Any Man I Want Read Free Page B

exasperation. “Carter Parks does not love me.”
    â€œProbably not, but he loves this family and he knows how to play tough. He’ll keep you safe.”
    â€œI don’t need a babysitter, Avery Beauregard.”
    â€œNo, you don’t, Audelia Katrina. You’re a big girl. I know you’re grown or whatever. But you do need an exit strategy and a hiding place where no one can get to you. Carter can and will provide both of those.”
    â€œFine,” I snapped out, already over it.
    â€œI’m sorry, Kit-Kat. I didn’t hear you. Was that a ‘thank you’ that you muttered so graciously, sis?”
    â€œ Merci , mon frère ,” I thanked him through gritted teeth.
    â€œThat’s what I thought I heard. De rien . Keep your head up, sis. We’ll talk later.”
    â€œLater.”
    â€œAnd Katrina?”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œDon’t look at it. It will just piss you off.”
    â€œOkay,” I agreed, knowing full well I planned to look as soon as I hung up.
    Beau used his sternest big-brother voice. “Katrina, I mean it.”
    â€œGot it. Not looking.” I used my most innocent, agreeable voice.
    He sighed. “I’ll talk to you after Carter gets there.”
    â€œWhen will that be?” I glanced at the clock.
    â€œKnowing him? Less than two hours. He was on the jet the minute after I called him.”
    Carter Parks was on his way, a sex tape with me on it was floating around the Internet, and it wasn’t even noon on a Monday yet. “Fine.”
    â€œYou okay?”
    â€œYou know us Montgomerys—we’re always okay.” I hung up and reached for the laptop.

2
Kevin Delancey is not that dude
    Katrina—Monday, May 23—12:02 p.m.
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    I ’d watched it over and over again. The first two times I was embarrassed, shocked, and ashamed. I thought about crying, but in the words of my mother, “What did tears ever solve?” I wasn’t that much of a crier. All the puffy eyes and stopped-up noses just wore me out and took time away from fixing what was wrong. I moved past sadness and watched it again.
    The next two times I was angry and incredulous. By the time I watched it for the sixteenth time I’d zoomed past angry to furious and had vengeance on my mind. Basically, the video had been spliced and Photoshopped to look like I lured Kevin outside to a hammock, laid back on it, took off my top, and enticed him to join me, at which point we had about five minutes of what looked like simulated sex and then the video faded to black. I realized that only the top half of the woman in the video was me; the rest of it was not. Someone with serious video editing skills put this together. And since Kevin had departed less than forty-eight hours ago, he’d either been planning this for a while or had somebody on standby waiting to make this happen.
    Now, it was one thing to sleep with someone and have the world watch it, if that was your kind of thing. It was entirely different for someone to manipulate the facts to suit their revenge fantasies. Yes, I’d slept with him. Twice, in the dark, for fifteen minutes in the privacy of a hotel room. I wanted to scream that from a megaphone. Yes, I’d been topless on the beach, lying in the hammock. But those two things were mutually exclusive events. Kevin Delancey did not inspire me to get freaky or full-frontal on a public beach in midday. At all. And that pompous ass knew better.
    Against my better judgment, I Googled first my name and then Kevin’s: one hundred eighteen thousand new search results with my name attached. I scanned a few of them. I reached for the bottled water and drank some more, wondering if I should pull out the Advil as well. I watched Kevin give a press conference that was uploaded to YouTube, where he had the nerve to stand there with a straight face and say he felt used and betrayed. Really, though?
    I skipped to