Tempting Evan (JK Short Reads) Read online

  TEMPTING EVAN

  J. KENNER

  CONTENTS

  Title

  Tempting Evan

  Tempting Evan

  by

  J. Kenner

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  Tempting Evan Copyright © 2005, 2012, 2019 by Julie Kenner

  Originally published as “Dead Friends and Other Dating Dilemmas” in This is Chick-Lit, edited by Lauren Baratz-Logsted and published by BenBella Books

  All rights reserved.

  Published in 2019 as Tempting Evan by Martini & Olive

  Cover design by MSRheinlander Consulting

  Cover image by Big Stock Photo/curaphotography

  V-2019-3-7KU

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.

  Sexy Little Sinner is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or establishments is solely coincidental.

  Tempting Evan

  “Nude?” I repeat, ignoring the traffic outside the Toyota’s window as I stare at this man I’ve known—and crushed on—since I was five years old. “Were you nude, too?” I hope I sound interested in a great story and not in the mental image of Evan in the buff. A mighty nice image, too, enhanced by the fact that I had, in fact, once seen him wearing nothing but a tan. The view had been brief, accidental and underscored by much mortification on the part of my then fifteen-year-old self, but I’d held the mental picture close to my heart ever since.

  A trademark Evan Walker grin eases across his face, the force of it unleashing the butterflies that had been napping in my stomach. It’s been a year since I’ve seen that smile in person, and I’d forgotten just how nice those butterflies could feel. “What do you think, Syd? Did I let it all hang out?”

  He’s teasing me, and I play it cool. I lean back in my seat and kick my feet up on the dashboard. “I don’t know. Just how daring are you?” It’s a game we’ve played since we were little, Evan, Emily and me. Evan with his braver big-brother attitude, and Emily with her little-sisterly certainty that she could show up her older brother. And me, just hoping to impress my best friend’s brother without my best friend catching on and, inevitably, teasing me.

  From the backseat, Emily snorts. “Daring? Evan’s about as daring as a carrot.” I ignore her. We’ve been in the rental car for almost an hour now, and she’s been silent the entire trip, which is good, considering I already know the opinion she’s voiced so many times to me: Evan is off-limits; I have a perfectly fine boyfriend back in Los Angeles (and I do). I need to keep my libido under control for the weekend, and then things can go back to normal.

  Honestly, though, I’m not all that happy with the status quo, and I’m tired of Emily’s nagging about my love life. That probably makes me a bitch—especially when you consider the circumstances—but like Celine Dion says, the heart will go on. Besides, I’m jet-lagged, and that makes me cranky.

  I sigh, and focus pointedly on Evan, ignoring my best friend in the back. “Come on. Quit being coy. Did you join in the nude revelry or not?”

  He laughs, and damned if that low, sexy rumble doesn’t make me go all soft inside. “No, Syd, I didn’t get naked. Instead, I got the hell out of there.”

  Now I join in the laugh, because I can see the whole thing. Evan chatting with friends and clients as they stroll down Melrose. Circumventing the red velvet rope to enter Impulse, the trendy new club reported to have the best chocolate martinis in Los Angeles, then stopping short when he sees what he can’t possibly be seeing: that every single person in the place is completely nude.

  “I mean, talk about a shock,” Evan says, amusement still lacing his voice. “I’m all for charity events, but my tolerance of philanthropic behavior ends about where my clothes begin.”

  “Yeah? I thought you Hollywood types jumped all over stuff like that. I bet there were so many cameras flashing in front of that restaurant that Paris Hilton’s tush got tanned.”

  Behind us, Emily exhales noisily, and I hold my breath, waiting for her to say something.

  “I think she’s already got the all-over tan going,” Evan says, and for a second I’m confused. Then I remember that we’re talking about Paris.

  “Right.” I fight the urge to glance into the backseat. “But you’re avoiding the bigger issue.” I say the latter with some bravado, as if to prove to Emily that I can banter with her brother even knowing she’s eavesdropping.

  He glances over at me, and I’m struck by the magnificent portrait he makes. Scruffy beard, bright eyes, and the Texas Hill Country rolling by behind him. Suddenly, I’m analyzing his kissability quotient, and that’s an area into which my thoughts have no business drifting. Certainly not now, on this trip. For that matter, not ever. I made a promise, didn’t I?

  “What bigger issue is that?” he asks, still caught up in our banter and not aware that my mind has moved on to his lips and other off-limits body parts.

  “The fact that you’re a Hollywood PR hound now,” I say, keeping my cool.

  “Is that what I am?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  He pretends to think about that, then slams his hand on the steering wheel. “Dammit, you’re right. I should have stripped naked and danced on a few tabletops. All in the interests of my clients, of course.”

  “Of course,” I agree, laughing. “After all, that’s what big shot Hollywood agents do.”

  When I think back, it’s clear I always knew that Evan would fit right in on the West Coast. He may have been born and raised in Fredericksburg, Texas, same as me, but Evan Walker had been meant for a milder climate and faster lifestyle.

  I think that’s one of the things I’ve always loved about him. Evan is exotic. He’s the epitome of everything I’ve always wanted to be—sophisticated, witty and daring. He moved to Los Angeles right out of high school, telling me and Emily he couldn’t pack his bags fast enough. Now he’s an assistant agent at one of those huge agencies that you read about in the entertainment section of your local paper. Me, I only sucked up the nerve to make the move to L.A. after finishing college. And even then, I had to have my best friend in tow as a live-in security blanket. Now I’m an IT manager for one of the major banks in downtown Los Angeles. Honestly, the excitement never ends.

  I stifle a sigh. I’d moved to Los Angeles after college purportedly for a new life and adventure with my best friend who was going to win an Emmy by the time she was twenty-seven. My real reason had more to do with said friend’s brother. But some plans never come to fruition, no matter how delicious they might be in theory. Suffice it to say that there are no little gold statues honoring Emily. And Evan and I are not an item, despite opportunity and intent.

  “Is that why you’ve been avoiding me?” he asks. “Because you think I’ve gone too Hollywood or something?”

  “I’m not avoiding you,” I say. “Don’t be stupid.”

  “Rejection makes me stupid. Considering all the lunch and dinner dates you’ve turned down, I’m thinking my IQ’s diminished to somewhere around fifteen.”

  Without thinking, I glance into the backseat and see Emily rolling her eyes. “If he thinks you’re go
ing to feel guilty for doing exactly what you two agreed, then his IQ really has taken a nosedive. God, can you believe that once upon a time you actually fell for this loser?”

  I turn away quickly, my cheeks flaming.

  “What?” Evan asks. I just shake my head. Evan’s not the least bit tuned in to his sister’s rants. That privilege belongs solely to me. As, apparently, does toeing the line and enforcing the agreement he and I made last year.

  “Listen, Evan . . .” I say, drawing out his name in the hopes that I won’t have to say the actual words.

  My ploy works. He lifts the fingers of his steering hand just long enough to signal me. “I know. I know. You weren’t avoiding me. We agreed to ignore our attraction. To not see each other any more. Yadda yadda yadda, blah blah blah.”

  He faces me. “But what if we should never have agreed in the first place?” Very gently, he brushes a fingertip across my cheek. I turn to look out the window and fight—hard—to hold back tears.

  We’ve reached the city limits, and I fake an intense interest in the familiar scenery so that I can avoid admitting that I’d been wondering that very thing.

  “At any rate,” he says after pulling his finger back, “I’m glad you came with me today. Surprised as hell, but glad.”

  “You know I wouldn’t miss this.”

  One quick nod as he turns off of Main Street and weaves his way toward the Wildfire Bed & Breakfast. “I knew you’d come for her. For the memorial. But I didn’t know you’d agree to take the same flight as me or share a car with me.”

  I can only shrug.

  “What happened to us?”

  In response, I point to the B&B, the ballroom of which will be filled tomorrow with food and wine, memories and tears. “How can you even ask that?”

  A muscle twitches in his cheek. A tiny movement, but to me, it’s as intense as a slap. “She died,” he finally says as he puts the car in park and kills the engine. “Not us. Her.”

  “It’s not that simple,” I say.

  “Maybe it should be,” he says, then gets out and slams the door so hard the entire car shakes.

  I flick my gaze to the backseat, wondering if Emily is paying attention. She is. Her eyes, fixed and hard, stare me down, and I feel the bitter cold of her anger settle into my bones.

  I open my door, desperate for the warmth of the sun, and I stand there on the warm gravel parking lot, just soaking it in, wishing it could make even the slightest dent against the chill that has set my insides to trembling.

  One year ago tomorrow, we buried my best friend. Evan’s sister. The Walkers’ only daughter.

  We’d been in town—Evan, Emily and me—visiting our families. The rain had come, a typical Texas thunderstorm. Slick roads. A drunk driver veering into oncoming traffic. The crunch of metal, and the snapping of bone.

  It was all over in a heartbeat. The doctors say she didn’t suffer at all.

  I know better. She suffered, all right. And she suffers still.

  My best friend Emily Walker is dead. She’s been dead for a year.

  She isn’t, however, dead to me.

  * * *

  “You were flirting.” Emily’s voice fills the room, her tone accusatory.

  “You’re not only dead, you’re insane,” I say, looking around and wondering where she’s going to appear. “I was arguing.”

  She doesn’t materialize, and I find myself scowling at nothing. She’s been doing this to me for a year now. Haunting, I mean. I was the last person to realize she was dead. They’d told me about the accident, of course. About how the drunk driver had cut her off. About how she’d lost control of the car and spun off the road into a ditch. Lucky, they’d said, that no one else had been killed. “Else?” I remember saying. And that’s when I realized that Emily—who’d been sitting on my bed all that time, sulky and crying—was really and truly dead.

  The situation had, as you might imagine, messed a bit with my head. It’s one thing for your best friend to die in a car accident. It’s another thing altogether to have her continue to be your best friend.

  At first, I’d thought I was going crazy. Once the reality of the situation got through my head, I wished I were crazy.

  Don’t get me wrong; I love Emily. Always have and always will. But, well, she’s dead. And if you think the fact that I’ve always had a smaller waist was a point of severe jealousy in our living relationship, you haven’t seen the kind of envy that can be generated when one half of a best friend unit is no longer able to wear Seven jeans at all . . . never mind how tiny (non-existent?) her waist might now be.

  “Arguing,” I say again, firmly, and to the empty air. “Not exactly Cosmo’s number one tip for getting the guy to notice you.”

  “Maybe not,” she says, “but it could be foreplay.” This time, the air shimmers, and suddenly there she is. To me, she looks solid, but I’ve learned better. I’m the only one privileged enough to see her, and I say that with a certain bit of ironic brio.

  “You’re pathetic,” I say. “Pathetic and paranoid.”

  “Fine,” she says. “You weren’t flirting. But that doesn’t mean you didn’t want to.” She smoothes her skirt and sits on the edge of the bed. You’d think I’d be used to this by now, but I’m not, and I watch, fascinated, as she sort of meshes with the mattress. Not really sitting on it, but not really in it, either.

  “Hello?” she says in a typically Emily voice. “Aren’t you even going to answer me?”

  “No,” I say, moving to unpack my suitcase. “You think you know everything, then fine. Just talk with yourself.” I half hold my breath, because that is so not the kind of thing I would ever have said to Emily when she was alive. But I’m feeling almost giddily brave. I’m not sure if it’s being around Evan again, or just being here for Emily’s memorial. I mean, there’s nothing like coming home to honor a dead girl to make you remember that the girl really is dead.

  I concentrate on unpacking, but sneak her one or two looks while I do. She’s still sitting there, but she’s eyeing me curiously, her expression both hollow and sad. When I can’t take it any more, I turn to her. “What?” I demand.

  “You two agreed to end it,” she says. “And you swore to me that you meant it. Right here in this room, you swore to me.”

  “Sometimes things change.”

  The air in the room turns icy, and I brace myself for a whip of wind as her fury rises. But there’s nothing. Just a well-deep sadness in her eyes.

  “Not for me,” she says, as she starts to fade from me. And then, only her voice is left. “For me, things will never change again.”

  * * *

  “Sydney Colfax! My goodness, let me have a look at you!” The enthusiastic voice washes over me, the familiar Texas twang making AnnMarie sound sweet and female. Not at all the insipid bitch I know her to be.

  “Hello, Annie,” I say, because I know she hates it. “I didn’t expect to see you until tomorrow.”

  “I work here part time now,” she says. “I just came in to see if Mary wants me here early tomorrow. You know, to help set up the room.”

  We’re in the ballroom, a huge room with oak floors and oil paintings plastered up on the walls. The B&B rents this room out for meetings. Tomorrow, it will be filled with friends and family, people who’ve come to honor Emily’s memory. Right now, though, it is empty, all except the enlarged yearbook pictures of Emily, mounted on foam core and leaning scattershot against the walls, waiting to be organized and displayed.

  I walk to the closest one—Emily’s senior picture. She’s smiling at me, a smile that hasn’t faded in my memory as I’m sure it has in her friends’ thoughts, and maybe even in her family’s. She looks beautiful as always. Ready to go conquer the world. Or at least the University of Texas.

  “Life’s really unfair sometimes, isn’t it?” AnnMarie asks, peering over my shoulder at the photograph.

  I don’t answer, but I start to walk the length of the wall, my eyes taking in the details of each p
hotograph, a silent tribute to my best friend. Emily as cheerleader. Emily as student body president. Emily winning Best Actress in the UIL competition. Emily on the debate team, and going all the way to State.

  I was at her side through all of it, winning my own little victories. Never once, though, did I think my A+ papers and quietly received scholarships and grants in any way compared to the glory that was Emily. Vibrant, alive Emily. Even now, I don’t really understand. Why take her life, when my more mundane one would hardly even be missed at all?

  I shake off the melancholy and turn away from the photographs. “Yeah,” I say to AnnMarie. “Sometimes, life just sucks.”

  “So how are you doing?” she asks.

  I examine her face, expecting to see only a mask of good manners, and am surprised to find genuine concern.

  “I’m doing good,” I say. I nod a little, because it’s true. I am doing good. And every day is getting better. “Yeah, I’m doing real good.”

  “I’m so glad to hear that. Wild horses couldn’t have made me say this last year, but I was worried about you. After she died, I mean.”

  “About me?”

  “You were always so . . . well, you know. Her little follower. Everywhere there was Emily, there was Sydney, too. Word around the school was she pretty much demanded you be there. Emily snapped, and you jumped.”

  “If you’re suggesting—”

  “That she was a bitch?” she offers, her thick accent and shark-white smile making the insult seem sweetly conversational. “Not at all. I don’t speak ill of the dead. I’m just glad to know you’re not lost without her.”

  I want to tell her just who the bitch is in the room, but I don’t. For that matter, I can’t even work myself up into a good old-fashioned righteous indignation. Because she’s right. At least about me. I’d always relied on Emily. In a lot of ways, I still do.

  “So I guess you and Evan are an item now, huh?”

  “I . . . no. No, we’re not.”

  “Oh.” Her face screws up in a picture of confusion. “My bad. I just assumed. I mean, before. You know, when Emily was alive, I could see why it wouldn’t work. I mean she’d be so . . . .” She trails off, waving a hand. “I just mean that I saw you guys arrive together. And I know you had a huge crush on him back when we were kids. And last year I heard—”