Lovers's Enemy: An Older Man Younger Woman Romance (A Man Who Knows What He Wants Book 67)

by Flora Ferrari

  CHAPTER 6

  Lucas

  I get Paisley set up at her desk and then bring her into my office to show her the first case she’ll be working on. As much as I want to work my way into her life, I need to stay focused with this backlog of cases or my life’s going to hit a rough patch in the form of unsatisfied clients. Unfortunately with so many divorces these days it’s tough to keep up.

  I give Paisley a second to read over the brief.

  “So what does this tell you?” I ask.

  “This is a case of age and infidelity.”

  “Exactly. They weren’t mature enough to get married and then when eyes started to wander their immaturity and lack of commitment to the promises they made to each other came to the forefront.”

  “You said, ‘Exactly,’ so that’s how you see it too?”

  “How else would you see it?” I ask.

  She looks at me like this is more about something else than just the case.

  “That they were too young to get married, right?” I ask.

  “So people can’t get married when they’re young? Fall in love for life when they’re young? Know what they want when they’re young?”

  “I’m not saying that at all. It’s just that they were too young. There are certain patterns you see repeated in this line of work, such as people who get married young tend to be more likely to divorce, but that’s just a pattern. It doesn’t mean that fate becomes everyone.”

  She looks at me as if she’s still trying to decide if her question has been answered in a way she finds acceptable or not. It’s not hard to see right through her question though. I know what she’s referring to. Her and us.

  And I’m not giving her some answer just to appease her, just to say what I think she wants to hear. It’s the truth, and being a lawyer involves getting down to the truth. And a lot of times neither party really wants to give it to you…only their version of certain events…events that they carefully select to make their narrative sound more real and more appealing.

  That’s not me. I’m a straight shooter and I’m being straight with her.

  “But you make it sound like their age lead to his infidelity,” she says

  “Their immaturity led to their infidelity.”

  “Their infidelity?”

  “She cheated too, and technically she cheated first.”

  “It didn’t say that in the brief.”

  “It’s buried deeper in the document and the way the evidence was gathered makes it harder to use in court, not to mention she’s the one filing for divorce so we have to look at the facts we’ve been given.”

  “Wait, she cheated first and she’s filing for divorce?”

  “Emotional abuse.” I pause. “I know you have all the education in the world about being a paralegal and that’s one of the reasons I hired you, but what we aren’t is the judge. We can only go with the facts we’re given and the path the couple is trying, or not trying, to take. That’s our job here. If we make these cases personal then you’ll take this work home with you and you’ll never want to get up off your couch to so much as think about going on a date again.”

  “Is that what happened to you?”

  Ouch. “No,” I say, but I’ve never really thought about it.

  “That was a fast answer.”

  “Because it hasn’t happened to me.”

  “But I hear you haven’t been dating,” she asks.

  “Where did you hear that from?”

  “My brother.”

  “And why were you asking him about my dating life?”

  “I wasn’t. He just told me in passing.”

  “Right. In passing,” I say.

  “Your name came up. I asked how you were. He told me.”

  And that’s not the only thing coming up right now. I feel her body move slightly closer to mine and my cock rises.

  “I’ve been busy with work.”

  “Too busy for all those ladies who are always looking your way?”

  “What ladies?”

  “Come on, Lucas. I’m not blind.”

  “It doesn’t mean I’m looking back.”

  “Did you ever cheat on one of them? Would you cheat?”

  “In what way?”

  “Oh! If you have to ask that then you’re already trying to play in the gray areas in a part of life that’s very black and white. It’s a yes or no question and it looks very much like your answer is yes.”

  “My answer is no, for reasons you’re not aware of,” I say trying to defuse this without admitting something I’ve been keeping secret from her.

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Positive.”

  “What reasons then?”

  “It’s personal.”

  “Personal? I thought we were friends, Lucas. I thought you wanted to play nice now after all those years of teasing. We’re friends right? You can tell me anything.”

  Now she’s the one teasing me and of course I don’t like it when the shoe’s on the other foot.

  Not to mention this isn’t the way I’d planned this…this confession so to speak.

  “Come on, Lucas. Out with it.”

  I take a deep breath and figure this was going to come out sooner rather than later. Better to get it over with now and to get on with getting what I really want.

  Her.

  “You can’t cheat, at least in the physical sense, if you’ve never been with someone can you?”

  “Very funny,” she says.

  “What’s so funny about it?”

  “You’re trying to tell me you’ve never been with anyone?”

  “You heard me.”

  The turned up corners of her mouth immediately flatten to match the flat tone of my answer. I’m dead serious.

  “You’ve really never…”

  It just hangs in the air like a dark cloud.

  “No.”

  “But all those girls who wanted nothing more than—“

  “Let’s talk about something else.”

  “But why? How could you resist? No guy could resist all those opportunities…and literally being thrown at his feet.”

  “Back to the case, Paisley,” I say trying to get back to work, but she’s not having it. She’s got the wound open and now she can’t stop picking at it.

  “Why? You still haven’t told me why?”

  I’ve had enough.

  “You wanna know why! Huh? You wanna know why? I’ll tell you why. Because I was in love with you. I was always in love with you and I still am! I just didn’t know it then but now I do! All right?”

  I can hear the last words echo off the walls as she stares at me.

  I look down at those lips at her expression and I swear her lips parts slightly. All that pent up desire is boiling inside me and she turns her body sideways straightening up to me even more and I can’t wait any longer.

  I grab her by the waist and pull her body into mine feeling her breasts press against me just before I lean in and press my lips against hers.

  My eyes close and I swear I can see fireworks and feel them too as a shock of adrenaline rips right through me when I feel her kiss me back hard.

  CHAPTER 7

  Paisley

  Somehow we made it through the day without another romantic incident. I say it like it’s a police report…romantic incident. But those words are appropriate considering how we practically assaulted each other’s mouths after so many years of pent up lust and desire.

  But this is so much more. This was dynamite that was exploding today and I know it’s going to explode at an even bigger level real soon…maybe even tonight by the way Lucas was out of the office most of the afternoon, but I know he wasn’t working on cases.

  After we caught our breaths from our kiss, and then put our professional faces back on, Lucas asked me if I had plans for tonight. When I told him no he gave me a pile of cases to work on and then told me he’d be back around five to pick me up.

  And not to make pl
ans.

  And cancel all our appointments for tomorrow.

  He’s planning something big and he’s planning it fast.

  He’s a man who knows what he wants and he’s not wasting time. We’ve both wasted years of it already and we won’t waste any more.

  Not now. Not now that we know what we know.

  At five he calls me and tells me to take the back elevator down and transfer in the lobby to the garage elevator, where he’ll be in one minute. He just called in advance to give me time and in case his phone didn’t get reception down there.

  It makes me realize now that maybe he wasn’t being overly paranoid about my safety, and after that kiss I know why.

  He’s got bigger plans for our “relationship.”

  The way he kissed me told me that. The way he grabbed me and pulled me in close like he couldn’t control himself. The way his lips crashed into mine. The way my mouth parted for him.

  God, it was incredible and all I’ve been able to think about all day is doing it again.

  I make my way down and get into his car and am immediately greeted with another passionate kiss.

  “Is this how it’s always going to be?”

  “Yes and no,” he says.

  “No?” I say making a pouty face.

  “Yes, because you’re going to be getting a whole lot of those kisses from here on out.”

  “Why the no?”

  “Because from here on out we go everywhere together. I won’t make you wait for me like you had to this afternoon.”

  “But the wait was worth it,” I say.

  “I hope you’ll feel that way in about ninety minutes.”

  “What happens in ninety minutes?”

  “We arrive somewhere where we should arrive in forty-five minutes.” I laugh at his reference to L.A.’s traffic jam problems, especially around rush hour.

  “I was thinking about that first case we looked at,” I say.

  “And?”

  “You know in some ways it reminded me of us.”

  “Us? They’re getting a divorce.”

  “Some ways,” I say. “But more like the opposite of us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Age had a lot to do with our relationship as well, but in a different way.”

  “You mean my immaturity,” he says.

  “Well, I’m glad you said it and not me.”

  He reaches over and places his hand on my knee squeezing it.

  “Better I realize my mistakes now than never.”

  “But it wasn’t a mistake exactly. I mean subconsciously I think neither of us wanted to rush into anything and we used our best, let’s call them defense mechanisms, at the time to deal with that.”

  “Interesting concept,” he says. “You always were mature for your age.”

  “And you’ve matured quite nicely,” I say running my eyes up and down his body as I watch the way he maneuvers that stick shift as he weaves in and out of traffic. He’s listening but he is trying to get us to whatever he has planned. As he moves in and out of traffic he does so safely, always checking his mirrors and signaling, not to mention avoiding other driver’s blind spots. I like that he’s a man on a mission, but he’s careful about it. He’s controlled, nowhere near reckless, and that heightens the experience all the while allowing me to relax at the same time. It would seem the two emotions are polar opposites, but they’re not.

  It’s almost like how opposites attract, or how he tried to “court” me all those years by teasing me. I guess some things never change, but in the case of his driving it’s definitely for the better.

  And that’s the benefit of an experienced man, even if he’s still saving one very important first experience for me.

  He’s learned from his mistakes and he can admit them. He’s comfortable in his skin and he’s had success, because he’s failed. But he embraces that journey, that challenge, and the failure that comes with it because he knows the failure is nothing more than lessons to be learned.

  And each lesson brought him closer to success, which he’s obviously found now both in business and I’m sure hoping what we’ve learned about each other today leads to success in our personal lives as well.

  And that starts with getting very personal tonight.

  “And how do you feel about us now?” he asks.

  “I thought about that too. And it would seem like we’re suddenly rushing into this, when we didn’t want to rush into anything before. But it’s quite the opposite actually. It doesn’t feel like rushing at all if you feel like you’ve known the other person your whole life.”

  “Feel like you’ve known or have known?”

  “I felt like there was always something underneath all that teasing, and now I know exactly what it was.”

  “Yes you do,” he says as he downshifts and we find ourselves stopped in traffic which allows him to lean over and kiss me again as he takes my hand with his suddenly free shifting hand as the car idles.

  Traffic opens up and neither of us says a word as we drive along The 5 Freeway before he merges onto the The 14.

  California Highway 14?

  That leads inland towards Palmdale…or maybe he’s taking us to Vegas?

  But leaving at this time for Vegas doesn’t make sense.

  Then my mind flashes back to an old memory and I wonder if everything that was revealed today is about to come full circle.

  And it will if he takes me back to the place where everything started.

  CHAPTER 8

  Lucas

  The car rolls to a stop and I look over at the passenger side needing to get a glimpse of her face.

  “I knew it,” she says with an expression that’s truly priceless. She places her tiny hand on top of mine and I quickly change up our hand position putting my hand over the top of hers. That’s the way it works. I’m bigger, stronger, and I’m her protector.

  Just like I’m going to be tonight out here at Vasquez Rocks.

  I spent the afternoon buying a tent and then rushing out here and setting it up, and there it sits still perfectly constructed.

  But of course it does.

  “What was that?” she says as we step out of the car and hear some gravel turn over in the distance.

  “That…would be Jeff.”

  “Who’s Jeff?”

  “A friend of mine who kept an eye on our campsite until we arrived.”

  “You hired someone to keep an eye on the campsite?”

  “You know I’ll do anything when it comes to your safety…and the safety of my unborn children.”

  She looks at me with big eyes, like she’s not sure what she just heard.

  “Yeah, that’s right. I said it. Our children.”

  She doesn’t say anything, just skips around the fire pit I built and then skips right over to me and throws herself into my arms.

  “Thank you. This is perfect. This is…us.”

  “I thought about a nice hotel on the beach in Malibu or even a room in Vegas or a quick flight to San Francisco…there were seats available.”

  “But you knew I’d want to plop down and take a seat right next to this campfire, didn’t you?”

  I nod. “Remember when your parents were out of town and Paul ‘had’ to bring you out here that night while the football team partied in the desert.”

  “And where I got teased relentlessly for being out here.”

  “But it was his only choice. He couldn’t leave you.”

  “But all the teasing?”

  “I took care of that later.”

  “I heard,” she says.

  “You did?”

  “It’s not important now. What’s important is us.”

  I pop the tops on two Corona bottles, handing her one and keeping the other for myself. We cheers and then plop down in our lawn chairs and wait for the sky to start turning all shades of pink and blue at sunset.