“You want to stay over tonight?” Yasmine gazed up at Robert as he stood hesitantly at the door of her condo with one foot in and one out.
“I don’t know, Yas.” He set her suitcase on the floor and dropped her keys into a bamboo bowl on a table near the door. “Should I?” he asked, his entrancing chocolate eyes level under dark bushy brows.
Untangling her gaze from his, Yasmine removed her Valentino crossbody bag and placed it on the chair next to the table. As much as she would love to rip off their clothes and writhe under Robert for an hour or so before falling asleep snuggled up to his hard muscular body, she wasn’t one to beg—not even for the best sex of her life.
Lifting her gaze again, she watched his mouth tighten with irritation as he stared down at her. Her desire to reach up and kiss the softness back into his smooth sexy lips was strong, but Yasmine squelched it. She was so good at controlling her desires—sometimes. “Can you close my door? All my cool air is escaping to the outside.”
“You want me on the inside or the outside of your door when it’s closed?”
Yasmine shrugged indifferently. She’d already posed the question, and that was all the invitation he was getting tonight. “That’s up to you, Robert. I’ll be upstairs while you decide.” Before he could reply, she wheeled her suitcase toward the flight of stairs that led to the second floor.
“Let me help you with that,” Robert said behind her, his footsteps following in the wake of his deep baritone voice.
“No, I got it.”
“Why do you always have to be so—so…independent, Yas? Let a brother help you once in a while.”
Because that’s how a lot of women get lassoed.
Yasmine lifted the suitcase and ascended the steps as quickly as she could, carrying about thirty pounds of clothes, shoes, handbags, makeup, and toiletries with her. A smile briefly braced her lips as she felt the heat from Robert’s stare burning a hole in the back of her bare legs and thighs left visible from her white shorts. She put a little more effort into wriggling her buttocks under the cotton material.
She knew he hated her independence and wished she would lean on him more, but that wasn’t Yasmine’s style anymore. Like a lot of women, she used to think that she needed a man to perform certain tasks and solve certain problems. She’d kicked that philosophy to the curb when she became a divorce attorney, and realized how one woman after another got sucked into a relationship she shouldn’t have been in, merely because a man flexed his muscles at her.
After her first few cases, Irina Dunn’s famous catchphrase, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle,” had become Yasmine’s mantra. When she needed a plumber, she called a professional, paid him, and sent him on his way. No expectations. No obligations. When she wanted a man and his sweet loving, she called Robert. They gave and they took equally, enjoying each other to the max.
As she walked down the hall, Yasmine heard Robert’s footsteps retreating across the floor, followed by the firm thud of her door closing behind him. So he decided to go home to his Beacon Hill townhouse after all.
She flipped a switch as she entered her master suite, and blinked as all thirty bulbs from the crystal chandelier hanging over her bed flooded the bedroom with light—too much light. With a sigh, she dimmed the bulbs, placed her suitcase on the luggage stand, and unzipped it. As she proceeded to unpack, she heard the engine of Robert’s silver Ferrari roar to life.
He’d been moody on the ride back from Granite Falls—a bustling little town in the foothills of the White Mountains in northern New Hampshire—where they’d spent the last three days. Yesterday, they’d attended the most magnificent wedding she’d ever witnessed in real life, or even seen on TV. Yasmine hadn’t even imagined weddings could be so grandiose.
Four billionaire friends and their wives had renewed their vows of love and commitment to each other and their families. Michelle Carter—Yasmine’s best friend since childhood, and Robert’s younger sister—was one of the bride wives.
Yesterday, Robert had given his sister away for the second time to Dr. Erik LaCrosse. Yasmine had had the pleasure of being Michelle’s matron of honor at her first wedding four years ago, but yesterday she’d sat at the front of the church among the honored guests.
Robert, Michelle, and Yasmine had all grown up together in one of the toughest neighborhoods in Manchester, New Hampshire, but they’d all made it out of the hood to a more affluent lifestyle.
Eighteen years ago when Yasmine was eleven, Robert had packed up twelve-year-old Michelle and rented an apartment in a better area of town to get her away from their abusive alcoholic father. Although they weren’t living next door to each other, she and Michelle were able to attend the same middle and high schools, graduate together, and maintain their BFF relationship.
Robert never returned to that neighborhood, but a series of unfortunate events that had almost totally destroyed Michelle had sent her back to live with Yasmine for a while. She’d eventually left it for good four year ago when she married the sexy, widower, billionaire doctor, Erik LaCrosse, father of her charge when she worked as a nanny in the LaCrosses’ Amherst home. And last but not least, Yasmine had said goodbye to their rundown neighborhood, three years ago.
It had taken Yasmine a bit longer to leave her origins because unlike Robert and Michelle, she still had family ties in Manchester: her parents, Luke and Marie Reynolds, her brother, Luke Jr., her sister, Naomi, Naomi’s husband, Felix, and Yasmine’s thirteen-year-old nephew, Peter—Naomi and Felix’s son—on whom she shamelessly doted.
And besides, she hadn’t had the fortune of meeting, falling in love with, and then marrying a billionaire. She’d had to work hard and fight for every little bit of luxury she now enjoyed—mainly her high-end, ocean-view, three-bedroom condo in Charlestown, Massachusetts, and her little red Jaguar F-type.
Not that Robert and Michelle hadn’t worked hard as well. Robert had been working since he was ten years old to keep him and Michelle from starving when their worthless father continuously neglected and abused them. Robert had singlehandedly put himself through Harvard School of Dental Medicine, graduated top of his class, and established Carter Orthodontics that eventually expanded into the very prosperous Carter, Obryan & Levitt Orthodontics. Robert was one of the best dentists in New England with a clientele that included the wealthiest and most influential people in Boston and the surrounding areas.
He recently became a self-made billionaire through Carter Dental, a company that invented and manufactured dental instruments both domestically and globally. Yasmine was very proud of his accomplishments. As a matter of fact, he had been her inspiration to make something of herself. She’d also admired the way he took care of his little sister, even when he was just a kid himself. He’d had to grow up fast.
As for Michelle, even though she’d married her billionaire soul mate, she was a #1 New York Times bestselling author many times over, and a multimillionaire in her own rights from the sales of her books—stories she’d written about the kids from their old neighborhood, kids she used to mentor, and was still mentoring up to this day—many of whom had attended the wedding yesterday.
Those little rascals—Yasmine’s nephew, Peter, included—probably thought they were stuck in a dream during their three-day stay at Hotel Andreas, one of the best hotels in the world, eating cuisine they couldn’t pronounce much less spell, pampered by private caretakers, and being chauffeured around in tinted limousines. That was Michelle. Advocate for the underdog. No matter how rich and famous she got, the girl would never forget where she came from, or those she’d left behind.
Yasmine swallowed back a lump as she thought of her oldest and best friend who now lived three hours north of Boston, and who had since made three new best friends—Kaya, Shaina, and Tashi—wives of Erik’s billionaire buddies, Bryce Fontaine, Massimo Andretti, and Adamo Andreas. They were all wonderful, down-to-earth women whom Yasmine had met and, God help her, liked a lot.
But Yasmine missed her Mich something terrible.
With her unpacking complete, Yasmine walked into her en suite and began removing her makeup. If she were to be honest with herself, she’d have to admit that she was jealous of Michelle’s new friends. Not only did the billionaire wives have a lot in common with each other, including hot, handsome husbands, adorable children, and fast, expensive sports cars, but they all lived within a ten-minute drive of each other and saw one another almost daily, while Yasmine was lucky if she saw her best friend four times a year.
They talked on the phone frequently, but it was never the same. It would never be like it used to be when she and Michelle lived next door to each other in Manchester, or even when Michelle lived with her while she was going through the most difficult time of her life. Yasmine had known for sure that things between them were changing the night Michelle had invited her and Robert to dinner at the house in Amherst, five years ago.
Nobody, not even Yasmine and Robert, had known at the time that Michelle and Erik had secretly married, until some stinky shit had hit the fan months later and ripped them apart. Paradoxically, while Michelle’s life was on a downward spiral, Yasmine’s was flourishing, and as much as she’d longed to share her joy with her best friend, she hadn’t. How could she, when her new love interest was Robert? It would have been cruel to flaunt her own happiness in Michelle’s face while her best friend’s heart was broken up over Erik.
Then, just when Yasmine was about to share her joy, fate threw her a curve ball, turning her own life upside down, forcing her to make some fast and hard decisions about her future. Those decisions, regrettably so, were now Yasmine’s deepest, darkest secrets.
Four years later, Yasmine still didn’t know if she’d ever confide in Michelle. It might destroy their friendship. Plus, Michelle might feel compelled to tell her brother, which could inadvertently bring Yasmine’s relationship with Robert to the ultimate end. She couldn’t risk losing her friendship with Michelle, or the love Yasmine and Robert had for each other. She knew she’d have to tell him sometime, but that sometime should be at her own choosing.
Expelling a deep breath, Yasmine pinned up her hair, dropped her clothes on the bathroom floor, and stepped into her shower stall. She squeezed her lids together and turned her face toward the warm sprays as tears stung her eyes. She should know better than to dwell on her dark secret, especially after spending so much time with Robert—a man who loved kids, and who’d been voicing his desires to have a family ever since his sister had gotten married and begun popping out babies one after the other.
Robert was always excited about visiting Granite Falls, mainly to spend time with his sister’s children—twelve-year-old Precious, four-year-old Erik Jr., three-year-old Tiffany, and seven-month-old Fiona. The kids were always equally excited to see their Uncle Robert, who had no qualms about getting down on the floor or rolling around in the grass with them. The experience of watching them interact always filled Yasmine with conflicting emotions.
Yasmine had been crushing on Robert ever since she was a little girl. She’d dreamed of marrying him and living Happily Ever After in a condo in the north end of Manchester—where the rich people lived. She’d admitted her feelings when she turned fifteen. He’d said she was just a kid and too young to know anything about love. He’d broken her teenage heart, and to hide her hurt, Yasmine had started making fun of his arrogance, calling him boring and a stuffed-shirt, and in turn, he’d called her impertinent and a sassy mouth.
Yasmine smiled at the memories. They used to make Michelle so mad with the name-calling. But when push came to shove, she could always depend on Robert to be there for her, even more than her own brother. After Michelle graduated high school, Robert moved to Boston to start his dental practice, and Yasmine began seeing him less and less. Soon years passed without any contact, until the night of Michelle and Erik’s dinner party in Amherst.
The minute she saw him, Yasmine’s heart had begun to pound like a jungle drum that could be heard for miles, and she’d begun to quiver inside. And to cover up her reaction to seeing him, Yasmine had done what she always did to hide her feelings: attack his rigid personality.
By the end of the night, neither one of them could resist the strong vibes between them. Robert had spent that night and the next two at her apartment in Manchester, and they’d stayed in bed all weekend, living off of passion, pizza, and water. They’d been hooked on each other since then.
But skeptical Yasmine knew that hot sex, especially hot sex in a new relationship, wasn’t enough to build anything on. Jeremy, her first boyfriend, had proven that to her when he too had broken her heart.
Yasmine had given Robert a second chance, then just as she’d begun to feel hopeful about a future with him, he’d discovered the ugly truth about the man he’d called Dad for most of his life. It was a difficult and painful time for him as he tried to reevaluate himself as a son, a brother, and a man. But instead of turning to her for comfort and moral support, he’d pulled away at a time when she needed him most.
How could she trust him with her most precious commodity when he’d rejected her twice? How could she believe in love and marriage, and Happily Ever After when her career as a divorce attorney brought her into daily contact with couples who were once in love, but who eventually reached the stage where they ripped each other apart over silverware and chandeliers?
To avoid that kind of turmoil and disappointment in her life, Yasmine had conditioned herself to believe in here and now. And right now, she wished Rob was here.
Yasmine turned off the shower, stepped out of the stall, and wrapped a fluffy towel around her body. It was going to be a lonely night, but at least she had the erotic memories of making love with Rob before they left Granite Falls that afternoon. Those memories would have to suffice until they saw each other again—hopefully tomorrow after he’d had time to cool down and miss her.
In the meantime, she had King George to help her cope with her Robert withdrawal. King George never gave her any grief about anything. He just did his damn job, got out, and left her alone until she summoned him again.
As Yasmine walked into her bedroom and headed for the bureau, she swore that vibrating dildo enjoyed her body just as much as Robert did. She might have to change his name to Sir Rob or Sir Robert. Whichever. One of them.
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