Page 104 of Am I the Only One
“So, do you?” he asks again, exposing every single truth within his expression.
He doesn’t know her.
Three months earlier ...
It was a cold and rainy night, and Tripp found himself in his usual spot when he would stay the night in the city. The Jefferson was his hotel of choice, rich in history and opulence. He was a hard worker, but he was born with expectations already on his shoulders and didn’t know any other way around it. Tripp Montgomery was a legacy from the start, groomed for a life in politics, he took the path that had already been laid for him seriously.
There was always a sense of inadequacy that resided in him, the fear that he would never become all that his parents desired, that he would never measure up in their eyes. But he never questioned his wife. Carly loved Tripp beyond measure. When he met her, he knew she would be the one. Carly was a woman with no expectations, she was content living her simple life and working her simple job. He knew that, with her, he could be himself without the pressure so many others put on him.
“Another one,” Tripp told the bartender at Quill, the lounge on the ground floor of the hotel.
It was his favorite place to work late at night. He preferred it over being locked away in his suite. When a fresh glass of scotch was set in front of him, he took a sip before returning to the speech he would have to present in a couple of days. He read it again and made some notes, just a few changes here and there before removing his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose as if to ward off the first twinges of a headache.
“May I?” a young woman questioned before she sat next to him.
“Um, of course ... yes.”
She smiled in a way he had become all too familiar with. He came across girls like her all the time. The ones with ambition in their hearts and ill intentions in their souls. Tripp was a man of power—a well-known political legacy—who girls would flock to as if he were some sort of a conquest. He wasn’t interested in any of that.
Never had been.
“Working off the clock?” the young blonde asked.
He glanced over to the girl who looked young enough to be his daughter. “In my line of work, there are no clocks.”
He listened to her as she ordered a drink, “Grey Goose martini, up, stirred, with a twist,” and laughed to himself. Such a sophisticated drink for someone her age. He smirked, amused at the act he clearly saw through.
“So, no clocks,” she said, “how do you know when to stop?”
He turned to look at her, and as she reached for her martini glass that the bartender just set down, his eyes caught sight of her cleavage. Momentarily, he became distracted. He was human, after all, and although she was young, she was a beautiful woman with soft bone structure and deep-green eyes.
“I’m not a man who likes to stop.” He then went back to his speech.
“I’m Emma, by the way.”
“Tripp,” he responded without a glance her way. Truthfully, he just wanted to concentrate on his work so that he could go to bed at a decent hour.
Emma then reached over and plucked a small piece of lint off the shoulder of his dress shirt. He watched as her hand lingered on him for longer than what he was comfortable with, striking a nerve within the already exhausted man.
“I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m tired and have a lot of work that I need to get done,” he told her, hoping she would get the hint, and she did. Emma dropped her hand and took another sip of her drink.
Sure, it boosted his ego to have an attractive girl flirting with him, but Tripp was married and adored his wife. Their marriage may have been strained for months on end, but he loved her nonetheless. Carly had been trying the limits of his patience lately, hinting at her suspicions that Tripp was giving into temptations, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth. And although their once peaceful relationship had turned tumultuous, the idea of cheating on her was ... unthinkable.
He could only hope that after the campaign came to an end, they would be able to get back on track. Tripp knew that he needed to be more understanding of his wife’s insecurities, but with a schedule that never stopped, by the time he would walk through the door, he had no more energy left. It was making him wonder if he had it within himself to even be running for governor.
Not needing any more distractions, he began packing up. “It was nice meeting you,” he told Emma politely before grabbing his briefcase and his scotch and heading up to his room—alone.
Emma sat there, defeated in her attempt to seduce the man running for governor of Maryland.The poor guy has no idea that his wife put me up to this, she thought to herself. Tripp wasn’t anything like Carly had told Emma he would be. He was nothing like the snake she had described at all, but that wouldn’t stop Emma from making Carly believe he was the lying, cheating bastard of a husband she suspected. She knew she needed to be smart about it, and she was. Emma was graced with a rock-solid surface most couldn’t see through, making her the perfect match for the unassured Carly.
Instead of making a second attempt with Tripp, Emma would lie.
And lie she did.