"Yeah, but what about her?"
"She's shy. I met her at one of the staff meetings. I said hello, and she stared at her shoes. Probably because I'm so intimidating."
"Probably," Wyatt agreed ironically. Patrick was pretty much the least intimidating guy on the planet, which was why he worked the member relations desk three times a week even though he was barely eighteen. "But why's she working at all? What are her hours? Do you know what she likes?"
"Because her father insisted that my uncle give her a job, too," Patrick began, counting his answer out on his fingers.
"Pretty much eight to five. And I really don't know." He cocked his head as he considered something. "I know she watches her brother play tennis sometimes when she has free time. So she either likes him or she likes tennis."
"Tennis," Wyatt muttered, nodding thoughtfully. "Okay. That's good to know."
"Good?" Patrick said. "I don't know about that. Because if good means you're thinking about asking her out, I think you should just back away slowly and find someone else. She's not worth the trouble."
"Yeah? Why?"
Patrick shrugged. "You've seen her. The girl's too shy. It's the summer, dude. You'll barely get to first base before she moves back home and you head to Boston."
"It's not just about sex."
"Yeah? Then you're doing it wrong."
Wyatt rolled his eyes. Patrick might like to talk big, but he was more bluster than action.
"Besides," Patrick continued, "from what I've seen, her dad's pretty strict. Like he walked out of a nineteen-fifties TV show. Probably why she doesn't talk to the guys. Or really to the girls, for that matter. Just forget about it. Seriously."
It was good advice, and Wyatt even tried to follow it for a few days, forcibly pushing her out of his thoughts and going out of his way to not be anywhere that she might be working. It even worked. Sort of. But then he'd catch a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye, and she'd enchant him all over again.
Soon, he realized that he was finding ways to be around when she was finishing her shift. He'd offer her a ride, and she'd repeatedly turn him down. Politely and sweetly, but also firmly.
He also found ways to be around when she was starting her shift. That's when he'd offer to bring her a coffee. Again, she always said no.
He tried again and again, sometimes suggesting a coffee, once even asking if she wanted to play a game of tennis after her shift. "I can't," she said. "I have to get home. Besides, I'm horrible at tennis."
"Right," he said. "Me, too." That was a blatant lie-he was actually pretty good at the game-but she'd rattled him. And he crossed tennis off the list.
After a full week of trying, he started to give up. She hadn't said as much, but considering what Patrick had said about her dad, Wyatt assumed she wasn't allowed to date. Or maybe she just didn't want to date him. Maybe that was even what he found so attractive, the fact that she didn't seem to care in the least who his family was.
The day she said, "no thanks, really," before he'd even asked her about a coffee was the day he started to worry that he was crossing into stalker territory, which was really not the vibe he wanted. He made a point of backing off. No sense acting like a douchebag, after all.
He started spending more time with Patrick. And then Grace joined them, and she was most definitely interested in him. She sat a little closer than necessary. She brushed his arm when she laughed at his jokes.
She also talked incessantly about his family. His sister and her cooking show. His mother, with her screenplays and novels. His grandmother, with her Hollywood pedigree and all those lovely award statues. The family mansion in Beverly Hills. The twenty-thousand square foot summer house in Santa Barbara. The chalet in St. Moritz. The family legacy. The studio Wyatt's great-grandfather had founded. And on, and on, and on.
All stuff that had nothing to do with him.
All stuff he really didn't want to talk about.
But at the same time, he was a guy, wasn't he? A seventeen-year-old guy with all the raging hormones that came with it. And maybe he had more discipline than some of his peers, but he wasn't a saint, not by a long shot.
So when Grace came to him when he was leaving the club one Friday night and told him her car wouldn't start, he did the gentlemanly thing. He offered her a ride. And when she offered to use her fake ID to buy some beer as payment for the lift, that seemed the polite thing to do. And when she offered to go down on him . . . well, he was a guy, after all.