Hope Breaks: A New Adult Romantic Comedy Read online

That was until the very second we entered the huge outdoor pavilion. That’s when an enormous beach ball roughly the size of a Miata pounded into the side of my head, stunning me and knocking me down to the wet, wet grass.

  I was shaking my head and trying to remember exactly what had just happened when Jake swooped down and lifted me back to my feet. I wobbled a little and held my head for a beat. I had an instant headache, but I was sure that was more from the sudden, ungainly face plant than getting whacked in the melon by the giant beach ball.

  “You okay, Hope?”

  I warmed just hearing him say my name. I loved the way he said my name.

  I nodded and tried to smile, looking up into his deep brown eyes… neither of which were looking back into mine. They were fixed a little lower, at chest level.

  He peeled his eyes from my boobs and gave me a wide-eyed look, and then peered back down to my chest.

  I looked down and found my once pristine, pink, sleeveless t-shirt now not only smeared with a sickly green, but wet and plastered to my chest.

  My bra was one of those sheer numbers—pretty but not made to conceal much when it was uncovered. (So I was thinking ahead a smidge, sue me!) Since it got wet as fast as the t-shirt—and since the water on the grass was cold—I suddenly had two hard nipples showing through my shirt.

  Shiiit…

  I dropped my head and moaned, and my headache ratcheted up to near migraine proportions.

  Jake took me by the shoulders and steered me over to the side, up against the wall of the amphitheater. I thought for a dizzying moment that he was going to push me up against the wall and kiss me… maybe go further…

  Which was both a horrifying thought—public sex—and a turn on—Jake and sex.

  Instead of kissing me, he yanked the old black AC/DC t-shirt he was wearing up over his head and handed it to me.

  Okay, it was my turn to stare at his chest. Broad and strong, and covered in tan, smooth flesh. Just begging to be touched and licked and…

  I shook my head and tried to pull myself together. Yes, Jake was gorgeous. Yes, Jake was even more stunning without his clothes on… I mean, without his shirt on. And YES… I suddenly felt like my body was on fire and all I wanted was for him to smother that fire with his smooth, dreamy naked skin…

  And maybe stoke that fire with his…

  Jake pulled out the blanket we were going to be using on the grass and unfolded it, holding it up so that I was completely hidden by the plaid material.

  “Okay… you’re good to go. Change.”

  Oh… good idea. “Thanks,” I said, and swiftly jerked my own stained and wet t-shirt up over my head. I pondered leaving the bra on, but it was wet so I pulled it off too. Jake’s shirt was black and quite a bit big on me, so no matter what I wasn’t in any danger of showing off my assets again… even if we got drenched from head to toe.

  His shirt was warm as I pulled it on over my bare skin, and soft from being worn often…

  Plus, it smelled like him, which just about made me moan and my toes curl.

  Thank god, it was black and roomy on me…my nipples had gone from simply hard to poke-your-eye-out in five seconds flat.

  I leaned my back against the stone wall of the pavilion and closed my eyes. Things had to start going better…

  Of course, he got to see your boobs—kind of—for the second time, and you’re now wearing his shirt… and he’s bare-chested. Where’s the bad?

  True.

  “Okay, I’m done.”

  Jake dropped the curtain of the blanket and started to fold it back up. I tried not to, but I couldn’t help but watch as his arms and chest—and amazing set of rock hard abdominals—flexed and swelled as he folded.

  Maybe he could come over and fold laundry for me, shirtless, one night?

  Don’t you have anything better to do with a shirtless man?

  Maybe…

  He was looking me over as he folded, and he had a wicked smile forming on his handsome puss.

  “What?” I said self-consciously.

  “Nothing,” he drawled, and then his eyelids lowered like shades on bedroom windows. “You just look really good in my clothes.”

  I felt my spine straighten. He liked the way I looked?

  “And out of them,” he added with a low growl in his voice.

  I gulped and felt my face burn as I blushed.

  Jake held out his big warm hand and I took it.

  “Let’s go find the others.”

  Chapter 12

  THE OTHERS WERE ABOUT halfway up the gentle grade designed for the lawn seating, smack dab in the center of the whole stadium.

  Good choice.

  “Troy!” a jovial male voice thundered over the happy partygoers. I looked up to see a giant of a man, shoulders wide enough that he probably had to come at any doorway not only sideways but leaning down.

  Jake held up a fist in fraternal spirit… or was it a sports thing? Men… who knew?

  We headed toward what seemed like a dozen people who ranged from a decade older than me to maybe twenty-five. Quite the collection of friends.

  Giant met Jake with a fist pump, and then a manly hug, and then he looked down at me, smiling expectantly. “And who’s this?”

  “Mort, this is Hope Jones, she’s Southie’s little sister.”

  I cringed at the “little” part. I was only four years younger than he was!

  “No shit! Your brother was a god. No one could get in more trouble than him!” He extended his huge hand to me and I shook it.

  Jake eyed the others. “They look intense. What’s up?”

  Mort groaned and leered at Jake. “Drunk lost girl again.”

  “No way! The concert isn’t even started yet.”

  Mort shrugged his huge shoulders. “She started a little early, and disappeared practically as soon as we claimed our spot here.”

  “Damn.”

  “Who’s lost?” I asked.

  “Mandy,” they said together, with the same irritated though affectionate intonation.

  Jake said, “She’s almost thirty, a grade school teacher no less, and every time she comes to a concert she drinks way too much and gets lost. Usually takes us about half the concert to find her.”

  “And the Mighty Midget—” Jake punched Mort ineffectually in the arm. “I mean Mandy, is kind of short, so it’s even harder to find her.”

  I looked warily out on the milling throngs of concert goers. I mean, wow… there had to be ten thousand people here already… and we were going to try to find a drunk, lost, short girl?

  Perfect.

  “The girl needs a lojack installed somewhere,” Mort said.

  “I thought you guys had taken care of that this time?”

  Mort rolled his eyes. “Well, yeah. Lea downloaded that app for finding your friends by tracking their cell phones…”

  “She ditched her phone?” Jake asked.

  “She left it in the car.”

  “Fantastic.”

  “I’ll help,” I said, and both men turned and looked at me. “I’ll help look for her,” I repeated. “Does anyone have a recent picture of her, and what was she wearing?”

  A lovely young woman with creamy skin and some freckles appeared alongside Mort and Jake. “I’m Lea,” she said and showed me a picture of a short, curvy young woman dressed like a day glow Pocahontas. “That’s what she was wearing when we got here.”

  At least the feather she had banded at the back of her head was florescent green. That would be a help. And the fact that she was dressed as a native America and not a Minoan belly dancer.

  Jake looked around at the crowd and then up at the waxing sun. “We’ve got maybe a half hour before the sun sets. So let’s get to it. The standard grid sweep, and then return here to see if anyone has found her.”

  “Why don’t we just call each other?” I asked.

  Before Jake could say a word music started to thump out of the pavilion’s sound system. In a heartbeat Brown Eyed Girl fi
lled the stadium, and the crowd screamed and hooted and clapped.

  Oh, yeah… cell phones would be of little use now.

  ***

  I went with Jake as he scoured the lower reaches of the lawn seating. I scanned the floor seating, and was relieved that for the most part everyone was standing pretty still, swaying to the music by their forgotten chairs.

  There were balloon vendors and hot dog vendors, beer vendors, and even a girl handing out free condoms. A human condom vending machine.

  We traveled to the western-most point of the stadium, finding people covertly toking on some hand rolled marijuana and a conga line of topless middle-aged women all sporting the same frog face painted on their naked chests. The frog’s eyes were painted over their nipples.

  I shook my head and resumed our missing drunk-girl search, moving up the hillside, searching pockets of clustered revelers, and winding around the top of the hillside near the fencing. There were beer stands and margaritas to be had. And bathrooms.

  I checked all the women’s rooms and Jake checked the men’s—just in case.

  Nothing. A big, fat zero.

  Jimmy started playing It’s Five O’clock Somewhere and the crowd sang along, dancing and swaying to the music. Everyone was so happy and mellow; it couldn’t just be from the booze and some recreational marijuana. Nope, Jimmy just had that effect on people. His music was major league good…

  And I was missing it! This was so not how I’d pictured going to see Jimmy Buffet play—and with the handsomest, hottest man I’d ever kissed—would pan out.

  Damn this drunk-girl. She needed a leash.

  All my inner grousing stopped when Jake reached out and took my hand, leading me gallantly through a cluster of frolicking twenty-somethings dressed like island castaways.

  Just the touch of his hand made my inner circuitry sizzle and light up like a Times Square neon sign. My heart pumped faster, and my breathing went to straight up hyperventilation.

  An excited squeal bubbled up in my head.

  Jake stopped and looked back at me.

  Oh, that squeal hadn’t been silent…

  I smiled and tore my eyes from him to try and make it look like I’d squealed like a teenage girl for Jimmy. Even though Jimmy was more of a hoot and holler man to me, I needed to play off the squeal.

  I glanced over toward the stage and caught sight of Drunk-Girl a.k.a Mandy.

  Lord, she was short, especially standing between two broad shouldered titans. Just as suddenly as she’d appeared, another giant moved in front of her and she disappeared.

  Jake had already followed my gaze and he grasped my hand tighter and we started off towards the group of obscenely tall men. Without a single hint of hesitation he shouldered right on into the group.

  The instant Drunk-Girl saw Jake she screamed with delight and flung her arms around him. The contingent of giants all stiffened at the same time, and they traded dark glances.

  Well crap. This looked like a fight in the making. Fights might be fun in the movies, but they were usually bloody, painful and scary as hell in real life.

  I didn’t like fights.

  So I did what anyone who’d watched as much “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Sex and the City” and romantic comedies as I had would—I improvised.

  “Oh my god!” I hollered at the top of my lungs. This made not only the glowering titans jerk, but also made Jake and Drunk-Girl jump apart as well. I gave them both the most murderous glare I could summon.

  “I knew I’d find you with her!” I screamed, and then charged on past the now nervous looking redwoods. “You were supposed to go find her, not wrap yourself around her!”

  Jake almost smiled, but bless his heart, he bit his lip and dipped his head like a beaten dog. Mandy was so surprised by my venomous accusations that she seemed to forget that we’d never met before. Her head as well fell as she succumbed to drunken guilt.

  I shook my head disgustedly and reached out and took both of them by the hand, yanking right on past the forest of giants and through a gaggle of shimmying scuba babes in barely-there wetsuits.

  I glanced back once about twenty feet later, to find the forest giants had lost interest in us and had hooked up with the scuba babes.

  Perfect.

  Still, I didn’t risk slowing down our momentum. I pulled Jake and Drunk-Girl through the sea of concertgoers and vendors until I caught sight of the Evergreen we’d been lined up with on lawn seating. Then glanced around until I found the young man with the blue body paint, grass skirt, and silver Cesar crown of ivy on his head. About twenty paces later I pulled us all into the nearly deserted blanket strewn plot where we’d started.

  Drunk-Girl stumbled as I let go of her. She careened out of control and bounced off the throng of concertgoers that surrounded our little plot of space. A couple of Jake’s friends had stayed behind to keep watch on their stuff and their spot. They sighed in unison and high fived both Jake and myself.

  “That’s the fastest anyone has ever found her. Way to go!”

  The other grabbed hold of her friend and started tugging her off into the crowd. “And now we have to go pee!”

  Drunk-Girl, a.k.a Mandy flopped to the blanket covered ground and called out, “Bring me a Madras or a Corona!”

  I rolled my eyes and caught Jake stifling a laugh. Mandy looked up at us both and her eyes became round as saucers.

  “Oh... my… god! I’m so sorry Jake… and I was so not trying to do anything!” That last bit was aimed at me. “I swear, me and Jake are just friends… I would never…” And then her owl-eyes became confused. “Do I know you?”

  “No,” I said, and bent down so I wouldn’t have to scream so loud. “But you owe me. I saved you from a forest of giant trees.”

  Her eyes bugged out again and she nodded her head rigorously. “Giant trees. Oh my god! They would have eaten me!”

  I nodded. “So to repay me, I want you to stay on the blankets. Got it? No leaving the blankets unless someone else is holding your hand.”

  She looked briefly like she was confused, or like she was going to argue.

  “Or the giant trees will grab you and eat you alive… with barbeque sauce!”

  Mandy yelped and pulled a stray blanket up over her head.

  Jake burst into a riotous laugh and grabbed hold of me, pulling me into him and…

  He kissed me…

  Long and slow and soft…

  I lost my breath, I forgot my name—I couldn’t even hear Jimmy singing any longer.

  I popped up on the balls of my feet, wrapped my arms around his neck and licked up into his mouth. My nervous system exploded from just the taste of him, from the feel of his lips against mine, of how our tongues met and entwined.

  His strong arms encircled me and pulled me into him, his hard, warm body the only thing that was holding me to the earth. His bare skin slid against my arms and I was sorely tempted to rip my shirt off just so more of him would be in contact with more of me.

  I didn’t even realize a warm mist had started to fall until I heard Mandy lament, “It’s raining! I can’t friggin’ believe it!”

  Our lips parted and I looked up into his eyes. So warm and brown and beautiful.

  I reached up and ran my hands through his now wet hair.

  “I love it when it rains.”

  Jake smiled and leaned down toward me. “Me too.”

  Just then Mort and the rest of the “search party” showed up, all of them giving Mandy—still under her blanket—a gentle pat on the head.

  “Next time we put her on a leash!”

  That got a couple of surly responses, and Mandy popped her hand out from under her blanket and shot Mort the finger.

  A song all too familiar started to come from the stage, and the crowd began to roar and whoop and scream. Jimmy started to sing about looking for his lost shaker of salt, and the crowd sang along, chanting “SALT! SALT! SALT! SALT!” while pumping their fists.

  Jake turned me around so
I could see the show, his arms wrapped around me like he was afraid I’d get washed away in the gentle summer rain.

  No one cared that it was raining. If anything, the crowd seemed to revel in the gentle misting.

  ***

  I know it probably took a while, but I didn’t seem to notice the walk back to Jake’s truck, the traffic that we must have gone through to leave Tower Amphitheater, or that it was now pouring buckets of rain.

  All I knew was that I was sitting pressed up against the most beautiful, most wonderful man in the world. And that I fit in the bare, sexy nook under his arm like he’d been made just for me.

  Chapter 13

  THE RAIN WAS STILL pouring by the time Jake’s rattling old truck pulled up in front of my house. He killed the engine, we stared at each other for a moment, and then he said, “Race you to the porch.”

  I cheated. The second he said race I grabbed for the door handle and took off running.

  I should have won. I mean, I cheated, I had less distance to run—since he parked with my door facing the house—and he’d have to make it all the way around his truck.

  He must have pulled some Dukes of Hazzard style hood sliding… or just came out the door I’d left open behind me. Whatever. He beat me to the porch and caught me as I tried to plow through him.

  It was a nice catch, his strong, bare arms wrapping around me. I looked up into his melted chocolate eyes, and then my eyes slid down to his luscious, rain slicked lips. I fought very hard not to leap up into his arms and kiss him.

  I was rewarded by a chill breeze slamming into us from the west. I trembled, and my teeth started chattering immediately.

  Jake grimaced… must be too much of a man to show that he was cold too.

  “Let’s… g-g-et inside.” I said.

  Jake quirked an eyebrow, and then slid one of his hands into the front pocket of my jeans. I gulped, his hand searched, grazing something that hadn’t been touched by anything not run on batteries for… well, for a pretty long time.

  I groaned.

  He pulled his hand out of my pocket, my house keys dangling from his index finger.

  Good god, he had great hands.