Fool Me Once (First Wives Series Book 1)

by Catherine Bybee

  The lights on the deck started to fade, and Reed skillfully placed his arm over her shoulders and tucked her into his personal space.

  Her stomach twisted and her head felt light. When was the last time she’d been held while watching a movie? And why hadn’t she actively tried to find someone to do so? The truth was, she hadn’t met someone in a long time worthy of quiet movie moments.

  He smelled fresh, his body was warm, and he kissed the side of her head once he settled. She could get used to this.

  When the opening credits of the movie started to roll, she looked up at him. “Thanks for not pressing.”

  He brushed her arm with the backs of his fingers and turned his attention to the movie.

  The movie ended and all but a few stayed behind to enjoy the quiet night outside. The ship glided over the ocean with almost unnoticeable movement, the breeze picking up as the night grew on.

  “I say we paraglide tomorrow.”

  Lori had curled up on the lounger, Reed kept his arm around her and talked against her ear while they watched the stars.

  “Jump off a cliff with a tent over my head?” she teased, but didn’t seem as dead against high adrenaline activities as she had when they first met.

  “How about off the back of a boat?”

  She seemed to contemplate that image. “Over the water?”

  “I don’t think you can do it off a back of a boat that isn’t over water.”

  She pushed at his feet with hers. “Smart-ass.”

  “C’mon. Push yourself.”

  “I can’t tell if you’re manipulating me or bullying me.”

  He should have been insulted. “You haven’t said no.”

  Her lips pushed together. “I’m thinking about it.”

  “I bet Avery would do it.”

  “Avery is younger than I am.”

  “Oh, you’re so old.” His voice was rich with sarcasm.

  “Plastic surgery and fillers. I do live in LA.”

  For half a second he found himself searching for telltale scars.

  “Now who’s gullible?”

  “So I’ll book us in the morning.”

  “I should ask the others if they want to join us.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  “It isn’t a firm no.”

  That’s a start. “So you’re in LA.”

  “Isn’t everyone?” she asked.

  “Feels like it at three in the afternoon on the freeway.”

  “I know, the traffic starts earlier and earlier.”

  “I’m in Santa Monica,” he told her.

  “House or condo?”

  “Renting. I haven’t decided if I’m going to stick there.” Which wasn’t completely true. But since his business was run out of a cell phone and a post office box, it was easy to stay mobile.

  “I have a condo downtown.”

  “Loft space?”

  “No, high-rise. I love it. Close to my office, close to the courts.” She snuggled deeper in his blanket.

  “I’d like to see how you live.” While the line was one he’d used in the past to gather information, he said it now with an unwelcome wave of guilt. He pushed it aside.

  She hesitated. “Do . . . do you think this can continue outside of a cruise ship?” she asked, tilting her head up to see his face.

  “Honest answer?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t completely figured out what this is. Have you?”

  Lori settled back in the crook of his arms. “Well, we’re both adults.”

  “We are that.” He held her closer, as if emphasizing their age.

  “Neither of us are married or otherwise attached.”

  “True.”

  “It’s safe to say there is some chemistry.” She kept rattling off her list of obstacles they’d already overcome.

  “I like the chemistry,” he said against the lobe of her ear.

  “We live in the same general area of the world. Which is a coincidence I’d question if I were somewhere other than a cruise ship in the Mediterranean.”

  “Maybe it’s fate.” He hoped she hadn’t noticed his hand pause during her last comment.

  “I’m not a big believer in fate. In my world, things happen on purpose, not accident.”

  It was his turn to twist this around on her. “So you’ve been stalking me and set us up to meet?”

  She laughed, as he anticipated.

  His gut twisted with a taste of guilt licking the edges of his psyche.

  “No, that would be on you,” she said.

  “Guilty,” he admitted. “Ever since I saw you at the bar that first day on board, I’ve been stalking you.”

  Her amusement leveled into something much deeper. His lines were working, he felt it in how her body relaxed against his, how when she looked up at him, her eyes peered deeper into his.

  “To what end?” she slowly asked.

  His hand that had been lingering on her arm took a long stroke up until the back of his fingers stroked the edges of one breast.

  She shivered under his touch.

  “I can think of a couple.”

  Lori lifted her chin and turned up toward him. “Only a couple?”

  “You know of more?” he teased.

  “Maybe.” Her word sounded like sin.

  He liked the banter.

  Reed reached for her neck, ran his thumb along her jaw, and felt his erection spring to life.

  Lori sighed and closed her eyes.

  He lowered his lips.

  “I have a question,” she said before he could kiss her.

  “Ask it,” he said.

  “Why are we sitting on this deck when we both have perfectly good private rooms?” She opened her eyes, stared at his lips.

  “That is a very good question.” And unless the ship started to take on water, he was taking his investigation to a dangerous level.

  “Your room or mine?” she asked.

  He lifted his frame from the lounge chair, reached a hand for her. “Mine. Your friends tend to show up in yours.”

  Once she was standing, Reed slipped a hand behind her back, pulled her body flush with his, and reached for her lips. He tasted cream as she melted against him. She kissed him back, open mouth and wanting.

  Reed wanted her.

  God help him.

  Lori’s palms started to sweat when Reed unlocked the door to his stateroom.

  Was he serious about wanting to see if they could be something off the ship and home in LA, or was he handing her a line?

  Did she care if it was a line?

  Yes, she did. Against her better judgment.

  She told herself to live in the moment and not worry about what she had no way of controlling.

  Truth was she was the one who wanted Reed. Even if he was a sweet talker saying all the things she wanted to hear in order to get her naked and under him. She wanted that, too.

  “Looks like we share the same decorator,” she said, trying to hide her nerves. She entered his room and crossed to the drapes, which were open to the sea. “Same view.”

  She felt his eyes on her back and turned.

  Reed leaned against his closed door, his hands casually in his pants pockets. “You’re nervous.”

  “No,” was her immediate reaction. She sighed. “I shouldn’t be.”

  “We don’t have to.”

  For a moment, it felt like he was backing out.

  “Bite your tongue,” she teased.

  He pushed away from the door and approached her. “I’d rather you do that.”

  “Oh? You like pain?”

  He shook his head before reaching for the back of hers. His kiss was an inferno in under a second. Unlike the ones they’d shared before, this one promised a much more satisfying end. Their tongues dueled until they were both breathless. He removed the clip that had held her hair back all evening, his fingers massaging the strands free of tangles as he continued to claim her lips, h
er neck.

  She moaned. “Oh, you have that down.”

  “One of my talents,” he said with a little growl.

  Lori opened her eyes, found him watching as he kissed her. “Do you have more?”

  His hands ran down her shoulders before falling to her waist. “You’ll have to tell me.”

  She reached behind his neck and pulled his head back down to hers. He nibbled her lower lip before lifting her off her feet and carrying her the few feet it took to place her on the bed.

  He followed her down, the weight of him the secure blanket of comfort she desired.

  Lori wrapped a free leg around his, felt the vibrations of his low moan through their lips. He kissed, nibbled, and worked his way down her neck. He found a spot that made her shiver.

  “There you are,” he muttered. “Relax, I have you.”

  He cupped her breast through her clothes, teased her nipple through her bra.

  Her body warmed, her limbs shivered. The sway of the ship lightened the cells in her head, and Reed blew them away with his touch.

  Reed separated her legs with his knee, pushed against her fully.

  “Too many clothes,” she whispered, wanting.

  He chuckled and reached under her shirt, the heat of his hand met her skin, electrifying her senses. Lori clawed at his shirt, slid her hand beneath the waistband of his pants, met the cool flesh of his hip.

  Teeth met her breast through her shirt. “Take it off.” She wanted it off . . . everything.

  “Demanding.” There was laughter in his voice.

  “Please.”

  He huffed out a laugh and tugged her shirt over her head. Sitting up, she helped him out of his, was rewarded with a man who worked out and lived by the beach. Tan, muscular . . . and touching her.

  Her nails ran down his chest, circled his nipples before reaching around his back.

  Without warning, he shifted her around the bed until she was on top, straddling him.

  Her hair fell around her face. Reed pulled it back and smiled up at her. “I like this look,” he told her.

  “Me on top?”

  “No . . .” He traced her bottom lip with his thumb. “Aroused.”

  She traced his bare abs, ran her hands lower. “And what does that look like?”

  “Sexy.”

  Something she couldn’t identify crossed his face before he pulled her in to kiss.

  Reed liked to play, his hands made quick work of the rest of her clothes, she helped him shed his.

  He looked just as good out of his clothes as he did in them. While she didn’t have body image issues, Lord knew she wasn’t as fit as she’d been in her early twenties.

  Did he notice?

  Did he care?

  “Lori?”

  His thumbs parted the folds of her sex.

  “Yes . . .”

  “You’re beautiful.”

  “Are you reading my mind?”

  He pulled her under him, kissed the top of one breast, moved to the other. “I am. One of my talents.”

  His tongue and teeth traveled lower.

  “Oh?” She shivered.

  “Top secret skill. I shouldn’t be using it now.”

  It took every ounce of will to not push him lower. The heat of his words carried on his breath tickled her belly. “I won’t tell anyone.”

  He licked the edge of her hip.

  “You want more.”

  She lifted for him.

  “You can just tell—”

  “Stop! Talking!”

  He laughed before he found her. A lick, a nibble, and a suck, and Lori was lost.

  It didn’t matter how skillful she was at completing certain tasks on her own, nothing took the place of a man’s mouth on her sex. And Reed had skills.

  She really hoped the walls of the ship were insulated when she called his name in her release.

  Lori opened her eyes when air met her flesh.

  Reed stared at her.

  She hid under her arm.

  “I’m doing that again,” he told her.

  “Now?” She wouldn’t survive it.

  “Later.”

  She flung her arm to her side. “Good.”

  He shifted over her, the heat of him pressed closer.

  Lifting her legs over his hips, she invited him in. “Don’t stop.”

  Reed placed a hand on the side of her face as he sank deep. Conversation ended, replaced with an effort to breathe while racing toward a common, satisfying goal.

  He said something she didn’t quite catch, not that it mattered, and her body shattered in delightful waves.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Lori was drunk on orgasms, Reed could see it in her face, could feel it in the lazy touch of her hands. If he were being honest with himself, he’d admit he was as loose as a doll made of string.

  With her head tucked into the crook of his arm, Lori traced imaginary circles on his chest, which managed to arouse him more than once already, and it was only one in the morning.

  “Have you always been in California?” Lori’s pillow talk was a bit of a minefield. Reed had learned early on to give as many facts as he could without telling everything about himself.

  “Mostly. Spent a little time in my twenties traveling around. How about you?”

  “Born and raised. Did my undergrad in Chicago, froze my butt off for four years, then law school at Columbia.”

  Her leg was tucked up beside his, his hand rested on her naked thigh. He gave her butt a tiny slap. “Where you froze more of this off.”

  She laughed and wiggled her rear end. “I couldn’t wait to get back to the sunshine.”

  “And traffic.”

  “Traffic is everywhere. Adding snow and ice makes it worse.”

  He knew that.

  He also knew that now was a great time to probe her about her relationship with Shannon.

  “You could be an attorney anywhere.”

  “Wealthy clients are in LA,” she offered.

  “Like Shannon?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I guess that’s good for you.”

  “Wealth doesn’t make divorce any easier, it just makes it more lucrative for me.”

  “How so?”

  “Best example is to compare a typical divorce from a middle income family in, say, Nebraska, to a high income family in Bel Air. The first couple have a home, two cars, a moderate savings. Nothing in ways of stocks, bonds, yada yada. Couple of kids, maybe a dog. For argument’s sake, let’s say the wife decided to be a stay-at-home mom. The marriage falls apart without too much fanfare. Maybe the house is sold, most likely the wife and kids will stay in the family home, ex-husband has to pay for home, for the kids . . . the wife needs to go back to work. There is no fighting over possessions, since what they had was minimal. He keeps his junk he kept gathered in the man cave garage and she keeps the Pier 1 Imports buys.”

  “It sounds like the wife is making out.”

  “Probably, but no more or less than what she had when she was married. But in a wealthy marriage, there are multiple houses, sometimes in different countries. Custody is an issue if the couples live in different places. Cars, assets, stocks, bonds; you name it. I had a couple fight over a collection of Montblanc pens.”

  “Are those expensive?” He was a Bic kind of guy.

  She looked up at him. “Yes, very. Anyway, the rich take a long time to sort out their crap.”

  “And the longer they take, the more hours you can bill.”

  She placed her chin on his chest. “Yes. Which sounds awful, but I always warn my clients when they come in what it’s going to cost if they can’t come to some kind of resolution before going to court.”

  Questions about Shannon’s divorce were on the tip of his tongue, but he swallowed them back. “I didn’t have much when I divorced. I was barely twenty-three, and she had just reached the age to drink in a bar. It lasted less than a year, neither of us fought to keep the couch.”

  “That
’s smart.”

  “What about you? Was your own divorce simple?”

  “Yes and no.” Her smile fell.

  “Oh?”

  “We met in law school.”

  “You were both lawyers?”

  “No. He was a year younger than me. I graduated, took the bar . . . passed. He graduated by a hair and failed the bar three times. I found my first position with a firm, and he was working as a paralegal and hating it.”

  “That sounds like a recipe for disaster.”

  “Or divorce, as it turned out. He had enough legal knowledge to hold on long enough that I cut him a check for alimony and he ended up with the condo.”

  Reed couldn’t imagine any able-bodied man taking his young wife for that kind of payout.

  “So where is the yes part of ‘was your divorce simple?’ Sounds like you got screwed.”

  “It was simple in that I didn’t drag it out. My attorney’s fees were nothing compared to what my clients pay me. I learned two very valuable lessons before I turned thirty.”

  He could probably guess, but he didn’t try. “Which were?”

  “Love is grand, but divorce is a hundred grand.”

  He grinned. “And the second?”

  “Prenuptial agreements should be mandated before anyone enters into marriage.”

  Her eyes were fading, and she lay back down on his chest.

  After a few seconds, he said, “Prenuptial sounds loveless.”

  She hummed, and her breathing slowed. “I refer to my previous statement.”

  Reed closed his eyes. “Love is grand . . .”

  “Divorce is a hundred grand,” she finished for him.

  She went to sleep in Italy and woke up in France. To seal the morning up, Reed faked a French accent and woke her with indecent kisses all over. By the time she took her walk of shame to her cabin, she was floating on a sexual cloud with appropriate body aches from the previous night’s exercise.

  “Go spend the day in France with your friends,” he had encouraged her.

  “No skydiving?”

  He laughed. “You’re not ready.”

  She wasn’t. “Dumping me already?”

  “Not a chance. But I need to recharge, and I’m not sure how I can do that while staring at you all day. Besides, you’re here with your friends.”

  His words reminded her of why she was on the cruise in the first place. Somehow, the trip for her clients had become her own personal Love Boat episode.