“Nice to meet you both,” I said from my chair. I should have stood, but I was in a bikini.
Absolutely nothing was right about the moment. The only thing I was sure of was Peter Prescott’s disdain for me.
Towering over us, looking down his sharp nose at me, literally and figuratively, he asked, “Don’t you work in the snack shack?”
“Yes, sir,” I said meekly, with no misgivings about my social status. I was lesser than—there was no doubt about it.
“Well, nice to meet you,” he said without another glance my way. “Come on, Nan, let’s go eat. Aston, I’ll speak with you later.”
From then on, I avoided any public areas of the club where Peter Prescott may have been lurking.
And I didn’t believe a damn thing Aston said about keeping me.
Bexley
That summer, we spent more time panting like dogs in heat than anything else. For weeks, we survived on lingering kisses and brief touches. As for me, I was falling in love on borrowed time.
Close to a month after the first party, there was another one on the seventeenth hole, and Aston invited me. Just me. Not Milly.
“That’s up to Mike,” he told me. “I didn’t know they had a thing going when I told you to bring her last time. I kind of broke bro code when I said she could come.”
I sipped my iced tea while standing behind the snack shack, staring at a shirtless Aston with his swim trunks hanging low on his hips. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He stepped closer, wrapping his hand around my braid and running his lips along my cheek. “It’s one thing if I want to fraternize and only make time for you. It’s not for everyone,” he whispered in my ear. “There could’ve been another girl there.”
“One who belongs with Mike,” I said, my voice hoarse.
“Stop it,” Aston said sharply. “That’s him, not me. I don’t care about that stuff.”
Nodding into his chest, I pretended to believe him, but my heart ached all the same. Deep down inside, I knew we didn’t belong together.
His hand ran down my back and tightened on my waist, gathering me close. “Not me, you hear me?”
I nodded again.
“Say you hear me, Bex. I mean it. I don’t give a shit about anyone else, what they think or do or know. I’m my own man.”
“I hear you,” I muttered into his rock-hard chest.
Sadly, I was falling so deep in love—or lust—I’d started to believe he was right. I’d finally begun to believe there could be a future for us. A forever.
“Good. So later, why don’t you come back with me to my dad’s place and change there? He and the stepwitch went to some retreat in Tahoe, and the kiddies are with their grandma.”
It was the first time Aston had asked me to go inside his father’s house. Up until this point, we’d stolen moments in his car and on the golf course, but what he was suggesting made that all seem like child’s play.
“Are you sure?”
“Bexley Rivers, let me introduce myself. Aston Prescott,” he said, stepping back and offering me his hand. “Making a difference, not carrying on bullshit traditions. I like who I like, just like how I vote. I choose to vote how I want, not how my dad votes, and I vote to like you.”
I smiled huge, could actually feel it spreading across my entire face and swirl around my heart. As my chest burned with an unfamiliar sensation, I said, “Okay.”
“Pick you up here around five?”
“Yep.”
I couldn’t stop smiling.
As promised, Aston showed up outside the snack shack at five, and led me to his car. We drove slowly back to the house, and he grabbed my hand as we made our way down the driveway. Inside the garage, he disabled the alarm and took my hand again.
The house was huge. You could put twelve duplexes like my mom’s just inside the foyer.
Leopard-print wallpaper covered every wall, and the floor was a dark polished wood. Twelve miniature crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling, prisms of light bouncing off the crystal table in the center of the floor. I stood there, looking up and counting the light fixtures, my mouth hanging open.
Aston kicked his flip-flops off in the corner and came up behind me. “Don’t get like that. It’s just a big old house.”
His hand wrapped around me from behind and tightened over my stomach, soothing the butterflies hatching in my belly.
“It’s more than a house. It’s practically a museum.”
“Eh, forget it, Bex. Come on, let’s have a drink.”
We went into a kitchen built for a master chef, and Aston pressed his hand into what appeared to be paneling until it popped open. It was a refrigerator—of course. Duh.
“Water, wine cooler, wine, or beer?”
“Water’s great.”
He poured a glass of water and stuck a lemon slice on the rim, then grabbed a beer for himself.
“Cheers.” He touched his bottle to my glass after he handed it to me. “Sit up on the counter, make yourself comfortable.”
I eyed him.
“Come on, hop up.” He patted the bright white marble slab, and when I did as he asked, he wedged himself between my thighs.
“Is this what your house in California is like?”
He laughed. “Nah. My mom got the short end of the stick, thanks to a lousy prenup. She has a small ranch house in Sherman Oaks. It’s definitely nice, nicer than most,” he said, retracting his earlier comment, probably wondering about where I lived. “It’s comfortable and lived in, but my mom spends most of her time in bed, wrapped in a robe, yearning for something she’ll never have again.”
“Sad. She must’ve really loved your dad.”
He took a swig of beer. “She did. Does. I don’t know. It may just be the idea of what they once had. The whole divorce was a surprise to her. My dad came home from work one day and
