Forty minutes after the phone call, my army buddies arrived with both Miranda and Emma in tow. We were soon all out by the pool in our swimming costumes. Miranda looked stunning in her tiny red bikini and Emma was elegant in her more modest black one.
"Hey Jack," Miranda said, taking her first plastic glass of beer from Mitch. "How old is Stacy now?"
Stacy was a topic of conversation I would have preferred to have avoided around Emma. There was just something about her that made me uneasy; almost as if I was an open book to her. "Eighteen," I said in an off-hand tone of voice, hoping to sound disinterested.
"Does she still compete?"
Damn. "Yeah, she does. She has a competition sometime in the middle of this week. Wednesday, maybe."
Emma was lying on one of our sunloungers and turned her head my way. "She competes? What at?"
I didn't know whether not being able to see her eyes behind her dark sunglasses was a good thing or a bad one. "Gymnastics. Stace is pretty good."
"Oh? I used to compete in the gymkhana when I was her age."
Trying to deflect the conversation into other areas, I plastered on a look of interest. "Really? Did you have your own horse then?"
She smiled and it was dazzling, making a warmth spread in my chest. Jeez, she was beautiful! "Actually, I had several. Daddy owns a couple of stud farms and likes to spoil me."
Liam perched on the bottom edge of her lounger and nudged her knee, "Tell them what Daddy bought for you this week."
She scowled at him. "Stop bragging honey. It's vulgar."
He shrugged his shoulders. "How can I be bragging if it is you who got the sports car and it wasn't even your birthday?"
"I told you he likes to spoil me. I'm still his little girl to his eyes and he was in a good mood."
"Hell," I said, still not being used to just how immensely wealthy Emma's family were. "I wish my folks could afford to spoil me like that. What put him in such a good mood?"
She used one hand to pull her sunglasses down her nose a little so that she could peer over them and look me directly in the eye. She held my gaze for a moment longer than was comfortable before pushing her sunglasses back up her nose, "I have no idea."
"Fuck me!" Cooper hissed, staring past us, so I twisted my head around to see what he was staring slack jawed at.
It was like a tide of nubile teenage flesh flowing out of the house. Stacy had said that if my friends were coming over she was inviting hers, but I wasn't expecting this. The noise of their chattering, giggling and laughing was considerable but I barely heard it as the lithe, sylph-like bodies strolled into the sunlight clad in the wispiest bikinis imaginable. Slim legs; firm, toned stomachs; small breasts; flowing hair and pearl white smiles flooded the patio and bunched around the near end of the pool. There were about eight of them, but it was almost impossible to snag my eyes away from all the bare skin to be sure.
"This is my dumb-ass brother and his friends; ignore them if you can," Stacy chirped over the constant buzz of their talking.
The brat looked glorious in her tiny yellow bikini. True, she had almost no womanly curves on her child-like body, but she did move with the sensual grace that made her a natural gymnast. Her long blonde ponytail curled over her left shoulder and she squinted in the bright sunshine as she stared defiantly at me.
"Can't you and the pep squad do something indoors? We're trying to have an adult party here and could do without a bunch of vapoured kids," I told her.
"We're not kids," she reminded me. Like I needed that with all the flesh on show! "As for vapoured, I think the word you meant was vapid. However, 'cause they don't print dictionaries with centrefolds and staples, I can understand you getting it wrong."
"Fuck off, Stacy."
She grinned because it was clear her barbs were getting to me. She really did love to pit her wits against others, and usually won. The bitch. "Your verbal flexibility astounds me as always, Jack, but we have as much right to use the pool as you do; although granted your sweaty gorilla mates do need to wash off more than us." She made a show of pinching her nose and wafting a hand in front of it.
"Fine, but don't think you're getting any of our beer," I sulked. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Cooper in the act of handing a plastic cup full to a very pretty young thing with hair so blonde it was nearly white. "Hey!"
He turned to me and shrugged. "I paid my share of the money, One-shot, so if I want to give this cutie some, I will."
"Yeah, don't be such a tight ass, Jack," Miranda added.
"Don't you start Miranda, 'cause sure as shit you didn't put up any money for the keg."
"No," she admitted, "but Mitch did and we share everything, don't we honey?" He looked like he wanted to agree with me, but knew it was best not to put Miranda in a mood if he was hoping to get laid, so nodded. Traitor.
"Sod it!" I snapped and stalked over to sit beside Emma.
The gymnast team dissolved into girlish giggles, laughter and bubbling chat as they all spoke at once. It didn't help my mood to see how beautiful they all were, with slim, athletic figures that had only just crossed into adulthood. It was like a fantasy come to life. There was a couple of sweet blondes, a girl with raven hair so dark it seemed to be tinted with blue highlights, and even a delicious redhead who had a nose dappled with the cutest freckles imaginable. All this young flesh was barely contained in ribbons that pretended to be bikinis and I had to tear my eyes away.
"Let them enjoy themselves, Jack," Emma said, soothingly. "It's not long since we were that young and a beer was the ultimate way to show how grown up we were."
"Emmie," Tank-boy chuckled, "One-shot ain't ever grown up."
I couldn't help but smile at that. "This, coming from you? Thanks, Liam." I sighed and leant back against the small, three brick high border to one of mom's flowerbeds. "It's just that the beer will not go as far with eight others drinking it."
"And that's a problem?" Emma asked, removing her sunglasses with a look of concern.
"Huh? No," I replied, a little too quickly.
"One-shot gets rather possessive about his beer," Cooper told them, dropping his bulk beside me. "He's an alcoholic."
"What?!" I gasped. "No I'm fuckin' not! I just like a drink, that's all. What's wrong with that?"
