Crush (2 page)

“Hey,” he said. His voice was like honey. “That was real fucking cute how you did that girl’s hair.”

I swallowed hard. “Um…yeah, she was adorable.”

His eyes never wavered from mine. “Yeah, she was, but I wasn’t talking about her.”

Another gulp. It was almost impossible to breathe around this guy. Whoever he was, he was having a serious effect on me, and I was acutely aware of the fact that we were now completely alone by the pool. Everyone else who’d been here earlier had gone inside when the sun began to set.

“Er…thanks,” I choked out, cursing myself for being so nervous.
He’s just a hot guy,
I told myself.
Get a grip!

He jerked his head towards the pool. Now that it was starting to get dark, the lights were on inside it, making it glow a shade of bright aquamarine.

“Wanna take a quick dip with me?” he asked.

I wanted to take a hell of a lot more than a dip with him, to tell the truth.

“Oh. Um….sure, why not?” I replied, my heart racing like crazy.

He grinned. “Well, you’re gonna have to take that towel off.”

I was wearing a bikini, but I had a beach towel wrapped around my body from the waist down. I’d never been entirely comfortable with revealing myself in a skimpy swimsuit in public. I didn’t dislike my body, it was just that I knew I didn’t look like a perfect Victoria’s Secret bikini model, and that made me a little touchy about swanning around a pool half naked.

As I stared up at this guy, all those feelings melted away. His bright blue eyes were stormy with lust, and his hungry gaze made me feel wanted. Desired. He was looking at me like I was hotter than a volcano, and I doubted those eyes saw anything negative in my not-so-flat belly and slightly thicker than average thighs. Any of my usual instincts to keep myself covered up were yanked away by that intense gaze, and with a shy smile, I stood up and whipped my towel away.

His gorgeous eyes coasted over my curves, taking in every inch of me the same way my eyes had taken in every inch of his incredible body. “Come on,” he said, turning and taking a flying leap into the water.

The displacement caused droplets of water to spray up out of the pool and cascade over me, and I squealed as he came up for air.

“Hey!”

He grinned again. “You’re gonna be wet as soon as you get in, anyway! C’mon, jump in!”

Truth be told, I was already wet in another way entirely. But shh, that can be our secret.

I gingerly slid into the water. It was a lot warmer than I’d expected, and the magical Adonis paddled over to me and extended a hand.

“I’m Bradley Eriksson, by the way. My friends just call me Brad.”

I took his hand, trying to ignore the jolt of electricity that streamed up my arm as I shook it. “I’m Mia Williams. My friends just call me…Mia.”

Ugh, ugh, ugh. Two seconds in and I was already saying stupid, nonsensical things out of sheer nervousness.

“What are you doing here in Biloxi?” he asked, leaning against the edge of the pool.

“I’m about to head back to college, so my Dad and I are here on a sort of ‘last hurrah’ before school goes back,” I replied. “How about you? Tattoo model convention?”

He chuckled, a deep sound reverberating from his chest that made my insides turn to mush. “Ah, so you’re not just beautiful, you’re funny too, huh? I’m on break from college as well.”

“Oh,” I said. I had to admit, I was kinda surprised. He didn’t look a typical college student. Then again, I suppose he did fit the profile of a party-boy frat bro. I knew the type. There were a few of them at my school. “So what do you study?” I asked.

“I’m pre-med,” he said. “Third year into my Bachelor’s so far. I’m at USM in Hattiesburg.”

He saw my eyes widen at the mention of pre-med, and he chuckled again. “Not all of us blonds are dumb,” he continued.

“Oh, sorry, I wasn’t thinking that you were dumb,” I hastily replied. “You just
—
you don’t really look like a doctor.”

That’s what I got for judging a book by its cover…

“Well, I’m not one yet, obviously,” he said. “But I get you. Not a lot of doctors are covered in tatts. I got these when I was going through my teenage rebellion phase. You know how it is.”

“Oh, um…yeah,” I said. Truthfully, I’d never gone through a rebellious phase. Then again, I was only nineteen. I still had time.

“Yeah, anyway, this is still a long way off, but I’m hoping to be head of cardiothoracic surgery at a hospital one day. The money in that is incredible,” he continued.

I fought the urge to raise my eyebrows. The money? Sure, head surgeons got paid a lot, but going into medicine for the salary alone seemed kind of arrogant and shortsighted. What about the urge to help people and make medical breakthroughs? Shouldn’t that matter to a future doctor? Then again, I barely knew this guy, other than that he was hot as hell and definitely fitted the profile of a douchey frat bro, especially considering what he’d just said.

Eh, whatever. Based on the money comment alone, he probably wasn’t relationship material, but my body was telling me that he was certainly summer fling material. From what my friends had told me about their experiences with flings, the personality of the other person didn’t really factor into their decision to flirt or hook up with them. Long term thing? Sure, personality mattered. Small summer flirtation? Not so much.

“So where do you study?” he asked.

“Overton,” I replied, pushing aside my reservations about his apparent money-hungry arrogance. He might not be Mr. Right, but he made a great Mr. Right Now.

He nodded. “That’s a good school. I’ve got a couple of buddies there. One of them leads the NABJ chapter there.”

“Tim Rice?”

“Yeah, you know him?”

I shook my head. “No, I’ve never met him, but I’ve read some articles he’s written. He’s very talented.”

“That he is. Anyway, I hope you’re being careful on campus. He told me there’s some crazy sex offender roaming around that area right now.”

I shivered, even though the water was warm. He was right. Within the last year, there’d been three separate attacks on female Overton students by an as-of-yet unidentified perpetrator. He’d worn a balaclava when he attacked and overpowered them, so all that the girls had been able to tell the police was that he had blue eyes. The attacks had all happened when the girls were leaving the library after late night study sessions, and since then, security had been ramped up further.

There’d been no new attacks in the last four months, thank God, but we were all still a little jumpy. Students were far more careful about walking around in groups rather than alone, and it just sucked that we had to be so vigilant and frightened all the time. Why couldn’t people just stop being douchebag rapists instead? It was a sick, sad world we lived in sometimes.

“I know,” I replied. “I keep a little can of mace in my purse just in case.”

“Well, be careful anyway. I’d hate for something to happen,” Brad said, his eyebrows furrowed with concern. “So, anyway, what do you study at Overton?”

“Political science at the moment.”

“Nice. You said ‘at the moment’. What do you have planned afterwards?”

“I’m going to go to law school.”

“So you’re smart, too. I think I hit a trifecta.”

His eyes seemed to burn a hole right through me, and I was fairly sure my entire body was about to overheat. I was only too aware of the raw, primal power that emanated from him like heat from a raging furnace. He didn’t even have to say another word or move another muscle to let me know that he wanted to kiss me as much as I wanted to kiss him, and suddenly his lips were on mine as he drew me into his powerful arms.

I’d never done the vacation hook-up thing. I’d never even kissed a guy on the cheek without at least knowing him for several weeks, let alone made out with a guy I’d just met, and I’d definitely never hooked up with a guy whose personality I wasn’t entirely sure I approved of. However, those things didn’t seem to matter in Brad’s presence. I wanted nothing more than to slide my hands all over that hard body in front of me, and more than that…I wanted to slide my hands down the front of his boardshorts, getting an up-close and personal encounter with what I could already tell was a hard, thick cock, judging from what I could feel as he pressed his body against mine.

His tongue slid past my lips and entwined with mine in a rough, hot kiss, and I murmured into his mouth, overcome by wild lust. God, he was so hot, I wanted him to eat me up.

Wait. Speaking of eating…a tiny thought had been nagging at the back of my mind, and a realization dawned on me all of a sudden.
Crap!
I’d promised to meet my Dad outside my hotel room just before seven to have dinner with him. It must have been half past six already, if not later, and here I was soaking wet in a pool and latched onto a perfect stranger.

I jerked away, suddenly coming to my senses. Dad probably wouldn’t be too pleased to see what I was up to if he came looking for me, and besides, hooking up with a random guy within five minutes of meeting him was probably a bad idea, despite what my body was telling me.

“I’m sorry,” I said, already regretting the fact that I had to leave this bod-god behind. “I have to go.”

“What? No, don’t leave,” he murmured, tucking a tuft of my hair behind my ear before moving back in for another kiss, his firm body grinding up against mine.

I almost got lost in the frenetic haze of his embrace again, but I broke away and began to paddle over to the pool ladder.

“Sorry, I really have to go,” I said, turning my head over my shoulder. “I have a dinner thing. But maybe I could grab your
—
”

I’d been about to say that I could possibly get his number and meet up with him tomorrow to get to know him better, but his next actions prevented that from happening. He grabbed my arm and pulled me closer again, water splashing around us like crazy as I tumbled back into the pool and into his powerful arms. I couldn’t quite tell if he was just being playful or if he was actually being creepily forceful, but either way, I was peeved. I really did need to leave, and he was making it damn hard.

And that wasn’t the only thing that was hard, from what I could still feel pressed up against me.

“I’m not letting you go anywhere,” he said. “Dinner can wait.”

“I really do have to go. Please let go of my arm, Brad,” I said, my voice stiffening slightly.

“I don’t think so, babe,” he replied, squeezing slightly harder on my arms as his thick fingers twined around them. “Like I said, I’m not letting you go anywhere.”

He obviously thought he was a lot more seductive than he actually was. Urgh. Why did guys always have to ruin it? He’d seemed pretty cool at first, but grabbing me and refusing to let me go in order to try and make me stay came across as very entitled. Totally not cool.

He clearly wasn’t used to women saying no to him. They probably threw themselves at him like it was nobody’s business, and I could actually picture him walking down a hall past hundreds of women, all of their panties dropping in his wake. Unfortunately for him, I wasn’t the kind of girl who fell for that kinda crap.

Well, not usually.

“I said no,” I replied, forcefully jerking my arm out of his grip. “I need to go!”

He threw his hands up in defeat. “Jesus. Okay, okay. I get it. No need to get all bitchy.”

Okay,
now
I was incensed. I was a bitch simply because I’d said no to being grabbed onto by a gym-rat guy whom I’d already told I had to leave? Fine, paint my forehead with a giant B, because if that made me a ‘bitch’ then I was happy to wear the label. It wasn’t like I had completely overreacted. I’d initially been nice to him about it. I’d apologized, said I had to go and even tried to ask for his number, and he was the one who’d gone and made the situation all tense and awkward.

Whatever. He was just a typical frat boy douche anyway. No skin off my nose if he didn’t like me anymore. At least that’s what I was going to tell myself.

I climbed out of the pool and wrapped my towel around my waist before grabbing the rest of my things and stalking towards the hotel without so much as another glance in his direction. Screw him. I knew guys like him, and they were no good. And speaking of no good, nothing positive could come from a random hookup with a relative stranger. As much as my body had been telling me to go for it, I knew deep down that casual flings weren’t for me.

It didn’t matter now, anyway. He’d shown his true colors, and I was only going to be at the resort for another couple of days. It was a big place, and I could easily avoid him and forget all about him. As I headed into the elevator, I was comforted by that one thought.

At least I never have to see him again.

CHAPTER TWO

MIA

“Mia! There you are! I just went looking for you at the pool, but there was no one there.”

I jumped at the sound of my Dad’s voice as I reached my hotel room. Even though I was alone now, I felt an odd sense of guilt over what had just happened outside. If my Dad had seen me cavorting in the pool with that Brad guy…well, jeez, I had no idea how he’d react. His whole life motto was study, study, study, and after tha
t—
work, work, work.

Thank God Brad’s earlier attitude had completely put me off him. I no longer needed to worry about freaking my Dad out by engaging in any vacation shenanigans now that he was already out of the picture. Oh well, I suppose I could always fondly remember him as the hot guy I made out with for all of ten seconds, right?

My cheeks were still slightly warm, and I smiled up at my Dad. “Sorry, I was just going to shower and get changed for dinner. Are we eating here at the hotel tonight?”

“Yep, I’ve got a table booked in the main restaurant for half an hour from now, so can you meet me down there at a quarter past seven?”

“Sure,” I replied.

“All right. See you soon. Wear something nice. Tonight is a very special celebration,” he said with an enigmatic smile.

I vaguely wondered what he meant by that. Surely the imminent start of my sophomore year at college wasn’t
that
big of a deal? Hmm. I’d been studying my ass off and killing it with my grades all last semester, so maybe to him it was a big deal. Shrugging, I let myself into my room and jumped in the shower, rinsing the pool chlorine from my hair and skin as I closed my eyes and let the hot water stream over me.

God, showers were the best. Warm water, freedom from clothes, and plenty of time to let my mind go wild without the distractions of phones, TVs, textbooks and music. Time to relax. Unfortunately my mind was starting to relax a little too much. I couldn’t get that damned Brad jerk out of my head, as much as I was trying to stop thinking about our very brief encounter.

He’d been such an arrogant, hot-headed douche
—
so why was my hand slipping south, trailing over my hard nipples and stomach as I recalled his bright eyes, hard muscles and broad shoulders? Urgh. Us women always seemed to be turned on by the bad boy assholes, no matter how much we tried to remember how much they sucked. My hand moved further down, stroking between my legs and drawing a soft moan of pleasure from my lips before I snapped out of my reverie and yanked it away. I couldn’t do this. I had to get out of the shower and get ready for dinner, and besides, I didn’t want to be touching myself while thinking about that asshole Brad, no matter what my hormones were telling me.

After I’d dried, dressed and quickly toweled off my hair, I swiped on some mascara and pink lip tint before gazing at my reflection with satisfaction. Yep, definitely a decent enough look for a nice dinner.

I headed down to the restaurant and looked around, trying to spot my Dad. He waved at me from the other side of the restaurant, and I grinned and headed over. He was seated at a table for four, which seemed a little odd, but I figured the restaurant was heavily booked and simply didn’t have enough two-person dining tables available.

In retrospect, the four-person dining table should have been my first clue as to the events which were about to unfold.

“Hi, Dad,” I said, giving him a brief peck on the cheek before sitting across from him.

He got up and sat next to me, leaving two empty chairs across from us. Again, that was weird, but the restaurant was quite loud, so I figured he just wanted to sit closer so we could actually hear each other speak.

A perky redheaded waitress appeared at our table with a pen and pad in hand.

“Can I get you any drinks or appetizers?” she asked.

“I think we’ll wait for the rest of our party to arrive,” Dad replied before I could even try to order a soda.

“Sure,” the waitress replied. “I’ll come back soon.”

I turned to him, one eyebrow arched. “The rest of our party? What’s that about?”

He shifted nervously in his seat. “Well, sweetheart, there’s something I need to tell you. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. I couldn’t quite figure out how to break it to you because I was afraid of how you might react, but now it’s come to the point where I really have to tell you.”

My mind was instantly jerked back to when my parents had first told me Mom was terminally ill, and my stomach filled with nervous butterflies. I had a horrible vision of the rest of our dinner party being a bunch of doctors and other specialists, all telling me they’d ‘try their best’.

“Dad….you’re not sick, are you?” I asked, my eyes wide.

“No, no, nothing like that,” he replied. “It’s just…I met a woman a while ago. We started seeing each other more regularly a few months ago, and things have…progressed.”

The butterflies in my stomach stopped fluttering around for a second and then started up again in full force as his words finally hit me. “Oh. You met someone,” I said in a small voice.

He nodded. “Yes. And a couple of weeks ago, I asked her to marry me.”

My eyes widened again. “You proposed? But I haven’t even met her!”

“I know, I know. I’m sorry, sweetheart, I really am. Like I said earlier, I was afraid of how you’d react. I know losing your mother was very hard on you, and I didn’t know if you’d be particularly happy about me getting into another relationship.”

I didn’t even know how to react to that. Yes, I was a little upset and blindsided by the big reveal, but I didn’t want that to show. Dad was obviously happy, and I didn’t want to spoil that for him.

“Wow. No, Dad, of course I’m happy for you. I just wish you’d told me sooner. I…um…well, I assume that I get to meet her tonight, then?”

“Of course. She’s coming to dinner,” he replied. “And tomorrow, we’re going to have a small ceremony. Just a tiny gathering, right here on the beach. Karen and I discussed it, and neither of us want a big ceremony. We’ve both done the big weddings before, and we’d prefer something more intimate this time.”

My jaw practically unhinged as I listened to his words. Not only was my father engaged to a woman I’d never even heard of before today, he was getting married to her
tomorrow.

“Karen. That’s her name?” I asked, trying to keep my cool.

He nodded and pulled his cell phone out of his pocket to show me a picture.

“Here she is,” he said.

In the photo was a petite woman with pale skin, blue eyes and straight blonde hair. Strange emotions began to churn around in me as I stared at it. I was sure Karen was a very nice lady, but that didn’t stop the deep-down feelings of apprehension about this marriage. Dad been a civil rights activist for the POC community for so long, and believe it or not, there were still quite a few people in this country who had a huge problem with interracial marriages…especially in the South, where we lived.

My Dad was very well-known for his work, and as a result of his fame, he’d received all sorts of awful racist threats against him in the past. If he went through with marrying Karen, I worried how it would affect him given his high-profile position
—
likely more threatening letters showing up on his doorstep and even more racial vilification aimed at him, which was exactly what he fought against. I’d never been openly threatened about who I chose to date or be with because I wasn’t a prominent figure in society like he was, and I felt a tinge of anger that my Dad had to experience things like that based purely on the color of his skin.

A lot of people liked to pretend we lived in a post-racial society, but that simply wasn’t true. We still faced a lot of prejudice, whether or not people liked to admit it. I couldn’t tell you the amount of times I’d been followed closely by store employees when I shopped, simply because my skin wasn’t pasty white.

And that was just a minor example.

I’d briefly dated a guy last year who’d barraged me with endless comments like, ‘
you’re really pretty…for a black girl,’
and ‘
you’re the first black girl I’ve ever dated,´
as if I were some sort of exotic prize. Yeah, you can imagine how quickly I dumped him once those comments started.

That was one thing I’d liked about Brad earlier, before he went into douche-mode. He hadn’t said anything like that. All he’d said was that I was beautiful, smart and funny. He hadn’t said I was beautiful, smart and funny….for a black girl. No, he’d simply liked me for who I was, apparently. But he was still a jackass in the end.

Dad mistook my stunned silence for something else. “Very pretty, isn’t she? She’s a wonderful person. You’ll love her.”

“Yeah, I’m sure I will,” I said, trying to push my concerns aside.

If this was the person my father loved, then I guess I had no right to even think of challenging that with my worries about what a bunch of racist douchebags in society might think. He deserved happiness, and I knew that most of my uneasy feelings towards this engagement were stemming from my feelings about my mother, not any sort of racial issue. With every word my Dad spoke about Karen, it felt like my Mom was slowly fading right before us.

“So…she’s going to be here soon?” I asked, a slight tremor in my voice.

My heart was hammering like crazy at the thought of meeting her, and I still couldn’t quite comprehend the fact that my Dad was springing such a huge thing on me like this.

“Yes. She’s telling her son about us now, and they’ll be joining us momentarily. Oh, sorry, I completely forgot to mention that. She has a son around your age. From what she’s told me, I’m sure you two will get on like a house on fire.”

All this new information was like a bomb that kept on exploding in my mind. My Dad had met someone.
Bam.
They were getting married tomorrow.
Bam.
She had a son, which meant I would soon have a stepbrother.
Ka-blam!!

Crazy. This was totally crazy.

“A son, huh?” I said.

“Yes,” he replied. “Now, don’t worry. This isn’t going to change things too much. You two are both off at college, so you aren’t going to have to suddenly move in with a strange boy. Of course you’ll both stay at home with me and Karen over Christmas and so on, but you can manage that, right?”

I gritted my teeth, still on edge over the whole situation. “Sure.”

He patted my hand. “Glad to hear it. And again, I’m sorry I kept this from you for so long. It was wrong of me. I just…I really wasn’t sure how you’d react.”

I gave him a tentative smile. “No, I think I understand,” I said quietly.

I did get it, now that I was thinking about it. Judging by the immediate thought process I’d had when he showed me Karen’s picture, he must have anticipated that I might feel slightly betrayed, if only for the memory of my Mom.

I’d been wrong to think like that. I’d always known he’d meet another woman one day; I just hadn’t been prepared for the moment it finally came. He’d been utterly devastated after my mother’s death, and he’d barely left the house for weeks afterwards. But it had been nine years now. As much as he loved her, it was probably healthy for him to move on.

It didn’t mean he’d forget Mom or stop loving her, but still…the thought of him with another woman made her feel a little more distant than usual, as much as I tried to push that intrusive thought aside.

“Her son is actually at college here in Mississippi too,” Dad continued. “But not at Overton. He goes to the University of Southern Mississippi. Medical student, I believe. Wait no…pre-med.”

That should have been my second clue as to what was about to happen, but I was still too shocked over Dad’s news to put two and two together.

A few minutes later, his face brightened, and he waved across the restaurant.

“Over here!” he called out.

I recognized Karen from her picture, and she made a beeline for us. She was even lovelier in person, and she took a seat across from us before smiling at me.

“You must be Mia,” she said. “I’m so excited to finally meet you. Your Dad has told me so much.”

“It’s nice to meet you too,” I replied, flashing her a smile in return.

Although I was projecting a calm, friendly exterior, my heart was still pounding. What if she secretly hated me? What if she wanted my Dad all to herself and tried to make my life hell in some way? I’d heard a lot of horror stories about evil stepparents.

No.
Jeez, I had to quit all this needless worrying. If my Dad loved her and wanted to marry her, then she must be a decent person. As upset as I was by him springing this marriage on me at the last minute, I had to trust his judgment. Father knows best. Right?

“Where’s Bradley?” Dad asked.

Karen gave us a rueful smile. “He’s running a little late, but he’ll be here in a moment. He almost forgot he had to meet me for dinner, so he was still all wet from the pool when he came up.”

Finally, things started to click in my mind. Her son was a pre-med student at USM named Bradley who’d just been in the pool. Oh, crap. Of course. How the hell had I not realized ten minutes ago?