Tristan sat back in his chair and gave up trying to concentrate on the contracts in front of him. His mind was going in confusing circles.

He’d never considered himself lacking when it came to women and their feelings, but Claire… She was so different than all the other women he knew. One thing was certain: he’d surely enjoyed holding her in his arms. But strangely enough, he found himself never wanting to let her go. And yet he had. He just didn’t know what to make of it all.

The other women he had known in his life, he knew how to handle. He knew the score, he knew the game. Women like Anna he had grown up with, but Claire….

Claire was in a different league altogether, and he wasn’t sure of the rules.

He jerked upright as a soft knock sounded on his door.

“Mr. McFarland?” Gladys popped her head inside and smiled apologetically. “You have a visitor.”

Tristan nodded. “Send them in.”

Gladys had canceled all of his appointments for the day, so he knew he had no one on the books. Still, he’d take anything to distract him from his thoughts of Claire—even an unwanted drop-in. Spending the afternoon trying to figure out their relationship was giving him a pounding headache.

“Yes, sir. Then I’m going to run these files down the hall to your brother’s office.”

Tristan nodded. “Very well.”

Gladys disappeared only to be replaced by a face from his past.

“Tristan, darling.” Anna Riveria swept through his office door, leaving the dark mahogany open behind her.

“Anna.” Tristan stood, walked around his desk, and allowed his ex-girlfriend to kiss him on the cheek in greeting. “Long time, no see. How was Africa?”

Her face curled up into a petulant pout. Funny, at one time he’d actually thought that look to be sexy, now she just looked like a spoiled brat. “Dreadful. Just dreadful.” She slumped down into a nearby chair and crossed one slim leg over the other.

“I see,” he said, though he didn’t at all.

“The heat and the humidity down there. It was unbearable. And the mosquitoes.” She did that pouty thing with her lips again. “Daddy owes me big time for this one. But you know Daddy…”

“Uh-huh.” Tristan reclined back in his office chair and tried to concentrate on what Anna was saying. Only he had no interest in her trip to Africa and what it meant to her father’s campaign. He wanted to…he wanted to go home and see his wife. Spend time with her in the middle of the afternoon. For the rest of the afternoon.

He didn’t want to be here with predictable Anna. He wanted to be home with his unpredictable bride.

Even more strange. Maybe it was a virus.

“Tristan?”

“Hmmm?”

“Are you listening to me?”

“Sure, I am.” Surely it was just a virus, and this obsession he was experiencing with his wife would soon pass, just like the common cold.

“You’re not.” Anna swayed across the room toward him.

Tristan focused his gaze and all he could muster of his attention onto his ex-lover. “Of course, I am,” he repeated.

“Then you know how much I’ve missed you.” Anna plopped down onto his lap.

“Anna, I—”

“Oh, Tristan. It’s been so long,” she purred, her lips drawing closer and closer to his.

“A lot has changed.” He grasped her upper arms in his hands to push her aside. Definitely a virus.

Anna shrugged. “So you got married. Everyone in Dallas and Fort Worth knows that you only did it to get your inheritance. I don’t blame you. But it doesn’t mean that we can’t be together now, does it?”

Two months ago, he would have agreed, but it seemed that even he was one of the things that had changed.

Before he could answer and tell Anna that yes, being married did mean that they couldn’t be together, and before he could lift her from his lap, Anna covered his mouth with her own.

The drive from the mansion to downtown seemed to take forever. It took years to walk across the parking lot and at least a millennium before the elevator arrived at Tristan’s office. But finally the bell dinged, the doors opened, and Claire stepped out into the carpeted hallway.

It was impetuous, impulsive, to just show up at his office without calling first, but she wanted to surprise him. Last night after their close call, she had realized something about herself that shocked her to the core. She was in love with her husband. And for some strange reason she felt compelled to tell him so.

She didn’t know exactly what she was going to say, only that she needed to say it. She needed to come clean, lay her cards on the table and all those other clichés that had to do with honesty.

The door to Tristan’s outer office was open. She made her way toward it, her steps alternating between a light jog and the crawl of a snail. She wanted to be there, wanted to talk to him, yet at the same time, she had never been so scared in her life, had never dreaded a chore so much. What if he laughed at her? What if he told her they could never be?

What if he said that he loved her in return?

Quietly Claire eased into Tristan’s office, but his secretary was nowhere to be seen. She would have liked the chance to talk to Gladys again, maybe even use the secretary to stall for time, but not today. Claire knew that Tristan was in his office, or at least somewhere close; his car was still in the parking lot.

Like the door to the outer office, the door to the inner office was open, though not a sound emerged from within.

On trembling legs, she approached and without knocking, peeked inside.

The sight that greeted her was not what she had expected. Anna Riveria in all of her blond glory was sitting on Tristan’s lap, kissing him like there was no tomorrow.

Her heart broke in two even as her hand flew to her mouth, stifling the sob that threatened to alert them to the fact that they were not alone.

She might not have much, but she would hold onto her dignity.

Choking back a gasp, she turned on silent feet and fled back down the carpeted hallway to the elevators.

Tristan was totally unprepared for Anna’s kiss. It took a second for the action to register and another for him to bring his hands to Anna’s waist and lift her away from him.

She smiled sexily, her lipstick smeared, and brushed the hair back from Tristan’s forehead.

He caught her hand in his own. “Anna,” he said, his voice sounding more impatient than he had intended. “I’m a married man.”

“But darling—”

Tristan shook his head. “There are no buts. I’m married, and we can no longer be a ‘we’. I’d thought I’d made that perfectly clear.”

Anna stared at him for a solid minute, her face registering first shock, then anger. “I see,” she said, her voice blowing in from the North Pole. Her back stiffened as she smoothed non-existent wrinkles from her linen suit. “Well, let me make something perfectly clear to you.” Her eyes narrowed as she leaned in close to him, a tactic he was sure that she employed so that he could smell the expensive perfume she favored. Funny, but there was a time when he had found the scent alluring. Now it was simply coy. “When your…infatuation with married life runs out, don’t expect to come crying to me.”

She waited for his response, shoulders taut, lips pressed firmly together. Receiving none, she turned on her heel and with a flash of her long blond hair, marched to the door.

She was almost to the hallway when he finally answered. “Good-bye, Anna.”

Claire couldn’t remember the drive back to the mansion. The scenery flashed by in the blur of her tears. How stupid had she been. How incredibly stupid. And naive and innocent and unsophisticated. How could she have ever imagined that Tristan McFarland could care for her? And how could she have been so crazy as to lay her heart on the line where he could walk all over it without a second thought?

She slammed the car into park and left it in the middle of the circular drive.

It was over, she acknowledged as she numbly made her way inside the house. It was all over. There was no way she could stay here in Tristan’s house, face him day after day, knowing what she did. Knowing that he was sleeping with Anna behind her back, knowing that he didn’t care for her and never would. She simply couldn’t stay. That left her only one recourse.

She tripped twice on her way up the staircase. On wobbly legs, she stumbled into the bedroom. Tears streamed down her face.

“Crying will get you nowhere,” she heard Nanie’s voice clear as a bell in her mind. Her grandmother was right of course. But Claire wasn’t sure what she could do. She felt alone and sad, more alone and sad than she ever had in her entire life—even more than when her parents died. Even more than when Nanie passed on. For this time, Claire was truly alone after she had experienced the joy of family—however dysfunctional it may have been.

As if her actions were controlled by an outside force, Claire walked to the closet she shared with Tristan and pulled out her tapestry tote bag. With calm precision, she placed the bag on the bed and began filling it with her things.

She could no longer stay at the McFarland mansion; she could no longer stay with Tristan. She wasn’t sure where she would go or what she would do, but she had the rest of her life to figure that out. Right now, the only thing that was certain was that she had to leave.

It took only minutes to fill the bag with her new clothes. How sad that her life could be stuffed into one single, worn bag. She lifted the case from the bed, gave the room one last look, then climbed back down the stairs.

She should leave a note, she supposed as she made her way across the foyer, but she wasn’t ready for that. She would give Tristan a couple of days to realize that she was gone, then she would call and break the news to him over the phone. It was the coward’s way, she knew, but it was the best she could do right then.

“Claire.”

Startled, she jerked her gaze up to meet the confused hazel eyes of her husband.

“T-Tristan,” she stammered, her heart breaking all over again at the mere sight of him.

“Are you going somewhere?”

So much for breaking the news over the telephone.

Fighting back the fresh tears that threatened, Claire stiffened her backbone. “Yes,” she said firmly. “I’m going somewhere.”

“Where?”

Claire had to hand it to him, it was a legitimate question. “I…I don’t know.”

“I see.”

“No, Tristan, I don’t think you do.”

A heavy moment hung suspended between them as Tristan waited for what Claire would say next, and Claire waited to hear herself say it.

“I’m leaving you.”

“Leaving me?” He blinked once, but otherwise his expression remained unchanged. He merely stared at her as if he knew deep down that she didn’t have the guts to carry through with her threat.

Well, that might have been the old Claire but the new Claire, the one who wore makeup and had a sassy new hairdo was different. She stood up for herself and would never remain in a loveless relationship that was headed south.

“I saw you today with Anna. It’s over. I’m leaving.” She started toward the door.

Unfortunately, Tristan blocked her path.

“Claire, really. Think about what you’re saying. If you leave, I don’t get my share of the inheritance, which means you don’t get paid either.”

Not ‘Claire, please don’t leave me.’ Not ‘It’s not what you think.’ Not ‘Anna means nothing to me.’ Only money. With Tristan it had always been about money.

“Move out of my way, Tristan.” Some strong force deep inside of her helped her lift her chin and meet his gaze. Turquoise clashed with hazel as they shared a moment of simply staring the other down.

Finally, it was Tristan who turned his gaze away. “Claire, you can’t do this.”

“Oh, but I can.”

“Guess what?”

Both Claire and Tristan turned as Devin strode into the foyer, Esperanza hot on his heels. “I’ve discovered who doctored the designs. It wasn’t Claire after all, but Esperanza the whole time. Our new designer has been right under our noses all along. Isn’t that marvelous?”

“Marvelous,” Tristan dryly agreed.

But Claire only felt her heart sink a little lower. She didn’t know where she was going, she was tossing away a fortune, and she had no skills to get her through. She was happy for Esperanza and the discovery of her new talent, but it only made Claire feel that much more worthless.

“And I’ve got marvelous news for you, Devin” she said. “You’ve won.”

“Come again?”

“Don’t listen to her, Dev.”

“I’m leaving,” Claire baldly stated. With more aplomb than she truly felt, she pulled Tristan’s ring from her finger and extended it toward him.

“No, she’s not,” Tristan countered, refusing to take the plain gold band from her.

“Leaving?” Devin asked.

“Leaving,” Claire repeated. She handed the ring to Devin, then turned back to face her husband. “And neither of you can stop me.”

Chin held high, Claire pushed her way past Tristan and walked out the front door.

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.    

A MILLION TO ONE

Copyright 2023 by Amy Lillard 

All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.    

They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.  

Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

previously published as All You Need Is Love copyright 2013 by Amy Lillard

significant changes have been made to the original manuscript resulting in new copyright status