Beauty and the Geek (Gone Geek Book 1) (11 page)

Tamara cuddled up next to him, wrapping the sheet around his waist. Her lids drooped, and she kissed his chest.

“You must think I’m some sort of sex addict,” she said without looking at him. He was familiar with those looks because they were his insecure habit.

“I’ll be your dealer, if you’ll be mine.” He stroked her hair back, out of her face, urging her to look at him.

“Pinky promise?” She wiggled up his body until her head was on the pillow next to his.

“Pinky promise.” He hooked his pinky with hers and gave it a squeeze.

Her smile, the way her eyes lit up, made his heart knock around painfully.

“You’re going to have to dump your other Internet boyfriends.” He had plans to take up all her time.

“I told you, there isn’t anyone else.” Her voice rang with honesty. Vulnerability. They were being real here.

“Good.” He released her finger and cupped her cheek.

“Does this mean I should change my Facebook status?”

“What would you call us?”

“I don’t know.” She lifted a bare shoulder. “That’s why I’m asking.”

“I’m all in. You can call us whatever you want to. Putting a name on it isn’t going to change it.”

“So, when my friends ask where I was this weekend, I can say I was with my boyfriend and not some sex addict I met in a chat room?”

“That does have a better ring to it.” He chuckled and stroked down her shoulder, her back.

“Just…so you know…this is special.” Her honesty was beautiful. Almost painful.

“I know.”

In that moment, Stephen felt himself slip…fall…and it was perfect.

11.

Tamara’s legs stretched as
far as she could make them with each stride. She was huffing and puffing, while Stephen glided over the sand, not even a little winded.

Their towels and her tote waited just ahead of them.

She focused on the towels, her muscles burning.

Ten feet.

Five feet.

She slowed. Stephen sailed on past.

Tamara stopped and walked a few strides, eating up the sight of Stephen—shirtless and glorious—sprinting down the sand. Running was so not her thing. There wasn’t a sports bra built that could contain her breasts in a manner that also allowed her to breathe.

“Nice run.”

She glanced up at a beach dude. He’d set his chair up maybe fifteen feet away, along with some other guys who were busy stripping down to their trunks.

“Thanks,” she said and dismissed him.

Tamara flopped on her towel and pulled out her water bottle. Stephen was a small speck down the beach. She dug into the tote. Her hand closed around Stephen’s sketchbook, and she glanced back at him. It would be wrong to look, but she was so damn curious. What was he keeping in there? Plans for world domination? The next best thing since the Hitachi? She let go and groped around for her cell phone, which was what she’d been looking for, and checked the messages.

One missed call from Miranda. And another dozen from Adam. Ugh.

Tamara had a few minutes, so she jabbed Miranda’s contact and pressed the phone to her ear.

“Hey,
chica
. Where have you been?” Miranda’s voice was chipper, all sunshine and business.

“Running. How are you?”

“Running? You?”

“Yeah, well, Stephen runs, so I ran. So far it’s the one thing I don’t like about him, but we all need our hobbies. What’s up?” She lay back on the towel and brought a knee to her chest, stretching out her protesting muscles.

“Nice stretch. Need a hand?” Beach Dude called out.

Tamara ignored him in favor of listening to Miranda.

“Just making the rounds, seeing who’s doing what.” A long, slow squeak gave away Miranda’s location. She was in the office. On a weekend. Oh, the horror.

“Oh? And?”

“Rashae finished the Black Widow and mailed it this morning.”

“Finally.”

“I know, right? She’s been bitching about that suit for weeks. Anyway, Piper’s in Chicago. And none of us had heard from you.”

“Piper’s in Chicago? For what?” Tamara sat up. Why hadn’t she known? When had this come up?

“Yeah, it was a last-minute thing or whatever. She says she’s staying super busy. You haven’t talked to her, have you?”

“She still isn’t answering my calls.” Tamara pressed a hand to her chest. The ache had nothing to do with gravity or her boobs and everything to do with her friend not speaking to her.

“You know how she is,” Miranda said.

“I know, it just sucks I can’t make everything better.”

“She’ll forgive you. It’s not like you told Stephen you were her.”

A shadow fell over Tamara. She glanced up—only it wasn’t Stephen.

“Can I help you?” she asked Beach Dude.

“Care to join us?” He thumbed over his shoulder at a pop-up tent his friends were setting up.

“No, thanks.” She smiled and pointed to the phone.

“Okay.” He shrugged and moseyed back to his friends.

“Who was that?” Miranda asked.

“No clue.”

“Where’s your boy toy?”

“Stephen’s still running.” Tamara ignored the boy toy part. Her friends didn’t understand. At least not yet.

“You two getting along okay?”

“Yeah, I’m really glad we did this. Getting out of town together is nice.”

“Where are you?”

“No idea, but I will text you pictures of the place we stayed last night. It was—oh my God, Rashae is going to want to go back there and check into every room to do pictures. It’s crazy.”

“Oh, boy, road trip,” Miranda said without enthusiasm. “You think this one’s going to stick around, or you guys just…hooking up?”

“It’s not a hook up.” Her throat closed up around the word ‘boyfriend’. The newness, the uncertainty of it all was simmering just below the surface. “I really like him.”

“Good. Then I hope it works out. He should come to CosCon, unless you think that’s too much for him? I’d love to meet him.”

“I don’t know. I haven’t exactly shown him any pictures besides the Wonder Woman group shot. I don’t think he fully understands the whole cosplaying thing.”

“Oh, to be a fly on the wall for that conversation. Hey, Rashae told me about the new show opportunity. Yay?”

“Yeah, that’s cool, right? I’ve been trying to watch a bunch of their episodes so I get everyone’s name down right. It’s a bro-show, for sure, but they all seem like decent guys, so maybe I’ll catch a lucky break.”

“They have one guy that does con segments—uh…”

“Samir-something.”

“Yes! He’s really great. I’ve done two interviews for them. Super professional. I’m pretty sure he didn’t even look at my boobs.”

“That’s really good to hear.” Tamara breathed a little sigh of relief. And Miranda was the type to be hyperaware of the kind of attention she was getting, especially with the whole stalker issue she’d faced down.

“You know Rashae wouldn’t pitch you to a bunch of dicks.”

“Yeah, but she’s never met their whole crew. I just…worry.”

“I bet. Everything else okay?”

“Yeah, except Adam keeps calling me. I had to block him from Facebook because he kept tagging me in shit I didn’t want to see.” She sighed.

“He is not…”

“He is.”

“Tamara—I hate this.”

“I knew it was going to get ugly, but at least it’s not me going there, you know?”

“Yeah. Does Stephen know?”

“I’ve told him about most of it. I asked him last night if I should block Adam and he was all for it. He’s super defensive about the whole thing, so I don’t want to give him the blow-by-blow or else he’s going to build me a robotic Rapunzel tower or something.”

“He could put lasers on it. Then it’s a mech.”

“Now…that could be interesting…”

“Hey, I’ve got to go. Keep me updated, okay?”

“Sure.”

Tamara ended the call and rolled her eyes.

What was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she tell one of her best fucking friends she was in a relationship?

Because she was waiting for the shoe to drop. The rug to get pulled out from under her. Something.

This was stupid.

She opened her Facebook app. Things weren’t official until they were on Facebook, right?

Tamara edited her profile, changing her status to
in a relationship
. If Stephen wanted to publicly connect them, that was up to him. She came with a visibility factor he might not want attached to his social media footprint.

She tossed her phone into her bag and sat back just in time to ogle her boyfriend running toward her. His fair skin was pink from too much sun.

“Holy shit, look at that guy,” someone said behind her.

She ignored their banter, the talk, the laughs—because those guys didn’t matter. She gave Stephen her full attention, because he was the guy she was going home with. The one who got to call her slut, and the one who’d fuck her silly later if she were lucky. Not Beach Dude or any of his Sand Bros.

“Done yet?” She offered Stephen a bottle of water and a towel.

“Yeah.” He swiped the hand towel over his face and down his chest. The way he tilted his head was enough of an indication that he was aware of the talk.

He had this sixth sense for unwanted attention. Maybe she’d had it at some point, too, but she’d given it up. She could only hope he would, too someday. Maybe if she gave him something else to think about…

“Want to go for a swim?” she asked.

“Later.” He stretched out next to her, pouring a bit of the chilled water on his chest and shoulders. “You still teach Taekwondo?”

“Only when my brother needs a substitute teacher.”

“Where’s that at?”

“It’d be a bit far for you, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“Just a thought.”

“If you want to take classes, there’s a closer dojo. Not that I’m telling you to not go to my brother, but that’d be an hour and a half drive one-way most times, with traffic.”

“Yeah—no.”

“Why?”

“If I’m going to keep up with you, I need to beef up my workouts.”

She laughed and rolled to her side.

“I don’t know about that. You’ve kept up just fine.” She grinned.

“Barely.” He pushed his sunglasses up and she sighed. His eyes were so unique, so beautiful, she just wanted to stare at them.

“I changed my status on Facebook, by the way.”

“Oh?” He took another long pull on his water bottle.

“Yeah, I didn’t tag you or anything because…I didn’t know if you were okay with that.”

“What’s not to be okay with?” He lifted a shoulder.

“No, what I’m saying is, I changed my relationship status.”

“Oh. Why wouldn’t I want you to tag me? Is this a big deal or something? I’m not a big social media person.”

“Well, people have a certain perception of me, and I didn’t know if you’d want that to touch your professor look.”

“My professor look?”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t. You’re speaking gibberish to me.” He pushed up to his elbow.

“I just mean—some people have bad opinions about me. Possibly your students, and if you don’t want that, it’s okay.”

“First, my students have no fucking business being on my Facebook. Second, anyone who has a bad opinion of you has eliminated themselves from the pool of people I’d want to know, and that’s why there’s a block button.”

Tamara leaned across and kissed him.

He was amazing.

And perfect.

And she just wanted to curl up with him and spend the rest of the day with him.

“So, swim?” he said against her lips.

“I’ll go put on my suit.”

He patted her hip.

All kinds of things could happen in the water.

She grabbed her tote and headed toward the cinderblock bathrooms up by the road.

“Hey.”

Tamara sighed and stretched her legs out a bit longer.

A shadow crawled down beside hers as Beach Dude closed the distance between them.

“Hey,” he said again as he caught up with her.

“Hi.” What was it with guys who thought they had a right to be acknowledged?

“We’re going to fire up a grill, we’ve got some beers. Want to join?”

Oh great, a drunk sausage fest!

“No, I don’t think so.” She stared straight ahead. Maybe she could change and they could wander down the beach—away from the Sand Bros.

“Hey.” He grabbed her arm.

She twisted out of his hold, turning to face him.

“Don’t touch me,” she said.

“Hey, chill, I just wanted to talk.” He had one of those faces, the too-pretty-to-have-ever-worked-for-anything looks that told her all she needed to know about him and his friends. They were trouble. And maybe that was a harsh judgment, but she’d met plenty of his type.

“And I want to pee.” She took a step and he blocked her path.

She could put him on his ass and bloody his nose before the prick knew what happened. But that was the problem. She was a trained expert, and he was a dumb kid. In this instance, without provocation, it would be her fault. Which meant her hands were tied.

“Why don’t you come have a drink with us? Ditch your friend.” His width alone made it difficult to bypass him. The guy made a grab for her hand and she jerked her arm away from him.

Beach Dude was not giving up.

“Hey.” That one word had her shivering.

She glanced over her shoulder at Stephen, her white, sweaty knight, ready to storm Beach Dude into the sand.

“He bothering you?” Stephen pointed at Beach Dude, but his gaze was on her, caveman mode activated. Shit. After their last talk, she could see Stephen’s hackles were up and he was in protector form.

“Stephen, let’s just—”

“No one’s talking to you, fuck face.” Beach Dude’s grimace was everything wrong in the world.

“Leave her alone.” Stephen neatly put himself between her and Beach Dude.

“Stop,” Tamara barked, but both men had that tunnel vision, thousand yard stare aimed at each other.

“Go back to your tower, hunchback.” Beach Dude shoved at Stephen’s chest, but didn’t move him more than a half step.

“Quasimodo, you mean Quasimodo.”