Page 17 of Flirting with 40

You condescending cow.

“My boyfriend will be there.” My answer is too fast, and I inwardly cringe at how pseudo desperate it sounds.

“Boyfriend?”

“Yes. Boyfriend.”

I offer a catty smile and then silently freak out the entire time I walk the length of the glass walls that house the conference room, knowing she’s staring at me.

I have no idea how in the hell I’m going to pull a boyfriend out of my ass for the retreat.

Maybe Kelsie was right. Maybe I’m sabotaging myself so that I have no other option but not to go.

It doesn’t help that, three hours after the fact, I’m still preoccupied by my lie. When I leave my office, hobo bag under one arm and cell phone held up to my ear, I cross the street completely distracted.

So distracted that, when I look up, I stop dead in my tracks the second I see them.

The person behind me bumps smack-dab into me, and a car that wants to use the turn lane I’m standing in honks its horn. It doesn’t matter, though, because all I see is them.

Paul is standing ten feet in front of me, looking as handsome as he ever did. His skin is tan, his hair is a little bit longer, and his typical white button-up shirt that I could never get him to veer from is gone. It’s been replaced by a silver one with its sleeves rolled up to the elbows and the collar unbuttoned some. He looks relaxed, and the grin spreading across his lips tells me he’s happy. I can’t remember the last time I made him look like that.

A pang hits me low in the gut. It doesn’t matter how much I hate him because I once loved him. I once adored him. I moved across the country and away from my family to start a life with him. I once put my dreams on hold—kids, the white picket fence, the whole Norman Rockwell existence—for him and his career aspirations.

All to be left with nothing.

So does it hurt to see him from afar? Hell yeah it does.

When he reaches to his left, all those pangs turn to a hand-trembling anger as he hooks his hand around the waist of the woman walking toward him. He pulls her into him and kisses her way too long. It’s the kind of public display of affection that makes anyone watching uncomfortable but also screams of intimacy and still-new love.

But I can’t move. I can’t look away. And when she steps back, I’m stunned by the sight of her. It’s the first time I’ve seen his new fiancée, and all I can think of is how much she looks like me . . . the me from twenty years ago.

As if Paul senses me the same as I sensed him, his eyes find mine. Our stares hold for a beat, his smile faltering and then widening as he presses a kiss to her cheek before pointing to me and calling out my name.

“Blakely!”

CHAPTER FIVE

Slade

“I love her to death . . . but, man . . .”

“What? You’re a grown man who needs his space?” Lane’s laugh comes through the connection.

“My own space. Silence without the constant badgering about who I’m dating, why the past chicks weren’t good enough, how I need to find a good woman to settle down with but only after she approves. Shit, Lane, I miss her till she’s here, but when she is, I’m ready to send her back home.”

“You don’t mean that,” my cousin says.

And he’s right. I don’t. I love my parents to death, but loving them to death and having my mother take it upon herself to move in for a few weeks while I’m on suspension from work is trying my patience.

Watcha doing? Where are you going? Whatever happened with What’s-Her-Name? The one with the blonde hair and crooked toes? How come you organized your kitchen drawers like this? It’s against the flow of the space.

“The questions are endless, but I’m not going to complain about the home-cooked meals and laundry service.”

“Bastard.” He snorts. “So, other than avoiding your mom, what have you been doing?”

“I’m working on a few papers for medical publications and journals. You know me—”

“You never could sit still.”