Earning Edie (Espinoza Boys #1)

  Earning Edie

  Copyright 2016 DJ Jamison

  Published by DJ Jamison – Smashwords Edition

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Sneak Peek: “Catching Jaime”

  About DJ Jamison

  Other books by DJ Jamison

  Connect with DJ Jamison

  Acknowledgements

  Stepping off the ledge and onto the blank page can be a scary prospect. This book is a long time coming, and I couldn’t have done it without the support of my husband, the many reassurances from other writers and the great insights from my beta readers.

  Chapter 1

  EDIE

  Well, my parents did it again.

  They managed to turn what should be a happy occasion into another crapfest.

  Sitting on a folding chair under the glaring sun, my hideous yellow gown soaking up enough heat to power a small village, I couldn’t muster much excitement about high school graduation. It was a stepping stone to our future, a milestone in our lives, blah blah blah.

  To my right, Jessica Mallick flirted with Brian Morris while handling dueling text messages from her friends. Apparently, she’d made out with someone last night and was now strategizing about how to “catch” him.

  Considering at least half the senior class would be leaving town when summer was over, I didn’t see the point. But when it came to high school girls, I was usually the exception, rather than the rule. I hadn’t had a boyfriend yet. And no, I wasn’t a lesbian, even though my cousin Daisy insisted on asking me that question every other year when I saw her for Christmas.

  Still, I admired Jessica’s multi-tasking. Sitting directly under the sun on Ashe High’s football field, I was too miserable to focus on anything, much less two-way texting and one-way flirting.

  I sweltered under the polyester gown, my skin growing sticky with humidity. Lifting my thick brown hair from my neck to get a little air moving, I snuck another peek at her phone to pass the time.

  Another text message: “Doesnt he have gfriend”

  “Not 4 long,” Jessica sent back.

  Charming.

  The phone chimed with a return text. “You take Carlos; I get Jaime.” Followed by a winky face.

  I knew those names.

  Carlos Espinoza and Jaime Harris ran with the popular jock circle, pretty far from my more academic group of friends. My closest friend, Lily Brown, sort of surfed between the two circles, making friends with everyone, and she’d been obsessed with Carlos all four years of high school.

  Watching him run through girls like soda pop while my awesome friend pined after him made me instinctively dislike him, but Lily had already promised I was going to his graduation party tonight, even if she had to drag me screaming. Lily’s promises often came across more like threats, but I was used to it.

  “Lily!” I called across three rows so she could hear me where she sat with the other B names.

  She turned, her blue eyes squinted against the bright sunlight.

  “I don’t see them,” I said, hoping she’d take my meaning.

  Her mouth dropped into a grimace, and she craned her neck to scan the crowd gathering in the football bleachers.

  I watched her, rather than the crowd, tired of scouring the bleachers for some sign of my absentee family.

  My parents had never been what you’d call good at the parenting thing. They were divorced, which you’d think would mean double the presents and birthday parties. Not so much. Instead, they each shoved parenting responsibilities at each other, and no one picked up the slack.

  Instead of two presents, I often got no presents.

  They hadn’t attended parent-teacher conferences in ages, which wasn’t that big of a deal. I made good grades anyway.

  They’d also skipped my high school band concerts, which was a little harder to swallow. I’d eventually given up the clarinet, so it hardly mattered now. Only I sometimes wondered if I might have kept playing if I’d had someone take an interest. I suspected musical genius wasn’t in my genes, even with an enthusiastic parent in the crowd, but I’d never know for sure.

  They’d even forgotten my birthday one hectic year.

  But skipping my high school graduation. Really?

  A smile lit up Lily’s face and she waved wildly to the crowd. I jerked my head around, hope surging.

  My eyes landed on Lily’s brothers and sisters, who waved enthusiastically from the crowd, and my heart settled back into its steadier, if disappointed, rhythm. Figures.

  She had a ginormous family, and they were all there. Her parents; her two older brothers in college; and her three sisters still in junior high and high school. It made me wonder where the heck they were all sleeping this summer.

  Lily got annoyed by her huge family, but I envied her. There would be plenty of cheers when she crossed the stage.

  I’d give anything to have someone in my corner like that.

  Thirty minutes later, I shuffled off the stage — after a rousing speech about how we were all persevering like our mascot the Pioneers and the added of humiliation of being called Eddie Mason – to find someone had shown up for me after all.

  “Look!” Lily pointed into the flow of people that now swarmed the graduates with congratulations.

  Tequila shoved her way to us through the crowd, grinning widely. That girl could rival Lily for the best smile ever. It stretched across her face bursting with uncontained joy.

  “You did it, Eeds!” she squealed and pulled me into a hug.

  Somehow, I ended up squealing and bouncing up and down with the 13-year-old I mentored. I was supposed to be a model for at-risk youth, but sometimes it seemed like Tequila was the one teaching me about life. My parents hadn’t made it, but Tequila made the effort when it was anything but convenient for her.

  “You didn’t have to come. How did you get here?”

  Tequila shrugged her bare shoulders above her tube top and said “bus” before popping her bubble gum. She’d paired the bright purple tube top with tight white shorts.

  “And what are you wearing? Are you trying to get knocked up?”

  Tequila rolled her eyes, used to my mother hen act.

  “For real, Edie? I know enough about sex to know you don’t get knocked up just because you look good.” She turned to Lil and gave her a hip bump. “Am I, right? Hmm?”

  Lily laughed. “You’re right,” she said, earning a glare from me. “So, you want a ride home, Vodka?”

  “Har-har,” Tequila said, used to Lily’s joke of calling her by every liquor except her actual name. “It never gets old.”

&n
bsp; Lily gave Tequila a ride home and dropped my at my job, Jumpin’ for Joy, before heading home.

  Technically, I had the day off to “celebrate” my big day. I opted to stop by, and see if I could catch an extra shift. Dad had been avoiding the tuition talk, and I was getting a bad feeling about how much financial support I was going to get.

  My boss Joy took one look at my face and enforced “bounce therapy,” a term she’d coined for making me go jump in the bouncy houses we managed.

  “You need to bounce the blues right out of you, missy!” she scolded playfully, pushing me toward the nearest fire engine red inflatable. “Today is your day. I won’t let you work. Besides, the place is practically empty.”

  She had me there. She did a brisk business on the weekends and through birthday parties, but late afternoon and evening was always slow. So, I did as ordered, and reluctantly kicked off my shoes and started jumping.

  Between Tequila’s surprise visit and Joy’s enforced bouncing, I felt lighter than I had since I realized my parents weren’t going to appear at graduation. I was almost in the mood to celebrate.

  Maybe I would go to that party with Lily.

  NICK

  I’ve been celibate more than a year. For a guy, that’s like, forever.

  The reason for my celibacy? The green Prius idling in my apartment parking lot. Or rather, activities with the driver of the Prius. I like cars, but not that much.

  I ducked down, my palms sweating and curse words pouring from my lips. I couldn’t handle seeing Elana right now. Or, well, anytime, if I was being honest.

  My sister-in-law must have been in town for my cousin’s graduation. I’d missed the ceremonies — and a run-in with her, thankfully — because of a last-minute news meeting at work. A news meeting that was anything but good news.

  My column was on the chopping block unless I improved my readership in the next eight weeks. And that column was everything to me. It was my ticket to syndication in larger newspapers, and maybe even a book someday. But only of it was a success, and I was determined it would be, whatever it took.

  It was kind of stupid to think I could hide from Elana. Besides being bright orange, my 1969 Dodge Charger was a distinctive classic car, and one I’d spent countless hours working on in Elana’s garage last year. She’d be sure to recognize it.

  I smashed the gas pedal to the floor.

  The engine revved loudly as I sped up — a feature that usually revved my ego, but today made me cringe — and the wheels squealed as I took a corner too fast.

  My cell phone rang before I’d cleared the next block.

  Elana.

  Grimacing, I let it go to voicemail.

  I didn’t know how long Elana would hang around in the hopes of cornering me. I could go to Mama’s house, but there was always the possibility she’d show up there. Elana had gotten even closer to Mama since my brother died, which made me all kinds of nervous considering the secret we were keeping.

  We’d made a stupid mistake. One that could rip out my mother’s heart.

  It was every bit the cliché Jerry Springer scenario you might imagine.

  My brother Gabriel had been traveling a lot for work, while I’d been spending a lot of time working on our project car in his garage. Hanging out with his wife. His lonely wife.

  It doesn’t take much to add two and two.

  Gabe and I were supposed to restore the Dodge Charger together, but like Elana, I was feeling his absence. I spent hours over there, working on the car and eating the dinners she made for me. We talked, and we drank wine, and we watched movies together.

  Then it happened.

  One hook-up. One impulsive fall into bed. One betrayal that couldn’t be undone.

  And … hell, there were no excuses to be made. I fucked up. Big time. And there was no taking it back.

  The phone stopped ringing, only to start up again. Fuck my life.

  I drove aimlessly, gritting my teeth until the phone went silent once more.

  Blessed silence filled the car. Elana had given up on reaching me, for now.

  I should just man up and talk to her, but what was there to say? She only reminded me of our indiscretion. Of my brother, and the fact I could never make it right with him.

  Gabe died in a car accident before I could even think about coming clean and asking for forgiveness. Or at least a good ass-kicking. That might have assuaged the guilt somewhat.

  With him gone, and the chance for amends gone with him, I wasn’t sure I’d ever outrun the guilt.

  Still unsure of my next move, I drove aimlessly. I needed a place to settle in and work. Shoving the guilt aside, I concentrated on the revelations of today’s news meeting.

  I’d been doodling in my notebook, drawing a caricature of my managing editor, Tanya Nelson, as a blowfish shouting at a bunch of distracted guppies when Sean flicked my pen.

  My head had shot up to see the blowfish herself staring me down, brown eyes narrowed in annoyance. I quickly flipped my notebook to a fresh page before she spotted her caricature.

  “What?”

  “You’re quite the attentive reporter,” she said dryly, drawing a few quiet laughs from the staff. My mouth opened, my mind whirring through potential excuses for my distraction, but she continued on. “We’ve had to cut a reporting position.”

  My mouth snapped shut, and I cast an anxious glance around the table. No one was missing. Except Shirley, but Shirley always came in late because she lived on a farm an hour from town. It had to be Shirley … Tanya wouldn’t actually lay me off in public, right?

  “That means the rest of you have to shoulder some extra responsibility,” Tanya added, with a meaningful look around the table. A look that said, “Yes, I will be giving you extra work, and no, you won’t be getting any perks in return.”

  A wave of relief had hit me. I still had a job. As for the reporting, who cared? My job was to write columns and meaningful features, not cover the daily grind.

  “Nick, you’ll have to pick up some extra stories.”

  Relief, gone. “But my column—”

  “As I was saying when you drifted into la-la land, we’re considering retiring your column, so you can report full time.”

  “WHAT?”

  I’d shot from my chair, heart pounding. I’d worked my ass off, done the hard sell to get the damn thing started — and they wanted to discontinue it, already?

  Even though I’d argued hard for my column, Tanya hadn’t budged much, outside of giving me an eight-week window to convince her to save it.

  To do that, I needed a kick-ass column each and every week for the next eight weeks, and I had until tomorrow afternoon to turn in the first one.

  Gotta love being a journalist in the era of dying newspapers.

  My cousin’s house caught my attention. I’d turned down Carlos’ street on autopilot, but it was as good a solution as any. My aunt had an open-door policy for family, and I could kick back in their hot tub after I put my brain through the ringer.

  Chapter 2

  EDIE

  I looked out the car window to get a better view of Carlos Espinoza’s house.

  It perched on a hilltop impressively, and I could just see the kidney-shaped pool as Lily turned onto a gravel drive that led up to the house. Big columns supported a front porch and put me in mind of the Southern verandas I’d seen in movies.

  I knew Carlos lived in this swanky Northwestern neighborhood, but I’d never been inside any of the homes here. Unlike most of our graduating class, I’d never attended one of his parties.

  His house was positioned on a large corner lot, with a huge, perfectly manicured lawn. Tonight, cars parked haphazardly along the side of the drive and up on the lawn, giving me the feeling Carlos’ parents weren’t going to be too pleased when they came home. Then again, he threw these parties often enough they must be okay with it. I didn’t understand that, but admittedly, I didn’t understand much about parenting. I’d avoided my own parents since the gradu
ation ceremony.

  Lily blared the car horn and waved frantically through the car window at another group of friends. A loud whoop echoed back, and giddy laughter drifted on the breeze.

  “Oh yeah, this is going to be that kind of party,” Samantha said gleefully from the front seat.

  “What kind of party?” I asked guardedly.

  “The best kind,” she answered cryptically.

  I decided not to ask exactly what she meant by that, but now I was a little concerned I might be out of my depth.

  Generally, I skipped the party scene, preferring a quiet movie with friends or a night in reading when I was alone. Lily had given up on dragging me to parties years ago, but she’d insisted graduation required a celebration.

  The car lurched to a stop as Lily found a spare patch of grass to flatten, and I unwound myself from the cramped backseat with a sigh of relief. Carrie and Kelly Williams climbed out behind me; the twins had been noticeably quiet on the trip over, only whispering to each other. But they’d always been their own super duo, giving others only brief glimpses into their lives.

  The group straggled up to the house in a disorganized line, and I hung back, while Samantha threw herself into the center of things, grabbing the nearest available guy and hitting the dance floor. Looking into that mass of twisting bodies weaving around furniture — and occasionally tripping over it — I wanted to turn around and run out the door.

  “Let’s get some drinks,” Lily suggested, as if she sensed my flight instinct kicking in.

  She grabbed my wrist and dragged me to the kitchen. I narrowly dodged an elbow to the face and tripped over not one but two sets of feet on the way there. After that, I stopped trying to track our path and watched the ground for obstacles.

  “You kind of know your way around here, don’t you?” I asked suspiciously once we’d reached a bubble of space next to the kitchen bar.

  “Maybe,” Lily smirked as she mixed sprite, vodka and some purple concoction into a glass. “Here, take a drink.”

  It was obvious Lily wasn’t going to spell it out for me. But I had a feeling she’d been hanging out with Carlos before tonight. I had hoped she’d move on now that we’d graduated, but I guess I was wrong. She’d been crushing on him for far too long to give up now.