My Despicable Ex (Book 1)

by Sierra Rose

  I stared at the picture, then looked at all the others, recalling just how happy and in love we had once been. I hadn’t looked upon those memories, those snapshots of our moments, in years. Nadia told me to burn them, but I couldn’t bear to for one reason or another. Not only were those pictures the embodiment of the beginning of my career, but they were also remnants of precious, albeit painful, memories. Jake had, after all, bought me my first Nikon camera, and I used it all the time and snapped pictures of anything and everything.

  When I wasn’t shooting pictures, I used my tripod to capture so many wonderful shots of us together. I picked up the picture of Jake and me at the river, holding what appeared to be the world’s biggest bass; we had equally huge smiles on our faces. Then I looked at the pictures of us snuggled up together on a blanket in the grass, so carefree and clueless to the dark fate that loomed ahead for us. There was even a picture he took of me, smiling as I held up my finger to show off my engagement ring. It wasn’t big and fancy, but I didn’t care. Unlike my mother, I had never cared much about money. I loved Jake for who he was, and I couldn’t have cared less if that ring had been made out of tin foil and plastic gems. The one thing I wanted it to be was true, and in the end, it was just a lie.

  When Jake crashed into my life, I was a fifteen-year-old, a good girl who had never broken the rules. He was the biggest, bad boy at our school, and my mother was horrified when I started dating him. When I told her I loved him, she cried. According to my mother, he didn’t fit in at all. She saw him as a troublemaker, a poor kid who lived on the wrong side of town in the projects. She didn’t think he was good enough for me, because his father was in jail and his mother had a drug addiction. My mother begged me to end it with him so many times, but I didn’t care what she said. I loved him, in spite of his faults and his socio-economic difficulties. Because she’d been so dead set against us being together, I had to wonder why my mother would ask, postmortem, for us to prance around the world together. Her Will made absolutely no sense.

  As I thought about that, I realized I had to see Jake, even if I wasn’t sure why. I was in a daze, not even thinking straight. I did need closure, the chance to really say goodbye, which I’d not been granted before.

  I also needed to change into something sweet, sassy, and sexy, just to show him what he’d missed out on. I slipped into my dark-wash designer jeans and a black, lace, strapless top with beaded heels. In the lawyer’s office, my hair had been pulled back in a French braid, but this time, I was going to let it down. After curling my hair, I gave myself that smoldering, smoky-eye look that made my hazel eyes pop. I pushed my breasts up to give him a glimpse of my cleavage. I worried that I might be showing off too many curves and that maybe I should tone it down a bit, but in the end, I decided he deserved to be tortured with what he would never be able to touch again.

  Practically flooring it, I sped to the White Coyote. I took a moment to gather my nerves, then walked into the bar. Music played, and people laughed and chatted. I scanned my surroundings until my gaze fell on Jake, who was shooting pool. When he let out a laugh at his failure to sink the purple ball, it jarred my memory; I remembered that deep, delicious laugh, the one I could have spent hours listening to. I watched him lean over the pool table. His faded blue jeans clung to his perfect ass like a second skin. Huge muscles bulged through his tight t-shirt as he made the next shot and then reached for his beer bottle that sat on the rim of the pool table.

  All of the sudden, as if he’d caught a whiff of me or was somehow psychically aware of my presence, he met my gaze and gave me that familiar, sexy smile. Tousled hair in disheveled waves skimmed the collar of his t-shirt as he said, “Wow. You look absolutely stunning.”

  Mission accomplished, I thought, throwing a little more sway in my walk as I approached him.

  He motioned around him. “I’d introduce you, but I’m sure you know all these guys,” he said.

  “Most of them,” I responded, waving to everyone.

  They all stared at me and gave an awkward wave back; whether it was compassion, pity, or shock that I’d even shown up, I couldn’t tell.

  “Can I get you a drink?” Jake asked.

  Ed smiled. “She doesn’t look like she’s here for a beer, man. Get her some champagne.”

  “Ashly’s always been a classy woman,” Mike said.

  “Mike!” I said, blushing. “You know I’m just one of the regular folks.” I grinned.

  Mike walked over and gave me a friendly hug. “I’ve missed you, girl. It’s been years.” He kissed me on the cheek. “I heard you and Nadia started a fashion line and even own a boutique.”

  Jake smiled at me. “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks. We’ve got big plans, and we’ve gotta start somewhere.”

  “Reach for the stars, I always say. Anyway, we’ll catch up later,” Mike said. “I know seeing Jake again must be, uh…quite the shock,” he whispered.

  “I didn’t mean to lose touch,” I said. “I just…”

  He winked. “Don’t even worry about it. Just give me a call sometime, and we’ll play catch-up over lunch. I’m in the phonebook.”

  “Definitely,” I promised.

  Another one of his buddies slapped me on the back. “Does Jake still look the same?”

  “I’m sure any minute, Earth will fall off its axis from all his hotness,” I said sarcastically.

  They all laughed, and I could only grin.

  Jake finally managed to tear his gaze away from my cleavage and smiled. “How about that drink?” he offered again, sounding like he needed it more than I did.

  I pushed my long brown tresses behind my ears. “Thank you, but I won’t be staying long.”

  “I was hoping we could catch up,” Jake said.

  Right on cue, another of Jake’s friends walked in and hugged me. “Ashly! It’s been years. You must be here for Jake.”

  “Yes, I’m here to talk to my absentee groom. And I was the dumpee, so get your stares and whispers out of the way or forever hold your peace.”

  Most of his friends just said hello, then left. Either they wanted to give Jake a little privacy or they were too uncomfortable to face me.

  “Look,” I said. “I chased your entourage away.” I blinked. “Imagine that. It seems I still have that effect on people. I mean, I did somehow chase you away on our big day.”

  “I asked them to leave so we could have a little privacy, Ashly. I know the White Coyote isn’t the best place to meet to hash out our differences, but I couldn’t have you going off on me at a restaurant or something.”

  “So you’re expecting me to go off on you?”

  “I know I deserve it. What I did was rotten, and I’ve never been able to forgive myself.” He inched closer. “I’m so sorry, Ashly. If I could take it all back, you know I would.”

  I reached into my purse and grabbed one of the pictures of me in my lovely wedding gown. “Since you never got to see me in my wedding dress, here,” I said, shoving it into his hand.

  He glanced down and pondered for a long moment. “Wow. You’re so beautiful. I was such an idiot.”

  “You got that right. How could you just leave like that, Jake? How could you do that to me? And the worst part was that you humiliated me in front of all our friends and relatives. I didn’t deserve that.”

  “Ashly, you know as well as I do that I never fit in with your rich family. I was a bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks.”

  “But love conquers all, right? I didn’t care, and you shouldn’t have cared either.”

  “We were so young. I had just turned twenty, and…” he said, trailing off before he blurted out yet another lame excuse.

  Images flooded into my mind. I remembered Nadia helping me take down all of his pictures a few weeks after what I’d deemed Black Saturday. I’d felt shock and rage, depression, and the most intense loneliness anyone could ever feel. For weeks, I couldn’t get out of bed, and taking a shower and getting dressed seemed like poi
ntless, impossible chores. After Jake walked out of my life without ever looking back, Nadia also helped me pack up his belongings. I cleared out the medicine cabinet and threw out his blue toothbrush in the wastebasket, one of the hardest things I ever had to do. I learned the hard way just how much heartbreak could hurt. I worked through the pain eventually, and that helped me to get on with my life, but if it weren’t for my job, friends, and family, I never would have survived the havoc that Jake wreaked on me. I still wasn’t sure I’d ever get past the anger completely, because it was still sitting like a lump in the pit of my stomach.

  “Ashly?”

  I snapped back into reality and stared at his blue eyes glittering in the dim light.

  “Do you want me to beg?” Jake asked. “Please. If you hate me, that’s fine, but let’s go on this trip, take these pictures. We’ll stay strictly in the friend zone, and I promise I won’t even talk to you unless I absolutely have to. After that, we can go our separate ways, and you’ll never have to see me again.”

  “Jake, you put me through a living hell. I’m only here so I could tell you that in person. How could a man declare his undying love the night before his wedding, then just leave minutes before he’s supposed to walk down the aisle?” Before he could answer, I continued, “There’s nothing more I can say, and it doesn’t really matter anyway, does it? We can’t go back in time and fix things. What’s done is done, and I have to move forward with my life. I just wished you would’ve left me a box of tissues that morning instead of a dozen red roses.”

  “You’re pissed, and I don’t blame you. But you’re just gonna walk away from your inheritance, your mother’s dying wish, because you can’t stand the sight of me?” he asked.

  “Something like that,” I said, then turned and started making my way to the door.

  “Ashly, please don’t go.”

  I ignored him and hurried to my car, hoping he wouldn’t jump on the hood and confess his false, undying love for me just so he could dupe me a second time.

  * * *

  The next day after work, Nadia knocked on the door. When I opened it, she looked frantic, totally out of character for her.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “The bank didn’t give us the loan.” She strolled into the kitchen, grabbed a glass, and poured herself a glass of wine from my fridge, then downed half the glass in one gulp. “Our dreams of running our very own fashion business are going down the drain. We don’t have any money left, and we’re going to be thrown out. Our boutique will go down in flames, Ashly! What are we gonna do?”

  “Our clothes are different from the competition’s. We stick out, Nadia.”

  She poured a glass of wine for me. “Not if we can’t get noticed. Our boutique’s just starting to take off, but not enough to pay the high mortgage. I tried talking to the owner, and when that didn’t work, I resorted to flirtation and cleavage. I don’t know what a girl’s supposed to do when neither begging nor boobs works.”

  “We just need to get our ideas off the ground.”

  “There’s no time. We have to be out by next month, and building a fashion brand doesn’t happen overnight.”

  I swallowed hard. “Yeah. I’ll ask Mr. Hanford for an extension.”

  “Good luck. He’s not an understanding or flexible man, and he obviously doesn’t care about push-up bras either. He just wants his money. Our boutique is on prime property on Fifth Avenue, and he has two other business associates begging him for our space.”

  “We can’t lose that spot. Location is everything.”

  “I agree.” She sighed heavily. “Look, Ashly, I never would ask you this if there were any other way, but…”

  I cocked my head when she paused and trailed off, wincing a bit.

  “You need to take that trip with Jake. It’s the only way to save our boutique and everything we’re working so hard for.”

  “What!?” I shouted. “No! No way.”

  “I know he hurt you bad, but you don’t even have to talk to him. Just give him the cold shoulder and take those crazy pictures your mom demanded. Turn them into your lawyer, and you’ll have more than enough money to keep us going.”

  “No, Nadia. I mean…I just…I can’t.”

  “Take the damn pictures, Ashly,” she said, patting my shoulder.

  “I can’t leave you alone with the boutique for all that time,” I said, making excuses.

  “I can handle it, and I can hire my sister for cheap to help out. Please take that dream vacation—for the sake of our dreams.”

  I glanced down at the floor, as if it could give me answers. “You have no idea what you’re asking, Nadia.”

  She pondered. “I do, and I’m sorry I had to ask,” she said. “I understand if you can’t do it though,” she said, heading for the door. Over her shoulder, she sadly announced, “We gave it our best shot. That’s the important thing.”

  “Nadia!” I called, but she ignored me and ran out the door. I pondered for a few minutes, then grabbed my purse and hailed a taxi. I directed the cabbie to drive to my boutique.

  After he dropped me off and I paid the fare, I walked up to the display window, pressed my palm on the cold glass, and stared back at my own reflection. I looked at the mannequins, dressed in creations I’d spent countless hours designing. Then I opened the doors and switched on the lights. I spun in a slow circle and looked at all racks of clothing, trendy outfits in all sizes for less than fifty bucks. That place was my dream.

  The décor in our boutique played a vital role in our success. We kept the atmosphere modern and contemporary, with a huge black dresser in the corner, its top drawer open for accessories and the jewelry Nadia designed, from crystal earrings and necklaces to beaded bracelets. We furnished the place with big, comfy chairs and lounge benches with cushions, as well as mirrors, lights, display cases, deep shelves in the wall, dressing rooms, a sitting area, and a public bathroom.

  The thought of losing our business was devastating, and I knew I couldn’t let that happen as long as I had a way to prevent it. How hard can it be to take some stupid pictures with an idiot I won’t even have to talk to? I’ll just stay as far away from him as possible and only get close when we have to take photos.

  I frantically dialed Nadia’s number. When she picked up on the third ring, I said, “I’ll do it.”

  Ecstatic, she screamed so loud that my ears began to ring. “Awesome!” she squealed.

  “I’ve got to make the arrangements and call my idiot traveling companion.”

  “Look, Ashly, I know you’re taking one for the team, and I can’t thank you enough.”

  “Meh, I’ll grin and bear it…but you so owe me for this.”

  “Owe you? You’re gonna be rich. You’ll have twenty-five million dollars for putting up with that ass for a couple of photo sessions.”

  “A couple? Try almost a dozen of them, all in different locations!”

  “Don’t cop out now. We need this. Promise me you’ll put up with the ass. Think of it as a horrible, horrible job assignment. Don’t even talk to him. Just get the photos and hurry back. I’ll have a stiff drink waiting for you the second you get off the plane.”

  “I’ll do my best. I just hope I can handle spending all that time with Jake.”

  “If you feel like leaving, promise you’ll call me first.”

  “So you can talk me out of it?”

  “Absolutely!” She let out a breath. “Listen, if it hurts that bad, don’t put yourself through it. We’ll find another way. We’ll survive. We always do.”

  “No, I’m gonna do it, even if it means losing half to Jake. I can’t give up all of my mother’s money, and if I don’t do this, everything will go to the lawyer, who’s already filthy rich. I like the guy, but the thought of that just makes me cringe.”

  “It’s your money now, girlfriend. Go get it.”

  I smiled. “I will, Jake or no Jake.”

  “And listen,” she said, “you gotta promise me you’ll ju
mp in the blue water and kiss a dolphin. No thinking about work, because I swear that’s all you live for. Don’t be designing clothes in your head while you’re ride a horse seaside or snorkeling.”

  I laughed.

  “I’m serious. All work and no play makes Ashly a dull girl. While you’re gone, I’ll handle everything. No worries. And I still have that extra key, so I’ll be happy to stop by and feed Tiger.”

  “Thanks, Nadia.”

  “You can even take one of the bikinis from the Reflection Collection.”

  “They’re so gorgeous.”

  She laughed. “Of course they are. I designed them. You’ll look fantastic. We’ve been going to that workout class for a long time, and you have the flattest abs. Just flaunt that bod’ in Jake’s face and show him what he missed out on.”

  “Thanks, Nadia.”

  “I’m serious, girlfriend.”

  After we said our goodbyes, I hung up and pondered, Can I really put up with Jake without killing him on this vacation? The truth was, I wasn’t so sure.

  Chapter 5

  Three weeks later…

  On the way to Australia, our first stop, I sat back and folded my hands across my lap. I knew I needed to keep myself busy so Jake wouldn’t try to talk to me. I picked up a magazine and started thumbing through it, pretending to be totally engrossed.

  Next to me, Jake buckled his seatbelt. He leafed through the literature given to him by my lawyer, then started Googling the resort. “I got their website,” he said, then went on to read it to me. “Green Island Resort, on the Great Barrier Reef, is one of the most unique and memorable destinations in Tropical North Queensland. A coral cay, a luxury resort, a natural wonderland unlike any other…Indulgence, romance, and adventure await on this tropical island paradise.”

  “Sounds wonderful, except for the romance part.”

  Utterly silenced, he swallowed hard and looked away.

  My gaze drifted over to a young woman who was babbling away about her upcoming wedding, flipping through the pages of a popular bridal magazine. As all the painful memories of my own destroyed nuptial bliss flooded back, I glanced down at the floor and let out a long breath. The first Thanksgiving, the first Christmas, the first New Years, and the first birthday without him had been absolutely unbearable. I couldn’t help but let out another huff as the girl kept chatting away.