Smartasses: A Sexy Nerd Rom Com Anthology
Genres: Romance
Book Preface
I never dreamed I’d meet my celebrity crush while stealing every single pair of my best friend’s pants.
Trust me, my life is not that wild. In fact, the most excitement I usually get is running my fan-favorite Insta thirst account featuring butt-tastic pics of Hollywood superhero Carter Hayes. So, imagine my shock when, in the middle of the cruise ship hallway, I realize the guy whose shirt I’m stuffing slacks inside of is Carter disguised as a tourist. How I manage not to faint dead away, I’ve got no clue.
When word leaks that Carter might be on board, he asks me to help him maintain his cover. There’s no way I’m gonna say no to that. I just don’t share that I’m the anonymous woman behind the fan account that reported sighting him onboard. No biggie. Right?
However, when things between us go from friendly to hot to OMG-I-can’t-keep-my-clothes-on-around-him, all I can do is hope he never discovers my secret. You see, somewhere along the way, Carter went from an untouchable movie star to the man I’m falling for.
Copyright © 2022 Avery Flynn
All rights reserved
Attracting Aubrey is a work of fiction.
Any resemblance to actual events or people is entirely coincidental.
Except as permitted under the US Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.
Chapter One
AUBREY DEAN WAS a pants thief, and she had no regrets.
Now, she wasn’t taking just anyone’s pants or using the five-finger discount in a store. No, she was digging through a suitcase in the hallway of a cruise ship. And it wasn’t some stranger’s suitcase.
The unassuming black suitcase without a snag or a scratch or a speck of dirt on it belonged to one of Aubrey’s besties from college.
Grace—said suitcase’s corporate-down-to-her-sensible-shoes owner—was smart, amazing, and in desperate need of letting her thighs air out.
When Grace let slip to Aubrey, Kendall, Benjamin, and Liv as they were boarding that she hadn’t packed any shorts because of her not-fit-for-public thighs, Aubrey knew exactly what needed to happen. One quick communication spree via knowing looks between friends later and the rest of her old college crew were buying Grace another cocktail while Aubrey sprinted toward Grace’s room.
Luckily, she hadn’t gotten down to her room yet, so her suitcases were still in the hall right outside her door where the porters had placed them.
Really, Aubrey was doing the Lord’s work here and freeing Grace’s thighs, which had remained covered for pretty much her entire life after her mom had told her they were not the kind of thighs that should ever be seen in public. Yeah, Grace’s mom was a judgy bitch. Grace had great thighs—and even if she didn’t, it didn’t matter. No one should spend a seven-day cruise to the Bahamas sweating it out because her thighs were covered the entire time. An intervention was necessary.
Which is exactly why she was giving Grace a friendly little nudge in the be-yourself-and-tell-whoever-doesn’t-like-it-to-fuck-off direction. Stealing every pair of pants Grace had brought with her for the cruise was the perfect solution. Okay, maybe not perfect, but desperate times called for desperate measures.
Aubrey swiped a pair of pants from the open suitcase and extended her arm up in the air. “Free Grace’s sexy thighs!”
She was The Thigh Avenger, and it felt good.
For the first time in a year, Aubrey was free from the stifling confines of small-town life, where everyone knew everyone and everything about each other. Even if she was popping motion sickness pills like candy and chasing them down with overpriced tropical drinks, she was going to enjoy every single second of this cruise with her besties from college.
Kendall, Grace, Benjamin, and Liv were the people who knew her as Aubrey Dean: Wild
Woman. In small-town Salvation, she was deceased Ashley’s poor daughter and Marie’s troublesome granddaughter.
Her friends expected to see her leading the party in crop tops and shorts. Back home, everyone in town knew to find her behind the counter at the family bakery covered in flour after another failed attempt at making anything edible.
Here, on board, she could be fun, flirty, and fabulous. In her one-stoplight town, she would always be a never-reached-her-potential disappointment.
Damn, she missed being the woman her friends knew. Small-town living had sucked all of it out of her, though—especially when she was reminded almost daily of the Grand Canyon–sized chasm between how she’d planned for her life to turn out and how it actually had. If it hadn’t been for her countdown to this cruise and her anonymous Insta account documenting the many, many beautiful photos of Carter Hayes (AKA America’s favorite movie superhero The Admiral), she wasn’t sure if she’d still be even kinda close to sane.
“Do you need help getting your bag into your room?”
Aubrey started at the man’s voice, practically jumping up from her squatting position next to the opened suitcase. “It’s not mine.”
Way to go, Dean. You’re a fucking genius pants thief.
And that was most definitely the wrong thing to say, judging by the guy’s Boy Scout appearance with his tightly cropped blond hair, square-framed glasses, clean-shaven square jaw, crisp khaki shorts, and totally unwrinkled Hawaiian shirt buttoned all the way up to his neck. Under different circumstances, all she would be thinking about was how to dirty him up, but this wasn’t the time for that. Later? Oh yeah, she’d be having thoughts, all sorts of naughty thoughts.
“So you’re stealing…” He paused, looking over the small pile next to her. “Pants?”
Okay, he hadn’t used an old-fashioned police whistle or made a citizen’s arrest, so she could still get out of this. She pasted on her sweetest, most innocent smile that usually fooled 0.2 percent of the population. What could she say? She’d always had a trouble streak, and it had always shown through.
“Yes, but I have a good reason.” She leaned in close, hoping to make him feel as if he was in her circle of trust. “They’re my friend’s.”
His eyes—a startling shade of blue that seemed way too familiar—narrowed. “It’s a prank?”
“Sorta, yeah, let’s go with that.” Really, it was a mission from the higher sexy thighs power, but explaining that to the Boy Scout would probably break his sweet little brain.
He crossed his arms over his chest, the move making the seams of his shirtsleeves practically cry out in pain from straining so hard not to rip under the strain of some seriously drool-worthy biceps. “I don’t—»
“Why are you walking so slow, Kendall?” Grace’s voice carried down the hall. “Are you sure you feel okay?”
Shit.
In a move quick enough to qualify for the running-from-killer-clowns levels of fast, Aubrey bent down and picked up the pile of pants and shoved them into the Boy Scout’s arms. “Hold these.”
Adrenaline spiking, she squatted back down, zipped the suitcase closed, and set it up again like before.
“Why am I the only one worried about Aubrey taking off?” Grace asked with well-deserved suspicion in her tone. “What are you guys up to?”
“Nothing,” Liv said, not giving away even a hint that shenanigans were afoot.
“You know Aubrey, she’s always up to something,” Benjamin said. “She’s probably already spotted her man of the cruise and is putting him under her spell.”
Oh yeah, she wanted only one guy to do her bidding right now, and that was the Boy Scout. She grabbed him by the arm and hauled him down the hall. “Come on. We have to hustle.”
Okay, he had more bulk to him than she’d expected, going by his I-iron-my-underwear appearance, and she had no doubt she was only getting him down the hall by force of personality and not any actual muscles on her part.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
Where? Crap. That was a great question. She glanced over at the number of the rooms as they fast-walked without looking like they were getting the fuck out of there and realized they were only ten rooms shy of hers. All wasn’t lost. They could make it.
“We’re going to my room.”
He stopped dead. “I’m not sure that’s—»
“Wait, is that her?” Grace asked before calling out, “Aubrey, I know that’s you.”
Fuck.
She didn’t turn, and she didn’t slow down. She tightened her grip on the Boy Scout’s not-of-this-earth solid bicep under the obnoxious Hawaiian shirt decorated with wiener dogs in grass skirts and kept moving—or at least she tried to. He kept his feet planted where they were, and short of using a Mack truck to shove him forward, she would not be able to move him.
“Are those your friends?”
She nodded. “Yep.”
The first hint of a sexy smirk transformed him from saint to sinner. “So I could blow this thing right now?”
She gave him a sideways glare and prayed her panties didn’t go up in flames. “Don’t even.”
“Aubrey Dean,” Grace said from only a few feet behind them. “What are you up to?”
Okay, she knew that tone from Grace. There was no getting out of this. Stopping, she whispered,
“Stuff them down your shirt.”
His blue eyes widened behind his Clark Kent glasses. “Why would I do that?”
Good gravy. Did he not understand the time pressure they were under?
“Because if you don’t, she’s going to know they’re missing, and she can’t know that yet,” she said. “Grace knows what I look like, so I can’t put them down my shirt. However, she doesn’t know you, so it will just look like you’ve got a gut. Come on.” She gave up on the sweet smile and went straight for damsel-in-distress desperation. “Do me a solid, please.”
BEYOND A DOUBT, this was the weirdest experience Carter Hayes had ever had, and he’d once spent six hours on a green screen sound stage wearing a CGI suit and pretending to fight a one-eyed zombie giant with poisonous farts.
When he’d turned the corner and found the cute blonde giggling to herself as she pulled one pair of pants after another out of a suitcase, he thought she might be a little touched, as his grandmother used to say. When she held one pair up in the air and declared she was freeing Grace’s sexy thighs, he figured she was drunk already. And just when he thought it couldn’t get more bizarre, she managed to pull him in as an accessory to pants theft, and now she wanted him to shove four pairs of pants down his shirt?
This was a mistake. He would only draw attention to himself when he was supposed to be observing others, not be observed. The last thing he needed was for anyone to realize that he wasn’t the mild-mannered dental laboratory technician Carter Van Stettle from Iowa. This cruise was his opportunity to prove to indie-darling director Allyson Hernandez that he could disappear into a part, that moviegoers could look up at the big screen and see him as anyone other than The Admiral.
He was all ready to return the pants to their rightful owner and be on his way. It was the smart thing to do. Then the thief beside him said please, and well, one could only play the most debonair superhero to ever top the box office for so long before some of the character stuck to them. He stuffed the stupid pants up his shirt and tucked the hem of it into his shorts to keep them from falling out. The special effects team on his last movie would have laughed their asses off, but the paunch effect of the pants was actually pretty good.
“Grace,” Aubrey said, turning to face her friends. “I didn’t hear you.”
Her friend didn’t bother to hide her skepticism. Behind her, a man and two women were trying not to grin and failing.
He held out his hand. “Carter Van Steetle from Iowa.”
“Grace Kim.” She shook his hand.
By then, her other friends had gotten control over themselves—obviously, they’d been in on the stealing pants prank—and everyone introduced themselves.
“So what are you two up to?” Liv asked.
“Poor Carter got lost.” Aubrey gave him a poor puppy look and hooked her arm through his.
“Can you believe he’s never been outside of Iowa? This is all pretty overwhelming for him.”
Oh, that was how she wanted to play this? The woman with the soft Southern accent that definitely came out more country than old money was calling him a hick? As he’d grown up in LA the son of movie stars of the multiple Academy Award–winning variety, the closest he’d ever been to the country life had been going on set with his parents when they’d shot a movie in Idaho and his annual weekly visit with relatives in Iowa during the summers when he was growing up. Still, he’d been given his part, and like any good improv player, he was going to lean into it—with a twist.
“Thank goodness I ran into Andie, here,” he said, adding some more yokel to his words. “She just saved me from feeling as out of place as an outhouse in the White House.”
“Aubrey,” she corrected, looking at him as if she’d never seen him before.
“That’s right.” He tapped her on the tip of her button nose as she all but growled at him. “She just talks so fast it’s kind of hard for my country boy ears to keep up.”
Benjamin chuckled. “That’s interesting, considering she’s from a blink-and-you-miss-it small town in Virginia.”
“Really? I’m surprised.” He turned to face Aubrey, giving himself a second to take her in. She was cute in a main-character’s-sweet-best-friend-who-fell-for-everything kind of way, while her eyes betrayed her girl-next-door sensibility. Those big brown eyes sparkled with trouble. It wasn’t overt, but it was just enough of a sugar-and-spice combo to make him want to know more. Plus, he’d caught her stealing pants; there was definitely something more to Aubrey Dean than her aw-shucks face promised. “You have fast-talker written all over you.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, not missing the dig at her underhanded antics earlier. Then as if she’d flipped a switch, she turned the sugar back on and focused on her friends.
“I’ll meet you guys back up on deck for the mandatory safety briefing thing.” She sidestepped closer to him, teasing him with the strawberry scent of her shampoo. “I’m just gonna make sure Carter doesn’t get lost again.”
They turned—meaning she pivoted and he followed because he couldn’t seem to help it with her
—and started back down the hall.
They got a few doors down from her friends before she broke the silence. “So where is your room?”
“Eight doors down on the right.” Normally, he’d be several decks up in one of the full suites, but
he’d gotten his assistant to dial back to a more affordable regular room with a balcony.
“Are you kidding me?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“We’re next-door neighbors.” She didn’t sound very thrilled about it.
What was that all about? It wasn’t like he was the one who’d asked to be part of the pants crime of the century. “Seems only right since you’ve involved me in your life of crime.”
She let out a full-tilt snort of oh-yeah-buddy-suuuuuuure. “I wish I lived anything close to that exciting of a life. I own a bakery. Well, it’s my name on the business license, but really, it’s my gran’s bakery.”
Carbs. He was going to eat so much sugar while he was on the cruise it would make his trainer for The Admiral movies cry. Totally worth it. “So what’s your baking specialty?”
“Mine?” She laughed. It was light and soft and too utterly practiced to be sincere. “Nothing. I am whatever a gardening black thumb is to baking. The shop, however, is famous for its bear claws. So will you be using your newfound skills of skulduggery when you return home to Iowa?”
It was a deft turn to get the conversation away from herself and back on him. Damn, he could take lessons from this woman. According to one of the British secret agents he’d shadowed for an action flick a few years ago, diversionary tactics were the best way to maintain a cover. He’d never seen it used in a real-life situation, though, and had it be as smooth as what she’d just done.
“Doubtful they’ll be a call for any flimflam,” he said, echoing her old-timey turn of phrase.
“There’s just not much call for subterfuge when you fabricate teeth.”
“Like dentures?”
Thank God his cousin, who actually did live in Iowa and actually was a dental technician, had given him the low down on the job. “That and the crowns and bridges, orthodontic appliances too.”
He brought them to a stop. “And this is my room.”
“Thank you for your help,” she said, this time her smile genuine. “I owe you a drink.”
He should beg off and keep his distance if he wanted to maintain his cover, show Hollywood he could be more than just The Admiral, and finally get the respect he craved from a world that thought he’d only gotten where he was because of his parents. That was what he should do, but he didn’t.
“Yes, you do,” he said, unlocking his door with his free hand. “You know where to find me.”
She looked down at her arm still in his, seemingly surprised to find it there, and gently pulled back. “See you around.”
She disappeared inside her room, leaving Carter in the hall trying to understand what in the hell just happened and what he was going to do with a stranger’s pants stuffed under his shirt.
Chapter Two
AUBREY SHUT HER cabin door behind her and let out the breath she’d been holding. Holy crap, that had been close. If she’d been by herself, there would have been no way she would have gotten away with it. Giving the Boy Scout a gut had been a stroke of—
“Oh, fuck.” She let her head fall back against her door with a thunk. “You forgot to get Grace’s pants back, you dumbass.”
Now she was going to wait for Grace, Liv, Kendall, and Benjamin to vacate the hallway, and then she’d have to go out there and knock on Carter’s door. She cracked open her door; her friends were still chatting away in the hall. Closing the door quick before they could spot her and interrogate her until the truth spilled out, she let out a frustrated groan.
Shit. Shit. Shitty McShittersons.
That was when she heard the knock. It wasn’t coming from the other side of her door but farther inside the small cabin. A door connected her room to the one next door. Bingo. The Boy Scout was her new favorite person for realizing it was there. She unlocked the door from her side and yanked it open.
“You. Are. Brilliant,” she said. “I can’t believe I forgot to get the pants.”
He grinned, showing off a dimple in his right cheek deep enough for someone to get lost in. “No worries.”
While she was still getting all lusty about a dimple, Carter pulled the hem of his shirt out of where it had been tucked into the waistband of his shorts. The move revealed a slice of abs as hard as his biceps and a very unusual wine-colored birthmark shaped like an A.
Aubrey’s sorta-undercover-scoping-out gaze jerked to a stop on that birthmark. Suddenly, her face was ten-thousand degrees, and her palms were sweaty. She knew that A—not like personally or anything, but she’d spent plenty staring at it on the screen in a dark theater because The Admiral movies were always about the fan service when it came to showcasing America’s favorite superhero without his shirt on. And she knew from the many pics she’d posted on her Insta that the A birthmark wasn’t movie magic. Carter Hayes had been born with it.
OH! MY! GOD!
He—Carter motherfucking Hayes—was still talking, but she couldn’t hear any of it over the roar of oh-my-fucking-God in her ears. How had she missed it? Sure, he’d bleached his usual dark hair (cutting it short enough that he could be mistaken for a Marine recruit), had on a dorky outfit, and was
wearing a pair of glasses that her cousin in the military had called birth control glasses, but still, she was a real fan. If any of her half a million Insta followers knew that she’d been fooled by this disguise, she would never hear the end of it.
“Aubrey, are you okay?” He cocked his head to the side and shot her a questioning look. “You kinda glazed over a little bit there.”
“I’m fine.” A slightly hysterical giggle started working its way up from her belly. “More than fine.” She clamped her jaw shut in hopes of not letting the unhinged laughter out and said through her teeth, “Never been better.”
She took the stack of pants he was holding out to her.
“So I guess I’ll be seeing you around?” he asked.
Clutching the pants to her chest, she nodded like a bobblehead glued to the dashboard of a car doing a hundred down a pothole-filled road. “Most definitely.”
Okay, her ability to talk while freaking out was nowhere near the level she’d hoped it would be if this day ever happened, but who in their right mind would ever think they’d run into one of the biggest movie stars on the planet on a singles cruise. He wasn’t even in the fancy suites. He didn’t have a handler or people to, like, go fetch his coffee or anything. Maybe she was wrong. It wasn’t like she’d gotten a great look at the birthmark. Maybe it was a common birthmark. Maybe there was a whole Facebook group dedicated to people with birthmarks shaped like letters. Or maybe she was standing in front of Carter Hayes, and her little brain had just broken in half. Yep. That definitely seemed like the most likely option.
“Don’t worry, I won’t use this door again.” He held up his hands palms forward in the universal sign of I’m-not-a-serial-killer-intent-on-wearing-you-like-a-skin-suit. “I just noticed your friends were still out in the hall. Sorry for forgetting to give you the pants that you stole.”
She nodded because her mouth had forgotten how to make word-sounding noises.
“Well, bye.” Face screwed up in a look of half concern and half WTF, Carter reached past her, grabbed the doorknob, and closed it between them.
A second later, the click of the deadbolt being engaged on his side sounded.
That had gone about as well as eating one of the rock-hard bear claws she’d made back when she’d moved home to Salvation after her gran had first gotten sick. Her donuts were basically lethal weapons. Sorta like The Admiral’s shield and trident. OMG. The Admiral!
Adrenaline making her hands shaky, she yanked her phone out of her crossbody purse and prayed for the little bars showing she still had a signal.
“Yes!”
A few minutes later, she had the perfect image—a GIF from Carter’s latest movie showing him as
The Admiral in disguise, strutting near the water, bonus points as it showed his amazing ass—and caption posted up on her Insta account.
Spotted on board? Still awaiting confirmation, but all signs point to The Admiral being in disguise on a singles cruise making its way down to the Bahamas. Tell me, what would you do if you spotted the very sexy Carter Hayes on your cruise? Thirsty me wants to know!
She closed the app and flopped down spread eagle on the bed, a little bit of guilt scratching at her conscience. Her anonymous superfan Insta had been her lifeline since she’d moved back to Salvation. Posting pics of The Admiral, chatting with fellow fans, and being generally a total dork about her totally-never-gonna-meet-him-so-it-doesn’t-matter crush had been the one fun and silly thing she still did that reminded her of the laughing person she used to be. Part stress relief, part hobby, it was a harmless escape from the three in the morning alarm waking her up in time to get the bakery open, the fear that the cough her gran hadn’t been able to kick was something more serious the older woman refused to go to the doctor about, and the realization that everyone who’d told her that getting her degree in feminist history so she could write amazing non-fiction books sharing the real stories of women who’d done extraordinary things was a pipe dream was probably right. It was just for fun. It couldn’t hurt anyone—especially not someone like Carter Hayes.
Still…she couldn’t ignore that guilty feeling. She opened up Insta on her phone to delete the post, but all of the signal bars were gone.
“Fucking A.” Her groan was bone-deep and of the why-do-you-always-do-this variety.
Now she would have to go pay the GDP of a small country to get an hour of cruise ship internet so she could delete this post. This was what she got for acting on impulse. Again. When would she ever learn to think before she acted and actually listen to her head and not just her gut?
“WAY TO BE a total creeper, Carter. What woman wouldn’t freak out when a strange man knocked on the door connecting their rooms—all while they were trapped on a cruise ship together for the next seven days?” He rubbed his palm over the spiked fuzz of his short hair that he still wasn’t used to.
“And please, for the love of good beer and better women, do not start answering yourself.”
Yeah, because he wasn’t already treading that total weirdo line as it was. If she heard him mumbling to himself—and answering— that would be the thing to really drive Aubrey into avoiding him.
“Whatever you say, buddy.”
Carter had spent almost every day since he started noticing women around the most beautiful of them in the world. His parents were Hollywood royalty, which meant that everyone who was anyone, or who wanted to be, ended up at their champagne-drenched and cocaine-powered parties.
Sometimes, those folks took an extra interest in him. In the beginning, he’d thought it was genuine, but
he’d been an idiot. Of course, it wasn’t. That wasn’t the Hollywood way—where every relationship was transactional, and the best ones were those that vaulted the other person from the B to the A list.
That culture was so ingrained that everyone just assumed his success was because of his parents.
Now, Carter would be the first to admit that he had opportunities that others hadn’t because of his parents, but no one placed the mantle of a billion-dollar movie franchise on a person because of who their parents are. Producers loved their money way too much for that.
Still, the need to prove himself as a man able to do the work and carry a movie without the help of his last name or the world’s most talented special effects department was what lit a fire in him hot enough to burn down the Hollywood sign.
Right on cue, his phone rang.
“Carter, my man.” His brother and agent, Byron, didn’t sound the least bit winded even though the odds were he was calling during the middle of his workout. The sicko trained hard and with the dedication of a bodybuilder for the fun of it, not because the studio made him. “How are you, and are you ready for me to send the rescue helicopter yet?”
Carter glanced toward the sliding glass doors leading to his balcony. He could still see the New York skyscrapers in the distance. “We probably haven’t even hit international waters.”
“Did you get my gift?” his brother asked in one of his trademark oh-look-a-squirrel change of topics.
“I did. The condoms are a nice touch.”
A mountain of fruit, wine, cheese, and a box of condoms in a plastic-wrapped basket had been waiting in the middle of Carter’s double bed when he’d opened his door. In addition to being his brother and agent, Byron was also the biggest troll alive, so there was no doubt he’d included the condoms just to rub it in that Carter wouldn’t be getting any during this cruise. The last thing he needed was to get his cover blown by getting a little too up close and personal with a rando or having someone spot his stupid birthmark.
“Hey, just because you’re the uptight nerd version of Carter doesn’t mean you have to stay celibate,” Byron said as if he didn’t know well and good that the very opposite was true. “My therapist says that it’s important to express yourself and not bottle things up.”
Carter rolled his eyes. “Isn’t your unlicensed therapist also your weed dealer?”
“Hey, man, it’s LA. Everyone has to hustle.”
“Speaking of hustling for work, is everything lined up for New York when I get back?”
Allyson Hernandez had all but triple-dog dared him into making this trip. It had happened during one of those awful Hollywood lunches at a restaurant almost no one could get reservations for. With several shelves full of awards for her movies, she didn’t need Carter to get a table. However, being
seen with him and even having it whispered that he might be attached to her next project could do wonders for getting financing for her next award contender. Meanwhile, he wanted a shot—a real shot
—at the lead part of a single father with a genius kid who had an attitude problem. So it was a transactional meeting, yes, but the tolerable kind where everyone involved was in on the real situation.
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