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 events 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.