Pink Shades of Words: Walk 2016 Read online

  PINK SHADES OF WORDS

  A FIFTY SHADES OF PINK ANTHOLOGY

  stories of love and passion by favorite bestselling authors

  Ruth Clampett

  Cambria Hebert

  K.A.Hunter

  Jade C. Jamison

  Raine Miller

  Liv Morris

  Emma Nichols

  Melanie Shawn

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Pink Shades of Words

  Let’s Pretend by Ruth Clampett

  Mr. X – A Short Story by Cambria Hebert

  Indemnity by K.A. Hunter

  Escaping the Cocoon by Jade C. Jamison

  Filthy Rich – Blackstone Dynasty I by Raine Miller

  Hard Luck by Liv Morris

  The Decoy – An Undercover Prequel by Emma Nichols

  Book Boyfriend by Melanie Shawn

  Acknowledgments

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to all the women and men currently fighting breast cancer. Never give up!

  Glorya Hidalgo

  Fifty Shades of Pink team captain

  www.fiftyshadesofpinkteam.com

  www.authorsintheoc.com

  Fifty Shades of Pink team participates in the Avon Breast Cancer Walk in beautiful Santa Barbara, CA.

  You can donate to our team at

  www.avonwalk.org/goto/50shadesofpink

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  Email:

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  Pink Shades of Words

  A compilation of stories to raise awareness and money for

  Fifty Shades of Pink

  Avon Walk for Breast Cancer

  Santa Barbara, CA

  Let’s Pretend by Ruth Clampett

  Copyright © Ruth Clampett 2016 All Rights Reserved.

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Content Editor: Angela Borda

  Copy Editing: Elli Reid

  Sometimes good people do bad things.

  I’m fundamentally a good person, so my big, bad thing from my past chafes me like a wound that won’t heal. It’s truly the only regret of my life. It was a choice I made nineteen years ago. If I could, I’d go back and change it, knowing as I do now that it altered the entire course of my life.

  * * *

  On this sunny April afternoon, I’m sitting impatiently in my chiropractor’s beige-on-beige waiting room waiting to be called up to the desk for my appointment. Picking up a copy of LA Weekly off the coffee table, I mindlessly thumb through the entertainment section when I see an advertisement of a concert for the reclusive musician, Alec Lowell. I push my reading glasses up my nose and read the ad again. I haven’t heard of Alec Lowell performing live in years.

  I scan the ad for information and then glance down at my phone’s calendar. The concert is two weeks from Saturday at the Ace Theater in downtown L.A and doesn’t appear to be sold out yet. I’ve always been a huge fan of his music. Should I go? Could I?

  I’m immediately overwhelmed and determined to buy a ticket. My heart starts pounding and my fingers tremble, tightening along the page’s edge as all the memories of an earlier time in my life flood back to me.

  For a moment I wonder who I can drag along with me to the show, but then I acknowledge that there’s only one person I ever wanted to see Alec Lowell live with, and I broke his heart almost twenty years ago ... the very night we were going to see his show at a small venue near our college campus.

  * * *

  I met Matthew Richardson at the end of my freshman year when he was visiting a friend who lived across from me in the dorm. He was unlike any guy I’d ever known: brilliant, quirky, and more fun than anyone I’ve met since. He had a crooked smile and twinkle of mischief in his eyes, but also had a serious side when it came to his ambitions. He was an engineering major, determined to be an inventor or developer and work for a progressive company with a focus on with cutting edge ideas.

  We became friends at first, having long debates about philosophy and politics, the kind of stuff college kids can talk hours about over cheap beer. I was intrigued by his sharp mind even when I didn’t agree with him. And honestly I had no idea he had any interest in me until the night he insisted on walking me to the library when our debate ran late and it was dark.

  When we got to the library entrance, he turned to me with his hands jammed in his jean pockets, and his cheeks flushed and asked if I’d go on a date with him. My mouth fell open. After a long awkward pause where he shuffled his feet and waited for my response, I accepted. His resulting grin I can still picture in my mind.

  Our early dates are still vividly memorable. With almost no money between us he always figured out crazy things for us to do. He had good friends in the right places, and those friends would sneak us into movies at the theaters they worked at, gallery openings with open bars, and let Matt know about vacationing professor’s schedules. One professor in particular traveled a lot, and when he did we’d recklessly sneak into his backyard and skinny dip in his swimming pool late at night.

  We were silly too, doing ridiculous things like playing miniature golf high and then stopping at the froyo place to partake in free samples until we were kicked out. I had never laughed so freely in my life and I adored everything about him, including his black-rimmed glasses and cowlick of hair he could never flatten.

  Matt always made me feel beautiful, telling me that my pale skin was perfectly peachy when it was pasty, and that my wild and wavy long dark hair made me look like the fierce heroine in his favorite SciFi series. He loved my height and my curves, always running his hands over my body, making me feel sexy when I never had before. I don’t think I fully appreciated how special it was to be so revered.

  He would ditch classes when I had a free afternoon and roommate-free dorm room so we could partake in highly inspired sex, trying everything we could imagine, laughing when it was a failure, and seeing stars when it wasn’t. I couldn’t get enough of him, nor he of me. Sometimes I’d get so worked up just sitting next to him in the library that I’d woo him to his car for a quickie. I didn’t care about awkward car seats and center consoles ... I’d do anything for that feeling of having him deep inside of me. Not that he minded that I was insatiable. He was too...or at least just for me, he insisted.

  By my junior year, and his senior one, we shared a small apartment in student housing. It was run down, but we lovingly filled it with wobbly Ikea hand-me-downs and mismatched dishes. In the tiny living room we hung a large world map and put pushpins in all the places we wanted to visit one day. We had big plans. We were dreamers, imaging our lives when our careers took shape, rewarding us with a life that was student-loan free and didn’t require Top Ramen for dinner when funds had dwindled to single digits.

  Some of my favorite times were when we’d lie in bed late at night after making love. Matt would make up stories that he’d call “Let’s Pretend.”

  “Let’s pretend we get to stay in a fancy New York hotel every year, and do all the things while we’re there.”

  I clapped my hands together with glee. “Like see shows on Broadway and walk in Central Park! Oh and the museums Matt! Can we go to the Met first?”

  “Sure. And how about not just a walk, but a carriage ride in Central Park...nothing’s too good for my girl!”

  I’d swoon and curl up against him.

  Other times his ideas were more outla
ndish. “Let’s pretend we’re getting married on a Ferris wheel at a carnival,” he said. “We could have the entire wedding party and guests in the various bucket seats as we went around.”

  “Ha! My mother would love that ... not! She has motion sickness. She probably wants us to do a hippy thing, barefoot, with flowers in my hair and in a field somewhere.”

  “How boring,” he groaned and I agreed.

  One night he said, “Let’s pretend we’re pregnant with twins!”

  My eyes grew wide but then the idea settled in and I liked it. “And we’re having a boy and a girl! They’ll be mini-me’s like you and I!”

  “How about just mini-you’s. You’re gorgeous,” and then he pulled me into his arms and kissed me. He made love to me slowly and gently that night, every emotion so intense that I could feel our future in my heart and it was so good.

  It’s hard to imagine where we took a wrong turn. What is it about relationships and the slow sinking when love is taken for granted?

  Life and school trudged on, as did the mundane boredom of routine and school pressure. I remember that for my twenty-first birthday, Matt kept asking me what I wanted for my special day. I told him that I wanted to go see Alec Lowell who was coming into town even though I knew it was near impossible to get tickets. Alec insisted on playing only in small clubs long past when his audience had outgrown such venues. The result was extreme measures to get tickets unless you could afford paying top dollar to scalpers.

  I look back now and realize that Matthew was desperate to give me something special because he must have sensed that I was starting to drift away from him. The distancing began in tiny ways, some of his jokes weren’t funny to me anymore, and it bugged me how he never washed the dishes or picked up his bath towel.

  When I’d nag him his eyes would grow wide like he couldn’t believe I cared about such things, and then I’d feel horrible for not loving him the way I should.

  At the time I refused to be honest with myself about what was happening. The truth was another man was casting a shadow on our little world, and his name was Brett Carlton.

  I first became aware of Brett in my Sophomore American Lit. class. He was the kind of guy I’d always avoided and he was everything Matthew wasn’t: gorgeous, sophisticated, wealthy and mysteriously dreamy. He was romance novel swoony, a dark mix of Darcy, Heathcliff, Rochester and Mr. Wickham. He was a literature major like me, who quoted Wadsworth, Emerson and Thoreau like it was the most natural thing in the world.

  He was tall and had a swimmer’s body, broad strong shoulders, narrow hips and the long, fit legs of a man on the go. His wavy thick hair fell around his neck so he was always pushing it off his face, away from his chiseled cheekbones and emerald eyes. I made a point to always sit as far away from him as possible.

  All the girls had a thing for him, and practically threw themselves at his feet, but for some reason in our Junior year he took an interest in me. Yes, shy, understated, and very much in a relationship, me.

  Now I understand that his fascination was that I all but ignored him and thus seemed unattainable. I think he liked the challenge.

  His focus on me started so unexpectedly that I hardly knew what to do. He would come into class once everyone was seated, and then pick a seat near me and spend most of the lecture with his gaze, filtered through his thick fringe of eyelashes, fixed on me until I’d squirm. Then after class, he’d follow me out asking my thoughts on the lecture while coaxing me to join him for coffee.

  I was wary of him but then he’d surprise me with kind gestures. Like the time I showed up to class with a cold and he slipped out before the lecture, and returned with a cup of hot tea and honey for me he’d snuck out of the teacher’s lounge. Another time he jumped to my defense when the pompous ass, Chet Randall, belittled my theory connecting Gothicism with Romanticism in the 18th Century. I guess chivalry wasn’t dead.

  Of course, then the more I resisted him, the more determined he became. I’ll never forget the day he cranked up his game, stopping me in the Classics building and then pressing a hand on either side of the hallway wall to trap me. He smelled like a combination of fancy cologne and freshly laundered sheets. The long waves of his hair tumbled over his forehead and his eyes sparked electric green and dangerous.

  “Let’s do our homework together, Angelina.” He leaned close and brushed his lips against my ear. “... at my place.”

  I bit my lip, suppressing a groan, but there was an ache between my legs of longing for something I couldn’t have.

  “I’ve got a boyfriend,” I replied breathlessly.

  His eyes darkened. “He doesn’t need to know.” He reached over and took a strand of my hair and wound it around his fingers, tugging on it just enough to make my mind spin. “Come on ... you must know you’re making me crazy, girl.”

  The more I resisted him the stronger he came on, sitting next to me in class and then barely skimming the end of his pen along my inner forearm, back and forth, until I shivered with goose bumps while the teacher lectured. He showed up to class one day with a wild rose from the garden next to the English building and placed it on my open journal with a hand-written note.

  “We would be together and have our books and at night be warm in

  bed together with the windows open and the stars bright.”

  ~Hemingway

  “I want you, Angelina,” he whispered in my ear, and then he sat back and watched me squirm. It didn’t take long until I was picturing him when Matthew was making love to me, pressing my mouth shut in between kisses so I wouldn’t chant the wrong man’s name. I was falling away from my first love in the thrill of seduction, and didn’t see that I was making the biggest mistake of my life.

  There was a close call early on when Matthew and I were at a coffeehouse on the edge of campus and Brett suddenly showed up, sitting down on the couch next to me, flashing that killer smile. “Hey, Angelina,” he said. “What’re you doing?”

  My mouth fell open and I looked up at Matt whose annoyance was palatable.

  Matt leaned forward. “Who are you?”

  Brett elbows me. “You didn’t tell him about me?”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked defensively.

  He turned to Matt. “We sit next to each other in English Lit. Renaissance. I’m surprised she hasn’t told you about me.”

  The tips of Matt’s ears turned red. “Why would she?”

  Brett shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve heard I’m unforgettable.”

  “Matt this is Brett, and he’s annoying.”

  Brett placed his hand over his heart. “You wound me, Angelina.”

  Matt’s eyes narrowed. “What’s with this Angelina stuff? My girlfriend’s name is Angie.”

  “Good to know,” Brett said with a smirk. “Well, I’ve got to run. Nice to meet you, Matt and see you in class, Angelina.”

  Matt stared at me as Brett walked away with an expression I’ve never seen before. “What the hell was that about?”

  I shook my head, hoping my cheeks weren’t burning hot pink. “Who knows? That guy is crazy. Just ignore him, that’s what I do.”

  Matt stared at me a little longer as if he was doing a complicated equation. Meanwhile I busied myself by acting like the paper I was attempting to write was the most fascinating thing in the world.

  As the weeks passed Brett got more daring and I slowly got tangled in his web of charm. One afternoon he asked me if I could phone him about the chapters we needed to read since he had to leave class before they were assigned. He wrote his number with a heart around it in my spiral notepad without it ever occurring to me that that simple act could be so dangerous.

  I left him a message with the chapters, and in turn he began stealing my notepad and scrawling lines of poetry on the pages ... some famous, some obscure. The poems he wrote were about unfulfilled longing, and a woman he believed would make his dreams a reality. All the words began to weave together, begging me to calm the savage hunger he h
ad for me.

  I was coming undone over this man and was selfishly thrilled about it, craving and then needing the obsessive attention like it was crack shot straight into my heart.

  Three nights before the Alec Lowell concert, Matt let me know that he’d be working really late in the lab on his final project. As always, Brett teased me, whispering in my ear about coming to his place but this time I shocked him by agreeing to come. His resulting satisfied smile was cocky, which annoyed me but didn’t outweigh the thrill I felt at the idea of being alone with him. In my mind I was going to finally test myself to see if I could resist his charms. I was holding onto my last strands of honor, albeit with a weak grip. My love for Matt was strong which should supersede all, right?

  Yet deep down in my gut, I knew resisting Brett was a test I’d likely fail. His spell on me had become all consuming, taking hold of my heart and deepest desires.

  We rushed out of class and jumped into his BMW. The ride to his grand 1920’s apartment in West L.A. was a blur, as was the elevator ride to his floor. As soon as the door to his place was closed, he had me up against it in the most passionate kiss of my life.

  “Lovely, Angelina,” he whispered as he ground his hips against me and scraped his stubble along my jaw before kissing me again. “You’re finally mine.”

  A wave of sickness flashed through me, the sheer wrongness of him claiming me when I still belonged to Matt. What kind of girl, or more accurately, what kind of cheap girl was I, to even let him kiss me? These thoughts tumbled through me as he took my hand and pulled me toward his bedroom, unbuttoning his shirt and fly before we’d even approached his huge bed.

  “I can’t wait to fuck you. You’re so damn sweet,” he whispered with a rough voice.

  For all of my guilt, it was far outweighed by my desperate desire, a wildfire burning over me. I never had wanted Matt this much, my heart thundering, a desperate need clawing up my back as I imagined pulling my legs wider and wider apart...begging for him without words.