Jesus Christ. What am I doing?
She wrenched her mouth away from his, and flattening her palms against his shoulders, shoved. Desperation, pain and grief lent her the strength his kiss had robbed from her. Chest heaving, she stumbled past him and lurched for her bed, a rough sob ripping free.
I can’t… I can’t…
“Hayden…” Griffin rasped.
“No!” Wrapping her arms around herself, she shook her head, sinking to the mattress that only minutes ago had been warm and musky with their lovemaking. Now the tangled sheets mocked her naïveté, her foolish dreams of happily ever after with this man. “No,” she repeated, squeezing her eyes shut against the sting of moisture. A few minutes. That’s all she needed. Then he would be gone, and she could drown in the tears. Just a few more minutes. “You’ve had your one-for-the-road fuck. Go.”
“Baby,” he whispered, brushing his fingertips over her jaw.
And for a moment, she trembled under the caress. For a moment, allowed herself to believe she meant something to him.
She was an idiot.
A masochistic idiot.
“Don’t call me that. Don’t ever call me that again,” she said, voice cracking. Dammit, the tears. One escaped and rolled down her cheek. “Get out.”
His hand fell from her face, but for a long beat of time, he didn’t move. His warm, solid presence reached out to her like a damn tease, taunting her with what she couldn’t have. Just as she parted her lips to scream at him to get the fuck out, he shifted, taking his heat with him.
She didn’t open her eyes. Not when she heard the rustle of his clothes as he finished dressing. Not when the bedroom door creaked open. Not when the echo of heavy footsteps disappeared.
Not when she curled up on the sheets where his scent still lingered.
Not when the sobs tore free, leaving a hole inside her that would never be filled again.
2
Five years later
Anaked blonde walks into a bar with a poodle under one arm and a two-foot salami under the other…
Hayden frowned. What the hell was the rest of that joke?
She lifted the mug of tepid, dark brown beer, sniffed its yeasty scent, and lowered the glass to the scarred table with no small amount of disgust.
Hell, it didn’t matter. The joke was funny inBreakfast Clubwhen Judd Nelson was crawling through an air vent during Saturday detention. Not so much when she sat in a Florida dive bar that looked like something straight off the set of a biker B-movie. With said bikers eyeing her as if she were either a narc or serving up the same thing as the skinny blonde with the dark roots, double-D cups and denim skirt up to her See You Next Tuesday. And from the frequent trips to the dingy hallway that led to the restrooms, the woman either had a bladder the size of a pea, or she was serving up pussy like Waffle House hash browns.
And the heat. God. She tugged on the collar of her T-shirt, praying for even tiniest bit of circulation to cool her damp skin.
She lived in Texas so she was accustomed to hot-as-hell, but damn, Florida, with its smothering, almost tropical humidity, was a whole different animal. And with her curls starting to tighten into a big ass mane, she probably resembled one of those animals. Son-of-a-bitch, she’d only been in the Sunshine State for four hours, and she already hated it. If not for the work assignment that had sent her to this little backwater town and bar, she and her afro would be getting the hell outta Dodge.
Or Blackpool, Florida.
Why anyone with brains, ambition, or a need for a damn Big Mac would voluntarily settle in this wrong turn off I-10 stumped the hell out of her. Seriously. Not. One. McDonald’s. From the looks of the clientele in this shit hole of a bar they obviously didn’t give a damn about a healthy lifestyle. So that meant the town was just as she’d called it when she’d almost driven right past it: Fucked.
And didn’t that just sum up the plethora of reasons why she was sitting in this godforsaken bar in this godforsaken town?
She’d earned a Bachelor’s in Managerial Studies and an M.B.A. in Finance. At twenty-six years old, she was the personal assistant to one of the most powerful businessmen in the state of Texas—hell, the whole country. Yet, she’d been reduced to a pseudo-bounty hunter for his wayward son.
Not just any son, though.
Griffin Sutherland.
Her first lover. The man she’d once loved with all the passion of a too-stupid-to-live girl. The man who’d broken her heart and walked out on her without a backward glance or a word in five years.
Yep. Fucked.
