Hidden Gem Short Story Collection (9781301405985) (12 page)

“
You didn’t look like a
beer drinker and this is the only cocktail I know how to make,” Zoe
explained when Harper accepted the glass with a lifted eyebrow.
“Anyway, Cliff’s obviously not the one throwing this party – he’s
in Paris right now. Levi’s the one throwing this thing.”

“
Levi?”

“
His son?”

“
Was I supposed to know
that?”

“
Yes?”

Harper gave Zoe a look as she took a swig of
her martini, her expression asking, “Why?”

“
Ugh.” Zoe shook her head
as she made a drink of her own. “I guess you have an excuse not to
know him if you’re from New York but basically, he’s king here.
Like, throws the best parties, knows the best people, is
gorgeous
.”

“
Then why don’t you go
after him?” Harper asked.

“
Aside from not wanting to
deal with
that
?”
Zoe asked, nodding across the pool and over at the open cabana. All
Harper could see was a gaggle of about a half dozen girls in
bikinis or underwear but she assumed the famous Levi Westin was
somewhere under there.

“
Yes.”

“
Well, aside from not
wanting to deal with that, I still have a weird boner for Marco
Donovan.”

“
Ugh.”

“
I’m
sorry
. Sometimes dirty crushes turn
into real crushes, okay?” Zoe said, playfully defensive. “Besides,
if you don’t want me to jump Marco’s bones, go mingle and find me
another boy to like. Your challenge starts now.”

Within hours, Harper
fulfilled her mission, having struck up conversation with a
stunningly good-looking, jet-haired model named Steven or Stephan,
who was signed to the L.A branch of her agency. It explained his
overwhelming prettiness. He was actually a little
too
gorgeous for
Harper’s taste but that didn’t matter when she wasn’t scouting him
for herself. And it certainly didn’t matter with Zoe looking so
pleased with her pick upon introduction, quickly whisking Steven or
Stephan off to some secluded part of the house – or at least a spot
where Harper couldn’t watch her and laugh.

Damn it
. Suddenly without the entertainment she’d anticipated for
the night, Harper groaned inwardly, swatting away the drunk guys
with cheesy lines before retreating back into the house to fix
another drink or two, hoping they might make her a little more
tolerant of the wasted partygoers. Having consumed probably double
the alcohol they had, she couldn’t help looking at them with
disgust.
Amateurs
.

Quickly giving up on finding company that
she could stand, Harper soon found herself at the backdoor of the
empty-looking pool house that was perched at the end of the
shimmering blue pool. She had heard passing guests mention that it
was under construction and thus off-limits, which made it perfect
for her purposes of hiding out until Zoe emerged from wherever she
had gone with Steven.

All she had to do was break in.

That would be easy enough. It was just a pin
and tumbler lock. She’d worked those a dozen times in the past year
alone – generally with the doors of the Lilac wine cellar and
Joie’s parents’ room, where they kept hashish from their trip to
Morocco.

After retreating back into the Westin
mansion on a material hunt, Harper returned with a safety pin from
the office and a wrench that she’d sent one of her male admirers to
find since she had no idea where the “maintenance room” was.

Going straight to work, Harper stuck the
wrench into the lock, twisting it as much as she could to keep
tension while using her makeshift pick – the safety pin,
straightened and hooked at the end – to feel for the pins inside
the tumbler. Within fifteen seconds, the door was open.

Closing the door quietly
behind her, Harper stepped onto the shiny hardwood flooring of the
pool house, looking up at the high, beamed ceilings. It was bigger
than her floor in Hudson’s Upper East Side townhouse. It was
probably bigger than the entire townhouse.
What is this place?

Before her was an open
kitchen of white tile, oak and stainless steel. Harper wandered
over to the wall that was comprised from floor-to-ceiling of square
oak shelves. Filling each compartment were books. Harper ran her
finger along their spines, her eyes scanning their diverse array of
topics. Motorcycles, choppers, Henry Ford, South American cooking,
World War II, bourbon, Japanese tattoo art. Considering those
subjects, Harper couldn’t help but laugh when her fingers reached
the spine of a giant coffee table book simply titled
PUPPIES
.

Continuing down the line,
she eventually pulled out a book titled
Willpower Through Yoga & Meditation
.

“
Haven’t read that one
yet.”

For some reason, Harper wasn’t startled by
the sudden voice behind her. Perhaps because it sounded so calm and
unfazed by her presence. Or perhaps because she had somehow felt
him before he’d said a word. Still holding the book, she looked
over her shoulder.

Standing there was a shirtless boy with
close-shaven brown hair and far more height and muscle than Harper
felt was normal for somebody his age – assuming he was eighteen or
so. In his left hand was a half-empty bottle of whiskey. Running up
the arm of that hand was a black tattoo of roman numerals. Harper
didn’t even care that she was staring.

“
Not a fan of willpower?”
she asked.

He kept his green eyes locked on her as he
swigged from the whiskey bottle. He wiped his mouth with the top of
his inked wrist. “I like excess. If I can’t have all of it, I don’t
want any.”

“
So, if someone said you
could only have one glass of that whiskey, you wouldn’t have any at
all? I’m pretty sure that’s called willpower,” Harper
snorted.

“
The all-or-nothing kind,
I guess,” the boy said, going into his kitchen and opening the
fridge. “Did you break in?” he asked casually while perusing the
compartments.

Harper watched him from in front of the
shelf. He had additional roman numerals going down the right side
of his ribs. “Yes.” She wondered if she should sound more
apologetic. “I needed to escape the people out there,” she offered
her explanation. It seemed to suffice.

“
Yeah. I always forget
that they get sloppy as shit after three or four drinks,” the boy
said, taking out a slab of raw, red skirt steak. “I don’t know
what’s wrong with them. I have more in my system than any four guys
out there combined and I’m walking.” He grinned. “Cooking, too,
apparently.”

Harper gravitated to the kitchen, seating
herself at the counter as the boy heated up a cast iron skillet on
the stove. “Well, you’re older than the kids out there.”

“
I’m sixteen.”

“
What?
” Harper stared at the broad, muscled back in front of her.
She had already thought she’d been low-balling when she guessed the
boy to be somewhere around eighteen. His build, the tattoos – even
the bookshelf. He didn’t seem her age at all. “Are all those books
yours?” she asked, wondering if it sounded like a weird or random
question. He didn’t seem to think so as he nodded.

“
Everything in here is
mine,” he answered, throwing salt onto the steak before turning
around to face Harper with a crooked smile that made her thankful
to be seated. “I basically live here and avoid the main house as
much as possible,” he explained, completely unapologetic as he
checked her out. His stare roved about her face for several seconds
before dipping down to her body in her white halter mini-dress.
“What’s your name?” he asked.

“
Harper.
Yours?”

“
Levi,” Levi answered.
“And how old are
you
?”

“
Sixteen. Same as you.”
When Levi pinched his brows, Harper cocked one of hers.
“Surprised?”

“
You seem older. Same as
me.”

“
How old do I
seem?”

“
Eighteen, nineteen.” He
nodded out toward the party. “But maybe it’s just because you can
hold yourself together unlike those assholes.”

“
I’ll take that as a
compliment,” Harper said, grabbing his bottle of whiskey when he
set it down to return to the skillet. It was a third full. With
four swigs, she emptied it. Levi’s eyes widened when he turned
around to see the finished bottle, raising his gaze to Harper, who
wiped the corners of her mouth with her middle finger. He raised
his eyebrows.

“
Not even mad,” he said,
impressed as he stared at her mouth with a faint grin. Harper
laughed, feeling the pleasant buzz that had faded from her first
few drinks.

“
So.” She arched her back
to gather her long blonde hair into a ponytail, watching Levi’s
eyes return to her chest as she did so. “I take it your parents are
divorced?”

“
What?”

“
You live in the pool
house to avoid your real house. Your parents let your friends come
over and wreck their property because they feel guilty about
putting you through their drama, never having time for you, that
kind of thing. You’re a total divorce baby.”

Levi leaned onto the counter with his
elbows. A smirk danced in his green eyes. “I’m not. But you
obviously are.”

Thrown off, Harper frowned. “What?”

“
When did your parents
split?”

She swallowed, trying to look unbothered by
the question. “Two years ago.”

“
Why?”

“
Shouldn’t you at least
fake being polite or ashamed about asking me this?” Harper asked
with a snort, certain that they hadn’t been acquainted for more
than eight minutes although they did feel quickly and strangely
familiar.

“
I don’t fake things,”
Levi said simply.

Fair
enough
. Harper chewed on the side of her
nail for a second. “They split because they have things to do. My
dad works and my mom’s trying to work again. They don’t have time
for each other.”

“
What about
you?”

Harper stared. “What?”

“
I assume they didn’t have
time for you, either.”

Harper wet her lips. “Yeah but I don’t care.
It means I get to come to L.A alone instead of with one of them,”
she said, trying to sound carefree. When Levi squinted at her, she
rolled her eyes. “Please stop trying to read me. I can promise you
that I definitely didn’t want to come here with parental
guidance.”

“
I believe you. But I’m
sure you also would’ve been relieved if one of them said, ‘No
chance in hell, I’m coming, too.’” Levi smirked at her cocked
eyebrow. “You want them to feel like actual parents
sometimes.”

Feeling transparent, Harper crossed her arms
over her chest. She squinted at Levi and his odd perceptiveness. “I
had to be right before about your parents being divorced.”

“
No, sorry. That was a
genuinely interesting assessment but my parents are still
together.”

“
Then… why do you get all
this?” Harper asked, gesturing to the house and the party. She was
pretty sure that her question sounded childish but she didn’t care.
She was confused.

“
Because my dad doesn’t
care if I exist or not. Nothing I do makes him bat an
eyelash.”

“
That’s
shitty.”

“
Well, he never wanted a
kid.”

“
Then why did he have
one?”

“
A family was my mom’s one
dream. My mom is my dad’s one weakness.”

“
So he gave her the family
she wanted.”

Levi shrugged. “Sure. Unless family means
spending time together. Doing shit together, giving shits about
each other,” he smirked as he slid the steak off of the skillet and
onto a cutting board, grabbing a long, serrated knife from its
wooden holder and deftly cutting the meat into thin strips against
the grain.

Harper watched him go back into the fridge
and remove a jar of what looked like homemade green salsa. “Yeah,
that’s called a normal family. Some people only get the makings of
one without the normal part.”

“
And by some people you
mean us.”

“
Yes.”

“
You don’t seem all that
upset it,” Levi smirked as he plated the steak and salsa. Harper’s
lips twisted into a sardonic smile.

“
Nothing upsets me when I
have enough to drink.”

“
Sad.” Levi opened a
pantry and pulled out a vintage-looking bottle. “Obviously need to
break out my good scotch for this conversation.” Reaching up into a
high cupboard, he pulled out two crystal tumblers. Harper watched
the muscles in his ribs flex as he did so. “Can you handle
more?”

“
Are you kidding
me?”

“
Alright. Then just tell
me when,” he smirked as he began filling the glasses, lifting his
gaze at Harper, whose mouth watered at the sight of both his
tattooed forearm and the rich amber liquid it poured. Levi laughed
when she stayed silent even as he reached the brim of the glass.
“Can’t blame you,” he said, sliding the near-overflowing tumbler
across the counter at her. Pouring himself an equally full glass,
he took a large gulp before holding it out to her.
“Cheers.”