In this Fifth Avenue prequel by USA TODAY bestselling author Maisey Yates, enter the exclusive world of New York’s scandalous elite…where everything is about to change.

Where it all began…

As the son of a high-powered attorney, Travis Beringer has never wanted for anything…except the elusive Sydney Davis. But everything changes in an instant with the shocking death of her roommate, Sarah Michaels, and suddenly Sydney is in his arms, desperately seeking oblivion.

Encased within a sensual web of desire, Travis and Sydney delight in every erotic touch they’ve fought for so long. But what will happen when the dust has settled and the harsh light of day ushers in a reality neither is prepared to face?

Dear Reader,

High society, and the glamour that comes with it, has a particular allure. I find the world of the rich and the famous fascinating. But not necessarily for the pieces of it that we, the general public, are allowed to see.

It’s the gilded, glittery underbelly that I find most intriguing. The tarnish on the silver, if you will.

That tarnish is the focus of the Fifth Avenue trilogy.

Where beauty, power and glamour conceal deadly secrets. And desperation reveals the characters’ darkest, most passionate desires. And where ultimately, love prevails over the darkness.

One tragic night changes everything for Sydney and Travis. It’s the beginning of a new chapter in their lives, and in their relationship as their friendship turns to something more.

The same night also starts a chain of events that will reveal how much of this solid high society is built on a foundation of shifting sand. And when the lies start to give way, everything begins to crumble.

This book is only the beginning. The gunshot at the starting blocks.

I hope you enjoy the journey.

Happy reading!

Maisey Yates

USA TODAY bestselling author Maisey Yates lives in rural Oregon with her three children and her husband, whose chiseled jaw and arresting features continue to make her swoon. She feels the epic trek she takes several times a day from her office to her coffeemaker is a true example of her pioneer spirit.

In 2009, at the age of twenty-three, Maisey sold her first book. Since then it’s been a whirlwind of sexy alpha males and happily ever afters, and she wouldn’t have it any other way. Maisey divides her writing time between dark, passionate category romances set just about everywhere on earth and light, sexy contemporary romances set practically in her backyard. She believes that she clearly has the best job in the world.

Take Me

Maisey Yates

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For everyone stuck in the middle of their darkest night. The sun always rises.

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

EPILOGUE

EXCERPT

Chapter One

Christmas 2004

The party was a glittering affair. Every Treffen event was. From the immaculately dressed waitstaff, to the lilting strains of Christmas carols being played by a string quartet, all the way down to the golden marble floors of the ballroom.

Sydney Davis wondered, idly, how common it was for a law firm, even one as prestigious as Treffen, Smith and Howell, to have a ballroom. But she decided it didn’t really matter, since she was here, and she was just going to soak in all the fancy. And it was dripping with fancy.

She’d been exposed to most of this stuff at some point during her life, but it was only these past few years she’d been included in it.

Thanks to Travis Beringer. Who had wandered away from her at some point during the party. Probably looking to get kissed under the mistletoe. Which was the hazard of bringing a date who would never really be your date.

Travis was her best friend in all the world. Had been from the time they’d first seen each other in the hallowed halls of his family mansion. Her mother had been on the housekeeping staff, but that hadn’t stopped Travis, or his family, from treating them like equals. So much more than any of her mother’s other employers had ever given them.

Then they’d gone the extra step and actually taken interest in her, recommending her for a scholarship position at a very prestigious, private, all-girls school, which had led to her entrance into Harvard, and eventually to the annual Treffen Christmas party.

Not that the party was that important. But she had been excited to be included. It was a chance to make some professional connections, and with graduation on the horizon, it was particularly important.

She knew Austin Treffen, law student, and son of their host, through her former roommate, Sarah Michaels. And also through Sarah she’d met Hunter Grant and Alex Diaz. Powerful connections that she knew would serve her well later on. Hunter was a star athlete, making a name for himself in the NFL, while Alex was on the cusp of a prestigious career in journalism.

Every inroad forged was valuable for someone with an eye for politics. As long as none of them were too salacious.

But there was nothing salacious here. Here, there was nothing but glitter and diamonds. Old money, with a sprinkling of people like her. People who had been lucky enough to have been given the assist that allowed them to crawl up from nothing and into a world of endless possibilities.

She looked across the crowded room and saw Jason Treffen, who was, for lack of a better term, holding court. He wasn’t only the host of the party, but the focus of it. Wherever Jason was, he drew a crowd. He was so magnetic, it was almost off-putting.

Sarah had been working part-time for him for a while and her comments about her boss always left Sydney feeling a little uneasy. Sometimes Sarah seemed to verge on an obsession with him. Other times, she seemed fearful and edgy. And lately she hadn’t said much at all. They’d drifted apart a bit since Sarah had moved into the city, but Sarah had been even more distant recently. Sydney had mostly put that down to her recent breakup with Hunter, which had thoroughly devastated her friend.

Tonight Sarah didn’t look devastated. She looked stunning, if exhausted. Though, Sydney hadn’t seen her since they’d first arrived.

Jason suddenly broke away from the crowd, his eyes meeting hers, a smile on his lips. And she found it hard to look away. There was something about him. Sheer charisma. He would be an excellent politician, and yet he seemed content to stay a lawyer, devoting most of his time to high-profile cases of women who suffered injustice in the workplace.

He was an idol for someone with her ambition. A man who’d built an empire, and managed to make a difference at the same time.

“You must be Sydney,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, holding out her hand. When he shook it, she felt a vague whisper of disquiet and she wasn’t sure why. “Mr. Treffen, it’s very nice to meet you.”

“You as well. Are you enjoying my party?”

“I am.”

“Sarah’s told me a lot about you,” he said. “She speaks highly of your intelligence.”

“That’s nice of her.”

“Not at all. I suspect it’s just true. I wanted to tell you, if you’re ever looking for a job that might complement the classes you’re taking, I always have things available here for bright young women.”

Flattery warred with a strange, sinking sensation. She wasn’t sure why the sinking sensation. Maybe just because of the way things had been going with Sarah. She should be flattered. Jason Treffen would be a valuable name on her résumé. A letter of recommendation from him would get her places.

“Thank you so much,” she said, “I’m honored. When school starts back up again, I’ll reevaluate my schedule and come see you.”

He patted her arm, his smile paternal, but the feeling his touch left behind...very not. She wasn’t sure what to make of him. “You do that. Please.”

He turned and walked away then, stopping at the next group of people, smiling, greeting everyone by name. He was a force, no question about that. Regardless of her slight, weird and baseless misgivings, people seemed to like him and the value in the connection could not be overstated.

“You look lost in thought. Or are you simply in awe of your surroundings?”

She turned toward the sound of Travis’s voice and caught a hint of his scent—clean skin and fresh aftershave. And she let herself have a moment where his sheer beauty took her breath away. She’d known Travis since he was a boy, but at the age of twenty-two he was very much a man now.

His shoulders and chest were broader, the softness long gone from his face, replaced with a chiseled edge that made him look both beautiful and a little dangerous. His eyes were the same. That light sky-blue that seemed to promise her the world every time he looked at her.

And his lips...well, they were the same, but they were much more distracting than they’d been when they were younger. Of that she was certain. Until recently she’d never been quite so aware of the shape of them. Or that they looked vaguely sinful.

But that could also be because she had been boyfriend-less, and ergo, sexless, since sophomore year, when her one-and-only boyfriend had broken things off with her to move on to more WASP-ish pastures. She’d been too busy studying and generally trying to prove that she absolutely belonged, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to do anything about her love life.

“Just pondering things,” she said.

He snagged two glasses of champagne from a passing waiter and held one out to her, which she took gratefully. “Pondering what things? You’re on break, remember? You aren’t supposed to be thinking about school or studying or your political ambitions.”

“I didn’t get here based on lineage, Travis. I’m here because I work hard. The only thing that’s blue in my family lineage are the collars. The blood is just red.”

He arched a brow. “Don’t ever bleed around these people and they’ll never know.”

“That’s my plan.”

“Do you want a dessert to go with your champagne?”

“Do you have to ask?”

He smiled and shook his head, moving in the direction of the balcony, where the table with the chocolate cake was set up.

She watched him for a moment, sipping on her fizzy drink. He really was very handsome. His tux was custom-fitted to his physique. And yeah, you could tell.

Suddenly a scream shattered the music. “Silent Night” broke into a million pieces as more screams followed the first and people began rushing to the balcony, to the windows.

Sydney froze, watching the commotion, watching as Travis set his cake down and moved closer to the windows before taking two stumbling steps backward and then turning to face her, his skin waxen, his lips pressed into a thin line.

“What happened?” Sydney asked.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“What happened, Travis?”

“Don’t look,” he said. “Please don’t look.” He was trembling as he reached out and grabbed her, his fingers curled around her arm. “Don’t look,” he said again.

She started to panic then, fear rising up in her chest, grabbing her by the throat and shaking her.

“Travis, what?” she asked, knowing she sounded crazy and hysterical now, but not caring.

Jason Treffen was trying to speak over the roar of commotion, but for once, it seemed like he didn’t have control. It seemed that whatever had happened had lessened Jason’s power, if only for a moment. Because no one could pay attention to Jason—not now. They were all glued to the windows. And Travis wouldn’t let her see.

“It’s Sarah,” he said, pulling her from the room. “I don’t want you to see.”

“Sarah?” she asked, picturing her friend as she’d been earlier in the evening when they’d met at her Manhattan apartment to get ready for the evening. Sarah’s dark hair had been swept up into a bun, her gorgeous figure wrapped in a crimson gown. So alive. So beautiful. “I have to help. I have to see—”

“You can’t help,” he said, his voice rough. “You can’t help.”

“Why can’t I help?” she asked.

“She’s dead,” he said, the words seeming to scrape his throat on the way out. “She’s dead, Syd. Come on.”

“No,” she said. “You don’t know that. You don’t know.”

She tugged free of his grasp and ran toward the windows, her heart in her throat, blocking air from entering her lungs. Sydney pushed her way through the crowd to the windows, her whole body shaking now. She could see her own reflection in the glass, and through to the other side, the lights in the buildings across the street. Christmas lights strung over everything. Then she looked through her reflection, down to the street below.

And she saw her.

A slash of red on the pavement. The crimson not contained to her beautiful gown, but pooling out around her, spreading across the New York City sidewalk.

She put her hand over her mouth and froze there.

“Syd,” Travis said, using her nickname again. The name only he was allowed to call her. “Let’s go.”

“I have to help,” she said, her words a sob.

“You can’t,” he said.

“You don’t know that,” she said, shaking her head, knowing full well Sarah was beyond help now.

Travis tugged at her arm again, harder, and she stopped pulling against him, stopped fighting him, and let him lead her to the elevator.

“What happened?” she asked, the moment the elevator doors closed.

“She jumped.”

“No.” She shook her head. “Travis, she wouldn’t do that...she wouldn’t. I don’t believe this. I was with her only a couple of hours ago. She was getting ready. And she was happy and s-so beautiful.”

“I know, baby.” He put his arm around her, holding her hard against his side, holding her together.

“Are you sure it’s real?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

She could feel a tremble move through his body, echo in hers. He’d seen it, too. It hadn’t been a sick hallucination or a party trick. It was real.

Her friend was dead. Before her life could ever begin, she was dead.

Travis leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes. She looked at him, so strong, so solid. Shaken like she was. The look on his face made it even more real. “Promise me something, Travis,” she said, shaking from the inside out.

“Anything.”

Right now, Travis was the anchor. Right now, Travis was the only thing that made sense. She felt like if she lost sight of him, she would drift out to sea completely.

He was her friend, warm, alive and present, and right now she needed him to be with her. She would give anything, her soul if she had to. She just couldn’t bear to lose him, too. Not tonight.

“Promise you’ll stay with me,” she said.

“How long?” he asked.

“As long as it takes.”

“For?”

“For...for me to stop shaking.”

He released his hold on her, but he stayed close, his presence a comfort.

He rested his head against the high-gloss elevator wall and closed his eyes, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he swallowed hard. He opened his eyes and looked at her, and all of his sparkle was gone.

She wondered if she would ever see it again.

“I’ll stay with you,” he said, putting her hand in his and squeezing it tight.

For some reason, the agreement felt like a blood oath. Like a pact. And she wondered just what it was she’d agreed to.

She wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure of anything.

Except that Sarah was dead. Horribly. Tragically.

And that right now, as much as she needed Travis, he needed her, too.

She watched the numbers of the elevator, watched as they got closer to the ground floor. She didn’t know what would happen between them, because nothing seemed right tonight. Nothing was predictable.

She’d never been afraid to be alone with Travis before, but for some reason, right now she was.

But not as afraid as she was of being alone without him.

Chapter Two

“The Black Book,” Travis said when they got back into the town car that had delivered them to the party earlier that night.

“What’s that?” she asked, squeezing her hands into fists and trying not to fall apart.

They were both on the verge of it, and if either of them gave in...well, they would both shatter completely.

“A hotel. It belongs to a friend of my father’s.”

“You don’t want to...go back to the dorms?” She’d been planning on staying with Sarah tonight, but obviously...obviously she wasn’t now.

“You want to go back to the dorms right now?” he asked.

She imagined the little space she’d shared with Sarah for the past three years. Sarah had been gone from it for nearly a year, but now it would feel so final. There was no chance she would ever walk through the door again.

“No,” she said, her voice choked.

“I don’t, either. I don’t think I can stomach the drive time and...I just want to be...somewhere else. Somewhere new.”

She nodded slowly. “Are you okay?”

“Fuck.” He dragged his hands over his face and leaned forward. “No, I’m not okay.”

She didn’t know what to do. Didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know how to react at all, since her instinct now was to do what he was doing. Folding in on herself. Holding her stomach, trying to keep the pain from tearing her into tiny, irreparable pieces.

But if she did, she didn’t know what it might do to him. So she just sat there, staring straight ahead, unmoving, while tiny claws stabbed into her heart.

Travis had never seen life’s ugly side. And she’d been spared a lot of it. But growing up she’d seen in her neighborhood violence, poverty and the kind of depressed desperation that went along with it all.

She’d learned as a child to shut things off when the outside world went insane. And she realized now that Travis never had. Travis’s life had always been beautiful mansions and social niceties. Weekends spent on the Cape and afternoons on the green.

He’d seen nothing more than the careful facade laid over the reality of life. Had barely seen down into the machine, to see where the cogs, like her family, like so many others, made things work, seamlessly and beautifully for families like his.

And he’d never seen those more unfortunate people get ground up in the inner workings of the beast before, either.

He was kind, his family was kind, and they assumed everyone else was, too. His life was charmed and he assumed that all of life was.

Travis was brilliant, but this wasn’t the sort of thing brilliance could prepare you for.

Not that she was prepared. Not in the least.

She’d grown up in a rough neighborhood, with no father and a mother who was wounded and jaded by life. Her mother had taught her early to never depend on other people...to depend on herself.

She lived by that. She’d moved through life mercilessly ensuring that she guarded her own interests and her mother’s. She’d made sure she’d carved a clear path out for herself, so that at the end of everything people would look and see that while she’d had a hand up, she’d done the work herself.

Travis was her friend, but she’d never been in a position where she was forced to depend on him before. But tonight she needed him. Tonight, she needed him to be the one who was strong, because she was already broken.

“We’ll stay together,” she said finally. “All night.”

He nodded slowly, his eyes staring straight ahead. “Good.”

He tugged his tie off and threw it onto the seat, then shrugged off his jacket and put it there, too. Keeping busy, she imagined. And she was keeping busy by watching him.

When the car pulled up to the curb, she pushed her door open and Travis did the same, neither of them waiting for the driver.

“You forgot your jacket,” she said, when he shut his door. “And your tie.”

“I don’t care.” He turned and started toward the entrance to the hotel.

She stepped up onto the sidewalk, her heels clicking on the pavement as she followed him through the revolving door and into the marble-laden lobby of the boutique hotel.

They walked up to the counter and she stood just behind him, her heart hammering. An evening that had started out surreal and turned to a sort of unbelievable tragedy was getting even stranger.

She felt like she was having an out-of-body experience.

Watching Travis check them into a beautiful hotel. Knowing she was going to spend the night with him in a room.

Knowing that Sarah was gone and never coming back.

Beyond that, she knew nothing.

She didn’t know what would happen once the doors to the hotel room closed. Didn’t know what would happen if they crawled into the same bed together tonight.

Didn’t know what might happen when she went back to the dorm alone, or back to Sarah’s apartment and found it full of her things, and empty of her forever.

So she would focus on one unknown at a time.

The ones that affected her the most now.

The ones that concerned Travis, a locked door and a bed. That was suddenly paramount in her mind.

When Travis turned away from the counter, he had a key. Not a card like you so often had for places like this. An honest-to-goodness key that looked like it belonged in a door that led to a dungeon or something.

“Let’s go,” he said.

She nodded, not sure of what else to say, until they were in the elevator again.

“What’s going to happen?” she asked. She hated seeming vulnerable, she hated sounding afraid, but she was, and she was too raw to sublimate it.

“Tonight or forever? Now that Sarah’s gone?”

“We can start with tonight.”

He looked at her, the pain in his eyes enough to tear a hole in her soul. She hated this. Hated that Sarah was dead. Hated that she couldn’t even pretend it wasn’t real, because she saw it all reflected on Travis’s face.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Would the answer have been different if I’d wanted a response to the other questions?”

He shook his head.

“I thought not,” she said.

The elevator doors slid open and revealed a long hallway with black doors. “This is a little Twilight Zone,” she said.

He let out a choked laugh. “Sure is.” He looked at the tab hanging off the key. “We’re at the end of the hall.”

As they got closer to the room, her throat tightened until, by the time they reached the door to their room, she could barely release the air from her lungs.

He put the key in the lock and turned it slowly. And she couldn’t help but apply weight and significance to the action. Because it made her think of other things.

And she was ashamed that it did. That the fact that they were going into a hotel room for the night, on the night when their friend had died, made her think of the possibility of sex.

But then, maybe that was why she was thinking of sex.

Because Sarah’s life had ended tonight. Unexpectedly. Shockingly.

And at the moment, Sydney was more conscious than she’d ever been of the fact that time wasn’t infinite.

That you couldn’t save everything for later. Couldn’t wait to have everything until after the next midterm. Until after graduation.

Good sex. Great sex. The kind that curled your toes. A chance to act on the attraction that had simmered, deep inside of her, for years, for the man holding the door open for her.

The only guarantee was tonight.

What was wrong with living it like it might be the last? Sex was different than needing someone. Lust was different than dependency.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.