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Perhaps maturing too quickly and looking like a woman when she was still a child had something to do with it. At age thirteen, she had found that older men openly lusted after her and had made crude remarks which at the time had frightened and repulsed her, and she had never really gotten over that.
It wasn't rational, and she knew logically that there were plenty of nice men out there who weren't perverts, but it was a struggle not to think about what was going through men's minds when they looked at her and what they were planning to do to her.
Her mother had pressured her to get therapy, but Margo didn't like sharing her inner demons with strangers. She'd read self-help books and enough romance novels to fill up a library, and if that hadn't helped, she reasoned that nothing would.
She wasn't like other young women her age, who were obsessed with finding suitable partners, but she had learned to hide it. Going to bars with Mia and Frankie, Margo had flirted with guys like a pro, but she had never given any of them her phone number or taken any home. The only ones she'd actually gone out with had been friends or acquaintances of friends who had been vetted beforehand.
"Hey, pretty lady."
Margo tensed and opened her eyes, but the guy wasn't talking to her. He was talking to a leggy brunette with a huge hat on her head that hid her entire face from view.
The sun was almost all the way down, so the hat was no longer necessary, but it was an elegant accessory, and the woman looked like someone who paid attention to her accessories even more so than Lynda, and that was saying something.
Her sister-in-law was obsessed with designer labels.
Margo let out a breath and turned her phone on, going back to the eBook she'd been reading before the interruption. Still, she couldn't help but overhear the conversation going on two loungers down from her.
The woman was trying to make the guy leave her alone, but he was obnoxiously persistent.
"I can't join you at the bar," the woman said. "Please, leave. I asked you twice already."
"Just tell me your name, and I'll leave," the guy said.
Yeah, right. If she told him her name, he would ask another question, and when she answered that, another, and so on.
Some men didn't know when to quit.
"You are making me uncomfortable," the woman said. "My boyfriend is the jealous type, and if he sees you talking to me, he will get mad. Please go."
She was probably making up the story about the boyfriend, just like Margo had done countless times before, but the guy was either drunk or obtuse and refused to get the hint.
"Your boyfriend doesn't scare me." He thumped his hairy chest. "If you want a real man, dump the asshole and come with me. I'll show you a real good time, and I won't leave a precious jewel like you alone by the pool."
Margo turned on her side and gave the dude a bright smile. "You should do as she says. Marcello is a beast, and he's crazy. He will beat you up just for looking at Kitty."
"Oh?" The guy turned his attention to her. "What about you, missy? Do you also have a jealous boyfriend?"
"I'm happily married." She discreetly turned her ring around and lifted her hand to show him her fake wedding ring. "Patrick and I are expecting our second child." She rubbed a hand over her flat belly. "I hope it's a boy this time. What do you think about the name Solomon? I want my son to be smart, and King Solomon was supposedly the smartest man ever born."
Mindless chatter about children was a sure way to chase off even the most persistent flirts, but the guy was either smarter than he looked or good at detecting lies because he lifted a brow. "And where is this husband of yours?"
"Home with our daughter. I'm here with my sister-in-law, celebrating her last days as a single woman."
A convincing lie always had an element of truth in it.
The dude shook his head and pushed to his feet. "Slim pickings today." He walked away without saying goodbye.
"Thank you for the save," the woman under the large hat said. "Can I show my gratitude by buying you a drink?"
"Sure." Margo put her phone away and took off her reading glasses. "I'm Margo."
The woman chuckled. "I'm not Kitty. I'm Jasmine, or Jaz for short." She removed her enormous floppy hat, revealing a face that took Margo's breath away.
Jasmine was stunning.
"Is that your real name?" she blurted out. "Because you look too much like the princess from the Aladdin movie for the name to be a coincidence."
Black glossy hair tumbled in thick waves down Jasmine's shoulders, and her warm, olive-toned skin was so perfectly smooth that it seemed to be made of glass. Her almond-shaped eyes were deep brown with amber flakes floating around the pupils, their shade so striking that Margo suspected they were colored contact lenses. The high cheekbones, the straight nose that was slightly hooked at the end, and the full lips that were covered in berry-colored lipstick made Jasmine perfect for the role of an Arabian princess.
