Read Online Men of Fortune 1: Derek by Sienna Matthews - Free Book Online

machine Adam Fortune’.”
    If she weren’t so incensed, she’d have
sputtered with laughter over his arrogance. The moniker was one the
models gave him for his prowess in bed; it was rumored that he
fucked all the models he shot. Or so she’d heard.
    “Put your clothes back on or—”
    “Or what?” he countered. He placed his hands
at the hem of his T-shirt, took it off and let it sail—
    To land on the face of the person who was
coming through the kitchen door just then.
    “What’s going on in here?”
    Derek.
    Her heart lurched, panic setting in. She
knew what the situation looked like, and it was very damning. Only
Adam was out of his clothes, but she’d been in here with him a long
time. Why, oh why, didn’t she leave him be? She should’ve gone out
the moment he took out his cock.
    She flew to her husband, just as he threw
the shirt to the floor. “Derek, this isn’t what it looks like.” The
words rushed out of her. “I was convincing Adam to put his clothes
back on—”
    “What?” The whisper that came out was deadly
soft and stopped her torrent of words.
    She gulped. She wanted to touch him, but she
didn’t know if he’d fling her hand away, and she couldn’t take
that. Her hand, lifted midway, fell back to her side. Despairing,
she knew the only conclusion he would make. Any hope she had of
repairing her marriage washed down the drain, just like that. Tears
threatened, but she’d be damned if she let them fall. She didn’t do
anything wrong.
    Her chin lifted, to find Derek looking from
her to Adam and back again. His face was so dark and stern, wearing
an expression she’d never seen before, and it struck fear into her
heart. But that was before she saw the bleakness in his eyes.
    “I came in to find out what’s taking you
both so long to walk into this—this—” Derek drew a distracted hand
down his hair. “Will someone tell me what’s happened?”
    Carly wanted to speak, to try to explain the
situation before Adam could dig them further into the hole, but
Derek continued, “Adam? Do you mind telling me why you’re naked in
my kitchen? This wasn’t part of the plan.”
    In her misery, she latched on to the part
that made no sense. Plan? What plan?
    Adam shrugged. “I revised part of it.” The
odious man was still grinning. If he sabotaged her, wrecked her
marriage, he had a lot to answer for. First of which, he’d find
himself without a job come Monday. Somehow, she would manage
it.
    “I seduced Carly at the table…”
    The tension in Derek’s body communicated
itself to her. She could reach out and touch it; it was so
tangible, as was the feeling of inevitability rising within her.
Adam, blackguard that he was, was sure to twist the tale and make
it seem like her fault.
    True enough, he was now saying, “To my
surprise, she invited me into the kitchen. You heard her.”
    A glance at Derek’s face revealed that his
expression had grown even darker, prompting her to protest, “No, it
wasn’t like that at all—”
    Derek’s fingers bit into her arm, and his
eyes blazed. “I did hear you.”
    “Derek, please, listen to me—” Her arm hurt,
but it was the bitterness in his eyes that stunned her, felled her,
made her want to take him in her arms and comfort him. Somewhere in
his past, a woman had hurt him, badly. A past she hadn’t known
about.
    The truth shook her. She didn’t know her
husband at all, hadn’t thought that the charming, easy-going man
she’d wed would have ghosts in his soul.
    At this moment though, nothing mattered, not
her insecurities, not her suspicions about Derek’s activities,
nothing but the need to tell him what truly transpired. “I rejected
him.” When he just looked at her, she repeated, “I rejected Adam.”
Nothing mattered but Derek.
    Some of his tension eased, and her heart
lifted. Perhaps there was hope for their relationship after all.
Since trust still existed between them—and love, too—there wasn’t
anything they