I glanced at the small tin of cocoa powder I had picked up hopefully from the grocery store last week and let out a sigh. No way was it going to be cold enough for me to justify whipping that out for the kids any time soon.

Which shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me. This was Nevada, after all, and it rarely got below seventy, even in the winter. I shouldn’t have been silly enough to think that it might really drop low enough for us to cuddle around the TV with a hot cocoa in hand, watching some old, fuzzy Christmas shows and indulging in the spirit of the season. I had put off checking the weather forecast to hang onto that last bit of hope, but now that I had seen the forecast, there was no avoiding the truth. It wasn’t meant to be. Again.

I closed my laptop and got to my feet, reveling in the last few moments of silence I got to enjoy before my day exploded into life. With a couple of kids to look after, the day seemed to fly by so fast I hardly had time to turn around, and I had taken to getting up early so that I had a half-hour of free time to down a coffee and take care of myself. Because nobody else was stepping up to do it these days.

I headed through the house to wake up the kids. Sammy and Olivia shared a room. They were young enough still not to have any real need for personal space. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do when that changed. Give one of them my room, perhaps? Sleep on the couch? As long as they were happy, though, that was all that mattered.

"Hey, baby," I cooed as I sat down on the edge of Oli’s bed. Her green eyes fluttered open, bleary, taking a moment to settle on me.

"Good morning," I leaned over and planted a kiss on her head, then went to get up her brother. They were so precious when they had just woken up, when they weren’t quite conscious enough to wreak havoc on the world around them. It had been so odd, watching them grow up and seeing them develop into little people all of their own, but it had been a joy, too. I just wished that I didn’t have to do it alone.

But there was no time to think about that – I had to get them ready for daycare. And for some reason, they’d decided that this particular Monday was going to be the day they spent dragging their feet and making it as hard as humanly possible for me to do what I needed to get done. They fooled around with breakfast, took forever to get their clothes on, and sprinted off to the other end of the house to avoid me brushing their hair...everything they could do to drive me nuts. I kept checking my watch, knowing sure as hell that I was going to be late for work and understanding with a sinking feeling that there was nothing I could do about it. As though I needed to give that asshole something else to hold over my head. I wished I lived a little closer to my cousins, so they could help out with the kids once in a while, but it was just me out here, and I was going to have to learn to live with that.

I managed to get them into the car and tore off down the street to drop them off at daycare – I put on one of those singalongs CDs as we drove, so at least I didn’t have to worry about entertaining them. I managed to lift them out of the car and plant kisses on both of them as I hustled them toward the entrance.

"Have a good day!” I called after them. They both waved to me as the teacher who waited at the gate smiled at them in greeting. I bit my lip. Even after all of this time, it was hard to hand my babies off to anyone else. They were three and five now. Olivia was a little older than her brother, and I couldn’t imagine what it was going to be like once they got older and they actually started attending elementary school. I would totally be that mother who cried at the gates and embarrassed the hell out of them. It was hard enough on me now that Olivia was in Pre-K part-time at the elementary school.

I hurried back to the car and tore over to work. The offices for the non-profit I ran with my now-ex-husband weren’t too far away, but they were far enough that I barely pulled into the parking lot in time to make it for our morning meeting. I was seething as I flashed my badge at the receptionist at the desk; I knew that Adam was going to be an ass about this, and I could really do without it this morning.

"Good to see you finally made it in," a voice drawled from behind me, dripping with amusement. I turned around to find my ex-husband leaning in the door of his office, watching me. He was wearing an impeccably tailored suit that looked as though it had cost half of my monthly rent. Just then, I realized my own shirt was hanging out of my skirt, and I hurriedly tucked it in.

"Yeah, well, it’s been a busy morning," I muttered. God, I wanted to punch his stupid, smug face in. If I had the nerve, I would have just landed him a sharp slap right then and reminded him that the reason I was late was because I was taking care of his two babies, something he seemed to have no interest in these days.

But I didn’t say a word. We had started this business together, and there was no way I was going to give him the chance to evict me from it for good.

The non-profit had been my idea in the first place, and it had been my first real baby. My whole life, I had been passionate about providing better care for kids who were transitioning out of the foster system and into the real world, and five years ago, we had started Changing Places as a way to help with that concern. It had been hard going the first few years – lots of work for little return – but thanks to a couple of celebrity endorsements and well-placed swanky events, we had finally started to take off.

Which would have been amazing, if it weren’t for the fact that my then-husband had started drifting away from me as soon as he’d caught a hint of the high life. I was sure, looking back, that the only reason he’d stuck by me all those years was because he saw Changing Places as his way into the elite of the city. He could get patted on the back for being so noble and so good, and he could attend luxury events as a representative and schmooze with celebrities on the side. Which was, of course, how he’d met his girlfriend, Melanie.

But I wasn’t going to let that get me down today. I rolled my shoulders and drew myself to my full height, remembering the self-help mantras I was supposed to repeat to myself in times of stress: I am strong. I am worthy. I don’t need this asshole or want him. Something like that.

"Good to see you as well, Adam," I replied, ignoring his smug expression and brushing by him into my office. I wanted to exude confidence, but whenever I was around him, I had a habit of feeling tiny all over again. No…not tiny – huge. That was the whole problem.

When we’d had Olivia, I had put on some weight. I would never deny that. I didn’t think it was anything to be ashamed of, though – I had just carried an entire human life inside of me, for goodness sake. I would lose the weight when I got the chance. I was running around after an energetic little girl who was the light of my life. Of course dropping the weight was hardly a priority.

But then, I had gotten pregnant with Sammy a little over a year later. And with him, I had gained even more weight. Something in the realm of a hundred and fifty pounds. With that much weight on me, plus the kids, plus the non-profit organization, I’d hardly had the time to think about eating, let alone think about eating healthy enough to actually lose weight. I would look at the other moms, with their svelte bodies in slim-fit leggings, and wonder if I was doing something wrong.

My husband had certainly thought so. If he had just come out and said something, maybe it would have been different, but he’d held back, snidely sliding in rude comments about the way I looked as though that was going to get him somewhere. I’d been too busy to spend time fretting over what his passive aggressiveness meant. I’d had two children to run after, as well as the business to think about. And I hadn’t noticed until it was way too late how bad things had gotten between us.

And when I say too late, I mean right at the point where he was making out with a nineteen-year-old model on the regular behind my back. He had met Natalie at one of those fancy industry events that he was constantly attending. Dark hair, slim frame, and big, violet eyes – she was everything I knew he wanted. Even before I had figured out that they were actually sleeping together, I knew there was something there between them – a twinge of attraction – but I’d ignored it. My husband wasn’t that kind of man. Was he?

Of course, cue the obvious: he’d left me for her, stuck me with the kids, and kept up with the business because he liked the status it allowed him. He paraded her around the office every chance he got, and I just had to live with it and try to swallow my irritation at his pathetic posturing. I knew everyone in this place thought he was embarrassing himself for this girl – a man of his age and life experience chasing around a woman who was barely out of her teens – but he didn’t give a damn. Like the business, she was another status symbol, one that he could show off on his arm to anyone who wandered into the office. She stopped by regularly, and I had to put up with their sloppy PDAs every time they greeted one another.

But that was fine by me. Really, it was. She was welcome to him because I knew it was only a matter of time before he got bored of her and searched for a new symbol to prove his wealth and his power. The kids and me, we had never been enough for him – hell, even now, the most he did was toss child support in my direction and sneer at me when I came into work late. And I had to suck it up and remind myself that I was better off without him, that I was a finer woman without him weighing me down. It was hard to get myself to believe it sometimes, but I convinced myself more and more with each day that passed, each day that he offered me a smug comment about my time management or my outfit.

We had the morning meeting in just a couple of minutes, which would hardly give me time to go over the email that ran through what we would be covering today – I would just have to wing it and hope that nobody noticed. I checked my outfit once more, straightened my skirt, and headed through to join everyone else in the meeting room next door.

"Glad to see you could at least make it to this on time," Adam remarked, and a couple of the younger employees tittered nervously at his statement. I knew they were just trying to get on his good side, but it irritated me that they clearly thought so little of getting on my bad side in the process.

"Sure. Can we get started?" I replied, keeping my voice as civil as possible. Just because we were divorced, that didn’t mean that he had won. If anything, I had. After all, I had been the one to eject this waste of space from my life, right?

"I take it you’ve had a chance to look over the minutes?” he asked. I felt myself go red.

"And if I haven’t?"

"Then I get to break the news to you myself," he replied, spreading his hands wide. "I’ve managed to land a celebrity for one of our fundraisers this year. Morgan Ward. You ever heard of him?”

It rang a bell somewhere at the back of my mind, but I shook my head.

"Should I have?”

"He’s an actor," Adam waved his hand. "Big catch for us. Big catch. Seems like he’s trying to clean up his image, and he wants to use us to do it."

"Well, that’s good news," I remarked. "When do we start working with him? What did you have in mind for the fundraiser?”

"Well, that’s the thing," Adam replied, shuffling the papers in front of him. "Bit of reputation rehabilitation here, you see. And he’s got a reputation for, uh..."

He trailed off, clearly wanting everyone in the room to be hanging on his every word.

"Sleeping with every woman who ends up in front of him," he finally finished his sentence. I kept my face steady, though I could see one of our advertising heads flush a little and dip her head down as though the very thought of this actor in that state was inappropriate for work.

"So what?” I demanded. "He’s working with us. There’s nothing weird about that."

"We’ll have to send out someone who doesn’t do anything for him," Adam replied, tapping his finger on his bottom lip. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I had a feeling I knew exactly where this was going. I wanted to demand that he avert this, force him to slide this sick little statement off-track, but he had never been much for listening to what I wanted.

"Kari, you busy?” he asked, and there was a sudden stillness in the room. I felt as though I had been punched in the gut. For a moment, I felt myself drifting outside of my body, so angry that I was sure I was going to watch myself lunge across the table and throttle my ex-husband out right there and then. He would have deserved it. How could he say that to me? He knew how hurtful he was being. But I couldn’t let anyone else see that he had managed to get under my skin like that – I had to keep myself together. If he knew he could get to me, he would do it over and over again until I quit this place once and for all, and I was never going to let that happen.

"No, I have plenty of time," I replied, getting to my feet quickly. "Pass me along the contact, alright? I’ll take it from here."

And with that, I headed out of the room and back to my office, promising myself that I would be allowed to cry about this as soon as the work day was over.

I managed to keep my promise to myself, tapping out emails in a haze and getting everything set up for this stupid charity event with this stupid actor my husband was so sure would find me repulsive. I was so distinctly aware of my body, aware of the loose skin that had come from losing more than two hundred pounds in the last couple of years, aware of how imperfect it was. I had done my best to squeeze myself into the mold that I knew this place wanted of me, but there was only so much I could do since the damage had already been done when I’d had my children. I reached below my desk and gripped my thighs and my belly, feeling the wobble that still remained there. How had I ever expected to be taken seriously in this city that was full of women so much younger, so much thinner, and so much more perfect than me? What man would make me his first choice when the options were so many and so myriad?

I made some excuse to duck out and pick up the kids early. Once I walked out of the building to my car and closed the car door tight, I let the tears flow. It hurt me so much to think that the man who had once loved me would use my deepest insecurities against me like that. He knew how aware I was of my weight and my desirability; he knew how much it hurt me to know that I would always be valued as less-than when compared to the women who were younger, thinner, and prettier than me. I had stretch marks and scars and battle wounds from bearing my two babies, but was that really so wrong? Was I so repulsive that Adam believed any man who was put in front of me, even one with as consistent a reputation as this Morgan guy, would be disgusted by my very presence?

I crossed my arms on the steering wheel and buried my face against them. I knew the scant make-up I had managed to put on that morning would be streaming down my cheeks, but I didn’t give a damn. I could scrub myself up before I went to the daycare and picked up the kids. God, I missed them so much – even sitting here in the car, just a few miles from them, I felt that ache deep in my soul, the lack of them so present it hurt. They thought I was perfect, no matter what I looked like, and that was one of the most validating things in the world.

The hurt my ex had inflicted on me paled in comparison to how much I missed my children. But I could actually do something about that, so I pushed myself up from the wheel, checked my makeup in the mirror, and tidied myself up. I could go collect them, and then we could go home and play and watch a movie and hang out, and I could forget all about this. That was how it usually worked when Adam pulled something bitchy out of the bag. Which was happening more and more these days. Maybe he was learning it from that model girlfriend of his – her industry was meant to be cruel, right? Still, he didn’t have to take it out on me.

As I pulled the car out of the lot, I felt a surge of anger toward him. He was trying to get me out of the business, once and for all, so that he could go on and live his life, pretending that he had never met me in the first place. But I was never going to let him take over Changing Places: it was mine more than it was his. I actually gave a shit about the kids we helped out. He was crazy if he actually believed that I was just going to leave, all nice and quiet, like he wanted me to.

I set my jaw firmly. So, he wanted me to organize this event? I would organize the best damn event this company had ever seen. This actor they had managed to get their hands on, the one who was hoping this would rehabilitate his image – well, I would make sure nobody wanted him to do anything but pet puppies and kiss babies from here on out.

Yeah, that was how I would get back at him. I would turn this all the way around on him. Adam thought that he could just toss this in my direction as a snide backhand, hoping that it would be enough to shake my confidence badly enough to quit at last? Well, he had another thing coming. I had worked my ass off for that place, and this was going to be no different. I had pulled off so much in the last few years, all by myself, even with Adam practically working against me most of the time. Did he really think this was going to be enough to throw me off my game?

I put on the radio and hummed along idly to some big pop hit as I drew closer to the daycare. The traffic was heavy, but I didn’t give a damn. My mind was racing. And I knew I was going to make this an event that nobody would ever forget.