Half Empty (First Wives Series Book 2)

by Catherine Bybee

That had her laughing. “You’re so blatant.”

  “I’m honest. It’s a curse, though my mama would say differently.”

  The plane dipped again, forcing Trina to hold her glass up to avoid spilling the wine. The intercom system inside the plane made a noise, and the voice of a man she assumed was the captain started to talk.

  “We’re hitting some rough weather, Mr. Thomas. I’d suggest you and your guest stay seated with your seat belts fastened until I can get us away from this storm.”

  Wade sat a little taller and looked out the window. “Don’t have to tell me twice.”

  Trina took a drink of her wine to keep it from spilling. “They wouldn’t have taken off if it wasn’t safe. It’s just gonna be bumpy.”

  Trina peered at the flight attendant, who was sitting several feet away, the phone to the cockpit to her ear.

  “This doesn’t bother you?”

  “Not at all. In fact, I was working in the private sector as a flight attendant before my marriage. I’d planned on creating a company for private flight attendants.”

  “That didn’t work out?” Wade asked.

  “I didn’t pursue it. I might, eventually. I’ve had other priorities this year.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Enough about me. What’s your story?” The way he was watching the rain against the window told her Wade was nervous. In her experience, the best way to quell that was to get him talking.

  “I started singing in the shower as soon as I realized a hairbrush could double as a microphone.”

  The image of a young boy covered in soap, holding a round brush, popped into her head.

  “When I was about eight, me and my buddy started a two-man band. He used an old paint bucket as a drum, and I had a hand-me-down guitar I learned how to play on my own.”

  The plane dipped again. This time Wade’s glass fell to the floor and started rolling around, spilling wine everywhere.

  Trina looked at the flight attendant, who reached for her seat belt to cinch it tighter.

  “Whoa.”

  “It’s okay—”

  “Sorry for the turbulence, Mr. Thomas. This is the captain speaking. It looks like we’re being encouraged to land on Grand Bahama instead of Nassau. There are lightning strikes on the smaller island, and turning back to Miami would have us chasing this storm. We’re very sorry for the inconvenience. As soon as the weather clears, we will get you to your destination.”

  “That’s not good,” Wade said, looking behind him toward Nita. “Is everything okay up there?” He pointed toward the cockpit door.

  “Just lightning, like the pilot said.”

  Wade turned his wild eyes on Trina.

  “Hey, it’s fine.”

  “Easy for you to say. Musicians always die in small plane crashes.”

  Trina couldn’t help but take the blame for being on the plane with a storm approaching. Not that she felt they were at risk of falling out of the sky, but Wade obviously considered it a high probability.

  “Do you need me to come over there and sit next to you?” she asked, trying to tease him.

  His eyes locked on hers. “Don’t you dare take that seat belt off.”

  The plane started to descend and bank to the left. Trina tried to see the ground but only saw clouds.

  “Does your friend still play the drums with you?”

  “What?”

  “The drums. You said you had a friend who played when you were a kid.”

  Wade shook his head. “No. He ah . . .”

  Trina noticed his hands fisting on the armrest. His knuckles turned white.

  “He what?” Trina kept her concern about the bad weather to herself. As flights went, this was one she could have done without. The small plane made it worse.

  “Married his high school sweetheart, had a daughter within the first year.”

  “Married life and your job aren’t compatible?”

  “I’m not sure about that. Drew didn’t have the same drive. Took the excuse of a wife and a kid to stop trying and went to work with his father.” Wade looked out the window again and released a relieved sigh. “Land. I see land.”

  Trina leaned forward and rested a hand on his knee. “Hey . . .”

  He turned her way and tried to smile.

  He sucked at it.

  “I’m sorry. This was a bad idea.”

  Wade covered her hand with his and squeezed. “It was my bad idea.”

  “You were just trying to get me to go out with you.”

  There was a pause and a tilt of his head that she’d seen him do before. “I think after this flight, the least you can do is say yes to a date.”

  Oh, yeah, he was definitely playing it hard. Not that she thought for a second his anxiety about the flight was a show. White knuckles and wild eyes were a dead giveaway.

  “How about dinner at whatever hotel we muster up once we land?”

  His thumb stroked her fingers.

  On instinct, she pulled away, only to have him hold her tighter. “That was a given. I’m talking about when we get back to Texas. I still need to teach you the two-step.”

  The plane rocked back and forth as the runway approached. Wade squeezed her hand a little tighter.

  “Who says I don’t already know the two-step?”

  “Do you?”

  “It’s two steps, how hard can it be?”

  The first punch to the tarmac and Wade squeezed her hand hard enough to have her tense. Once the wheels made decent contact and the nose bounced before leveling out, Trina placed her free hand over his fist.

  Wade glanced at his hand. “Oh, damn, sorry.” He let her go the second he realized the grip he had.

  Trina shook out her hand with a laugh. “I don’t need my hand for the rest of the day anyway.”

  Tilting his head back and closing his eyes, Wade let his shoulders fall. “That was not fun.”

  “We landed. We’re good.”

  “Little lady, I haven’t worked this hard for a date since I was in Miss Kuhnar’s third grade class.”

  She laughed. “Third grade? You started early.”

  “Patty refused to let me walk her home up until the last week of school.”

  Trina had a strong desire to learn more about Patty.

  The airplane came to a stop, and Nita stood from her seat as quickly as she could.

  “Sincere apologies, Mr. Thomas.”

  Relaxed now, Wade flirted with his eyes and put Nita at ease. “I’ll use this in a song,” he told her.

  The younger woman seemed to like that idea. “I can’t wait to hear it.”

  Wade winked.

  “Do you know who Wade Thomas is?” Avery glanced up from her cell phone to find Lori’s and Shannon’s eyes.

  “The name sounds familiar,” Lori said.

  Avery turned her phone around and showed the others the image on her screen. “He’s a country western singer. A friggin’ musician!”

  Lori blinked. “Okay . . .”

  “Trina is in a private plane with a cowboy rock star. This isn’t good.” Avery hated to think of her vulnerable friend being taken advantage of by some sweet-talking, yes, ma’am kinda man that had women throwing themselves at him in a different city every night.

  Shannon and Lori didn’t share her distress.

  “Remember Miguel?”

  They all exchanged glances in a memory of the man that had latched on to Trina during their weeklong cruise in the Mediterranean last year. The man had put drugs into Trina’s drink, his intentions never truly revealed, since they had intercepted their friend before anything tragic happened.

  “One case of bad judgment isn’t a reason to assume Trina isn’t capable of picking up a decent guy,” Shannon said.

  Lori was biting her lip with a frown.

  “What?” Avery asked.

  “I seem to remember something in Trina’s file saying she had a track record of dating lousy men.” Since Lori was the lawyer who wrote up the prenupt
ial agreements for all the First Wives, she would know. Alliance, the company that had arranged all of their fake marriages, procured painstaking background checks. Those reports included everything from criminal behavior to previous relationships, bad behavior on and off the record, financial issues good and bad, all the way down to the skeletons in the family closets.

  “She’s too trusting.”

  “There isn’t a lot we can do about it until she comes home,” Lori told her.

  Avery pushed off the couch in the middle of Trina’s Texas ranch estate. A home Trina had inherited from her late mother-in-law, a mansion way too big for a single woman, even if it had a staff of half a dozen people milling about at all times of the day. “Oh, yeah, there is. We can go to her. She isn’t planning on coming home.”

  “She wouldn’t ditch us,” Shannon said.

  Avery moved around the great room until she found a pen and paper. “That’s exactly what she’s doing. It’s been a year since Fedor offed himself. The only people who know about her other life are here. Everyone out there only knows what she tells them. If you haven’t noticed, Trina hasn’t exactly fostered any new friendships since all this went down. According to Andrea, she has made several excuses about going into the office, except when they have board meetings.” Trina had inherited a third of Everson Oil, including a place on the board. Shortly after coming into her inheritance, she’d embraced the company and her mother-in-law’s sisters, Andrea and Diane. That was up until a month before, when she escaped to Europe. She’d pulled away then, and hadn’t emotionally returned.

  “Maybe she needs some time alone,” Shannon said.

  “Or she needs her friends to step up and make sure she’s making good decisions. If she isn’t, we’re there to catch her when she’s dealing with the memories of last year.”

  Lori glanced at Shannon. “She has a point.”

  “Damn right I have a point. If my fake husband had splattered his brains all over the wall in the den, I would have run off to find God in India or some such place.”

  Shannon winced. “Thanks for the visual.”

  “Sorry, I’m just worried. You guys are the best thing, other than the money, of course, that my marriage to Bernie has given me. I don’t want Trina making a mistake that we can help her avoid. A cowboy singer handing her a bunch of country lines so she can bankroll his next indie project is not gonna happen so long as I have some say in the matter.”

  “Maybe this guy and her are completely platonic.” Shannon was forever the optimist in the group.

  Avery and Lori exchanged doubtful glances.

  Avery turned her phone back onto the image of Wade Thomas. “Look at that ass and tell me you wouldn’t take a handful?”

  A slight pull to Shannon’s lips in the form of a smile told Avery what she already knew.

  Avery started to dial.

  “Who are you calling?” Lori asked.

  “Sam. She said if there was ever a need for her jet, to call. I think now is a good time.”

  Chapter Six

  Umbrellas proved useless when rain splattered horizontally across your body.

  Dripping wet and laughing at the plight of it all, Wade opened the door to the hotel lobby and let Trina step in before him. Behind them, their driver dealt with their luggage.

  Trina held both hands out in front of her and pulled her wet shirt from her chest. “That is nuts.”

  Wade shook his head and rain splattered everywhere.

  “Hey!” Trina laughed and stood back.

  “What’s the matter . . . ?” He did it again. “Afraid of getting wet?”

  Trina stepped close and twisted her ponytail over his frame.

  “Oh, it’s on.” He snaked a hand around her waist and shook his head until she squirmed away.

  “Uncle!”

  When they stopped laughing, half the lobby was staring at them like they were nuts.

  Trina tried to keep a straight face. “His fault,” she told anyone who listened.

  Wade took the liberty of placing a hand on the small of her back as he pushed her through the lobby. “I’ll get ya for calling me out.”

  “It was your fault,” she whispered.

  They both stepped to the registration desk at the same time.

  “Good afternoon,” the man behind the counter greeted them.

  “Hello,” Trina said.

  “Hi,” Wade said at the same time.

  The clerk looked between the two of them. “We’re here to check in,” Wade told the man.

  He turned to the computer. “What is the name on the reservation?”

  “Oh, we don’t have a reservation. Our plane had to land here unexpectedly—”

  The man stopped typing and the smile on his face fell. “I’m sorry, but we’re completely booked.”

  Yeah, Wade had heard that before. “I’m sure you can find something.”

  He shook his head. “Many of our guests were forced to stay an extra night because of the storm.”

  Trina leaned forward. “What about your penthouse suite, or whatever your top floor has to offer? Money isn’t an issue.”

  Trina pulled her wallet out of her purse.

  Not to be outdone, Wade removed his wallet. “Exactly.”

  The clerk typed on his computer again. “The only thing we have is the presidential suite—”

  Wade put his credit card down before Trina could. “We’ll take it.”

  Trina nudged his card away. “I’ll pay.”

  Shaking his head, Wade picked up her card and pushed his forward. “Not this time, little lady. Use this, please.”

  The clerk ping-ponged his gaze between them.

  “I’m the reason we’re here. I pay for the room,” Trina insisted, grabbing at her credit card.

  Wade held it out of her reach.

  “I haven’t had a woman pay for my room since I was in diapers.” He turned to the clerk. “On my card.”

  The clerk held up his card and hesitated. “You sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  Wade turned to Trina.

  “I pay for half or I’m going to find another hotel,” Trina insisted.

  “Seriously?” What was up with this woman?

  She placed her hands on her hips and cocked her head to the side. “Don’t I look serious?”

  “You look like something that fell into a pond.”

  Trina rolled her eyes, grabbed her card from his fingertips, and turned as if she was walking away.

  “Fine! Half.”

  With a smug smile, she handed her card to the clerk without words.

  “Presidential suite for one night—”

  “Two,” Wade interrupted the clerk. He glanced at Trina. “I’m not getting back on that plane until my liver settles to where God meant it to sit.”

  She sighed. “Fine.”

  “You take the master,” Trina suggested when the bellhop left them.

  “Why? Are you going to argue about that, too?”

  He had this pouty look that stretched from his eyes to his lower lip. Trina wondered if he used that look to get his way with all the women.

  “I won’t argue. But my guess is the bed in there is a king, and you’re taller than me. It’s the practical choice.” She picked up her suitcase and started toward the master. “But if you insist.” Blowing right past him, Trina passed into the larger bedroom and tossed her case on the footstool by the bed. “Oh, this is nice.”

  “Now you’re just teasing,” Wade said from the other room.

  Trina laughed to herself.

  “I’m going to shower and change,” she told him.

  Wade moaned.

  She turned around and bit her lips.

  “You’re loving this,” he said.

  Trina shrugged. “Could be worse.”

  “I can’t figure you out, lady.”

  “Good.” With that, she stepped back from the door and closed it.

  Wade chuckled as he wal
ked away.

  Once she kicked off her shoes, she found her half-broken phone in her purse and attempted to access her messages.

  The screen had cracked to the point that bright globes followed the shattered glass and distorted the information. She tapped her messages but nothing happened. Instead of fighting it, she tossed it back in her purse and told herself to call her house phone later that night.

  It might be nice to live without the distraction of a cell phone for a couple of days.

  Shedding her clothes as she went, she made her way into her private bathroom and smiled at the size of the space. How many times had she stayed in hotels on layovers all over the world? None of which had rooms like this.

  But this was how she lived now.

  Penthouse suites and bathrooms you could throw a party in if you chose to.

  She still packed light, even when going to Italy for an extended period of time. She had bought a few things along the way and simply shipped them home instead of dealing with the luggage. A luxury she never would have used in the past.

  Her reflection in the mirror looked back. Her long black hair had stopped dripping down her back somewhere between checking in and taking the elevator to the top floor. Through her beige shirt, she saw the outline of her bra. Hardly wet T-shirt contest worthy, but it was close. To give Wade credit, he hadn’t noticed. Or if he did, he didn’t stare.

  He seemed like a nice guy—therefore, she wondered what was wrong with him. If there was one thing Trina knew about herself, it was that she trusted them all way too soon. She thought they all said what they meant and meant what they said. She couldn’t read them before her fake marriage to Fedor, and she’d certainly failed with her husband in their brief time together.

  Unable to stop her head from going there, she thought about the last time she saw Fedor alive. It was the night before he shot himself. Alice, his mother, had slipped into a coma, and he spent most of his time in the hospital, by her bedside.

  Trina had found him in his den. In his hand were two metal balls that he often fiddled with when he was thinking. She wondered, briefly, what had happened to those balls. They were real silver. The only reason she knew that fact was she’d asked him shortly after she moved into his Hamptons home.

  Trina closed her eyes and forced the image, and the memory, away.