Chapter 1
Addison
# Never date a guy who calls you Sugarmuffin
Istare at Jasper’s face unblinking. Has he always had that mole right beneath his left ear? Can’t say I’ve noticed it before. Although his beard is a little shorter than usual. Either way, he should probably get that checked out.
“We’re just in different places in our lives, Adders,” he says in that annoyingly saccharine voice he adopts whenever he’s trying to get me to agree with something I absolutely shouldn’t—like the time he wanted us to have sex in the cemetery, right before we were caught by Sheriff Nolan, or when he convinced me to invest in his microbrewery. Both my dignity and two thousand dollars I’ll never get back.
But his voice drags me back to this living hell that is my present situation. The smell of sex still lingers in the air and I balk.
“Oh, Adders,” he says again, tone dripping with fake concern. It has to be fake because if he had any genuine concern for mywellbeing, I’m pretty sure he wouldnothave been nailing his new side-chick on my couch.
I hate that any part of his weed-addled brain might think that I just violently retched because of anything remotely connected to his imminent departure from my life. I also hate that he calls me Adders. My name is Addison. Addie. Adds or Ad if you’re not into multiple syllables, but never Adders. I’m not a snake, unlike my soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend.
He makes a sad face. “Lacey just gets me, Sugarmuffin.”
Lacey? The woman he met last week at a Renaissance fair who is currently in my bathroom, probably cleaning his cum from between her thighs, or off her boobs—he was always obsessed with jerking off on my boobs.Shegets him? Wait until she has to let you move all of your things into her apartment because you lost yet another job when you got high while you were supposed to be watching the security monitors. Then we’ll see how much she gets you. I clamp my lips together and don’t say any of those things.
The fact that I caught Jasper banging Lacey onmycouch and inmyapartment isn’t even in the top five things that are bothering me right now. Our relationship has been over for months. But like a wilting orchid, I have continued to feed and nurture it in the hope that it would hold on—just until the end of winter. Not because I care about said relationship, of course. Jasper is handsome, and charming when he wants to be, but he’s also a sleaze who will bone anything with a pulse and has an overinflated sense of his own importance. The latter was evident by our sixth date. I would have dumped him after the fifth one if I’m honest, but Jasper had two crucial things in his favor. One being that he didn’t grow up here in Juniper Ridge, and two being impeccable timing. Not only was he actually with me when I got the call about Braxton and Eva’s imminent winter wedding—one so imminent that my mom is convinced there’sa grandchild in her near future—but he was also free on the date in question. And, sure, I might have been using him just a smidge, but he did get free room and board out of the deal—not to mention all of the other fringe benefits.
I only needed nine more days from you, Jasper! Two hundred and sixteen hours where you didn’t put your dick in someone else.
Lacey emerges from my bathroom, pulling her blue faux-leather mini down. She flashes me an apologetic smile. I should warn her not to invest in any of his get-rich-quick schemes, but I can smell my favorite Jo Malone perfume, and I’m far more annoyed that she helped herself to my Pomegranate Noir while using my bathroom than I am at her helping herself to my boyfriend.Thatis all on him. So, I don’t offer any words of advice. Petty? Yes. But I figure I’ve earned it.
“I’m sure she does get you, yeah,” I mumble, while mentally going through the name of every guy I’ve ever dated and wondering if I can convince them to come to a wedding with me in five days’ time. Pretty sure even if they were single, their answer would be no. My relationships don’t tend to end amicably, and I have a history of picking guys who are the most epic kind of wrong for me. Many have gone on to find very fulfilling relationships, so I’m well aware that I’m likely the problem. Too much—or not enough.
Jasper rests a patronizing hand on my shoulder. I expect he intends it to comfort me somehow, but it only makes my skin crawl. That I put up with him for five long and torturous months and allowed him to treat me like garbage is a testament to how desperate I was to have a date for my brother’s wedding.
And now that dream is disappearing faster than Jasper’s hopes of becominga leading light in the world of microbreweries, right before my very eyes. Dammit! My lip wobbles.
“Oh, Adders,” Jasper repeats, still with that sickly sweet tone.
Oh, dear God, he really does think I’m upset about him.
“Please just go, Jasper. I’ll box up all your things and leave them outside. You can pick them up whenever you have time.”
“I’m really sorry, Sugarmuffin.” He pulls an even sadder face.
I’m not, asswipe.
But I feign a sad smile and open my front door, ushering him and his new Renaissance-fair girlfriend out of it.
“Oh, by the way, your toilet is blocked. I flushed a condom,” she says with a nonchalant shrug of her shoulders.
“Good to know,” I force out the words and close the door behind them. Then I rest my forehead against the cool wood and curse my stupid life.
I need to call Emma. She’ll know what to do. And even if she doesn’t, she’ll at least drink with me until I can no longer feel my face—and then hopefully I will no longer be forced to stare into the abyss that is having to face Chase goddamn Hunter as the desperately lonely single girl he left behind eight years ago.
Chapter 2
Chase
# Never agree to share a secluded cabin with a woman who once threatened to drive a stiletto heel through your heart
“You’re a genius, Chase. I mean, I never thought anyone would be able to bring my vision to life, but you’ve…dammit, son, I don’t know how you did it, but it’s perfect.”
I smile at the face of Gregory Chambers on my computer screen—one of my newest clients, who’s just visited the site of his ecologically friendly and fully self-sufficient twelve-story office building in Dallas for the first time. My VP, Claudia, along with the site foreman, Isaac, are with him, and they’re both beaming too. I’m only sorry I couldn’t be there myself. The excitement when someone sees their dream come to life is infectious and it never gets old—at least if we do our jobs right. “We’re just glad you trusted us with your baby, Mr. Chambers. It’s been a pleasure to work on a project so close to your heart.”
