Ian's Way by Reese Gabriel Read Free Book Online

married man. She tried to be careful but there were some pretty damn good liars out there. She swore again and again that she wouldn’t be fooled, not by sob stories of half-assed separations or skillfully disguised ring-finger tan lines, but it kept on happening.
    Right down to Trent, her latest on-again, off-again beau who swore he was no longer fucking his ex, though Nikky had her doubts.
    Dear sweet Ian , she thought, pressing a kiss to his lips as she got up gingerly from the bed. If only he knew the mess she had made of her life over the years, he would never have lit all these candles or spread the rose petals.
    Some goddess she made.
    Feeling more dejected by the moment, she gathered her clothes. She had felt this kind of thing before and the more her panic rose about wanting to go, the more it confirmed that she wasn’t a worthy person.
    In this case she had allowed Ian to deceive himself where she was concerned and that made her complicit.
    Talk about self-damning logic. She could almost hear her father’s voice, the hushed but very intentional tones in the next room as he grilled Nikky’s mother and later her big sister Lil. His questions were always the same. Where did you go? With whom? Why are you wearing that new perfume?
    They were all whores in his mind, every woman who walked the earth. Nikky must have been the worst of all because the old man hadn’t even been able to bear to stay under the same roof with her once she had become a teenager, or so Nikky’s fourteen-year-old brain had told her the summer her father had left the house for good.
    “What do you expect?” he had growled at Nikky’s mother as though it were the most natural and appropriate thing in the world for a man to leave his wife and take up with his twenty-something secretary.
    Apparently Gerald Neill’s own behavior was exempt from any moral examination though.
    Go figure.
    Nikky gently closed the door behind her. Goodnight my sweet prince, sleep tight.
    Kaity was lying in the dark, pretending to be asleep, when Nikky got back to their room.
    “I’m sorry,” she whispered as Nikky climbed onto the other side of the king-size bed after a quick shower.
    Nikky was tempted to ask why she was sorry. It could be anything. Take your pick. From pilfering lip gloss to using all the towels at each and every hotel stay. Kaity was the queen of annoyance.
    And that didn’t begin to cover the s’mores nightmare Nikky had just discovered in the bathroom—burnt marshmallows and melted chocolate stuck all over Nikky’s hair dryer and tweezers.
    “It’s okay, we can make more s’mores next weekend,” Nikky said groggily.
    “No, not that, silly. I mean about me telling Gretchen about you and Ian. I don’t know why I open my mouth half the time. I’m such a bitch.”
    “It’s cool, Kaity .” Nikky reached across to hold her friend’s hand. “I’m sorry too, for calling you a bad friend. You are a hot mess sometimes but you have always been there for me.”
    Kaity was sniffling, laughing and crying at the same time. “We deserve each other, huh? So what about Ian? Was it off the charts?”
    “It was the best sex I’ve ever had. No strings attached. What more could a woman ask for?”
    Kaity was obviously thinking about that. “I don’t know. But for a woman who supposedly just had the time of her life, you sure sound miserable.”
    “It’s nothing,” Nikky lied. “I’ll be fine in the morning.”

Chapter Three
     
    Ian growled, the veins in his forehead popping as he leaped straight up and swung the racquet one more time.
    It was game point, the small blue rubber ball reverberated off the wall with the violence of a gunshot.
    “That’s two games for me,” he announced to his partner and best friend Nathan Kane. “Want to go for best three out of five?”
    Nathan was working on catching his breath, hands on his hips. Like Ian, he was in top shape though there was no keeping up with Ian today. “The way you’re