I could picture was how perfect her hair would look fisted in my hand while I fucked her.

Shoving the door open so fast I almost fell out, I took a deep breath before I opened up the back door to get my backpack. Scarlet was oblivious to my mental porno, thank the Lord.

“Uhh, the class I have after workouts gets done at noon. I’ll meet you back here after that, so you don’t have to drive through campus. That okay?”

Not surprisingly, she was giving me a guarded look at my hurried exit from her car, but she nodded. “Yeah, that’s fine.”

Slinging my backpack over my shoulder, I jogged toward the tunnel that led on to the field, suddenly ready to pound on something, anything, to clear my head from that fucking weirdness.