The plan was, after getting Ivy down, I’d change into one of my newest purchases and wait in bed for my husband to come home so he could unwrap his new gift.
I was feeling good about things, hopeful even, that this would be the start of getting us back to where we once were. Pushing through the door of the bistro, I had a smile on my face and a bit of a swing in my hips as I pictured Alex’s reaction.
My good mood remained in place as the hostess grabbed a menu and led the way to my table. As I followed, my attention drifted, taking in the other diners who were enjoying their meals. I came to stop in the middle of the dining area when I spotted a familiar curtain of dark brown hair at a table near the back.
Krista hadn’t been answering my calls, so it felt somewhat serendipitous that I’d happen to run into my best friend on the day I needed her most. This was the perfect opportunity to show her what I’d bought. I started toward her but jerked to a halt two steps later when I spotted her lunch companion.
The arm I’d been lifting to wave slowly lowered to my side and the smile fell from my lips when I saw him lean in close and press his lips to hers in a kiss that was so not suitable for public.
Realization slammed into me like a wrecking ball. Everything started to make perfect sense. The pieces snapped together like a jigsaw puzzle, revealing a picture I’d been too blind to see before now. Alex’s increasingly late hours, his interest in me waning until almost completely gone, the unexpected business trips out of town . . . and the fact that Krista had been avoiding me more and moee over the last few months.
“Ma’am?” the hostess asked. “Are you okay?”
I absolutely wasn’t.
Because I had just realized my husband and best friend were having an affair.
Chapter One
Hayden
I never thought I’d be in this position: a thirty-three-year-old, freshly-divorced, single mother whose husband had spent the better part of a year banging her best friend behind her back.
In the past few months, I’d taken hit after hit from those two assholes, starting with the fact it hadn’t been just sex: they’d been in an actual relationship. Then there was the hit that came when the man I’d been married to, the man I’d loved with my whole heart, basically laid the demise of our relationship at my feet. I let myself go. I cared about our daughter more than him. I stopped making an effort to look good for him. Basically, it was my fault he no longer found me sexually attractive and had tripped, landing dick-first into another woman. I sustained another hit when he informed me he wasn’t in love with me anymore; he loved Krista and wanted to build a life with her.
But the absolute worst, the hit that burned like lashes across my skin, had come when he confessed that she was pregnant and they intended to marry soon after our divorce was finalized.
Hearing that she’d so easily given him something I’d struggled tirelessly for years to give him, enduring one heartbreak after another before it finally happened, had been devastating.
But that was the past. The life I thought I was destined to live until my last breath was over. The house we’d started our family in was now empty, waiting for its new owners to move in. My girl and I were about to start on a new adventure, but before we could set off, my ex and his new fiancée were enjoying one of their scheduled overnight visits with my baby.
I spent the evening in our little hotel room, trying to distract myself from imagining them playing the perfect little family by slathering on a face mask, giving myself a pedicure, and binging on episodes of The Office and Schitt’s Creek. Unfortunately, none of that worked, and before long my mind started to wander down some not-so-cheery paths.
What few friends I had before everything went down decided to hitch their wagon to Krista, so there was no one I could call to vent to. I hadn’t had a job since before Ivy was born, so there were no co-workers I could confide in. I was well and truly alone, and the knowledge of that was suffocating. It didn’t take long to get sick of my own company, and screaming into my pillow had gotten old really fast. So when the walls felt like they were closing in on me, I grabbed my purse and room key and booked it out of there, heading for the pub a few blocks down from my temporary home.
The air smelled of hops and spice and polished wood when I stepped into the bar. Alex would never set foot in a place like this, and for that reason I immediately found the place charming.
It was nothing like the stuffy wine or tapas bars and five-star restaurants I’d been forced to suffer through with his insufferable colleagues or asshole clients. It was a place where you kicked back with some greasy, carb-loaded bar food and a couple of beers, the latter of which I was in desperate need.
I made my way to the bar. Spotting a stool near the curve on the far end, I hooked my purse and jacket on the back, hefted myself up, leaned my elbows onto the scarred wood top, and looked toward the bartender.
He glanced down the length of the bar and caught my eye when I waved to him, tipping his chin, indicating he’d be with me in just a second.
“Bet it wouldn’t take me more than three tries to guess your drink.”
At the deep, husky voice, I swiveled in my seat to face the man on the barstool beside mine and nearly fell out of my seat at the first glimpse of him. His light brown hair was long on top and cut close on the sides. It looked like the only styling he did was to drag a hand through it to brush it back off his forehead. Stunning grassy green eyes smiled down at me from beneath a thick fan of dark lashes. Those eyes and the man’s sharp cheekbones might have made him look almost too pretty, but his bristly square jaw and Roman nose gave him a rugged appeal. His full, plump lips were turned up in a tiny grin that showed off a perfectly straight smile.
He had the shoulders of a professional linebacker, with thick, rounded biceps that strained the sleeves of his gray Henley. This dude was either one with the gym or had the kind of job that required serious manual labor, but either way, holy God, did he have a body. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen such a good-looking man in real life. On TV and in movies, sure. But never up close and personal in real life. He couldn’t possibly be talking to me.
I glanced over my shoulder, wondering if there was some tall goddess of a woman behind me, but there wasn’t.
Turning back to him, my lips quirked up in a puzzled smile. “I’m sorry?”
“Your drink,” he stated, his grin curving even higher. “I said I bet it would only take three tries to guess what you’re gonna order.”
What was happening? “You want to bet that you can get my drink order right?”
“Yep. It’s kind of a talent of mine.”
I felt my own smile grow as well as I asked, “All right. Say I take this bet. What do you get if you win?”
He looked up thoughtfully. “How about your name?”
“Seems like a lot of trouble to go through for a name when you could just ask.” Was I flirting? Holy shit! I was totally flirting!
Turning on his stool to face me full on, he rested an elbow on the bar top and leaned just the slightest bit closer, “Well, there’s also the added perk that I’ll get it right and you’ll be so impressed you won’t tell me to leave you the hell alone.”