Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 133213 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 666(@200wpm)___ 533(@250wpm)___ 444(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 133213 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 666(@200wpm)___ 533(@250wpm)___ 444(@300wpm)
Carys Taggart has spent the last year and a half of her life living a lie. A lie Tristan forced on them all. She understands that it was meant to protect her and Aidan, but lately when Tristan says he doesn’t love her, it feels more like the truth. The wedding she’s dreamed of has been put off far longer than he promised. When he asks her and Aidan for another delay, she’s ready to move on without him.
Tristan Dean-Miles has a good plan and the best of intentions. Go undercover as a ruthless arms dealer so he can find a deadly bombmaker at the top of the agency’s wanted list. It might be taking longer than expected, but he’s so close he can taste it. Unfortunately, getting this close meant getting in way too deep. He knows he will succeed, but if he can’t convince the love of his life and his best friend that he’s worth the wait, his victory will cost him everything.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Prologue
Carys Taggart stared at the man she’d loved since they were children. Well, one of them. The other sat beside her, but he’d done nothing to deserve her death stare.
They sat on the balcony section of one of Dallas’s fine dining establishments, located in an equally luxurious hotel, overlooking the city lights. It was elegant and somewhat private, and she wondered if this was where it all finally ended. At least he’d chosen a beautiful spot to end what had felt like a lifetime love affair.
“It’s not forever.” Tristan Dean-Miles was a gorgeous man with dark hair and green eyes. He was six foot three, and over the last few years had gone from gangly computer geek to muscular soldier.
She missed her computer nerd so damn much. The nerd wouldn’t be leaving her. The hacking-obsessed young man she’d adored wouldn’t be standing in front of her breaking all of his promises. She felt inexplicably weary, and it wasn’t because she was in her final year of medical school. The stress of taking the USMLE was nothing compared to sitting in this restaurant watching the man she thought she’d marry let her down. Again.
“That’s what you said last time.” The other man she loved looked as tired as she did. Aidan O’Donnell. Six foot two, with lean muscle he honed in the gym and by running.
Her life was complicated.
“I know,” Tris replied, a deep patience in his tone. “I’m sorry. I know I did, but things have gotten…complex.”
She’d known they would have trouble when Tristan had announced he was going into the Army instead of grad school. They’d had plans. Plans they’d made when they were stupid kids who thought they could make a relationship like this work.
She sat there in the middle of the fancy restaurant Tristan had likely picked either as an apology for what he’d been planning to say or as a shield so she couldn’t yell at him. Either way, she sat there feeling like a piece of herself had broken off, and she wouldn’t get it back.
Just because Tristan’s parents had made it work didn’t mean they could. Tristan’s unique family had made what they had feel somewhat normal. But there was a reason the world wasn’t full of happy threesomes.
“Complex?” Aidan’s jaw had taken on the hard line she associated with his stubbornness. It always tightened when he was working through a problem he refused to give up on. Even when the “problem” had told them again and again he didn’t want to be solved. “What is that supposed to mean? Tris, we’re supposed to get married in a few months. We agreed when we finished medical school, we would make this thing legal and start our family.”
It was what they’d always dreamed of. At least she and Aidan. They would get through school, marry, and move in together and start their lives. They would do it without shame, and anyone who didn’t like it would be ruthlessly extricated from their group.
“There is nothing I want more, but I have some things I need to do before I can settle down, and it might mean staying away from the two of you for a while.”
“So you did it.” She knew what he wasn’t saying. This had been her fear for months now.
“Did it? Baby, all I’m doing is my job.” Tris looked so reasonable. He looked like a young man from a good family in his well-tailored three-piece suit. Unlike Aidan, Tristan came from money. A lot of it.
Her family did well, too, but not like Tristan’s. Aidan’s was upper middle-class. He hadn’t worried about college or medical school, but he’d eaten his share of ramen noodles and worked some heavy-lifting part-time jobs.
Tristan could have done anything he wanted to. Had any job in the world. He could have taken his place at his father’s side and learned how to run one of the top investigative firms in the world. Miles-Dean, Weston, and Murdoch specialized in locating people who were lost or who didn’t want to be found. The company did well, but it was his parents’ creative endeavors that had made them wealthy beyond their wildest dreams. Between his father’s software innovations and his mom’s best-selling novels, there was little the Dean-Miles family couldn’t afford. Tristan could be here in Dallas with them.
But something else had called to him.
“It’s a job you don’t need,” Aidan pointed out. “Look, I understand you’re enjoying the adrenaline rush of being Army intelligence, but where does it end? You said you wanted to spend the last couple of years working this out of your system. I got it. Medical school is a lot, and you thought we wouldn’t have time for you.”
She would have made time. Even if it had been nothing more than holding him while he slept.