The Executive’s Affair Trilogy Bundle (Trinity, Desire, Unconditional) (25 page)

Four years later.

“
Hey, what’re you doing here?” Laszlo asked as he stood from behind his desk and walked across his office toward Trinity. “And where’s the little man?”

“
Home with the nanny,” Trinity said with a smile, stepping into his arms and kissing him fully on the lips. “I was going to wait until you got home, but you know me. I’m impatient and just had to see you.”

He laughed softly.
“I’m not complaining. I love getting surprise visits from my beautiful wife.” Normally she brought their son with her, so it was strange that she showed up alone today. Francis Michael Cstary, little Frankie, was now three years old and the center of their world. He loved that boy so much. The day of his birth was the second happiest day of his life. The first was the day he made Trinity his wife.

“
Well, I come with an added surprise today.” She smiled wickedly, her eyes twinkling with mischief.

Laszlo held her out at arm
’s length and studied her face. “Well? Don’t keep me waiting forever.” He laughed.

“
We’re going to have another baby, Laszlo,” she said, biting on her bottom lip.

“
What?” Had he heard her correctly? Another baby? They’d mentioned it a time or two, but had never really discussed it. Then again, they hadn’t taken any precautions to prevent it, either.

“
I’m pregnant again. Six weeks,” she said.

His eyes widened with excitement and he smiled so big he thought his cheeks were going to rupture. Laszlo picked her up and spun her around.
“Ahh! I’m going to be a father again!” He laughed and set her back down on her feet.

Trinity laughed.
“I was worried you’d be upset.”

“
What? Why would I be upset?” He looked at her with shock. “Trin, love, you’re the love of my life and I will take as many babies as you give me.”

“
Okay, don’t get carried away,” she said with a chuckle. “I’m not giving you an entire baseball team or anything.”

He grinned.
“No, that would just be crazy.” Then he pulled her to him and kissed her. Life was perfect.

Elizabeth wrote her first romance novel at age fifteen when she discovered writing about boys was way easier than actually talking to them. Since then, her flirting skills and relationship techniques have helped hundreds of others find their mojo. After earning a master’s degree in secondary education from UNC, she worked abroad teaching English, bar-tended at late night clubs in Chicago, and continues various philanthropy projects that focus on empowering women. But she always returned to writing. Though she’ll forever be a free-spirit at heart, she now lives in Los Angeles with her two dogs. If she’s not working on her latest sexy story, you can find her reading, watching reality television, or indulging in her unhealthy addiction to rock concerts.

One Last Thing. . .
        

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Enjoy a complimentary first chapter from
Double Take: A New Adult Romance

The music had followed them. It thumped on the walls and pounded from below. It vibrated through the metal frame of her bed, buzzing their bodies with electric current. The muffled tangles of animated voices wove over and under the regulated thrusts of the bass. White holiday lights draped along the perimeter of the ceiling softened everything in a honeyed hue, including the face of the boy beneath her whose hands were sliding up the back of her shirt. He had blond hair, cut short in an almost-crew style, and gray-green eyes. She didn’t normally go for blonds, she found herself thinking as his form blurred before her. She thought he was pretty hot–a broad chest and strong neck that she wanted to feel, inch by inch, with her lips. She ran two fingers from his chin to his collarbone and marveled at the smoothness of his skin. At this, he took her head in his hand and kissed her. As his tongue flicked against hers, the sensors between her legs rose and shivered, and she pressed her hips into his, hard. His free hand found the back of her bra and unhooked the clasps. His palms were cool on her breasts.

Trisha’s mind, for the first time in weeks, was soothingly dark, like someone had drawn a shade over it. She was suspended in this moment. The boy’s smell—a blend of spices and powder—intoxicated her. She could feel him hardening against her pelvis, and knew that she could get him to stay if she showed him how talented she was. Deftly, she unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans and conjured him from confinement. She was hungry to please him. At the fluttering touch of her fingers, he groaned.

She’d had boys tell her that she was the best at her craft. She figured it was partly because she was utterly willing—not like most girls, who dreaded the job, acted disgusted and made their men feel guilty. But it was also her approach. She knew where and how to apply the pressure with her tongue, when to use her hands, if at all, and at what point to go full throttle. Her friend Millie thought it was degrading and refused to do it, but Trisha found it empowering. Her head was foggy tonight from the three cups of fruity elixir she had downed in an hour, but even so, she could tell that he’d be an easy one to please. As she worked, he lifted himself into her, tilting and writhing. It didn’t take long for him to grab the hair on the top of her head and yank as he found ultimate release. His wails erupted and then descended around her like ribbons.

With his sounds, Trisha’s sight cleared. She sat, straddling his legs, and watched as he slung one arm across his face. He breathed in once, and breathed out. Did he not want to look at her? The sensations of desire that had been building in her were falling in waves. She always seemed to forget: once she had given away what a guy wanted, there was nothing left in it for her. She was always in such a rush. The music continued to resonate, but instead of urging her on, it only assaulted her throbbing head. The boy pulled up his boxers, gaze focused on the ceiling.

The boy. Trisha’s mind groped for his name as he swung his legs over the side of the bed. His feet clomped to the floor. He had never taken off his shoes. Was this it, then? Desperation tingled in her chest.

“Was that okay?” she asked. She wanted to move toward him and put her hand on his shoulder, but she hesitated. He still hadn’t looked directly at her. Again? This was happening to her
again?
But he had been so interested a couple of hours before, asking her about her acting and complimenting the pink extensions in her hair, drilling her about the summer hot spots of Boston, where he would come to visit her that June while he was vacationing with his family in Kennebunkport. She had been so charming! Steve, she thought suddenly; his name was Steve. She wanted to think she wasn’t stupid, but more and more of these escapades were pointing to the contrary.

The boy raised his eyebrows and scratched the back of his neck. “Yeah,” he said. “There really aren’t too many situations in which those are not okay.” Was that supposed to be an insult? Trisha’s jaw tightened. He was looking around her room, a much-coveted single because of a screw-up with student housing. She almost wished she had a roommate who would walk in right now and make everything straightforwardly, blatantly awkward so that she could get out of this. As his eyes shifted, she felt her cheeks grow warm in shame. Maybe it was time to get rid of those two Anne Geddes posters and the ballet figurine bookends on the shelf over her desk.

“You want to go back downstairs?” she asked, though she knew the answer. She was beginning to wish she could rewind time.

“I don’t think so,” he said, and stood up. “But thanks for everything, er—Katie.” He backed away from her, felt for the doorknob behind him. Now he was studying her face. “I mean, Nicky? Wait, what’s your name again?”

Her mouth dropped open. Was he serious?

Now he was laughing. “Emily? Sorry. All I was told was that I should see the girl with the pink hair.”

Trisha sprang to her feet. “Get the fuck out,” she said, slamming her fist against his chest. He was such an asshole! He fumbled to open the door, still laughing, and tripped into the hallway.

“Sorry, sorry!” He held up his hands innocently. Now, in the fluorescent light of the corridor, she noticed how narrow his eyes were, how pointed his ears, like a fox. Not attractive—not at all. Her surroundings spun around her, and she caught herself in the door frame. “Jenny. I mean, Chrissy!”

Trisha kicked the door shut. The tears were spilling over before she reached the bed. She could hear him still talking, and she cradled her head with her pillow to block him out. Her phone, which had slipped out of her pocket and onto the floor at some point, was lighting up with texts from Millie, but she didn’t want to face them. She was horrified. Did she really have a reputation? She’d had her share of encounters freshman year, but who hadn’t? Wasn’t college about searching until you found something worth committing to? She knew plenty of girls who spent their weekends hooking up with guys and crying over them on Monday. It was part of the weekly rotation, like reading quizzes in Anthro 101 and fighting for a spot on one of the common room couches during Pats games. Wasn’t it?

What a shitty way to begin the semester, though. She had left for Christmas break in mid-December smarting from Devon’s rejection, the transparent excuse he had given her for wanting to be free—he needed to end things with his ex-girlfriend once and for all, because their relationship was still kind of undefined, and she wouldn’t leave him alone. He needed time and space to handle the break-up. What that really meant was that he wasn’t done sleeping with her. “It’s been really great,” he had said to Trisha about their three-month affair. “But I’ve just got too much baggage.” She had never met a guy who let his baggage get in the way of guaranteed sexual fireworks. But she let him go without a fight. Over the long month that she was home in Gloucester, her parents never once asked her about him, even though she had been gushing about his genius graphic arts skills, his sensitivity, his knack of knowing what was bothering her just by sitting there in silence with her, since the school year had started.

Trisha didn’t know what time the music stopped. She fell asleep in her clothes, mouth dry and nose stuffed from sobbing.

***

Her mother’s phone call cut right through her dreams. Trisha squinted against the sun coursing into her room, rolled over and scooped up the phone from the floor. When she lunged over the side of the bed, it felt as though her brain slugged forward in her cranium. The pressure in her forehead nearly made her pass out again.

“I want to discuss something with you, Trish,” she said without a greeting. “Daddy and I were going to say something when you were home, but the time just never seemed right, and we were trying to hold off on asking you to do this until we were sure we had to.”

Trisha rubbed her eyes and her fingers came away black with mascara. She was wandering into full consciousness. “What is it, Mom?”

Her mother had a tendency to worry and to make things that were not so tragic sound dire. She knew, though, that it was going to have to do with money. Her parents ran a small sit-down seafood restaurant on Bear Skin Neck in Rockport that never quite made its yearly revenue goals. Trisha’s dad lived to breathe the sea-salted air into his lungs and to crack lobster shells—he had grown up on the Cape. Her mother was the host who took care of people and lovingly refurbished old chairs and tables and nautical paraphernalia until her décor looked just right. The same patrons came in year after year, begging for the calamari and warm hugs from the Barrons. Trisha loved her parents for loving something that made them so tired. But she knew that it didn’t give them the life they deserved. And she, herself, had no interest in either seafood or the restaurant business, so she was really no help to them.

As her mother began to talk, a flash of memory from the night before made Trisha’s stomach cave: the image of Steve with his arm over his face.

“—because we can’t afford to pay servers hired from without.”

Trisha’s mind backpedaled.

“Trish? Are you there?”

“Yes, Mom. Can you say that again? There was a really loud noise in the hall.”

Her mother sighed. “I said, Daddy and I are going to have to ask you and the boys to help us at
Making Waves
this summer. We can’t afford to hire outside servers.”

Trisha’s heart held a beat. Ugh—
no!
An entire three months pinned down to endless dinner services, the smell of low tide and cocktail sauce, sweating through her tee-shirt as she maneuvered around two of her thick-built brothers in and out of the kitchen. She had been thinking of other plans, plans of living with her high school friend Jessica in Cambridge and waitressing at a bar and grill somewhere in town, or teaching kids acting in an enrichment program. Her entire summer, sabotaged by that shack of seaweed on stilts!

“But why?” Trisha protested. “You’ve always hired extra servers to cover the summer season.”

“Because,” her mother said, “things are tight this year, and the restaurant needs a new roof.” She paused. “Please, Trish. We’re depending on you. We’ll alternate your schedule with Jay’s and Eric’s so you have plenty of time off.”

Trisha closed her eyes and saw bursts of electric light. “You’re ruining my summer for a new roof?” Immediately, she regretted saying it. She had just walked herself into a guilt trip.

Her mother’s voice wavered. “All right, Trish. If you can’t make sacrifices after all your father and I have done for you…” She went quiet.

Trisha wanted to scream. She wanted to erupt into a good old fashioned temper tantrum like she used to in middle school, ripping apart her entire room and then bawling as she picked up torn poster pieces, warped books and shoes, thrown at high velocity, whose heels had made divots in the walls. She wanted one more thing to go terribly wrong. Just one. It might send her over the edge. Why the hell not?

“It will all come back to reward you in the end,” her mother said.

Trisha glanced over at a framed photograph on her desk of her family at one of her cousin’s weddings the previous spring. She and her mother were petite, and the four men stood like bears on their hind legs behind them. Her brother Lucas was separated from the rest of them by a couple of feet, with his left hand in his pocket, eyes averted. She opened her mouth to ask her mother how he was doing, but decided against it. The woe-is-me mood was in full swing.

“I guess I have no choice,” Trisha said.

Her mother droned on for another twenty minutes about Aunt Carol’s new Jaguar, the neighbors’ refusal to pay for half of a new fence, and Trisha’s father’s plantar fasciitis. When Millie’s text to meet her at brunch pinged in, Trisha was thankful for the interruption. But a pebble of regret for being so disengaged from her mother bounced around in the pit of her stomach as she headed toward the quad, quivering in the frigid January air in her thin wool coat.

I hope you enjoyed the fir
st chapter of
Double Take
. If you’d like to read more please
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