From Enemies To Expecting. Kat Cantrell

would be like to kiss me. Admit it. You’re curious about the tongue piercing.”

      “Of course I am,” he bit out, fuzzing her brain at the same time.

      He was? Fascinated, she zeroed in on him, and yeah, there was a whole lot more than agitation in his expression. Logan McLaughlin, official Boy Scout of major league baseball, had never kissed a woman with a tongue piercing. And he wanted to.

      Heat and a thick awareness flooded all the places between them. His heart thumped under her palm, strong but erratic, which perfectly mirrored the stuff going on under her own skin.

      “What red-blooded male wouldn’t be curious,” he murmured. “When there’s only one reason to have a steel bar through your tongue—to pleasure a man.”

      His eyelids shuttered for a beat, and when he opened them, his eyes held so much wicked intent, her pulse bobbled. Caught in his hot gaze, she swayed toward him, her hand fisting his shirt. “One way to find—”

      His mouth captured hers before she’d fully registered him moving. And then all rational thought drained from her mind as Logan kissed her. The TV set melted away, the fascinated onlookers disappeared—none of it registered as he yanked her into his embrace.

      Exactly where she wanted to be.

      Logan McLaughlin was perfection under her hands, because yes, he was that hard all over. His back alone qualified as a work of art, defined with peaks and valleys that she hadn’t ever felt on a man before. Imagine that. Something new to be discovered on a male body.

      She wanted more. And took it.

      Tilting her head, she deepened the kiss, and he countered instantly, swirling his tongue forward to find hers, taking command of the kiss, heightening the roar of hunger pounding through her veins. His mouth. God, the things it was doing to her. The things it could do.

      And then all at once, his lips disappeared and she swayed forward, desperate to get them back on hers. Instead, he leaned in and nuzzled her ear.

      “How’d I do?” he murmured. “Close enough to what you were going for?”

      Trinity laughed, because what else could she do? “Yeah. That was perfect.”

      He’d been on to her scheme the entire time. Of course. What had she thought, that a man with commitment and white picket fences written all over him might actually go for a woman like her, who’d turned her independence into a shield? That he’d been as into the kiss as she had?

      Never in a million years would they make sense together—unless it was fake.

      This was a great place for goodbye. But for some reason, Trinity was having a very difficult time taking her hands off her partner.

Two

      The next morning, Trinity entered the five-story glass-and-steel building that housed the cosmetics company she’d helped build with her marketing savvy and love of all things feminine. She still got a thrill out of the modern design and purple accents she and her three partners had selected, and the location just north of downtown Dallas was perfect for a single woman who owned an amazing condo in the heart of the city.

      Cass had been making noises about moving the company to Austin. Trinity kept her mouth shut because Fyra’s CEO had a very good reason for wanting to do so—her husband, Gage, lived there and they were expecting a baby together. Trinity didn’t have anything against Austin, per se. But it was yet another example of something she had no control over. She hated anything that smacked of lack of control.

      Plus, what was wrong with Gage moving his company to Dallas? Both CEOs ran large companies with lots of employees. Just because Gage was the man in the equation, why did that mean he automatically won the battle?

      Trinity strode toward her office to the sounds of hoots and clapping. She took a moment to grin and wave. Obviously the footage of her kiss with Logan had made the rounds. The game show itself wouldn’t air until later in the week, but she’d charmed the producer out of a clip of the kiss, starting it on its viral journey by posting it to her own social media accounts and tagging everyone she knew to share it.

      Trinity wasn’t one for leaving things to chance.

      Cass had scheduled a meeting for first thing this morning, probably to get the full scoop. Humming, Trinity grabbed coffee and dug around until she found her iPad in her shoulder bag, then strolled to the conference room where Cass stood at the head of the table.

      “Hey,” Trinity called and repeated her greeting to Fyra’s CFO, Alex Edgewood, and then to Dr. Harper Livingston-Gates, the chief science officer, whose faces appeared in split screen on a TV mounted on the wall. Both of them were participating in the meeting virtually since they’d abandoned Dallas the moment their husbands crooked their fingers.

      Trinity sank into a seat and mentally slapped herself for being unkind.

      Alex was pregnant with twins and on bed rest, so it made sense that she lived in Washington, DC, with her husband, Phillip, a United States senator. Harper’s husband worked in Zurich, and Trinity didn’t blame her for wanting to be in the same bed with a man as hot as Dr. Dante Gates, especially since they’d just figured out they were in love after being friends for over a decade.

      Maybe Trinity was a little jealous that everyone else had such an easy time with normal female things like falling for a great guy and having his support during pregnancy. And none of them had suffered a horrendous miscarriage that had left them feeling defective. Well, so what? Trinity had other great stuff in her life, like more men than she could shake a stick at.

      Except lately, great men had been pretty scarce. The pitfalls of turning thirty. Made you think more about the definition of “great,” and pseudo–frat boys with Peter Pan syndrome were not it. Unfortunately, that seemed to be the type she met at her usual haunts, which was fine for the short term.

      She just wished she knew why that didn’t feel like enough anymore.

      Cass started off with a sly smile. “You and your reality show partner got pretty chummy. Do tell.”

      “All for the cameras, hon,” Trinity assured her. God, what was with that pang in her gut? The kiss had been fake. On both sides—never mind that she’d liked how real it felt. “We were both interested in getting additional coverage. It worked.”

      Alex and Harper both murmured their disappointment that the story wasn’t juicier.

      “I know we’ve turned dissecting our love lives into a regular boardroom agenda item, but let’s move on,” Trinity insisted smoothly. “I’m sure Cass didn’t call this meeting to talk about my partner on a reality game show.”

      “Actually, I did,” Cass corrected. “We’ve got a publicity issue that’s at the top of everyone’s mind right now. After the mess with the leak and then the FDA approval fiasco, sales went into the toilet. We’ve got new problems daily as articles keep popping up in what feels to me like a smear campaign.”

      Felt that way to Trinity, too. Which was why it pissed her off so much. This was her territory. Her company. And someone was after it.

      “Yeah, I’m aware. That’s why I did the show, remember?”

      “I’m not sure it’s enough.” Cass frowned. “I approved it since the publicist suggested it, but we need to move forward with launching Formula-47. When can you schedule time to present the marketing plan?”

      “Next Monday?” Trinity suggested and started calculating exactly how screwed she was...since the campaign didn’t exist. Very would be the precise amount of screwed.

      It wasn’t anyone’s fault but hers, but then she’d never had a creative dry spell like this one, and she couldn’t even commiserate with her friends. Recent personal events for all three ladies had driven a wedge between them, with Trinity on the wrong side of the married mom division.

      Trinity