Chapter Four

Saylor

My Instagram blew up. Yeah, I know you hear that a lot, and then when you check out the explosive account you find there’s a mild disruption before everything returns to normal. Not mine. The comments section was like a war zone, the followers split into factions.

One group said they’d forgive Rex and that I should have milked his indiscretion for diamonds or a weekend in Paris, then got over myself.

Another group said I should castrate him, with the more enthusiastic among them coming up with ideas for the best tools for the job, and exactly where to make the incision. Two offered to do it for me. Many unfollowed. Several insisted they’d been fucking Rex, too. I labeled them as trolls and refused to feed them, but deep down I couldn’t help wondering if there was truth in their lurid descriptions.

Without the wedding I’d become irrelevant, exactly the way Dom said I would.

I posted photos of me bravely getting on with my life. The park bench set up with a single takeout coffee and a book. My sparkling clean apartment. I created a luxury bath set up with candles, roses, a cupcake, glass of wine … for one.

That was the thing. My account had been based on romance, the dream, the stunning wedding, the happily ever after. My entire worth was in my ability to sell the fantasy all these women wanted. Cheating was not part of the fantasy. Neither was impending spinsterhood.

My photos were bland in both composition and execution.

My sponsors dropped me.

PR companies treated me like the Typhoid Mary of product placement. Nobody wanted to associate their brand with a person unable to keep their partner from cheating before the wedding day.

But I gradually got new sponsorship offers. Ice cream, pie, craft books and sex toys. Apparently that was the demographic I now served as a single, young ex-fiancée.

I put myself out there for new writing jobs but found the only work available was short pieces for website content that were lucky to pay a penny per word. Other than that, there were the offers to write erotica. Uh, no. I was completely off sex. If I thought about it all that came to mind was the bobbing of Amber’s head as she treated herself to a suck on Rex’s popsicle.

Then one night, one of the more loyal people in my ever-decreasing band of followers came up with an idea.

You must be exhausted. You should treat yourself to some self-care. Go on that honeymoon you planned. Who needs Rex? Do it for you, Saylor.

The hashtag #WhoNeedsRex began to trend with people posting photos of luxury locations, women having fun, cute animals (of course), beautiful dinners, expensive wine, a massive dildo, all accompanied by #WhoNeedsRex.

Finally, Rex was becoming irrelevant in my life and treated like the joke he was.

I pulled up the website with the gorgeous private mountain lodge in Aspen I’d booked for our honeymoon. It was part of my brother’s portfolio of exclusive luxury accommodation he rented out to people who valued privacy as much as a beautiful location. I hadn’t got around to canceling the booking.

Dammit. I was going on my honeymoon alone. Sologamy, here I come.

***

“I don’t know what to call this place. A lodge? A mansion?” I was Facetiming with Casey and Dani, who wanted to know all about my honeymoon accommodation.

“We want to see what it’s like.”

I picked up my phone and took a walk through the house. “Bedroom one. Look at the bed?”

“Ha, Rexy, you could have been screwing on that,” Casey said as I waved the phone around the massive bed with the most stunning coverings, a zillion pillows, and a magnificent headboard made from a solid piece of expensive-looking timber.

“Uggh, don’t. The thought of having sex with Rex turns my stomach.”

“That’s the spirit,” Dani added. “Show us the bathroom.”

Casey told her she was weird.

“She’s not weird, look at this.” The double shower had six jets. The bath would have fit all three of us. And the view… “Sorry you can’t see the view at night. You can lie in the bath and look through the full bank of windows—floor to ceiling, no less—out to the mountains and forest.”

“Eek. And every pervert can look right back at you,” Casey remarked.

“You might think that, but here’s the trick. The glass has some sort of film sandwiched between it that makes it opaque at the flick of a switch. This place is amazing. I wish you girls were here with me.”

“We’re coming up for Christmas Day.”

“You are? Oh my god, you two are the best. We’re going to have the greatest Christmas. Just you wait.”

“Yeah, we figure you’ll have cabin fever by them. You’ll be slopping around in pajamas you haven’t changed out of for three days. Hair like a rat’s nest. Breath of death.”

“This ain’t no cabin, girls, and I don’t plan on having a fever,” I said, laughing. “Nope, I intend to pamper myself like a queen. Walk in the woods. Eat healthily. Drink water … and wine. And start work on that murder mystery I always wanted to write.”

I poured a glass of wine and settled in by the massive fire that had been built, ready for a match, in the hearth. The house had heating and was the perfect temperature, but I couldn’t resist adding to the ambiance with a roaring log fire. I raised my glass to the screen of the phone, and the girls did the same back.

“There’s a great little town nearby, too. A few bars and restaurants there we can check out. Bring sexy clothes. I plan to find me a mountain man who’ll fuck Rex right out of my memory.”

My friends laugh. “I thought you were going solo. You know, the whole single honeymoon thing. What did you call it?”

“Sologamy.”

“Sounds more like slogamy which I think means hard work,” Casey said. “I like the mountain man idea much better.”

“Hot ski instructor sounds good,” Dani adds. “He’ll be fit, burly, and ready to glide down your slopes, through your wet valley and all the way up to your heart.”

I touched my chest. “This heart is locked. The key has gone, but the rest of me is ripe for some fun.”

Dani tipped her glass to me. “You check out the town talent and we’ll be there before you know it to join in the fun.”

“I love you girls,” I said, not because of the wine I’d consumed on an empty stomach, but because they were genuinely great friends.

“We love you, too, Saylor,” they chorused back.

Later, as I lay in bed, I felt very alone. Not lonely, but alone in a way that made me small and insignificant. I couldn’t imagine Rex in this bed with me. Didn’t even want to. I thought that maybe by coming here I’d rediscover some sort of yearning for him. A pang. A need. A desire. Had I loved him? I couldn’t even muster up any sorrow that my year was ending in an entirely different way from how I’d expected it to.

It felt like a lifetime since I’d done anything meaningful with Rex, and I began to wonder when our relationship had floundered. Without the wedding sitting over the horizon like a looming weather event, I struggled to dredge up a memory that contained both Rex and a feeling of joy.

Perhaps I’d fallen out of love with him a long time ago.

The house creaked as the temperature outside plummeted.

Earlier, as I’d walked through the rooms on my way to bed, putting out lights and closing drapes, I had noticed the snow falling outside. It looked beautiful in its pristine silence. That was something I’d have liked to share with somebody special.

I slept like I’d been deprived for weeks. When I woke, I rose from bed feeling as though an enormous weight had left me. I headed straight for the shower, discovering my favorite shampoo and conditioner I’d brought with me were still in a bag downstairs. I hadn’t bothered unpacking much when I arrived because by the time I’d messed about at the airport car rental company and found my way to the house—having taken two wrong turns—all I’d wanted was a glass of wine and a chat with my girlfriends. Unpacking and organizing could wait until today.

I slipped a T-shirt over my naked body and padded downstairs to find my shampoo and conditioner.

It was his scent I noticed first, and when I turned the corner and saw him, I screamed. There was a man in the kitchen, standing at the coffee machine with his back to me. As he swung to face me I looked around for a weapon, noticing the knives were in a block on the counter, just beyond him.

“Good morning, Saylor,” he said smoothly. “Are you sure you’re supposed to be here?”

Oh, shit. Hunter.

He looked bemused in a ripped-body, smug-faced sort of way. Jeans aren’t supposed to fit a guy as well as his did. A man’s sweater shouldn’t be made of wool so fine that you could perfectly judge the contours of his body right down to the narrow waist. A disconcerting display of washboard abs that turned your mouth dry and your pussy wet. And speaking of pussies, mine was bare.

No panties, bare.

Naked, like a newborn baby, bare.

Totally. Fucking. Bare.

I tugged the hem of my old T-shirt to pull it below the level of my butt cheeks and stepped backward from the kitchen, around the corner, all the way to the staircase then I turned and sprinted, taking the steps two at a time.

What the hell was he doing here?

Why did he look even hotter than he did when I last saw him in the flesh two years ago?

How on earth was I going to get my dignity back?

Why had my body burst into life like a desert flower feeling a rare sprinkling of rain at the sight of Rex’s cousin making coffee in the kitchen?

Rex’s cousin!

My brother’s best friend and business partner.

I faltered, shuffling from foot to foot in the plush pile of the fur rug at the foot of my bed. Chaos reigned in my head, and my shampoo and conditioner were still downstairs.

Just as well I hadn’t unpacked yesterday, because I had to get out of the house and find somewhere else to stay.