Once Forbidden, Twice Tempted (The Sterling Wives Book 1), стр. 32
“Tara. We talked about this. About the door,” he said.
“I know. But we need privacy.” That one word—privacy—and the accompanying knowledge that they were now alone did a number on her. It made her face and chest flush with heat. It made her legs feel rubbery. Being in his presence heightened the memory of his touch. It boiled it down to a potent serum that streamed through her body. What would have happened if she and Grant hadn’t had their hands forced the morning after? Would he have wanted more? Would she have agreed? She knew she would have. It would have been impossible to turn him down.
“The whole office will talk about it,” he said.
“Let them talk. We have bigger fish to fry.” Tara went to the window and looked out over the city skyline, her mind running too many disparate pieces of information at one time. Astrid. Johnathon. Miranda. It was such a mess. And it was time to crack it open. “You knew, didn’t you?”
Grant sat back in his chair and crossed his legs. He’d removed his suit jacket at some point during the day, and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. God, he had sexy forearms. Strong and long, with the perfect amount of dark hair. “Sorry. You’re going to have to be a little more specific than that.”
“Johnathon and Astrid. The real reason he never told Astrid about marrying Miranda.”
Grant cleared his throat and averted his gaze. That told her all she needed to know, but she still wanted to hear it.
“Tell me,” she said.
“I didn’t find out about it until after the fact. I swear that if I had known ahead of time, I would have tried to talk him out of it.”
“What happened?”
“I guess he just never had the nerve to tell Astrid when he met Miranda and they got involved. He couldn’t bring himself to break her heart. He and Astrid still had a very on-again, off-again relationship after the divorce. She went back to Norway and he went there several times trying to reconcile.”
This was news to Tara, and it hurt to hear it. Johnathon had no problem moving on after shuttling her out of his life. Astrid was on his arm in what felt like the blink of an eye. “I had no idea.”
“It was heartbreaking, really. They both wanted children so badly, but they’d never been able to conceive. Years of trying and waiting every month and never having any luck took its toll on the marriage, but I think they still loved each other deeply.”
Tara knew it had been rough for them, but she hadn’t been privy to the details. “What about after he and Miranda got engaged? That wasn’t enough to keep him away from Astrid?”
“Apparently not. I thought he was flying to London to meet with a potential partner on a project. He didn’t tell me he was stopping off in Norway on the way there.”
“From what Astrid said, it was only weeks before the wedding. What prompted it?”
Grant shrugged. “You know what he was like. He sometimes simply let the wind carry him in one direction, even when he knew he should probably go the other way.”
Tara did know that firsthand. She’d felt like that had been the case when Johnathon jettisoned her from Sterling and pushed her into real estate. It all happened so suddenly. One day she was working at their fledgling operation and the next, he was insisting she do something else and get her real estate license.
Grant pinched his nose and shook his head. “It’s hard for me to know what was going through Johnathon’s head at that point. All I know is that he went to Norway and he and Astrid slept together.”
“He told you when he got back?”
“Actually, no. But he put some items from Norway on his expense report and he was out of the office when the folks in accounting asked me about it. Norway wasn’t on his company itinerary, so they were checking to see if it was right.”
“Did you confront him?”
“I did, and you can imagine how that went. There was no confronting Johnathon. He never wanted to own up to anything that made him look bad. He never wanted to appear human. He wanted everyone to love him unconditionally.”
“And it worked for the most part.”
“It did. He just made everyone else deal with his mistakes.”
Tara knew that, too. When Johnathon had asked her to set aside her aspirations with Sterling, he’d told several people that it had been her choice to do so. That couldn’t have been further from the truth, but Tara believed in a unified front when it came to marriage, and so she’d smiled and nodded and said that being a real estate agent had always been her dream. When it wasn’t true.
“I don’t really know what to do about this,” she said, turning back to Grant. As she shifted, the sun steamed in through the window over her shoulder, first blinding her, then as her eyes adjusted, lighting him in a soft glow. It harkened back to their morning together and waking up next to him. It had been so lovely. He made her feel desired. Wanted. She hadn’t felt that way in forever. Good God, she really wanted to kiss him again, to have his lips on the sensitive skin of her neck and feel his commanding hands all over her body. She really wanted to find out if their night together had been a fluke.
“You realize you’re asking the wrong person, right?” he asked. “I have every reason imaginable to stir up trouble between Astrid and Miranda. To divide your interests and hopefully convince one of you to sell.”
“So why not create problems? You could have told either one of them about it and really driven the wedge between them. The opportunity was there from the moment Max told you he’d