Page 84 of Decidedly Off Limits

Warning bells rang in my head and my fingers froze.

“Oops,” Kelsey said, with an awkward giggle. “Sorry Matt and I were a little loud.”

“Oh, you two weren’t loud at all.”

Shit.

“You can come out now, Trent.” Holly didn’t sound pissed, but the blanket over my head could’ve been deceiving.

“Trent’s not here,” Kelsey said, doing a good job sounding confused. Matt and Jillian weren’t the only good actors it turned out.

“Ahh, so you’re telling me Jillian is one very lucky woman, and was having sex with both MattandTrent last night?”

“Why would you think she was having sex with Matt?”

“Because I saw him leave her room this morning to use the bathroom.” The last word had barely left her mouth when the bedding was tugged away from my head, exposing Kelsey’s and my lie…as well as a good proportion of my ass.

Groaning, I shifted around so that all my valuables were covered.

Then groaned again at her do-you-really-think-I’m-that-stupid expression, eyebrow raised.

I had an economics degree from Columbia and my professional CFA designation, both of which said I was an intelligent man. Yet at that moment, not one intelligent thought traipsed around in my brain. The best I could come up with was “Hi?”

Holly didn’t say anything at first. She just sat on the wingback chair, where I had at one point made Kelsey come last night. But now wasn’t a good time to point that out to Holly.

Kelsey and I sat up, her arms crossed in front of her to keep the covers against her breasts.

“So, how long has this been going on between you two?” Holly waved her index finger at us to indicate who she was referring to, as if there was any doubt.

“A couple of weeks,” Kelsey said, her voice soft. Soft with the promise of a lifetime of groveling to make up for what we had done. To make up for the betrayal that Holly was no doubt feeling, because we hadn’t been honest with her to begin with. “I’m so sorry, Holly, that I didn’t tell you sooner. We didn’t plan for this to happen…it just did.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me the truth?”

“Because Erin and my brother can’t find out.”

Holly looked genuinely surprised. “Why not?”

“Because I’m screwing my best friend’s little sister,” I reminded her. “Liam would be pissed if he knew the truth.”

“And Erin would be devastated if she found out,” Kelsey added.

“How come?” Holly asked.

“Well, to start with, the last thing she wants is for me to date Trent. She loves her brother, but he’s not her first choice for me.”

“But it’s not her choice to make,” Holly so wisely pointed out.

“I know, and under different circumstances I would tell her that. But it goes deeper than that. And if she knew I’d been lying to her the whole time, she’d never forgive me.”

“So you’re going to keep lying to her about this?”

“It’s not like this is going to last forever.” Kelsey’s words were a swift kick to the nuts. She had already written off what we had between us. I was a temporary fling—nothing more.

Ready to stamp “hypocrite” on my forehead? The irony hadn’t skipped me. She viewed me as not much different than I had viewed the women I’d been involved with. But the difference was I had done it out of self-preservation.

A voice in my head muttered maybe that was what Kelsey was doing too. She had already gone down the workaholic route with her ex. She had no intention of repeating that mistake.

Wasn’t that why we had hooked up to begin with?