Accidental Tryst (Charleston #1)(31)

Checking my email one more time before I leave my laptop on the desk, I'm disappointed to see she still hasn't responded.

Instead I see an email from Isabel Montgomery.



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Subject: We really do need to talk.



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Of course Isabel wants to talk. My grandfather basically stipulated that the only way she could continue to receive the same business disbursements into her spending account was to go through me.

I would have to sign off on them.

My grandfather, may God rest his manipulative soul, is basically forcing Isabel Montgomery to kiss my ass or go without. The whole situation is so messed up. Frankly, I'm sure it's destined to breed more hatred than mend anything.

Not one to run from conflict, I decide we may as well meet and get all the grievances aired and over with.



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From: Tmontgomery

To: Imont@monthomesandfacdotcom

Subject: Re: We really do need to talk

Isabel,

That would be fine. I'll be available for coffee before our morning meeting with the firm accountants. Please be at the hotel by eight.

Trystan



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Feeling happier that I'm the one in control now, I close my laptop, strip out of my clothes, and climb into bed, letting inebriated and broken sleep claim me. Except it doesn't. And I get up to get Emmy's phone and bring it back to bed.



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Good night, Emmy.



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The response comes immediately.



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Emmy: Good night, Trystan



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Sighing heavily and too mentally wired to sleep, I mindlessly surf her phone. Maybe I can find something, anything, that will turn me off.

Her Instagram profile, even though I scrolled through it before, becomes my focus. There are the pictures of food I've already seen, and halfway through scrolling and trying to find more than the couple of pictures of Emmy rather than her dinner, I realize there are repeating links to another Instagram account. The account I've been looking at is her work one. I tap her name at the top and a drop-down choice comes up with another name AnAngelintheForest. My frown clears as realize the reference to her last name, Dubois, loosely translates to The Woods or The Forest in French. And that's when I hit the motherlode. I grin and make myself comfortable. Pictures of her around town, sunsets over the water, the beach, her toes in the sand. I zoom in, even her feet are pretty. Pale skin, pink polished toes. And her ankles are slender.

I hate my stalker self right now, but I push on.

Pictures of her with a blonde woman tagged as her friend Annie. Emmy with a little baby boy—Annie's baby, I presume. Her with Armand. All three of them together. Clearly the three of them hang out a lot. Emmy with an older man with white-gray hair who has no family resemblance whatsoever. I read the caption: "The families you choose are the families that once chose you." Something about the way it's written sends a prickle of melancholy through me. It has a lot of likes. The man isn't tagged. But I wonder if it's David. I click out and go back to the main page of pictures and continue my search.

And oh, I really shouldn't have done it.

My thumb and my eyes zero in on a picture of people on the beach. I open the picture up to full screen. I see who I presume is Annie, her belly round and pregnant in a navy blue swimsuit. But I barely spare her a glance because there's Emmy, her red hair is wild and streaking sideways in the breeze and filtering the sun. Her mouth is open and wide with laughter, and her sweet, curvy, little body is packed into a tiny yellow bikini.

Holy hell.

I sit straight up in bed as if I can see it better if I'm upright. My gaze slides down her body from her slender neck and collarbone, over the swell of her ample breasts, the barest hint of a tightly-budded nipple shadowing the fabric, and down the soft skin of her belly, pauses on the small yellow triangle, and on down her shapely legs to those pink toes.

Aaaand, I'm hard.

Fuck.

I have a headache starting to brew between my eyes, and I pinch the bridge of my nose. Surely, it's the gin and not the fact I was supposed to find something to exterminate my crush, not magnify it a thousandfold.

Now I know how she looks in a bikini, a visual I could have done without. Because, Christ, she is far from the skinny women I normally go for, but she is quite possibly, the sexiest woman I have ever seen. The image is seared onto my eyeballs. And even half an hour after I've put her phone safely on the other side of the damn room, I can still see it.

I turn on the TV in the dark and flick mindlessly through channels looking for ESPN, hoping for lots and lots of sports stats.

What have I been reduced to? Because even in my most hormonal teenage years, I never focused this hard on a girl.



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The incessant buzzing ring of Emmy's phone wakes me in the dark. The hands of my watch glow faintly, telling me it's just past six. Pushing myself from the bed, I stumble to the desk where I left her phone.

It's a Manhattan number. Naturally, I answer it.

"Oh," the voice responds to my raspy morning greeting. "Uh, is Miss Dubois available please? This is Penny Smith from Rockaway Nursing and Rehabilitation. It's an emergency."