No Strings Attached by Randi Reisfeld Read Free Book Online

cache of comfy chaise lounges for her campers. She expertly advised them on applying “lots of sunscreen, first, and always.” While they were following directions, she sashayed over to Boss-boy. “Hey,” she said innocently, bending over a little to catch his eye. “Would you happen to know where I can score some towels?”
    On cue, he shot straight up and removed the earbuds. He had thick black curly hair and a killer smile.
    Katie pointed in the vague direction of her group. “I need them for my … sisters, and their friends.” Admitting lowly counselor status wasn’t prudent.
    He swiveled at the waist to point behind him to the towel cart. “Right there. They’re big and bulky, though. If you need help carrying them, I wouldn’t mind the distraction. I’m Brian, by the way.”
    Standing, Brian looked even better than lounging. He was perfectly proportioned, and Katie found the gentlemanly offer smooth. When he removed his sunglasses, a startling pair of blue eyes twinkled at her.
    Oh, Katie needed help, all right.
    By the end of day one, Brian Holloway, headed into his senior year at MIT, followed by employment in his family-ownedHolloway Fund Management Group, wasn’t even Katie’s only candidate. Nate Graham was in the game too. During her group’s tennis lessons, she’d wandered over toward the marina with a wire basket to see if she could round up the errant balls the girls had shot over the fence.
    Nate, blond, cute, and clever, if a bit on the short side—and just arrived via personal yacht—had offered to help. Extraordinarily friendly, he’d even escorted her back to the courts, and given her suddenly tongue-tied giggly girls a few tips.
    Again, the warm feeling of having done the right thing, against the Lily-pullout odds, filled her. Katie was having an A-plus day.
    Ooops. Points off for Harper. Make that an A-minus.
    The entire way home in the Lincoln Towncar—a freebie Katie had wrangled from the Luxor’s courtesy driver—her (up to now clueless) co-conspiritor had been in her face, demanding to know why Katie hadn’t bothered informing her she’d be assuming Lily’s cast-off job. Had Katie just assumed Harper was desperate enough to go along with any plan? Or was it Katie’s superiority complex, figuring, like, who wouldn’t be honored to hang with her all summer? After all, she was Katie-The-Kick, wasn’t she? All this, and so much more, Harper had shouted at her as the courtesy car sped along the highway.
    Had Harper given her the chance to get a word in, Katie could’ve told her it was none of the above. Throughout theharangue, Katie kept her cool, knowing that no matter how furious the girl was, no way would she back out of their arrangement. Harper would stay the entire summer, be her co-counselor, pay half of the rent, and not be too nosy.
    Katie’s confidence was more than instinct. Katie had something on Harper. It was an unexpected find, an ironic and—when you thought about it—sickening coincidence.
    At her first chance, when Harper went for a bike ride, Katie read through the girl’s private journal. (Getting into other people’s private papers, diaries, documents, and files, was a Katie specialty. That kind of intel came in very handy.)
    But the Harper exposé? Juicy.
    That boy Harper was pining over? The one she couldn’t bear to be away from, even for an hour? Her erstwhile soul mate, the only one she’d ever loved, who had dumped her so suddenly, so violently, she’d felt (as described in the journal Katie read) “slashed open from chest bone to my belly, cut open and filleted, watching all the pieces of me gush out.”
    This boy, the reason Harper had fled Boston?
    He wasn’t coming back.
    Nor was Katie’s own erstwhile bff.
    Luke Clearwater was Lily McCoy’s better offer.

Joss Knows Harper. Only He Doesn’t Know