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She breaks our gaze, and I crack my neck before taking a large swig of my drink, trying to concentrate on the warm trail that it blazes down to my stomach instead of the warmth that’s there from seeing her again.
She’s more beautiful than I remember.
Tanner slaps his hand onto my shoulder. “Four years and you still haven’t forgotten about her. Take it from someone who knows… You never will, Buddy.” He squeezes my tense muscle, looking at me with pity. “So do us all a favor and go and fucking talk to her. You look like a dog that’s been kicked.”
I grunt, gazing back to where Sophie is standing with her friend, who’s one of Logan’s investors. When he received Sophie’s name on the guest list as a plus one, the bastard took great delight in telling me that the first woman who’s ever knocked me back would be coming tonight. A woman my friends all know I couldn’t stop thinking about.
The only woman who has ever held my interest. Maybe because of her wit, her drive, and her beauty. Or because of her smart mouth. I don’t understand it. But I know that she’s the only woman I’ve still thought about years after a date. Thought about enough to have an unwelcome fist of jealousy grip my stomach when Dax told me the name of the lawyer who helped him out last year when he got arrested. A fist thatonly tightened when Rose added that she’d heard she was no longer single.
Thatwoman.
Sophie Havers.
“Will it get your ugly face off my case if I do?” I quip to Tanner.
“Absolutely,” he lies smoothly.
His tired eyes light up as I stand from the stool. Lucky fucker has just had his third kid. He might look and feel like shit. But he’s happy. I’ve known him long enough to tell. He never looked like this before Rachel. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t jealous. He knows I want all that. I’m the last one of our group who hasn’t gotten someone special. And kids. Fuck, I want kids. Maybe that’s not a normal thing for a thirty-five-year-old man to dream about. But I don’t give a fuck what’s normal. I want the wife. The sexy pregnancy belly. The tiny babies. The crazy kids racing around. I want it all. And I’m going to be the most devoted father there is.
I throw Tanner one last scowl, which he chuckles at, then take my time weaving across the room. I don’t head straight for her. Instead, I move to the wall at the edge of the busy room. She’s no longer talking to Dax and Rose. But her friend is still with her.
I sip my whiskey as the two of them talk. Her friend closes her eyes and tilts her head up as if she’s listening to an imaginary sound while she twirls a crystal bracelet around on her wrist. When she opens her eyes, she searches around the room until she sees me. A wide smile overtakes her face, and she whispers something to Sophie before disappearing into the crowd.
Sophie’s eyes lock onto mine and I roll my tongue over my bottom lip as she walks over to me purposefully, full of that same confidence I admired all those years ago.
“Mr. Harper.”
Fuck, the way she says that has blood rushing south inside my body.
“Ms. Havers. It’s been a long time.”
She studies me, her eyes glassy and her cheeks flushed as she sips on her drink.
“It has. How are you?”
There it is. The polite, practiced, clipped tone. All it does is make me want to break through it and dig deeper.First woman to ever turn me down.
“Breaking my restraining order it would seem. What’s the rule? Not to be within one kilometer of you?” I smirk.
She shrugs. “They vary. I’m surprised you adhered so well to it. Didn’t have you down as being such a good boy.”
My dick twitches in my pants.
“You know it was a joke?” Her voice softens.
“Was it?” I hold her emerald eyes. “You sounded pretty clear on what you wanted. You were too busy to date.”
She looks away from me, small lines pinching around her eyes as she swallows, and a frown settles over her glossy lips.
“Does he deserve you?”
I might have only met her twice, but I know the small talk is just polite bullshit to her. I learned that much from our meeting. And also, I want to know. A self-torturing part of me wants to know about the man who made her change her stance on dating when I failed. He must be something special. Another lawyer, perhaps? A politician? A fucking prince?
“No.” She smiles sadly. “No, he didn’t.”
And just like that, my self-torturing part does a lap of merry victory through my body before the realization of what she means takes it out like a baseball bat to the knees.
“What?” I grit, my hand clenching tight around my glass as it freezes mid-air on the way to my lips. “What did he do to y—”
