Half Empty(21)

She stopped him with a glare.

He shuffled his feet. “Wanna eat?”

“Wade?”

“A couple hundred dollars, I think,” he said out of the corner of his mouth.

She placed the bottle down, sipped the wine. “If you paid two hundred dollars for this bottle of wine, I’d be careful of anyone trying to sell you beachfront property in Kansas.”

“There isn’t beachfro—” His charming smile fell. “Jeb said it was good,” he confessed.

She started to interrupt but he kept going.

“But I have been wine tasting, in San Francisco . . . which is technically Napa . . . ish.”

Damn, he was charming. Like a kid wiping his mouth clean of chocolate after being caught in the cookie jar.

It felt fabulous to have someone care enough to try so hard.

“Don’t hold it against me. I wanted to impress you.”

“I’m impressed.”

“Really?” He stopped shuffling.

“I am. I don’t know why you’re trying so hard.”

He put the glass of wine down. “Are you kidding me? I’ve been busting my nuts just to get you here. Now that you are, I don’t want to blow it with the wrong wine or my mom doing her best iceberg interpretation.”

She set her wine next to his. “You can’t control your mother or how she’s acting, and if you don’t know about wine, it isn’t a deal breaker. I’m here, whether I should or shouldn’t be.”

“You definitely should be.”

Again with the charm.

He stared, his gaze moving to her lips.

Would he . . .

Wouldn’t he . . .

“We should eat.” He looked away.

Her heart dropped. “Or you could kiss me.”

Apparently Wade didn’t have to be told twice.

Two steps and he pulled her into his arms and didn’t give her a chance to say she was kidding. Not that she was.

His lips were on hers like an exclamation point, his hand to the back of her head. It was as if he was shocked to be there, until he wrapped his arm around her waist and softened his hold.

With every ounce of breath, he moved into their kiss and let her know that this was something he was good at. It wasn’t wine, it wasn’t controlling his mother . . . it was seduction.

He moved slowly, like there wasn’t a care in the world other than letting her feel their lips mingle, his tongue ask permission and then take possession. He was smooth, unhurried as he sparked fire under her skin.

This was good, probably too good.

He changed his angle, explored deeper.

And he held her. As if he never wanted to let her go.

She wasn’t sure how long they kissed or if the lack of oxygen broke it off or the sound of a distant animal brought them around. But when Wade’s lips left hers, he’d left a little of himself behind.

“Wow,” she said in a hoarse whisper.

“I’m happy to hear you say that.” His eyes peered into hers. “I want to take this slow, and I’ve never wanted to take anything like this slow before in my life.”

“That’s probably a good idea.”

He took a conscious step back and pulled out her chair. “Let’s eat.”



He couldn’t sleep.

The memory of her lips, the taste of her heart . . . and she was one door away.

“No.”

He had to say the word out loud to stop him from walking the few steps to her room. Wade Thomas was good at a number of things . . . singing, charmin’, seducing . . . and making older women wish they could turn back the clock . . . but he sucked at waiting. Holding back for Trina put him, and his body, in the most uncomfortable position he’d been in for a mighty long time.

What kind of masochist was he that he welcomed the feeling? If it wasn’t pitch-black outside, he’d saddle up Black Star and take the stallion for a ride. He probably wouldn’t survive it, but it would match the burning he felt all over.

He had it bad.

The woman had found a way under his skin, and he had no intention of scratching that itch to make it go away.

He’d written enough love songs to identify what was going on inside of him. This wasn’t lust, although that was part of his needs . . . no, Trina was more. The part of a song that brings meaning to the chorus. She hadn’t looked off in the distance once since she’d been there, which gave him hope she wasn’t considering her late husband. In fact, it was her that initiated their first kiss.

He smiled into the memory.

Sweet . . . tasty, and a hint of spice.

His thoughts made his body tighten even more.

“Go to sleep, Thomas . . . that ain’t gonna happen tonight,” he whispered into the night, to himself.

He rolled onto his side and forced his eyes closed.

All he saw was Trina.



It wasn’t hot.

The breeze flowing into her second floor guest room cooled the space without an artificial air conditioner, but she still couldn’t stop the steam oozing from her skin.

It was a line . . . it had to be a line. No one said they wanted to take things slow unless they were about to call the whole thing off. Only Wade hadn’t done that. He’d held her hand throughout their dinner and told her about how he had dreamed one day of owning a cattle ranch. He’d read a book when he was a kid about a man following his dreams, one prize steer at a time. He’d told her that owning as much land as he did in Texas almost required him to either have cattle or an oil field. He would leave the oil to her.

And they talked.

Wade Thomas, famous singer that he was, started out poor. More so than she had. Her parents had both worked hard to put her and her older sister through school. High school! Trina had put herself through a few years of community college and eventually worked her way into a job with the airlines. She’d met Samantha on a chance flight, where she’d learned about Alliance, and next thing Trina knew, she was married to Fedor Petrov and standing in a graveyard.

So why was she in Wade Thomas’s home, wishing he didn’t want to take it slow?

Trina flipped her pillow over, pounded it a few times with her fist, and growled.



The East Coast wasn’t a place Avery ever wanted to live.

A night of tossing and turning due to the deafening silence left her comatose throughout the next morning.

How Trina thought she could endure this for almost two years of her contracted marital life, Avery didn’t know. Who was she to pass judgment? At least Fedor liked cool tones and open space. Bernie had been all about dark wood and hunter green on the walls.

Still, Bernie lived in a place close to other people, where she could walk outside and see them.

All Avery noticed was a stray cat that ducked under the shrubs the second she approached.

Stupid cat.

Avery held her cup of coffee as if it were the answer to life, and crossed through the space between the main house and Fedor’s office. Most homes like this had interior offices, but not Fedor Petrov’s. He had to have a separate space, as if it would make a difference in his eventual outcome. Like what, sharing your space with your family, your wife, would make your wealth half of what you could accomplish in a separate space? Lotta good that did when you offed yourself.

Avery cautioned herself on her thoughts as she clenched her coffee and crossed the lawn.

Trina was avoiding the room, putting off the last memory she had until the bitter end. To Avery, it was just another room in a massive house that needed a set of eyes to see what held value and what could go at a garage sale for pennies on the dollar.

It was just stuff.

A dead rich man’s stuff.

She opened the locked door, expecting a ghost to jump out.

Instead, she smelled paint and new carpet.

The large office had a desk in the center, minus the chair. There were two chairs positioned in front of the desk for visitors, and the walls were lined with bookshelves. Large windows were hidden behind floor to ceiling drapes, which Avery opened. She forced one of the windows up and moved to another one on the other side to capture a breeze and push out the stale air.

“Okay, dead guy, let’s see what you have hiding in here.”

She didn’t start with the desk, which might seem like the obvious place. She started at the top shelf in the office. There were plenty of books, none of which looked very old or valuable. Still, she climbed a sliding ladder and removed a handful and set them on the empty desktop. Someone had gone through the effort of dusting the room, making Avery’s job spider free, which she was incredibly thankful for.

She flipped through the books, making sure there weren’t any papers, or money, stuck within the pages. As she went through each shelf, she stacked the books against a bare wall and reached for another. The third shelf over revealed a locked safe behind the books. Instead of a dial combination, this safe was locked with a key.

She rifled through the desk in search of a key. Strangely, the middle drawer was completely empty. The left top drawer held neatly placed pens, and not the Bic kind . . . no, these were of the Montblanc variety. Avery pushed the books she’d stacked on the desk aside and lined up the pens. One was so impressive she stopped rummaging and spun the thing between her fingers. Diamonds, tiny bits of glitter sparkled. “Just sitting in a drawer,” she said to herself. All the Petrov treasures hidden in plain sight. Apparently it worked, since the pricey stuff didn’t disappear by the sticky fingers of the staff hired to clean the vacant home. Or maybe the staff didn’t think someone was stupid enough to leave valuables lying around.