MAGNOLIA GRANTHAM

“You have a good weekend?” Skylar Van Cleef walks past my office with Addison right behind her.

“You look rested.” Addison brings a coffee mug to her lips. Her skin is the perfect shade of goddess—bronze. St. Thomas must’ve been good to her. “I like that. Looks good on you.”

I pull in a heavy breath, as if I’m agreeing with them, and nod. I’m not sure how rested I could look. I haven’t slept a full night in days. “It was a very lovely weekend. Addison, your place is breathtaking.”

“We got lucky,” she says, taking another sip. “Wilder knew someone. It was a pocket listing. That place would’ve been snatched up in the first twenty-four if they listed it for what we paid.”

Skylar turns to Addison, batting her on the shoulder. “Don’t forget, Theo and I are borrowing it this weekend.”

“Hopefully, we’ll get to use the place sometime this month.” Addison winks at Skylar. Once upon a time, Skylar was her assistant. Then she worked her way up and married Wilder’s cousin along the way. Now they’re family. “Wilder was eager to get back to work. Ten days in St. Thomas without his laptop was too much for him.”

“You didn’t let him take his laptop?” I ask.

Addison grins, shaking her head. “Nope. This was a work-free vacation. He’s lucky I let him take his cellphone. I caught him checking his email a few times the first few days. Made him go cold turkey after that.”

Wilder is a ruthless businessman, commanding respect the instant he walks in the door. But he loves his wife more than anything. Addison comes before everything else, including their multimillion-dollar real estate empire.

“You’re good.” Skylar lifts her brows, picking at her pink polish. “I’m impressed. Theo would look at me like I had two heads if I made him take a technology hiatus.”

“Vacations are exceptions. You should try it this weekend,” Addison says before turning back to me. “So what all did you do in Montauk?”

I should’ve been prepared for this question. Guess I’ve been so preoccupied, it didn’t occur to me how I was going to answer it.

“Um,” I say. “I got there Friday, and someone else was there.”

I glance up at Addison. Her eyes crinkle.

“Xavier Fox,” I say with meticulous detail.

Skylar’s jaw falls. She didn’t know me two years ago, but she knows of Xavier, and she knows we had a falling out.

“How’d that happen?” Addison glances up at the ceiling. “Sweetie, I’m so sorry. Wilder must’ve lent out the house without telling me.”

“It’s fine. I still had a nice time.” I force a smile to cover the sick swirl in my belly. That gorgeous weekend in the Hamptons, the one that should’ve rejuvenated me and brought me back from the dead, left me consumed with confusion and tasting bitter melancholy instead. “He left on Saturday. I still had two whole days to myself.”

“Was he cordial?” Her chin tucks, her eyes softening. Wilder and Xavier are friends, and she knew something went down the second I left my partnership with Xavier and came running to her new agency. She never asked questions, though at the time, she was probably too excited to sign me on to care what happened.

“There were . . . moments.” I try to be as diplomatic as possible.

“Knowing him, I believe that.” Addison chuckles. “I’m so sorry about the mix-up. We’ll make it up to you, okay? Let me talk to Wilder, and we’ll find another weekend for you that is one hundred percent yours.”

I wave her away. “Don’t worry about it. Really.”

“Speak of the devil.” Addison pulls her phone out. “Wilder, hey.”

The second she walks away, Skylar rushes inside my office and shuts the door. “Tell me everything.”

“I don’t feel like talking about it.” I shrug and face my computer, scanning my emails.

“Aw, come on.” Skylar sulks, plopping into a guest chair. “I know something happened between you two. You rarely talk about him unless it’s in the professional sense, and even then, your body gets all tense and your eyes get all squinty. Tell me. I’m not leaving until you tell me what happened. Then and now.”

I know Skylar, and I know she won’t leave until I tell her, and I don’t have the energy to keep protesting anyway.

“We used to be a team,” I say. “We worked for Bliss Agency’s Tribeca office.”

“Right. That much I already knew.”

“We were inseparable. Did everything together. Got close. Got a little too close after that.” I bury my head in my hands, inhaling through the break between my fingers. I lift my gaze to her. “We went to a national broker’s conference in Tallahassee. Something happened that weekend. I don’t know. It was different. He was tender with me. Instead of razzing me and throwing quick one-liners at me, he was quiet. He’d slip his arm around me. Order for me at dinner. Our dynamic shifted. I don’t think either of us realized it was happening until it was too late.”

“Too late?”

“We slept together that night. For the first time. In my hotel room.” My voice is weighted with tiny shreds of regret. If I could take back that moment in exchange for our friendship, I would.

“And?”

“It was amazing. It was everything anyone would want it to be. Intense. Passionate. Sweet.” I shake my head. “He told me that night that he’d been in love with me for years.”

“And you never knew?”

“Never.” I lock eyes with Sky. “All that time, I never allowed myself to make him an option. And when he told me how he felt, I realized I felt the same. I’d just been burying it over and over, deeper and deeper, until I could hardly feel it anymore. But after we made love, everything surfaced stronger than ever. I told him I loved him too.”

Skylar’s head tilts, her lips spreading into a sweet smile though her eyes offered sympathies.

“I’ve never said that to anyone but him.” I sit up in my chair, crossing my legs. I can’t get comfortable. “I don’t talk about emotions or feelings or lovey-dovey anything. But I poured my heart out all night, lying there in his arms like some love-sick idiot.”

“Okay, now I’m scared.” Skylar leans forward. “Where did you guys take a left turn?”

I suck in a long breath. It isn’t something I enjoy thinking about, never mind discussing.

“The next morning, I got up and got in the shower. He said he’d meet me downstairs for breakfast. The hotel we were staying at had a continental breakfast. It wasn’t anything fancy, but all the attending brokers liked to meet down there and chat each morning before the conference started back up.” I swallow the strain in my throat, tensing my stomach. “I went downstairs as soon as I was ready. I spotted Xavier sitting at a table with three other guys. They were brokers from here in the city. We knew them professionally. Anyway, I came around the corner and heard my name. So I stopped. And, maybe I shouldn’t have, but I listened in to their conversation.”

“Oh, no.” Skylar’s hand flies to her mouth, her blue eyes widening.

“I heard every word.” My neck heats. My breath shallows.

“Let me guess. He was detailing your entire night together like some horny frat boy.”

“Not quite.” It hurts to swallow. “One of the guys saw him leaving my room and asked him what happened. Xavier told them I’d been in love with him for years, and he just wanted to get some. Said I wasn’t his type. That I was clingy and needy and obsessive. None of those things were remotely true, Skylar. He made me sound like this pathetic, sad, lonely girl. He implied that sleeping with me was some kind of pity fuck. He seduced me, Sky. Then he sold me out.”

My eyes burn, and I blink away the threat of tears.

“Why would he do that?” Her nose scrunches. “It makes no sense.”

“Because he wanted to get some and he’s a great salesman. That’s why. And the second his friends came around, he showed his true colors. The biggest mistake of my life was believing he was different from any other guy. He made me think I was special.”

My bottom lip trembles. I bite it until it floods with pain and makes the sensation stop.

“If he was your best friend,” she says, “there’s got to be more to it. Are you sure you didn’t walk into the middle of a conversation that maybe wasn’t about you? Maybe they were talking about another girl.”

“How many Magnolias do you know?” I cock an eyebrow. “Anyway, I just don’t understand how he could do something so horrible and then claim that he still loves me. Takes a lot of nerve to stick the knife in and give it a good twist a couple of years later.”

“Wait.” Skylar places her hand in the air. “He told you he still loves you?”

“Oh. Yeah.” I roll my eyes. “He didn’t mean it. He was just being . . . Xavier. He says things because he knows how to get a reaction out of people.”

She licks her lips, glancing to her left, concentrating. “You’ve got to talk to him, Magnolia. Something’s not adding up. Call him. Call him and meet with him again. You two need to talk about this.”

“Not happening.”

“Why not?”

“Because if I show him an ounce of kindness, he’ll just weasel his way back into my life one sales pitch at a time. He knows what to say to get under my skin. I know what I heard. There’s no excuse for that. I refuse to let him talk himself out of that.”

“Does he know you heard it?”

“Doesn’t matter. He said it. That’s all that matters.”

“I still think you should call him. Find out why.”

I stand up, reaching for my purse and phone. “I’m going out for some fresh air, and then I have a showing in an hour. I’m done discussing Xavier, okay? Please don’t ask me about him again.”