Read Online Tall Cool One by Zoey Dean - Free Book Online

it couldn’t be love. Sweet, smart, good-guy Adam and Cammie the viper? Anna knew she had nothing to say about it. She’d dropped Adam. At the time things had been so mixed up with Ben: They were together, then they weren’t, then they were. She had to tell Adam the truth. He was the last guy on the planet who deserved to have a girl cause him pain. But why had she lusted after the bad boy instead of the good guy? Why was nature so perverse? Now she wasn’t with either Ben
or
Adam. So if Adam wanted Cammie, well, Cammie probably couldn’t hurt him any more than Anna herself had hurt him. She really hated that.
    “So Anna,” Cammie continued. “You know all about Adam, in every way. Right?”
    The question hung as the waitress brought Anna her prawn-and-avocado salad and Sam a fruit platter. Cammie and Dee ordered without even looking at the menu—a spinach salad for Cammie, a bowl of the restaurant’s signature squash soup for Dee.
    “Not really,” Anna replied when the waitress had moved off. The truth was, she and Adam hadn’t shared more than a kiss or two.
    Cammie smiled. “Take my word for it.
Insatiable.
Want to know why sandpaper is made out of sand? Check out my butt.”
    Anna wondered if it was National Oversharing Day and someone had forgotten to send her the memo.
    “I’m happy for you,” Anna said evenly, forking a bite of shrimp into her mouth.
    Cammie laughed. “Honestly, Anna. You sound like a woman who has cobwebs growing—”
    “Cammie.
Enough,
” Sam warned. “Don’t be so bitchy.”
    “It wasn’t bitchy,” Cammie insisted, then stretched languidly. “It was an honest assessment of a condition that I hope changes as soon as possible. For Anna’s peace of mind and happiness. Anyway, a girl can’t be as happy as I am and be bitchy. Who has the energy?” She fixed her gaze back on Anna. “Honestly, you quit on him too soon. You can’t imagine what you were missing.”
    You can’t imagine what you were missing.
    As Anna parked her Lexus in front of her father’s house, she wondered why Cammie’s words bothered her so much. She didn’t want Adam back. And if he was happy with Cammie and they were having sand-blasting sex together, fine. So be it.
    Anna glanced toward Django’s guesthouse and wondered if he was home. She could use some of his southern charm right about now. But what about the girl, what was her name? Lisa. Was Lisa still there? Were they together, doing what everyone in the world—Cammie and Adam, Danny and the redhead, even her mother and father—except Anna seemed to be doing?
    She decided to let discretion rule and opened the enormous black door to the main house. The first thing she saw was a note tucked under the Ming vase in the foyer.
    Anna—
    Your mother and I took a drive up the coast to San Simeon. Please think about doing the Las Casitas trip for me, if only to keep an eye on my associate. You’ll miss only a few days of school because of the conference on Friday. You could use a break.
    —Love, Dad
    So what was this, then? What were her parents doing? Did her father want her to go to Mexico just so he and her mother could be alone?
    She lay down on her oak canopy bed and stroked the pink silk quilt that had been handmade by a seamstress in Kentucky. It was beautiful. The whole room was beautiful: hardwood floors dotted with museum-quality, hand-knotted tapestry rugs, antique oak furniture, carefully preserved. In fact, the whole house was as lovely as this room. But none of it seemed to make her father happy. Not happy in the way he’d looked that morning on the couch.
    Maybe there were some people you could never get out of your heart, not completely. It wasn’t love; it was . . . what? Something she just didn’t understand. Like how she felt about Ben.
    Anna did have his number at Princeton. Before she could think herself out of it, she impulsively picked up the phone and dialed the number. One ring. Two. Three. She was glad that he