Twenty Times Tempted: A Sexy Contemporary Romance Collection

by Petrova, Em

  She was confused. And hurt. I turned away and retreated into the kitchen. Tick, tick, tick. Stirring the thickening sauce, I waffled with the wooden spoon, buying the time that tick, ticked, ticked my resolve away.

  She murmured my name again and I heard the stool pfft across the carpet and my gut clenched because she needed to leave before I hurt her, hurt myself.

  Teeth clenched, I growled, “Taylor, we need to talk.”

  “Okay.”

  Jesus, she said okay. Persistent, innocent.

  I can give you what you want, Taylor Richardson.

  But can I give you what you need?

  I’d tucked the red wine close to the refrigerator, away from the heat, leaving it uncorked and breathing. The damn wine was luckier than me, I couldn’t catch a gulp of air if my life depended on it. Rooting around the cupboard, I found two mismatched wine glasses and filled them halfway, handing her one while I chugged mine and poured another … what was it called? Not a finger, that was for scotch.

  She interrupting my musings, asking, “What’s wrong?” She’d have been better served to ask ‘what’s right’ because that would have been a much shorter discussion.

  She sipped, I drank, I topped us off and spoke until the timer dinged and my subconscious walked me to the refrigerator and the bowl of iced shrimp awaiting immersion in the fragrant sauce. One sensory level worked, admiring the spicy aroma of creole seasoning, my bastardized version adequate for the uninitiated and the best I could do on short notice.

  I was shite in the wooing department, a johnny-one-note and self-centered as my family often reminded me, taking my pleasure whenever it suited and tucking away those tiny vulnerabilities that branded me a loner … and lonesome to my core.

  With Taylor, I wanted to use something other than my dick to show her how I felt. Aside from my job, it was the only passion I acknowledged.

  That the tall mocha skinned woman staring at me with concern and, dare I say it? … maybe even, love … opened up a realm of possibilities I’d never considered.

  I tried to bury the truth under the guise of seduction.

  When it looked like I might be winning, I slapped her with the final betrayal.

  “The paper is prepared to offer you a generous cash incentive if you will agree to assist us in this investigation.”

  I plated two bowls of shrimp creole and placed one in front of her. I stayed on the opposite side of the bar, preferring to remain standing with the counter physically separating our bodies, though the heat off her anger was enough to set my apartment on fire.

  She spooned the stew and blew on it, tasting it and nodding. A piece of me waited for her to dig in and let the flavors dissipate the harm I’d done, but that was a hopeless fantasy. She set the spoon down and retrieved her shoes, making quick work of knotting the laces.

  When she stood, she towered over me, physically, morally, in every way possible.

  She asked, “Are you only about the job, Mister van Horn?”

  My sister’s voice added a damning echo to that, her accusations coming home to roost in the persona of her best friend.

  Vaulting over the counter and pulling her into my arms would only result in her decking me or me getting hit with a restraining order, neither of which was much disincentive when I watched her world collapse around her, all because of me and my goddamn story.

  I had chosen honesty over subterfuge. That should have left me feeling noble, instead I felt like shit. And I owed her an answer.

  I just wish I had one that made sense.

  I’m in love with you. I can’t live without you.

  Get used to disappointment, Robbie.

  Instead I said, “I can make your problem go away. I can see that Michael O’Brien gets put behind bars for a long time.”

  “And make your newspaper a hell of a lot of money, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what about you,” the you drawn out with such venom the spittle pooled at the corners of her mouth and foamed until she flicked her tongue, quick as a snake and just as lethal. “What do you get?”

  The list was long: notoriety, respect, a chance at becoming the watchdog over the public trust, the knowledge that I did my best at overcoming a challenge… That maybe I was a badass and someone to watch out for because I could slice and dice lives with well-chosen words.

  But she knew all that already.

  “What do I get?” I moved around the counter and came up behind her. That she let me get that close while being vulnerable gave me a frisson of hope, so I went with what was in my heart.

  “What I wanted was you, Taylor.”

  “Me?” She made to spin and confront me but I clasped my hands around her waist, holding her still. If she wanted to throttle me, I’d let her. What I couldn’t do was let her go.

  “You don’t know me…”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. Let me help you.”

  Let me love you.

  “If I agree to do this, do I have to work … deal … with you?”

  “Um, no, my editor, Dave Jackson, can assign an associate editor to work with you for most of the time. You’d have to see me occasionally, but…”

  My heart thudded double time, so hard I feared I was verging on cardiac arrest.

  Say yes, say yes, say yes…

  “Let me go.”

  I released her and stepped away. There was nothing more I could do. I’d dug my own grave good and deep. The rest was up to her.

  She said, “I’ll think about,” and walked out the door and I didn’t even try to offer to take her home.

  My belly growled but I dumped the shrimp creole into a plastic contained and shoved the dishes and the pan into the dishwasher. Checking the calendar to see what was up for Saturday, I found the usual clutter absent, a day free of obligations almost a sin. To celebrate I might indulge in a pickup game at the Y, something I hadn’t done for a long time. I needed the exercise, mostly to clear my fogged brain cells. After scribbling a reminder in the blank square box, I called Paddy and arranged to meet him at our usual place.

  I was going to squeeze all the information I could out of him.

  Then I was going to get falling down drunk.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Tay

  Marie held my hand, her fingers twined around mine, tight. We were at her kitchen table, Sam having been once more dispatched to bring me round, this time with an overnight bag.

  “I simply can’t believe that man let you go home all alone, especially into that neighborhood,” and she turned to yell out into the living room, “Sam, can you believe that?”

  Marie was furious, actually more so than me. I was just numb … no, more than numb. Dead. Dead to sensation, dead to hope.

  Apropos of nothing, I offered, “He made shrimp creole.”

  “Ah.” Another squeeze, letting me work it out.

  Sam asked, “How was it?” and Marie gave him the ‘isn’t that just like a man look’ but he ignored her and moved into the adjoining hall to escape the estrogen tsunami.

  “Do you want to move into the den, dear? Be more comfortable?”

  “No, thanks, this is fine.” Uncomfortable was good, it kept me rooted in the now, it gave me a physical pinpoint that reminded me that the emptiness inside didn’t define me in a psychobabble kind of way. I was more than a shell with a soft gooey center. I needed to grow a set of brass ovaries and meet the opportunity head on.

  Yay! Taylor Richardson! You go, girl.

  “I called the lawyer, Rebecca Finklestein, this morning and explained the offer.”

  “And what’d she say?”

  “She’d already looked into Italian law and it was like she said, prove him guilty, put him behind bars and all my troubles go away.” Sort of. She also reminded me that I could keep my mouth shut, head or some other body part to the grindstone, wait out the time and then put it behind me. That appealed to the defensive mindset, the passive one.

  The other little consequenc
e that no one talked about, and quite honestly had never occurred to me in a New York minute, was me once more being implicated in Michael’s schemes in a guilt by association kind of way. And that made sense because once the mud started flying, it would coat everything, including me, in the fallout zone. Europe all over again.

  Marie said, “There’s more, isn’t there,” and waved for Sam to join us. Apparently he’d been lurking nearby just in case.

  “I never told you the whole story, about what Michael was doing to break my contract and get me placed in the A-one league.”

  Sam said, “With a healthy signing bonus, right?”

  “Exactly.” Extracting my hand from Marie’s grasp, I folded them on the table and willed them to stop trembling. “In some ways I was naïve. That’s not an excuse, just a fact. And I believed in Michael.” Hells bells, I had married the man. “I trusted him, and that’s on me, no one else. I missed all the signs.”

  “Like what, hon?”

  I came at that question sideways. “There are a lot of ways to break a contract, to make yourself so unattractive to the team and the league, that they’ll practically trip over themselves to wash their hands of you.”

  “Morals clauses?” That from Sam and I knew he knew where I was headed.

  “As a last resort, yes. But there were other options: not playing up to potential, throwing games, illegal gambling, crap like that.”

  Marie sat back to give her husband clear line-of-sight to me and my shame.

  “It seemed cut and dried. Don’t play my best for a few games, not badly enough to do real damage and destroy our championship hopes, but enough for them to bench me.” At Marie’s quizzical look, I explained, “You can make stupid fouls that lead to technicals and extra points for the opponent, or maybe you get a little too physical and cause an injury.”

  “So you gave in.” Sam sounded disappointed in me, as well he should.

  “I considered it. The negotiations broke down, management entrenched and Michael was threatening to leave if he couldn’t get his way.”

  “Oh, Tay.”

  “What I didn’t know, at the time, was that he took kickbacks from both sides. Supposedly my team bribed him to convince me to stay, the other to convince me to defect.”

  Sam said, “Let me guess, he painted you as the perpetrator in all this.”

  “But, surely they couldn’t believe that of you!” Marie cried, being supportive again.

  I sighed and chewed on a fingernail, mentally whipping myself for not seeing it, any of it. When whoever said love is blind, they must have pegged the big red target on my back.

  “Somebody leaked it to the papers…”

  “No prizes for guessing who.” Sam was holding Marie’s hand now, his face thunderous.

  “Well, anyway, they started pointing fingers, at me, even other members of the team, accusing us of … crap, I don’t remember what all, now, but it got to the point where I was physically ill before a game. The fans booed and expected me to fail.”

  “So you did.”

  “Yeah, Sam, I did.” Brushing away the tears, I sat up straight and faced the couple who had launched the rescue Taylor longboat, along with Cordie and the Fink, and fessed up to my mistakes.

  Sam wasn’t about to pressure me to come out with it, but I had to clear the air so I continued, “We were in the quarter finals. By that time, I was ready to walk, forfeit everything, all my friendships, my fans, the whole nine yards. Michael was in Rome, taking a break from the stress.” I managed to say that with a straight face but Marie hissed and looked ready to kill.

  “So you ran.” Sam had that ‘your parents raised you better than that’ scowl and it was true.

  “Oh yeah, I ran. Right back to Michael. By the time I found him, the whole story had been leaked, each side taking the moral high ground,” and I did the hated finger quote thing, “and I ended up with the short stick.”

  “Then what happened?”

  This was the hard part, the Taylor Richardson is too stupid to live part of the story. “Michael had already assumed control over my assets,” and I glanced at Sam to confirm that he understood exactly how much money was involved, “and he wasn’t happy with losing twenty thousand a month so he tried to peddle me to Spain and France.”

  “But your reputation preceded you.” Sam was keeping a lid on his feelings but it cost him, his color going to an unhealthy shade of brownish puce.

  “The truth is, I had enough set aside to be comfortable for a very long time, working or not working didn’t matter. All we had to do was live simply and let it blow over until the next big thing caught the public’s eye.”

  “But that wasn’t Michael’s way, was it, dearest?” Marie sounded a lot like Cordie who was the only person, other than Michael, who knew the entire sad tale.

  “No it wasn’t. It took a little over a year, but he managed to blow through my savings and that’s when it got ugly.”

  When the money ran out, the abuse started. That’s when I should have bailed and I didn’t because by that time he had me believing it had been my fault all along and that I deserved everything I got, including his fists.

  Then there was Prague and me homeless and trying to find a way out.

  End of story, finito.

  Waiting it out was my best move. Avoiding the public eye and going about my business. Miss Anonymous. Except, I wasn’t exactly anonymous anymore. Rob’s buddy Sullivan, and now Rob himself, had a bead on a story where I was more or less a sideshow, but still an important cog. They’d move ahead, with or without my help.

  Without … that meant more legwork, more research, finding other smoking guns as Rob put it. But with my help? Maybe justice and a taste of vindication. I had less to lose financially but one thing that experience had taught me was I deserved a measure of self-respect. Otherwise, why was I trying to re-invent myself? The prospect of losing it again to public opinion wasn’t just uncomfortable, it was damn near a game-changer.

  But I loved the sport, so much so that I couldn’t imagine living outside of it. My graduate studies offered me an opportunity to get back to doing what I did best and to move forward with my life.

  I wasn’t Michael O’Brien, I didn’t need a man to define me.

  Then why does it matter so much what Robert van Horn thinks of you? That was the sixty-four thousand dollar question.

  Sam quietly asked, “What can we do to help?”

  “Yes, dear, what?”

  That’s when the dam burst.

  ***

  David Jackson was a bull moose of a man, hardly what I’d envisioned as the classic skinny, twitchy newspaper editor with heartburn and a constant hard-on for a lead. He looked, walked and talked like a linebacker; and he left me in no doubt that I was in good hands when it came to protecting a source. He introduced me to Parvi something or other and we exchanged contact information and files.

  Nodding appreciatively, Mr. Just-call-me-Jackson, everybody does, motioned for everyone but him, the assistant editor, and myself to leave the small conference room.

  “This looks fairly comprehensive.” He pawed through the folder, alternately looking at the corresponding pile next to my meager stash and then to Parvi who was furiously taking notes on a handheld device.

  “I collected all the newspaper articles and editorials that I could and translated them myself. Unfortunately, most of what’s there is from Milano since that was my home base at the time.” Tapping at a small collection paper-clipped together, I explained, “This is from the Rome sources, two of them are gossip rags but the other one is a respected daily.”

  He grunted and scanned some of the highlighted sections.

  Parvi interrupted with a, “Sir, should we get Peg to look over the financials?” to which the editor flipped a slightly thicker stack of notes toward his assistant editor.

  I had no idea who Peg was but if she could follow Michael’s misuse of my funds, it just might lead to other connections. Especially those in the Ca
ribbean. The editor had filled me in on exactly how far my asshole husband had fallen in his endless quest for the almighty buck.

  In some ways it was a relief to know that I’d slipped into that crack that some people might call chump change. He’d stepped up to the big time, manipulating deals netting him a nice cut of twenty million.

  After Parvi disappeared through the door, Jackson said, “Now. Do you want to explain why you don’t want to work with van Horn?”

  “No.”

  He waited.

  No, because we have a relationship. Wait, there’s no ‘have’, there’s … had? That wasn’t quite right either. So what do we have? Two kisses that curled my toes and set my innards on fire, a thumbprint on my lip that refused to leave, existing like some amputated phantom limb does, leaving feeling where none should exist. The unspeakable thrill of him spreading my legs, milking my senses of every spark of denial, sending me into orbit and then firing my taste buds with such indulgent fury I might have exploded, right there in his kitchen, sitting at his counter. Wishing it was his bed.

  Me pounding the formica and howling yes yes yes yes! as the mirapoix and the subtle seasonings detonated into orgiastic excess on my tongue.

  The fact that he could cook and use that tongue like a lethal weapon had me clutching my thighs and making the veins pop in my neck. There was a good chance a passing stranger might feel the need to call 911-exorcism given my state of arousal.

  Jackson’s mouth quirked in a way that reminded me of him.

  I stood and said, “I have a thing…” and we shook hands and I darted through the maze of cubbies and men in various stages of apoplexy, all in random motion in a din that rivaled a madhouse. I had no idea how a man like Rob could stand it.

  Don’t go there, girl. Think about something else.

  I’d just turned down enough money to pay rent on a decent apartment in a safe section of the city for the balance of my academic career. It seemed a fair exchange: I help them stick it to Michael ‘Malone’ O’Brien and I got as much protection as they could afford to give me without sacrificing the truth, whatever it was. I had had enough of dirty deals and money under the table to last me a lifetime. That wasn’t me; it wasn’t how I wanted to live my life.