Erotic romance extract: The Object of His Desire 2: Pursued

Trudy Parsons is in a good place. A young American, educated at Yale, now living in London where she's a successful professional, working in one of the city's oldest publishing companies. Not only that, she's being pursued by two hot, rich and highly eligible bachelors, men accustomed to getting exactly what they want. Lavish romantic gestures, the finest in designer clothes, shoes and diamonds, private jets to whisk her off to foreign dinner dates... what more could a girl want?

But pursuit comes with a price, as Trudy finds out about the dark history her two admirers share. A history, it seems, they can't escape.

Should she be drawn to men like this? Should she choose one of her suitors and succumb?

The much-anticipated sequel to the popular The Object of His Desire 1: Wanted.

Extract:

“Just because... just because of what happened,” I said, over a cappuccino in a Caffe Nero just around the corner from my Covent Garden office. “Just because of that... well, don’t you start thinking that anything has changed, okay, Charlie? Don’t you start thinking there’s an ‘us’ again, okay? That’s over. That’s thirteen months over, okay?”
Charlie. I’d lived with Charlie for close to twelve months, in the small Islington apartment I still called home a little over a year later. The last I’d seen of him as he was leaving was that nimble sidestep and duck as the ashtray hurtled past his ear and made a nasty hole in the inner wood panel of the door.

Charlie. Honey-blond hair, sharp blue eyes, and, as I discovered when I bumped into him again at Ethan’s wedding, a man who still had the easy knack of being able to wrap me around his posh little English finger. A man who knew all the buttons to press, all the vulnerabilities, all the weaknesses.

A man who could spend an hour seducing me and I’d only worked out that was what he was doing when he had me up against the church wall, his thigh hard between my legs, his hand crushing my left breast.

That was where the knickers came in, or rather where they left.

I’m a professional woman, a commissioning editor at a venerable British publishing imprint. I have a Yale education, I come from a respectable New York family that had moved out to a large Connecticut home when I was little. I had been brought up to be strong, and to know my place in the world.

So why was my self-esteem at such a low ebb that when I went to Ethan’s wedding I wore suck-me-in Magic Knickers to keep everything slim and firm? I’d felt safe wearing them because I just knew nobody would ever get to see them.

So... that grinding, the leg between the thigh, the rush round to the back of the church where we were out of sight, the wandering hands, the pressing bodies... that thing that happens when two people realize just how desperate they are for rude, raw sex...

That.

Well suck-me-in knickers that go up to at least your second rib simply aren’t made for rude, raw sex. Too
much beige, for starters.

So I did what any resourceful girl with a good education would do. I pinned him to a gravestone, blindfolded him with his tie, then whipped off the Magic Knickers and hurled them as far away from us as I could manage.

And so it was that, some time later at the stately home where my brother’s wedding reception was being held, I found myself running away from the heir to the family estate in high heels and no knickers (not that Will knew that – I’d stopped his wandering hands before that point), feeling incredibly vulnerable and more than a little confused by the rush of events.

And now, a few days later, I found myself sitting in a Covent Garden coffee shop gently explaining to my ex-boyfriend that just because we’d got it on like wild animals at the weekend– “...don’t you start thinking that anything has changed, okay, Charlie? Don’t you start thinking there’s an ‘us’ again, okay? That’s over. That’s thirteen months over, okay?”

He sat there, both hands wrapped around his cup as if he was trying to warm them even though it was still August and in the mid-eighties outside, and he smiled that lazy smile of his, and I knew he wasn’t listening. Or, more likely, he was listening and laughing because, arrogant schmuck that he was, he simply chose not to acknowledge what I was saying.

You know that kind of conversation? I’d had so many of those with Charlie during our year together. All those trivial exchanges where he’d got his way and ignored anything I might want or think... That’s the kind of thing that almost always culminates in an ashtray flying through the air, or at least it does in my experience.

But Charlie wasn’t always like that, or so I was learning. On the day of my brother’s wedding I’d seen a whole new side to him. The man had hidden depths. He had, God damn it, sensitivity. Now how had I missed that before?

Since our folks had died eighteen months ago, Ethan and I had been the only family we had. We may not have been that close in the last year, but we were still family.

When I’d gone to the wedding I’d wondered why Charlie was being so attentive and why I was so edgy. It had taken a touch from Charlie, him leaning closer and saying, “I understand.” And then finally I got it: there was Ethan marrying into a family with a large network and ancient traditions – if he had found a new family did that mean I risked losing all I had left of my own?

Charlie.

Irritating, smug and surprisingly sensitive Charlie.

“There is no ‘us’,” I said again, as he sat there cradling his coffee and outside in the street London rushed past in all its glorious variety.

§
So... at what stage does denial become futile? And at what stage would denial get laughed out of any court in the country?
There is no ‘us’.

(continues...)

The Object of His Desire 2: Pursued is available from:
Barnes and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-object-of-his-desire-2-pj-adams/1113481841Amazon US: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009QN3QXA/ref=as_li_tf_tl?tag=pollyjadams-20Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B009QN3QXA/ref=nosim?tag=pollyjadams-21Kobo: http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/The-Object-His-Desire-Pursued/book-zY6ej4hXYEmkS3SzzdaU2w/page1.html