XAVIER FOX

Hot.

Damn.

“Magnolia, you didn’t have to change for me.”

I stand up as she struts down the open staircase in a string bikini the color of pale salt-water taffy, her dark hair cascading down her shoulders and back in untamed waves. A pair of black sunglasses rests atop her head, highlighting her delicate-featured face, and her lips are slicked in a sinful shade of red.

My cock twitches. She still does it for me.

Then again, she never really stopped doing it for me.

Magnolia Grantham was the only thing I ever wanted, and now she’s the one thing I can’t have.

It fucking kills me, but I’ll never cop to it. Not to her. If she won’t give me the time of day, I refuse to give her the satisfaction.

“Kindly stop staring.” A hint of her southern drawl is injected into her command. God, how I’ve missed it. Her hand brushes against the wooden railing as she hops down from the final step, adjusting her beach bag over her left shoulder. Her long legs stride toward the back door, her hips swaying in tandem. I concentrate on the two little indentations above her perfect, peach-shaped ass, imagining how they might feel under the pad of my thumbs if I were to grip her hips from behind.

“Going to the beach?”

She doesn’t answer.

“Don’t forget sunblock,” I call out, if only to antagonize her a little more.

She heads for the steps that lead to the grassy path, reaching in her bag and pulling out a brown bottle of Coppertone and holding it above her head.

At least she’s not completely ignoring me.

I catch a nap on an overstuffed sofa next to floor to ceiling windows, stuffing a pillow under my neck and letting the penetrating sun act as a blanket.

It’s peaceful here.

A guy could get used to this.

I figure a few more years of being in the top 1% of Manhattan brokers, and I’ll be able to nab a place of my own out here.

* * *

I wake cold. The sky is dark and music floats down the stairs. My phone tells me I was out cold for the last three hours.

The echo of clicking heels readies me for my archrival once more. I sit up, stretching my arms across my chest and then behind my head. The house is dark, but the faint glow from the foyer light illuminates the stairs just enough that I make out Magnolia’s slinky form.

She’s in some kind of preppy, high-waisted shorts get-up that shows off her long legs and hides the rest of her. Tonight she’s all legs. I know what that means.

“You staying in tonight?” Her question ends with a sarcastic lilt and a mocking smile.

“Yep. I’m staying in on a Friday night.”

Her eyes roll as she checks the interior of her clutch. “Do you know where the key safe is for the cars? Addison said it’s behind some seashell picture, but there are about fifty of those here, so—”

“Ah, she’s only nice when she needs something.” I rise, heading toward a grayscale portrait of a conch shell and pulling it from the wall to reveal a built-in safe. I punch in the code. “Take the Volvo.”

She squints. “Why do I get the Volvo?”

“Because I’m taking the Corvette.”

And the Volvo is safer.

Magnolia swipes the keys from my hand.

“Where are you going tonight?” I ask.

“Meeting a friend for drinks.” There’s no pause in her response, and it’s almost as if she were waiting for me to ask just so she could throw it in my face. I refuse to stoop to her level. I have a whole bevvy of women on speed dial in the Hamptons.

Beautiful women.

Connected, blue-blooded, well-bred women with pedigrees, because people in New England with old money breed their families like prized poodles.

None of them compare to her.

Magnolia Grantham is a bona fide Southern Belle with Louisiana manners and big city boldness, and I’ve yet to find another woman like her.

And fuck, I’ve looked. I spent an entire summer fucking any woman I could find with the winning combination of long legs, chestnut hair and a southern accent.

“Be safe, Mags.”

“Stop calling me Mags. Please.”

“Couldn’t if I tried.” I step into her space, brushing her hair away from her shimmering chocolate eyes. “You’ll always be Mags to me.”

We stand frozen for a moment, neither of us inhaling until she steps away and lunges for the door.

I wonder if she knows how hard it is to stand right fucking next to her and not lose my fingers in her hair, press her up against the wall, and smash her lips with mine.

One night.

For one whole night, Magnolia Grantham was mine. The next morning, after breakfast, she inexplicably wouldn’t speak two words to me. And when we got back to New York, she turned in her notice and joined the Van Cleef Agency.

All those years we’d worked together, I thought Magnolia was playing hard to get.

It turned out she was hard to get.

Correction—is still hard to get.

One of two things needs to happen this weekend: I need to fuck Magnolia Grantham one last time, or I need to fucking get her out of my system once and for all.

At the very least, I’m going to gift her with a punishing kiss, one to make her weak in the knees and filled with repentance. A man doesn’t pour his heart out to his best friend, declare his love for her, then watch her walk out of his life the next day without so much as an explanation.

She owes me. I’m going to make her sorry she was never mine.