Page 1 of Bad Boy for Hire
Chapter One
Goodbye, summer.
May Glenfield stood on the shared dock outside of her house and watched the water. Summer wasn’t over, and technically wouldn’t be for another month, but she always felt a bit of melancholy when the leaves on the trees surrounding the lake began to turn.
Last night, she’d hung out at the bar with her friends. She’d driven home—her two cocktails long gone after devouring a virtual mountain of loaded nachos—and had fallen asleep with visions of the sexiest bartender in the world dancing in her head. She sipped her coffee and smiled to herself. That’d been nice.
No hot men, came the automatic reminder.
She huffed. She was tired of hearing that internal warning.
Xavier didn’t break that rule so much as annihilate it. He was unreasonably beautiful. With sparkling amber eyes the color of bourbon, a voice that was firm but playful, and a stepped-up style that most men didn’t bother with in the Cove. She’d heard Lou refer to his clothes as “rockabilly.” A trendy shirt here and there could slide him in that direction on the scale, but fashionista May saw his style as stepped-up simple. He wore jeans, like most of the hot guys in the Cove, but no one wore them as well as Xavier. They were fitted but not tight, cupping his perfect ass, and he often paired them with a button-down shirt, cuffed over impressive biceps and framing his muscular stature.
Picturing his biceps made her also picture the tattoos running the length of his left arm. Tattoos, for goodness’ sake. A row of pines and birds at first glance, but if one looked closer (and she had), constellations and binary code were woven into the natural scene. On one inked tree trunk were small black dots attached with thin lines (for which star grouping she had no idea), while the leaves of another smaller tree were made up of nothing but ones and zeroes. She hadn’t even known she liked tattoos until she’d seen Xavier’s. But like the rest of him, his tats were smart, sharp, and effortlessly cool.
She sighed. How she had resisted that man for three years was a miracle.
So, yeah. Xavier. Reddish blonde hair, coiffed to perfection. Full beard that looked soft and touchable. Amazing mouth. Sparkling eyes. A far cry from her ex, who was stouter, bulkier, and bald. But unlike Prescott, Xavier was friendly and instantly likable. And he made her laugh. There was an air of calm that seemed to ebb from his very soul.
A tad dramatic? Maybe. But drama had become almost second nature to her in recent years. She’d stuck to her no-hot-men rule, partially out of stubbornness but mostly, she was recently suspecting, out of fear. Losing Prescott had meant losing the connection with his entire family, and at a time May had suffered a great loss of her own, that had been a hard pill to swallow.
Her cellphone buzzed from the pocket of her joggers. Lisa, she’d bet. Sure enough, her best friend’s smiling photo looked up at her from her phone’s screen.
May answered the video call and was greeted with the opposite of smiley Lisa. Frowny Lisa grumbled, “My head hurts. Why do you look great? I hate you.”
May chuckled, her friend’s sour attitude glancing off her. They’d lived in the Cove their entire lives, and May and Lisa had become besties in middle school. There wasn’t much Lisa could say that would offend her. “I drank water in addition to cocktails. Didn’t you?”
“Vodka is made with water,” Lisa mumbled against the edge of a pale blue coffee mug. Lisa was sitting up in bed, sunlight playing in her dark hair, mascara slightly smudged underneath her blue eyes, both of which made her appear less guarded than usual. “Did you open it yet?”
“Open what?” May felt a wrinkle mar her brow before the conversation from last night crawled out of the back of her mind and slapped her on the forehead. “Oh. That.”
“Yes. That. What else?” Lisa set her coffee mug aside. “Open it now. We’ll do it together.”
“It’s inside.”
“So, go inside.”
“No, thanks.”
“Do you want me to come over and do it?” Lisa threw off the covers like she was getting out of bed, but then winced before easing back down on her pillows. “Ow. Sorry. You have to do it. If I move farther than six inches from this bed, my head might explode.”
“Did you drink water this morning?”
Eyes closed, Lisa answered, “Coffee is made with water.”
“I don’t need to open it,” May said, knowing that Lisa wouldn’t drop the subject. “I already know what’s in it.” The white envelope with the gold seal sitting on her counter had a return address from one Ms. Posy Stanton. “It’s Prescott’s sister’s wedding invitation. Mystery solved.”
“So? Open it, mark the RSVP no, and mail that fucker back.”
“I have to go, Lis. I love Posy. We were like sisters.” Both of Prescott’s sisters, Posy and Paisley, and even his mom, Cherie, were family to May. Or, they had been when she’d been dating Prescott.
Over the years, she’d kept in touch, but lately she had relegated her correspondence to social media. Texting had been easier than phone calls but had often led to invitations for coffee or brunch that May had politely turned down. It wasn’t about unresolved feelings for Prescott, it was about not reopening a wound that had finally begun closing.
“Loving Posy doesn’t mean you have to put yourself through hell for her,” Lisa continued. “It’s a wedding. Send a gift.”
“She’d never forgive me if I skipped her wedding.” The weight of those words sat on her shoulders like a winter coat she couldn’t take off. For a woman without siblings, who had lost one parent and was estranged from the other, abandoning the family that had loved her through that time wasn’t an easy task. Prescott’s mother and sisters had even taken May’s side after the breakup, which hadn’t been fair. Not to them or to Prescott.
“Babe.” Lisa’s voice cut into May’s thoughts. “You okay? You look like you’re about to cry.”
