ONE: Laney
Four years ago, summer
“Come on, Laney. You gotta live a little. You’ll be eighteen in a few weeks and then you’ll be leaving for college. This is the last fair you’ll ever attend as an adolescent. Don’t you want this summer to be memorable?”
“Yes, but that does not include getting busted for drinking under age.” My best friend, Tori, gives me that look that says I’m hopeless. “What?” I ask defensively. “Daddy would kill me.”
“I thought preachers’ kids were supposed to be wild as hell?”
“I can be wild,” I tell her, avoiding her disbelieving blue eyes. “I just don’t want to be wild right now.”
“Then when? When are you gonna do something? Anything? You won’t make it a single semester away at college if you don’t learn some of this worldly stuff now, Laney.”
I chew the inside of my lip. I do feel ill-prepared for college. But the thing is, I don’t want to do wild things. All I’ve ever really wanted out of life is to find the perfect man to sweep me off my feet, get married, have a family, and live happily ever after. And I don’t have to get wild to achieve any of those things.
Looking at Tori’s expression, however, makes me feel like some kind of freak for not wanting to break the rules. At least a little. But she doesn’t understand my dreams. No one does, really. Except my mother. She was the same way when she was my age, and she found everything she wanted in life when she met my father.
“Come on, Laney. Just this once.”
“Why? What is the big deal about getting it here? Getting it now?”
“Because I want to get it from him.”
“Why?” I ask again. “What’s the big deal?”
“I’ve had a crush on him for years, that’s what the big deal is. He went off to college and I haven’t seen him since. But now he’s here. And I need a wing woman.” When I don’t immediately relent, she presses. “Pleeease. For meee.”
I sigh. I have to give Tori credit for being one seriously gifted manipulator. It’s a wonder I’m not wild as a buck. She talks me into doing things I don’t want to do all the time. It’s just that, so far, they’ve been fairly innocent. Being the preacher’s daughter and living with such strict parents makes it hard for me to get into too much trouble. Tori ought to be happy about that. If it weren’t for the restrictions being my friend has placed indirectly on her, she’d probably be a pregnant, drug-addicted criminal by now.
But she’s not. Partly because of me and my “taming” influence. And it’s those stark differences in our personalities that make us such good friends. We balance each other perfectly. She keeps me on my toes. I keep her out of Juvie.
“Fine,” I growl. “Come on. But so help me, if he tells on us, I’m blaming you.”
Tori squeals and bounces up and down, her ample boobs threatening to overcome the extremely low neckline of her shirt.
“Why don’t you just go over and do that in front of him a couple of times? I’m sure he’d give you anything you want.”
“That’ll come later,” Tori says, ruffling her blond bangs and waggling her eyebrows.
I roll my eyes as we start off across the fairgrounds. As we near the farm truck where the shirtless guy is unloading crates, I ask Tori again, “Now who did you say he is?”
“Jake Theopolis.”
“Theopolis? As in the peach orchard Theopolises?”
“Yep, that’s his family.”
“Why don’t I remember him?”
“Because your hormones slept through your freshman year. He was a senior. Jenna Theopolis’s older brother. Played baseball. Dated pretty much all the hot girls. “
“Except for you,” I add before she can.
She grins and elbows me in the ribs. “Except for me.”
“And you’re sure he won’t try to get us into trouble?”
“I’m positive. He was a bad boy. I’m sure there’s nothing we could think of that he hasn’t done ten times over.” We stop a few feet behind him, and I hear Tori whisper, “Good God, look at him.”
So I do.
I can see why Tori would find him appealing. His tanned skin is glistening in the hot Carolina sun. The well-defined muscles in his chest and shoulders ripple as he picks up a crate from the back of the truck, and his washboard abs contract as he swivels to set it on the ground. His worn blue jeans hang low on his narrow hips, giving us an almost-indecent look at the way the thin trail of hair that leads away from his navel disappears into the waistband.
But then Tori’s words come back to me and I’m immediately turned off. She said he’s a bad boy. And I’m not interested in bad boys. They don’t figure into my plans. At all. In any way. That’s why I don’t have to worry about being attracted to him.
Even though he’s hot as blazes.
Tori clears her throat as we move closer. “Hi, Jake.”
Jake’s dark head turns toward us as he pauses in his work to wipe his brow. He looks first at Tori. “Hi,” he replies around the toothpick stuck in one corner of his mouth. His voice is low and hoarse. His smile is polite and I think to myself that he’s handsome enough, but nothing to warrant Tori’s insistence on talking to him.
But then he looks over at me.
Even with him squinting in the bright sun, his eyes steal my breath. Set in his tan face and framed by his black hair and black lashes, they’re striking. The amber color is like honey, honey I feel all the way down in my stomach—warm and gooey.
“Hi,” he says again, one side of his mouth curling up into a cocky grin.
For some reason, I can’t think of one single thing to say. Not even a casual greeting, one that I would give a perfect stranger. I stare at him for several long seconds until, finally, he chuckles and turns back to Tori.
“What’s wrong with her?”
“Uh, she’s just shy.”
“Shy?” he asks, turning his attention back to me. I almost wish he hadn’t. My belly is still full of hot liquid and I’m starting to feel breathless. “Hmmm, I don’t meet shy girls very often.”
From the corner of my eye, I see Tori wave her hand dismissively. “Eh, she’ll loosen up in a minute. In fact, that’s sort of why we’re here.”
Jake glances back to Tori, releasing me from the prison of his strange eyes. I take a slow, deep breath to settle my swimming head.