Twenty Times Tempted: A Sexy Contemporary Romance Collection

by Petrova, Em

  Antony glared at her, and then his gaze softened. “Right. There is always that. Thanks.”

  “Antony,” she said, getting up, determined to get the hell out of here. All the way out. With nothing more in mind that to soothe and say goodbye, once and for all, she put her arms around him, burying her face in his neck. His hands started at her hips, moved up her arms and tangled in her hair and before she could take a breath, his lips were on hers once more.

  She let herself have its perfection for a few seconds, and then pulled away, gripping his arms. A tear slipped down her cheek. He touched his fingertip to it. “I hate making women cry.”

  “Well, you can rest assured this is not your fault. It’s mine. I never should have come here and put you in this position. I…I let my own needs take control of me. This isn’t helping you.”

  “You might be surprised to know that I think it is. Even our actual therapy sessions, such as they are.”

  “I have to go. You need to talk to AliceLynn. I won’t be this person, Antony. My husband fucked around on me and left me for the other woman, you know? I don’t know if I can stand to look at myself in the mirror anymore so I’m … going home. All the way home.”

  “You aren’t that woman Margot. But yeah, you should go.” He took a big step away from her. “I’ll handle AliceLynn.”

  Margot’s heart sank even further towards her feet. “I…don’t want to say this but I’m going to since I won’t be seeing you again.” Unable to stop herself, she put her palm against his rough face. He leaned into it. “I could love you, Antony Love. If we were living a different life. So take care of yourself, and your daughter, and your Mama. I do love that woman.”

  She dropped her hand and whirled away from him before she did something even dumber than she already had. By the time she’d parked in front of her rented condo, her throat was raw from sobbing. Gripping the steering wheel, she had a brief flash of panic, realizing that AliceLynn actually had an appointment with her—this very afternoon. Well, the girl certainly wouldn’t show for it.

  Mind already spinning with all she had to do to get out of here, she unlocked her front door and tossed her keys on the kitchen counter. It would take her a solid month to disentangle from everything—get out of the lease on her place, figure out how to resume her practice in Ann Arbor. Might as well get started on it. She tapped her fingers on the generic granite counter, pondering the concept of Aiden and Rosie together and what that meant for Antony.

  No. Stop. Don’t go anywhere near there. Make your lists. Get the fuck out of Dodge. Now.

  By five-thirty that night, Margot had her lists done, was well on her way toward getting her condo sublet and had contacted her former office landlord in Michigan. He’d been thrilled to know she’d be back.

  When the knock on her office door came, she shoved her reading glasses up her nose, confused. It creaked open, revealing AliceLynn Love dressed in her waitress getup from the pub, her blue eyes watery and her lower lip quivering. Without even thinking about it, Margot got up and went to her, pulling her inside and into a huge hug. She shut the door and let the girl cry a while, then handed her a tissue.

  “I hate him,” the girl muttered between blowing her nose. “Don’t know what you see in him.”

  Margot took a breath and pointed to the couch. “Well, whatever it was, it’s over. Your dad is going to marry Rosie and she is a really great lady. She’ll make a super stepmom for you.”

  “Oh, I know you’re into him. I can tell. Besides,” AliceLynn tossed her long red hair over one shoulder, then yanked it up and stuck it through a band. “Rosie likes my Uncle Aiden. Y’all are so…so…oh never mind.” She stood, still sniffling. “Thanks, by the way.” She pointed to her purse.

  “Well, I’m going to assume you have a good reason for having a knife in your bag. Just tell me one thing.” She patted the couch next to her since the girl still remained standing.

  “What,” AliceLynn said, not taking the hint.

  “Are you cutting yourself?”

  Her face flushed bright red as she bit her lower lip and started backing away.

  “It’s not uncommon you know. But it’s also not a good thing so I want you to do me a favor in exchange for me not telling your dad about it,” Margot said as she rose, a strange, protective feeling surging through her. “It’s all right. You can tell me.”

  “I, um, well…” The girl shook her head. “What of it? I haven’t in a … while. Not since I met Jason.”

  “Replacing cutting with sex isn’t a solution. You are on the pill I assume?” Margot heard the berating tone creeping into her voice and quashed it. She grabbed the girl’s thin wrist and turned it over, noting the telltale scars all up and down the inside of her pale skin. How in the hell Antony hadn’t seen this she had no idea. AliceLynn tugged at her arm but Margot held tight. “You’re having protected sex, right? He wears a condom?” Even as she said it she nearly choked on the words, recalling her lack of one with the girl’s father not a few hours before.

  “Yeah. I’m not stupid.” She glared at Margot. “And I’m gonna just say that whatever you are doin’ with him—”

  “Is over,” Margot said, dropping her wrist. “I want you to promise me that anytime you want to cut yourself, you’ll call me.” She pressed her business card into the girl’s hand. “Sometimes, all you need is someone to talk to. And if you talk to me first, before you hurt yourself, we can keep you from doing it, okay?”

  AliceLynn opened her mouth but Margot pressed her fingers over the girl’s lips. “I know what I did with your dad was wrong. It’s why I’m moving home and leaving him to his life with Rosie. And I’m sure you’re imagining things about her and your Uncle Aiden.”

  “Whatever,” the girl said, stuffing Margot’s card into her bag. “You don’t have to leave you know. I won’t tell on y’all.” She looked down at her feet and spoke to them but her words lifted Margot’s saggy spirits. “I like…talking in here, with you.”

  “Thanks. I have a referral for you. You’ll have a new therapist but you can call me anytime, for any reason, okay?”

  To her complete surprise, AliceLynn launched at her and wrapped her arms around her neck, resuming her crying. Margot sighed and patted the girl’s shoulder, having all sorts of inappropriate, motherly thoughts. Finally, without saying another word, AliceLynn retreated and slunk out the door.

  Margot dropped onto the couch, shaking and confused, wishing she could wind back the clock to that moment she met Antony’s mother so she could say ‘no thanks’ to the woman’s plan of action for Antony and his daughter. But even as she wished it she knew it wouldn’t go down that way. Lindsay Love was the sort of woman impossible to refuse.

  Six Weeks Later

  Margot eased through the cardboard labyrinth that was her life now, cursing when she stubbed her toe for the millionth time on some box or another. She was already running late for her doctor’s appointment and had spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get past the fact that it was the week before Thanksgiving and she was, in essence, alone for the first time in her life. At least last year she’d gone home and celebrated the holiday with her sister’s family. It had been torture on some levels, but it was all she had.

  This year, of course, was a whole different ball of wax. After spending a ton of emotional energy ignoring Antony and his regular calls and text messages in the first couple of weeks after their encounter, she was exhausted. The fact that he’d finally gotten the hint and stopped pestering her—she had to use that word to convince herself that what they’d done was wrong on so many levels there were no words for some of them—it had taken a different sort of energy to not call or text him. To just get in her damn car that he’d fixed the first day they’d met and show up at his house, beg him to be with her where he belonged and leave behind his well-meaning, caretaking compulsion to marry Rosalee Norris.

  Whatever it was, she prayed to move past it. No matter what, she woke every day wishing she
could crawl under the covers and sleep. By the time she hit four or five in the afternoon, she had to take a nap, just to get through the rest of the evening.

  “Come up early,” her sister Annette kept insisting. “Why wait a week? You know you’ll hate being alone on Thanksgiving, no matter how much you hate it here with all this damn chaos.”

  She’d already made up her mind. The movers were coming the Monday after Thanksgiving and it made zero sense to spend the money or time driving up to Michigan and back only to turn around again—for good. She had a few things to wrap up here, including the annual lady parts checkup she was currently late for, plus having a final good-bye coffee with Antony’s mother, which she anticipated and dreaded in equal measure.

  The traffic between her place and her gynecologist’s office was a mess, setting her back another twenty minutes. But she located a parking spot and dashed inside, smiling her apologies, and settling in for the usual extra forty minute wait she had to endure. Once she finally got settled in a room, had her vitals taken and was dressed in a hospital gown with a bonus paper lap blanket, the exhaustion stole over her again, making her sway on the ice-cold exam table.

  The doctor breezed in, looking down at her tablet computer. Margot flinched, drawing the edges of the flimsy gown together over her bare breasts. Sweat beaded up on her forehead even as she shivered.

  “You don’t look so hot,” the woman said, unnecessarily, as she tapped on her computer. Margot hated the new depersonalized approach doctors took with their stupid iPads or whatever. She took a deep breath as the nurse helped her down onto the back so the doc could commence with the usual boob poking and prodding which hurt more than usual. “Sore?” The doctor asked in a perfunctory fashion.

  Margot yelped. “No, I mean, I didn’t think so. Ow!” She resisted the urge to bat the woman’s fingers away. The doctor typed out something on her tablet, washed her hands, then palpated Margot’s abdomen. When she dug deep into her left side, low, near her hipbone it made Margo blow out a breath. “That hurt,” she said, wiping the sweat off her upper lip with a shaking hand.

  “Any chance you could be pregnant?” The doctor’s mild words pierced her brain. “Don’t we have you on…?”

  Margot gulped and tried to sit up, no longer hearing the doctor’s words as a strange ringing sound was filling her head. She was on birth control and she hadn’t forgotten to take it… had she? Of course not. She’d never neglect anything that important.

  The nurse patted her shoulder and glanced over at the doctor who was scrolling through her notes and frowning. “I’m not pregnant,” she insisted, even as her brain fuzzed over and her throat closed up recalling in an instant Antony’s tale about getting Crystal pregnant the second time even though his mother had ‘finagled a way to get her on birth control’.

  “Well,” the woman said as she helped Margot put her heels in the stirrups. “I’m gonna guess you’ve been sexually active recently?” She raised an eyebrow before she ducked down between Margot’s raised knees.

  “I … uh… I’m gonna….” She lurched up and let the nurse hold the plastic bowl under her lips.

  The annoying doctor nodded while the nurse handed Margot a wet cloth to wipe her mouth. “Okay, so, how long has it been since you had unprotected sex?”

  Margot’s hands shook so much she could barely hold the cloth. Her teeth chattered and the room started to dim.

  Pregnant? Dear Lord how could that be? I’m responsible. I do the right things…but for that one…time.

  The doctor patted her bare foot.

  “How long ago, Margot?”

  “S-s-s-six weeks or so.”

  “And that missed period? You didn’t notice that?”

  “I’ve been busy, trying to get…moved. Oh dear Jesus help me.” She flopped back, hand over her mouth.

  “All right then, I’m gonna skip this and have you go pee in a cup for me. Pretty simple, this test. No dead rabbits required.” The doctor took her feet out of the stirrups and helped her sit up. The nurse handed her a cup and they both left the room. Staring down at the empty plastic cup, still shaking so hard her neck hurt, she pulled her jeans and sweater on, slunk across the hall to the bathroom, peed and put the sample in the little window slot.

  It only took five minutes and the words ‘congratulations, you’re going to have a baby,’ for her entire world to shift off its axis. The doctor had her get undressed from the waist down and used some kind of a dildo-looking wand and a screen to locate it—her and Antony Love’s baby—a peanut shaped little blob, with a faint but regular heartbeat.

  “Holy…mother of…oh god I’m gonna puke again.” The nurse appeared with the bowl but after a few minutes Margot waved it away. When the doctor touched her knee and said she could recommend a reputable clinic but that Margot would have to go there today, or it would be too late, she glared up at the nondescript ceiling.

  “You just showed me my baby, let me hear its heartbeat and are now suggesting that I have an abortion?” Rage rolled through her, the likes of which she had never experienced. She turned her head to look at the still photo of it—the impossibly small living human being inside her, and the rush of anger was replaced with her first real dose of mama bear protectiveness.

  “Just wanted you to know your options,” the doctor said as she put away the ultrasound machine and helped Margot sit up again. “You and your husband aren’t together anymore, right?”

  “It’s not his,” she said in a whisper, still woozy, dizzy and more than a touch nauseated. “It’s…oh it doesn’t matter.”

  “Nope, not if you’re moving home. I guess you can find a good OB up there?”

  “Yes,” she said as tears slipped down her cheeks. “Thanks.”

  She re-dressed again, checked out and walked in a daze through the mass of women in the waiting room, nearly running right into someone who was standing and sobbing as if her heart was breaking. A nurse was trying to coax the crier away from the middle of the waiting room full of anxious looking women.

  “Sorry,” she muttered, trying to maneuver past the two of them. The woman looked up at her, her familiar face tear-streaked. “Oh. Hi. Rosie,” Margot squeaked out. “What’s…what’s wrong?” She put a trembling hand on the other woman’s shoulder.

  But the nurse was tugging her away, wanting her out of the public place while she had her breakdown no doubt. She watched as Antony’s fiancée was led away with her shoulders hitching, her sobs echoing around inside Margot’s aching head.

  Chapter Ten

  The weekend of Thanksgiving was the first time since his hook up with Margot that Antony finally felt somewhat normal again. Of course, ‘normal’ implied his usual, edgy state of existence, not the blessed, totally relaxed state he’d inhabited for a few brief hours in her arms. But he accepted it as the life he must inhabit, the one that defined his new reality—married to Rosie and stepdaddy to her wild child son, Jeffrey.

  Rosie had planned and implemented the most amazing surprise Thanksgiving dinner for Lindsay, Anton and the whole clan. Lindsay had taken a bad turn with the cancer she’d been fighting and had lost her hair, due to the chemotherapy, in October. So Rosie had taken it upon herself to make sure all the boys showed their respect by shaving their own heads. It had gone over beautifully, like most things Rosie did, he knew—had known for a lot of years. He caught himself watching her a lot that day, admiring her soft, petite beauty and musing on his luck. Until memories of how much he wanted Margot Hamilton would invade his brain and he’d have to drink more beer in a vain attempt to drown them out.

  Thanks to an over the top scene he and Aiden had initiated and dragged Kieran and Dominic into at his mother’s annual neighborhood Halloween party a few weeks before, Rosie had been ignoring him in the weeks leading up to the dinner, which was nothing more than he deserved. But after the Thanksgiving success he was more than ready to resume the status quo. Frankly, he required her physically. He needed to reconnect, if for no other reason than
to re-establish themselves as a couple in his own rattled brain.

  So he had taken steps, gone full romance on her, and she’d succumbed in a lovely, gentle lovemaking session in her bed the Friday after Thanksgiving. “I love you so much,” he’d whispered into her hair before falling asleep, holding her close.

  Now on Saturday morning, he whistled as he cooked bacon and eggs and named each of the Matchbox cars Jeffrey held up for his inspection, giving his honest opinion of the relative merits of the Shelby Mustang versus the Dodge Coronet Super Bee. Finally, he sent the boy after to his mother to wake her while he sat sipping his coffee, staring out the window onto Rosie’s small yard, pondering just how in the hell he would ever be able to let go of his obsession with his former therapist. A text hit his phone, letting him know that AliceLynn would be staying over with Janey that night after her shift at the pub.

  Jeffrey came bounding into the kitchen and hit his legs, gripping them like a barnacle. Antony’s throat tightened with long-forgotten emotions as he tousled the boy’s hair, then lifted him up with little effort and plunked him into his chair. “Eat up, boy. Grammie Love wants us to come out and ride her horses later. You good with that?”

  “Horsies!” the boy screeched around a mouthful of food. Antony grinned at him then glanced up at the devastating vision of Rosie, her dark hair curling around her flushed face, dressed in her PJ pants and his shirt. “Mama! We’re gonna ride horsies!”

  She smiled and slid into her seat, accepting the coffee cup Antony pushed across the table to her. Something about her seemed sad and distant but he refused to acknowledge it. He loved her. She loved him. They were getting married in a month. The end. Happily ever after, forever and ever, amen.

  Once they’d finished and he’d made Jeffrey help with the cleanup, he piled the kid into his car seat and distracted himself for several hours with horses, the boy, his mother, and a picnic. After they’d washed and put the horses up for the day, he drove over to his mother’s house at her insistence, where she made them a huge lasagna dinner. She’d located some old Lincoln logs and other vintage toys that Jeffrey attacked with a vengeance.