Third Times A Charm

Third Times A Charm

Contemporary Adult Romance

This book contains sexual content that is intended for a mature audience.

Published at Smashwords.com and Copyright 2014 by CJ Hawk

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and strictly fictional. All persons, places or incidences are creative endeavors of the author. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people.

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Sometimes it only takes, one look, a soft touch, and a woman knows that her once lost love from long ago, was a foolish mistake. Will that stop her from making the same mistake again, just to lose the love she craved for so many years, or will it take her charm and wits to win him back again? Perhaps, he was never lost at all.

With a guarded heart and a knack for making the big corporate money, Jill Waltz was no stranger to going it alone. One crazy drunken night, she is caught in several compromising positions with her married boss, and she knew her life was about to be turned upside down. First of which, was to be shipped to the branch office in the middle of nowhere. As things go wrong, she wonders if this is the price she has to pay for making a very big mistake, since she got caught fooling around in the late-night hour at work.

When love is the last thing on her mind, career first, little does she know that her old high school love that stole her heart ten years ago, would show up in the same place, to discover that their love never extinguished. Leaving her wondering if happily-ever-after does exist, or will she mess it up this second chance and hope that third times a charm.

How does one corporate go-getter of a woman get herself so caught up in the chaos of a career that there seems no clear way to make it all work out? With her desire to love the man she lost and keep things in perspective, she finds that once what seemed important, is not that significant after all, while trying to keep it all together.

With the help of unusual great friends, a desire to make the most for her life, and perfect timing to a confusing situation, will she open her heart and find a way to make it all work out into a happy ending, one that she never dreamed possible?

Table Of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Other Available Ebooks

Sample Chapters: All That Glitters

Chapter One

It felt like a dream. The stroke of his hand on my face, gently caressing my cheek with his thumb as his bright blue eyes stared into my blue ones. I always felt safe in his arms. Safe yet every part of my body tingled with an electric need to be touched by him. His voice would sooth me under the stars as we held each other, while his strong hands stroked my long blonde hair. We would talk for hours after making love in the bed of his old pickup truck. Ten years in the past seemed like a very long time ago in retrospect compared to what I have built with my career in such a short time. Yet in the oddest of moments, the memory of him will flood my brain as if to never let me forget my first love, Mitch West.

Ten years is a long time to still be thinking about a man who was really just a boy back then. Somehow, his memory would not elude my thoughts in stressful times like this. I often thought about finding out what really happened to him when my crazy life would kick me in gear to focus on only my career. Perhaps that is why I made such a foolish choice that night. This long drive away from home was causing these memories to replay over in my mind like a set of love notes being played out on a piano. I shook my head of the music and thought to myself how one very lonely time consuming career, ten years later, and here I am.

I am in quite a pickle and not the dill kind that I love. My career altering move had landed me on a country highway, in the middle of parched farmland, feeling as if my career was now on a road to nowhere.

As my mind slowly faded of memories of a love lost so long ago, my frustration was building with the need to just be where I needed to go instead of dealing with the occasional slow moving car on this single lane back country highway. It was as if my lucky stars had dimmed from all the success it bestowed upon me over the last ten years. Just the fact that every person on the face of the earth was driving slower than molasses in front of me, might as well read like a sign ahead; Slow Down Girl. Because with each car that I would pass on this highway, I would drive right up behind another slow car. I was never great at reading the celestial signs of how to run my life, so perhaps that was why I was being tested to my limits.

Speed limit’s fifty five folks! I shouted to myself while driving in the comfort of my black Ford F150 Truck. I took a deep breath and realized the only one rushing was me. It was my own time structure of being there at a certain time, which was slowly slipping away. I leaned back in the driver's seat of my brand-new truck and decided the tractor I was now behind would not be passed until I had a clear vision of the highway ahead for both our sake. With paper plates still intact and my new truck loaded to the hilt with my personal items, all stored nicely and securely in cardboard boxes in the bed of the truck, I wanted to get to my rental before dark.

The Conley plant transferred me from my marketing director position in Denver to plant manager out to the proverbial no mans land, otherwise known as the middle of nowhere. Having nothing to do with my management skills and keen aptitude for marketing their new wind plant that builds parts and motors, and everything to do with the fact that I slept with the owner’s son, my boss, who is married.

Everyone seemed to overlook the fact that he slept with me just as much as I had slept with him. In addition, at no point in time did we actually sleep, if you know what I mean. He was not being sent off to the middle of nowhere, to now be the only woman supervisor of fifty men on a production line, in the middle of their nowhere plant.

He got a stern warning from his parents and all I got was a second chance to prove my worth to the company. Worth that I had worked extra hard over the last six years to prove I was a key player; starting as an intern in college and working my way up fast on a eighty hour workweek plan, giving them my blood, sweat and late night tears to help make their company a success.

Ok, I will admit I am not the type to want to sleep with a married man, let alone try to attract one. I'm really not. However, it was a long year of dateless nights, major stress from work, self-induced I might add. Moreover, one Reed Conley Jr. had been coming on to me more times than I can count. I guess I had a weaker moment than I could have handled. It was not like he was hard on the eyes or did not know what he was doing, just the opposite. It was not like he was happily married, and I pursued him. Either way it was wrong, yet I felt like I was the only one paying the price.

Does it help to mention that I tripled the company’s sales with ad campaigns and marketing ideas? It did, as I was informed that was a major factor as to why I was still gainfully employed. However, as part of my ‘punishment’, as I saw it, I was being shipped off to the far northern corner of a small town in Colorado, or BFE as I was mentally calling it. I knew I was heading for the middle of nowhere and no one; a good four hours from my beloved fast paced downtown Denver life.

Conley Senior tried to convince me that this new management challenge was just what I needed to keep my mind sharp and my skills proven, but mostly, out of trouble with both Mrs. Conley’s, senior and junior. The farther away I was from them, the better. Or at least, he thought so.

I did not have it in me to argue with a man that I was so enamored with his ability to build a company out of nothing in such a short time. He has always been my mentor and business model to copy, but he was also a happily married man with a very persistent sexy son who wanted to fool around with any long legged gorgeous eyed woman instead of being stuck in a marriage he claimed he was tricked into. I had been one of those fools at a weak moment to fall for his charades, yet oddly enough I was not really that mad at him. We took our two selves to tango against our better judgment.

As I let my hands wrap softly around the black leather steering wheel of my truck, the road began to open up ahead of me, while that slow tractor was long gone, my mind began to worry about the life I just lost. I thought about how I had to trade in my black convertible mustang for something more durable and winter ready. It was a tough thing to do, but I was no fool to Colorado weather out on the southeastern plains. I replayed the night that Reed Conley Junior, and we had a little too much to drink in celebration over a recent success and then began to celebrate on each other’s bodies. Then I thought about the look of awkwardness that came after with all my coworkers. The office vibe was never the same. I knew time would heal things, and eventually I would be back in Denver and running things like I did before. Or at least, I hoped I would.

As I finally reached a comfortable speed of seventy five with not a car in sight ahead of me, I thought of how I had to rent out my condominium in the prime area of lower downtown Denver, fully furnished with all my beloved contemporary furniture. If I had not made this move for the Conley plant, I could have kissed my profit sharing and high-income job good-bye, and in this economy, I did not want to take my chances. Therefore, when Mr. Conley politely offered this position with a fully furnished apartment, out in the middle of nowhere, it came with the understanding that I kept my mouth shut, and their son’s wife will not be privileged to the misunderstandings between their son and myself. However, I knew, that she already knew. You never forget a woman confronting you for something like that.

No amount of apology or explanation was going to resolve that woman’s anger, nor should it. I stood frozen with my feet firmly stuck where I stood as she assaulted me with her words of anger. I tried to explain that we were both drunk and too stupid at the time of the incident, but she did not care. Why should she care why we did it? I was furious with myself. That was until I caught her doing more than just a tongue inspection on a junior editor in the back storage closet late one night after she assaulted me with her anger. Reed Conley Junior was truthful when he told me that they both gave up on their marriage a long time ago.

Reed was the best-looking man since my high school sweetheart Mitch West, to spend days, no weeks projecting to me his attraction and making me feel like the best damn thing since the World Wide Web. He was not too bad in bed either, not that we ever made it there, only my desk and office chair.

I knew he was married – unhappily. At the particular time, when the union took place, I just did not care that I was cheating. On the other hand, technically, he was the one cheating since I was not married or dating at the time. However, it still did not bode well with my personal views, but a woman is going to make mistakes now and again; I made mine that dreadful night.

The longer I drove away from where it all happened, the easier I could assure myself that this was my do over chance at not only my career, but perhaps my love life. That is if I ever had any time to start one. I let the road ascend upon me with hopes that I would arrive at my destination soon. At some point, civilization had to appear. Over the next hill, I mentally wished to myself until I reached that point and felt despair. Ok. Maybe, over the next hill, after that. Really? How many people lived out this way? And WHY? A better question is, why didn't I just splurge for the GPS for the truck? Because even though I knew how to make good money, I did not like to spend it frivolously. I could pull out my cellphone but the fact that wandering lone cows seemed to appear on this highway out of nowhere, kept me from doing anything but eyes on the road ahead. That scare, an hour earlier, still had my heart pumping fast.

Back to my mental question, why would anyone want to live in the middle of nowhere, out in the open and away from the city? And the following big question - maybe civilization could be over the next hill - why is the Conley’s main plant all the way out here? Oh yeah, because it was a center point for delivering to all the wind farms, in several different directions. Therefore, my next big mental question may not come as a surprise to anyone. How the hell did I get myself into this mess? Talking to myself mentally, was about the only way I was going to keep sanity until civilization appeared, because if I counted one more spotted brown cow, I was going to scream.

I tapped my fingertips to the rhythm of a country song on the radio, on the leather steering wheel on my new Ford F150. I picked out a shiny metallic black one with black interior and dark tinted windows. I bought a tough looking truck for the same reason that I packed away my heels and office designer suits and decided if I was going to manage a team of fifty men, mechanically inclined at that, I was going to walk into the plant looking like a bad-ass chick wearing all black and biker boots. I had my first-day attire planned down to a science of mental game playing.

I had no mechanical method to my madness. Hell there has never a mechanical gene in my body. Now marketing and promoting, I kicked ass. Organizational skills and budgets ran a close second. I probably would make a great plant production manager, as long as they did not hand me a wrench.

I had to wonder what all consisted in town, so I Googled it before taking off on my journey to the middle of nowhere. What I saw was not the least bit enticing for my city girl slick ways. I needed coffee houses twenty four seven. I liked off Broadway plays and funky new restaurants to visit with my artsy friends. I liked people on every corner, and I was not a big fan of wide-open spaces. It left me feeling scared. Except for all the times, I sat beneath the stars, late at night, with my old high school sweetheart Mitch West. He had always made me feel safe when we were alone at night. He constantly made me feel as if we were the only two in the universe.

I needed to get my mind off of Mitch and thinking about something that did not stir up memories of long ago. The reason I was running behind, came to my mind. The traffic in Denver caused me to run about half hour behind. Then the traffic and road construction along the way now had me pegged two hours behind. My first day of work will be tomorrow, and I had no clue as to what to expect of my new humble abode for the next twelve months.

However, after twelve months, I could ask for a transfer back to Denver, and I would be up for the newly created division in the department of solar power. The Conley’s had their fingers in all aspects of energy. Mr. Conley’s brother owned a local petroleum plant and there was talk of having their son start up a renewable battery division for all the new electric cars due out on the market. In the future scheme of thing, it would move Reed and his newly pregnant wife, out to California, far from me. It was a win-win situation. Although there was talk that the baby wasn’t even Reed's, but that was not my drama to converse about.

As the road was still wide open ahead of me and signs were now telling me I was close, I kept driving fast while pondering the last best question I had mentally asked myself. How did I choose to get myself into this mess? Oh yeah, first I was drunk. Second, I was horny and had not been with a man in over a year and third, most importantly, one particular Reed Conley Junior had been coming on to me and flirting with me in my darkest hour. I gave in to his wicked ways, and he was wicked. There was no excuse for my behavior, but somehow thinking about it continually seemed to make the situation a bit less intense. Just a bit.

I thought of my options after the situation occurred and leaving the company was not an option. I would be stupid to burn my bridge from a company that was on the forefront of green energy. However, damn their son was good! No, he was better than good. The first orgasm was nice and in a rush, no penetration but his tongue would win first prize in an ice cream licking contest. The second one was a stretch, and I do mean I felt the stretch. The third one was a slow and lingering session that ended up leaving my office desk looking like a complete windstorm had blown through it. Who would have thought that the security department had recently installed a camera in my office? I had no idea. They said it was for all the recent computer thefts. All offices now had cameras.

Those guys in the security department did not treat me the same since then.

Switching gears, thinking about Reed Conley Junior and the way he made me feel, got my mind all stirred up about Mitch West. Now he was a man to make a girl get all warm and fuzzy with a look. He was captain of the basketball team back in high school, all-star player, with dreams of college and a career in the fire department. He had a lean muscular physique back then. I wondered what his grown-up man muscles might look like now. He had the most incredible piercing blue eyes, so crystal clear and bright blue you wanted to jump right into them. He had thick dark and wavy hair that I loved running my fingers through. His deep gentle voice when he spoke to me like I was the only one in the room, always made me feel so intense with desire for his touch.

We were quite a pair. He was popular; I was not. He was sweet and sincere, while I had a way to act overly tough. Apart, we were in our own group of peers who never interacted, but with each other we could not get enough of each other. Sometimes I thought of myself as ice to his fire when we were in school together. Far different than how we were when we found each other alone from all of our peers. We had a way of working each other into a sexual frenzy until the only thing we knew how to do next was to lock lips and do things that every romanced young woman dreams about. I was sixteen, and he was eighteen. I had my sights on a local graphic-design college, and he had no desire to stay around.

In fact, thinking back, we never really ‘knew’ each other. We were always starting up an argument over the littlest things, and then like two sex crazed teens; we would always find a way to kiss and make up. Sometimes it was in the back of an empty school bus, after one of his games. On other occasions, the back of his old Chevy pickup truck. Then, there was the old abandoned run down barn off Miller road that everyone liked to party at. We always ended up in the loft that was only accessible by backing his truck up and sticking an extension ladder up to the loft.

I will never forget the time he left his keys in the ignition in such a hurry that his friends left us high and dry all night by pulling down the ladder and driving the truck up the road. Little did they know that with only two condoms; we still spent the entire night making each other content with our love. Mitch took that night to teach me all the ways a man could pleasure a woman, and a few ways that I could pleasure him without condoms.

I almost missed my turn off as my mind whirled with thoughts of Mitch. We had our bad moments and the last being the worst. Therefore, I choose to speak ill of him whenever I could once he graduated. By my junior year in high school, rumor mill spread that he ‘was gone’. It was all everyone talked about. Some said he died in a car crash. Others speculated that he finally got his girlfriend pregnant and could not stand being married so he killed himself. All this came from the fact that every time someone called his house his mother would say ‘he’s gone’, and then burst into tears. With his girlfriend Sissy disappearing without finishing high school, that same year, everyone just drew their own conclusions.

However, I had mine. Sissy and I hated each other. She saw the way that Mitch and I electrified each other when we were in a room together. After that night in the loft, I thought for sure he was going to give me his class ring as a promise to me. When he didn’t, I walked right into that school the following Monday and took the prime opportunity to slap Mitch across the face and call him dirty names. Sissy jumped at the opportunity to be at Mitch’s side, and the rest was history.

He never asked. I never told why I did it. Sissy got Mitch and I got no one, because after Mitch, I did not want to date anyone. After that dreadful Monday that I slapped Mitch, I threw myself into all my classes. I was put in charge of the yearbook, which I made sure that all the photos of Sissy were the worst possible ones. By the time, summer came and went, the rumors started.

Sissy never came back for her junior year when I was a junior and all everyone talked about was the great Mitch West was gone, and he did not even get to use his basketball scholarship. No one could get any information out of his mom, and his dad had died his freshman year in high school. That left all of us crazy teens to our own assumption, which was always the worst. No one corrected the stories, not even the basketball coach. He just motioned his fingers to his lips, as if he was zipping up a pair of jeans sideways. Telling anyone that asked to mind their own business.

Sissy’s disappearance tied it all up nicely. I went with the story he went off and got married. However, the car crash one was the most vivid story I had heard. When I finally graduated from collage with my degree, my run-in with Mitch’s best friend Mike, settled the score. He never said dead, just gone for good. He asked me if I wanted to go out on a date, and I passed. I asked if he ever heard from Sissy, and he shrugged his shoulders as if he had no idea what one had to do with the other.

I did not let Mike leave the coffee house without tossing out a few ill words about Mitch. I was still a woman scorned. Mike turned to me as he was about to leave and said something that reverberated in my head repeatedly for weeks. Don’t speak ill of someone, or they might come back to haunt you. His evil laughter was too much as he left me standing there, with my frilly coffee desert in hand.

I had decided then and there, that I really could not speak ill of Mitch. I had no reason or right to add to the mysterious stories of the late great Mitch West. Everyone who was anyone at the high school, always talked about him. They talked about him when he was there, and when he was gone. It was like a virus spread, and it was all everyone could talk about. As an adult, and a recipient of my own rumors, I knew better than to keep on assuming stories were true, nor did I think I should be spreading them anymore. I had been hurt when Mitch did not come chasing after me that day and chose to stand with Sissy by his side. My life was so different now that I really needed to move on from even thinking about him.

I had to wonder why my mind could not shut out these thoughts about a part of my life that was so long ago. I guess it was because Mitch was my first. He made love to me as like no man ever did since. However, Reed Conley Junior came in a tight second. Thinking of how Reed made me feel kept making me remember how Mitch caused my body to react. With both men, nothing good came of it, and now I was left all alone to think only of the memories of how both those two men had made me feel so alive, if only for a brief moment in my life. Now, I had to make my new position as the plant production manager the thing that made me tick. My life was centered on my career. It was the one thing that kept me sane in this crazy world of love.

Mitch had done things to my body that no man seemed to replicate, the warm fuzzy sensation he caused to stir in my body when he entered a room and looked at me. When he smiled, that sensation would just intensify throughout my entire body. My only defense back then, when I felt things got too close, was to fight him off with a nasty disposition and mean words. None of them ever rang true. I just did not know how to defend myself against a man who could claim my body and soul with his mere existence. That was until I worked side by side with Reed. I had kept all those intense sexual feelings under control, until I couldn’t.

I did not know if I wanted to find that feeling in a man again. I felt my career was more important now, as it left me with the sense of security that I craved. I had to work hard to get back on track, and men were the last thing I needed. At least, as far as a relationship went. Otherwise, I was game for some quick senseless fun.

I had to focus on the one thing that kept me going, my career. A career that I almost bungled it up. This was my second chance to make things right again. I needed to focus on what was tangible and real for me now, which was my job and the Conley plant.

I turned into the final quiet street to where my apartment complex was located and let me mind focus on my list of things to do before collapsing into my bed for the night. I had a lot to do, but I was focused now, ready for the challenge and excited to make things right in my world.

Chapter Two

At ten minutes past nine o’clock, on this late October evening, I finally got my keys from the landlord at the apartment complex in town. It was not all that bad, but it was not that great either. If I was into the complete household décor of cheap pressed plywood ready to assemble furniture from your local super chain store, then I was content. The corporate apartment was decorated with dark plywood furniture mixed with inexpensive pine, and simple white blinds mixed with almond colored appliances. I was in designer hell.

It wasn’t the company apartment’s fault that my second love to marketing design was interior design. I might have to break out the platinum and do a little online furniture