Lust

Adam, son of the area’s most successful-and most absentee-real estate developer, would scout locations.

And Kaia would help, because, “Wow, what a great way to get a better sense of the town!”

Harper thought she might throw up.

Mission eventually accomplished, an afternoon’s worth of diversions beckoned.

“What do you say, guys?” Kaia asked, rising from her sprawl and flinging open the glass doors that led out to the deck. “Should I turn on the hot tub?”

Kane, who-bored out of his mind-had been moving at half speed all afternoon, sprang off the couch and tore off his shirt.

“Just show me the way” he said, grinning.

Miranda smiled at the sight of his bare chest, then blushed and quickly darted her head around to make sure no one had noticed. Harper may have been right about Kaia. She might be a “skanky, superficial bitch” (Miranda, for one, felt it was slightly too soon to tell, but she wasn’t about to get in the way when Harper went into battle mode), but there was now at least one reason to be thankful for her arrival in town. Actually, plenty of reasons- Kane’s six-pack abs, his bulging biceps, his taut back muscles, and the adorable indentation that dipped beneath his waistband… Miranda said a silent prayer of thanks and followed Kane, Kaia, and the rest of the group outside, where a large Jacuzzi was embedded in the hardwood deck.

“My father’s midlife crisis has been very expensive for him,” Kaia explained, “and very fun for me.” She flipped on the jets.

Stripping down to his fitted black boxer-briefs, Kane eased himself into the steaming water with a satisfied moan, as the rest of his friends looked on in envy and amusement.

“Now this is what I call a meeting,” Kane murmured to himself, raising his glass and toasting the empty air. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back on the marble lip of the hot tub, taking deep, measured breaths, shutting out the world.

Kaia turned to Harper and Miranda, beckoning them toward the door back into the house. “Girls, I have plenty of bikinis upstairs, if you-oh,” she stopped herself, giving Harper a none-too-subtle once-over. “Actually, I guess none of my suits would fit you, Harper,” she said loudly. “Sorry.”

Miranda sucked in her breath. Most guys ranked Harper’s delicately curvy body somewhere between Angelina Jolie and Catherine Zeta-Jones (pre- pregnancy and gross marriage to Michael Douglas, of course). But curves were curves-something that the willowy Penelope Cruz clone Kaia distinctly lacked. And not in a bad way.

Harper visibly tensed, and Miranda waited, as if watching a wild animal poised before potential prey-would she recoil, or attack?

After a measured pause, Harper did neither.

Instead, she merely smiled gracefully-and pulled off her shirt.

“No problem,” she assured Kaia sweetly. “I think I can take care of myself.”

And, stripped down to a satin black bra and matching panties (the latest from Victoria’s Secret-mail order, of course, since the only underwear within a decent drive of town came from the Wal-Mart off Route 53), Harper strolled slowly across the deck toward the hot tub.

Kane favored her with a long, low whistle.

“Looking good, Grace,” he crowed, as she slid into the churning water and took a spot beside him. Even Adam, still fully clothed and pressed against the wall of the deck, flushed a bit and gave her an appreciative smile. Harper shot a triumphant glance at Kaia and then let herself slip deeper into the water, finally submerging herself completely. She burst through the surface, face dripping, hair glistening, and then leaned back against the edge, her slender neck in perfect position to be pummeled by the massage jets, her long, bare legs swung over Kane’s lap.

Kaia just shook her head. “Miranda?” she asked. “How about you?”

Miranda looked longingly at the hot tub-and, more to the point, Kane’s supine figure stretched out along its width, his head now leaned back, eyes closed once again, arms splayed out along the edge. The Greek god of cocky laziness.

But consider her options:

Borrowing a suit from Kaia-who towered over her by a foot and differed in several other, far more crucial, measurements as well.

Or the Harper approach. Except that Miranda’s underwear of choice today was baby blue with yellow polka dots and, in fact, recently purchased from that Wal-Mart off Route 53. As would likely be immediately clear.

Add to this the fact that, much as she was enjoying the chance to examine and memorize every tiny detail of Kane’s mostly naked body, there was no way she was going to give him the same opportunity. He was taut perfection; she was, drawing from her always at-the-ready mental list of imperfections, stomach fat and arm flab and thigh cellulite and-well, suffice it to say, she was amply flawed.

“No, thanks,” she simply said to Kaia. “I think I’ll just sit on the side and gawk at all this partial nudity. Teen depravity, et cetera.”

“Yeah, I’m quite the turn-on, aren’t I?” Kane called to her, eyes still closed.

“You know I can barely keep myself from tearing off those boxers,” Miranda called out sarcastically, pulling off her shoes. If he only knew. She sat on the edge of the hot tub, dangling her bare legs in the steaming water, fighting the urge to lift one leg and begin lightly running her toes up and down his tantalizingly close bare skin. Instead, she flicked a foot sharply in his direction, splashing him with a torrent of hot water. “Somehow I think I’ll manage to restrain myself.”

Kane opened his eyes, lifted his head, and, steadily holding her gaze, wiped the drops of water off his face. He squinted at her, then shook his head and let it gently drop back down. “Do your best,” he warned her in a low voice, “but I’m irresistible-one of these days, Stevens, you’re not going to be able to stop yourself from tearing off all those clothes and jumping in.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” Miranda said sharply, hoping that he was right, that someday she’d find the nerve.

But today?

Not gonna happen.

“Hey, how’s your meeting going?” Adam pressed himself against the back wall of the deck, the only spot he’d been able to find with good reception. He cupped a hand over the mouthpiece of the cell phone, to prevent the splashing and cackling from the hot tub a few feet away from drowning out his low voice. “Is it over yet?”

“No, we’ve still got a ways to go,” Beth told him. “We’re going to be here for a while.”

“That sucks.” He pictured her in the sparse newspaper office-really a spacious former supply room that Beth had commandeered her sophomore year to serve as the headquarters of the Haven Gazette. Despite the old editions hung proudly on the bulletin board, the short row of outdated computers lining the wall, and the ever-present stack of reporter’s notebooks and old tape recorders available for loan, the room still looked-and smelled-like exactly what it was: a dark, dank basement cave. A flickering overhead light, a fraying couch probably infested by termites, a tiny window that looked out onto a ventilation shaft-Adam couldn’t stand to spend more than five minutes there, but Beth loved it. She said it made her feel like a “real” journalist.

“No, it’s actually really great,” Beth protested, her bright smile so present in her sunny voice that he could almost see it. “Working with Mr. Powell is going to be so much better than last year with Donovan. He actually wants to listen to my ideas. In fact, you’ll never guess…”

Adam sighed good-naturedly as Beth began to chatter about her plans for the paper. He hated how busy she always was, but he loved her earnestness, her passion. The way she threw herself into what she loved.

He grinned-the way she threw herself at him sometimes didn’t hurt either.

“Anyway, I think we might work through dinner,” she finished apologetically.

“What? I thought we were having dinner together,” he complained, annoyed as quickly as, a moment ago, he’d been aroused.

“I know, I know, I’m sorry-I was just about to call you and-”

He stole a glance at the hot tub, where Kane was now flailing his arms wildly as Harper and Kaia struggled to knock him off balance and submerge him under the water. Kaia let loose a laughing shriek as Kane grabbed her wet, squirming body and tossed it away from him with a loud splash. Adam shook his head in exasperation. Kane was