Oceans Apart Book 1 (Oceans Apart #1)(11)

Unfortunately, that wasn’t always easy. Brad Holloway had been a good boyfriend before the whole cheating on me thing had happened. He’d brought me flowers when I was sick and took me out to dinner, surprised me with tickets to shows and trips to the beach on Sundays. I’d been happy, and Brad seemed like someone I could easily fall for.

My parents had liked him and Kari had liked him — and it was nearly impossible to find someone my best friend and my parents both liked.

He was tall and athletic with blond hair and green eyes. He had an easy smile and a deep, rumbling laugh that always made me shiver with delight to hear it. We could spend time together doing nothing but lying around and playing games on our phones and telling corny jokes.

As much as I wanted to believe I was over him, sometimes when I was feeling especially lonely, I found myself missing Brad. But missing him and being willing to take him back after what he did were two very different things. So I put his number on the reject list on my phone and didn’t listen to his messages anymore. If I didn’t ever have to see Helena at work, then it would have been so much easier to ignore this whole thing.

The elevator ride seemed to last forever, but eventually we hit the first floor and the doors opened. Helena turned right while Kari and I went left, and I let out a huge sigh of relief.

“I hate her,” Kari said as we headed for the doors.

“I know,” I replied. “She’s…ugh. Whatever. I really don’t want to talk about her.” We made our way out into the sunshine of the afternoon and decided to just give in and have Chinese. As we walked, my phone vibrated in my pocket, but it wasn’t until we found a table in the small restaurant that I had time to check it.

It was a notification from Facebook indicating I had a new message in my inbox, and my heart started to beat just a bit faster as I opened the app to read it.


It was from Tristan.

My heart jumped up into my throat. Part of me had been so sure he was going to forget all about me when he went back to England, but here was proof he hadn’t.

Kari was reading the menu and not paying attention, so I kept my attention on my phone.

Hey

Just letting you know I made it back to London safe and sound and exhausted. The eight-hour time difference between here and there is insane and I want to sleep for a month. Instead, I’m at work even though it’s after 8 pm here. I should get an award. Anyway, I just wanted to say hello and thanks for the beach. If you’ve decided talking to a near stranger over the internet is a bad idea, I’ll understand. If not, I’d love to hear back.

I couldn’t help the smile that blossomed over my face as I read his message. There was something about the way he talked; and now seeing the way he wrote made me giddy inside, and I knew it wasn’t entirely the accent.

I knew Kari wouldn’t approve, since my best friend was firmly of the belief that online friendship, relationships, and even most correspondence on the web was fake. “If I can’t see your eyes, how do I know you’re not lying?” she always said, and I didn’t want to go there right now. I did want to respond, though; I just didn’t want Kari to see it. Not yet. Not until I knew whether or not talking to Tristan was going to be a good idea.

So I got up, straightening my navy blue polka-dotted skirt over my legs and said “Girl, I gotta run to the bathroom, be right back. Can you order me a Diet Coke and the orange chicken with chow mien if the waiter comes by before I get back?”

“You got it, girly,” Kari said with a grin, and I sighed with relief.

I hated the idea of hiding things from my best friend, but…this was something I had to do on my own.





Chapter 6 — Tristan





“Alright, guys. We’re supposed to have the foundations for this place laid in the next two weeks. It’s not going to be easy, since the client has changed his mind about everything to do with this project at least six times already, but we either have to start or postpone it, and I don’t think I need to tell you what’ll happen if we postpone it again.”

From the sounds of approval I was getting from the team, I could tell they understood what I meant. “I know it’s not usually how we do things,” I continued, “but if we get this done right, then it could mean a lot of doors being opened for this company. That’s good for everyone. So let’s do this right, yeah?”

“You got it, boss,” one of them called out and the others seemed to agree, so I let them go to it.

I was glad they’d seemed to buy my whole “I have energy and am here to be productive at work” routine because in reality, I was f*cking exhausted. Crossing the ocean and getting very little sleep because of it should have been a reason to be able to call in to work sick, or take a half day at least, but not when you were Martin Armstrong’s son.

Well…that wasn’t entirely fair.

My father had been trying to get me to take an office job since day one, but I insisted that I’d rather be out where the hard work happened. I enjoyed getting my hands dirty, and it kept people from thinking that I got special treatment just because I was the boss’ son.

While I couldn’t say that I wished I didn’t come from money (because there had been so many opportunities I wouldn’t have had otherwise), I’d say that I wished it didn’t affect the way people treated me so much. There were certain expectations that came along with having money and being well known for it. People expected you to look nice all the time, wear the fancy suits and the expensive shoes. To drive nice cars or else have someone else do the driving. I couldn’t take a girl out to a nice place to get fish and chips. No, it had to be all five star this and exclusive catering that.