Friends with Benefits Read Free Page B

L. Parsons, production designer of many famous films and TV shows. Parsons had been hired to design all the sets for the upcoming Los Angeles Fashion Bash (known as FAB); Billy seemed to be doing most of the grunt work. FAB opened in two days. If it had been any further away, Lydia was sure she’d be the oldest living virgin in Beverly Hills.
    Where were her friends? Lydia peered around. The pool deck was crowded, but she didn’t see Kiley or Esme. In fact, there were two pools at the Brentwood Hills Country Club, one of the three or four top clubs in Los Angeles. One of the pools was for families with children, one was for adults only. A breezeway connected the two of them. There were also tennis courts, lawn bowling, a gym to rival any in the city, two restaurants plus an outdoor dining pavilion, and an eighteen-hole championship golf course that had hosted both men’s and women’s tour events. If you had to ask how much the membership fee was, you couldn’t afford it. If you didn’t know several members, you’d have no chance of joining. Kat and Anya had been members ever since both were seeded tennis players. Now that Lydia was their employee, she had members’ privileges too.
    As she flipped open the
Kama Sutra
book, a thought struck her. Her aunt Kat was gay. She’d been living with Anya Kuriakova, the former tennis star and now famous coach, for years. Their children, Martina and Jimmy, had been the product of artificial insemination. So what the hell was Kat doing with a book about heterosexual—
    â€œI could show you how to do that,” a male voice offered.
    Lydia raised her oversized white Chanel sunglasses (thank you, Aunt Kat’s closet) and peered at the drop-dead-gorgeous blond guy in sky blue surfer Jams who had just crouched by her chaise longue.
    â€œScott. I distinctly remember tellin’ you that I’m not interested anymore,” she said with a trace of her childhood Texas drawl.
    â€œYou could have changed your mind.”
    Lydia sighed. Scott Lyman was one of the country club life-guards, and a former Olympic swimmer in the backstroke. She’d had a very brief flirtation with him, and considered the possibility that he might be the man to do the deed—in other words,
her
—but soon how luscious his butt looked in surfer Jams lost out to how vacuous he sounded every time he opened his mouth.
    â€œSee, Scott, the thing is, when we met I was perfectly willing to settle for eye candy—that would be you.”
    â€œAwesome,” he breathed hopefully.
    â€œBut I met someone else,” Lydia explained. “He’s just about as perfect of a male physical specimen as you are. Plus, turns out what’s between his ears is bigger than what’s between his legs.”
    Scott gave her a knowing look. “Bummer. Some girls say that size isn’t everything, but that’s bull. Let me show you what a
real
man can do.”
    God, he was just so
dense.
She cocked her head across the pool. “That redhead in the white bikini over there was just checking out your ass.”
    â€œYeah?” Scott craned his head around.
    â€œGo get lucky,” Lydia encouraged him with a little wave of her fingers, and he took the hint, heading for potentially more fertile hunting grounds. Good thing. Lydia didn’t want to get downright rude on the boy. If he pestered her enough . . . well, it didn’t pay to get her angry, either. She’d befriended a particularly powerful shaman back in the Amazon who had herbs and potions that purportedly could make a person do or not do just about anything. While Lydia had arrived from Brazil with only a battered backpack containing a change or two of clothing, she had brought a collection of vials containing her native arsenal.
    Lydia went back to studying the
Kama Sutra
chart.
    Dang. That girl had to be a gymnast.

3
    Esme Castaneda
    As she had been every morning for the past two