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Lord ‘a’ mercy.
It had been ten years since the man before her had told her he loved her, promised her the world, offered her everything she ever wanted on a platter. Then he ripped out her heart and stomped on it, a grin on his face for her trouble.
Oh no. Oh no, no, no!
He flinched, his sexy as all heck smirk slipping a little bit. Shoot, she must’ve said that out loud. Then again, she didn’t give a cat’s whiskers if the man heard her muttering her shock and displeasure under her breath. He deserved to know his presence was unwanted. Actually, he deserved much more than that. Like a swift kick in the pants.
Too bad she didn’t have the time nor inclination to stand around letting all that old hate and hurt to surface.
“Hello, Calliope.”
Her name in his mouth was like a curse falling from pretty, poisonous lips. He had no right to put her name in his lying, cheating mouth.
“Keep my name out of your mouth,” she sneered, the collar on her dress shirt feeling awfully tight all of a sudden. “You don’t have the right to speak my name nor to me.”
Ethan didn’t seem moved by her vitriol, only pinning her with a stare that said nothing. Raising his ham sized fist, he flattened it and reached out to her as if to touch her.
She took a big step back. He would never touch her again.
Not like any man has touched you since him anyway, she mentally snarked. Not that she hadn’t tried, but being a full-time mom and working to keep a roof over their heads with only a high school and then junior college education, she had little time for romance or bed acrobatics. There had been a few men who’d tempted her into first and second dates, but none of them had lit that spark inside her that told her he would be worth the risk.
Only one man had ever done that, and that risk had been too high a price to pay.
Ethan reached out again, his hand stopping before he could touch her, his fingers curling into his palm…like he wanted to touch her, but he was stopping himself.
She took another step back, her gaze never leaving his cursed, gorgeous face.
Why aren’t you stepping right over to your car and getting the heck out of here?
Curiosity. Plain and simple. She wanted to know why he was there, and what the heck he thought he could say to her after all these years. Yeah, she was asking for trouble…but she was also deserving of some damn answers.
Answers? He said he loved you, lied to you, then cheated on you when you needed him the most.
“It’s good to see you, Callie,” he drawled, his deep voice deeper and smoother and sexier than she remembered. But it still had the power to light up her insides like daylight LEDs. “It’s been a long time.”
“You don’t say,” she snapped without thinking.
The man had the audacity to grin at her, like he hadn’t done her dirty then gone on to earn millions while she and their daughter lived off of ramen noodles, canned tuna, and misfit fruits and vegetables.
Angrier than she’d been in—you guessed it—ten years, she hissed at him like a cornered cat.
“Come on, Callie, don’t be like that,” he pleaded, his voice soft and coaxing, like he was trying to get her to lay on her back so he could stroke her belly.
Or stab her in the heart.
“Shove it up your ass, Brass!” she growled, raised both hands to flip him a double bird, then turned on her heels and strode away. The curse word slipped from her mouth with ease…but she’d pray for forgiveness later. The word fit the predicament.
Hurrying to her lime green, two door hatchback, she opened the door, jumped in, and turned the key in the ignition. Thankfully, the twenty-year-old beater car didn’t kick it in that moment because she needed to be as far away from that man as she could get.
She backed out of her parking spot, shifted into drive, then practically burned rubber from the bank parking lot—not once looking back in his direction. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of another millisecond of her attention.
Pulling onto the four-lane highway that acted as Jackson Key’s main drag, she let heaving breaths she been holding in finally escape. Yep. She was hyperventilating. Maybe she was having a panic attack. Maybe she’d had one in the bank and had hallucinated that whole confrontation on the sidewalk, and she would snap out of it and it would have all been a waking nightmare.
Her brain disagreed with her, flooding her with too many details for it too have been a figment of her imagination.
The sight of Ethan…the heat radiating from his huge, hard body…the scent of him that still lingered in her nose…and the timbre of his voice as it sent shock waves of long dead desire through her blood.
It had been all too real.
She had no idea what the hades Ethan Brass was doing in Jackson Key, but she was determined to avoid him for as long as possible. The town wasn’t all that big, but she had no plans to go much of anywhere besides work and the apartment she and Lexi shared with Maeve.
No. There was no reason to assume she’d run into Ethan Brass again. She’d hide out until he left town—because that’s what he did, leave.
How hard could it be to avoid the man who’d broken her heart then abandoned her and their daughter? It wasn’t like he didn’t have a life to get back to in New York, right? It wasn’t like Ethan Brass was in town to take up where he left off ten years ago. That was insane. There was no possible way that NFL MVP Ethan Brass was there for a second chance.
