“So this motherfucker walks into my office like that shit is my fault, you know? So I say to the guy, I say…”

I’m not listening. I’m looking at him, but I’m looking right through Jeff, the senior analyst sitting across the small table from me, and my thoughts are a million miles away from whatever he’s talking about.

…My thoughts are always a million miles away these days.

In my lap, over my lily-white Black Halo Jackie sheath dress, my thumb rubs against my bare ring finger. Like every time I do this, there’s this second of panic that somehow I’ve lost the ring before my brain remembers that it’s been gone for a year. But there’s my thumb rubbing at the ghost of it. You know what they say about old habits.

The thing is, I did lose the ring. But I lost it purposefully, yanking it off in a whirlwind of hurt and betrayal and tears, cursing his name before winding back and throwing it as far off of our front porch as I could. I looked for it later, but I knew it was useless. The ring was gone, lost forever on the sandy and rocky shore of the Pacific.

Lost and gone, like Brooks.

We’d been married for a whopping two months when my father approached him with the job offer to run a crew on one of his rigs. The pay was fantastic, but the time commitment…

I remember flinching when he told me.

Three years. The man of my dreams, the love of my life, the one person I wanted to grow old with, and have a family with—I’d be without him for three freaking years.

I knew the job offer wasn’t kindness. Not from my father. It was a wedge. It was another way for him to try and break Brooks and I apart—part of his ongoing crusade to prove to me that I’d made the wrong choice. One more way for him to try and convince me Brooks wasn’t “good enough” for me. That his being not of “our world” made him somehow unsuitable.

I’d pleaded with my husband not to take the offer. I begged, and cried, and told him we didn’t need the money. Not with the trust fund I had waiting for me, and not with the job offer looming at Carson Financial. But Brooks wouldn’t listen. Or couldn’t, maybe. My father had found the one weak spot in our armor, and he’d gone for it hard.

It was the fact that I came from old money, and that Brooks came from nothing. I didn’t give one single shit about that. I didn’t care, and all I ever wanted in life was him. We had a simple life together. A simple house we’d made into a home together, north of San Francisco, and near the water.

But there was a fire in Brooks that even my pleas couldn’t put out. It was the urge to provide, and my father exploited that fire with every fiber of his being. And so, the man I loved, the man whose eyes made my pulse skip, and whose hands made me shiver and moan, and whose heart was my rock, left.

At first, we met up whenever we could. I flew to meet him, or him to me. We wrote emails all the time, texted all day, video-chatted every night. A year went by, and then a second. And the distance couldn’t touch the love we had.

And then one day, it all stopped cold. One day, my texts went unanswered, my calls declined, and my emails lost somewhere in internet land. A day turned into many days, which turned into a week. And I was in full panic breakdown mode going out of my mind trying to get an answer about what the hell was going on, when I finally got one short little email from him, like a bullet to the heart.

There was another girl. He claimed he’d never felt this way, and that he wouldn’t be held back from finding “true” happiness, and that he was leaving me for her.

And that was it. One email, four lines, and my life as I knew it was over.

There was darkness for a while. But after that, I turned the fury and the pain into fuel. I pushed hard at work and took on twice the clients I was expected to. I rose through the ranks, moving from junior to the senior commodities trader I was now at Carson Financial, the hedge fund I worked for.

And that pretty much brings us here, to the upscale restaurant in the North Beach area. Glittering candlelight, expensive cocktails, white tablecloths, waiters in suits. And Jeff, the senior analyst, sitting across the table from me, his eyes lingering on me long enough for me to know this isn’t just two co-workers “getting a drink” after work.

Jeff isn’t a bad looking guy. He’s quite handsome, actually, in that monied, high-class way. And yet, he’s also a total smarmy prick. Rich, handsome, and a douchebag, and for all intents and purposes, I’m out on a date with him.

…The thought sours in my stomach.

The thing is, I know I should feel fine about this. After all, it’s been a year. A year without so much as a peep from Brooks after he ran off with the other girl. My hands clench under the tablecloth, the half of the gin martini I’ve already had boiling through my veins as the rage flares up again.

Jeff should be an easy distraction, and I can’t think of a single female friend who would at all begrudge me this one. After all, he’s hot, rich, and arrogant—all things that would make for a perfect way to finally move on from my shattered heart. I’m not looking for love, and I know damn well Jeff is after one thing, and it sure as hell isn’t a relationship.

This should be the perfect way to finally move on. One night with the asshole analyst who works down the hall from me, so I can finally move on from the man who wrecked me.

…Except, I already know that’s not going to happen.

It’s been a year, and it hasn’t happened. Men have asked me out. Men have bought me drinks. I actually went on one “date” with a guy six months ago, but I spent the entire dinner feeling like I was a horrible cheater, and I excused myself early to go home alone.

It’s the horrible fact that a year later, I’m not “over” or “moved on from” Brooks, because the truth is, I don’t hate him. I can’t hate him. It’s like there’s some part of me that’s holding on to the man I knew. The rough-around-the-edges guy from the other side of the tracks. The one with the smile that stole my heart and melted my panties. The one with the chiseled, hardened, muscled body, and the pure adoration in his eyes. And try as I might, and as much as I know I should, a year later, I still can’t let go of that.

I know I should hate him. But that’s impossible while my heart still loves him.

“Leanna.”

I blink, realizing it’s the fourth time in a row Jeff’s said my name. I blink again drop out of my thoughts, focusing finally on the man sitting across from me.

“Sorry,” I frown, my mouth twisting.

“Bored?”

“What? No, I—” I smile plastically, tucking an errant lock of blonde hair behind my ear before clasping my hands on top of the white linen tablecloth. “No, just thinking through a work thing.”

Jeff smiles. But it’s not a Brooks smile. It’s not that smile that makes my heart skip a beat, or makes the teasing, tinging heat bloom between my thighs and tickle up my spine. No, Jeff’s is more of a predatory, practiced smile.

“What if we got out of here.”

I blink. “Excuse me?”

“C’mon, Leanna,” he purrs, reaching across the table. And before I can move them, he takes my hands in his. “We’ve been dancing around this for months.”

This is new to me.

“Jeff, I think you might have—”

“I know the story, Leanna,” he says flatly. “Look, your husband took off, and that sucks. But there’s no need to join the nunnery, you know? I mean, I’m here, you’re here. You’re divorced and hot as fuck, and my condo is two blocks from here.”

My eyes go wide, and my jaw drops a little at his brazenness.

“Okay, Jeff, I think—”

“C’mon baby,” he drawls out, his eyes locked on mine. “Wouldn’t I be the perfect way to get back at your ex?”

I hate that I hesitate, because I can see instantly that it makes Jeff think he’s found a foothold or that he’s started to wear down my walls. The truth of it though, is that I’m pausing because of his choice of words.

Ex.

The problem is, Brooks isn’t my ex. Legally, we’ve never divorced. I kept waiting for papers, seeing as he was off with this new woman apparently, but they never came. My father’s been pushing me to file myself for months now, but I can’t bring myself to do it. It’s the same reason I can’t bring myself to hate Brooks.

It’s because part of me won’t let me believe that it’s even real.

“Jeff, I—”

I’m about to explain it to him. I’m about to tell him about how I’m not actually divorced, like that even matters to a prick like Jeff, thank him for the drink, and get up and leave. But just when I’m about to do all of that, something draws my eyes. Slowly, I look past Jeff towards the front door of the restaurant, and suddenly, the whole world melts away.

Because suddenly, fifty feet away, are the bluest, most piercing, most heart-stoppingly gorgeous blue eyes I’ve ever seen in my life, and they’re looking right at me.

…And I know those eyes, because years ago, I fell in love with the man they belonged to. And somehow, a year after he vanished from my life, Brooks O’Neil is standing right in front of me, looking at me across the room with a look of pure possession in his eyes.

It can’t be him, but yet, it absolutely is. He looks older. Hardened. And he’s wearing a suit. My mouth goes dry. My pulse quickens. My eyes widen and my skin tingles, and I blush fiercely at the feel of the slick heat that instantly blooms traitorously between my thighs. Our gazes lock, and I’m frozen as the ghost that haunts my heart suddenly storms right towards me, fire blazing in his eyes.