Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
About the Author
SIZZLING PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF Jasmine Haynes
"Sexy.” —Sensual Romance Reviews
"More than a fast-paced erotic romance, this is a story of family, filled with memorable characters who will keep you engaged in the plot and the great sex. A good read to warm a winter’s night.”
—Romantic Times
“Bursting with sensuality and eroticism.” —In the Library Reviews
“The passion is intense, hot, and purely erotic . . . recommended for any reader who likes their stories realistic, hot, captivating, and very, very well written.” —R1oad to Romance
“Not your typical romance. This one’s going to remain one of my favorites.” —The Romance Studio
“Jasmine Haynes keeps the plot moving and the love scenes very hot.”
—Just Erotic Romance Reviews
“A wonderful novel . . . Try this one—you won’t be sorry.”
—The Best Reviews
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Copyright © 2008 by Jennifer Skullestad
All rights reserved.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
eISBN : 978-1-436-22496-3
1. Divorced women--Fiction. I. Title.
PS3608.A936S56 2008
813’.6--dc22 2008004814
http://us.penguingroup.com
To my brother Michael
for looking up “persistence” in the dictionary
and seeing my name next to it
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Jenn Cummings, Terri Schaefer, and Rose Lerma, for endless hours of reading. To Kathy Coatney, for checking up on me. To Christine Zika, for giving me the jumpstart. And to my agent, Lucienne Diver, and my editor, Wendy McCurdy, without whom none of this would be possible.
1
TRINITY Green sagged against the closed door of her condo and sighed. She was an extrovert. She loved people, thrived on their company. Yet for some reason, Faith’s baby shower had totally exhausted her. She was happy for Faith, thrilled about the baby, a boy, and that Faith had fallen for Connor and he’d fallen for her. It made Trinity’s matchmaking heart implode with happiness. Honest to God. That’s why she’d planned the shower though Faith had three months to go. She wanted to make sure her best friend in all the world had plenty of time to get the baby things she absolutely must have but didn’t receive at the party.
But with all that giddiness and the way Connor (who’d insisted on being there) kept touching Faith and looking at her with such an adoring gaze . . . Trinity didn’t know why it gave her a headache, but it did. A migraine, which then gave her an upset stomach. As much as she loved, loved Faith, she had to get out.
Thank God Trinity had arranged for the party at a restaurant where all she had to do was pay the bill ahead of time and let the management clean up the banquet room. And Connor had said he’d make sure the truckload of presents got to their house.
Hence the reason she was home three hours earlier than she thought she’d be. Which would give her enough time to plan a perfect dinner for Harper. She’d get out Mama’s china and the silver candlesticks, order up a delicious dinner from Vatovola’s, and still have time to pamper herself with a soak in the bath. By the time Harper got home from his Sunday golf game at the country club, she’d be scented and perfect, and there was that new negligee she’d bought with him in mind.
Men liked the little gestures that made them feel they were kings of their castles. Their six-month anniversary wasn’t until next week and Valentine’s Day was almost three weeks away, so he wouldn’t be expecting it.
Therefore it was, in a word, perfect. Her migraine was starting to go away.
Trinity hung her coat in the front closet. The entry hall was too small, but the condo was a starter home. At twenty-five hundred square feet, it wasn’t conducive to entertaining, especially for Harper’s business contacts. All his working capital was tied up in a deal, and her father had fronted them the money. With three bedrooms, two-and-a-half baths, living room, and dining room, they could survive for a while. The kitchen was a problem, however, when the caterers got in there. Like packed sardines. Trinity hadn’t redecorated, though, and rented just the bare furniture essentials. It would only be until Harper’s deal came through in a couple of months.
Kicking off her high heels, she carried them upstairs. As she stepped into the hall at the top, she realized the shower was running. So Harper was home. No long soak. But . . . there were other possibilities.
She could join him.
Harper was a fastidious lover. He didn’t like to muss her hair. For the most part, she could keep her lipstick intact. Which was fine. Who wanted to wake up beside a woman who’d gotten all messy and sweaty with smudges of makeup all over her face? Trinity hated the “morning after” look. For her part, she always got up before Harper and made sure her hair and makeup were perfect by the time he joined her for breakfast.
Yet sometimes, she dreamed of unbridled lust and passion— when she didn’t worry how she looked or if she
perspired. Or even if her lipstick got all over his dipstick. She wanted something totally intense.
Like the fire she glimpsed between Connor and Faith.
Before she got married, Trinity made the occasional joke to Faith about having a passionate affair with a sexy man—which was pretty much as far as their sex discussions went—but Trinity had to admit she was all talk and no action. She’d never had hot, sweaty sex outside her fantasies. Even with Harper, everything was . . . controlled. But really, why was she thinking about all that now?
It was Faith’s baby shower getting to her. The adoring look in Connor’s eye.
Even after six months of marriage, she’d never engendered quite that expression in Harper. He was complimentary, of course, and he loved showing her off, squiring her around, and she knew he adored her. But . . .
Maybe tonight was the night for unbridled passion. They’d never taken a shower together, let alone made love under the steamy spray. Harper was a private sort when it came to bathroom activities.
But tonight . . .
Nipples already hard and panties damp, Trinity undid the top two buttons of her baby blue suit as she entered the bedroom.
Harper’s shoes and his slacks lay in the middle of the bedroom carpet. His white polo shirt covered a corner of the flowered bedspread, and his Windbreaker listed off the side. This kind of disarray was unlike him. He must be tired.
The water pounded in the shower, and one of her black lace bras lay across the bathroom threshold. She couldn’t remember leaving it there.
Except that wasn’t one of her brassieres. It was too . . . big. The lace poked up proudly and . . . Trinity gulped . . . she wouldn’t have filled even a quarter of a cup.
Steam puffed out the open bathroom door, carrying with it a sound barely discernible above the water’s beat.
A moan. Or something.
Trinity’s migraine came back full force. Vapor bathed her face as she put one hand on the bathroom doorjamb, perspiration covering her upper lip. She swallowed against a dry mouth, and it ached going down.
Please don’t, please don’t.
She thought the chant was in her mind, but then she realized her lips were moving. As much as she didn’t want to, she couldn’t not look.
The water ran in rivulets down the clear glass door, washing away the condensation. Supported by the shower wall, long, black wet hair spilled down the woman’s face, shoulders, and large breasts. Her legs spread, one calf hooked over his shoulder, she fisted her fingers in his hair and held his face to her . . .
Harper’s face. Harper’s blond hair. Harper doing that with his mouth. A guttural male groan wafted on the steam vapors.
Harper never made a sound with her. Except when he came, and then it was merely a grunt before he rolled off.
Oh, oh, maybe it wasn’t Harper at all. Maybe they’d broken into her house and were using her shower and . . . all right, that was ridiculous. And she needed to stop looking.
The woman’s enormous breasts jiggled as she moaned and rolled her head against the marbled tile. She was not so much fat as voluptuous. So not like Trinity. Harper reached up and squeezed a nipple. The woman squealed. He lifted his head and put his hand between her legs. “That’s it, baby.”
Baby? He’d never called Trinity baby.
“Scream when you come. I want to hear you scream.”
He hated it if Trinity made noise, so Trinity never made noise. It was . . . undignified.
Then Harper stood, water streaming down his back, his butt, his legs, and he grabbed the movable showerhead. “Hey, baby, let’s say we blast you off.”
He pinned his paramour to the wall with a hand on her breasts and shoved the showerhead between her spread legs. She squirmed and squealed and laughed, then started to moan.
The sounds assaulted Trinity’s ears, the woman’s cries mingling with her laughter as if she were actually having fun. Trinity wanted to have fun during sex, but she could never seem to let go. Not like her husband’s . . . fuck buddy.
“Come on, baby, come for me, sing for me, baby.” He crooned to her, chanted. And when she started to sing, as he called it, he took her mouth and kissed her long, hard, deep.
Trinity wanted to die.
She wanted someone to make her come the way Harper made his woman come. Oh God. She wanted a man to kiss her like that. As if she were the only woman that mattered in the world.
Obviously, Trinity wasn’t that woman to her own husband.
That . . . that . . . that asshole.
How dare he? For a moment, seeing him in the shower, a completely different man from the one she thought she knew, Trinity had lost her sense of self. Who the hell did he think he was, screwing another woman in the shower Trinity’s daddy had paid for, in the condo her father had given her the money to purchase, diddling his . . . his whore with the showerhead Trinity had bought?
She kicked the bra at her feet—that woman was still wailing— and gee, there were the matching panties on the bath mat. She marched right over and yanked open the shower door.
Harper stared at her, his facial muscles suddenly slack.
His lover squealed and tried to cover her breasts with her hands. It didn’t work. And really, why bother at this point?
Trinity stepped aside, holding the door. “Get.” She pointed at the open bathroom door. “Out.”
“Honey.” Harper still held the showerhead, water jetting against the side wall.
She noticed he didn’t call her baby. How had she ever thought he was handsome? His penis was the size of a . . . pencil. And he was a girlie-man. She couldn’t think of a worse word to call him. “Get out of my house. Or I’ll call the police and report a break-in.”
“We need to talk.” He punched the shower knob off.
A drop of sweat trickled down her scalp to her nape. More droplets gathered along the line of her bra. She hated feeling sweaty. She hated that he’d made her sweaty.
“Do you remember Lorena Bobbitt?” she whispered.
He dropped the shower nozzle, banging the tile wall.
“Well, if you don’t get out of here in five seconds”—she whipped a metal nail file off the bathroom counter and waved it at him— “I will Bobbittize you.”
His shriveled penis went completely flaccid, and he grabbed his lover’s hand and scrambled out of the shower, slipping on the tile. They ran, seizing pieces of clothing in their path, until she heard footsteps in the hall, then feet pounding down the stairs, and finally the slam of the front door. They couldn’t have had time to dress.
“Whew, that felt good.” She blew a few blond strands of hair out of her face and tossed the file back on the counter. Then she saw that pair of black lace panties on her pristine white bath mat.
And Trinity burst into tears.
Dammit. She couldn’t stay. That was her shower. Oh God, they’d probably done it in her bed, too. Yanking her overnight bag out of the closet, she opened it on her vanity stool and threw in the necessities.
She’d go back to Daddy’s.
Trinity stopped. No, she couldn’t go home. If her mother was still alive . . . but she’d lost her mom the year after she graduated from high school. Cancer. That had been the worst eighteen months of Trinity’s life, watching her mother waste away, helpless to stop it, not to mention how hard her mother’s illness had been on Daddy. He’d never quite recovered. Which was another reason she couldn’t run home with this. She’d caused enough havoc by marrying Harper up in Tahoe in a quickie wedding without telling Daddy first.
And as much as she wanted to, she wouldn’t go to Faith’s. Faith and Connor were getting ready for the baby. That was more important. Trinity couldn’t dump on her friend now.
She’d go to a hotel for a night or two until she figured out what to do. Besides Bobbittizing that cheating bastard.
Before she left, she took off her rings and tossed them in the bathroom trashcan. She hadn’t worn them long enough to leave a mark on her finger. God. That
seemed so utterly wrong.
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