Tempting Victoria Read online

  Or a piranha, apparently.

  What did he do to her though? To Victoria, in particular? Did they have anyone else in common apart from Chris? What did he do to someone else that would make her think he was shit?

  He stepped into the tiny bathroom and washed his hands. Nathan as a rule didn’t force himself on anybody. He left when he was no longer needed. When he sensed that his presence was burdening someone out of obligation, he orchestrated his own exit so they wouldn’t have to worry about theirs. Maybe to someone who didn’t know him very well, that would seem callous and uncaring. But it was the honest way to live, and people appreciated it. In fact, he was friends with most of his exes. Well, except for…

  Shit.

  Lana. It would have been Lana. She knew Chris too, lived in his neighborhood, if he recalled correctly.

  He was done washing his hands but went back into the bathroom to splash his face as he remembered the shitstorm that was the relationship with Lana. They hung out in college and met through Chris. He liked her, was friends with her for about a year, then slept with her off and on for another six months. He thought she was on the same page about that, it being an “off and on” thing.

  She wasn’t.

  It got ugly.

  Lana was fine now, of course, but he understood that anyone who had witnessed that thing go to hell would see him as the one at fault.

  But this was good. That meant Victoria’s intense dislike was based on incomplete information. He could work with that.

  Not a woman who thinks you’re shit, he reminded himself.

  The woman also barely knew him. Nathan was fully intending to keep his hands off her, because he said so. If she put her hands on him first, all bets were off.

  Maybe he should work on that.

  ***

  “Do girls like that?”

  “Not all of them.”

  Victoria rolled her eyes. “Well, not all, of course. But in general, the ones you've been with.”

  “I guess they do.”

  “Interesting,” and when Victoria said that, she really was interested. “Dirty talk's just always seemed...rude to me.”

  Nathan didn't want to do it this way. Sure, he was planning to seduce her at some point, send out feelers to assess how open she'd be to breaking her own rules, but it normally wouldn't have involved this. Talking. About sex, he'd had, with other women.

  He started this on track by talking about her. Other things in general. When he met her in front of her B&B and walked her to the market, they were talking about themselves. He'd led the conversation and wanted her to know where he lived in Houston, that his dad worked in oil for decades before retiring early and starting his own energy consulting firm, that his mom recently started teaching engineering at St. Thomas.

  “Samantha Grant?” she'd said, startled. “Samantha Grant from the engineering college is your mom? I helped organize a fundraiser for the women in the STEM courses scholarship society...wow. Samantha Grant's so...”

  “Asian?”

  “Awesome. You must be so proud of her.”

  He shared that because he knew it would make her comfortable. Finding out that she actually knew and admired his mother gave him mixed feelings. Yeah, he was proud of her, but he didn't want his mother anywhere on his mind right now.

  So he steered them away from that. Asked her about the shopping list for the client, which included fruit, local greens, sugar-free juices. He knew where to get them and liked how unaffected she was by the bustling open-air market.

  “I know how to buy fruit,” she'd told him, like she was offended that he was trying to help. So he stood back and watched as she sniffed mangoes and weighed melons in her palms. She never bought anything right away, he noticed. There was always a production of sniffing, feeling, haggling. She had a teasing, almost flirty way of haggling, a facade that was dropped as soon as they began talking again.

  “Why is it your first time here?” he’d asked. “It seems like you’re a natural at Mexican market negotiations.”

  “Oh, I love to bargain. Do you know it’s how I thought I could be an event organizer? It wasn’t because I liked events, dear god. It started out as...well, there’s this music festival I’m part of. Have you heard of Breathe Music?”

  “Yeah, from Chris.”

  “He helps me with that sometimes. I first joined as a student, a musician who wanted to be mentored. You kind of can’t do that again, after being mentored already. So I volunteered as an event intern, so I could be part of the festival again. Now I run the thing.”

  He didn’t know that. He was aware of the events work, and the festival, but not that she had volunteered her way up to running the thing. It wasn’t his scene, but he was aware that it helped many young musicians, especially those who didn’t have the right connections.

  She continued, “...this job is...me bargaining my way into things. Opportunities. Because people need someone like me to put it all together. God, I sound like...are you going to tell me to relax? Chill? Go to a frat party?”

  “Never go to a frat party.”

  “Do as I say, not as I do?”

  “I don’t go to frat parties.”

  Something in her face had changed, like something passed by and called her attention. “So what is it you would tell me to do?”

  “Whatever you want. I’ve spent the past two years since I graduated getting everything done. Trying everything out. I want to feel good about the next step.”

  “Oh. Thanks. I’m...yeah, definitely doing that. Trying this out. What is your next step?”

  “An actual job.”

  It was going so well.

  Maybe she was beginning to see him as an interesting person. She agreed to stop by a little hut that was actually a bar to get drinks with him. And then he fucked up by pushing it.

  “Why do you call me a piranha?” he'd asked.

  She had blushed at this, obviously at this, but made an excuse about being allergic to tequila. “What's in this?” she said, raising her drink.

  He could have left it alone, but he didn't. “I asked you a question.”

  “Chris is a bastard for sharing that with you.”

  “He's a good friend who's got my back. Why do you think I eat people?”

  “I guess you wouldn't know, since you didn't see Lana again after you dumped her.”

  Now, he was ready for that. He knew it was going to be about that. But he could have apologized for it and moved on from the topic of exes, couldn't he? He didn't.

  “If it matters, I'm on good terms with all my other exes.”

  “How does that happen? How do you break it off with someone and everyone's okay with it?”

  Maybe it was the alcohol coursing through her system too early in the afternoon, but he could have sworn she said that with no judgment. She really did want to know. It was why he continued. He rarely had an audience for his thoughts on this.

  “Similar expectations,” he said. “Expectations that are met.”

  “And you think that's what Lana was so broken up over? Expectations?”

  “She knew I didn't want what she was hoping we'd have. I knew she wasn't going to change her mind about wanting a relationship.”

  “But you slept with her anyway.”

  “I did. Yeah, that was a mess.”

  “She hoped you'd change your mind eventually.”

  “I hoped she would too.”

  “She obviously didn't.”

  “Which is why I don't fuck my friends now.”

  Victoria had laughed at that. A little too much. Tears began to form in her eyes, which she brushed away with her fingertips. “God. That mouth you've got. But that's a good rule to have. So is it correct for me to think that when you say expectations, the others knew it was just about sex?”

  “Yes, they did.”

  “Okay. Seems fair. If it's true that most of them don't hate you for it after.”

  Then she fell silent. He could have used that
time to change the topic.

  “What do they like about sex with you?” she asked.

  Chapter 5

  It wasn't like Victoria and Lana were best friends or anything. She knew of Nathan's ex through Chris, sure, and they hung out sometimes. Each time, Nathan's douchebaggery was the main topic of conversation, as it likely had been for months with other people, as far as Lana was concerned.

  The way Lana told the story, it was like she had been duped. Lured into his bed under false pretenses, promising a relationship with her that he never delivered on. The details changed a little bit with every retelling. Victoria knew that, but she was hearing exactly what she wanted to hear anyway.

  Don't even think about trying it with Nathan. You would have broken your rules for nothing.

  Not that she was seriously thinking of...what was Victoria even thinking? She didn't go out with guys who headlined campus gossip. Never mind how hot he looked with that hair and when he forgot to shave. She wasn't going to be the new name they dropped in casual conversation as the latest Nathan conquest, the one soon replaced and forgotten. Hanging out with Lana kept feeding her with reasons why the attraction was bogus and must be crushed.

  She didn't realize that he was Samantha Grant's son though. Victoria did a lot of volunteer work for the college student orgs, and a recent project had her working with the engineering faculty, Samantha Grant included. Why had no one mentioned it? How could someone like her raise someone who was so despica...?

  Don't think about it. Don't think about how an awe-inspiring mother could have spawned a monster. Maybe it happens. Maybe some apples fall so very, very far from the tree.

  It was easier to think of Nathan as a jerk, wasn't it?

  So she started asking him about sex.

  It was there before she could stop herself, the sex talk. All she knew was that she felt the urge to ask Nathan more about how he grew up, what it must have been like. But that seemed like genuine interest, and it made her brain backpedal like crazy. She tried to keep the topic on Lana, but he was so very over it. And then, well.

  “What do they like about sex with you?”

  He looked like he wasn't sure how to answer. Then he shrugged and went ahead. “I say things.”

  She didn't expect that. She thought it would have to do with his arms, muscled and thick, radiating heat from walking around as much as they did this afternoon. Those strong arms that could probably lift a woman and bend her into—biceps that would twitch and clench when—oh god. Yeah. There was something about this Cozumel air. That was it. Victoria struggled to stay in the conversation. “Dirty talk, you mean?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Do girls like that?”

  “Not all of them.”

  Not all? Because he'd know that, right? He's been with enough to get a significant sample of the population. “Well, not all, of course. But in general, the ones you've been with.”

  “I guess they do.”

  They would, wouldn't they? “Interesting. Dirty talk's just always seemed...rude to me.”

  “It's not about being crude all the time.”

  “I'm not following.”

  Nathan's gaze fell on her, and she felt it all over her head, then down her body. It was like he was scanning her again, seeing something she possibly didn't want him to see. “Maybe you're not turned on by a dirty mouth. That's okay. Some people are like that. Maybe if I told you that I think your body would feel hot and tight, so tight as I fucked you with my fingers, you'd laugh instead of get turned on.”

  Victoria coughed. And then, yeah, she did laugh. His transitionless switch was surreal, out of place in this noisy bar. The bar itself seemed out of place too, against a backdrop of tourist families crossing the boardwalk. “I would.”

  “You already are.”

  She was laughing, but still the idea of–it stirred something in her. God, this was the wrong thing to be talking about. Not now.

  “It's not for you then,” he said. “It's going to be different for everyone. It’s about what turns you on, what gets you off. If it’s not a crude mouth, then it’s something else. I bother to find out.”

  “How noble,” she managed to say. “Maybe some people actually do enjoy sweet lovemaking, you know? Like in romantic movies. Maybe they’re meant for that, and all this drama isn’t necessary.”

  “Depends on what movies you watch. But it’s not–sometimes I don't even say much,” Nathan told her. He toyed with the ring that his beer bottle left on the tiled surface of the table. “I...describe what's happening. Like how I see your neck is red, Victoria.”

  “Tequila, I'm sure.”

  “It's red like it would be if I sucked on your skin there. Your breath's short, like you're gasping.”

  He was right though. Victoria sucked it in, deep, but her lungs weren't filling up enough.

  “It's like I'm inside you already.”

  There was a line she didn’t realize had been drawn on the sand, and it had been crossed, and she began laughing. “You know what I'd do? I'd ask you to shut up already.” Maybe she just wasn't into it. That would be a good sign, if she was immune to it after all.

  Nathan smiled, his fingers grasping the neck of his beer bottle. “Hey, I tried.” And yet his face was not that of someone who had given up.

  Who cares. He can’t dirty-talk me. “I'm glad you offered not to sleep with me this weekend then. It looks like I won't be enjoying it.”

  He shrugged. “A sad, sad mystery for us both.”

  ***

  “Well, this is extravagant as shit.”

  Victoria was in the middle of a professional conversation with the beach home's property manager and tried to ignore Nathan's unsolicited reviews of the place. He had proceeded inside without her, and she could hear him going from room to room already.

  As soon as she got the keys and the assurance that the Wi-Fi was working, she went right upstairs and toward the balcony that was supposed to have the view of the sea that she'd rented this house for.

  And it was gorgeous. It was a balcony that stretched across the entire second floor of the house, accessible from three rooms. The dining table and two nice chairs were set up there already, as she had requested. It wouldn't require dressing up, but Victoria could tell that she'd need mood lighting out on the balcony. She didn't like working with candles, so she'd brought in artificial ones—tea lights she could switch on and off. They were in her luggage, but the B&B was just around the block from here.

  Around the block but seemingly a world away from this luxury three-bedroom. Three nights here could finance her B&B stay for over a month. But Trent wanted private, and special, and he liked the idea of having the house to themselves.

  Nathan came out onto the same balcony from another room. “Stocked the fridge,” he said. “You sure you're not having people over? This looks like a party house.”

  She shook her head. “Trent and Nyssa met here in Cozumel during a cruise stop. He doesn't want other people.”

  Nathan visibly shuddered. “Cruise stops.”

  “Not into those, snob?”

  “Hey, I treated my mom to one of those on her birthday. She likes being pampered. If being herded into a boat and then off a boat and then on a boat again counted as that.”

  Victoria measured the distance from the bedroom she had walked out from, to the table on the balcony, in paces.

  “What are you figuring out?” Nathan asked.

  “Where we should be,” she said. “When you play the guitar. I think they'd appreciate if we remained unseen as much as possible.”

  “I should be in this room then,” he said, referring to the one he had walked out from.

  “And your guitar?”

  “I know this guy at one of the dive shops. I'm picking it up tonight.”

  “And the music?”

  “I've practiced. Not bad, Victoria. You arranged the song yourself?”

  “Ha. It is something I do,” she said. “I just haven't been into
making my own music for a while.”

  “Does that bother you?”

  “No,” she said, her voice softer. “I like doing this for people.”

  She wondered for a second if she should say it, if she should say that she used to love music, with a passion, and that it couldn't sustain her interest for very long. She thought maybe the piano would, then the cello, then the violin, then focusing on songwriting...but the more she learned about it, the less she wanted to keep doing it.

  Music slut, her best friend Haley jokingly called her. Haley did have a confidence problem sometimes, but Victoria saw a dedication in her that she didn’t quite see in herself. But between the two of them, Haley was the committed kind. Same boyfriend, no matter if he was a jerk sometimes. Same instrument, even when she was told she couldn’t study music as a major.

  Victoria worried that she couldn't, wouldn't, find anything to root her down to something like that. She knew she could do it but feared that time when it made her indifferent enough to stop.

  Wouldn’t that be the worst? If she suddenly stopped, after years of being the person who did music? What would that say about the past few years of her life?

  You can commit to things. Things that stick. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

  “I need to get some things from my room,” she told him. “How about you get your stuff and the guitar, and let's meet back here?”

  Chapter 6

  “Their flight's on time,” Victoria told him, and he realized then that it had been more than an hour since they had spoken to each other. “They'll be here in maybe an hour and a half. You got everything done?”

  “Almost.” He showed her the piece of paper that contained the to-do list she wrote for him, with all items but one crossed off. “Not ready to say I've sound-checked. Give me a sec.”

  “I'll be up on the balcony,” she said.

  She'd been up there most of the evening while he stayed downstairs in the kitchen, chopping fruit and rearranging furniture. When he arrived back with the guitar he'd borrowed, he was greeted with a new plan from her to practically redecorate the entire house. It required moving furniture around, sometimes hiding the extra chair, lounge seat, bean bag.