Chapter 5
“I said, shut up!” Jason snapped as he stole the basketball from Brad and tossed it into the hoop. Brad wiped the tears off his cheeks as he struggled to stop laughing.
“Shut up!”
“I can’t…I can’t…believe that she shaved your legs!” Brad said between gasps of laughter. The bastard. Thankfully, Jason was wearing a shirt to cover up his now hairless chest and armpits.
Oh, Haley was going to pay for this.
“She ate my cake, too!” Jason said, which in his mind was the more serious betrayal. She didn’t even let him lick the spoon clean and he’d asked several times. Damn tease. That cake had smelled so good. His stomach rumbled from just thinking about it.
“Man, for someone so obsessed with food, you’re lucky you’re not fat,” Brad said as he continued laughing his ass off. Thankfully, he was now able to stand so that Jason could kick his ass in this game.
“It’s not luck. I have a high metabolism and I work out,” Jason said, taking another shot.
“How long did she keep you tied up?”
“I don’t know why you find this so funny. You’re supposed to be my best friend. This should outrage you that someone would take advantage of me like that. Where’s your loyalty?” Jason demanded with a glare.
Brad abruptly stopped laughing and arched a brow in disbelief. “You hired two strippers at my bachelor party to give me a Brazilian bikini wax when I passed out.”
Jason chuckled. Oh, that had been a very good night indeed.
In fact, he was pretty sure that he had the pictures around here somewhere.
During the entire ceremony, Brad had fidgeted at the altar while he’d tried to discreetly scratch himself.
From what Jason heard, his wife loved it so much that she’d been after Brad to have it done again.
To say that Brad was reluctant to allow hot wax near his package again was an understatement.
“Nothing you can bitch about will be any worse than what you’ve done to everyone else over the years. In fact, I believe Haley is now my hero.”
“She’s dead to me,” Jason said with a sniff.
“Uh-huh,” Brad said, stealing the ball and making a shitty shot.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jason demanded, taking the ball back.
Brad shrugged. “It just seems that you like her.”
“I do like her,” he said easily before adding, “When she’s not betraying me, she’s my buddy.”
“She’s a very hot buddy in a very cute way, I would say,” Brad added.
“There is that, too,” Jason said, dribbling the ball. “It’s nice to have eye candy around for my enjoyment.” He looked Brad over. “It wouldn’t kill you to pretty yourself up if you’re going to be in my presence.”
“Yeah, I’ll get right on that,” Brad said wryly.
“See that you do.”
After a few minutes of playing, Brad asked, “So, is there anything going on between you and Haley?”
Jason just barely held back a laugh. “Come on! She’s my buddy. I don’t see her that way!”
“Uh-huh.”
“I don’t.”
“Sure.”
Jason shoved the ball at Brad. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Brad shrugged as he took another shot. “Nothing. Just noticed how you watch her sometimes.”
“Oh? Enlighten me. How do I watch her?”
Brad looked down at the ball as he bounced it once, twice, and then looked up. “Like you want to devour her from top to bottom and you’d kill anyone who got in your way.”
Jason snorted. Then for good measure, he snorted again. “No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.”
“It’s all in your head.”
“Whatever you say,” Brad said easily, pissing Jason off more.
He didn’t want Haley. He didn’t look at her in any special way.
She was his friend, his buddy, his amigo, and he saw her as a friend and not some tasty morsel that he wanted to devour.
Okay, so yeah, she was hot and those glasses made her look utterly adorable and he’d noticed that she had really nice legs and big breasts that he was sure would cradle his head very nicely, but who wouldn’t notice that?
She was also small, which made him protective of her.
He also liked putting his arm around her because she felt good against his side and fit perfectly under his arm. So what? It didn’t mean anything.
“Oh, here comes the object of your desire now,” Brad said, chuckling.
“Shut up!” Jason snapped before he turned his attention to Haley, who was in a new green silk blouse and a dark skirt. It looked like she was going to work, not hanging out on a Sunday, he thought, noting the foil-covered plate in her hands.
“You look nice. Where are you off to?” Brad asked.
Haley sighed unhappily, “Barbecue.”
Both men gaped as they looked her over. “You’re going to a barbecue dressed like that?” Brad asked.
Jason kept his thoughts to himself since he still wasn’t speaking to her. Who went to a barbecue dressed like that? What happened to jeans and a tee-shirt or a tank top? Clearly, they still had much to work on.
“Family barbecue, don’t ask,” Haley said before turning her attention to Jason. “Are you still mad at me?”
He grunted before walking off.
“Oh, come on! I eventually let you go!”
He flipped her off without looking back.
“That cake wasn’t half as yummy as it looked. It left me uncomfortably full!” she yelled, earning a laugh from Brad and a second one-finger salute from Jason.
“What do you have there?” Brad asked, looking down at the plate in her arms.
Haley sighed as she pulled back the foil, revealing large chocolate chunk cookies. “I made these for the big baby so that he would stop his tantrum.”
“Wow, those look really good! Can I have one?”
She shrugged. “Sure, since the baby doesn’t want them.”
Brad picked up a cookie. It was inches away from his mouth when a large tan hand suddenly grabbed it. Jason snatched the plate from her as he sent Brad a killing glare.
“How dare you touch my cookies, you bastard!” Jason said in utter disgust before popping the cookie in his mouth and heading back to his house.
“Damn, those looked good, too,” Brad grumbled.
Haley sighed. “Don’t worry, I have another plate on my kitchen counter,” she said, the words were barely out of her mouth when Jason abruptly changed course and headed towards her house.
“Well, I did,” Haley said, sighing as she watched Jason walk into her house like he owned it.
A minute later, he was walking out of her house, carrying both plates of cookies and the gallon of milk she’d had in her fridge.
He headed back to his house, but not before he glared at Brad.
“You cookie-thieving bastard,” they heard him mutter before he headed inside.
Brad rolled his eyes, chuckling. “And people wonder how I lost weight rooming with him in college.”
Haley just laughed as she locked her house and headed for her car. For a moment there, she forgot about the hell that awaited her.
Haley ignored the glare of the parking attendant as she pulled around her parents’ mansion and parked her car. She tried not to roll her eyes, but she just couldn’t stop herself. Leave it to her parents to go overboard for a family barbecue.
Why they bothered, Haley would never know.
It wasn’t like the rest of their family didn’t know that they were rich.
It was kind of pathetic if you asked her, no one did, of course.
She was just expected to show up at family functions, act perfect, and bite her tongue. Yup, this was going to be so much fun.
For the next four hours, and that was how long her mother told her that she absolutely had to stay or she’d throw a fit to end all fits, Haley was going to have to endure looks of pity over her marital status, childless state, job, and weight. Yup, this was going to be great, just great.
Why couldn’t her car have stalled on the way over here or, better yet, run out of gas, leaving her stranded at the mercy of the wildlife that would maul her and save her from this hell? Was that really too much to ask?
She ran a hand over her blouse to smooth it down as she approached the front door. Before she could knock, the door opened. Jameson, her parents’ butler of ten years, looked distastefully down his nose at her.
“Your mother expected you a half an hour ago, Miss Blaine,” he said with a haughty sniff. It hadn’t escaped her notice that he called her sisters by their first names and even smiled when he did it. It was just another reminder that she didn’t fit in.
“Where is she?” Haley asked, hoping to get this over with.
Another sniff. “Madam is in the backyard. She’s very exhausted. She’s been working day and night on this barbecue. She was up at the crack of dawn and hasn’t rested since!”
“Uh-huh,” Haley absently said as she walked past people that she didn’t know.
Funny how family barbecues in her family really meant inviting everyone they wanted to impress.
It seemed that she was the only one that didn’t bring an entourage with her.
She had friends that she really cared about and could have brought, but well, it was because she cared about them that she wouldn’t inflict this upon them.
“Haley, so nice to see you!” her cousin Jacob said.
“You should come to the Vineyard this summer and stay at my new cottage. It’s fabulous, you’ll love it!
” he said loud enough to draw attention to himself.
She had no doubt that it was for the benefit of the crowd surrounding him since he hated her.
It might have something to do with her putting Nair in his shampoo bottle when they were kids.
Ah, whatever.
Haley simply gave that fake smile that her mother had drilled into her head growing up.
She made her way to the backyard, where she found her mother working hard at sipping a martini and gossiping with Haley’s sisters, a few aunts, and her grandmother snoozing in a wheelchair a few feet away under her own umbrella.