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1
GEORGIA
An hourafter kissing Sebastian Finch, my lips burn.
Fifty-nine and a half minutes after slapping him across the face, my palm stings.
And the whole while, my thoughts are stuck on repeat:What have I done?
No, that’s not right. I should be asking,What didhedo?
The two-faced jerk. Sauntering up to me, grabbing me around the waist, and kissing me without permission? Overbearing, domineering, unbelievably rudepig.
Twenty-five or so years later, and Sebastian hasn’t changed a bit.
And me! Ogling his sculpture, thinking I finally understood art.Feelingsomething at the sight of that metal-and-wood hunk of abstract lawn ornament. Distracted by his square jaw and his strong throat and his stupid Texas twang. Melting in his arms like ice cream on a hot day, waiting to be licked up and savored.
I am such anidiot.
I slam a wine glass down onto my quartz countertop, arresting the movement at the last possible moment to keep from shattering the base. Then I glare at the intact glass, wishing I had courage enough to break it.
My hand trembles—still. This isn’t fair. Sebastian doesn’t get to waltz into my life and mess it up again. I left that too-small Texas town when I was eighteen. I left everyone behind, and I washappy. Now…
Red liquid glugs out of the nearest dark bottle and into my glass, splashing up the sides in an undignified manner. Derrick would have hated that. He’d have told me to control myself, to get a handle on my overwrought female emotions.
Ugh.
As if my ex-husband isn’t the most emotional person to grace the face of this planet. But when it’s anger, and when it comes from a man, it doesn’t count as emotion. He could rant and rave for minutes, hours on end, butIwas the hysterical one.Iwould be apologizing, soothing, placating.
Why is it that all the men in my life are such lecherous turds? What is it about me that screams,Pick her! She’ll love your ham-handed advances! She’ll be perfect as a live-in maid and personal cheerleader! She wants nothing more than to service your manly needs! Don’t worry about her wants or her needs or her ambitions. They can be swept up into a dustpan and dumped out the back door. In fact, she’ll do it herself. Sweeping is women’s work, after all.
What is it about me that makes men think I’m a damn doormat? I’m not! I’m a CEO, for crying out loud.
Well.FormerCEO. And whose fault is that? That weasel-faced, anger-management-needing bastard.
I taste none of the wine that slides down my throat in one quick shot and dump another quarter of the bottle into my glass.
“That kind of day, huh.”
I jump, turning to see a woman standing in my open front door.
Simone is a shortish, curvy redhead who seems to have taken a liking to me recently. Normal people would probably say, “Simone is my friend,” but friendship as a whole is so foreign a concept to me that I can’t quite help feeling nervous about her advances.
It’s like once I hit thirty, everyone around me grew out of having friends. I can’t blame them. I was busy with my career, with my marriage. Former friends had children, bought houses, moved away. I blinked, and ten years had passed—and I was alone. Hanging out was replaced with “networking” and loneliness.
Now I’m forty-three, and the landscape of female friendship is nothing short of bleak. Or it was, until I moved to Heart’s Cove.
Simone nudges the door open wider with the tips of her fingers, giving me an amused and slightly mystified look. “Didn’t even have time to close the door on your way to the wine rack. I can’t say I’ve never been there, but what brought this on today?”
I scowl over the rim of my glass and take an angry sip. “Sebastian Finch.”
“Ah.” She bumps the door closed with the generous curve of her hip, marches into my house, and grabs the bottle off the counter before inspecting the label with an expert’s eye.
“Glasses are up there.” I point to a cabinet beside the gigantic refrigerator that came with my enormous kitchen.
Stupid house. Why did I buy it? It’s way too big. It had to be on the outskirts of this stupid town, which hosts a stupid Fringe Festival, featuring stupid artists like Sebastian freaking Finch.
Fresh start—ha! I must be some kind of delusional. Now I have a huge house on the Northern California coast to take care of, when what I really want to do is turn into an ostrich and bury my head in the sand until I suffocate and die.
