Page 8 of Drawn To You (Paloma's Edge 1)

He had no idea that it had been a pleasure to meet Bethany. However, I couldn’t let him know that. He may think that I’d gotten fresh with his cousin. I never thought I’d see her again. University of Miami was huge. Visitors and non-admit students came all the time. I had been too late when I had decided to catch up to her and offer her a ride to wherever she needed to go. Too damn proud, like I had been in the past, to reach out to someone. And now that I’d seen her again, my interest in her had only increased. She was probably a student there too.

With my wide beach bag and beach chair folded up, I headed towards the long path to get to my car. Joel and Rylan came in with what looked like ten girls. One of them I recognized from last night. She was a pretty girl by conventional standards, although she didn’t hold a candle to Beth’s beauty or degree of sexiness. Last night, this girl must’ve told me her name five times, and I couldn’t recall it to save my life. As most of the girls tittered in a fake and exaggerated way, the girl from the night before sent me a lascivious wink and curled her finger around the loop of her belly-button piercing. While I liked piercings on girls, her doing the belly-button twirl did nothing for me like I knew it once would have.

“Chase! You leaving already?” Rylan smiled while one of the girls rubbed her hands over his chest.

“Yeah. Gonna go to lunch with Nancy. Gotta look my best.”

Joel’s mouth twitched. “Don’t even go there,” I warned him. Joel had the grace to look embarrassed, but I doubted that he really was.

“His mind is always in the gutter.” Rylan shook his head. We were young, horny bastards, but Nancy had treated us all like we were her children. She could be our grandmother. Joel wouldn’t have attempted to make a joke involving Nancy if Pierce were here.

“Have a good one.”

Joel looked on as most of the girls started to frolic in the sand. “We most certainly will.”

Rylan chased after the girls.

“And you don’t wanna leave those girls unattended for too long. They have short attention spans.” I cocked my head in the direction of other guys, who were looking at them.

A thought seemed to enter his mind and he faced me again. “Hey, did you pick you up Pierce’s cousin today?”

“Yeah.”

Joel’s face became animated. “Well,” he said impatiently. “How’d she look?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “She’s all right,” I gladly lied.

Joel’s face scrunched up in disappointment. Good. He raised his chin up at me and then he sauntered over to one of the girls.

Chapter 3

Bethany

When Mrs. Adler, Uncle Anton’s personal assistant, had informed me that he was unable to pick me up and someone else was going to, I thought it’d be Pierce, my Aunt Deborah, or Cassidy. Or a driver. Not Chase.

Before Chase had left me in the lobby, I’d felt like I was gonna melt into a puddle of water under his hazel gaze. Addled, my skin had heated, and I had felt like he stroked my face wi

th his hands. Knots formed in my stomach because I wanted him to hold my face in his hands. Okay, I also wanted him to ease my growing ache below.

What the heck was wrong with me? I had just met the guy. Ruggedly handsome, he had such strong and big hands, with arms like boulders. In fact, his entire body was a walking billboard for fitness.

In less than a day’s time, I wanted Chase something awful. Somehow he had calmed my nerves about seeing Uncle Anton, setting off a different kind of tension in me. I’d been tempted to gawk at his figure. And I had come close to giving in when I had recalled why I was here. Plus, there was no way he’d get the satisfaction of catching me peek at him. Enough women had done that in the lobby. And I was really losing it; I’d given them a flinty-eyed stare like he was mine.

Shortly after I had seen Mrs. Muldoon and I was home, I tried to absorb that Cindy and Mr. Baxter had left town together. I hadn’t heard the note slip underneath the door; it’d been a letter from the landlord, stating that Cindy hadn’t paid rent in three months. She also hadn’t re-signed the lease. I’d been given two weeks to move out. Because rent had been paid consistently for years, thanks a lot to yours truly, my former landlord had given Cindy an extension. I’d thought that the notice had been a cruel joke played on me until I called the landlord’s office. I called Cindy afterwards and left her a message, letting her know that we were officially out of a home.

To say I was devastated would be an understatement. I would’ve sobbed right then. Jake had enveloped me in his arms and had said that he was there for me.

Soon after, Jake had picked Mariska up from work and she’d come to the house, assuring me that I could stay with her. But it hadn’t been right. Caring for Pete was a handful and her parents wouldn’t have said yes. She would’ve been angry at them when they had a right to say yes or no to begin with, and I didn’t want to be a source of discord in the Landry or the Cox homes.

Jake had offered for me to stay in his room, while he slept on the couch in the living room. I’d have only accepted Jake’s invitation if Uncle Anton hadn’t invited me to his house through Mrs. Adler. To my relief, Jake understood. Mrs. Cox had thought my decision was best also. She’d only agreed to Jake’s offer because I meant a lot to him and he’d have been mad if she refused. She didn’t like to upset her boys. And Mr. Cox had always supported his wife’s decisions, so that was a non-issue.

As an eighteen-year-old adult, I shouldn’t have thought that Cindy would want to do anything for me, including be home when she’d said she’d be. I just thought what she and I had as friends meant as much to her as it did to me. She had told me all sorts of details about her relationships that I really didn’t care to know about, but she didn’t have any friends here. She had lived in Franklin Parks all of her life and I didn’t think she ever really considered leaving the only place she ever knew until she had the chance. But what did I know? Maybe she’d planned to leave with her boyfriend or any man and she hadn’t wanted me to be their plus-one.

Cleaning up the apartment had served as Cindy’s way of apologizing. And considering how dirty the house had gotten while I had been in college, it saved me hours of doing that task myself. After two days of sulking, I had gone to Jake’s house to use his internet and had applied for jobs. But without a car, which most of the jobs required, I was screwed. I needed a job to save up money to buy a car by the end of this summer. The hours of the jobs I had seen were so inconsistent that I had declined Jake’s offer to give me a ride to and from a job. He drove Mariska to work when he could because she didn’t have a car either. I wasn’t going to make Jake feel conflicted between Mariska and I.

A group of men and one woman with sharp business suits and stern expressions walked into the hallway and out of the hotel. Everyone peered at them. It was hard not to. They had such a strong and intimidating presence, and I’d seen a good share of powerful looking people come in and out of here.

“Ms. Pruitt,” Brody, the concierge, called. He was cute in that boy-next-door way. He had a great smile and welcoming phone voice. He had to be around my age, or maybe even younger. I stood up and walked over to him with my stuff. “Mr. Pruitt is ready to see you. Your patience is much appreciated.”

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