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He was the reason I’d started bringing dates home. Of course, he had to one-up me and started showing up with supermodels. I won’t even go into how he played a part in scaring off my now-ex-fiancé. Okay, maybe I will. He’d told Ethan last Christmas that he had the personality of a dry piece of toast, and then had the audacity to lecture him on how he should be treating me. Really, the man who’d left me for London without a thought. Who had treated me as if I were nothing more than a summer fling. Ethan had treated me fine, thank you very much. So he might have occasionally stopped me midsentence to record his thoughts. He was a history professor at Stanford, and he was constantly thinking about his lectures. When brilliance struck, he never let the moment pass—like ever, even during intimate moments. Sure, it got annoying, but Ethan was intelligent, and he could be very thoughtful. I couldn’t tell you how many times I had come out of the lab after a brutally long day to find a rose on my windshield with a little note that said, I love you. And he gave the best foot rubs.
Ethan was long gone now thanks to Kane berating him and Auggie telling him he wasn’t the right man for me right after Ethan asked him to pass the ham. How would Auggie know that? Auggie didn’t even know me. I had told Ethan I didn’t care whether or not my father approved of him, but right before Valentine’s Day, Ethan said he’d been thinking since Christmas that maybe we weren’t right for each other. He said my father’s wealth bothered him. Apparently, that kind of money went against his principles. What? He taught wealthy people’s children at Stanford. Not only that, he said he was concerned about the strange attachment my stepbrother seemed to have to me. Hello? Kane wasn’t my stepbrother. And hadn’t Ethan noticed Kane’s bombshell girlfriend who had practically sat on his lap during Christmas dinner? To top it off, he’d decided he didn’t want to move to Atlanta. He didn’t think it was fair he had to give up his job for mine.
Truthfully, I wasn’t as torn up about our breakup as I should have been, not that I would ever tell anyone that. I guess it said something, though. There had been only one man I’d ever been truly heartbroken over. That man was the reason I was thinking of turning the car around. But how often would I really see Kane? He would be up on the executive level doing his thing, and I would be in the lab doing mine. And when I did have to attend meetings, I would ignore him. I definitely wouldn’t think that age had made him more attractive. Nor would I remember what it was like to run my hands through his thick brown hair, or the way his chocolate caramel eyes could see right through me. For sure, I wouldn’t dwell on the way his kisses could set my soul on fire and the fact that no matter how I’d tried to find someone to light the flames again, I’d only ever felt a few sparks and maybe an ember or two.
Kane needed to marry one of his supermodels and start going to see her family for the holidays. Better yet, he should find a different company to work for. He would never reach his goal of becoming a CEO of a Fortune 500 company by the time he was forty-five if he stayed at Armstrong Labs. Unfortunately, that honor would be mine. And the first order of business when I became CEO would be to fire him.
I really needed to stop thinking about him. We were over. So over. And I was no longer the awkward girl who got her hand stuck in her bra while retrieving cake crumbs. Okay, so things like that still happened to me. Even last Christmas, in front of the man himself, I’d had a little mishap when my sleeve had caught on fire as I’d reached for the rolls and had gotten too close to the candle’s flame. Of course, Kane had been the first to spring into action. He’d thrown a glass of water on me, then had peered at me with that look he used to give me that said, “You are so adorable.” Oh, how I longed to loathe him. Somehow, I never could.
Note to self: buy only fire-retardant clothing, and don’t eat cake in front of Kane. In fact, don’t do anything in front of him.
When I hit I-20, I stepped on the gas. I might as well get it over with. Eight years ago, I’d realized dreams were just that—dreams. There was no use second-guessing myself now.
