First Time: Ian's Story (First Time (Ian) Book 1)

by Abigail Barnette

  Go after her! Get out of the car and beg her forgiveness! Don’t let her walk away!

  I made a deal with myself. If she turned around by the count of five, I would go after her. I reached five, and extended the time to ten. And when she still hadn’t turned around, I realized that she was really walking away from me.

  We were really over, just as quickly as we’d begun.

  I put the car in gear and drove away, glancing into the rearview mirror again and again, until I couldn’t see her anymore.

  She never looked back.

  Chapter Eighteen

  My first holiday season as a divorced man could not have been bleaker if Dickens himself wrote the first three acts of a novel about it then forgot to tack on the fucking happy ending. I skulked around the streets of New York with a permanent scowl, disgusted by every happy couple kissing near Christmas tree lights. The laughter of children filled me with bitter regret. All I needed now was for Burt to die so he could haunt me on Christmas Eve and rattle spectral fucking chains in my face.

  He would have to come find me in the Hamptons. I looked around my personal holiday hell, the living room of my old friend Neil’s seaside palace. The place was fucking mammoth, even by Hamptons standards. I hated to be judgmental of my friends, but even with his billions, there was no reason he and Sophie needed this kind of space. And the number of people who’d come to share in the Christmas spirit overwhelmed me.

  “You look like you’re having fun.” The rich bastard’s crisp upper-crust accent identified him without me having to turn around.

  I took a sip of the whisky neat in my hand then felt sorry for it; Neil was sober. Even though he’d provided the alcohol at this party, I felt like a traitor indulging in front of him. “You should have a party sometime when I’m not miserable, if you want me to have a good time.”

  Neil stood beside me in my sad little corner, surveying the party from my perspective. “Still not answering your calls?”

  “I’ve stopped calling. If she didn’t answer the first five times…” Five, even, was a bit too much. I should have stopped at three. No, one. But the hope had been too attractive, every time. This will be the time she’ll pick up, and we can work this all out. “It’s better to move on.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, mate.” One of Neil’s many strengths was the ability to know when he’d said enough. He exercised that ability flawlessly at the moment, not bothering to implore me to see a bright side.

  I didn’t want to talk about Penny all night. I didn’t want to talk about her at all. A part of me had wondered if she would be in attendance tonight, by virtue of her employment. I was either crushed that she wasn’t there, or immensely relieved.

  “I forgot to mention, I received the most pretentious invitation in the mail the other day,” I began, shifting the conversation away from myself.

  “Oh?” Neil pretended he didn’t know what I was talking about, lifting his eyebrows in interest.

  “Something about some silly rape crisis center,” I went on in good-natured mocking. I knew the center was a project close to his heart. “They want money out of me for this black tie fundraiser. Sounds like a real bore.”

  “You’d better not come, then,” he said, nodding sagely.

  “Actually, I won’t be able to make it.” I dropped the joke. “I’m sorry. I have to fly down to Nassau to look at some houses.”

  “The Bahamas?” Neil sipped his own drink, which I suspected was ginger ale. “Architects are doing better than I expected these days.”

  “You’re not the only one with vacation house money,” I reminded him. “This is for a job. I’m working for Carrie Glynn.”

  “Oh, that’s quite posh, isn’t it?” said the poshest arsehole this side of the Atlantic.

  “Very posh, if we’re discussing paychecks. But I’m going to have to relocate for over a year. I thought I might get a head start on the real estate search.” I’m going to have to leave the city, to leave behind any chance of ever seeing Penny again. More aptly, any chance of ever seeing Penny before she found someone new and settled down with him into the life we should have had together.

  “Much better to stay in your own home than a hotel room,” Neil said, but something across the room caught his gaze. His beautiful, dark-haired wife gliding around in her cranberry-colored dress and sky-high heels, most likely. “Of course, hotel rooms have their advantages.”

  “Keep it in your pants, Elwood. I’m not looking to be romanced.” I didn’t want to keep him from Sophie. The two of them seemed incomplete when they weren’t at each other’s sides. “Go on, find your girl and enjoy your party. Don’t let my sad old arse weigh down your holiday spirit.”

  “If your sad old arse is interested to know, Penny will be at the charity gala,” he said, stepping back casually, hands in his pockets. “I’ll leave your name on the list, in case you change your mind.”

  That night, as I lay in bed in one of Neil and Sophie’s many guest rooms, watching the ceiling spin, I prayed. More fervently than I’d ever prayed for anything in my life, I begged God to give me a sign. Something that would make me sit up and take notice the way Penny had noticed little coincidences and tallied them up. The longer I prayed, the more despondent I became when those signs didn’t arrive.

  I wanted Penny. I wanted to hear her laugh and see her smile. I wanted her gasping my name beside my ear as I sank into her body. I wanted to watch her hold our baby to her breast, to see her walk down the aisle, so beautiful she put other brides to shame.

  Maybe that’s why I wasn’t receiving a sign. I didn’t need one. I knew already Penny was the woman for me. She’d said she believed that no matter what happened between now and then, in the end, we would be together. I wasn’t going to wait and see how we got to that end, and how long it would take. I wanted to start our lives together now.

  I grabbed my phone and flipped through my calendar. Neil’s black tie charity event was on January sixteenth. There was no reason I couldn’t push back my house-hunting trip a week and attend it.

  What was I thinking? That I would show up and Penny would fawn all over me, just because I’d shuffled my schedule around? It wasn’t as though I could find her and promise her I wasn’t going to leave. I was going to leave. And she was right, I’d still proven myself a liar, even if I hadn’t lied to her. Everything was exactly as it was when we’d broken up. Would seeing her again make a difference?

  I had to try. If I had to beg her, I would. Losing Penny was a mistake I couldn’t afford to make again.

  * * * *

  The night of the gala, I stood in front of the mirror in my bedroom and adjusted my bow tie. “I look like I’m about to roast the most beloved Shriner in the lodge.”

  Ambrose yowled in agreement.

  “This is as good as I stand to get.” My guts roiled. I was going to this stupid thing tonight, but I had no idea how I was coming back—either as the happiest man on the Earth or the most miserable bastard on the planet.

  “All right, Ambrose. Don’t wait up,” I told the cat. Then, I went downstairs, grabbed my coat, and headed to the car.

  Why Elwood had thought holding a charity function in one of the most contentious weather months of the year was a good idea, I couldn’t say, but the forecast didn’t look promising. The streets were a bit slick, and the snow was beginning to cake on the road as I drove into the city. But when I arrived and left my car with the valet, there was a long enough line it was clear people would show up for Neil Elwood if he threw a fête.

  The Elwood Rape Crisis Resource Center was in a fantastic building in lower Manhattan. Not as fantastic as it would have been had my firm designed it, but that was neither here nor there. The remodel had gone incredibly well; what had once been a bank’s home office was now a towering glass structure with a welcoming atrium and, from what I’d read on the website, several floors devoted to temporary housing for victims at risk. Mental health facilities, both inpatient and outpatient, and an educa
tion center took up the rest of the building.

  From the outside, the only thing that gave the place away as a crisis shelter was a small bronze placard by the door. Otherwise, it could have been any old office building.

  I knew Neil had sunk a very large amount of money into the not-for-profit project himself. He’d slipped from tenth wealthiest Brit to thirteenth, but he was far from eating beans out of a tin under a bridge.

  The party was being held in the aforementioned atrium, which made up for its lack of daytime illumination with sparkling golden lighting. The fountain, a very modern and abstract sheet of textured copper bubbling water down its face, would create soothing sounds on a normal day, but it could barely be heard over the din of voices and the ten musicians playing big band music on a temporary stage. A staircase with wide, round steps that narrowed as they went up curved toward the second floor. I would have gone with something less art deco flavored for this particular space.

  Criticizing buildings was a hazard of the profession.

  “Champagne?” a white jacketed waiter asked, offering from his tray.

  I nodded and thanked him, but the glass in my hand was nothing more than a piece of my cover. Outwardly, I was there to support my friend, but I’d come for one specific task.

  I spotted Penny across the floor. All the color returned to my world, color I hadn’t realized was missing. Just seeing her, without any guarantee, without any clue about the outcome, almost brought me to my knees in thanks.

  Her eyes locked on mine, and her rose petal lips parted. She’d styled her hair in stiffly sculptured waves that swept back from her forehead. A thick silver coil curved around the base of her throat, which constricted visibly, as though she struggled for breath. An expanse of bare skin and cleavage showed above the top of her strapless black gown, which fit like a glove from the floor up. It illustrated her body like a brushstroke of ink, and she painted the room as she walked toward me.

  Before I had an answer from her, I knew I was leaving with her. I refused to imagine any other outcome.

  I drained my glass and handed it to another waiter.

  When Penny finally reached me, her expression was tight. “Ian, what are you doing here?”

  A lump formed in my throat. Ah, fuck it. If ever there was a time to cry in public and not give a shite, this was it. I fought through the emotional hoarseness in my voice and manage to hold myself together. “I came to get you.”

  She frowned.

  “That turned out creepier than I intended.” I ran a hand through my hair before I remembered that we were at a black tie event and I needed to look marginally acceptable. “But I want you back. I want you to come with me to Nassau. We can get a nice apartment with a pool and ocean views. We can go on the fucking House Hunters show if you want. Be their token older man, younger woman couple who can’t agree on anything—”

  “Ian…” she began, and the doubt in her eyes killed me.

  “You said once that you believed whatever happens between us, we would be together in the end. I believe that, too. I was stupid. I was so fucking stupid to say what I did to you. And to not fight harder for you. But I want you.”

  Her chest rose, her breasts swelling against the tight top of her dress in what had to be the most unintentionally seductive expression of emotion in history. But she didn’t say anything, and I felt like my apology wasn’t enough.

  “I know you don’t believe me, but I never cheated on Gena. I wish I could make you understand why I would lie about it to Annie—”

  “Don’t.” Despite the conviction in her eyes, her voice wavered.

  The band picked up a slow song. Some old standard that was recognizable and not at the same time. Penny wiped at one eye with her thumb, but the tear she’d so carefully cleared away formed again immediately. She managed a tremulous smile and interrupted me uncertainly, “Dance with me?”

  “Of course.” It was better than nothing. We went to the floor and found a spot near other couples, to blend in. The moment my arm slipped around her waist and I pulled her body against mine, I felt right, for the first time in weeks. I prayed that, somehow, she would feel that rightness, too.

  Her hand briefly tightened on my shoulder as we started to move to the gentle tempo of the music. She gazed up at me, her lower lip quivering. “I don’t want to do this anymore, Ian.”

  My heart collapsed like a poorly supported first story beneath the weight of a skyscraper of disappointment.

  “I don’t want to be without you,” she whispered.

  Ah, if it were only that simple, Doll. “And I don’t want you to rush into coming back to me.” No, that wasn’t true. I’d wanted her to leap into my arms. If this were a movie, the romantic music would swell, the camera would pan out as we kissed passionately on this glamorous dance floor, and the audience would go home happy in the knowledge that we would be together forever. I believed we would be, but as a player in the moment, I saw the lights and the cameras. I knew that more was going to go on behind the scenes. A resolution to the fight that had split us up might not have seemed important to Penny now, but it would be, and likely very soon. “I do want you to come back to me. I would love it if you rushed. But I want to earn your trust.”

  She leaned her head on my chest. Her back jerked beneath the palm I splayed at the small of it, and she kept her face hidden to disguise her tears. “We have so much time to worry about that. But the way I feel about you? It isn’t going to go away because of a lie you told someone in your past,” she promised. “This isn’t going to be perfect. It might take a long time to get back to where we were. But it will be worth it. And for right now? I just want you.”

  The hurt reversed, the structure of my heart rebuilding stronger than before. Holding back the physical reaction to my relief, which I couldn’t trust to not be some explosive whooping sound followed by gasping like a fish out of water, was monumentally painful. “You have me, Doll. You’ve always had me.”

  She pulled back and gazed up at me earnestly. “What if I said no to leaving New York? What if I told you I wanted to stay here? That I wanted you to stay here?”

  My stomach roiled with nerves. I couldn’t walk away from the project. Not with a figure that size on the table. But I couldn’t buy another Penny, so the money meant nothing. “I would turn down the job.”

  “Ian…” She slowly shook her head. “That would destroy your career.”

  “I know.” I shrugged, my throat going dry. “I want you more.”

  “More than—”

  “More than a few million dollars, yeah.” If I mourned for the money, it was because I couldn’t find a way to have it and Penny both.

  “You’re such an idiot,” she said, and it took me a breath to realize she was laughing at me. “I’m not really going to ask you to turn down the job. Of course I’m going with you. Do you have any idea how much snorkeling I can do down there?”

  “Oh, you…” I had more to say, but it got lost when our mouths met. I tightened my hold at her waist as we reacquainted with lips and tongues. We were on a nice, civilized dance floor. This probably counted as making a spectacle of ourselves. I couldn’t bring myself to care.

  She pulled back, her big brown eyes glittering. “Come with me.”

  I let her lead me off the floor and through the crowd. I caught sight of Neil and Sophie on the circular bottom step of the stairs, near the podium. He was going to make a thank-you speech to the big name donors, most likely. That gave Penny and me a chance to sneak off, past the coatroom and down a secondary hall.

  “What is this?” I whispered as we closed a set of fire doors behind us. The corridor we’d entered was entirely dark except for the red exit lights.

  “It’s like a conference center thing,” Penny whispered back. “Sophie gave us a tour the other day.”

  “What are we doing here? Corporate espionage?” I asked as she pulled me farther into the darkness.

  “No.” She came to stop in front of the dark shape o
f a door. There was a click, and it pushed open. “Looking for a place to fuck.”

  The rush of blood away from my head should have rendered me brain dead. She gripped the front of my shirt and jerked me through the door after her. Whatever room we were in, it had a conference table. Penny paused beside it and wriggled her hips then hopped up on the table, her legs parted. She’d hiked her dress to her waist. “I love you. And I’m so glad we’re back together. And we’ve got plenty of stuff we still need to talk out, but I’m asking you, please, please fuck me.”

  Oh, I was going to. We needed to spend more time talking about our problems—and I definitely needed to set the record straight about the circumstances of my divorce—but if we got this part out of the way, we’d both be able to concentrate better.

  Not to mention the fact that when we were touching, when I was inside of her with her arms and legs wrapped around me, it was as close to Heaven as I could ever get. Being without her had been my time in Purgatory, and I was ready to return to her grace.

  I dropped to my knees and slipped her legs over my shoulders, jerking her forward. She was still wearing panties, a flimsy satin thong. I gripped them at her hips and pulled hard, rewarded by a rip and a loud gasp as they were ruined beneath my hands.

  “I can’t believe you did that!” she gasped, but she certainly didn’t sound angry or put out by my actions. Instead, she buried one hand in my hair to urge me closer.

  Her pussy was open and exposed for me. The smell of her… I hadn’t been able to forget it. I’d spent miserable nights in my bed with my cock in my hand, trying not to think of how she tasted, how slick and hot she’d felt under my mouth. I’d always given in and fantasized; it had been the only thing that would get me off.

  Now, she was in my hands. She was all mine.

  “Please,” she whispered urgently.

  I bent my head and kissed her, parting her folds with my tongue. She held the back of my head with one hand and rested her weight on the other, her hips rocking as much as they could in her half-upright position. I sought out her clit and caught it between my lips, flicking my tongue over and over. As much as I loved taking my time and savoring her, right now I just wanted to make her come. I wanted that connection between us that I hadn’t felt in so long. She gasped and moaned, slamming her palm against the table and pulling my hair almost too hard. When she broke, it was with a wail of relief that would have gotten us caught, for sure, if there hadn’t been a loud party going on in another part of the building.