Otherwise Engaged

OTHERWISE ENGAGED

By: Nicole Green

Chapter One

With his eyes
still closed, Rain raised his arms above his head and stretched. He stopped
short when his arm hit someone else’s. His eyes flew open.

Oh crap
, he thought.
One slipped through.
He had a rule
against this sort of thing. Letting them sleep over tended to give them the
wrong ideas. He sat up in bed and looked down at the blonde lying next to him.
Sure, she was cute—round, perky breasts—but he could get another
one just like her tonight if he went out looking. That was the fun part. The
not-so-fun part was falling asleep before remembering to kick them out of bed.

She blinked and
smiled sleepily at him. “Hi.” Running a hand through her curly blonde hair, she
sat up next to him in bed.

How was he
going to get out of this? “Uh, hey.” If you let them stay the night, it was
tricky getting rid of them—so much more awkward. If you got rid of them
the night of, it was kind of expected. They knew the deal.

“Last night was
amazing.” She tickled his arm with her fingernails.

Of course it
was. “Oh, um, thanks.” He slid out of bed and spotted his jeans halfway across
the room. Walking over, he grabbed them and tugged them on. “Yeah, you, too.”
What was he supposed to say? See, this was another good reason to get rid of
them before any sleeping happened. He never knew what to say the morning after.
He didn’t want to encourage them, but he didn’t want to be a total ass, either.
It was all in good fun. Everyone got something they wanted out of the deal.

“I love this
bed.” She fell backwards and burrowed deep in his sheets. Well, it was a high
quality bed.
Only the best for him.

Yeah. Don’t get too attached.
“Well,
it’s—a bed.”
Yeah,
dumbass.
That’s exactly what
it is
, he thought. He looked around the room for his phone as he spoke. He
scratched the back of his head, having no clue where he left it.

This was why
partying with Skylar was a bad idea. No matter what they were doing or where
they were, Skylar managed to get him in trouble. From getting arrested in
Montreal, to hitchhiking in Brazil, to
blow-out
parties Rain couldn’t remember later, Skylar was usually the common denominator
in the bad situations Rain ended up in. The thing was, Skylar was usually
involved in the most epic of Rain’s adventures, too.

“…Breakfast?”
she was saying.

“Huh?” Rain
looked up, startled. That was not a word he wanted to hear. Breakfast implied
they would be in each other’s company longer. He couldn’t even remember her
name. The name thing was another problem with allowing them to spend the night.
He rarely bothered trying to retain such details. It wasn’t like he planned on
seeing these women again.

A new voice
made Rain jump. He’d forgotten there were two. A woman walked out of his
bathroom wearing only one of his shirts. “Yeah,” she said. “I’m hungry.” This
one was a redhead. Her bright red hair couldn’t be natural. Now he remembered. He
suppressed a grin. Last night had definitely been a good time. No wonder he’d
been so tired he passed out afterward. He still didn’t remember either one’s
name, though.

“I think
breakfast is a great idea,” he said. He finally spotted his phone on his desk.
Walking over to it, he said, “You two can get to know each other better…” Or
crap. Were they already friends? He couldn’t remember that, either.

“Wait, aren’t
you coming with us?” the blonde asked with a frown. She got out of bed and
stretched her gloriously naked body.

“I can’t,” Rain
said. “I have this thing…I have to do…it starts in—” He stared down at
his wrist before realizing he’d taken off his watch last night and left it in
some location he couldn’t remember at the moment. He glanced at his phone and
pretended to study its face. “Whoa.
Starts really soon.
I have to get going, ladies.” Hm. He had a new message from Carolina. He hadn’t
heard from her in a while.

“Oh yeah?”
Red’s expression told him she wasn’t buying his story. “And what exactly is
this ‘thing?’”

“It’s for my
grandma. She needs me to feed her cat.”

“Oh? That can’t
take long. We can wait for you.” Her look went from incredulous to
scrutinizing.

He coughed. “In
New York. I have to…cat sit. I’m cat sitting for my grandma. Yep. That’s right.
You know. I forgot. I
gotta
take this train. I’m
already late. It leaves really soon. I have to get out of here like…now,
ladies.”

The blonde and
Red exchanged glances. Then the blonde asked, “Don’t you have to pack a bag?”

He was sweating
over there even though he hadn’t put on his shirt yet. Couldn’t they give him a
break? “I have clothes there,” he
said,
fully aware of
how lame he sounded. “I visit Grandma a lot.
And…her cat.
Very hungry cat.” He nodded. They stared at him for a moment, and he
interjected a “Yep,” into the uncomfortable silence.

“Don’t you get
it?” Red said to the blonde. “He’s trying to get us out of here.” She yanked
off the shirt of his she wore, popping a few buttons off in the process, and
pulled on her jeans and top.

“Oh yeah,” the
blonde said. “I get it.” She bent to grab her dress from the floor, and he
couldn’t help but appreciate what he’d enjoyed last night. She pulled her
mini-dress over her perfect bubble butt. “He’s doing a shitty job of it,
though.”

Red snorted.
“Asshole.”

“No, it’s not
like that,” he said, but he was dancing a jig of relief on the inside. “I had
fun last night.”

“Yeah,” they
said. “We bet.”

“Let me walk you
two out.”

The blonde
pushed past him, followed by the redhead.

Red tossed him
an ugly sneer. “Don’t bother,” she said.

The two of them
walked out together, slamming the door after them. After they left, Rain looked
down at his phone again. He smiled.

Carolina.
They’d met in college and dated for a while, but Rain wasn’t the serious
relationship type. They’d stayed friends for a long time and were sometimes
more. Rain hadn’t heard from her a lot in the past few months or so, but life
got busy. He assumed they were both tied up with things and hadn’t thought any
more about it. Hopefully, this text meant she was in town and wanted to get
together.

He opened the
text and read it. It said that he needed to call her whenever he woke up
because she had some huge news for him. He grinned. She knew him so well. She
never called before noon on the weekends because she knew chances were he
wouldn’t be conscious yet.

He pulled up
her number and pressed the send button. A few moments later, he heard her sexy,
throaty voice. He could hear music and loud voices in the background. It
sounded like some sort of party was going on.

“Rain!”
Carolina said. “Oh, it’s so good to hear from you. How’ve you been?”

“Good. I’m glad
you called. I miss you,” he said.

“Let me walk
outside. We’re having something at Tia Rosa’s house and these people are so
loud. Hold on a minute,” she said, talking so quickly that her words ran over
one another the way she usually did. He heard her moving around. When she
stopped, it was quieter. “There. That better?”

“Yeah,” he
grinned. His grin faded. If she was at her Aunt Rosa’s, that meant she was in
Brooklyn. New York. Nowhere near D.C. But maybe she was coming down to visit
soon and wanted to make sure he would be in town. He wouldn’t give up hope yet.
“So what’s up?” He sat on the corner of his desk. He scanned the room,
continuing a visual search for his watch, as he waited for her to answer. He
couldn’t lose another Piaget. Those things were pricy to replace.
Not that he couldn’t afford it,
but he hated throwing money
away.

“Gosh, it’s
been so long since we talked,” Carolina said. “We have so much catching up to
do. Are you seeing anybody? Or you still breaking hearts?”

He grinned.
“You know me.”

She laughed.
“Don’t I?” Her voice took on a faraway tone for a moment. Before he could put
his finger on what was strange about it, she continued, “Anyway, how’s the job?
How’s life? Come on, talk to me.”

“Everything is
good.” Rain was a partner in a small venture capital firm. He’d started the
business with a couple of people he knew from business school. He used to work
with Skylar—he’d helped Skylar start his company—but they made much
better friends than they did business partners. He’d left the business to save
the friendship. Carolina had heard plenty of his griping about that, though.
“How are things with you?” He was ready—more than ready—to get to
the good part of this conversation. “Coming to D.C. any time soon?”

“No, not
really,” she said distantly. “So. Remember this guy I was telling you about?
Manny?”

“Sounds
familiar,” Rain lied. “He a boyfriend?” He didn’t care to learn anything her
boyfriends. He saw them only as nameless, faceless guys standing between him
and good times with Carolina. The only things he ever felt toward them were
ambivalence or a vague sort of jealousy.

“He was. Now
he’s a fiancé.”

“He’s a what?”
Rain pulled the phone away from his ear, stared at it a moment, and held it
back to his ear.

Carolina
squealed, and he held the phone away again. He put it back to his ear again
just in time to hear her say, “I’m getting married!”

“You are?” He
couldn’t have been more shocked. “I’m so happy for you.” He was pretty sure
that was the right thing to say in this situation.

“Yes! January
first. We’re starting off our New Year with our new marriage. Isn’t that
beautiful? It’s going to be in San Juan, Puerto Rico.” She chattered on with
more details—destination wedding, family in Puerto Rico, blah, blah,
blah
. He didn’t catch most of it. He was still busy trying
to comprehend the fact that Carolina was getting married.

She stopped
talking, so he assumed he was supposed to say something.

“Oh. Great,” he
said woodenly.

“Don’t you
think it’ll be beautiful?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll love
Manny.” Her tone of voice changed when she said the man’s name. He’d never
heard her say anyone’s name like that.

“I’m sure I
will.” He was still on
auto-pilot
.

“My family
adores him. He’s here now because Tia Rosa insisted on throwing us an
engagement party. I put it off for months, and I kept trying to tell her we
didn’t need one, but you know how that woman is. I think she thought I would
never get married. She is so excited. You would think she’s the bride.”
Carolina went on about her aunt.

Rain laughed in
all the right places, but he couldn’t really concentrate on her story about her
aunt. He was trying to remember the last time he’d seen her. What had they
done? What had they talked about? Suddenly, it seemed so important, but that
last visit melted into all the others in his mind. He’d had no idea it would be
the last time he’d see her while she was a single woman.

“I hope you
don’t have plans for New Year’s already. I didn’t get around to sending you one
of those save-the-date cards,” she said. “I, you know, things get busy.”

Hm. That
sounded like the sort of lame excuse he might give her. “Nah, nothing yet.”
Rain wasn’t the type to make plans that far in advance unless they were
work-related plans. New Year’s was over two months away.

“I know it’s a
lot to ask for you to fly all the way to Puerto Rico for my wedding, but it’d
mean a lot to me if you were there,” she said, her voice sounding a lot more
solemn than it had been when she was gushing about Manny a moment ago.

“Yeah, I mean,
of course I want to be there. For you.” He still couldn’t believe he was having
this conversation. He was talking about Carolina—his Carolina—getting
married. How was that possible? She’d never even mentioned anything about
wanting to get married. And weren’t they too young for this? They’d just graduated
college. Wait. Had it really been five years ago that they graduated?

“Okay, thank
you so much! Give me your address so I can make sure I have the right one. I
need it for your invitation.”

He rattled off
his address while thinking that something felt out of place about this whole
thing. Something seemed really wrong. He finished his conversation with her
while still kind of zoning out and not able to focus on what was being said.
All he knew was the next time he saw Carolina, it would be in Puerto Rico. And
he would be there to see her getting married to some other man.

No more
Carolina? No, that couldn’t happen. Could it? All through college when they’d
been off and on, he’d never imagined this. In all the times she’d visited him
in D.C., he’d never imagined this. They’d driven each other crazy in good and
bad ways, and they’d driven each other away, but they always somehow managed to
come together again. She’d teased him about this very thing sometimes, and
sometimes the words had taken on an angry tone:
some day, you’re going to realize you missed your chance. That’s going
to be a bad day for you
, she’d said.

Carolina was a
beautiful woman. There was no doubt about that. And spending time with her was
mind altering incredible. She was the only one he’d found worthy of repeat sex
since his only serious girlfriend in high school—not that high school
really counted. He remembered the first time he’d seen her. Tight jeans over
lovely hips, a tiny tank top, and a smile a mile wide on her beautiful golden
face. He’d felt his lips tug into a matching smile almost of their own accord.
Her smile had always demanded a matching one from him. Always.
Right from the start.

He guessed he’d
assumed they’d end up together. He should have had plenty of time to get to
that end, though. He wasn’t interested in settling down yet. Other things were
priorities right now—taking over the telecom industry, seeing the world,
just enjoying the single life. Relationships and all that didn’t go with his
brand of ambition, and they didn’t seem like enjoying life to him. That sort of
thing seemed stifling.
Like a trap.
He’d seen it suck
the life right out of friends of his that had fallen prey to the marriage trap.
Friends he rarely if ever saw anymore. He wouldn’t mind putting that whole
thing off for a few more years. He needed more time.