Tainted Love Read Online Free Page A

her measly income as the nanny to Martina and Jimmy—the artificial-insemination offspring of her aunt Kat Carpenter and her Russian wife, Anya Kuriakova—wasn't going to put her behind the wheel of anything besides a used bike any time soon. Yet she had to do what she had to do toassuage her own guilt: Give up the car, and get the guy who had loaned it to her, Luis Amador, out of her life. Even if she had to pay the price in decreased mobility.
    Luis was an assistant golf pro at the Brentwood Hills Country Club, the exclusive facility to which the moms—her pet name for her aunt and Anya—belonged. Lydia seemed to spend at least three out of every seven afternoons in their vaunted “Nanny and Me” program, which had been created because so many of the country club members were either working, out on the golf course, or engaging in beauty maintenance at their favorite spas in Beverly Hills (conventional) or Topanga Canyon (alt-type rich).
    Lydia and Luis had met one afternoon at the country club. She needed wheels and he had a car that he was willing to lend, but that was not the problem. The problem was that the car transfer evening had turned into a drunken romp up to Malibu, which turned into her awakening the next morning in his bed with both a splitting headache and the loss of her virginity.
    When she'd disclosed this little lapse in judgment to her two best friends, Kiley and Esme, they had gone off on her. Not because she'd had sex, but that she couldn't remember if he'd used a condom. Esme had actually accused her of a temporary lapse in sanity. That had been followed by a visit to Planned Parenthood in Echo Park, where she'd been tested for STDs, HIV, and pregnancy. All the tests came back negative, thankfully. She'd need another HIV test in six months, but it seemed as if one night of temporary insanity wasn't going to have lifelong implications.
    Still, it irritated Lydia that she'd done something so dumb. It wasn't the virginity thing. Hell, she'd been looking for the perfect male specimen to do the deed ever since she'd arrived in Los Angeles. A red-blooded American girl who had grown up in Amazonia surrounded by naked five-foot-nothing men with rotting teeth who considered it a fashion plus to tie their appendages to their stomachs with twine had to make up for lost time.
    This being Los Angeles, it wasn't as if she'd been hard up for candidates. There were plenty of cute guys in Beverly Hills, and she seemed to attract a decent amount of male attention. She was on the tall side, slender, with huge eyes the color of celery and long, choppy, naturally blond hair bleached nearly white by the Amazonian sun. Other girls might fantasize about love, but Lydia fantasized about sex with pretty much everyone she met. She was certain that she'd love sex even more than she loved shopping. All she needed was the right guy.
    Then she met Billy Martin. Billy changed everything, and not just because he was six-two, hot, and bore a strong resemblance to Tom Welling from
Smallville
. It was more than that. They got each other. Billy had even lived overseas for many years. He was a design student with an interest in film set design.
    As far as Lydia was concerned, all this added up to “Let's Do the Wild Thing Now.” But to her great frustration, she had evidently fallen for the most romantic boy on the planet. Lydia's “Let's Do the Wild Thing Now” was Billy's “Let's Really Get to Know Each Other First.”
    So yes, while she could chalk up her “oops” with Luis tosexual frustration, she somehow doubted that Billy would see things the same way. Which was exactly why she was not going to tell him.
    Luis's battered wooden front door swung open before she could push the white doorbell. “Car trouble? Or was it just that you missed me?”
    The front porch light shone on the twinkle in his eyes. Costa Rican by birth, in America on a golf scholarship to Pepperdine, he wore a college golf team shirt and cutoffs not all