America’s Geekheart Read online

  I like my house.

  And it’s a big damn pain to change your name on the down-low. Maybe I should skip that step and move to Fiji this time.

  “I know, I know, I’m being melodramatic,” I say to Meda, even though I’m pretty sure I’m not. It’s hard to tell when you know you don’t always have a firm grasp on normal. “But I promise I won’t leave you behind.”

  She meows at me again, staring at me with one blue eye and one amber eye, hops off her cat bed perch in the front window, and sashays into the kitchen, where she’s undoubtedly expecting dinner.

  Four hours early.

  I trail behind her, because she was five pounds of fur and bone when I brought her home from the shelter, and she can eat anytime she wants.

  But as soon as I step into the kitchen, the hairs on the back of my arms stand up.

  Someone’s in my backyard.

  Inside my privacy fence.

  Next to my wooden beehives.

  He’s slinking toward the house in sunglasses, a ball cap pulled low, and a sweatshirt.

  In June.

  And if he thinks he’s going to get anything out of me, he can think again.

  I slip my taser out of my grandma’s cookie jar and drop to my hands and knees to crawl over the plain beige linoleum to the back door, then lift my head just high enough to peer through the pane glass window above the doorknob.

  He’s coming this way.

  Shit. Shit shit shit.

  Meda meows again.

  The stranger’s head swings my way—the creep is making sure he’s not being watched—and I duck down.

  But only until there’s a knock on the door.

  And then it’s all action.

  I leap up, twist the doorknob, and I yell, “Think again, asshole!”

  My heart’s pounding so hard it’s shaking my nipples. My voice is thick and high because holy fuck I’m staring down an intruder, and I don’t think, I just point and squeeze.

  I can’t see his eyes, but I see his lips part under the dark scruff around his mouth and over his jawline. His body jerks once, twice, and then he’s down.

  Sack of potatoes down.

  “Oh my god, Beck, I’m going to kill you,” a woman shrieks as she dashes through my back gate.

  I point the taser at her. “Back!” I yell a split second before recognition kicks in.

  I know her.

  I know her really well, but my brain is operating on oh my god, the paparazzi found me and I cannot place this woman, and if she has one of those spy cameras in one of her buttonholes, my picture will be on every gossip tabloid in six hours and my mother will be horrified that I didn’t comb my hair today.

  She stumbles to a stop and lifts her hands, wincing as she seems to favor one leg over the other. “Sarah. I’m so sorry. I tried to stop him. He thought you’d appreciate the apology in person more than over Twitter.”

  She winces again, and I know this woman.

  I do.

  “Who are you?”

  She blinks once, then relaxes. “I’m Ellie. Your neighbor?”

  My neighbor.

  Shit shit shit.

  I look down at the sack of potatoes with ridiculously long arms and ridiculously long legs splayed out on my small patio.

  Then back up at her.

  “You let the underwear ape in my yard,” I say.

  Her lips part, and a slow grin starts across her pretty features. My mother would adore her, because without makeup, she’s pretty, but with makeup—and the haircut, and the clothes that fit right, and the style sense—she’s really effing gorgeous.

  “The underwear ape,” she says, nodding slowly. “Yes. I like that. Beck’s my brother. Also known as the idiot who doesn’t know how to use a direct message. He’s very sorry. He thought he was congratulating me on getting engaged. In his own, special, brotherly way.”

  He groans on the ground. “Fuck, Ellie, I told you no titty twisters.”

  She’s smiling wider. “I told him I’d call you first, to make sure you weren’t going to…well, I said call the cops, but I think this might be better.”

  “You have an evil side,” I say.

  “I grew up with him,” she replies, as though that explains it.

  I look down at him again.

  He’s long. Broad shoulders. Looks lankier in person than on that billboard over I-56 that I pass a few times a week, but that could be the baggy sweatshirt. His hat’s askew—Fireballs, nice—and a dark shock of hair is poking out from under the brim. His blue eyes are slightly crossed over his crooked sunglasses, but seem to be coming back into focus as he blinks lazily at me. “You shocked me,” he says.

  “Didn’t recognize you with your clothes on.”

  And that’s really all I have to say about that, so I turn around and walk back into my house.

  As far as I’m concerned, we’re done here.

  Three

  Beck

  First rule of apologizing: Make sure she knows you’re coming.

  Holy fuck, that was a ride.

  And those eyes.

  All four of them.

  Whoa.

  You believe in love at first sight? I always have.

  Except I don’t know if this is love, or if it’s just the side effect of a jillion volts to the chest.

  “You piss yourself?” Wyatt asks with a grin as soon as Tucker, his kid, dashes to his room to get a toy to show me. My childhood best friend is lounging in the wide doorway between the living room and dining room, listening to Ellie tell the watered-down version of events next door while I hold an ice pack to the pain that’s quickly leaving my head, my legs propped over the armrest of the couch.

  “Came fucking close,” I admit, and fine, I’m still shaking a little.

  My sister and my best friend share one of those couple looks, and they both bust a gut laughing.

  I’d be pissed, but let’s be honest. One, it was probably inevitable that I’d get tasered for something eventually, and B, at least now I know what it feels like. And bullet point four, I ruined the surprise part of Ellie’s surprise engagement party since she didn’t know I was coming home until Wyatt told her so they could rush to my aid over my tweet-tastrophe, so I owe them a few laughs at my expense.

  Even if it’s by getting myself tasered.

  Not something I’d planned to add to my bucket list, but this’ll be a story for the ages once my chest quits twitching.

  Though if it really is love, my life is about to get fucking complicated.

  Probably not love, I decide.

  Probably just the volts to the ol’ ticker. Wonder if getting tasered in the butt would have the same effect.

  Unlikely, I decide. I should definitely get tasered in the ass next time if there has to be a next time. Which there hopefully won’t be.

  “I told you to let me call her first.” Ellie plops onto the couch next to my head and ruffles my hair. “Sarah’s…jumpy.”

  “Rare breed,” Wyatt agrees wryly. Dude’s a military guy, one of my best friends growing up. Could’ve joined us in Bro Code, but he was all fuck that, I’mma go save the world. “And probably not susceptible to your unique charms.”

  Sarah—aka @must_love_bees, aka the woman I accidentally epically insulted online when I thought I was sending Ellie a funny private message in response to her posting her engagement rings, aka the woman who tweeted back This desperate attempt to steal my 51 fans won’t work, @BeckettRyder. 49 are scientists & not fooled by your six-pack, which was honestly hilarious, especially since she has over ten thousand followers—has four eyes in my memory. Four big, dark brown eyes, with big irises that seem to dominate her features and swallow her pupils. Straight nose—both of them. Pillowy lips. And all that wild, curly brown hair.

  She’s like Medusa crossed with a Peter Pan mermaid. Half scary as hell, half adorable.

  “Uncle Beck! Check it out! I have an underwear doll!”

  “Levi is so dead to me for giving him that,”
Ellie announces as Tucker shoves a Ken doll in my face.

  Except it’s not a Ken doll.

  It’s a Beck Ryder doll.

  “That’s the studliest underwear doll I’ve ever seen,” I tell him. “You’re one lucky little dude.”

  “His lips are funny,” Tucker says. He’s Wyatt’s son from his first marriage and near total clone of my buddy, except the kid got his mom’s brown eyes instead of Wyatt’s blue-gray-whatever they are eyes. Tucker tries to screw his lips up in a smoldery duck-lip configuration, and he gets damn close, which is wrong on an eight-year-old.

  Ellie chokes on a laugh, but I hold out a fist for a bump. “You keep making that face, all the ladies are gonna fall all over you before you’re ten.”

  Wyatt gives me the don’t tempt me to give you a wedgie glare, but I shoot him back a you’re welcome smirk.

  Because Tucker’s recoiling in horror. “Eww! I don’t want the ladies! They’re old.”

  “It’s what some of us are stuck with, man,” I tell him solemnly, though it’s been months—or longer—since I’ve actually had a lady.

  Or any other form of companionship beyond my hand.

  It’s what happens when you want sex to mean something after dating one too many women who want to say they slept with a superstar, bagged an underwear model, or got knocked up by a billionaire.

  That last one’s the one that really did me in.

  Twice.

  And they were both lying.

  “I am never growing up.” Tucker snatches his doll back and races to Wyatt. “Can I have a cookie?”

  “You can have a carrot, because Grandma Michelle is going to feed you cookies out the yin-yang at the party tonight.”

  Grandma Michelle.

  My mother’s in heaven.

  She’s finally getting one of us married off, and getting an instant grandson in the process. Not that she hadn’t already adopted Tucker as one of her own—we grew up in a village in our neighborhood, and with Wyatt’s small family gone now, we’re all he has left—but she’s pretty much constantly leaking joy out her eyeballs over Ellie and Wyatt finally realizing the reason they fought so much over the years was because they were soulmates.

  They’re disgusting. And adorable.

  And all those relationship goals that a famous world-traveling empire owner like me will never have. On top of never knowing what a woman actually wants me for—my body, my money, or my fame—when you’ve been everywhere around the globe and still haven’t found the one, she doesn’t exist.

  Probably.

  But I have family, and a couple foundations that benefit kids, and adopted nieces and nephews between Wyatt and Tripp, so I’m cool.

  Most of the time.

  Better to spread the love out among the people you know you can count on than hold it back for someone who might never materialize, right?

  Someone knocks on the door, and I flinch.

  Ellie sucks in a smile. “Relax. I can guarantee you it’s not Sarah coming back with her taser. She’s not usually that aggressive.”

  Sarah.

  Pretty name.

  Still making my lungs twitch too. Probably a good thing she’s not coming back.

  Wyatt glances through the small windowpane on the door, then pulls it open. “Reinforcements,” he tells me.

  I start to get excited, thinking Tripp or Davis or one of the Rivers brothers are swinging by, but it’s not any of them.

  “It was inevitable, wasn’t it?” Charlie, my assistant, says with a cheeky grin. “Don’t ever keep your phone on airplane mode overnight again, or I’ll quit.”

  Assistant isn’t quite the right word.

  She’s more like my life handler.

  “You’re officially grounded, and don’t even start on we have to be at blah blah blah event, because you’re uninvited from all of them. Even that farm park in Nebraska that we never replied to about their Goat Days festival has rescinded your invitation to participate in the Goat Race, and they were the most polite of the bunch.”

  I stare at her, because I hear the words she’s saying, and they’re starting to penetrate.

  The flying yoga bricks and getting tasered were just the beginning.

  I didn’t just piss off the Twittersphere and half the women in the universe.

  I fucked up my entire life.

  “The foundation?” I croak.

  Shit shit shit. She has to tell me I haven’t fucked up the new foundation.

  She doesn’t.

  “You have WiFi?” she asks Ellie and Wyatt, and within minutes, she’s set up in the recliner next to the couch, laptop open, phone on one armrest, tablet on the other, with no answer to my question. She’s been with me for six years, might be twenty-five or might be thirty-five—I’ve never actually asked—and if she ever notices how many people check her out while we’re traveling the world for fashion shows and product launches and photo shoots, she doesn’t let on.

  “Video conference with your PR and management teams in thirty, and I’m working on getting you set up with a call with Vaughn,” she reports, then does a double-take. “Is your hair smoking?”

  “He tried to run away and got himself tasered by the neighbor,” Ellie offers helpfully.

  “Told you to keep security with you here,” Charlie replies before going back to her laptop.

  “It’s home,” I scoff.

  “And you just pissed off the entire internet. Don’t mind the two black cars down the street. I took care of arranging extra security for you. And you should be able to go back to your penthouse within a few hours. I asked the cops to let the picketing go on unless it got violent.”

  “You can control picketers?” Ellie asks.

  Charlie shrugs. “Not really, but it looks good that we’re cooperating instead of throwing a diva fit. Once we get Beck on camera with Ellen or Dr. Phil, apologizing profusely, they’ll go away. He’s disgustingly charming.”

  “I should really send you better Christmas presents,” Ellie says in awe.

  “Your parents take good care of me.”

  “Hey. I bought you a car last Christmas,” I point out, even though an entire armada of cars wouldn’t make up for her having to deal with me some days.

  Like today.

  “That I’m home to drive maybe two months out of the year. Your parents sent a subscription to the peanut butter of the month club, and it magically gets forwarded wherever we are every month.”

  Shit.

  I’m bad at giving presents.

  And here I thought I rocked.

  Also, I like peanut butter.

  “Today sucks,” I mutter.

  “Serves you right for being an ass.” Ellie claps a hand to her mouth and looks around, but Tucker’s gone.

  “That tweet was supposed to go to you, and it was a joke,” I tell her. “I would never seriously tell anyone to shut up and go have some babies. But you’re stealing my best friend, you know. Wyatt was mine first.”

  “I’m already researching the best women’s equality foundations for a sizable donation,” Charlie says. “It won’t solve everything, but it’s a start in damage control.”

  “The foundation?” I say again. “That’ll help, right?

  She pins me with a look, and I realize I haven’t just fucked up. I’ve FUCKED UP. All caps. This isn’t like the time I wrongly congratulated that news anchor on being pregnant on air—I know, I know, but I was nineteen and an idiot—and almost got us banned from ever going back to Detroit.

  This is way worse.

  Because in about ten days, I’m supposed to announce a joint foundation with Vaughn Crawford, the hottest center in basketball, to sponsor athletic organizations for kids all over the nation.

  And now I’ve put the stain of my reputation on the whole thing.

  Sent the entire plan through the floor like a flaming meteorite made of cow shit.

  Something tells me a video conference with my entire team isn’t going to solve this. And there won
’t be a scandal hot enough in Hollywood to take precedence over me sticking my entire leg in my mouth, Twitter-style, ever.

  “I shouldn’t go to your party,” I tell Ellie with a wince, because I’ll only be a distraction.

  “They’ll be talking about you whether you’re there or not,” she points out.

  “All friendlies,” Wyatt adds. “But if you can’t handle taking the crap…”

  I don’t deserve to be around friendlies today.

  And I need to get off my ass, stop feeling sorry for myself, and help my team fix this instead of once again letting Charlie set everything up for me.

  It’s what she does, and what I pay her well to do, but this is my mistake.

  “I need to call Vaughn,” I tell her.

  She nods. “Oh, yeah, you do. And tread lightly and grovel, because no one wants your reputation bringing them down. The only thing you have going for you right now is that it’ll be hella hard for him to find another co-sponsor who can donate gear as easily as you can.”

  Yeah.

  She’s right.

  The FLY HYGH foundation isn’t just money to fund sports complexes and equipment and administrative fees. It’s also getting donations from Vaughn’s shoe line and my athletic gear line.

  All might not be lost, but Vaughn’s one of the good dudes, and he deserves a better partner in this than a dumbass who insults all of womankind on Twitter.

  It’s time to start groveling.

  I push myself to sitting to grab my phone, and my gaze falls on the house next door.

  Probably need to go apologize to Sarah the right way too.

  When Ellie met me at my building in a getaway car just as I was running up, she filled me in on what happened while I was unplugged. So I took my phone off airplane mode and checked social media.

  It’s ugly.

  Not only am I getting eviscerated, but in the midst of all the support for @must_love_bees, she’s also being mocked and called names by people who think her handle is stupid, that there’s no honeybee crisis, that giraffes aren’t going extinct, that the earth is flat, that atomic particles are a myth, and suggesting she go kill herself for having an ugly profile picture, which is an artistic drawing of Saturn with the rings bent into shapes of wings and a honeybee tail on the end.