TRIGGERED: A Romantic Suspense Bundle (5 Books)

by Evie Nichole

  “Yes, I’m sorry. Breakups suck.”

  “They definitely do.” She continued to stare out the window, aware that she was being rude, but lost in seething anger. After a moment, Jason cleared his throat. “I wonder what he was selling that was so, you know, involved? Did he ever say anything about shipping prices?”

  Her brow furrowed, and she pulled her hand back suddenly. She sat up straighter, looking at him hard. Her face reflected anger, confusion, and fear.

  “Um, why is that important?” The fog in her brain was beginning to lift.

  His eyes widened almost imperceptibly, and then he leaned back, laying his arm across the back of the booth, appearing relaxed and casual. Monica’s suspicion only continued to build inside of her. She wished she were not so drunk, so she could analyze the situation more clearly. He’s acting weird. Is he acting weird? Why was he asking so many questions? Was he asking too many questions?

  As if on cue, the waiter brought two coffee mugs and a full pot of coffee, gestured to the bowl of creamers and the sugar by the napkin dispenser, looked at them both curiously and then walked away without saying a word. She poured herself a cup, blew on it hard, and chugged half of it despite the still scalding temperature. She felt her mind clear, but only slightly.

  “Why are you asking…those questions?” She was having trouble now remembering exactly what he had asked. God, I’m a lightweight.

  “Oh, no reason,” he said, still resting casually against the booth. She still felt like he was feigning his relaxed position, but he pulled it off so naturally it only served to confuse her further. When she continued to stare at him, he leaned in again, his hands clasped in front of him on the table, the look of concern and compassion returning to his hazel eyes.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to weird you out. I’m into…I mean, I work in sales. Watches, but nothing fancy for the moment. I was just curious about what this guy…Alan…sold. You know, I’d like to be making a lot more money than I am, and he sounds like he’s been really successful…from what you said. That’s all it was.” He dipped his head down again, the look of shame she couldn’t help but find endearing. Her body began to relax though she still felt a nagging suspicion at the back of her slowly sobering brain. “I’m sorry I upset you,” he muttered to his lap.

  She reached out her hand without thinking and placed it over his folded ones. “It’s okay,” she said, shoving her suspicions aside. “I overreacted.”

  He looked up, his brow furrowed, and then he took a deep breath and moved his hands so they were holding hers now. “No, no, it’s none of my business, and it’s not the point of this conversation at all. We were supposed to be talking about you anyway, and not what your asshole ex did for a living. I shouldn’t have made it about me. I’m sorry.”

  She smiled at him, realizing that Alan had never apologized like that to her, not in the entire six months they’d dated. He had apologized, sure, but he never took full responsibility like that. “It’s okay,” she said, gently. She freed a hand and finished her cup of coffee and reached to pour another for herself. “Want some?” she asked, and when he nodded, she filled his cup as well. He removed only one hand to drink it, letting the other linger, holding hers.

  After his first tentative sip, he said, “Like I said, if he was cheating on you, then he was a total idiot. I think he was an idiot for spending so much time away from you, period, even if it was for work.” She wondered at his ability to speak so confidently while completely sober, as far as she could tell. The glories of being a man, she thought with a wry smirk.

  She was blushing and shook her head, pleased but embarrassed. “You’re just saying that to be nice.”

  “Is there something wrong with being nice?” he asked, his sexy smirk reappearing over the rim of his mug.

  “No,” she said, matching his smile as she sipped her second cup of coffee more slowly. “But you don’t know me well enough to know if he was an idiot or not. So, technically, you’re lying.”

  He chuckled, setting his mug down and placing his other hand back on hers. “Well, you’re right. I don’t know you. Much. But I do know that you’re beautiful.” She blushed again. “You’re funny, you’re strong, you seem pretty smart, and you care what people think about you but not enough to let it stop you from doing what you want.”

  She stared at him, feeling warmth fill her body. Had she been some old-school romantic interest in a movie, she may have swooned. Instead, she narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips. “You’re gross.” He looked affronted until he realized she was smiling humorously.

  “Why is that gross?” he asked, chuckling again.

  “You just met me, you don’t know me, and you just gave me this great romantic line that was, I’ll admit, smooth as hell, but gross.”

  He smiled at her, and then nodded in mock seriousness as if he understood her perfectly. “You’re also a bit messy, can’t hold your liquor, are far too trusting of strangers, and eat really unhealthy food.”

  “To be fair,” she said, her smile wide, “I only eat that way when I’m drunk. Which isn’t that often, I’ll have you know.”

  “It seems I offend you whether I’m nice honest or mean honest.”

  “Or maybe I’m less trusting of strangers than you assume.”

  “Fair point.”

  She laughed lightly, all feelings of foreboding gone. She looked down at her hand in his, noting that the warm feeling inside her had very little to do with her lingering drunkenness. She noticed that his hands were slightly larger than Alan’s. She’d held his hand across a table like this just last weekend, as they waited for their four-star dinner to be served and stared out at the city from the twenty-third floor. A tear slid down her face once again, and she tried to wipe it away by pretending to scratch her eyelid, but Jason was not fooled. He squeezed her hand, and she could feel him watching her as she stared at the table, the spot just to the right of their hands, the day’s events flashing through her mind again. She couldn’t believe she was holding some other man’s hand, and though it wasn’t technically romantic, it felt surreal. She’d woken up in Alan’s bed this morning and now…

  “When my last girlfriend broke up with me,” Jason spoke very quietly, and she looked up to find him staring at the table, at their hands as well. “I stayed home from work for a week because I didn’t want any of the guys to see me crying. And I couldn’t seem to stop crying. It kind of freaked me out because I’ve never cried that much in my life. I was worried I was broken or something. I thought it was never going to end. Everything seemed to bring it on. We had been living together for two years so even a trip to the fridge was just like, boom, waterfalls.” He laughed, drily, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “My boss was the only one who knew what was up; she’s a woman, so I didn’t feel as ashamed to tell her. She kept calling to check on me. On Friday she called and said that she understood, she’d been there, she knew it took time to get over that kind of thing, but that if I didn’t come in on Monday she was going to fire me. I didn’t think she meant it since I had a bunch of vacation time saved up, but it worked. It kind of woke me up to the fact that I just…had to keep going. That Sunday, I looked myself in the mirror and said, out loud, ‘Hey, you’re going to be okay. This sucks and it’s probably going to keep sucking, but you’re going to be okay. And you’re going to go to work tomorrow.’”

  “Did the crying stop?” she asked, remembering her own last breakup, two years ago. She’d done the breaking then and hadn’t cried as much, probably because she was prepared for it.

  “It wasn’t as bad. Being at work was a distraction, and it also forced me to, I don’t know, get out of my head or something. I still didn’t want the guys to see me crying, but I also realized that crying, while necessary to get my grief or whatever out, wasn’t going to solve anything. It didn’t stop immediately, but after that first week, it got easier and easier to pull myself out of that kind of funk. Eventually it stopped. For the most part. I cried on our a
nniversary, but just for a few minutes.”

  She stared at him. She felt something stirring in her gut, different from the butterflies from earlier. “I’ve never heard a guy talk so openly about crying like that. Most guys act like they’ve never even done it.”

  “I mean, up to that point, I’d cried, maybe, a handful of times, at funerals, when I broke my leg in football, that kind of thing. Never like that; never that much.”

  “You must have really loved her.”

  He looked up, holding her eyes, a deeply complex emotion she couldn’t quite identify clouding his eyes. His voice sounded ragged when he answered, “I did.”

  She squeezed his hand this time. The waiter approached tentatively, holding Monica’s plates of food. They pulled their hands apart but kept eye contact, both of them laughing silently at the amount of food she had ordered.

  “You have to help me eat this,” she said with a groan.

  “I am entirely too sober to eat this kind of food.”

  “That’s not my fault,” she said, kicking his leg playfully beneath the table. “I’m going to go wash my hands,” she said, standing up as he chuckled. She walked, a little steadier on her feet now, across the diner, and she could feel his eyes on her back and hoped that her dress did her figure as much justice as she thought it did. She couldn’t help but add a bit more of a swish to her walk than usual. I wonder if he’ll change his mind about sleeping with me, she thought, laughing softly to herself as she entered the bathroom. She knew the thought was mostly ridiculous; she never hooked up with people she met in bars. But there was a small part of her that would not be opposed if the opportunity should present itself.

  ***

  Jason watched her walk to the bathroom, noticing the inviting movement of her hips and the suppleness of her curves. He licked his lips, then, noticing the watchful eyes of the diner’s employees, looked away quickly. He pulled out a cell phone and pressed the first speed dial button.

  “Hey, did you get all of that? Yes, I cried that much, you assholes, and I’ll make you cry if you bring it up ever again. Did you get what she said?” He listened for a moment, keeping an eye on the door to the women’s room. “I don’t know. I don’t think she knows much, but she might know more than she’s saying. Yeah, I think I have a good shot of getting her number. I’ll ask her on a date or something, so we can get her talking when she’s sober. I have to go.” Before Jason pulled the phone away to hang up, he glared at no one and grumbled, “Fuck you guys.”

  He hung up, shoving the phone in his pocket and watching for Monica to come out, planning exactly what he was going to say next.

  Chapter 3

  “You gave him your number, right?” Monica’s best friend, Zoe, had already chugged her entire cappuccino because her blood was eighty-five percent caffeine and needed constant replenishing. Monica had just finished telling her about her night, sipping a hot green tea with lemon because the diner coffee and ten pounds of carbs she had consumed last night had done nothing to assuage today’s hangover.

  “Yes, I gave him my number,” she said, slightly more annoyed than she ought to be, as a dull pain pounded in her head.

  “Good.” Zoe was eying the counter, already contemplating her next fix. Monica stared off at nothing, replaying the blurry events of her night. After she had come back from the bathroom, Jason had seemed normal and casual, but she still got the sense, somewhere in the back of her mind, that he was putting it on. She was distracted by the arrival of cheesy fries and mozzarella sticks.

  “You have to eat some of this,” she said, with a wink.

  He looked at the platters of food warily. This look only increased as the waiter returned with one plate full of bacon and another with chicken wings.

  “Can we get some extra ranch,” she said, biting into a steaming mozzarella stick. She would have paused to laugh at herself, but she was suddenly so ravenous that the only thought she had room for in her brain was getting this food into her stomach as fast as possible.

  Really sexy, Monica thought, watching Zoe decide to go order another coffee. She shook her head at the memory of her stuffing her face in front of such a beautiful man. And sweet, she thought, he was really sweet. Strange though, she couldn’t help but add to her thoughts, remembering how he had seemed slightly off despite being totally sweet and charming.

  “Come on!” She laughed this time, shoving the plate of fries in his direction. “You’re going to make me feel really bad about myself, and that is not a good strategy, let me tell you.”

  He was smiling now, though he still seemed a bit hesitant about the food. “Not a good strategy for what, exactly?”

  She swallowed loudly, like they did in cartoons, then grabbed a chicken wing and began tearing into it as an excuse not to actually respond. With a mouth full of chicken and buffalo sauce, she shrugged and gave him a wink.

  He responded with a smile and then took a dramatically deep breath, grabbed a handful of fries and shoved them into his mouth. He moaned with exaggerated enthusiasm, rolling his eyes as if it were the best thing he had ever eaten in his life. She laughed joyfully, and he gave her a genuine smile in return.

  They held eye contact, with looks of unashamed happiness on each of their faces. “You’re cute,” she said before she could stop herself and then grabbed another wing, looking away, embarrassed.

  He continued to smile for a long moment; she could see it out of the corner of her eye.

  “You are, too,” he said with such sincerity that her head snapped up to look at him instantly, surprised by the genuineness of his comment.

  She looked at him, trying to detect some form of mockery behind his eyes, but found none. Then she gestured to the half-eaten wing in her hand and smirked. “Oh yeah, I’m real cute right now.”

  He just continued to smile and eat fries in a slightly more dignified way than she was.

  Monica cringed at the memory.

  “So,” she wiped sauce from the corner of her mouth, “what kind of sales did you say you did again?”

  Had she not looked up just then for his response, she may have missed the momentary flash of…something in his face. Fear? Confusion? It was gone as soon as she registered that it had been there at all. He played it off though.

  “Um, watches, for the most part.”

  “No wonder you don’t make much money. Who buys watches these days?”

  He chuckled. “I sort of do freelance, different contracts with different companies, you know, depending on, um” he faltered for a moment, then popped another fry into his mouth and continued, “you know, depending on who’s paying more.” He smiled as he popped another fry into his mouth playfully. She smiled in return, her suspicion returning itself to the back of her brain.

  Zoe sauntered back to the table with a new cappuccino and a huge grin. “He gave me a free one,” she said, glancing back at the curly headed, twenty-year-old guy, staring at them from behind the counter; he looked proud.

  “You’ve got a way,” Monica said absently, the image of Jason’s charming face still floating in front of her eyes.

  Zoe snapped in Monica’s face as she resumed her seat. “Earth to Hangover Queen, where are you?”

  Monica looked at her, her brow furrowed. “Last night.”

  “Ohhh,” Zoe crooned, with a knowing smirk. “The hunk.”

  Monica shook her head. “I keep having this feeling he was…I don’t know, up to something.”

  “Of course he was,” Zoe said and laughed, drinking half her new drink in one swallow. “He was up to trying to get your number. I think you should be grateful he wasn’t interested in taking advantage of your uninhibited state.”

  Monica nodded, lifting her eyebrows to acknowledge the seriousness of the comment, still staring away into space.

  “Dude,” Zoe said, snapping at her again. “What is it? He was sweet. He bought you drinks, he didn’t take advantage of you—which is kind of miraculous—and he was hot. Right?”

  Monica
pulled herself back to the present, looking into Zoe’s face. Zoe was looking at her as if she was nuts. “Right, yeah, you’re right.” She took another swallow of her tea, which had cooled a bit. “I was drunk, you know, I’m probably lucky I even remember as much as I do.”

  “There you go. I’m sure it’s nothing, but you can find out when you meet him again. Sober.”

  Monica nodded. “Exactly. Yeah, I’m probably just being dramatic. And I’ll be able to tell when I’m not—”

  “Plastered. Hammered. Smashed,” Zoe interrupted.

  “All of the above,” Monica said as she giggled, holding her still pounding head.

  Zoe looked at her appraisingly, and Monica could tell that she was choosing her words precisely. “So, you wanna talk about yesterday?”

  Monica sighed, closing her eyes as pain shot through her head. At least the headache and nausea were distractions from the dump of a day yesterday had been. She had to admit that the evening portion had been less awful though. “You mean the part before the bar and the handsome, mysterious stranger?”

  “Yep.” Monica grinned briefly, but her face returned to a look of concern quickly.

  “Not really. It sucked. What more is there to say?” Monica stared into her yellowish tea, which had bits floating in it from the lemon slice at the bottom of the cup.

  “You deserved that promotion.”

  “I know,” she sighed, her voice a combination of anger and melancholy.

  “And Alan’s a jerk, you deserve better.”

  Monica chuckled drily. “You say that every time.”

  “Well, it’s true.” Zoe was smiling again, trying to meet Monica’s eyes and get her to smile, too. “You deserve better than a jerk who doesn’t know he’s lucky to be with you and should hold onto you, tight.”

  Monica smiled, sadly. Even knowing he was a jerk, she still felt like a failure, somehow. Breakups had a way of doing that to her. And that was compounded with being overlooked at work. She appreciated Zoe though. Having a friend like her was a reminder that she deserved—and could have—good people and good things in her life. “You’re such a smooth talker. I should just date you.”