Half Empty (First Wives, #2)(16)

It had been a year. Why was she thinking about it all again now?

She flipped off her thoughts and turned on the water in the shower.



“We could always find a swimming pool until it’s time for dinner,” Wade propositioned Trina, who was watching the rain fall in heavy sheets outside the windows of their room.

“First, I just took a shower, and second, the pools here are outside.”

“What about a hot tub?”

Trina glanced over her shoulder and sent him a look that women had perfected for centuries. It said, Are you kidding, Give me a break, and Stop, all at once. “You just want to see me in a bikini.”

As hard as he tried, Wade couldn’t stop his head from going there and his eyes from traveling down her one-hundred-percent-clothed body. “Yes, ma’am, there is that.”

“Do women ever say no to you?”

He paused and tried to remember the last time he’d been rejected for a drink, a date . . . or anything that might follow. He’d been on tour for six months, and there were plenty of opportunities, and perhaps more than just a couple of women along the way.

He shifted on his feet, tried to bring up the months before the tour.

“Oh my God.”

“What? I’m trying to think.”

“You’re a womanizer.” She called him out.

Wade was pretty sure she meant that as an insult. “I make it a rule not to see women I work with. It’s too complicated when things don’t work out.”

“How noble.”

“So that leaves me with . . .” The image of a concert venue filled with flirty eyed women wearing everything from jean skirts and cowboy boots to bras they used as shirts with tight shorts. Every once in a while, some backstage guest or a wife of a producer would come on to him.

“Thousands of adoring fans?” Trina finished for him.

Wade kicked his feet up on the coffee table and leaned back. “I’m not gonna lie, there are plenty of them who offer, but I don’t dip into that pond as often as you might think.”

Trina turned to watch the rain again. “If I was interested, I’d ask more about the ones you cast off, but I’m not.”

Yeah, he didn’t buy that.

“Being on that stage gives a lot of women the feeling they know you.”

“I can’t imagine.”

He pushed to his feet almost as quickly as he’d sat. “Well, we can sit in this room and banter for hours, or we can check out what this island does when it’s on lockdown. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had just about enough of the inside of a hotel room. As much as this one is nice.”

A hotel room was a lot like living in a stale, staged home. It had everything you needed, but nothing that fit you perfectly.

“I need to find a store to fix my cell phone.”

“Okay, then. We search for that and stop at whatever else draws our eye.”

Trina agreed with a shrug and disappeared into her room.

Wade cursed his eyes for lingering on her ass.

His mouth watered. Lordy, what was it about her that made him want to strut like a cock in a henhouse? It didn’t matter, he was strutting and doing everything possible to get this woman to agree to see him once their little adventure was over.

“Ready.” She appeared at her door, purse in hand, light jacket over her shoulders. Her hair was down and flowing over her back. He wondered what it would look like with her in her birthday suit.

You’re a womanizer.

Yup, he needed to change his thinking or the images in his head would be teleported into hers. Because if there was one thing he’d figured out about this woman so far, it was that she read him like an open book.

The concierge hooked them up with umbrellas and slickers that were nothing but glorified trash bags with a place for your arms and head. Trina pulled the plastic over herself without thinking twice.

“Aren’t you going to put it on?” she asked him.

He held up the folded plastic. “I’ll look ridiculous.”

Trina looked around the lobby, noticed several people wearing the rain gear. “You and everyone else.”

“I think I’ll just stick with the umbrella.”

She lowered her voice. “Look at it as camouflage. No one will recognize you if you’re wearing this.”

“I’ll risk it, besides, no one noticed me when we ran through earlier.”

“That’s because everyone was preoccupied with being soaked. That or you’re not as famous as you think you are.”

Wade lifted an eyebrow as if to say she would eat her words.

“Suit yourself.” She pulled the hood over her head and turned toward the door.

The second they were out in the rain, Wade thought twice about his decision to look good over being dry.

Two blocks down and one block over, they rushed into a storefront that sold and fixed cell phones.

It didn’t take long for the clerk to tell Trina her phone was jacked and she should probably replace it. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the iPhone she was using. “I can get one here in the morning. It’s on the other side of the island.”

“Are there any other stores that sell new phones?” Wade asked.

“Yeah.” The clerk smiled. “Mine, the one on the other side of the island.”