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“No. The cheating bitch is in Vanuatu with my golfing partner.”
I choked on my Iced VoVo. As I covered my mouth with my palm, he put his hand on my back and gently tapped until I stopped coughing.
“Sorry,” he said. “I should’ve been a little more subtle.”
I brushed my mouth, flicking off specks of coconut. “No. No. I was just caught off-guard.” I lowered my eyes to his hand. “The wedding ring . . .”
“Ahhh.” He indicated over his shoulder with his thumb. “Helen left me last year, but I didn’t want to go through the tedious details with the hobnobs at the conference.” He sighed. “So, I shoved this back on.”
My heart clenched. “I know exactly what you mean.” Again, I spoke before I thought about it.
“Oh.” His bushy eyebrows drew up, and I looked into light blue, almost translucent, eyes.
Lolita was the only person on the Gold Coast who knew what Alexander did to me. But for some reason, it seemed appropriate to share it now. “When my cheating bastard ex-fiancé left me for my best friend, the hardest part was telling the story over and over.”
He just nodded. There was no judgment—no questions. Just acceptance. I liked it. He held his hand toward me. “It’s lovely to meet you. I’m Henry Addison.”
My palm was lost in his soft but firm grip. “Jane Nichols.”
I offered Henry another Iced VoVo before I left him on the seat out the front of the hotel and returned to my position behind the lobby counter.
The following two hours of my shift were consumed with the notion that the lovely Henry Addison was going to be my next man. Yes, he was more than twice my age. Thirty-one years older than me, to be exact—I’d looked him up. But based on the sculpted torso visible beneath his designer T-shirt, he looked after himself better than some of the men I’d actually had sex with.
But I was torn by one an unanswerable question—would he want me?
So far, all three men I’d surprised with my naughty early morning interactions had been willing participants. The idea of being with an older man was very appealing, and there was something about Henry Addison that was absolutely polarizing.
But what if he wasn’t attracted to me? I had to find out.
My shift finished at 6.30 a.m., but after the customary wait for Needledick to turn up, I figured I had just seventy minutes before Henry would need to attend the first session of the conference. It was plenty of time to shower, get into my disguise, and meet him in his room. But the sense of urgency still ate me up inside.
The pressure to impress this handsome stranger made my hand tremble as I applied black eyeliner to my lower eyelid. I stopped to observe my fingers.
What am I doing?
I gripped the hand basin and stared into my green eyes. Something bordering on terror looked back at me.
What had I become? Sick. Perverted.
Oh crap! I’m no better than Alexander, my cheating bastard ex-fiancé who’d slept with anyone in Mildura with a vagina.
Tears fell in rivers down my cheeks, and my shoulders heaved as I tried to breathe through the sobbing. The pain of what he did to me was still a raw, open wound, even after three years. I’d tried to move on, tried to cleanse my soul, but the misery was still there, twisting the dagger in my heart when I least expected it.
I strode to my bed, plonked down on the covers, and reached for the tissues on my side table. The little black and white cow beside the bed lamp caught my eye. Flicking away the tears, I reached for it. The ornament had been a gift from Aunty Ann.
I huffed at the thought of her. My mom’s sister was as wide as she was tall, with melon-sized boobs that filled her lap when she sat down. Aunty Ann was the queen of rhetorical questions. She was also husbandless, childless, and most likely still a virgin, yet she was always offering relationship advice. When she’d handed me this cow, she’d said, “Time to find greener pastures.”
No truer words had come from her mouth.
Four months after Alexander and I officially split up, I moved from Mildura, the town I grew up in, to the Gold Coast, more than one thousand miles away. Even further away in lifestyle. I’d gone from working a nine-to-five job in my father’s country stationery store to managing a night shift in a four-star beach-side hotel. I’d also gone from having several friends and a fiancé to one friend who I adored more than the whole lot of them put together.
Pinching the ceramic cow’s curled-over tail, I removed the secret panel along the ornament’s back. As I swallowed the lump constricting my throat, I plucked my engagement ring from the cow’s belly.
I tugged on my bottom lip to stop my chin from quivering and turned the precious piece over in my fingers. My engagement ring was stunning. A single cushion-cut diamond set in eighteen-carat gold. It was dainty, elegant, and had cost a fortune. At least, that’s what Alexander had told me dozens of times.
Bastard!
Sunlight caught in the diamond, casting a rainbow of colors up the wall. I stared in awe and recalled Mr. Henry Addison’s comment about a rainbow earlier this morning. Thumbing away a tear that had trickled to my upper lip, I stood and walked into the open air on my balcony.
