Elastic Hearts
Published by Claire Contreras, 2016
Cover Design by Okay Creations
Photographer: Perrywinkle Photographer
Formatting by: Champagne Formats
Edited by Marion Making Manuscripts and Karen Lawson
Copyright © 2016 by Claire Contreras
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems-except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews-without permission in writing from its publisher, Claire Contreras.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s awesome imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Quote
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Epilogue
Note from Claire
Acknowledgements
Other Books
Kaleidoscope Hearts - Prologue
For anybody who thinks love only exists in fairy tales—
Love is limitless.
Believe.
“Give a little time to me or burn this out,
We’ll play hide and seek to turn this around,
All I want is the taste that your lips allow . . .”
~Ed Sheeran
“WE CAN’T DO this anymore,” he said.
Those were not the words I’d expected to come out of his mouth given the last time I’d been here, he’d growled my name against my throat, telling me to be quiet so nobody would hear us. I blinked, swallowed, and blinked again, trying to focus on his intense hazel eyes as they studied my face, as if to make sure I understood him.
“Okay,” I whispered. I wanted to ask why, but held my tongue. I knew why. Or at least I felt like I knew why. Instead I gave myself a pep talk. We’d become friendly. We’d hooked up a couple times. It was no big deal for things to be over. No big deal at all. But if that were the case, why did I feel like he was ripping out my heart?
“It’s not . . .” He paused, sighing and running a hand through his hair. The hair I’d run my hands through a couple weeks ago. “I was going to say it’s not you, but that sounds lame. You know why we can’t do this anymore.”
“Because you’re scared of what would happen if my dad found out,” I said. He nodded. I figured as much. It wouldn’t look right if the new add-on to the firm was caught hooking up with the boss’s daughter, never mind the fact that we hadn’t even met here.
“It’s in bad form,” he said. “If we hadn’t met at the bar that night I would have never let it get this far.”
“No, I get it,” I said, not wanting to hear the predictable excuses he was sure to fire off.
“I need to focus on my career.”
I swallowed. My eyes drifted over his features taking mental snapshots, which was all they’d become. In twenty-four hours they’d be grainy in my memory. In twenty-four days they’d be faded; I’d have to squint my eyes and rummage through boxes in order to remember how he looked, what he wore, where we’d been. The only things I’d remember would be his scent and how I felt when I was with him. Important, and sexy, and smart. Victor was only four or five years older than me, but those were things boys my age didn’t have a clue about.
“You’re just now finishing college. You have an entire life ahead of you,” he said.
“I know.” I paused. “You don’t have to sit here and give me a pep talk. I totally get it.”
He let out a long, relieved breath, closing his beautiful eyes, eyes I wouldn’t look into again on the brink of passion. I wondered if he’d even considered asking me how I felt about telling my dad. Probably not. Vic was too driven. Too much of a rule follower, and deep down I knew he hadn’t wanted more. I knew he’d just wanted to have fun with me. He didn’t want to settle down until he’d built his empire over the lies he construed in order to win cases.
Just like my father.
I always swore I wouldn’t fall for a guy like him. Like them. I always said I’d end up with a guy who fit my lifestyle. One who didn’t over plan or over calculate. One who followed his dreams, regardless of how crazy they were. Guys like Victor weren’t like that. They became consumed by work—real work—not creative, fun dreams like the ones I had. We’d never work. That’s right. We’d never work. Maybe if I said that enough times I’d believe it.
“Well, it’s been . . . nice.” I stood up and walked toward the door. He stood as well, but stayed behind his desk, looking like he had no idea what to do. I let out a breath. “Remember to water your plants,” I said, looking at the little bonsai on top of his desk that he never remembered to water.
“I will. Remember to try out those tennis lessons again just in case,” he replied.
I smiled at the mention of that. I’d sprained my ankle a few months back when I went to play tennis with a friend of mine. He’d teased me relentlessly, not because I sprained my ankle playing tennis, but because I sprained it on a water break, when I stepped on the box for the water fountain. Total freak accident.
I closed the door and stood outside for a second, taking a deep breath to welcome air back into my lungs, wondering if I’d played it cool enough. When I felt settled, I left and drove to the set of a new sitcom where I’d been hired as a stand-in for a costume designer away on maternity leave.
By the time I got there, I’d replayed Victor and my short-lived history in my mind nothing short of forty times. I tried to think back and figure out at what point he knew things wouldn’t work. Had it been when we went to the coffee shop downtown and ran into a friend of his? He’d introduced us as friends, which we were, but the tone in which he’d said it implied that it was all we could be. Was it because of my age? Or was it just him? We’d discussed marriage and relationships and our aversion to both. One of us had been dead serious; the other had made up lies along the way, because I wanted a relationship with real attachments and long-term goals.
I parked my car and waved at the lot attendee on m
y way in, and in those seconds where I was looking back as I walked in, I bumped into the person walking out.
“I am so sorry,” he drawled, a slight southern accent I hadn’t heard anywhere aside from movies. My eyes made their way up his body slowly until they landed on his face and caught on striking blue eyes. Holy wow. He was the definition of Hollywood.
“It’s okay. I wasn’t paying attention.” We tried to sidestep each other three times, failed, and laughed. “Sorry,” I said again, my cheeks blazing.
“The universe must really want to throw us together,” he said, turning up his charming smile. “I’m Gabriel,” he said, now blocking the door completely.
“Nicole,” I responded, heart pitter-pattering.
“Are you an actress?” he asked. I shook my head.
“Costume design.”
He nodded slowly, his eyes still on mine. “New?”
“First day.”
“Nervous?”
“Very,” I said, but smiled. He opened the door wider.
“I promise we don’t bite,” he said, his grin widening. “Well, some of us don’t.”
I laughed as I stepped inside. For the remainder of the day and week, Gabriel looked for ways to find me all around set, and just like that all thoughts of Victor began to vanish. As they should. Victor and Nicole were done. I needed to accept that, and Gabriel’s charm was just enough to make me.
NICOLE ALESSI RARELY visited the law firm these days. I could count on two hands the amount of times she’d come, and six of those were before she’d gotten engaged. One of the last few times was after the ring graced her finger. I saw her in passing and she made sure to steer clear of me. As if I was going to pull her into my office and have my way with her while that thing was glaring at me, reminding me she belonged to somebody else. It was fine by me. It wasn’t like I felt hurt by the engagement, I was more caught off guard. One day we were talking about how crazy people were to want to get married, and the next she’d become one of those crazy people. She’d given me no inkling, no sign that she’d wanted more, out of me, out of life . . . out of anything.
Even though that ship had sailed five years ago, or more accurately had never taken off to begin with, the buzz of her name around the office put me on alert. Everybody from my secretary to the receptionist was whispering about the beautiful Nicole, wife to the handsome Gabriel Lane, coming for a visit as if she herself were Hollywood royalty. Maybe she was. I made it my job not to keep up with her whereabouts. What was the point, anyway? And because I knew she was coming in, I busied myself in researching Sam Weaver, a star running back I was representing in a high-profile divorce. I’d asked him more questions than the SAT, and the guy still hadn’t been one hundred percent honest with me.
How people expected me to represent them in court without all the information I asked for and win was beyond my understanding. My focus was cut by the loud knock on my office door. It was pushed open before I gave permission, and I didn’t have to look away from my screen to know it was William. He was the only one with enough balls to do that. It also helped that he was my boss and owned the building.
“What can I do for you?” I asked as my eyes scanned the latest TMZ post about Sam and his encounter with not one, but two prostitutes. I looked away from the screen when I heard Will walk toward me without saying a word. He had the look on his face, the one that told me he was about to ask me to do something he knew I didn’t want any part of. Like the time he asked me to take on the case of a porn-star divorce, which my sixteen-year-old self would have literally come all over, but the thirty-one-year-old me was too busy using disinfectant every time I went near any of my client’s “work spaces.”
“Fuck. Just spit it out.”
Will chuckled, unbuttoning his suit with one hand as he took a seat across from me. The fact he didn’t just come out with it and actually sat down to discuss it made me develop a little ringing noise in my ears. I gave him my full attention.
“You know you’re the best damn attorney on my team,” he said. I stayed quiet. I knew he wasn’t going to fire me, but starting a conversation out like that could only mean . . . my heart skipped a beat at the mere suggestion in my thoughts. “Your worth ethic is enviable. You’re driven, you’re a cocky son of a bitch, but somehow you maintain a level of humanity with clients.”
“Unless you’re about to drop down on one knee and propose to me, I think you should just ask for what will clearly be a massive, Victor-please-don’t-leave-my-firm-after-I-say-these-words favor,” I said, mainly because I was starting to feel uncomfortable with the way his blue eyes leveled on mine. He smiled.
“I want to make you partner,” he said.
My mouth dropped.
Those six words.
My reason for everything.
I reeled in my emotions before they let me get ahead of myself and sat back in my seat a little. “Just like that? What about Bobby?” Bobby, whose parents were old family friends of Will’s, had been hired a year before I was. Even if I was a much better lawyer, I couldn’t imagine him not giving Bobby the opportunity first.
“I’ve spoken to him about this at length. He knows where I’m coming from, and he agrees that you’re better suited.”
“Better suited . . . to make partner,” I said, needing to clarify.
“To make partner, and for the job I need you to do in order to make partner.” He delivered that with a wide grin. My heart sank. What the fuck was this man going to ask me to do?
“What is it this time? An actor needs representation because his wife slapped him with a divorce after he was caught cheating with their nanny?”
“Not quite, but good guess,” he said, his smile turning somewhat serious. “I need you to represent Nicole in her divorce.”
I blinked. What? No. I shook my head and swallowed loudly. It wasn’t often I was at a loss for words, but this was just . . .
“She’s getting a divorce?”
“Yes, and obviously I can’t be her attorney, so I wanted her to get the next best thing.”
Me. The next best thing. That in itself was high praise from William.
I closed my eyes momentarily, but the only thing I could visualize was the day she’d come in here and Will had introduced her as his daughter. Suddenly, I wanted the world to swallow me whole. It might as well have since I already felt like my career was beginning to sink as the memories of her and me in a bathroom stall at one of LA’s most popular nightclubs choked me, and I barely got an audible nice to meet you out. She’d smiled, like it was no big deal, but the blush that crept over her face and neck had said differently. The way her eyes widened at the sight of me, as if her vision had to adjust to what I looked like in real life, outside of the dark club and dimly lit bathroom. And how that memory rushed through my body and to my cock when she came back the following week and started to flirt with me.
I’d promised myself I wouldn’t get involved with her then, but from one second to another, Nicole’s tanned legs were spread open in front of me on this very desk, and I became addicted to the way she threw her head back and said my name with that slight Spanish accent, regardless of what I did to her body. I swallowed, cleared my throat, and took a deep breath.
“I can’t do it,” I managed to say.
“Is this about the Sam Weaver case? If you want to take on less, you can give that one to Bobby. I want you for Nicole.”
I want you for Nicole.
Nicole, who I knew the first time I laid eyes on her could be my downfall. Nicole, whose blue eyes held wicked promise every time she looked at me. Nicole, who had sworn she was completely against marriage, an oath I disputed when the tabloids dropped the bomb of her engagement. Nicole, who weaved some powerful shit with her wild streak and funny comments, rivaling anything that came out of my mouth. Nicole, whose fucking mouth was made by the gods for the gods and hadn’t been anywhere near me for at least five years. I breathed out a heavy breath, trying to rid myself of all things Nico
le. He had no idea what he was asking of me.
“Did she request me?”
“No. She doesn’t know yet. She should be here shortly. I wanted to give you a heads-up first. But, Victor, you do this, you do right by her, and then I’ll make you partner.”
Fuck. My. Life. That word was too tantalizing to fuck around with. Partner. It was the sole reason I was billing so many damn hours.
“Okay.”
“You’ll do it?”
“Yes.”
Now I just had to make sure I didn’t do her and lose my goddamn license in the process.
“DIVORCE SUCKS,” I said for what seemed like the millionth time since this whole ordeal started. Not that I needed to reiterate that for anybody. People didn’t get married thinking they’d ever divorce. Being the product of a divorced household, and a father as a divorce attorney, I never saw myself getting a divorce. I always swore that if I got married it would be forever, but that was before the promise of forever became dreary and cold. It was before the word itself made me want to curl up into a ball whenever I thought of my estranged husband hitting the bottle or those pills he’d been partial to for the past two years. It was before shit went down the drain, basically. And that’s how I found myself talking to the hot new security detail my soon-to-be ex-husband assigned me.
“Are you ready?” Marcus asked. Marcus. Even his name was fucking hot. The first time I saw him I wondered if Gabe’s manager had picked him out on purpose, maybe to see if I’d cozy up to him and leave Gabe alone. Or cozy up to him and have something to hold over my head in this divorce.
“He’s so full of himself, you know?” I said in response. Marcus’s brown eyes flickered to mine in the rearview mirror, holding absolutely no amusement.
“Pardon?”
“Gabriel. He’s full of himself. He thinks hiring a hot bodyguard is going to lessen the blow of the divorce. Let me tell you something, Marcus. I’m the one dealing with all this divorce crap. Me. I’m the one visiting lawyers and trying to sort things out quietly for his sake. You know why? Not because I’m a great human being, but because I still have feelings and he’s a grade-A prick. Having a hot driver isn’t going to make me forget that.”
Elastic Hearts (Hearts #3) Page 1
