Immediately she told me she’d ride with Helen, and kissed my cheek before getting in the car.
I feel like a dumbass for having no clue who she is, and I brought her on a family vacation. So of course they’re asking me a ton of questions, and I have zero answers.
“I don’t know,” I answer absently, steepling my hands in front of my chin as the driver takes another turn.
When we pass a “Private Beach” sign, only more questions attack my already overwhelmed mind.
“Private beach?” Viv hisses. “Where are we going? Are we going to get arrested? Is she like that weird chick you dated last year who was squatting in empty houses and trying to convince you she knew all those people? You were almost arrested for that!”
Dad grunts, Mom gasps, and I groan. Bora is definitely the type to break into a house. I think. Hell, I don’t fucking know anymore.
“You couldn’t fit our living room inside her entire apartment, yet she has access to a private beach home?” Mom adds, still stuck on Bo’s finances. “This has to be illegal. We should call someone and—”
“Relax, Julia,” Dad interrupts. “We’ll investigate when we get there. Stop assuming the girl is a criminal.”
He shoots a look over his shoulder to me in the back seat, possibly questioning just how well I know my date for the vacation. I might should have listened to my mother about those background checks on girls after all.
We pull up to a brightly lit, fucking huge house. Holy shitballs on firecrackers.
It makes the house we just left look like a shoebox by comparison.
“No way is this legit,” my sister says in a quiet breath.
Several people walk out onto the porch as we approach,
and Viv mutters, “We’re going to jail,” just loud enough to be heard. They all look like they’re wide awake as they approach us quickly, and I almost raise my hands in the air, fully prepared to be arrested.
However, they walk up to us with broad smiles under the heavily lit area. The paved driveway is nothing more than an extension of the road… As though the road was built just for this peninsula home.
“Welcome,” a big man says in a tone that resembles thunder. “I was told you lost your luggage, but we’re here to escort you to your rooms.”
“Five people?” Viv hisses.
Five people just happen to be on hand in the wee hours of the morning… Who the fucking hell is Bo Brendon?
Mom eyes me in disbelief, but she follows one man, while another escorts Viv. There are as many of them as there are of us. Well, almost. Not counting Helen, who is getting an escort from another man. They chat like they’re old friends as they duck inside, and Bo walks up with a poor attempt at a coy grin that is verging on smug.
“Bo, would you like us to show him to the room, or would you like to take him yourself?” a woman asks her from the porch, letting her own smile grow as smug as Bo’s.
I feel like I’m on the outside of an inside joke.
Bo opens her mouth to speak, when a loud scream comes from inside the house. The hairs on my neck rise when I realize it’s my mother, and I break into a sprint as Bo chuckles.
What the fucking hell is she laughing about?
I stumble to a halt when I see my father carefully lowering my mother to a chair in the massive excuse for a living room, but he looks more amused than concerned.
My mother’s jaw is slack as she stares wildly at something.
“I think your mother just figured out whose house she’s in,” Helen whispers to me, smiling as Bo walks up with the same enigmatic grin.
My eyes follow my mother’s as I move into the house a little more, and my breath catches in my throat when I see a mural. A motherfucking mural of the vainest man on the planet.
Vince fucking Jaggons—lead singer for Clashers.
No way…
My eyes dart back to Bo’s, and the mirth dancing in her eyes gives me pause. She said her father’s name was Vince, but…