Resist Me: Tricia and James, Part2
Unchained Attraction Book 4
K.L. Shandwick
Copyright © 2020 K.L. Shandwick
The author has asserted their moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the copyright holder, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Disclaimer: This book has mature content and explicit reference to sexual situations it is intended for adult readers aged 18+.
This book is a work of fiction, Names, places, characters, band names and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or names are used within the fictitious setting. Any resemblance to actual person’s living or dead, band names or locales are entirely coincidental. Any actual artists are given due reference and the situation depicted or quoted is within the fictional imagination of the author.
This book is dedicated to my good friend, Julie Berry
Contents
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
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
The end
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by K.L. Shandwick
Chapter One
“How do you feel about breakfast by the ocean on Saturday morning, before I leave for the Hamptons?” asked James, my boyfriend, as he stood in the doorway, his arms stretched above him, holding the wooden frame.
It was Thursday evening and we’d only arrived in New Jersey a few hours before. I had felt pleased when we’d traveled down together. It was unusual for him to spend Thursday with me, but I’d felt disappointed when his mind had already skipped ahead to his lone trip to his parents’ house for his father’s birthday that weekend.
“Sure, sounds good,” I replied, making myself smile in response.
“Dinner will be here in fifteen minutes,” he informed me, while I quickly caught up on the paperwork from the office that had been waiting in my special mailbox at my home to be signed off.
Initially, when James hadn’t asked me to go with him, I’d felt hurt. But when I’d considered my state of mind at the time, I felt he had measured my stress levels against a visit to his family and decided it would have been too much.
Of course, he’d have been right on that score because I’d only ever met his parents a few times when I was maid of honor at James’ brother’s wedding to my best friend, Billie. Although we’d been together for quite some time, I had chosen to focus on my intensive therapy, and didn’t feel able to handle more stress. As such, I didn’t feel I had the mental capacity to face his parents or mine until I’d worked through some of my issues. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t wanted to meet his parents as his girlfriend, far from it, but I had a far more significant reunion of my own to take care of first.
I reminded myself James had taken time off to drive me down to New Jersey. I’d had some urgent paperwork and a face-to-face meeting to take care of before he drove me back to the city the next morning to meet my daughter for the first time. Every decision he’d taken had been carefully thought through to reduce my levels of stress.
I felt mentally exhausted by conflicting thoughts of how my adopted daughter and I would react when we finally met, and I guessed James was only being sensitive to my previous request to cope with one significant event at a time. Knowing James was very protective of me, I trusted his judgement, so my feelings of being left out on that occasion were quickly pushed to the side.
Until I met James, I had lived with fear and anticipation all my adult life, waiting for my past to catch up with me. Sometimes it had filled me with deep-seated dread, and during my more optimistic moments, I had wished it would.
Countless times over the years I had dreamed my daughter had contacted me; met with me even, and sometimes they had felt so real I had awoken with a racing heart. Sometimes I’d felt deliriously happy, and at others, I woke in tears with a tight chest and labored breaths. However, no matter whether I’d dreamed about her or not, my baby had always been in my thoughts.
When something traumatic happens, one can either be consumed or learn to live alongside the event that caused the trauma. Personally, with my strong character, I had fought against being overwhelmed, but I’d paid the price by putting stepping-stones in place.
Mistrust and self-loathing had shaped my resurrection from the frightened sixteen-year-old girl I’d been to an intimidating independent woman on the surface, but a scarred and broken little girl on the inside. Since my baby had gone up for adoption, I had disciplined myself to live a life I had barely been able to tolerate.
I’d punished myself for my adolescent mistake more than society ever could have; yet I’d lived with my secret, unable to forgive myself for not handling the outcome better. In the years following that profound life-changing event, I became driven to fill a void I knew deep down I never could, but I had found success in business, and a rare few friendships I could deal with on my own terms.
Actively avoiding risks, I told myself I didn’t want a husband or a family, when in truth I had felt undeserving and unwilling to allow anyone else to make decisions on my behalf. I didn’t trust anyone not to hurt me anymore.
My life since then had been tolerable. I had coped fine behind the surrounding walls I had carefully built to protect myself. I’d seen most men as companions from then on, never allowing any to get too close. Those who had tried were mostly tossed to the curb.
Nothing had prepared me for how I felt when I met James Wild. I was instantly attracted by the piercing look he gave me, the way our eyes held the other’s gaze immediately made my body hum in anticipation. The air around us actually felt thicker, and he lit me up inside with the passion in his gaze.
I’d never experienced anything like those feelings from any man, and yet James hadn’t even touched me. Lust took over my body and I had immediately wanted him. From the intense way his beautiful light blue eyes took me in, he wanted me as well.
All it had taken was a few flirty words to set me on fire, and when we didn’t act on those feelings the sexual tension that grew between us became nuclear. We had both known it was only a matter of time before we had one another, but the wait had felt painful and desperate.
As far as I was concerned it was supposed to have been a one-night stand. A night where I had taken a risk I’d thought I could handle, but as soon as his mouth explored my body, fear turned to panic because I had known once would never be enough. I’d never felt anything like how he’d made me feel that night, and knowing how irresistible I found him, I’d figured the only way forward was to sabotage the mutual magnetism between us and make James resist me.
Both of us had been stung by event
s that had changed us; shaped us from the people we had been to survivors of situations neither of us had seen coming, nor knew how to escape from.
I’d heard about James Wild before I met him and from how my friend, Billie, had described him, I was on the fence with how I’d felt. His reputation wasn’t the best since he’d slept with his brother’s previous live-in girlfriend, but when Billie explained the circumstances surrounding the situation he’d found himself in, I immediately saw he’d been an unwilling victim.
Over the years we avoided one another, but on two occasions when we were thrown together after that first time, we’d caved in to our feelings and slept together again, unable to deny our bubbling sexual chemistry and the fiery desire that drew us together.
Neither of us wanted to commit to a relationship together, for very different reasons, yet despite our rationale as to why we’d never work, we both knew the connection we shared was the once in a lifetime kind of extraordinary.
So, eventually, my feelings for him overcame my mistrust and fears, and as terrified as I was, I took the biggest risk I’d ever taken with my broken heart, confessed my sins of the past, and went all-in with him.
Startled by the sound of the doorbell, my head snapped up and I peered out the window. It was very unusual for anyone to visit me at home.
James frowned because like me he knew no one came over at night. “I’ll get it,” he told me protectively, but I followed him to the door anyway.
“Surprise!” Billie shouted when he opened the door. I looked past him and saw her standing on my doorstep with a huge bunch of yellow carnations. My heart clenched tight at the sight of her. I loved Billie like a sister—she had felt like more than a sister—when she’d accepted my flaws and hadn’t passed judgment after I’d told her the shameful secret from my past.
I had a few friends, but none quite like her. The others were more work acquaintances than friends. Mainly confident, loud, brash friends even, or perhaps assertive might have suited them better.
Not Billie. When I’d first met her, she was mousy and unassuming, and mostly emotionally wrecked from a messy divorce. Since then, she’d grown to be the amazing kick-ass woman I’d always suspected she’d could be, thanks to the love of her second husband, Sawyer, my boyfriend’s younger brother.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, my eyes popping at the sight of her with a huge smile on her face. The nervous tension that hadn’t left me that day began to dissipate. Before she’d arrived, my mind was distracted by emotions that had threatened to overwhelm me, while negative scenarios played in my mind for how the meeting with my daughter may turn out.
“Supporting my friend,” she muttered through a scowl, like I should even have posed my question in the first place.
“You didn’t have to—”
“Of course, I did … I do,” she huffed, flashing me a look like she was parenting a child. “How many times have you been there for me since we’ve been friends?”
“But this—”
“Is probably the most significant moment in your entire life,” she responded, cutting my protest off, and waving an upturned palm around in front of me. “Did you really expect me to sit back and allow you to face tomorrow without me being here for you? What you’re doing takes bravery.”
“Thanks, that remark has given me all the confidence I need … not,” I drawled sarcastically. My show of bravado was wasted on her, when she gave me another scolding look that told me she’d tried to imagine how tough facing my past must have been for me.
Stepping forward, she handed James the flowers and wrapped her arms around me. Pulling me close, she crushed her small frame to my chest in a bear hug. The firmness of it had felt oddly strong for someone so small. After a few moments she stepped back, held my elbows, and stared up at me with her huge serious blue eyes. “I love you, Tricia. Of course, I’m going to be here.”
I believed every word because of the honest look she gave me. Guilt plucked my conscience because I knew I hadn’t always been the best friend toward her. I’d tried, but since her twins had been born I’d distanced myself without explaining why, I had found it too difficult to, but knew my absence had hurt Billie at a time when she’d felt vulnerable as well.
After Remy and Brynn’s birth, I retreated to protect myself. I’d had to. Watching women with their babies had always been an ordeal. Seeing those adoring looks as they poured love into their children had left me bitter that I had never gotten the same opportunity to do that for mine.
Yet, despite not being there for her in the past, on the eve of that pivotal moment in my life, Billie had come to my rescue. My heart was full of admiration for my friend’s forgiveness, as I’d watched her peel off her wool jacket and discard it casually over the back of my kitchen chair. I had never needed Billie more, but I hadn’t realized it until she’d arrived.
“Go on, get the wine out,” she coaxed, nodding toward the refrigerator door.
“Aren’t you driving?” I probed, frowning because she usually hadn’t touched alcohol if she had to get behind a wheel.
“Not tonight. Sawyer had a driver bring me here. He’s picking me up again at 11:30.” A wide smile spread on her face and a grin broke out on mine, despite the nerves in my stomach that had been hampering me all that day.
Billie was the best kind of friend ever; so special, I knew had we met when we had been younger, our bail money would have been so impressive our parents would have left us in jail.
“Is the time still the same for the big reveal tomorrow?” she asked, even though she knew it likely wouldn’t have changed.
“Yeah, 10:00 a.m. God, I’m nervous.” My admission had been the biggest understatement of my life because I had dared to consider there may be the slimmest chance to be a mom to Erin, albeit not exactly the Mom of the Year kind, but I had prepared myself for settling for any relationship she wanted to have with me. To my mind, anything was better than the hole that had been left in my life.
“Just be yourself, she’ll love you,” Billie stated, as she poured us two glasses of chardonnay.
“I don’t know …”
“Don’t know what?” James asked, snaking his arm around my waist from behind. I hadn’t heard him sneak up on me, but I’d felt the heat radiate from his body toward mine right before he’d touched me. A warm glow filled me in the safety of his arms.
“Erin,” I stated, like her name supplied him with everything he’d needed to know.
“Babe, it’ll be like talking to your younger self in the mirror,” he replied. “She’s a mature, rational, beautiful woman. From the conversation I had with her, I know she’s excited. To be honest, I think once she learns how devious I’ve been, she’ll have more trust issues with me than you, after the way I pretended not to know you.”
“Well, whatever. It’s too late to back out now,” Billie offered, lifting her wine glass and taking a large gulp down.
“Steady on, Sis,” James warned her, chuckling.
“That’s easy for you to say, James. You haven’t spent all day with my kids. This is purely medicinal,” she replied, gesturing toward her wine glass. “That kindergarten class can’t come quick enough,” she replied, chuckling as she lifted the glass to her lips again and took another sip.
“Your medal is in the mail,” James said playfully. “You’re my hero if not theirs,” he added, smiling warmly toward her.
“Hm, did I marry the wrong brother?” she asked, blushing when she realized what she’d said in jest had a whole other connotation to it, given James’ past with Charlotte, and she winced.
James and I burst out laughing, knowing it was a joke, but I could see he felt a little uncomfortable with the inference when he rubbed the back of his neck.
“Let’s not even joke about that in front of Saw, eh?” he suggested, and we all chuckled again.
For the rest of the evening Billie and I sat talking through all the feelings I may experience, all the likely questions Erin may have prepa
red, and all the burning questions I’d always thought I’d ask if I had ever gotten to meet her. It was cathartic to talk it over with Billie, and by the time she’d left, I was half-drunk but felt better prepared to face my daughter.
Chapter Two
“Couldn’t you sleep?” My head turned in James’ direction as he woke next to me in bed.
“What gave you that idea?” I asked, snickering as I turned and faced him. Lifting his hand from under the comforter, he brushed stray strands of hair from my face and we lay quietly lost in each another’s eyes.
Eventually he remembered to speak. “Not sure if it was the constant huffing, grunting, and pillow punching, or the huge sighs that clued me in,” he replied.
“Sorry, was I that bad?” I asked, feeling guilty I’d kept him awake. Staying in New Jersey, not making the journey back to New York, had been his idea and a great one. If we’d been in New York, I would have most likely wandered the streets and made several passes of the sports bar James had booked out for me to see the daughter I’d given birth to three decades before, but never had the chance to meet.
“Yeah, you were, but I guess that’s nervous energy rather than worry, since you were partially anesthetized from all the wine you girls consumed last night.”
“We only drank two bottles,” I argued, but then realized we’d drunk a whole bottle each.
Resist Me (Unchained Attraction Book 4) Page 1