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Chapter Ten
“Do you know the guy she’s with?” I pathetically heard myself ask as I snuck another glance in Tricia’s direction.
“Yeah. Bradley Moran, he’s an old high school ‘friend,’ I believe.” When she used air quotes, I knew they were more than that. My heart ached and sank to my stomach. How did I compete with someone who has high school history with her? Did I even want to compete? “They have a tight relationship … cozy,” she said, after choosing her word carefully. “Apparently, they dated in school, but they’re still good friends. I don’t think they’re an actual item or anything, Bradley was married until a couple of years ago and he has three kids.”
“Was married, as in no longer? Wait … how do you know so much?” I asked, shaking my head.
Rhea shrugged. “Like I said, we’re friends, she talks to me.”
I hesitated but had to ask. “Did she ever talk about me?”
“You?” When her eyebrows shot up to her hairline, I knew the answer before she spoke. “Never. Not a word about you. I had no idea, and yet she knows I work with you. How long ago was this?”
“You’ve mentioned me? Hasn’t she asked any questions?”
“No… that’s what’s so surprising. I do talk about you sometimes… in relation to work, but she’s never once mentioned she knows you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I told her quickly. I looked toward Tricia again, eating her lunch and listening intently to the guy who stabbed his fork in the air, obviously emphasizing a point. “It’s just a little odd that she wouldn’t say she’d met me if my name came up in conversation.” I shrugged. “It just goes to show she felt the same as I had … we were just a bit of fun.”
“From the look on your face when you saw her, I’d say you’re still interested. You may have been fun for her, but I think you would have liked more?”
I shook my head but said nothing for fear of protesting too much. Fortunately, the waiter arrived with our food and set it down. However, when he moved away, my eyes caught Tricia’s as she sipped her wine.
There was a moment of hesitancy as she pulled her glass slowly from her mouth. When I saw her lips set in a line and a frown creased her brow in similar confusion, it weighed heavy in my chest, but that magnetic draw and electric connection was definitely still there. As her gaze grew in intensity, I found it harder to breathe and that familiar craving to touch her came back, unsettling me.
Somehow, I managed to drag my eyes away and I fought to maintain what I felt was a reasonable conversation with Rhea until we finished our lunch. When I stole another glance toward Tricia, she and her companion were again deep in conversation with her looking apparently unaffected after her initial connection with me.
As soon as was practical, I excused myself from Rhea, left the restaurant, and headed back to my penthouse suite without acknowledging Tricia. But nothing prepared me for the deep discontentment and restlessness I had taken away with me from that moment we shared in the restaurant.
From my perspective, I’d done all that I could in readiness for this conference but no amount of preparation would have set me up for the test of spending five days in the same room with the woman who turned my body electric and my mind to mush.
Once back in my suite, I shrugged out of my suit jacket and I hung it back on a hanger in the closet. As I did so a text alert vibrated on my cell. When I took it out of my front pants pocket and saw it was from Tricia, my body became instantly wired. A sharp intake of air reminded me to breathe and my fingers shook as I opened the text.
Tricia: I’m surprised to see you here. Long time, no see. How are you doing?
Seeing that simple question on my screen from her paralyzed me.
Cracking my neck from side to side, I threw my cell on the bed and paced around the room, aware of how tense I felt for having received her message. For a minute I stared, either unable or unwilling to reply, for I knew opening any dialogue would probably lead to more. It had taken me years to move her out of my mind and yet again in one afternoon I was back in time, acting like a sex-starved adolescent.
Never better, family firm keeping me on my toes…
Okay, just buried under paperwork from the office…
It was great to see you, are you busy?
My thumbs had worked quickly writing and deleting each thought as it came into my head, but the last one was more dangerous than the rest. Sex between us had felt explosive, and Tricia had been my biggest high. That’s how it felt and like a junkie, one sight of my drug of choice had me instantly craving more. About five minute later I sent a generic reply.
Me: Doing good. You?
When I pressed send, my heart betrayed my head and raced excitedly from the short exchange that had said nothing much at all. We had been nothing but yet I couldn’t get over her. For a healthy male it had felt weird not to have the same drive as I’d had before, but no other woman came close after Juliette, and not even she made me feel how I had when I was with Tricia.
It had only taken that brief unspoken encounter in the restaurant to make me realize I had never gotten past her. A swell of restlessness squeezed my lungs until I was unable to bear the restrictions of my immaculate attire. Unbuttoning my collar, I loosened my tie, yanked it over my head, and peeled out of my clothes. Who cares what I wear? Today I’m just another delegate, who’s going to spend the rest of the day getting drunk.
As I walked into the bedroom another text came in.
Tricia M: Want to catch up?
The harm that could do would be immeasurable, because I wasn’t sure I had the will to resist her if the opportunity arose for us to be alone.
