Having It All Read online

  There it was. That smile on her face as she talked about his food. Josh would never, ever get tired of making people smile like that. “Yeah—you know I can’t have people over without cooking something. Glad you like ’em. I added some cider to give them a Halloween kick.”

  And then he got a kick. Because the two Storm Troopers he’d squeezed between shifted to stand next to Summer. That let him see who she’d been talking to before he interrupted. Her boutique’s newest employee, Annabeth Vasquez. The woman who used to be their favorite waitress at the POV bar.

  More of a friend than just a drink deliverer, Annabeth always had a funny comment and saw straight through their bullshit. She was no-nonsense, had a blunt sense of humor, and oh yeah, legs that went on for days. Legs that went straight from the floor all the way up to the bright red lipstick she always wore.

  Not that he’d noticed.

  Not that he’d noticed her long black hair either. Or the way her hazel eyes sometimes saw straight through his wisecracks to another level that Josh only ever revealed to the guys. And he no way, no how had ever noticed how she was on the taller side for a woman, so in heels her lips would line up just below his…

  Josh had made sure not to notice any of the many ways Annabeth was drop-dead gorgeous. Because she was their friend. That was a line he would’ve been an idiot to cross back when she’d waited on them. In fact, they’d sworn an oath to not make a move on her at all, so as not to ruin a very good thing. Now that she was tied in even closer by working with Summer? Off-limits didn’t begin to describe the situation.

  He hadn’t recognized Annabeth right off, because tonight her hair was styled in a 1940s wave that made it look way shorter. It matched the WWII-era military uniform she wore.

  It was hot as hell.

  Not that Josh noticed.

  He fired off a lazy salute. “Sorry to barge in on your conversation, ladies. Just didn’t want to miss saying hello to two of my favorite guests at the party.”

  Summer pursed her mouth into a challenge. “Is that a line you’ve used on every woman at this party?”

  “Hell no. You know I’m crazy about both of you. I greet all my potential lip-smackers by telling them they are the hottest guests at the party.”

  “You’re a disgusting dog, Hardwick,” Annabeth sneered. But she finished it with an amused chuckle.

  Working at their favorite bar, she’d seen his playboy ways up close and personal hundreds of times. Not to mention usually coming out of it with a more than generous tip for not hassling him in front of that night’s date. Or at least, not hassling him too much.

  “True. But I’m one hundred percent upfront about it.” Turning his charm up to eleven, Josh said, “Don’t I get points for that?”

  “Not in my book.”

  “Which is why I’m not in your book,” Josh countered. Man, she never gave him a single square inch. Not that he minded. It was a nice change from all the women who laughed at everything he said. Amazing how many of them thought that was the guaranteed quick slide into his bed.

  “I’m glad you stopped,” Summer said. “I need to go hunt up Riley. Now I won’t feel bad about abandoning Annabeth. Do me a favor—make her talk about anything besides work.” With an admonishing finger shake at her employee, Summer disappeared into the crowd.

  Arching one eyebrow, Josh asked, “What’s with the work talk?”

  “There’s a lot going on at the boutique. The launch of the website went smoothly, but there’s different glitches that pop up with the online sales. We’re already planning for the big holiday push. On top of that, I convinced Summer that we should offer a styling service. It’s taking a lot to work out the logistics, let alone squeeze it into the schedule.”

  “Whoa.” Josh noticed that Annabeth was toying with a button on her jacket. That wasn’t like her. She didn’t fidget. He’d never seen her stress before either. Annabeth didn’t just have a can-do attitude. She had an I can do this, and you’d damn well better stay out of my way as I get it done attitude. Equal parts kick-ass and awesome. “How about you take a breath?”

  She closed her eyes. Splayed her long fingers, the tips painted that siren red, across her stomach. Sucked in a long, slow breath and then let it out between lips that were slightly parted. Lips it’d be so easy to picture moving down his chest…

  Her long lashes snapped apart. “Nope. I’m not a chant-and-breathe kind of girl. Might as well try to put out a fire by thinking about rain. That doesn’t stop my stress at all.”

  “Didn’t say it would. Just figured you’d spewed out so many words that your lungs needed refueling.”

  Annabeth scowled. “Cute. Is that your way of telling me to shut up?”

  What the hell? “No. Of course not. I want to hear how it’s going with your transition to working at Forever Summer.” He tugged at the wide lapel on her jacket. “But I don’t want to literally watch you grow an ulcer as you tell me about it.”

  “Sorry. Now that I work at such a, uh, female-centric place, I’m über-sensitive to boring people when it comes up.”

  If he’d still had his beer, Josh might have done another spit take. Annabeth was a spitfire. No, a live wire—always crackling with energy and snark. “You could never be boring.” Clearly, some douchebag on the world’s worst date had messed with her head. And he wouldn’t stand for it. Loyalty to his people went bone-deep in Josh. The number of those who truly mattered wasn’t that big. But he’d go to the mat for any of them—no matter how small the issue. “Who told you that? I’ll go rough ’em up right now.”

  “Aren’t you a sweetie.” Annabeth patted the silver star on the middle of his chest. “No need to launch into actual superhero mode on my behalf. I’m just all in my head. It used to be easy to tell stories about the sloppy drunks or god-awful pickup lines I’d hear in a shift at the POV. Good for a guaranteed laugh, you know?”

  “Making fun of people making fools of themselves is a highly underrated perk of the restaurant business,” Josh said solemnly. “You should hear my stories about my food truck customers eating the grilled cheese sandwiches with their gloves on in the winter.”

  Annabeth laughed, shaking her head in disbelief. “That’s just dumb.”

  “No doubt. Yet their money deposits just like everyone else’s into my bank account.”

  “Well, my days are now all about peplum jackets and hemlines and color trends. It doesn’t feel as universally interesting.”

  Josh didn’t like hearing his normally self-assured friend see herself through the wrong lens. Weird. He would’ve bet a hundred dollars on her being the last person at this party who needed a pep talk. “You think a contract lawyer worries about boring people with their stories?”

  “Ha. No. But they should.”

  The music turned up a couple of notches as Dead Man’s Party started blasting from the speakers. Josh grabbed her wrist and tugged her through the dancing crowd into a bit of a shelter behind an oversized mannequin of a mummy by the outcrop of the elevator shaft. He wanted to be sure that she heard, really heard the truth he was about to drop.

  “The thing is, what makes any story interesting is the person who tells it.” Leaning close enough to see the green and yellow flecks in her eyes, he said, “And you, Annabeth, are a very interesting woman.”

  They stayed close like that, frozen, staring into each other’s eyes, for at least three long seconds past casual. Long enough that Josh wondered if he’d accidentally played his hand. Revealed the top-secret interest…longing…desire that slayed him every time he got within ten feet of Annabeth. And far too often chased through his mind when she wasn’t even in the room.

  She broke first. Didn’t pull her wrist out of his grasp—interesting—but she did tear her gaze away with a quiet laugh.

  “Wow. I’ve heard rumors about the power and intensity of your charm, Josh. Either it truly lives up to all the hype, or I’ve had too many of those Dark and Stormys.”

  He’d give her the out. �
��If you have to wonder, then you probably need another drink.”

  “That sounds like a good cure for my stress.”

  “Or you could just let go and relax. Drink. Dance.” Josh gave an exaggerated swivel of his hips to the chorus while wiggling his eyebrows. “Flirt. Laugh. This is a party, if you hadn’t noticed.”

  “Parties seem to be what you’re best at.”

  What wasn’t to love about a party? Josh was the driving force behind all sorts of crazy excuses to text fifty of their closest friends and get them to drop everything and come let loose. “Yeah. Food and drink and lots of people. Seems like that’s your thing, too.”

  Those dark eyebrows came together with an almost audible snap in the middle of her forehead. “Not anymore. My years of schlepping drinks in short skirts to sweaty men are done. Is that how you still see me?”

  Damn, but she was still prickly about this job switch. Josh hadn’t meant to insult her one bit. It had been a tossed-off, meaningless call back to her old job. Not an insult. Not a life judgment, for damn sure.

  What really got his attention, though, was how important it seemed to Annabeth that he see her the right way. Her reaction meant that his opinion really mattered to her. Which felt like it could change everything.

  In a low growl, Josh said, “You don’t want me to answer that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I see you in my dreams, Annabeth.”

  “That’s…unexpected.” She gave a nervous half laugh. “How drunk are you?”

  “Enough to do this.” One tug brought her flush against him. At the same time, Josh took her mouth. Exactly the way he’d dreamed about just last night. He devoured those plump, luscious red lips.

  From the first touch, heat exploded through him. His desire jacked up from plain old full throttle to however many g’s were pulled in a rocket launch. Because Annabeth was responding like, well, like she’d been dreaming about him for far too long, too.

  Her fingers clutched at Josh’s hair. Her tall, tight body fucking undulated against him in a slow roll that felt like they were already having sex standing up. Josh planted his palm at the small of her back and brought her even closer.

  Their tongues twined, danced, battled, explored. Back and forth, tasting and sweeping and licking. The applause at the song ending died off just enough for him to hear the sexy little moans she had going on. They kissed like they’d been doing it for years. Perfectly synced. In rhythm. Just the right pressure, the automatically perfect give-and-take.

  Annabeth was a million times hotter than any of his dreams.

  And that was trouble.

  Josh pulled back, but couldn’t resist one last touch, pushing a low wave of silky hair out of her eyes. “What was that?”

  Annabeth stepped out of his embrace. Kept stepping back until she came up against the wall. Her gaze darted left and right, as though searching for an answer, an explanation. Then she pointed up at the full moon. “My guess is that somebody cast a Halloween spell. Maybe that friend of Brooke’s that runs the New Age store in Dupont Circle. I heard a rumor she dabbles in Wicca.”

  “Or the costumes.” Josh lifted his shield around to hold between them. Because it suddenly felt like he needed a very strong reason to not keep touching her. “Captain America and Agent Carter always had a thing for each other.”

  “I think there was an episode of Buffy where all the costumes were under a spell. Summer’s the one who picked this out for me. I’ll, ah, go ask her where she got it. Find out if there was a pentacle hanging over the door and mystical chanting when she picked it up.”

  And then Annabeth used those mile-long legs of hers to hightail it away from him.

  Thing was? Josh didn’t believe in magic. He sure as hell wasn’t drunk either.

  Except on her kisses.

  Which he could never, ever have again.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Computer coding was easy. Annabeth had learned, in the online courses she’d cobbled together in the past few years, how to make a program do whatever she wanted. She loved wrestling the online sales site for Forever Summer into submission every day.

  Calendars, on the other hand? They were maddening, unyielding little bitches. She planted her elbows on the checkout counter and looked across at her boss. “Are you planning on cloning yourself anytime soon?”

  Summer gave a low chuckle. “What’s funny is that Knox and his brain team are probably working on that right now. Or making robot replicants of all of us.”

  “That’s not funny. It’s creepy as hell.”

  “You should be sure to tell him that you don’t want to be a part of their beta-test group.” Summer shoved the last ecru and burgundy striped velvet dress into the whitewashed armoire. Then she turned around and burst out laughing. “Omigosh, Annabeth, your face! Relax. I was only kidding. There’s no imminent plan to replace you with a robot. Nor does the technology exist.”

  “That you know of,” she said darkly. Snakes and spiders Annabeth could handle, no problem. Futuristic, dystopian movies were the things that creeped her out. Because it was so easy to picture civilization rolling down that dark path. All you had to do was watch the uncontrolled chaos at the RFK Stadium Metro stop after a soccer game to see that it took very little to turn civilized fans into an every-man-for-himself mob pushing onto the train.

  At their hat rack, Summer chose a deep burgundy 1920s-style cloche and plopped it on top of the window mannequin. “Why do you want to clone me?”

  “Now that you gave a green light to the personal stylist program, it’s already too successful. There aren’t enough hours in the day to squeeze everyone into your schedule.”

  “You don’t need me.”

  Annabeth stood on tiptoe to tap the edge of the Forever Summer sign on the wall. “Uh, your name’s the one on the store, not mine. People want your expertise.”

  “My expertise is in figuring out what to stock. Which I’m admittedly quite brilliant at.” Summer made a deep curtsy, her long brown hair falling forward to hide her face. When she stood and tossed it back, it revealed a grin. “When it comes to styling? You are every bit as good as I am, if not better. That’s one of the biggest reasons why I hired you.”

  The compliment both helped…and helped to strum her already on-edge nerves like Springsteen laying into a mid-song riff at FedExField.

  She’d never planned to become a stylist. Annabeth hadn’t had the luxury of planning for anything more concrete than whatever job paid the best with little more than a high school diploma. It was the same reason her older brother, Jamie, had joined the Army. Paying to keep a roof over their heads while she and then Percy finished school had taken every spare cent. Once he’d graduated, it wasn’t like options had magically materialized for a woman with no college degree and no training in anything but slinging food and drinks.

  But now that she’d somehow landed what could only be described as a dream job? Annabeth had gone into overdrive worrying about being good enough to keep it. Working hard enough to prove that she deserved it. Most of all, not wanting to make Summer regret giving her this chance.

  She bent over the Google Calendar again, mentally rearranging. “I can squeeze in some morning appointments. Catch early birds before they head into work. If I added four of those a week, along with me taking three nights of appointments once we close, then we might be able to fit in everyone that’s on the list. So far anyway.”

  “I love the enthusiasm and willingness. Be careful not to overextend yourself, though.” Summer wiggled her fingers over the iPad to block Annabeth’s view. “There’s nothing wrong with a wait list. It’ll build cachet.”

  “It won’t get people the looks they want for the holiday season.”

  “Not everyone. But it will make them think about using us for New Year’s, for Valentine’s Day, and just to impress on a random visit from the in-laws. Sure, the holiday season is a great way to kick off the styling program. We want to think long-term, though, too. And I
don’t want you burning out in your first three months here.”

  Summer was sweet. Supportive. And it was great working with someone who’d been a friend before becoming a boss.

  Still, Annabeth planned to utterly ignore her advice about not working too hard.

  The bell on the front door jangled as Riley and Josh came in. They wore shorts, even in this third week of November, sweatshirts covered in mud and grass stains, and matching grins. Annabeth remembered their routine from all the years they’d come into her bar. Wednesdays were pickup soccer games on the National Mall. Given both the cold and complete darkness by five o’clock, thanks to the time change, she guessed this had been their last one for the season.

  That was the first thought that cruised through her brain. Hot on its heels, though, was the realization of how crazy sexy Josh looked with his hair all wind-mussed and that sweaty, athletic glow to his cheeks.

  Plus, even though she’d seen him in shorts all summer? Seeing his bare, muscled thighs covered in golden hair now, when everyone else had officially layered up against autumn, felt…intimate. Him half clothed was just a wallop of masculinity that Annabeth frankly hadn’t prepared for. Hadn’t had the chance to raise her defenses against.

  She grabbed her blue glass water bottle and guzzled half of it in one long gulp.

  “You’re both filthy,” Summer scolded. She planted her fists on sage-green corduroy leggings. “Why would you come into a place filled with beautiful things in such a condition?”

  “Because you’re the most beautiful thing in here, and I couldn’t go another minute without ogling you.” Riley gave her a hefty dose of heavy-lidded bedroom eyes on top of the compliment. Wow. Annabeth felt the force of it even from the sidelines. It was downright adorable to watch the uptight NTSB agent go all gooey around the edges for her friend.