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  Oh Stupid Heart

  Book Two of: A Long Road to Love

  By

  Liza O’Connor

  Copyright Notice

  All rights reserved.

  Any reproduction of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying, electronic copying, or recording is forbidden without the written permission of the author.

  All characters in this book come from the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names, titles or professions. They are not based on or inspired by any known individual and any resemblance to a person living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Cover Blurb

  Carrie Hanson is in love with a different species: Trent, a pampered, uber-rich socialite who’s also her boss. Everyone keeps telling her it’s a train wreck looking to happen, but her heart wants what it wants. So despite the billion and one reasons not to, Carrie commits her heart to this inter-species relationship. But while she’s off being trained for her new job responsibilities, a beautiful ex-fiancée is working hard to get him back and Carrie fired.

  Liza O’Conner writes books that speak to my soul. Carrie is a character you will not soon forget.

  —Rebecca Royce, author of The Warrior series.

  Note from Author

  I stubbornly use British logical punctuation instead of US illogical punctuation when it comes to commas and periods next to dialog tags. The U.S. rule was created before the revolution, in times of shoddy printing presses, and it’s time Americans revolt and throw it out. (We threw out the presses long ago. I’ve not idea why we cling to the silly rule.)

  An example of British logic: He called it a “whirly bird”. (Note the period is after the dialog tag.) Illogical US punctuation would have it: He called it a “whirly bird.” That is not logical. The tags are highlighting a specific item in the sentence, while the period is for the entire sentence. Now the whirly bird has captured the period and will no doubt feed it to its babies. That is if whirly birds have babies.

  But this goes beyond whirly birds. This goes to national and personal self esteem. It is time we drop this silly rule. How can we ever gain international respect when we punctuate so foolishly?

  Dedication

  I dedicate this book to the authors and readers who so generously help me on a daily basis. While there are too many to name in person, if you’ve passed along a tweet, shared a Facebook post, critiqued my work, given me advice, left a nice comment on my blog, written a positive review, or hosted my blogs on your site, then this dedication is to you. Without you, I would be mute and very sad.

  ***

  Copyright Notice

  COVER BLURB

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Coming to Reason

  Other novels by Liza O’Connor

  About Liza O’Connor

  ***

  Chapter 1

  Carrie Hanson couldn’t believe it. Her four year sex-drought was about to end. She shivered in anticipation until a sinking dread over came her. What if I’ve forgotten what to do?

  Please God, let this be like riding a bike.

  Trent pulled back from their kiss and studied her, his brow furrowed. “Are you cold?” He reached across her bed and tugged the edge of the comforter over her, tucking the fabric beneath her body so she became a human corndog.

  She wiggled out of captivity and scooted across the bed, closer to him. “I’m fine. I’m just happy our horrible week is over and we can start anew. This time not as boss and an employee, but best friends who love each other.”

  Trent gathered her to his chest and kissed her. She opened her mouth and met his tongue with her own, giving as good as she got. His soft groan inspired her to do more.

  She unbuttoned the waistband of his suit pants and slipped her hand beneath his boxers, determined to move matters along and end her drought forever. He broke their kiss and his hands captured hers.

  He didn’t want her?

  She turned away, mortified with shame…and confused. Why the hell had he kissed so provocatively if he didn’t want to make love? She tucked her head, so he wouldn’t read all the emotions bouncing around inside her, but he forced her chin upward, his blue eyes somber and concerned.

  “Carrie, I have screwed up every relationship I’ve ever been in. I think part of the problem is I gravitated toward glamour girls with no brains and or personality, which I would have discovered, if I had taken a moment to talk to them first.”

  Worst excuse ever! “We’ve known each other for two years, in which time I’ve certainly established I’m not a glamour girl.”

  Trent chuckled and nodded.

  Her eyes narrowed and she growled, “You don’t have to be so quick to agree.”

  “But you aren’t. You’re not an image of beauty, you’re the real thing. While I have no complaints about your small, perfect body, what makes you special comes from inside. When you smile I feel like I’m standing before an angel of joy.”

  She saw where his thoughts headed. He didn’t want to make love to an angel. She recalled Elvis Presley did something this crazy. He refused to touch his wife after she bore him a child because he couldn’t make love to a mother.

  She pulled her hand away and gripped his shirt as she stared sternly into his eyes. “Do not go Elvis Presley on me. I am not an angel. I’m a small, catastrophe-prone woman who wants to make love to you.”

  His responding groan left no doubt in her mind he wanted to do the same. Yet, he resisted.

  “We will make love. Just not yet. I don’t want to rush this. A therapist once told me I keep diving into the deepest end of the pool without learning to swim first.”

  Carrie chuckled. He did tend to do that. She paused, realizing the oddity in his statement. “You have a therapist?”

  “Good God, no! I only dated a therapist, and honestly I found her comment a bit hypocritical since she jumped my bones two hours after we met.” He sighed and ran his hand through her long brown hair. “But I think I do tend to jump in the deep end.”

  Carrie nodded.

  “Which I’m trying very hard not to do here.”

  Jump? She’d been his executive assistant for two long years! “But don’t you think we have taken it slow?”

  He grimaced. “Yes and no. We took the first steps so slow I can’t even pinpoint when I stopped seeing you as just an employee, but my favorite EA, then my irreplaceable miracle worker, eclipsed by my critical-to-my-company savior, and finally the one person vital-to-my-happiness-and-well-being. But I do know when I finally realized my feelings for you far exceeded what I’d ever felt for anyone before.”

  While Carrie really wanted some “rain”, she rather liked his longwinded admission of love. “When?”

  “The month you ran off to Taiwan.”

  “Which was work related,” she reminded him. He always made it sound like she ran off to Disney World, leaving him to handle the worst employees ever by himself.

  “I’m aware you were in Taiwan improving my company, but it didn’t make your absence any less painful. It only highlighted how important you are to my happiness.”

 
Now, she understood his reluctance to move forward. He had just discovered his true feelings for her, only to have her return to the worst week ever in which each of them at one point felt betrayed by the other.

  She pressed her cheek to his chest. “You’re right. We do need time to adjust emotionally to this change and to feel secure before we move ahead.”

  He hugged her, then pushed her back and studied her face. “You aren’t going to allow anyone else to scratch your two-year itch while I’m taking it slow, are you?”

  Her itch hadn’t been scratched in four years, but he didn’t need to know the details.

  “Carrie, you can’t punish me for doing the right thing.”

  She would have laughed at Trent’s worry that someone would ask to have sex with her, but she resisted. Trent had insecurities about his ability to “keep” a woman. “Since six months after you hired me, there’s been no chance for anyone else to seduce me.”

  He smiled. “You’ve wanted to jump my bones for that long?”

  Her eyes narrow at his decidedly unromantic question. “Not how I would have phrased it.”

  He stretched out on the bed, a happy smile lighting his handsome face. His blue eyes sparkled from beneath black lashes. “You’ve wanted to make passionate love to me for one-and-a-half years?”

  Her lower parts tightened at his new translation. “Since we aren’t going to do anything yet, could we talk about work? You’re getting me all hot and bothered.”

  He pressed his lips to her forehead and sat up. “Excellent idea.”

  Chapter 2

  After hours of planning a life with future workers who actually did their jobs, Carrie yawned.

  Trent poked his finger into her open mouth. “Wow, even your teeth are tiny.”

  She lightly bit his invading digit in retaliation. Why did he have to tease her about her size? In some countries four and a half feet wouldn’t be considered abnormally small. In fact, he would be the freak, towering six feet tall. Unable to stay mad at Trent, she transferred her anger to where it belonged. Had her parents ever spoken to a doctor about her inability to eat much, she might have grown to five feet. An MRI would have shown her stomach had not developed properly, which meant she needed smaller meals throughout the day. Instead they jumped to the conclusion that her constant demands for a bottle which she then ceased to want after a few swallows proved her to be inconsiderate and petulant. Even as her twin sister outgrew her, they continued to blame Carrie for her size.

  Extracting his well-manicured forefinger, Trent studied it for marks. “Let’s go to sleep. Fatigue evidently makes you hungry.” He snuggled up to her back and wrapped his arms about her. “I promise you, I’ll be a gentleman spooner and nothing more.”

  “Keep your fingers out of my mouth and all will be well,” she warned before falling asleep.

  At four in the morning, Carrie’s alarm went off, and she nudged Trent awake.

  “What time is it?” he grumbled and shielded his eyes by laying his arm over his face.

  “Four.”

  He pulled away his arm and glared. “Why are we getting up at four?”

  “Because you said you wanted to be at work early. We need to catch the 5:10 train.”

  “Wake me up at five.”

  She shook his shoulder. “No! We have to leave in twenty minutes and if we don’t eat first, you’ll be grumpy by the time we get into New York City.

  “And you don’t think waking me up at four has already made me grumpy?”

  She realized she had a new weapon of persuasion in her arsenal. Turning his head to hers, she kissed him…with tongue. The moment he woke and tried to pull her into an embrace, she slipped out of his arms and hurried to the bathroom.

  She had just opened the mirror cabinet and grabbed her toothbrush and paste when he entered. Two minutes before she’d been on the toilet, so she wasn’t thrilled with him barging in without knocking.

  “Hey! A girl needs her privacy.”

  He pushed by her into the narrow bathroom not meant for two.

  “And a man needs his sleep. Seems a day of disappointment for us both.”

  She laughed. Unfortunately, doing so while brushing her teeth caused her to inhale her toothpaste. Her body attempted to cough up her lungs in protest.

  Instead of coming to her aid, Trent remained at the toilet, pissing into the bowl. When he finished, he flushed and zipped himself up.

  “Toilet seat down,” she said between handfuls of water.

  He slapped it down and frowned at her. “Don’t you have a glass?”

  He opened a cabinet and extracted a not-so-clear-plastic cup. “A real one?” With a grimace he passed it to her.

  “That’s the plant’s glass.” She cupped her hand and drank more water.

  “Does your plant brush its leaves?”

  Water spewed from her mouth as a laugh burst forth. He could be so silly at times. He grabbed a towel to dry her slightly wet pajama top. Her heart swelled with love. However, when he gathered her into his arms, she had to be the responsible one and push away. “If we miss the 5:10, the next train is at 6:10.”

  “Seriously?”

  She nodded.

  “Now I understand why you never get into work early.”

  “I’m always in before seven.”

  “Yeah, but I sometimes come in at six.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Then how come you didn’t know how to open the front doors yesterday?”

  “I was under intense duress. A nightmare from my past had returned.”

  His calling the ex-fiancée a nightmare pleased her. Yesterday, she’d misunderstood his feelings and thought they’d begun the mating rituals of the rich and fabulous species. Believing him enchanted by one of his own kind had been like a knife in her heart. When the bitch declared herself their new human resource expert, hired to help them replace eighty percent of their non-working staff, the knife twisted in deeper.

  Still, could her luck be worse? Carrie had engaged the best resource firm in the city to find them better employees. First on the list, an HR manager to keep her boss from being sued while they purged a large majority of their worthless staff.

  Of all the millions of human resource people on Earth, they sent his ex-fiancée, Coco, Queen of Arrogance.

  She stared up at Trent. “Should I ask Dan Marshal for another HR person?” Please say yes, please say yes!

  He shook his head. “No. She’s bringing in fabulous people.”

  Carrie huffed. “If you don’t mind, I’ll work at the office. Unless you’re working in the office.” In which case she’d sit in Central Park and work from a bench. What she would not do was be anywhere near the B.I.T.C.H.

  “The office still lacks windows or furniture. I wanted to work out of my penthouse, but a policeman kicked me out and said if I broke the crime tape again, he’d have me arrested.” He rolled his eyes. “My chef sidelined as a Russian drug runner, and I’m treated like the criminal! Nor did I ask the police to shoot the guy in my home. Fortunately, Coco found us temporary office space on Madison Avenue so I won’t have to test my lawyer’s ability to defend my property rights.”

  She recalled how horrified Coco had been of the middle-class working people passing by as she stood on the sidewalk before Lancaster Chairs headquarters. “I’m sure the Madison Avenue natives aren’t as repulsive to her.”

  He chuckled. “She is horrible, isn’t she?”

  Carrie leaned against him and nodded. Then she glanced at her watch. “Shoot, no breakfast. Get dressed immediately, or we won’t be into New York City until eight.”

  With a great deal of complaining from the one with long legs about the unreasonable length of their rushed walk, they made it to the Denville station just in time to catch the 5:10.

  Carrie led him to the top level of the nearly empty double-decker car and pointed to a seat row. “You should sit on the inside.”

  “Why don’t you want the window?”

  “Well, I’m plan
ning to sleep, and I normally do so by leaning on the glass pane, but today I intend to lean on your softer shoulder.”

  He moved into the window seat. Once she snuggled up against him, he released a sigh. “Before you fall asleep, how will I know when we get there?”

  Of course, he’d never been on a commuter train before. With Sam ready to drive him anywhere he wanted, why would he? While she had every intention of being awake when they reached the city, he made such a nice pillow that she did risk falling into a deep sleep. “They’ll announce New York Penn Station and everyone will get up to leave.”

  “There’s no one else aboard.”

  “Trust me, even on a Sunday, it’ll be full by the time we get to New York. Which is the other reason I put you on the inside. I’m your buffer from the natives.”

  ***

  Trent spent his time watching Carrie sleep until a conductor stopped and asked, “Where to?”

  “Penn Station,” he replied, proud of himself for knowing the answer without waking Carrie.

  “New York or Newark?”

  Gods above! Who the hell allowed Newark to name their station after New York’s?

  “New York.”

  “Round trip or one way?”

  “One way?”

  Carrie spoke up. “Make mine a round trip.”

  “One way.” He leaned closer to her ear and whispered. “I want to keep you as long as I can before I lose you for two weeks. I’ll have Sam drive you home late tonight and take you to the airport in the morning.”

  “Thank you.” She hugged his right arm.

  The train stopped and the conductor left without giving them tickets.

  “Where’s he going?” Trent demanded.

  “He’ll be back,” Carrie assured him. “He has to jump off the train and get the new chicks inside.”