Summer with a Bad Boy (The Love Collection)
Prologue
PROLOGUE
Ten years earlier…
Love Beach High Senior Prom
“Come on, Willy!” hissed Jezzy Brant, fidgeting in her four-inch Louboutin knockoffs. “It’s tequila, not church wine. You don’t sip it.”
Willa Leigh wondered why she was still besties with Jezzy. She could be a real bee-yotch sometimes. She hadn’t criticized anyone else’s furtive pass from the flask she snuck into senior prom, tucking it into her garter belt. On top of that, she’d called her Willy. Jezzy knew she hated that name, especially because her older brother had belittled her with it all the time.
A white-hot flash of defiance blazed in Willa Leigh’s chest. She lifted the silver flask to her mouth, tilted her head back, and guzzled the entire amount remaining in the container. Her eyes stung, and she clamped her teeth together to keep from coughing.
“How was that, Jezebel? ” She drew the back of her hand across her lips, the tequila burning a trail down her throat, all the way to her belly. No wonder: it tasted like kerosene.
Jezzy’s jaw dropped, snapped shut, then creased in a huge grin. “Way to go, Osborn!”
The other four girls who looked up to Jezzy, the coolest one in their posse, added a smattering of applause and shouts of approval.
Just then the irresistible notes of Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” blared through the sound system, filling the Love Beach High School gymnasium with music. Jezzy grabbed both of Willa Leigh’s hands and pulled her up out of the metal folding chair. Jezzy hopped from one foot to the other, shimmying to the pulsing tempo, as she led the way to the center of the dance floor. They lost the rest of their group in the tight press of bodies twisting and gyrating to the pop tune.
Gosh! A wave of lightheadedness swamped Willa Leigh, and she reached out to steady herself, clutching a handful of hot pink organza. The single shoulder strap was the only thing keeping the short formal on Jezzy’s slender body.
Who knew tequila rushed to your head like that?
The two friends fell into each other, laughing and hooting. Although her heels were three inches shorter than Jezzy’s and her center of gravity six inches lower, Willa Leigh stumbled and pitched as others bumped into her.
“We did it!” Jezzy yelled, lifting her chin so her thick glossy curls tumbled down her back. “We’re free!”
“Free!” Willa Leigh echoed, but with significantly less gusto. Random thoughts spun through her mind like glimpses of a carnival caught from the back of a merry-go-round pony.
The pride on her parents’ faces when she read aloud the acceptance letter from Florida State University.
The ten-year-old Honda Civic Granny has purchased for her with money saved from the sale of homemade preserves she sold at the Love Beach farmers market each week.
The glowing letter of recommendation written by Mr. Parshman, the high school English teacher and soccer coach.
The $500 donation toward tuition collected from seniors and employees at Beach Breeze Retirement Home where she volunteered every Saturday.
The hand-drawn graduation “card” sent from her older brother who was doing time for possession of cocaine at a correctional facility.
The weight of so many expectations, doubled after Henry Lee’s incarceration, made Willa Leigh feel as if she were walking through life with cements blocks on her feet. While Jezzy and the rest of their graduating class were footloose and fancy free, on the brink of stepping into life and making their dreams a reality, she was bound by responsibility to trudge a path laid out for her by others.
No one asked what she wanted or dreamed of or hoped for. No one ever seemed to see her, even Jezzy, who was caught up in her own troubles.
It didn’t help that Willa Leigh was plain and boring. She was a couple of inches taller than Granny’s stooped five-foot frame, with light brown hair and dark brown eyes and pale brown freckles. The only thing that got attention from the boys were the generous boobs and hips inherited from her Grandma Osborn, but she could do without the catcalls and embarrassing comments.
She had no personality to speak of, preferring instead to sit quietly in the back of the classroom or pitch in helpfully at the retirement home or let Jezzy take centerstage. With her best friend’s vivacious temperament and dramatic beauty—huge violet eyes fringed with lush lashes, thick mink-brown coils, mile-long legs, and perfectly proportioned hips and bust—it was easy for Willa Leigh to blend into the background.
Even in her fancy prom dress, Willa Leigh was nothing special. Mom and Granny took her to the department store at the mall in Charleston, making a whole day of it. Willa Leigh patiently tried on dress after dress, immediately falling for a coral halter dress that accented her figure and contrasted beautifully with her coloring. Amazed at the transformation, she’d stared at herself in the mirror, imagining a stunned silence falling over the gymnasium when she made her grand entrance. Ted Finnely, the quarterback on the football team, would step forward, eyes shining with masculine appreciation as he swept her out onto the dance floor. “Too mature,” Mom had said, Granny nodding behind Mom’s shoulder. They both approved of a gray tea-length gown with a long-sleeve, high-neck beaded overlay, which was why no one, not even nerdy Brian Steward, had asked her to dance.
Who wanted to look back in ten years and remember dancing with someone who wore a dress more suited for a mother of the groom than an eighteen-year-old virgin?
Virgin.
The word spiraled through Willa Leigh’s mind. She was probably the goodest goody-two shoes in all of Love Beach. She never missed curfew. Got straight As. Volunteered with old people. Did what she was told. Went on a grand total of two dates with a nice boy who worked at the supermarket in town.
Gah! Even worse than being an eighteen-year-old virgin was being a never-kissed virgin. Once, when she and the rest of their girl herd slept over at Jezzy’s house, she’d admitted a crush on Ted Finnely, but all the girls—and a few guys—at Love Beach High had a crush on him. Jezzy teased Willa Leigh about really liking Kobe Lewis, Love Beach’s notorious bad boy, just because she’d accidently run into him at the retirement home once and mentioned how cute he was to her best friend.
Jezzy was right about Willa Leigh secretly crushing on Kobe, but, like always, she tried to fit in and do what people expected. It was okay to swoon over Ted Finnely but confessing that Kobe Lewis was the boy who made her heart skip a beat would earn disapproval all around. Except maybe Jezzy, who was sleeping with a twenty-five-year-old college TA from the next town over.
“I don’t believe it!” Jezzy grabbed her wrist and nodded toward the gym entrance.
While the music continued to echo in Willa Leigh’s ears and bands of red and blue spotlights bounced across the ceiling, the crowd grinding and twisting on the floor gradually stilled as whispers arced from person to person.
Willa Leigh felt as if she was frozen in time, unable to move, air trapped in her lungs.
Framed in the extra-wide doorway was Kobe Lewis, a shock of dark blond hair falling over his forehead. In a leather jacket and blue jeans, he stood out against the tiny fairy lights and flowered garlands festooning the entry.
“Principal Wood expelled him…”
“…the guy has balls!”
“He’s so hot…”
“…gonna get kicked out…”
The deejay, unaware of the distraction, replaced the upbeat pop song with Ed Sheeran’s ballad, “Thinking Out Loud.” The momentary lull faded as couples turned toward each other, guys’ hands going around girls’ waists.
“I’m sitting this one out,” Jezzy announced, tottering on her stilettos when she yanked at Willa Leigh who remained rooted in place.
“Go on.” She waved Jezzy way, eyes locked on the far side of the gym, scanning for Kobe. She’d lost sight of him in the shifting throng of bodies.
All around her, couples rocked in slow, shuffling circles. She blinked against the dazzling lights, the music a distant backdrop of noise, all senses attuned to?—
Kobe Lewis.
It was the tequila, right? That’s why she avoided alcohol. Dad had warned her often enough about how it lowered inhibitions and impaired judgment. “The only thing worse,” Dad intoned, “is drugs. Look what happened to your brother.”
Standing like a statue in the middle of the dance floor, transfixed by Love Beach’s bad boy, was a far cry from Henry Lee’s felony charges but vastly out of character for her. Mom and Dad disapproved of Jezzy, felt she was a dangerous influence, but they hadn’t gone so far as to forbid the friendship. She’d managed to avoid trouble—mainly because she was never willing to venture too far into bad girl territory—but tonight, Willa Leigh itched to do something daring. Something shocking. Something for herself—no one else.
Her gaze found Kobe as if laser guided. Behind him, Mr. Wood, the school principal, was waving his arms and yelling. Lifting a hand, middle finger extended, Kobe waded into the crowd, headed directly toward her.
Willa Leigh blinked. When she opened her eyes, Kobe stood a breath away from her. She stared up into his face, some corner of her brain registering the reddish-blond scruff on his lean jaw, the silver hoop in his left earlobe, and pale blue eyes that reminded her of the flames on their gas stove. Something thrilling passed between them, lighting every inch of her skin.
“Willa Leigh. Dance with me.”
Her name— OMG! He knew her name!— rolled off his tongue like a caress. She shivered and took half a step closer, unable to resist his invitation.
Kobe looped his arms around her, palms resting on her back before sliding down to the curve of her butt. She rested her cheek against his chest, the faded cotton of his t-shirt soft and thin enough to feel the warmth of his skin. The zipper on his leather jacket pressed into the tender flesh of her shoulder when he pulled her closer. Something thick and insistent jutted against her belly, triggering a vague craving she’d never experienced before.
A murmur from the couples around them rippled outward, like the rings of a stone tossed into Clements Pond.
Willa Leigh didn’t care.
They swayed together, barely moving as Ed Sheeran sang about falling in love and Mr. Wood’s unintelligible shouts rang out.
Prom was almost over. Willa Leigh had come with her girlfriends, all of them crammed into her father’s Buick because her new used Honda was too small, and jammed on the dance floor in a pathetic girls-only circle, wishing someone, anyone—even Brian Steward with his pimply skin and thrift-store tuxedo—would ask her to dance. Now everyone was staring at her as Kobe Lewis moved against her as if they’d been going together all year like Ted Finnely and Janet Greenberg, the most popular girl in school and head of the cheer squad.
The principal’s angry words grew louder, pulling Willa Leigh from her fantasy-come-true. Kobe’s embrace tightened, then his hand found hers. When he whispered, “Wanna get out of here?” she nodded. Fingers laced together, he tugged her toward the gym’s front doors and out into the warm summer night.