Half Empty (First Wives, #2)(6)

“I’m not staying.”

Luciano looked disappointed.

“I’m actually on my way home.”

“You’re leaving Venezia?”

“I am.”

He kissed her cheek again. “It saddens my heart, even though I knew your time here wouldn’t last forever.”

“Thank you, Luciano. You’ve been one of the best parts about my visit.”

“Will you return?”

“I’m sure I will. This will be one of the first places I find when I do.” Trina looked over his shoulder. “Is Marco here?”

“Of course.”

Luciano yelled out his son’s name, and the younger man stepped out from the back of the restaurant, placing a long apron around his waist.

“Ms. Trina is leaving us,” Luciano announced.

“I wanted to say goodbye.”

“We will miss you,” Marco said.

Trina hugged Luciano first, and then turned to his son.

After she hugged the younger man, she pulled away and captured his hands in hers. “Follow the dream, Marco . . . and the money will come. If you love her, don’t let her go.”

He smiled.

She patted his hands, knew he felt that she’d slipped something in his, and squeezed.

“Ciao,” she said to both of them as she left the restaurant nearly as quickly as she’d run in.

Behind her, they called her name.

Trina started to run.

An hour later, as she sat in the airport lounge, she looked at her naked hand and released a long-suffering breath.



I’m at the airport. Trina texted Avery instead of calling.

It had taken two hours, but she’d managed to grab a standby seat en route to Paris. As Trina had planned, a storm was descending upon that part of France, and the chances of planes being grounded were actually quite high.

Having been a flight attendant for most of her young adult life, she knew which regions to avoid to minimize nasty weather and delays. Now she used that knowledge to do the exact opposite. London was known to have fog all times of the year, but summer storms were a much more likely issue in the southern regions.

If the rain over France didn’t delay her, she’d find her way to Florida, where a tropical depression would. No matter how you spun the wheel, she’d end up arriving in Texas after the weekend she was supposed to see her friends. She didn’t want to face them.

More importantly, she wanted to trudge through the anniversary of Fedor’s death by herself.

Their marriage had been on paper, something the First Wives would remind her of. But for some reason, Trina had grown to care for her late husband more since his passing than she had during their marriage. She’d stepped into his world as a hired bride. She was supposed to end their marriage after a year and a half and leave with five million dollars.

Only Fedor had eliminated the need for a divorce with the use of a gun.

His suicide had been in the papers for weeks.

Then, when his mother died of incurable cancer, the reason he’d wanted to marry in the first place, the papers had blown up.

Alice left her entire fortune to Trina, along with one-third say in the oil company she co-owned with her sisters, Diane and Andrea.

When all was said and done, Trina became one of the wealthiest women in the world, with well over $350 million in assets.

The fact that she was sitting between an overweight man and a teenage kid who smelled as if he’d been living in a hostel during his backpacking experience in Europe was quite ironic.

Avery would no doubt call her out on not chartering a private plane to reach her destination on time and in style.

Private jets were smaller and didn’t risk bad weather conditions like the larger commercial airlines did. Maybe she should consider chartering after all, she mused.

I tried, I did . . . but the only thing available was a small Lear, and they refused to fly.

Yup . . . the line would work and wouldn’t be a lie.

She’d even lose ten or twenty thousand on the booking just to stay away a few more days.

Trina spent two nights in Paris before the storm blew past and she inched her way toward Florida.

There again, she booked a hotel and glanced at flights without trying hard to find something to get her to her Texas ranch.

Her phone lit up as soon as she landed in Miami.

“Where the hell are you?” Avery was ticked.

“Miami. In baggage claim.” Trina watched the conveyer belt that unloaded luggage down two chutes at a painfully slow rate.

“Are you connecting in Miami?”

Trina was more than a little irritated that the call wasn’t losing its connection. “I tried booking, but there weren’t any flights. I’m going to find a private charter.”

“You know, if you’d actually planned on coming home for our club meeting, you wouldn’t be scrambling.”

She switched the phone to her other ear after catching sight of her bag sliding down the chute.

“I was on an open-ended vacation. I’m allowed to forget. Are you in Texas?”

“I am. Lori and Shannon will be here late tomorrow night.”

“Great. I should be right on their heels.”

Avery was silent.

“Are you still there?” Trina reached for her bag, holding the phone to her ear with her shoulder.