Random Acts of Hope Read online

  Random Acts of Hope

  by Julia Kent

  Copyright © 2014 by Julia Kent

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.

  Sign up for my New Releases and Sales email list at my blog to get the latest scoop on new eBooks, freebies and more:

  http://jkentauthor.blogspot.com/p/sign-up-for-my-new-releases-email-list.html

  This book is dedicated to the four little spirits that came into my own life and body, and who slipped away. You are missed, you are loved—and you are remembered.

  Chapter One

  Liam

  The last thing I expected to see when I walked into the kitchen of this Friday night gig was eight vibrators twitching furiously on the tile floor in various states of orgasm-inducing glory.

  The giant black dildo with huge, egg-shaped, bulbous balls at the base was winning. A close second, the pink rabbit with the little clit extenders tried to catch up. Next came a two-inch silver bullet, flailing off to the right but occasionally making a giant leap forward. The other four, a ragtag assemblage of peach and brown flesh-colored rubbery plastic, seemed to cluster around the refrigerator as if stoned, lolling about aimlessly after getting their hands on a quarter bag and a limitless supply of nachos.

  Ah, yes. The famous vibrator races at a sex toy party. I’d heard about this from one of the other bachelorette party strippers, but I’d never actually seen one.

  Check that off my list.

  I assumed that would be the biggest surprise tonight as I hovered behind the crowd in my police officer’s costume, ready to “arrest” the bride and handcuff her to my partner Jack, the other stripper, who would then undress and pretend to get teabagged by her.

  Yeah—I know. It’s pretty programmed, right? But that’s what the maid of honor always asks for.

  And the customer is always right.

  Tonight, though, was full of unexpected curves (and I don’t just mean the women). Because when I looked at one of the chicks on all fours, cheering that big old black vibrator to victory, I realized that wasn’t just any woman.

  That was Charlotte.

  My ex-girlfriend.

  The one who cheated on me, got pregnant with another man’s baby, tore my heart out of my chest while it was still beating and videotaped herself eating it topless, then uploaded to YouTube and made it go viral on Facebook.

  Or something like that. Minus the videotape part.

  A quick step back into the shadows and I evaded being recognized. Shit. Of all the nights for my friend Sam to be assigned to a different party. Jack was my stripping partner and he was too new to do the job alone. Besides, he was a baby face and these cougars would eat him alive. Charlotte practically lowered the average age of the women at this party by five years.

  Scanning the room, I took inventory of the bride and her friends. Second marriage, I guessed. Or third. You never knew once the women were over forty. That meant this scene could get down and dirty, because there was nothing hornier than a perimenopausal woman at a bachelorette party with sex toys, an open bar, and permission to get naughty.

  Nothing.

  “The Determinator appears to be in the lead, ladies!” Charlotte called out. “And you can find the order forms for all the fun toys out in the living room. Twenty percent off on all the twelve-inch models,” she added, winking. The pink Rabbit surged ahead, making a last-minute sprint as my dinner threatened to come up.

  My eyes were only for Charlotte, though. Five years had made her just get more luscious. God damn. Ass and tits that made the air catch in my throat and the blood flow south. Professional hazard, that—don’t ever get a hard-on at a job. The women took it as an air traffic controller’s signal, like glowing lights pointing them to dock right there.

  She dressed professionally, wearing a plum-colored fuzzy v-neck sweater that contoured to the swell of breasts I remembered so well, legs encased in a slim pencil skirt that embellished those creamy hips I could imagine naked with a flicker of memory, lips painted fire-engine red and that maniac-inducing fifties pinup girl look that I’d dismissed as silly when the girls in college wore it—but that made her smoking hot.

  Down, boy.

  God damn Charlotte had to be here, of all places.

  And she had to be so fine.

  “Ooooh, honey, you’re one big officer,” said a sultry voice behind me. A hand stroked my hip and hesitated before sliding a bit lower, filling a palm with my ass. “Arrest me, officer. I’ve been a bad, bad girl.”

  With one look at the source of the voice, my night went from Oh, man to Holy shit.

  That voice? That hand?

  That was my mother.

  “Liam Daniel McCarthy, what on earth do you think you are doing here?” my mother screeched. Mom doesn’t make sounds like hoot owls, and if I weren’t practically gagging from her touching my ass, I’d have laughed in her face.

  Which meant I was in the uncomfortable position of being thankful she’d just touched my ass, because laughing in her face right now was definitely the wrong approach.

  Her eyes combed over me in a decidedly different way. I felt like I was being catalogued by a nun. At a bachelorette party.

  Just then, a stray dildo buzzed over Mom’s foot, making her jump. The purple rabbit sputtered and coughed like it was dying of consumption.

  I kind of envied it.

  “I’m working.” The less said, the better. I tried to pull her aside so this conversation could be private, but Mom had other plans.

  “You’re working?” Her eyes combed over me, knowing exactly what she saw but not letting herself believe it. “You’re a…a…oh, dear God.”

  So I started stripping for money. With a body like this, who wouldn’t? To quote Louise, the owner of the entertainment company where I worked, “You’re six and a half feet of golden boy, muscled delight. Who wouldn’t want to hire you?”

  Mom couldn’t help with finances, so…

  “When did you decide to go into such a depraved occupation?”

  “When did you decide to take advantage of people in my depraved occupation? And by the way, most women who grope my ass like that tip me at least $5.” I held out my palm.

  She slapped it away.

  Bridget, the maid of honor for the bride and the one who hired me, walked over. Round and airy, she looked at least ten years younger than I’d imagined, and she dressed like someone out of a parody of what an art history professor looks like. Wide stripes and bright colors, like she threw the Mexican flag into a blender with a tie-dye t-shirt.

  “Is everything okay, Sybil?” she asked Mom. “Is this man…” Her eyes traveled up and down my body like Mom’s had a minute ago, except Mom hadn’t parted her lips and licked them slowly, then swallowed hard. The flush that crept up Bridget’s cheeks made me wonder how many orders she’d put on her sex toy form that Charlotte was distributing with big smiles to the thirty or so party attendees.

  Charlotte.

  “…bothering you?” Bridget finally added after she stopped undressing me with her eyes. Undressing? Hell, that woman had me tied to a brass four-poster bed with red silk scarves and a Costco-sized bucket of hot fudge by the side of the bed.

  “This is my son,” Mom said flatly. Disappointment oozed out of her.

  “Your son?” Bridget’s incredulity and shock came out so loud and clear that heads turned.

  But not C
harlotte’s. She knew damn well I was right here, and she was avoiding me about as well as you could in the small apartment.

  My blood ran cold at the same time that every muscle tensed, because fuck that. If anyone had a right to be the ignorer it was me. After what she did five years ago…

  A handful of women I vaguely recognized came over to see what was going on between me and Mom. I recognized Janice Knightly, Mom’s old boss at the living history museum where she used to work, and then another woman from the historical foundation where she works now. What was her name? The one with the fake tits and the crooked teeth?

  “Celeste, could we have some privacy?” Mom hissed to her. I took a step away and Mom grabbed my forearm. “Oh, no, sir. You’re not getting away.”

  “I have a job to do,” I said through gritted teeth. Celeste shot me a flirty look, which was weird coming from a woman who was my grandma’s age. Then again, Ben Franklin said all cats are grey in the night. I had a flash of my days on the island of Eden, where a group of cougars had passed me around like a joint at a Grateful Dead concert. I was well Bogarted by the end.

  My eyes couldn’t stay away from Charlotte, though, who was bent over an order form, her pen perched between her lips like she was sucking it off and waiting for the money shot. I grew hard instantly at the idea of those red lips giving my cock a nice ring around the base.

  God damn Charlotte.

  Celeste made a smug sound. I looked down to find her staring at my crotch. “I still got it,” she muttered. Mom shot her a confused look and I went limp.

  “You are not about to take your clothes off for money in front of my friends!” Mom choked out. Her hair was blonder than usual, with highlights that looked like little stripes in her hair. She was forty-seven now—or was it forty-eight? I never remembered, but I was close enough. Her eyes had too much mascara and she looked overpainted, like someone about to go on stage. This wasn’t the Mom I’d just seen at home two weeks ago in Belmont, grilling outside and kicking back with some local chocolate beers.

  When did she become so…cougarish? The leopard print thing she had going on only added to a sense of desperation I didn’t even want to think about.

  “Does Paul know you’re here?” I asked, keeping my voice casual. Bringing up her latest boyfriend was intentional. Fuck if I was going to let her treat me like a child. I was stripping down to my g-string and going home with my hundred in tips whether she liked it or not. She could blindfold herself to get through it, for all I cared.

  I bet Charlotte had blindfolds somewhere in that sample kit.

  And I was hard again.

  “This is what I do for a living, Mom.” I moved my hips in a shimmy, doing my best Magic Mike imitation. Celeste started swiveling her hips in a robotic way, and I wondered if both were artificial. Then she shifted closer to bump up against my ass.

  “Celeste!” Mom barked. Her eyes, the same bluish-green as mine, looked like panicked Os. “That’s my son! You babysat him when he was a toddler!”

  I did a few low-grade pelvic thrusts in the general direction of Celeste, and she giggled like a schoolgirl. “And a fine, fine young man you’ve raised here, Sybil.”

  Mom threw her hands up in horror as Bridget just stared at me. Then I realized she wasn’t staring—she was aiming her phone at me and Celeste, recording away.

  Eh. I’ve had worse things uploaded on YouTube, and I’m sure I’ll have even more in the future, if life goes my way. Can’t be a rock star and not have a ridiculous viral video, right? I hammed it up and came in for some rubbing against Celeste as Mom stormed off and confronted Charlotte across the room, pointing and glaring at me.

  Charlotte still wouldn’t look.

  Oh, yeah?

  I’d make her look.

  Charlotte

  What was Liam McCarthy doing at a bachelorette party, dressed as a—

  Oh.

  OH!

  Liam was the “talent,” as Bridget had called the stripper team coming at 9 p.m. I’d done plenty of sex toy parties, and bachelorette soirees were top on the list for buying all sorts of devices. Especially fortysomething third-time brides, because their friends weren’t, um…shy. Get a group of twentysomethings together to go through the catalogue and you get loads of snickers and self-conscious giggles.

  Gather them twenty years later and you get stories, reviews, and evaluations. These women knew their battery-powered love.

  Liam. Just looking at him made my heart pound so hard it could be a pulse setting on a shower spray. Jesus. I hadn’t seen Liam in five years.

  My hand went instinctively to my belly. I snatched it away like it was on fire. Five years ago Liam McCarthy got me pregnant and dumped me the moment I told him.

  Over the phone.

  And now I was seeing him for the first time since that pivotal call, the second-worst moment of my life.

  The worst?

  When I miscarried in my dorm bathroom at college five weeks later.

  “Charlotte!” Sybil McCarthy’s shout pierced the air. This party was the first time she’d spoken to me in five years. Too much of my past was roaring forward right now. The buzz of vibrators on the kitchen linoleum faded as she dipped her perfectly coiffed head and hissed in my ear.

  “Did you and Liam plan this?”

  “Plan what?” My voice dripped with contempt. I couldn’t help it. My hands started to shake, and a thick wall of white rage filled my chest. She’d never called. Never said a word. Shunned me if we walked past each other at the grocery store or at a town event.

  Me. The woman who’d carried her grandchild for a short time. All too short. A wave of pain shot through my belly, almost folding me in half. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction, though. I forced myself to stand even taller, dwarfing her by a good half foot. Liam had loved that about me—the freakish, six-foot-tall girl was a perfect match for Mr. Nordic.

  Sybil seemed taken aback. She expected meek little Charlotte from years ago, didn’t expect to be challenged. Tough shit, lady. I bled your grandchild out into a toilet in a 1920s dorm on campus without any help. You don’t get any respect from me.

  “Plan…this. It’s quite…” She chuckled without mirth, searching for the right words. “… unorthodox for you to be selling dildos while Liam is the beefcake.”

  “Sybil,” I said coldly, flashing a smile and giving another partygoer my index finger, asking her to hang on, “I haven’t seen Liam in five years. You’ve treated me like a piece of radioactive dog shit every time I got within one hundred feet of you in town. I hardly think I’m about to sabotage one of the biggest parties I’ve had in this business so I can ogle a man who did what he did to me.”

  I walked three steps before she yanked, hard, on my hand. I stumbled, my eyes catching Liam’s just as she pulled me back.

  “What he did to you?” she said hoarsely. “What you did to him was so disgusting. A high school senior who—”

  Liam’s voice cut through her rant just as my hand itched, pulled up nice and tight to deck her.

  “Let her go, Mom.”

  Titters rippled through the crowd. “Mom?” they whispered.

  “I will not let her rewrite history, Liam.”

  His cold eyes took us both in, and he took a deep breath. Thirty sets of female eyes were on him now, and even in my white wall of rage I could see how amazing he was. The boy with so much promise from five years ago had filled out into a giant, cut-marble statue of a man. He exuded masculinity, and even my shallow breaths infused me with his musk, a mixture of soap, aftershave, sweat, and something else that made every part of my body want to press against his.

  He reached up to his neckline and a ragged ripping sound filled the room as his uniform peeled off and he stood there in a g-string that was so tiny it might as well have been Rob Ford’s chances of becoming prime minister.

  And then Liam McCarthy showed me just how much of a man he’d become.

  Chapter Two

  Liam

&nbs
p; “Charlotte? CHARLOTTE?” Sam said, mouth gaping open. “You stripped in front of Charlotte?”

  “Don’t forget his mom, too. Your boss totally owes you hazard pay for that one. Maybe even mental health leave. You’re going to need ten sessions with a psychologist before you can get a woody again,” Trevor added.

  Sam, Trevor, Amy, and Darla were hanging out at a new coffee shop the size of a janitor’s closet. The ristretto pull was too perfect not to come here for macchiatos, even as Darla dumped enough sugar to put a diabetic into a coma into her delicate drink.

  I waved my hand. “Mom wasn’t too bad to deal with. She just stormed out. Never got that $5 tip, now that I think about.” I was pretending to be fine, but my stomach lurched. Mom would tell my dad. Dad would call me, furious, and insist it was time to join the family business.

  Screw that. I’d rather strip naked for old ladies like Celeste than become my father’s bitch.

  “Who’s Charlotte?” Darla asked. Trevor’s arm was slung over her shoulders and I saw it go tense. My own hand gripped the tiny espresso cup so hard I thought it would burst. Sam gave her the side eye and Amy had a pained expression on her face.

  The guys knew what had happened, but Amy… I didn’t know whether Sam told her what I’d told him about five years ago, when she cheated on me and got knocked up by some other guy.

  I decided to keep it simple, because once you got complicated with chicks it turned into a mess.

  “My ex-girlfriend. From high school.”

  Darla made a face like she was in pain. “Ouch. You had to strip in front of an ex? That would suck. And your mom on top of it all? You got some bad karma, Liam. One hell of a long shot to have that happen. What are the odds?”

  I pretended to laugh. It cut through the moment and I saw Amy go quiet, her eyes deep and still, like she was thinking. Uh oh. I didn’t want more questions now. She and Charlotte had known each other in high school and I never asked what she knew.

  “Well, Darla, that’s me. Long shot. If something’s one in a million, you can bet I end up being that one. Too bad it never happens for the lottery.”