Forbidden First Times: A Contemporary Romance Collection

by Sofia T Summers

  That was generous of her. I had planned to pay her half now, half at the end, that way it was fair to both of us. She couldn’t run off with all the money—not that I really thought that she would, but I had to be smart and logical about this, as much as I could be—and I wouldn’t just dump her at the end with nothing. But if she really didn’t want me to pay her…

  “Are you sure?”

  Trudie nodded. “I… I need the money. I won’t lie. But I also… I don’t want you to feel you have to pay me if you’re frustrated with how the whole thing went. I’d just like some, um, a bit of financial compensation for whatever I spend while I’m there. Not that I’m buying—I won’t go around on a shopping spree, I just meant, food and all of that—and airplane tickets—”

  “I’ve got you covered,” I promised her. “I’ll buy the tickets so that we can sit together and you won’t have to pay for a thing while you’re there. Will you need rent covered?”

  “No, I think I’ll be fine…”

  “Let me know.” I meant it, I wanted her to be taken care of. “I’m serious. I don’t want you to have to worry about anything while you’re doing this. It’s no skin off my back.”

  Trudie looked down at her food. “It’s just hard,” she admitted. “I’ve been independent for so long, it’s difficult to let myself lean on others. I never had anyone that I could really trust to help me out.”

  “Trust me, I understand. But I’ve got more money than I know what to do with, so let me spoil you a bit. It’s not even spoiling, it’s fair compensation for your help.”

  “Well, I suppose, when you put it that way.” Trudie winked at me. I loved the sense of dry humor that she showed. I had the feeling that the more she came out of her shell, the more wicked humor that I would get to see from her. I looked forward to it.

  “And we’ll have to spend more time together,” I blurted out before I could second-guess myself. “So that we really do get to know each other as much as we can. I can pretend to be my relatives and ask you questions.”

  “Like practicing for a final exam,” Trudie said. “The weirdest final exam ever.”

  “And the most amusing one. I’m told I do a very good job with imitating my relatives.”

  “Oh, I’m sure. I bet they’re all extremely flattered with how you portray them.”

  “I could give you more tours. There’s plenty of lovely museums and places to go. Movies we could see. Lots of fun little neighborhoods to explore. You want to make this city your own, right?”

  Trudie gave me a shy smile. “I’d like that. I had a lot of fun last time.”

  “Then we can do this weekend again? You’re free on Sundays, right?”

  “Yup, all day.”

  “Great.” I found myself just staring at her smiling like a dope.

  Trudie’s phone went off and I jumped a little, startled out of my reverie as I’d stared at her. Was that really how I’d been staring at her? Just lost to everything except her?

  I was in serious trouble.

  Trudie grimaced down at her phone, silencing her alarm. “I’m sorry, but my break’s over, I have to go back to work.”

  “No problem. Feel free to take the leftovers.”

  She didn’t protest this time, instead scooping them up and thanking me. I watched her leave and wondered at how all the energy in the room seemed to go with her. My office had felt so cozy a moment ago, and now it felt too large and empty.

  Don’t lose your focus, I coached myself. Just get through the wedding.

  I was starting to wonder, though, if by the time we got to the wedding I wouldn’t find myself wishing that Trudie and I were together for real.

  11

  Trudie

  The wedding day was fast approaching, and I was freaking out about it.

  The last few weeks had been—they had been like something out of a dream. And not an impossible fairytale kind of dream where it’s all like a Hollywood movie and you knew it was all too good to be true. More like a cozy, happy dream that left you feeling a bit sad when you woke up because you knew your life could be like that dream if only a few things were different.

  Laird was… he was wonderful. I kept expecting the other shoe to drop, waiting for him to show me another side of himself. Not that I thought, consciously at least, that Laird would turn out to be an asshole. But I couldn’t quite shake that fear. It felt ingrained in me. I looked forward to the day when it wasn’t natural to me anymore, when I didn’t worry about when the charming man that I was speaking to would turn out to be awful.

  But the days kept going by and Laird kept being wonderful. He was a bit of a dork, a bit awkward at times, but I didn’t mind that. I thought it was cute, honestly. It showed me that he was earnest in whatever it was that he was saying. And he wasn’t what you would expect the rich, successful, handsome owner of a huge company to be like. He didn’t want to take me out to parties or things like that. If he went out to clubs and such on his own, when he wasn’t with me, he never mentioned them—but I didn’t think that he did. That didn’t seem to be his thing. Instead he was eager to take me to historical sites, and to cozy little hole in the wall places to eat, and to museums.

  He loved art. I didn’t know much about it, honestly. I felt woefully uneducated. But Laird didn’t seem to mind. In fact he seemed eager to share his knowledge with me, telling me all about the art, and the artists, and the historical context, everything from the brushstrokes to the artist’s personal life.

  “I would love to take you to Florence,” he’d say. “Show you Michelangelo’s work up close.” As if he was still thinking about knowing me in the future and taking me on trips. I felt like I should remind him that we weren’t really dating, weren’t really together, but if I did… what if that meant he withdrew? And I couldn’t bring myself to let go of his companionship. It was selfish of me, but this was the sort of person I had always dreamed of dating. The sort of person I had always longed for. I couldn’t bring myself to give him up.

  Other than art, Laird’s big passion was for food. He took me out to Thai places, Chinese places, Italian places—you name it, we had tried it. He was forever finding some new place that was just opening, or had just gotten a rave review, and he wanted us to give it a try. No matter how wacky it might seem. Laird was just so eager to try it all, so adventurous.

  Sometimes, Jack would join us. Jack was a lot more sophisticated, in some ways, than Laird. He was the kind of guy who got all the girls. Personally, I liked Laird better, and I was glad that I wasn’t having to pretend to date Jack. He was too much like an older brother sort of person to me.

  “You better take care of this one, Laird,” Jack would say after I made him laugh. I made him and Laird laugh a lot, which always made me proud. I never thought of myself as a particularly funny person, not until I started spending time with them. “If you don’t appreciate her I’ll have to slap you.”

  Laird would always laugh in return, as if the idea of not appreciating me was ridiculous. This was entirely new to me. Sometimes, some of Pete’s friends would make jokes about me, but they’d been derogatory. Saying something like how if Pete ever got tired of me, they’d be happy to take a turn. That sort of thing. And Pete himself never would’ve appreciated Jack’s big brother sort of affection. He would’ve gotten angry and defensive, possessive of me.

  Jack was always checking in on me, too. He asked if we could exchange numbers, and he would stop by the coffee place to chat with me. At first I thought that it was just so that he could keep an eye on me for his friend, to make sure that I wasn’t secretly some crazy person who was going to kill Laird or rob him blind.

  I told Jack as much, at one point, feeling depressed that day, low energy, and wondering why anyone would put up with me. “You really don’t have to keep checking up on me for Laird,” I promised him. “I’m not going to turn on him.”

  Jack had blinked at me in surprise. “That’s not why I come here, Trudie. I like you. I think you’re a gre
at person who needs friends. That’s all.”

  To my horror, I had started to cry a bit, and Jack had hugged me, laughing a little—not like he was making fun of me, but like he was fond of me.

  After that, I started to relax around him, and to actually view him as my friend. Edith had noticed that I was happier lately, telling me that I looked like I finally was actually cheerful when I got home from work or headed out for the day, rather than merely existing. “There’s a difference between surviving and living,” she told me. “You need to live, not just survive.”

  It was true. I had been just ‘surviving’ for a long time. First to keep Pete from hurting me, then to escape him, and now to keep my head above water financially. With Jack, and at work, and with Laird especially, I no longer felt like I was just surviving. I felt like I was starting to really be a part of something. Like people would miss me if I was gone.

  “You seem happier lately,” one of the other baristas mentioned. I was starting to open up around them, too. Most of them were my age or younger, and a few of them were even still in high school.

  I had felt pretty isolated from them at first, because most of them were in college. They were always talking about their studies, their exams, the crazy parties. I had no life like that. I’d never gotten to finish college, and my short time there felt like eons ago. Like another life. How could I possibly relate to them?

  But then as I started to come out of my shell a bit with Red, the baristas would reach out to me, and I found that just being included with them was nice. They sympathized with my financial struggles and complained about the rude customers with me.

  “You should come to the movies with us,” they would say. “You should come out to the bar with us.”

  Laird encouraged it. “You need friends,” he kept telling me. “And you deserve friends.”

  That was… new, to me. And it gave me another reason to trust him. Pete had always wanted me all to himself. He would cut me off from my friends and keep me from seeing other people. I never got to hang out with anyone. But Laird was happy to hear that people wanted to spend time with me. He kept telling me to branch out.

  I was starting to really feel like these people were home to me. It was a dangerous and exhilarating feeling. I hadn’t felt so embraced by people in… not since I was a kid. Not since I’d lost my family.

  Of course, there were still obstacles. Liam, Laird’s brother, was coming home and there was going to be a family dinner. This would be the first test, where Laird and I proved that we could fool his cousins. If we could manage to fool his own brother, then we could certainly fool everyone else.

  The idea of Laird lying to his brother didn’t sit well with me, since they seemed to be so close, but Laird had explained that Liam was horrible at keeping a secret and that Laird wanted to show him up a bit. “He got married a short bit ago and he’s been ribbing me for not having someone of my own. I want to show him that I could have someone if I wanted to. I just don’t want to.”

  It wasn’t ultimately my choice, of course, it was Laird’s, and if he wanted to do this then I was all in. And it would be a good idea to have a kind of test run. See how I handled things. I was pretty good at lying or so I liked to think. I’d had to hide a lot from people. First when I was dating Pete and people asked how I was, and I pretended I was fine and everything was great. Then when I was preparing to run from Pete, I had to lie to him a lot—pretend that I wasn’t storing away money, making plans, getting ready to disappear into the night.

  But this was different. This wasn’t lying for survival, exactly, and it wasn’t lying to someone that I hated and feared. This was going to be lying to a good person, and a person that I didn’t know. Could I really pull it off? Could I convince someone who had known Laird from the moment he was born that I was Laird’s wife?

  “You’re going to do great,” Jack assured me. “Liam’s a pushover. You should be glad that it’s not Laird you’re having to try and fool.”

  Laird seemed confident in me as well—or at least I thought so? He never said anything otherwise.

  The day we were supposed to do the dinner, I walked into work in a cold sweat. Which was a hell of an accomplishment given that I had powerwalked all the way here.

  “Where’s the fire?” Red asked, looking amused.

  I pointed an accusing finger at him. “Don’t start.”

  “I think I liked you better when you were all shy and didn’t say anything and never talked back,” Red replied, grinning at me.

  “You’re the worst, and you like me better now, you like my sass.” I grabbed my apron and put my purse away.

  “Seriously though, what’s the panicked expression for?”

  “Laird and I are having dinner with his brother tonight, and he’s going to pick me up straight from work.”

  “None of that sounds like a reason to panic.”

  I glared at him. “Red. Do I look like I’ve got the proper clothes to go to a swanky restaurant?”

  “Oooh, you guys are going out?” Red waggled his eyebrows at me.

  “You’re more excited for this whole thing than I am, I swear to God.”

  “I’m excited for you. You might not believe it but this is all good for you, I promise.” Red was still grinning, unperturbed by my snappiness. “So. You don’t have anything to wear?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing that’s nice enough. I only have… I have nothing, really.”

  There was no room at the co-op for clothes, and I couldn’t really afford to buy a lot anyway. When I’d fled from Pete, I had taken only what I had to, and that had meant leaving most of my clothes behind. Now I only had… I mentally ran through my wardrobe. A spare pair of pants, some shirts, and an extra pair of pajamas. Nothing that was fit for a nice dinner so that you could meet the brother of your husband for the first time.

  Red hummed contemplatively. “Sounds serious.”

  “I have no idea what to do,” I confessed. “I want to impress Liam. I want to make a good impression. And if I was really Laird’s wife I would be able to afford nice things—not that, you know, a man shouldn’t pay for… you shouldn’t just expect your spouse to pay for everything. But…”

  “But Laird’s a generous guy and he would make sure that if you wanted to have nice clothes you could,” Red finished. “Of course. What was the last thing he said to you?”

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket and showed him the text. Before I could stop him, Red plucked the phone from my hand. “Stop! What are you doing!?”

  “You didn’t tell him you didn’t have anything to wear, you should’ve told him. Laird wouldn’t want you to be embarrassed.” Red started texting on my phone and I could feel panic seeping in.

  “Red…”

  “Aha, there, I told him what the situation was.”

  I tried to leap for the phone, but Red held it up over his head, out of reach from my grasping fingers. “Nuh-uh, you deserve nice things, and you need to learn how to ask for them.”

  “That—but that would be rude—”

  “You want to put your best foot forward and so does Laird,” Red reasoned. “If you go in just your jeans and a shirt, then you’re going to embarrass him, and you don’t want to do that. So this is the solution: tell him, and he’ll come up with a plan. If that means he buys you a cute dress to wear for the evening then that’s how it works.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say to that. Of course, logically, it made sense. But I hadn’t been able to shake… this feeling inside of me that felt like it was wrong to ask for things. I had never been able to ask for anything with Pete. It just wasn’t how things worked with him. He could get whatever he wanted, no questions asked, but if you wanted something? God forbid I ever want to treat myself, or get something nice for myself, or expect a present from him. He made me feel so guilty about wanting anything, like I was supposed to somehow be this automaton that didn’t need food or sleep or personal care. He was the worst. And I knew that all of that was wron
g, but the instinctive guilt that clutched at me when I even thought about asking anyone for anything was hard to reject after I’d had to live with it for so long.

  Even when you knew an abuser was being awful to you and lying, they managed to get under your skin.

  My phone dinged with a response, and Red grinned. “He said that he’s coming to pick you up right now, and you’re going to get something nice.”

  Oh God. I didn’t want Laird to have to pick something out that was fancy. “I’m going to throw up,” I said, panic rising in me.

  “You’re not going to throw up,” Red replied, handing me back my phone. “You’re going to be fine.”

  Laird arrived downstairs from the elevator, smiling at me and jangling his car keys. “Shall we? Red, you don’t mind if I steal her away a little early, do you?”

  Red grinned. Clearly he had made it known in the text to Laird that he had sent the text from my phone, and that it hadn’t been me who was actually doing it. “Not at all, Laird, go right ahead.”

  “I’ll get you for this.”

  “Y’know you keep saying that and yet… here I still stand, unharmed.” Red waved goodbye as Laird gently herded me out the door.

  Laird was always so gentle in how he touched me. He was never tugging me, or grabbing me, the way that Pete had. Pete had touched me all the time like it was his right, and he’d been rough about it, moving me places like I was a rag doll with no will of my own. But Laird was always careful with his touches.

  “I don’t like the idea of you buying me fancy clothes,” I said as I got into Laird’s car for the first time. It was a very nice silver BMW, and I felt almost like I had to sit in it carefully, gingerly, like I didn’t really belong in it so I couldn’t make myself comfortable.