In the years since, I had joined the firm and taken my rightful place. It had been a steep learning curve, which had kept me humble, and I knew I had grown to be a man much like those in business who used to intimidate me. A powerful boss, impeccably dressed on the outside, with the ability to make or break a man, but because I had lived my life differently I knew inside I wasn’t the same.
It had taken a while to realize my worth in life, and I knew there was still a mountain of material to learn from the piranhas who crossed my path daily, with their ruthless attitudes in the world of finance. But I also liked that I knew this. I was flawed, but reformed, and harder—but not unyielding—unlike the self-important egotistical narcissists who enjoyed listening to their own conversations and whose word they thought was God.
In short, I was proud I’d battled through and became sure-footed in my identity. It may have taken me a long time to mature, and along the way I had made many mistakes, but I found those mistakes came with experience. In business I was balanced and fair like my father, never brutal, but my tolerance for bullshit was low and had no problem casting out those who would try to gain an unfair advantage either.
Turning from my waist to look behind me, a smile crept on my lips when I saw Juliette had been joined by my sister, Lorna, and Hammer. The way Lorna tilted her head while Juliette waved her arms when she spoke animatedly was a sign of approval from her. Lorna had another ‘tell’ and kept touching Juliette’s forearm when she replied, and it confirmed for me my sister liked her.
Lorna, was my mom’s youngest daughter. Mom referred to her as her ‘affectionate girl,’ but I knew Lorna only ever invaded a person’s personal space when she became lost in a conversation she enjoyed. She, like Sawyer, made friends with most people and no one was off limits. She’d even developed an easy and close friendship with Sawyer’s now business partner, and long-time recovering drug addict, Hammer.
To most people it would have appeared a strange relationship; Hammer was a handsome, muscular, tall, and blond band drummer, who in the previous year had discovered tattoos. A stark contrast to that of Lorna’s social debutant background and her proper schoolmarm, no-nonsense approach to life.
Lorna had an upbringing of privilege that was a world away from Hammer’s poor start and less than structured rock star lifestyle. But he was a great guy and as weird as they looked alongside one another, they had always gotten on great. As I watched the three of them from a distance, I turned my attention back to the task at hand of getting Juliette a drink.
Scanning the yard, my focus settled on four large brightly-colored ice chests placed in the shade on the wooden porch. They were next to Hammer’s kitchen door. I crossed the yard, nodding at one or two of the familiar faces I recognized until I reached the porch. There weren’t many people I knew as most were personal friends of Hammer’s.
“Trust me, just taste it, you’ll love it, Billie’s an amazing cook.” My heart stalled in my chest and stuttered back to life when I heard the woman who had always immediately primed every nerve in my body.
Once the shock of potentially coming face-to-face with Tricia Mattison again sank in, my heartbeat raced. For the previous couple of years I’d successfully, if somewhat inventively, avoided any events where I knew the possibility of running into her had been more than average. Fuck.
I had thought we were ancient history, until I heard her voice, but the instant I knew she was near, my body had reacted to the sound of her unmistakable familiar tone. I hadn’t even set eyes on her, but the anticipation of seeing her had been enough to bring back that ache in my chest and the restless feeling I had always felt when she was around.
Hearing her voice had sparked that insane euphoric feeling I got from the crazy chemistry we shared, and I realized that feeling had never left me. It was nothing like how I felt when I was with Juliette.
How do I know I recognize that feeling yet, I can’t explain how I feel for Juliette? An internal comparison I’d rather not to have made, took control of my mind. Juliette is exactly what I need… I love her.
Do I, or is this what I want to believe? If it’s Juliette, then why is my body behaving like a hard-up teenager because Tricia is here?
My whole body felt wired in expectation, and like a flash, the time we’d spent apart instantly fell away and my thoughts plucked the raunchy memory of that last night I’d spent with her from my memory bank and set it on play at the front of my mind.
Another erotic image of her coming undone beneath me dropped into the mix, adding a heady cocktail of frustration, need, and an urgent pang of desire to see her.
Angrily, I squeezed my eyes shut tight, opened them again and strode toward the nearest cooler, set on getting the drinks, ignoring what I felt and moving the fuck away from the porch. Dipping my hand into the icy cold, partly melted ice, I pulled out a couple of beers. Not even the temperature in the box could distract the rage in my heart at my train of thought.
Rationally, I told myself Tricia’s voice was only a trigger to a long past memory and I loved Juliette, but deep down in my soul, my heart and my body were at odds with that thought as a sudden burst of adrenaline put every last nerve ending I had on its highest alert.
What Tricia and I had was a physical attraction, and I’d always favored physical tasks over mental ones in life. My contact sports were testament to that preference. The glowing calmness I felt after a good long workout had always truly centered me.
To entertain my feelings as anything else, with regards to Tricia, would have meant admitting I still felt I had unfinished business with her, and that was something I didn’t want to be my truth.
Caught up in my thoughts, I turned to make my way back off the porch and hadn’t realized she’d made it outside and was right there … in front of me, staring intently toward me. For a long moment we both froze, our eyes soaking in how the other looked, until I realized my breath had caught in my chest and breathed it out in a sharp huff. She looks incredible.
“Tricia.” My voice sounded low … gruff, as want and desire clogged my throat and I fought the unwelcomed electrical thrill that ran through me from having her gorgeous eyes on me. I felt my heart rate stall and stutter erratically as the air between us thickened. Blood roared through my veins and heat pooled at my core. The forceful reaction of my body to seeing Tricia was a reaction I’d never experienced with any other woman. My balls ached just looking at her. I had grown hard and my whole body had felt electrically charged, despite my head telling me I shouldn’t feel anything and hating I felt like that about her.
The hot afternoon sun suddenly burned as if someone had turned up the heat and shame washed over me that my body was being disloyal to Juliette. Disgrace warred with desire and I silently cussed Tricia’s appearance, because my devotion toward Juliette had been wiped out in a single heartbeat the moment I looked into Tricia’s piercing eyes. I couldn’t move, totally incapacitated by raw carnal thoughts about the woman I’d only slept with less than a handful of times. I’d never been a cheater by choice, yet pure liquid lust seeped, bathed every nerve cell I possessed in that one single minute in time.
For months after the last time I’d been with her, Tricia’s mental image had mocked me with her perfect smile that lit up her eyes. The way I had walked away from that scenario of hookups with her had controlled my thoughts far longer than I’d have liked. Being with Juliette had distracted me from those and they diminished. Yet, seeing Tricia again had cast fresh doubt on how I felt for Juliette just by her presence.
Tricia brought out a spirit within me I found difficult to resist, and when I’d taken the hard decision not to fuck her again, I knew denying myself that pleasure would take will because she felt like an addiction.
As my mind worked overtime to adjust to the shock of our meeting, it subsequently overloaded and emptied. I’d be a liar if I said I hadn’t thought what I may have said if I had run into her again and how I would have behaved, but when faced with the reality of this, al
l I managed to say was her name.
“James,” she responded, mimicking my name like I had done hers, but it was how she said it that told me she wasn’t immune to the riot of feelings arcing between us either.
“How have you been?” Absentmindedly, holding both beers by the neck of the bottles in one hand, I caught her upper arm with my free one before I realized I’d touched her. Tricia’s breath hitched sharply, her braless nipples immediately catching my attention as they pebbled beneath the tiny silk top she wore.
It hadn’t been my intention to touch her at all, but once I did, my fingers itched as agony and pleasure filed through every cell I possessed in response to the smooth warm skin beneath them. Tricia’s eyes immediately dropped to where I held her before looking at mine again. Dark jade eyes filled with lust stared back at me as she battled her own desire.
Good…” she shrugged and looked about as thrown by the meeting as I was, “busy, you know how it is.” The flat tone in her voice conflicted with how she searched my face, cast her eyes down to my lips, stalled for a beat, then held my gaze again.
Vibrations ran through my body as the air around us shifted again. The potent chemistry we had and the overwhelming connection we’d shared previously pulsed undeniably between us. Another incapacitating pause filled us both with hesitancy as we stood in self-denial and fought our thinly disguised attraction.
“No, actually, I don’t. I have no idea what you’re up to these days.” Frustration bubbled in my chest and I had no idea why I’d said that. I was with Juliette and I shouldn’t have cared what Tricia’s life was like anymore … but for some unknown reason I had suddenly needed to know.
“Tricia?” a low masculine voice asked directly behind me. As my gaze had been firmly on hers, it was she who broke our intense connection and glanced over my shoulder. The interruption made her take a step back, and as she did so my hand broke contact with her. I felt the imprint of her skin and the loss of warmth from it instantly.
As I turned my head to look at the guy, my chest tightened as discontentment turned to irritation and anger before jealousy took over. I was shocked that Tricia had brought someone with her because I’d never seen her with anyone else. That alone told me he may have meant something to her. All other times I’d ever seen her at events, she had been alone.
Casting my eyes over the tall man she was with, I compared myself with him. What does he have that I don’t? I prayed my eyes hadn’t betrayed me and shown my resentment and irrational thoughts. What the fuck am I doing? I’m with Juliette—love Juliette. Yet even as I thought those things for Juliette, it had still crushed me to see Tricia with someone else.
Glancing from her to him, I noted he was a handsome, affluent-looking man, astute too, since his eyes narrowed eyes suspiciously and took in the measure of me. Taking a deep breath, he slid his hand into hers and held it toward his chest in an intimate gesture, and she turned, peered up at him, and mirrored the warmth in his smile.
“James, you’re my hero, just what I need.” Juliette grinned, suddenly beside me. Her interruption shook me back to my senses. Tricia’s face was unreadable as she watched Juliette pluck one of the two cold beers from my hand. She took a small swig from the bottle and lowering the drink from her lips, she eyed Tricia and her date curiously. Smiling she slid her free hand slowly around my waist, leaned into me, and glanced expectantly up at me.
“Well, aren’t you going to introduce me?” My boner instantly deflated and I couldn’t recall a time when I’d felt more awkward as I stood between her, Tricia, and her partner.
“Tricia—Juliette,” I said, trying to sound indifferent and immediately wished I’d had the superpower of teleporting myself elsewhere.
“And that’s it?” Juliette mused incredulously, her eyebrows raised to her hairline before they quickly dropped when she picked up the tense atmosphere in the air between us all. Again, I struggled for something— anything to say that would have lightened the moment—any one thing that would free the tongue-tie that had almost rendered me mute.
“James, would you mind giving me a hand to move this table?” My eyes snapped to my left and Hammer stood, one hand on a table he could easily have lifted himself and it felt obvious to me, he’d been watching the whole incident from a short distance away.
Luckily for me, he knew more of the deal between Tricia and me than I’d have liked him to know. The night of the wedding, after I’d left Tricia’s room, he came to my rescue then too.
“Nice running into you again, James,” Tricia interjected; obviously relieved she had an out to move on. It would have been hard for our respective partners not to have picked up on the unbearable tension between us since they had joined our conversation.
Immediately after she had spoken, Tricia’s attentive suitor moved his grip from her hand and wrapped his arm around her shoulder. He nodded his acknowledgement but the suspicious expression that accompanied it told me we were done, as he turned Tricia and led her away.
“Who was that?” he asked, as they walked toward in the direction of the barbecue grill.
“No need to feel jealous, Mick, it’s only Billie’s brother-in-law,” she replied. If the conversation had continued about me, I had no idea, as they moved out of earshot and their voices became swallowed up by the indistinguishable chatter of the other guests around us.
“Old friend of yours?” Juliette asked, distracting my attention from them when they were almost out of sight. I realized I’d been watching them go and cleared my throat. Turning cautiously to look at my girl, it was apparent she hadn’t heard what Tricia had said when her partner had asked her. I moved away from her and calmly wandered toward the table Hammer had urgently decided to move on my behalf.
“Brother’s wife’s friend,” I replied offhand, giving Tricia as nonspecific of a title toward her, as she had about me moments before.
“Ah, really? I thought you looked … close,” Juliette replied. The hesitancy in her comment and the tone in her voice told me she’d chosen her word carefully. My heart sank. “For a moment I thought perhaps there had been more,” she added, and in my gut, I knew she already suspected there were unspoken feelings between Tricia and me, despite my protestation.
“Nope, definitely not close,” I replied honestly, because although Tricia and I had briefly been something, we’d never been close. Juliette’s question gave me an uneasy feeling, and another wave of guilt temporarily consumed me. Setting the table down only a few feet from where we’d lifted it, Hammer thanked me enthusiastically, like I had saved his life, and this gave me a minute to compose myself again.
My instinct had been to offer more reassurance to Juliette. After all, my meeting with Tricia hadn’t been orchestrated, nor had I welcomed how I’d reacted to it. Instead I chose not to dwell on the incident and threw my arm around her shoulder, pulling her into my side.
A cocktail of sadness, guilt, and shame pricked at my conscience when I did, because even though my reaction to Tricia hadn’t been welcomed, I had been ridiculously powerless to fight it.
Hearing my response appeared to satisfy Juliette, who sighed and rested her head on my chest. Immediately I cradled it with my free hand, but I felt like a traitor when my eyes intentionally scanned the yard and sought where Tricia had gone. I reasoned with myself this was to avoid her, but if that was the case, then why did my public display of affection toward Juliette suddenly feel oddly wrong?
Sawyer’s comment from earlier that day came back to me again, stirring more unwelcome thoughts in my mind. How do I feel about Juliette? Is what we have enough? If I had already had difficulty quantifying how I felt about my girl, I was even more confused since I’d crossed paths with Tricia.
For most of the rest of the day, I could neither concentrate on conversation nor could I stop my eyes from gravitating toward Tricia. Fortunately, Juliette appeared blind to notice my distraction and had been caught up by the attention of many of Hammer’s friends.
As time passed and
evening came upon us, we settled down in the various mismatched patio loungers, small bamboo sofas, and chairs people had donated to Hammer to furnish his new yard. Eventually we ate, but by then, due to my funk about seeing Tricia I’d drank copious amounts alcohol, much more than I’d intended to drink. I had always been careful not to get drunk since I’d woken balls deep in Charlotte, however I trusted Juliette to see me right and I had let my guard down.
A small pang of envy squeezed in my chest at how right Sawyer had gotten the balance in his life and how great of a fuckup I’d been in mine until a few years before. It was easy to learn how Sawyer had grown in maturity through the stories he, Hammer, and some of their musician friends had told. Despite laughing and looking relaxed with the group, there wasn’t one moment when I hadn’t been acutely aware of Tricia’s presence in that yard.
It was impossible to miss; once I knew she was there she appeared larger than life. For a while she and her partner had gone into the kitchen and I thought perhaps they’d left, but when they came back, she sat down directly opposite Juliette and me, with her handsome beau, Mick, in tow.
As I cuddled Juliette, I really didn’t want to be that guy, the one with his arms around one woman and closely watching every move of another. I tried not to do that to Juliette, but I knew my eyes were being drawn to her repeatedly, so with little option left, I decided I’d rather leave. Standing a little unsteady, I excused myself and headed toward the house to take a breath and to relieve myself.
Sitting across from her had felt painfully awkward and I was conscious she had been watching me. It had felt like the weirdest feeling as Juliette laid her head on my shoulder, clinging possessively with both hands, while Tricia locked eyes with me and blatantly stared me down.
I told myself I was being ridiculous, that Juliette was the one I was with, yet I had still felt uncomfortable, even mindful of how my being with Juliette had made Tricia feel. Why the fuck did that matter to me?
Resist You (Unchained Attraction Book 3) Page 5