A Very Dirty Christmas Page 6

I grip her ass cheeks in return. I don't give a shit where we are; I want to want to rip off her clothes and fuck her right here in the middle of a public park.

  Then as suddenly as it started, it's over. She presses her palms flat against my chest and shoves me, stepping back and wiping her mouth with her hand like I'm some kind of contaminant she can't wait to get rid of. I'm looking at her, trying to comprehend what the hell she's playing at here, but I can't think because there's no blood left in my brain. All I know is that my dick is hard as hell and she's standing there looking like she just ate some bad food.

  "Don't, Caulter -- " she says, holding her hand up like I'm a rapist about to come after her. As if I fucking grabbed her and kissed her against her will. As if she weren't just moaning into my damn mouth, arching her back and pressing her tits into my chest, daring me to touch her.

  "Don't what, Princess?" I ask. "You're the one who's rubbing up against my cock like it's a magic lamp."

  Katherine shakes her head, her fingertips still pressed against her mouth. Her lips are swollen, the skin around them red from my kiss. "This isn't fucking happening, Caulter." The way she says it is like I'm throwing myself at her. Like I'm lucky to be getting a chance to touch her or something. Her attitude pisses me off even more.

  "Don't worry, sweetheart," I say. "Just because I was high and wanted a quick lay doesn't mean anything."

  She looks at me with an expression I can't quite figure out. I think it might be disappointment, but she's the one who's fucking rejecting me. It passes as quickly as it appeared. "Just -- just keep your hands off me, Caulter," she says.

  "Keep my hands off you?" I can't hold back my laugh. "That's rich. Don't worry, Princess, your pussy isn't magic and I'm certainly not hurting for it. It won't be a hardship to keep my dick away from you."

  She narrows her eyes at me and her jaw clenches. "Good. I'm glad to hear it. We should be adults. Friends. We should be civil to each other." She stands there awkwardly, her words just hanging in the air, and I just stand there. I'm not thinking about what she said, though. I'm really thinking about the fact that my dick is not moving from where it's lodged, pressed up against the zipper of my jeans. I think her holier-than-thou attitude might have even made it harder.

  Clearly, my dick has poor taste in women.

  "Do you want to go back to my father's house?" she asks.

  I shrug. "Nah," I say, taking my pack of cigarettes from my back pocket and opening the flap. "I think I'm just going to go out. There's no sense having a hard on and not being able to use it."

  I say it just to hurt her, and it looks like it works. She blinks a few times, standing there with her hands balled up into fists at her sides, before she whirls around. "Fine," she says. "Whatever. Have fun."

  I stare in the opposite direction, watching her leave out of the corner of my eye but not looking at her. I won't give her the satisfaction of looking at her. The way she wiped her mouth after she kissed me, like I'm some kind of sleaze she can't wait to get away from? She may have been a good lay, but great lays are a dime a dozen. I don't need her.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Katherine

  I've always loved summer in New Hampshire. When my father first became Senator, he sold the farmhouse in Loudon where I'd spent my early years, and moved us to DC for the school year. But my mother and I would come to the house on Lake Winnipesauke for the summer. My father would join us, flying between New Hampshire and DC during early summer and only coming back full-time when the Senate broke for summer session. He never liked the state, even though he's tied to it politically. He returns here, but spends most of the summer bitching about being out of the loop and finding excuses to fly into New York or DC for fundraisers and political events.

  Me, on the other hand? I love this place. I cried when he sold our first house. He said it wasn't healthy to be attached to something like that ("It's just a goddamned house, Katherine"), and I was seven, so I said I'd never get over it. But I did. The summer house became my favorite place in the world, and it stayed that way after my mother died because she was my tie to it.

  So coming here for the summer isn't so bad, even if it means doing what my father wants as far as the re-election campaign goes. He's the incumbent, and honestly, the election is no big deal. He'll win by a landslide, just like he always does. He just thinks it's the biggest deal in the world. And besides, until summer session breaks, he'll be flying in and out, so I get this whole place to myself. Or I would, if Caulter weren't in the picture.

  I still might, though. I don't know where Caulter is. After what happened in the park, he never came home that night. I know, because I was listening for him. The fact that he went out and screwed some chick after kissing me, just because he had a hard-on, is so disgusting it makes me hate him. So when Ella said that Caulter was going back to Malibu for a few days, excuse me for being happy.

  If I'm lucky, maybe I won't ever have to see him again.

  The problem is that I can still feel his lips on mine, that bruising kiss in the park lingering even now. My body craves him, and I hate it.

  I just have to think about something else. Like how great it'll be to be back here for the summer. I love this place, with its white painted walls and airy spaces. I love the wraparound porch, and the little balcony outside of my bedroom where I sit and sketch when I want peace and quiet. I wish I could spend the summer here alone. I don't want Caulter and Ella here, intruding on this place that used to be my mother's and mine. I don't want their presence tainting my memories of her.

  And I especially don't want Caulter here, reminding me of that night every time I look at him. I don't want him here, reminding me of the fact that he's awakened feelings in me, even if the feelings are simply lust. Ridiculous, inappropriate lust. It's ridiculous and inappropriate not just because he's about to be my step-brother, either. It's ridiculous and inappropriate because of who Caulter Sterling is. He's a crude, caustic prick who can't keep his dick in his pants.

  The problem is, I just can't stop thinking about that prick.

  I can't stop thinking about that kiss in the park, Caulter's lips pressed hard against mine, his touch rough and unyielding. The thought of it sends a shiver down my spine even now, and I try to banish it. I should want someone more appropriate. I shouldn't want Caulter, with his vulgarity and stupid rebel-without-a-cause attitude problem. I shouldn't want Caulter, who's obsessed with sex.

  The problem is, I'm beginning to think he's done something to me, messed with my head. Because ever since that night, I can't stop thinking about sex either.

  I need to get Caulter out of my head, and being here this week by myself is the best way to do that. Until Friday night, I'm rid of my father and Ella and their whole love-struck teenager act. I don't have to give my opinion on wedding plans, and I don't have to deal with Ella's perpetual cheeriness. And I don't have to deal with Caulter and any early morning encounters in the bathroom. Maybe Caulter will decide to stay in Hollywood, and he won't come with them on Friday night, just in time for the Saturday morning pancake breakfast.

  I pause, my pencil on the page, mid-stroke. The Saturday morning pancake breakfast is a yearly tradition, this lame PR thing my father does at the beginning of every summer at this mom-and-pop cafe in town. We eat pancakes and smile and he kisses babies and talks about how meaningful this place is to him.

  "Katherine," a reporter will inevitably ask. "Does he do this at home?" And I will smile sweetly and hold up a fork with a bite of pancake on it. "When I'm home from school, he does it every Saturday morning. Pancakes and hot cocoa, just like when I was a kid."

  I fucking hate pancakes.

  I lose myself in my thoughts, my charcoal pencil moving over the sketch pad, the sound of the short, smooth strokes almost like white noise. Art is like my version of meditation. It's what got me through after my mother died, and I have boxes in the bedroom closet, filled with my paintings and sketches from that time.

  The knock on the door is what jolt
s me out of my thoughts. I slam the sketchpad closed, slipping it back into its hiding place underneath the mattress on the bed.

  Rose stands in the doorway, clad in a dress and apron. She's the other reason this place feels like home. Rose took care of me when I was a kid before we moved to DC, but she returned full-time every summer. She took care of my mother when she got sick. And after my mother died, she's the one who stroked my hair and spoke softly to me as I sobbed, stretched out on the window seat in the library with my head in her lap.

  When I look at her, I'm immediately afraid she'll be able to tell what I've been doing. I glance back at the bed as if the sketchpad filled with drawings of Caulter's naked body might have somehow jumped out of its hiding place under the mattress and displayed itself in full view. But of course it's hidden away.

  "Kate," she says, wiping her hands on her apron. "It's two in the afternoon. It's not good for you to be hidden away up here all day."

  I shrug. "I'm just drawing."

  She shakes her head and makes a clucking sound with her tongue. "I'm making cinnamon rolls and bread. You should eat. Pretty soon you'll be skin and bones."

  I laugh. "Rose, I gained weight during finals. I can barely button my jeans as is." But I follow her out downstairs anyway.

  She clucks her tongue as we walk, and gives me a disapproving shake of her head. "Barely button your jeans," she mutters. "You kids these days."

  "What about us?" I ask, sliding onto one of the tall stools surrounding the large island in the middle of the kitchen. The marble surface is covered with a dusting of flour, baking implements scattered across the countertop. Rose reaches into one of the kitchen cabinets for a plate, before presenting me with a cinnamon roll practically the size of my head, drenched in frosting.

  "Eat," she orders. "In my day, if you were skinny, it was because you couldn't afford to buy food."

  "Yes, ma'am." I don't have to be told twice to eat a giant cinnamon roll. Tearing off a piece with my fingers, I pop it into my mouth, and my eyes roll back in my head. It's still warm from the oven, homemade all the way, not that crap from the refrigerated section of the store.

  When I open my eyes, Rose looks at me expectantly, with one flour-covered hand on her hip and the other holding the rolling pin, paused mid-air. "Well?"

  "Well, what, Rose?" I ask, smiling.

  "Don't sass me."

  "These are amazing. Of course."

  She smiles, and goes back to rolling out her dough.

  "You're to blame if the newspapers talk about how the Senator's daughter is now fat, instead of the re-election campaign," I say, shoving a bigger piece of the baked good into my mouth.

  Rose snorts and gestures at me with the rolling pin. If she didn't look almost exactly like Mrs. Clause, with her gray hair piled on top of her head in a bun and her glasses sliding down to the end of her nose, she would almost be menacing. "Don't ever let me hear that word come out of your mouth again, Kate Harrison."

  "What?" I ask.

  "You know what I'm talking about. That word. Fat."

  "I'm saying that's what the media would say," I protest.

  She shakes her head at me. "You sound like that woman," she says. That woman is Rose's way of referring to my father's PR manager. I think the official term is communications director. Mona. Rose knows her name but refuses to use it. "That woman, the one who dresses you up and talks about brand."

  I sigh, thinking about what Mona will say the next time she sees me, the lecture I'll get on the "absolute catastrophe" I've created for my father with the picture in the newspaper of Caulter and I giving each other the finger. I'd love to see her face if she knew that Caulter had given me more than just the finger. "You know her name, Rose," I say. "It's Mona."

  She goes back to rolling out dough. "You look more and more like her, you know?"

  "I do?" I ask, my mouth full, picturing Mona, tall and stick-thin, with her fiery red hair clipped in a perfect bob and suits meticulously tailored to her model figure. "I don't look anything like Mona."

  Rose waves at me dismissively with a spoon in her hand, then dips it into the bowl and ladles cinnamon filling across a swath of dough. "Not Mona. Don't be daft. You look like your mother."

  "My mother was elegant, polished," I say. "I'm the exact opposite of that. I was trying to be polished. But after the photos in the newspaper..."

  Rose hasn't mentioned the photos in the newspaper yet. I know she's seen them. She clips the ones that mention me and saves them all in a scrapbook. She doesn't look up from her dough, but I think she might be smiling. "I saw that one of you and that boy, the new --"

  "The new step-brother."

  She rolls pieces of dough into pinwheels and lays them out in the pan. She's on her second tray of cinnamon rolls and I'm beginning to be afraid she's cooking them all for me. "Step-brother. I guess that's what you'd call him."

  "Have you met Ella?" I ask. I wonder if my father has already brought Ella here. I wonder how long he's been keeping his little secret.

  Rose purses her lips. "It was news to me too," she says. "Although the fact that I didn't know about it wasn't surprising."

  "She's a big celebrity."

  Rose raises her eyebrows. "That part isn't surprising, either. You know your father's political aspirations."

  I grunt my response as Rose adjusts the dough and slides the pan into the stove. "They'll be here tomorrow, you know."

  "I'm prepared." I'm lying through my teeth, and we both know it. I'm not prepared to see them. But I'm more unprepared to see Caulter.

  "Uh-huh." She rinses her hands under the faucet, her back still to me. "That's why you've been wasting away inside here all week instead of being out in the sunshine, down at the beach the way you used to be." She turns toward me, her hands on her hips. "It's not healthy, you know, moping around your room. She's not going to replace your mother."

  "That's not it," I protest. It isn't. I'm not a little girl who thinks a celebrity is going to come in and replace her. I'm irritated with the way he sprung it on me after being hypocritical enough to insist on dictating every part of my life.

  Every part of my life except for that night with Caulter.

  "Then what is it?" she asks.

  "Nothing." I can't tell her what happened with Caulter. I remind myself that nothing of consequence happened with him anyway. Nothing that bears repeating anyway.

  Rose raises her eyebrows. "Get out of the house," she orders. "Go do something with your friends. Jo called the home phone number, said she's been texting you and you haven't answered."

  Jo is one of my childhood friends, one I see every summer when I come home. My father hates her, mostly because she's not "one of us," which really means she goes to public school. He once grounded me for two weeks for hanging out with her a couple years ago, until Mona suggested it might be seen as elitist if it got around that his daughter was ditching a childhood friends because of the friend's blue-collar background. I've been avoiding her because she'll want to know all the juicy details about my new family, and I just don't feel like dishing gossip. "I'll call her."

  Rose hands me the phone and walks out of the kitchen. "I have laundry to do. Go have fun. Get some sun. Be a normal kid."

  "I'm not a kid anymore, Rose," I call to her retreating back. "I'm an adult now. I have been for a month."

  "Go be a kid," she yells. "You can be an adult when your father gets here."

  I scroll down the call history, looking for Jo's number. Screw being an adult. So far, the only thing good about turning eighteen has been, well, that night with Caulter.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Caulter

  "You're seriously going to New Hampshire for the summer? That's even worse than...where the hell is that school you go to?" Dane asks, his forearms sliding across the top of the table. I can barely hear him above the clamor of the piece of shit rock band at the dive bar in North Hollywood that Seth insisted on hitting up so we could "pick up skanks." As if there weren't
enough skanks in Malibu.

  "Connecticut," I answer absently, but he can't hear me. I'm trying to get into it here. The Caulter from two months ago would be into it, getting drunk and high and banging some girl whose name I was never going to learn, let alone remember. Shit, this Caulter is practically a fucking monk. It's now been two weeks since I've seen any action. Not that I haven't tried. I left the park after kissing Katherine frustrated and aggravated and horny as hell, and not about to give her the damn satisfaction of showing up at her father's place. So I wound up jerking off in a hotel room and watching TV. Fucking awesome.

  "Dude," Seth says. "New Hampshire?"

  "Yeah, I'm going back to New Hampshire for the summer," I say. "Trust fund."

  "Your fucking mother," Seth yells. He shakes his head, takes another shot from the bottle at the table, and fills my shot glass with liquor. My head feels cloudy, and I pause for a minute, thinking about waking up tomorrow feeling energetic, not hung-over in the bed of some chick I picked up at a dive bar in North Hollywood. But I take it anyway, tipping my head back and letting the alcohol numb the thoughts running through my head.

  "She wants to be the First Lady," I yell.

  "Fuck yeah," Dane says, beside me. His eyes are bloodshot and his pupils are dilated. "Sucking some Presidential cock."

  "Shut up." I stand up. "That's my mother you're talking about. I don't need to hear that shit." I push through the crowd of people in the bar and head toward the bathroom. I came back to Malibu for a couple days to get the hell away from the East Coast, from Senator Douchebag and the wannabe First Lady, but now I just want to get away from my idiot friends. Getting wasted and stoned with them is starting to feel like such high school bullshit. I should have just gone back to my mother's place in Manhattan.

  When I get back, a group of girls wearing sorority t-shirts is at the table, two of them hanging on Dane and Seth as they take shots from the bottle. Dane looks up at me. "Party at your place," he says.

  One of the girls, her hair ombre, black at the roots and bleached at the tips, slides her arm into mine. Her heavy makeup makes her look older than a college student, and she smells like a damn brewery. She presses her tits up against my arm. Normally I'd be inclined to let her suck my dick in the back of the bar, but right now I'm just repulsed, and I push her away, shaking my head. "Not tonight."