Trevor Reese: His Secret Love Read online

  CHAPTER FIVE

  She stood at her sink and placed dirty dishes in the dishwasher. She was relaxed, wearing one of Trevor’s dress shirts he always left at her condo, and sipping wine. She still couldn’t get over how blatantly Dallas and Shirley disobeyed her and created that craziness at work today, but she knew she couldn’t dwell on it. When Trevor hired Dallas, everybody thought she was going to be a great plus to the department. Now Carly knew better. Now she knew she had better watch her back.

  “Good evening.”

  Carly turned around quickly, startled to hear somebody was in her condo. When she saw, Trevor standing in her kitchen, with that unheard-of knack he had for being present without being heard, excitement overruled her surprise, and she sat down her glass and ran to him. She knew she told herself she wasn’t going to keep doing that. She knew she told herself that when he left on those trips, without bothering to even phone her while he was away, he had to work at regaining her affection.

  But seeing him again, all in one piece, standing there in his tight jeans and looking so damn sexy, broke down barriers for Carly. She couldn’t help herself. She cared about him. Deeply. She ran into his arms.

  Trevor closed his eyes in a tight closure as he swept her off of her feet and hugged her with the biggest bear hug he could muster. His entire body ached, but he didn’t care. He just wanted to hold her. The idea that he would not have seen her again, nor been able to hold her again after nearly biting the dust himself, made his heart ache. He was wrapped up and tied up with this woman. A man who shunned even the thought of entanglements, was completely entangled. He closed his eyes even tighter. He couldn’t help himself.

  When they stopped embracing and Carly, still up and in his big arms, was able to get a look at him, she could see the terror still in his eyes. “What’s wrong?” she asked him.

  “Now that I’m back with you?” Trevor shook his head. “Nothing.” He kissed her. “Nothing at all.”

  He began peppering kisses all along her face, and down her slender neck. When he got beneath her chin, he was back on her mouth again. Kissing her with even more fervor. Making love to her with his tongue and his mind.

  And then he moved over to the center island, placed her butt on the countertop, and opened her legs. He bent down and began eating her as she leaned back and let him. He was gone more than he was back, and whenever he came back he feasted on her. It felt as if they’d been apart for years. And the way he was eating her, almost hurting her, made it feel like decades.

  He stood erect, tossed his shirt over his head and dropped and stepped out of his jeans, and entered her with a fully aroused dick. And he put it on her. Carly was a wet one, and she began squirting when he began pounding.

  He lifted her up, into his arms, as he fucked her hard. She wrapped her legs around him. This was the woman he wanted. The only woman he wanted. And he wanted to stake his claim all over again. And he did. Carly was barely holding onto the center island, as he fucked her so hard she almost fell out of his arms.

  It was the kind of lovemaking she loved. To the world, she was prim and proper. But alone with Trevor changed her. She let loose. And she was giving him as good as he was giving her. She rode his rod. She massaged his hair. She kissed him as he fucked her.

  Carly shocked Trevor when they first started making love. She shocked him with how good she did it. Now she was the best he’d ever had. Bar none. She gave it to him the way he wanted to have it. Unselfishly and with the kind of passion that aroused his own.

  He continued to thrash into her. He continued to make long, passionate love to her. Until she came. Until she had the kind of orgasm that had her squirting and cumming and that took him over the top too.

  He came. As hard as she came. And when it was all said and done, and his cum was dripping out of her so extensively, they both were drenched.

  Carly laid back on the center island when they were done, heaving with heavy breaths, with her arms over her head. “I’ve never in my life,” she said to him, “knew sex felt like this. Until I met you.”

  Trevor smiled and kissed her flat stomach. “This is only the appetizer, baby,” he said as he grabbed her up into his arms. “I’m taking your ass upstairs.”

  “Not for more,” Carly said with shock in her voice.

  “For more,” Trevor said as he carried her toward the stairs.

  “But I can’t take any more!”

  “You will,” Trevor said confidently as he slapped her butt. “When I start fucking you again, you will not want me to stop.”

  Carly couldn’t argue with that. She always seemed well spent after sex with Trevor. Until he put it on her again.

  That next morning, after another round of sex and hard sleep, Carly was in the tub soaking her inflamed vagina, while Trevor, already showered and dressed, was downstairs. He was standing at that same center island that had been their sex bed the night before. It had been cleaned up: Carly took care of that early this morning before she got in the tub. And now Trevor was free to pull up the San Diego newspapers on his phone, and see who exactly was the guy he shot last night.

  It took some time, but when he saw the name, and then the face accompanying the name, his heart dropped. “Reputed Mob Boss Lanceno Celletti Murdered Outside of Bailey’s Last Night,” was the blaring headline.

  Lanceno Celletti. Trevor knew that name. And as he read the article, where Celletti had, just a couple weeks earlier, been released from prison and was embroiled in a turf war with his own people, it all began to make sense to Trevor. Those gunmen in San Diego weren’t just anybody. They were undoubtedly Celletti’s men. Men who knew they couldn’t take out their boss, but could get a patsy, an unsuspecting assassin like Trevor, to do their dirty work for them.

  The way he figured it, those men planned to take out Trevor themselves, right on the spot, and prove to the organization that they had nothing to do with it. They could claim the CIA was behind the hit because Trevor, they would later prove, was one of the CIA’s operatives. Then they would take over Celletti’s crime family. But something happened on the way to their plans. Trevor got away.

  But Trevor knew he would still be blamed. He would still have to contend with Celletti’s crew if they were ever going to prove that he, not them, was the real culprit. Trevor knew he had a problem.

  “Fuck!” he said angrily as he thought about it. He was set up. They were waiting on his ass. And now he was going to have to take care of that nasty business. He had to deal with mobsters who were as guilty as if they had pulled that trigger themselves. Trevor rubbed his forehead. He had work to do. Nasty, necessary work.

  But the worse part of it was knowing that it had to be an inside job. His bosses at the CIA had to have been a part of this. They told him to take out Chekov, but Celletti, instead, became the target. Everything they said Chekov would be, including the car he would be riding in, the clothes he would be wearing, and the club he would attend, checked out. They even alerted him that Chekov had arrived when, in fact, it was Celletti who stepped out. And all of their descriptors could be applied to Celletti. That shit was no coincidence. Nothing was.

  Then he felt her presence. Her calming presence. And then he heard that playful, whimsical voice she only used when she was with him.

  “Ta da!” she said behind him.

  He turned around. She was fully dressed, in a beautiful light-blue dress and heels, and wore very fashionable eyeglasses with her briefcase at her side. She looked as conservative today as she looked sexy and vixen last night. But either way, she was a stunning sight to see to Trevor. But instead of feeling happy to see her, which he always was, he also felt guilty. She didn’t deserve to be caught up in his world. She deserved better.

  “I told you I wouldn’t be late,” she said. “I came down here, cleaned up, and was able to bathe and dress without delay. It took me no time to clean up our mess.”

  “You mean your mess, squirter,” he said with a smile. And she couldn’t help but grin.


  She lifted up and sat on top of the center island, right beside where he was standing, and sat her briefcase by her side. He was so tall, they were now eyeball to eyeball. “What are you reading?” she asked.

  “Just news. Nothing.” He immediately put his phone away.

  But Carly knew his moods. She knew that, whatever he was reading, wasn’t just news. But bad news. And he didn’t want her to know about it. “How did it go?” she asked him.

  “How did what go?”

  Carly continued to stare at him with her expressive eyes. He knew what she meant.

  “It was just business, Carly.”

  Carly sized it up. “Bad business?”

  Trevor had a broodiness about him that made him shuffle from side to side, and look away in a hard stare, as if he was calculating the risk of saying little or saying nothing. He never told her very much. But he chose the former this time. “Yes,” he said.

  Carly could feel her heart squeeze. She knew, as she had suspected, that whatever he was forced to do, had not gone well. “What happened?”

  “I’m not going to discuss that. But I’m okay,” he said, and looked at her. Only when he looked at her, it was then that they both knew he was not okay at all.

  Carly also knew words were not going to change anything. She knew Trevor was a CIA operative. She knew, when called upon, he had to perform unpleasant acts on their behalf. Her only wish? “Why don’t you get out, Trevor. Why don’t you tell them that there will be no next time?”

  Trevor frowned. “You think I would stay in if I could get out? You think I would say yes if I could say no? There’s no getting out, Car. When they call, I have to answer. If I fail to answer, I’m of no further use to them. And then, if I’m no longer useful, I will die. It’s as simple as that.”

  Then he stared at her. “You understand that, right?” he asked her.

  Carly nodded. She understood it. But he still hadn’t told her why. “What do they have on you, Trevor?” she asked.

  But Trevor shook his head. She still didn’t get it. “It’s not about having something on me. They don’t have shit on me. It’s about what I have. My knowledge.” He pointed at his head. “I know where the bodies are buried. The government doesn’t give you the kind of knowledge I acquired during my years of service, and let you walk away scot free. There’s no walking away. You’re an agency man for life, whether you want to be or not. And your family, the woman you choose to pull into your heart, gets roped in too. If you don’t understand that, Carly, then we’ve got a problem.”

  Carly looked away from him. She understood.

  “That’s why I go through such elaborate ways to come and see you.” When she lived in that home, he could never drive up to her house like an ordinary boyfriend. He moved her from the house he owned to this condo because it was easier to manage. But enough of that. “How did things go while I was away?” he asked. Deep concern was in his eyes. “Everything okay at work?”

  “Everything’s okay,” Carly responded. She made it her business to avoid discussing problems in her department with him. They were her problems to resolve. Besides, based on the way he looked last night, he had enough on his plate already.

  But when Trevor made it to work, he discovered that he had yet another problem on his plate. A problem he didn’t see coming. And it wasn’t about mobsters, nor about who set him up for those mobsters. It was about an employee insurrection. Get rid of Carly, they demanded, or they would walk themselves.

  CHAPTER SIX

  He was barely in his office when all of the senior publicists in Carly’s department, seven strong and led by Dallas Shephard and Shirley Nance, came into his office. He was about to dismiss them. Some interdepartmental squabble was not something they should be bringing to his attention. Deal with it at the department level. Not founder/CEO/Chairman level. Until they said that word.

  Trevor leaned back in his executive chair, the lines of his pinstripe suit glistening against the sun shining through the floor-to-ceiling windows surrounding him. His sexiness wasn’t lost on Dallas, or anybody else in that office. “An insurrection?” he asked.

  “That’s what it’s coming down to,” said Dallas, who stood at his desk as she had ordained herself leader of the pack. “The staff is getting very concerned. They gave her a no-confidence vote as early as this morning, sir. She’s a young, sweet girl, but nobody believes she has the wherewithal to run such an important department.”

  Trevor looked Dallas up and down. She was a good-looking blonde, with long legs and a long, sleek neck. A babe. He hired her because his headhunters said she was the real deal. She was Carly on steroids, they claimed. She had major cases and knocked every one of them out of the park. She knew what she was doing. Since Trevor never allowed talent to slip through his grasp, he therefore hired her. But she was skating on thin ice right now.

  He leaned forward and pressed his desk intercom. “Contact PR. Tell Miss Sinatra I need to see her in my office now.”

  “Yes, sir,” the secretary said.

  Dallas, knowing she only had a few more minutes to plead her case, went on the attack. “We wouldn’t be here, sir,” she said, “if it wasn’t absolutely critical. The horror stories I’ve been hearing from other consultants made me physically ill. She doesn’t understand prioritizing. She doesn’t understand A-list versus D-list. It’s outrageous the kind of leadership she has provided. She has served you very poorly, sir.”

  Trevor was staring at Dallas. “Has she?” he asked.

  “She has. I mean, Mr. Gavin was livid, and well he should be. He pays five times what that rapper pays for representation. Surely, he should always be our number one priority. I attempted to make that clear to Miss Sinatra, but she didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t want to hear anything I had to say. It was as if she was obsessed with that rapper, as if he was her man. It was weird, sir.”

  Trevor looked at his other employees in the room. Nobody else had anything to say. It was all Dallas. They weren’t fools, he thought.

  His desk intercom buzzed. He pressed the button. “Miss Sinatra has arrived, sir,” his secretary announced.

  “Send her in,” he said, and within seconds Carly, still wearing that form-fitting light-blue dress from this morning, walked in. When she saw her entire senior staff, including Dallas, in the office, her walk slowed.

  “Is there a meeting I forgot about?” she asked as she walked up to the desk.

  “No meeting,” Trevor said. “Just disgruntled employees.”

  Carly was inwardly upset. She knew better than this. Did they go behind her back and bring this pettiness to Trevor? “What is the source of their displeasure?” she asked.

  “They think you don’t know what you’re doing,” Trevor said. “They seem to think I hired myself a flaming incompetent to run one of my most important departments.”

  Carly looked at her employees. Then her eyes settled on Dallas. “What’s this about, Dallas?” she asked.

  “Don’t put it all at my feet.”

  “I’m putting it at your feet. Tell me what this is about.”

  Trevor was silent. He loved Carly’s toughness on the job. It was needed. She seemed to understand that.

  “This is about your leadership style,” Dallas said. “That’s what it’s about.”

  “My leadership style?”

  “You’re too young,” Dallas continued. “You make decisions that only a fool would make. I wouldn’t hire you to run my dog, let alone my PR department.”

  Trevor looked at Carly.

  “You are not the woman Mr. Reese thinks you are,” Dallas continued. “You’re too young.”

  “You already said that,” Carly said.

  “It’s true.”

  “You have the right to think whatever you want about me,” Carly said. “I couldn’t care less. But you will not bring that nonsense to this job. If you don’t like my leadership, you can quit. If you continue your insubordination, I will fire you.”

/>   “Fire me,” Dallas said. “You didn’t hire me.”

  “But you work for me.”

  “You supervise me. I work for Mr. Reese.”

  “You work for Cary Sinatra,” Trevor made clear. “Carly works for me.”

  Trevor looked at Dallas, but all of the others too. “In my absence, Carly Sinatra is in charge. What she says goes. And she’s right. Anybody with an issue with the authority I have vested in her can quit.”

  Dallas was surprised that he would so easily take Carly’s side.

  “I hired Miss Sinatra based upon my judgement of who should run my PR department. You just got here,” he said to Dallas, “and you’re questioning my judgement? Get the fuck out of my office. All of you.”

  There was no hesitation. Every one of the other consultants took off, hurrying out of Trevor’s office. Dallas, a little stunned, hurried out too.

  When she left, Trevor looked at Carly. “Phone Perry Gavin,” he said. “Smooth it over.”

  “He’s highly agitated with me, Trev. I think he’ll prefer to speak with you.”

  “I don’t give a shit what he prefers,” Trevor responded. “Phone Perry and smooth it over. You created the problem, you fix it.”

  Carly was concerned. “So you think I was wrong to make LaQuan primary?”

  “Yes, you were wrong. This organization survives because of cash flow from men like Perry, not LaQuan Thompson. And yes, you were right. This organization wouldn’t be shit if we didn’t understand the difference between a man who wanted to keep his family man image intact, versus a kid looking at a Life sentence. You came down in the right place. But not without a cost. Smooth it over with Perry.”

  Carly inwardly smiled. “Yes, sir,” she said, and Trevor went back to what he was doing before this departmental interruption. But when he looked up at her retreating form, and got a rise just from the way her ass moved beneath that tight dress she wore, he leaned back in his chair. Sometimes he knew he allowed his feelings for Carly to interfere with his normal office practice. “And Carly,” he said. “Get your staff in line. If you can’t handle that department, you don’t need to run it.”