Memories of Us Read online

  Evernight Publishing ®

  www.evernightpublishing.com

  Copyright© 2015 H.K. Carlton

  ISBN: 978-1-77233-250-6

  Cover Artist: Jay Aheer

  Editor: Melissa Hosack

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  DEDICATION

  To Wild Girls.

  To Pretty Boys.

  And to Daddy's who raise gentle men.

  MEMORIES OF US

  H.K. Carlton

  Copyright © 2015

  Chapter One

  “Your old man is really getting into this human resources shit at work, eh?” Jack, the warehouse manager broke into my thoughts, as I perused the other restaurant patrons.

  I reached for the chilled mug of beer in front of me. “Yeah, I know right? If I hear ‘the human factor is central to this company’s success’ one more time, I think I might hand in my resignation.”

  “You’re the boss’ son. You can’t quit.” Jack chuckled, then took a sip of his draft.

  “I can so. Perhaps if dad had to role play at one of these things, he wouldn’t be so quick to force it on us.”

  “I don’t know, Call, from the rumors I’ve been hearing, you’re going to be taking on your father’s role, right shortly.” Jack lifted his beer as if to toast that fact. “I think there’s a method to his madness of late.”

  “Naw. The old guy’s not ready to hand over the reins to me quite yet.”

  “So, what did you think of the place? Better than the last one he sent us to?”

  “Much. It’s a more reputable retreat. But I’m sure that’s why he sent us up to check it out first. Especially on a workday. At least it didn’t smell like pot when we first walked in, like the last one.”

  Jack snorted. “Some of those people need psycho-therapy, not team building activities.”

  I rolled my eyes in agreement. “I know on the last one I learned a little too much information about some of our personnel. Full disclosure is overrated, my friend.”

  The wait staff finally approached our table. I looked down at my phone, noting the time. We were still about ninety minutes from home.

  “Fuckin’ A,” Jack exclaimed. “We’re gonna get the hot waitress at our table, boss man.”

  “Shut up, Jack. Remind me to add a segment on political correctness in the workplace?”

  “No, seriously, man. You gotta look. She’s your type.”

  “I don’t have a type.”

  “Yeah, okay. Blonde. Boobs. Body that won’t quit.”

  “Well, I do like ‘em with boobs.”

  “But never mind. You’re right, she’s not your type at all. She’s more mine. Don’t look. I saw her first. Dibs. Keep your face in your phone. This one’s going home with me.”

  “Well, hello, gentlemen. Welcome to Kit’s. What can I get you?”

  As soon as she started talking, it was as if I was caught in a time warp. I swung in the direction of the smoky feminine voice that had plagued most of my teenage years.

  “Karis?”

  Before I even realized what I was doing, I was up and out of my chair. Her face lit up right before I swallowed her up in a big bear hug.

  “Call!” she shrieked, returning my hug as she threw her arms around my neck. I closed my eyes and savored the feel of her slim but curvaceous form flush against my body. I inhaled her unforgettable exotic scent. The familiar yet unwelcome feeling of anxiety mixed with excitement shot through me.

  The wild child, I thought affectionately as I held her. Christ! How many scrapes had Trey and I pulled her out of when we were younger? It hadn’t been easy on Trey, being Karis’ older brother, but it hadn’t been easy on any of us. She’d earned the nickname wild for a reason. It was actually a miracle she’d made it through high school relatively unscathed.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

  The question had her easing back so she could look up at me. Reluctantly, I allowed it, but kept my hands at her waist, maintaining the hold.

  Her expressive blue gaze darted about my face.

  She looked beautiful, radiant even, with her long blonde hair tamed and braided in a loose fishbone style.

  “Well, clearly, I own the place,” she quipped, looking down at the standard uniform, white blouse, and black slacks. She filled out the pristine top like no one else. “What brings you to my neck of the woods?” she asked again.

  “My father had us up checking out one of those workplace retreats. He sent us to one before and it was a bust.”

  “Why, your daddy’s never had public relations trouble or mutiny among the employees before?”

  “No, it’s nothing like that, Kare. I think he’s probably paving my way. As always.”

  “Ah.” She smiled softly, nodding.

  “Ms. Hirt,” said one of the male servers, addressing her. “May I remind you, you are at work and hugging the clientele is strictly prohibited.”

  “Whoops, sorry, Rob.” Along with the apology she sent him a suggestive smile, one I’d often been the recipient of in the past. It was meant to distract or cajole.

  But I didn’t like the way he’d talked to her, whether he was a boss or an equal. I stared him down, but slowly eased my hands from Karis’ hips, afraid she might be reprimanded in private later.

  “May I take your order, sir?” She grinned up at me. “No wait, I see you already have a beer there.” She nodded at my place. “If I remember correctly, you need a Red Bull chaser. Right?”

  Smiling in return, I was about to ask when her break was so we could talk without her catching flack, when Jack piped in. “You can take my order, honey.”

  With amusement clear in her eyes, Karis sidestepped me and directed her attention to Jack.

  “What can I get for you, sir?” she asked. Then talking behind her hand but speaking loud enough for Jack to hear, she said, “This one went on the defunct seminar, I take it? He flunked the ‘don’t call her honey section’, didn’t he?”

  Unable to stop myself, I snorted. “I told ya, Jack.” I wandered back to my seat. “You can’t speak to people that way. You set him straight, wild child?” I looked down at Karis fondly as she shook her head at what I’d referred to her as. It was intentional. Jack watched on with interest.

  “Oh, pretty little rich boy.” She replied with her old nickname for me, to the amusement of my co-worker. “I learned a long time ago, you can’t teach some boys any manners,” she said, with a saucy smirk as she ran her hand down my lapel.

  “So how do you two know each other?” Jack asked.

  Karis and I exchanged a fond look. “Call here was best friends with my big brother, Trey, all through school.”

  “Ah, I see,” Jack said, leaning towards her with renewed interest.

  “Karis!” Rob, the other waiter reprimanded her, a little louder this time.

  “Seriously, guys, what can I get you? We need to make this look good,” she said, pen poised.

  “I think we were gonna hit the buffet—Karis, is it?” Jack said, standing to his full height. “Jack Wake.” He introduced himself, hand extended.

  Karis placed hers in his and I had the strangest urge to break their hold.

  “Nice to meet you, Jack. You can call me, Ms. Hirt,” she said teasingly, adding a throaty chu
ckle.

  “Ew, ouch, Ms. Hirt.” He grabbed his chest but watched her with certain male curiosity.

  “Let me refresh your pitcher, so it at least looks like I’m earning my keep around here.” She leaned across the table, her blouse pulling tight over her full breasts as she retrieved the jug. “Be right back, fellas,” she said, and brushed up against me before she left. It was a move long ago contrived to drive me crazy and it still worked. My cock tugged. Hurriedly, I took my seat.

  Jack rounded on me with a knowing grin, his eyes huge with interest. “Did you hit that?”

  In a normal situation, I would have found this line of questioning amusing and a typical Jack comment, but this was Karis and like it or not, this was different.

  “Watch it, Jack,” I cautioned, through gritted teeth. “She was my best friend’s sister, and that is all.”

  “Ah, you poor fucker, I should have guessed. Knowing the kind of upstanding honorable guy you are, you stood by that unwritten dude rule, didn’t you? No sister fuckery. Ah, man, that must have been pure, unadulterated torture.”

  I followed his gaze to my teenage torment. The image of Karis in a tiny blue bikini shimmered in my disreputable mind. And suddenly I was back in the Hirt family kitchen…

  ****

  A memory of us…

  Karis reached around me to take a glass from the cupboard. Her bare skin smelled of coconut oil. “Hello, Call,” she greeted, meeting my gaze. Karis would never be described as shy.

  Just then, the latest reject in the long line of jerk-offs she dated sauntered into the kitchen and grabbed her around the waist, as if showing me she was with him. As if I cared.

  He presented her with a flower, which looked suspiciously like the ones from Mrs. Hirt’s garden out front.

  But it worked. Karis beamed and took the gift, giving it a sniff.

  “Hey, baby, meet you out by the pool?”

  “Yep.” She answered, then fixed her gaze on me. The kid was an idiot if he thought she was really into him. She’d dump him in a minute if I said the word.

  The second he closed the sliding door on his way outside, I said, “Where do you find these assholes?”

  “They line right up, darlin’,” she drawled, then took a sip of water. The look she spared me seemed almost challenging.

  “He only wants in your pants.”

  “Hmm.” She glanced at the flower before tucking it behind her ear. “Maybe if he keeps it up, I might let him in.”

  That day, for some reason the offhand comment pissed me off. “You’re like an arsehole magnet. You know that? You attract the worst guys.”

  “Well, maybe I wouldn’t go out with guys like him if the one I was really interested in would give me the time of day.”

  I looked away, unable to hold her stare. Everyone knew she had a crush on me.

  “And if you say the sister pact, Call, I’m going to punch you in the face. I know for a fact that if you had a sister Trey would be all over her. He’s already fucked Pete’s sister.”

  “Stop.” I moved to the fridge, where I grabbed a soda.

  “Don’t believe me? I met her on the stairs one morning coming up from Trey’s room in the basement. We had the most awkward conversation of my life. And then she snuck the rest of the way up the stairs trying to sneak out before my mom or dad saw her.”

  “Well, just because no one else in this group has any morals doesn’t mean I don’t. It’s too bad you don’t respect yourself as much as I do.”

  She spun around in a cascade of long blonde hair. “Don’t believe all the hype, rich boy.” She walked back to within inches of me, brazen little bitch that she was. But I stood my ground and stared back at her, with what I hoped was a cold, disinterested expression.

  “Besides, you’re not so different. You might not touch, but you look at me just the way the rest of them do. I’m gonna walk outta here and your baby blues are going to go straight to my ass and you’ll admire the cut of my bikini bottoms.” She wiggled her hips and I fought the overwhelming urge to look at the colorful triangle between her legs. “I’ll even put a little extra wiggle on, just for you, Call. And by the time I reach the diving board, you’ll be sporting a full-fledged hard-on, baby, compliments of yours truly, the asshole magnet. And as you stand here fuming and berating yourself that I can make your little Johnson tug like that in the first place, you ponder, what that makes you.”

  She puckered up and blew me a kiss, then flounced outside. As promised, she worked that sweet, toned little backside all the way to the board. She strode to the end of it and pointed right at me, where I stood at the door watching, like an idiot. I couldn’t tear my attention away, like a fuckin’ train wreck. Then she dove into the pool with a dive that was Olympic swimmer worthy. As I turned away, I shoved my hand into my loose-fitting shorts and fisted the traitorous aforementioned hard-on.

  ****

  “Some things never change,” I said, aloud, coming out of my reverie. I was stiff again. Simply thinking of the little minx gave me an erection. Everything about her was carnal, even back then. The way she looked, the way she moved, her scent. The combination was a sensory cyclone that always hit me right where it hurt.

  To this day, when I caught a whiff of coconut, I thought of her and visions of her lovely young body would dance in my head, making me smile. Yeah, I could admit it now, Karis was often on my mind.

  “No, it was worse than simply an unspoken rule between friends,” I said, explaining to Jack. “The group of guys that her brother, Trey, and I used to hang out with, we took it one step further and actually made an agreement. A sister pact, we called it. We weren’t allowed to fuck around with any of the sisters. They all had other siblings and I was an only child. I took the vow thinking it would be easy for me, that it wouldn’t affect me.” Boy was I wrong.

  I think it had been the exact minute we’d collectively realized Karis was going to be stunning when she grew up that Trey introduced the idea. Looking back, though, I wondered if it had more to do with his own discomfort than out of any real concern for his sister. They didn’t have the best relationship, never had.

  “Trey, Brady, Pete, and I—we’d done everything as a foursome. Sports, school, parties, even got in shit together. Most of the time we hung out at the Hirt household. They had this in-ground swimming pool and huge backyard. Trey and Karis are only a year apart, so we shared a lot of the same friends. And our schoolmates and Karis’ girlfriends were forever pairing off and breaking up.” The pact seemed so insignificant now, but back then, we’d lived and died by it. At least I had.

  It didn’t stop Brady from trying to get with Karis, though. I recall, I’d been more upset about it than Trey had when we found out he’d been putting the moves on her.

  I even remember taking the little bastard outside.

  “I never remember agreein’ to that!” Brady had yelled as he’d turned to face me, ready to defend himself on the deck of the Hirt household.

  I refreshed his memory with my fists. As I was teaching my buddy a well-deserved lesson, he yelled something that stuck with me. “As if you can keep your eyes off her! I’ve seen the way you look at her!”

  “Yeah, but I’m keepin’ my hands off her, like we promised! And you’re gonna stick to that bargain, too!”

  The hardest thing I’d ever done in my life was keeping my hands off Karis. And if I was honest with myself, sometimes, I couldn’t. It was way too difficult and she lived to drive me to my limits, of not only my resolve but my very sanity.

  “Wow. Pure torture,” Jack commiserated while we watched her from across the room.

  “You’ve no idea. And she was hell on wheels, man. A real party girl.”

  “Mm, she looks like she’s alotta fun.”

  Fun, she could be, but a lot of the time she needed rescuing. “The guys and I were forever dragging her out of one scrape or another. Whether she was drunk at a party or going through a bad break-up with the next boyfriend in a long string of jack-
offs she went out with.” I was giving him a horrible impression of her and I wasn’t sure why exactly. “They never let her go without some kind of drama. And there were the jealous girlfriends who basically wanted to rip her hair out because of the way she looked and the way she liked to tease the guys. But she could also hold her own with the other girls. She had this innate way of putting them in their places with a snotty look or a well-placed barb without any punches being thrown. However, there were those nights, too.”

  “Here we go, boys.” Karis returned with a new pitcher of beer, although I had no intention of consuming any more. One of us had to drive home. I did take the Red Bull. “Help yourselves to the buffet whenever you’re ready. The plates are there and warmed. Enjoy. Give me a holler if you need anything else, pretty boy,” she said with a wink.

  “Thanks Kare.” It was obvious she was trying to be all business, except for the nickname. But it didn’t bother me. Not anymore. Perhaps the reprimand had come after all.

  I noted Jack and I weren’t the only patrons watching her walk away.

  We hit the buffet and as we ate Jack continued to pump me for information.

  “So you never dated her. But you both seemed generally surprised to see one another here. Like you haven’t seen or talked for a good while.” Jack shoveled a large scoop of mashed potatoes and gravy into his big yap.

  “No, we didn’t date.” We’d been in plenty of intimate situations, but I didn’t elaborate. “Yeah, when the boys and I went off to college, she still had senior year of high school to finish. And after that we lost touch. She escaped town the year after us and she hasn’t looked back. She barely even visits her parents, that I know. I didn’t even know she was working here. I thought she was going to school. Maybe she is. This is a college town. I remember seeing pictures on social media of her at frat parties.”

  “You still talk to her brother?” Jack wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.