Chasing Vivi Read online

  Chasing Vivi

  A. M. Hargrove

  Copyright © 2017 by A.M. Hargrove

  All rights reserved.

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the author, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at [email protected]

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to peoples either living or deceased is purely coincidental. Names, places, and characters are figments of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

  Cover by Sara Eirew

  Photography by Wander Aguiar

  Model: Andrew Biernat

  Editing provided by Emily Lawrence

  Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Other Books by A.M. Hargrove

  Playlist

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Epilogue

  A Sneak Peek from Craving Midnight

  A Sneak Peek from A Special Obsession

  About The Author

  Stalk Annie

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to anyone who was bullied and to those to weren’t afraid to stand up for themselves, even when they had to step out of their comfort zones to do it.

  “Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.”

  —William Shakespeare

  Acknowledgments

  First and foremost, thank you to my readers who continue to support and take a chance on me. Without you, I would never be creating these novels from all the ideas that keep popping into my head. I realize you have hundreds of books to choose from and I’m honored you choose mine to read. I appreciate it much more than I can say.

  Thank you, Nina Grinstead, at Social Butterfly for all your hard work and planning, the phone calls, messages, emails, texts, and everything else you do. I’m amazed at your effort you put in and I’d be lost without you. I FLOVE you!!! Also thank you Jenn, Sarah, Candi, Shannon, and Chanpreet. You guys totally rock and I love you!

  Terri E. Laine—it goes without saying that no book is any book without you. You are my bestie and writing parter, solo or otherwise. Thanks for listening to my rants and raves. You are the BEST!

  Thank you Wander and Andrey for coming to my rescue and pulling Andrew in for a photo shoot. And thank you Andrew for looking so damn good. You all are awesome and I love working with you.

  Thank you Sara for your patience—God knows you deserve it. Now that we’ve established Annie does not like green, we shall move forward. LOL. Hugs and kisses to you.

  Thank you to my super awesome beta readers—Kat Grimes, Kristie Wittenberg, Heather Carver, and Andrea Stafford. I know you all always have my back, even when I hit you up at the eleventh hour. I have no fucking idea what I’d do without you. You make my books work and find things a damn detective can’t. I love you all to Mars and back.

  Thank you Emily Lawrence for making this MS super spiffy. You do have some keen eagle eyes, my friend.

  And thanks to Rick and Amy Miles at Red Coat for all their hard work and effort. You guys are amazing.

  Hargrove’s Hangout peeps, thanks for hangin with me. I love chatting with you all. Let’s keep up the hot pics and laughs.

  If you want to join in on the fun, click here to join.

  To keep up to date with the latest from me, sign up for my newsletter here.

  Other Books by A.M. Hargrove

  For Other Books by A.M. Hargrove visit www.amhargrove.com

  For The Love of English

  A Special Obsession

  Chasing Vivi

  Craving Midnight (November 2017)

  For The Love of My Sexy Geek (A Vault Novella—October 2017)

  The Wilde Players Dirty Romance Series:

  Sidelined

  Fastball

  Hooked

  A Beautiful Sin

  The Cruel and Beautiful Series:

  Cruel and Beautiful

  A Mess of a Man

  One Wrong Choice

  The Edge Series:

  Edge of Disaster

  Shattered Edge

  Kissing Fire

  The Tragic Series:

  Tragically Flawed, Tragic 1

  Tragic Desires, Tragic 2

  The Hart Brothers Series:

  Freeing Her, Book 1

  Freeing Him, Book 2

  Kestrel, Book 3

  The Fall and Rise of Kade Hart

  Sabin, A Seven Novel

  The Guardians of Vesturon Series

  Playlist

  Lost In You … Bush

  Let’s Work It Out … Texas

  Hoping … X Ambassadors

  Incomplete … James Bay

  Wildfire … Seafret

  Raw Diamond Ring … Matthew Mayfield

  Mess Is Mine … Vance Joy

  So Tied Up … Cold War Kids

  Bitter Poem … Cold War Kids

  Something Just Like This … The Chainsmokers

  Goner … Twenty One Pilots

  Swallowed Whole … Pearl Jam

  Halo … Beyonce

  7 Years … Lukas Graham

  Unconditionally … The George Twins

  Roller Coaster … Bon Jovi

  Say You Won’t Let Go … James Arthur

  I Need My Girl … The National

  Chapter 1

  Vivienne

  Even though it’s only October, the frigid New York air razors straight through my coat, chilling me down to the marrow. No matter how many layers I add, it never keeps the wind and dampness at bay. I’m already sick of this weather and winter hasn’t even hit yet. Why the hell did I decide to make a new life here? Why not Texas or South Carolina? Or anywhere with year-round warmth? I walk the rest of the way to work, huddled deep into my coat.

  And speaking of work, my job sucks. My boss is a deceitful bastard. When I interviewed for the position, he made it sound as though I’d be in charge of IT and the business was on the cusp of exploding. I foolishly believed him. My lack of research into Java Beans & More, which is nothing more than a glorified coffee house, should’ve had me tying up my running shoes and hightailing it out faster than a space shuttle at launch, but every ounce of energy had evaporated from me after Mom’s death. Cleaning out the house, putting it up for sale, and taking that huge loss, had zapped me. That and the mountain of debt I was currently facing, which was why I snapped up this job, thinking it was a great opportunity.

  Breaking away from Virgin
ia, getting a fresh start, and making a new name for myself initially had me pretty damn excited about moving to the Big Apple. It hadn’t mattered then that I’d be living in a space not much larger than a closet, cooking on a portable countertop burner and microwave, and using a space heater to keep warm, because my fucking landlord would turn out to be a crook. I also hadn’t cared much that there were sketchy people hanging out in the building and on the stairways at all times of day and night, making drug deals or prostituting themselves. Okay, maybe I did care a little. Make that a lot. But I’d hurry past them, telling myself it was fine. Thankfully, they didn’t bother me much after I made it plain I wanted nothing to do with them. Now, I wanted to beat myself over the head. I should’ve been more diligent when the offer came through, instead of leaping at it like a yapping puppy in search of attention.

  The bell rings as I push the door open. Vince’s cheerful greeting has me waving back, even though I’m still shivering and hunkered down in my jacket.

  “You in there, Vivi?” I hear him laughing from behind the counter.

  “Y-yeah.” My teeth chatter from the cold.

  “You need a warmer coat. Like one of those Canada goose coats.”

  “Ha-ha, aren’t y-you th-the f-funny one? Th-they o-only c-cost a w-week’s s-salary.”

  “Not quite, but close. Maybe you need some fat on your bones. That’d warm you up.”

  If only he knew. I’d spent most of my life trying to get rid of extra fat. Of expunging those nasty ViviVoom comments in my head from Crestview Academy. Girls are so fucking mean. No wonder it was always difficult for me to develop deep friendships. Trust didn’t come easy because of what I’d been through. Being called “ViviVoom” for six years of my life was the least of it.

  “Nah, I just need thicker blood,” I call out to Vince.

  Rubbing my hands together, I hug myself for a few minutes, trying to warm up. Then I unwrap the scarf from around my neck and face, but refuse to take my coat off. “Was the early morning busy?”

  Vince, who is tall and lean with sandy brown hair and hazel eyes, glances at the coffee cup clock on the wall. “Uh-huh. We’re in the lull now. But it’ll perk back up in about ten minutes or so.”

  “Good. I’ll get to work then.”

  I’m upgrading the software in all eight shops and integrating everything into one system. Whoever originally set them up was an idiot. Each shop had its own package and nothing synced. It was a nightmare. I designed a new program for the company and am now in the implementation stage. I get seated at the other computer stationed at the counter.

  This is a far cry from my days in the Silicon Valley when I worked my dream job. And this was supposed to be its replacement. What a joke. Then I think about Mom and how I spent her final years taking care of her. Yeah, I gave up my career, but I wouldn’t have traded that time with her for anything in the world. When her diagnosis of ALS came, it mowed me down like a tank, exactly like Dad’s death in the car accident did when I was twelve. After she died, I sold everything and decided to start over. Make a clean slate. That’s how I ended up in New York. I’m still facing a mountain of debt, and this job was supposed to be a stepping stone to get rid of it, but I can see now it’s not working out that way.

  “How do you like working for Joe?” Vince asks out of the blue, breaking the silence.

  I hedge, answering, “Why do you want to know?” I can’t tell him the truth. Joe is a fucking lying pervert asshole.

  “Just wondering. You seem to have your shit together. I’d think someone of your caliber would be working for a bigger company.”

  Me too, I want to say. But I never talk about my personal life with anyone. Even though Vince is a nice guy, he’s young, only twenty-three, and I don’t trust him. I remember when I was his age, only a few years ago, but it seems a lifetime ago. He might get drunk and run his mouth to his buddies about how I thought our boss was a dickface. And there’s no way I’m going to dump my shitload of issues on his shoulders either.

  “Thanks. I do have my shit together. This job presents a challenge, which is why I’m here.” It’s a bullshit answer, but I go back to working, hoping it suffices. I’m busy, my nose buried in the screen, keyboarding away, when the bell rings at least a dozen times, but I ignore it.

  Vince interrupts me, asking if he can log on. Without breaking concentration, I tell him to go ahead and keep working. I’m on the back end of the program, so it won’t affect anything he’s doing.

  Reaching over with my left hand to grab my coffee, I accidentally knock my cup over, creating an epic mess. I scramble to clean it up. When I finally glance up in search of more napkins to mop up the spill, I’m staring into the most gorgeous set of golden eyes, the exact ones I’d always dreamed about, the ones that made me do things at Crestview I told myself I didn’t agree with.

  Standing before me is Prescott Beckham—the boy of my teenaged fantasies. He sat next to me in a lot of classes. We ended up as lab partners in chemistry and that was when he proposed the deal. Could I please, oh please, with hot fudge on top help him out with his homework? At first, I didn’t respond, but then he said he’d pay me. That grabbed my attention. I was desperate, broke, and didn’t have an extra penny to spend.

  “I know you don’t have any cash. I’ve watched you at lunch. You eat cheap junk. Not even high dollar stuff. You like Oreos, but you eat those shitty fake kind. I’ll pay you. I have a lot of money, Vivi. Please?”

  And those damn eyes. Oh, God, his gold-hued irises nearly buckled my knees. I caved and said I’d do it. But I made it clear it was only for the money, not because he’d asked nicely or I agreed with it. The truth was, the money was great, but I would’ve done it for free. He was that kind of guy—so persuasive, so difficult to say no to, so everything. Not to mention I was secretly in love with him.

  I often dreamed about how one day he’d announce to the world that he didn’t mind that I was fat and unpopular, that he’d fallen for me anyway—me, in my too-tight skirt wrapped around my pudgy thighs, which certainly rubbed together. Why? Why did I torture myself like that? Why did I let myself believe a guy like him could fall for a girl like me?

  Now, here he is in the flesh, all six plus feet of tall, dark, and insanely sexy. And it pisses me off that someone can look so damn edible. Dressed to kill, he’s wearing a lovely black coat, which I’m sure is toasty warm and probably cashmere. Peeking from beneath it is a crisp white shirt and striped blue tie. He’s come a long way from his Crestview uniform.

  “Vivi? Vivienne Renard?” He squints. It’s the same face he sees but definitely not close to the same body. This is a common reaction with people I run into who only knew me in my school days. I’m sure he still pictures me in that old pleated skirt where I looked like I swallowed a gigantic balloon. I hated those awful uniforms.

  My face remains impassive, or I hope it does, as I answer. “Um, yes?”

  Maybe if I pretend not to remember him, he’ll go away.

  “It’s me, Vivi. Prescott. Prescott Beckham. From Crestview.”

  Dammit. Well, it was worth a try.

  “Oh, right! Hi! How are you?”

  “Fine, but wow. You look … amazing.”

  And then I really study him for the first time. He doesn’t look so good. Okay, that’s not quite true. He’s gorgeous. He just doesn’t look as good as he used to. He looks … rough. That’s it. Prescott, who was always perfectly put together, is rough and edgy. The years seem to have taken a bit of a toll on him.

  “Thanks.” I jerk my gaze away from him, because suddenly I’m uncomfortable. I don’t want to talk about anything to do with my personal life and I have a feeling that’s what’s coming.

  “So, you work here?”

  “I do.”

  “Hmm. I’m surprised I haven’t run into you then. I’m in here every so often.”

  “I guess our timing was off,” I say. Damn, I wonder how many times he actually comes in here. It’s a good thing I’ll be rotat
ing to another coffee shop.

  “You live here now, too?” he asks.

  “It would seem so.”

  “How about we go out for a drink some night?” He scrapes his hand over his face, which is covered in sexy scruff.

  Absolutely not.

  “Thanks for the invite, but I don’t think so.”

  He takes a step back, as though I’ve physically pushed him. My guess is a man like Prescott doesn’t get turned down much. Then I wonder if he’s still in touch with Felicia Cunningham, a.k.a. Felatio Cuntingham. That girl had more dicks crammed down her throat than even I care to imagine and she made it her mission to make my life miserable. She was the one who coined the term ViviVoom.

  “Then how about dinner?”

  So, he’s still persistent, a trait I recall from our Crestview days.

  “No, but I totally appreciate the offer.”

  Those damn bourbon-hued irises latch onto mine, and my breath hitches, causing me to almost, almost give in. Shaking my head instead, I confirm what he heard, “Honestly, I can’t, Prescott.”

  He opens his mouth, his very sensuous mouth, to speak, then stops, nods once, and says, “I get it. You still think I’m the asshole from Crestview. I’ll probably always be that guy to you. But maybe you should go out with me and find out if I really am.” He pulls out his wallet and hands me a card. “If you change your mind, I live here in the city.”