One Night with His Ex

by Katherine Garbera

  Her breath caught between her parted lips as a shiver of sensual need went through him. He leaned down before he could stop himself and brushed his lips over hers. Then he felt her hands on either side of his face as she kissed him back before she broke the contact between them and got into the car.

  He closed the door and turned to walk around behind it, stopping for a minute to take several deep breaths to center himself. How was he ever going to manage being just friends? He couldn’t think of a time when he was next to her that he didn’t want to reach out and touch her, kiss her, pull her into his arms and never let her go.

  But he had to.

  If he wanted her to stay in Cole’s Hill for good this time, he had to figure it out.

  Did he want her to stay for good?

  He was pretty damned sure he did.

  He got into the car. When he started the engine, she reached over and fiddled with the radio until she found a country western station. The music filled the car on the drive home and he did a pretty good job of forgetting he wanted her until Eric Church’s “Like a Wrecking Ball” came on.

  He almost thought that Hadley wasn’t affected until she reached over and pushed the button to change the channel to a Top Forty station. But the damage had been done. He remembered her pressed against him last night at the Bull Pit, dancing so close that he felt every inch of her.

  When he finally pulled into her parking space at her loft, she looked over at him.

  “Thanks for a nice night,” she said, dashing out of the car before he could say anything more.

  Nine

  Hadley woke to her phone pinging and someone knocking on her door. She groaned and rolled over to look at the clock. It was eight in the morning. Not exactly early but she hadn’t slept well last night, dreaming of Mauricio and regretting not taking that kiss further than she had.

  The knocking continued, and she grabbed her phone as she hopped out of bed. Her Ravenclaw boxers and Also, I Can Kill You With My Brain T-shirt were respectable enough for whoever was trying to wake her up.

  She glanced at her phone and saw that her sister was texting and as she glanced in the peephole, she remembered it was Tuesday.

  Tuesday morning.

  She was supposed to meet her mother at Kinley’s to help her and Helena finalize the floral bouquet choices. Hadley had done a few design sketches and sent them over to Kinley, who was having samples made for them to look at.

  She opened the door and stepped back as her mother brushed past her into the apartment. It had an open floor plan, and though her bed had two decorative screens that blocked it from the view of the living room, her mother went straight to it and then came back out as Hadley moved into the kitchen area, starting a pot of coffee. She had a feeling she was going to need at least ten cups to face her mother this morning.

  “I’m not interested in excuses. I thought you were dead,” Candace said, setting her Birkin bag on the table near the front door before coming over and standing next to the kitchen island.

  “I had a long night working on my project for the company in New York. I slept through my alarm, Mom. No excuse, but I’m sorry,” Hadley said, going over and giving her mom a hug that she immediately returned, squeezing Hadley close.

  “I really thought something had happened to you. You are never late and then I couldn’t get you on the phone,” Candace said. She kissed Hadley’s temple and then stepped back, blinking as she reached up to touch her chignon.

  Hadley hadn’t realized at first how much it had freaked her mom out when she hadn’t shown up. But then she was the reliable sister. The one who never said no and was always there. “Again, I’m very sorry. Why did you check the bedroom?”

  “Mavis Crandall saw you out with Mo last night and I was just checking to see if he was why you were late,” she said.

  “No. We’re trying to get past the breakup and be friends,” Hadley said, checking the glass coffeepot and seeing there was already enough for a mug of coffee. She grabbed two earthenware mugs that she’d gotten from a local artist on Main Street and put one under the drip while pouring out the coffee into the other one.

  “Want a cup?” she asked her mom.

  “I can’t. I already had one today,” she said. “I’d love some juice if you have it.”

  “I do. Have a seat and let me get it for you,” Hadley said. “Did you reschedule for today?”

  “I tried to but Kinley isn’t available until Thursday,” her mother said in a tone that told Hadley she was put out by the fact that Kinley wouldn’t reschedule her other clients.

  Hadley wasn’t surprised by that. Kinley wasn’t one to back down and was used to dealing with bridezillas who made her mom look like a saint.

  “How about I make it up to you by taking you to brunch?”

  “Sounds good. I’ll text Helena and ask her to join us,” Candace said.

  “She might be working, Mom,” Hadley pointed out.

  “Nonsense. She’s her own boss. She can take a break and have brunch with us. I’ll call the club while you shower and make sure they have the table I like by the window. Oh, this is going to be so nice,” she said.

  Hadley got her mom her juice, then took her coffee into her bedroom area to get ready. She heard her mom on the phone being as sweet as could be but not hesitating to coerce first Helena into joining them and then the maître d’ at the club into reserving her favorite table.

  Hadley took a quick shower, got dressed and applied a light bit of makeup to cover the evidence of her sleepless night. Then she rejoined her mother, who looked perfectly at ease moving around the apartment fluffing pillows.

  “I think it’s time you redid your place,” Candace said. “It looks like you just threw everything in here. I know that when you moved out of Mauricio’s you didn’t really have the time to pick out nice pieces, but now that it looks like you’re staying, we should get you some good furniture.”

  Her mom had a point. No matter what happened with her and Mauricio, she was going to need to make this place her home. And her mom was right: she’d simply looked at the loft as temporary. It had been a stopgap after she’d moved back from New York, unsure of what she was going to do next.

  “I might need to take a trip to the antique markets,” Hadley said.

  “I’ll reach out to my contacts and see what’s available,” Candace said. “There’s nothing I love more than shopping for my girls.”

  Hadley smiled as they both grabbed their handbags and left the apartment. She’d been so busy thinking about the baby in terms of how it would impact her and Mo that she hadn’t considered what it might be like to be a mom...like her mother.

  She followed her mom’s Audi as she drove through town to the Five Families Country Club, but her mind wasn’t on the drive, it was on the child. What if she was really pregnant? She’d have a baby of her own. Someone she could dote on the way her parents always had.

  For the first time since she’d looked at that broken condom, she had the thought that maybe being pregnant wasn’t the worst thing to happen. Sure, she and Mauricio could be closer, but they were working on that. And a child...of her own? Someone who was hers? That was one thing she’d never realized she’d been missing.

  * * *

  Brunch with her mom and her sister was the last thing that Helena wanted to do today. For one thing, Malcolm’s behavior was getting more and more erratic and she would have a difficult time fooling either of them that she wasn’t stressed out. She could put it down to wedding jitters. Yeah, she thought, that was the excuse she’d use if one of them brought it up.

  She used some undereye concealer and highlighter on her cheeks to try to make herself look peppier, but to be honest, when she looked at her reflection in the rearview mirror, she knew she hadn’t really hidden her inner turmoil.

  Her mom and sister were already inside the countr
y club. Even if Hadley hadn’t been texting Where are you? every thirty seconds for the last ten minutes, she knew they were inside thanks to their cars parked side by side in the lot. She had asked her assistant to text her after thirty minutes and say there was an emergency so she wouldn’t have to stay the entire time.

  “So you weren’t dead,” Hadley said to Helena as she joined her mom and sister at their usual corner table near the large windows that overlooked the golf course.

  “I wasn’t,” Helena said.

  “I told you,” Hadley said, giving her mom a pointed look.

  “You girls have no idea what it’s like to be a mom. When I text or call you and get no response, my first reaction is to run through a long list of everything that could be wrong, starting with kidnapping and ending with death.”

  Helena reached over and squeezed her mom’s hand. “We know you worry but you need to remember we’re your daughters. Anyone who comes for us better be ready for a fight.”

  “I know. Doesn’t stop me from worrying,” her mom said. “Hadley was just telling me she has to run to Houston for a client next week and I asked her to go back to the flower district and speak to Manuel to find out what blooms will be the freshest in December for your wedding.”

  “Thanks, sis,” Helena said. She should probably try to get Hadley alone and see if she was doing okay with the whole might-be-pregnant thing.

  “No problem. I’m pretty sure that Kinley will have some good ideas too,” Hadley said.

  “If she’d had time to talk to us today, then we’d know that,” Candace said.

  Helena fought to hide her smile. Her mother didn’t like it when the world didn’t bend to her demands. Their daddy had said more than once it was his fault for treating her like a princess when they’d been dating, but Helena didn’t buy that at all. Her mother had always had a steel backbone and demanded excellence.

  “She has other clients, Mom. It will be fine,” Helena said.

  “Of course it will. And it was our fault that we missed the first one,” Candace agreed. “Now, what’s going on with my girls? I’m so glad we’re getting this time to catch up.”

  “Well, I had to rearrange my work schedule this morning,” Helena said. “Apparently my sister was in mortal danger but everything is great now.”

  “You have your daddy’s smartass humor, Helena. It’s not as attractive as either of y’all believe it is,” Candace said, rolling her eyes and then taking a sip of her sparkling water.

  “That’s one opinion. Had, what do you think?”

  “I’m going to have to side with Mom on this one. It’s funny to hear you joke about someone else but when you direct it at me, I’m not a huge fan,” Hadley said.

  “I’ll try to remember that. So what were you doing last night?” Helena asked as the waiter placed an avocado salad in front of her. “Were you out with Mo again?”

  “I was, as you know. We’re trying to be friends,” Hadley said, looking down at her plate and pushing the lettuce around. Helena felt a little mean for bringing him up.

  “How’s that going?” Candace asked.

  “Well, we’re taking it slowly. I invited him to the art exhibit I’m having next week at the shop, and he invited me to a polo match that he’s participating in. He apologized for the other-woman thing. He’s trying to show me he’s changed.”

  “Relationships take work, but make sure you are both doing it.”

  “We are. I’m not going to just fall for him saying things are different.”

  “Glad to hear that,” Helena said.

  “Sounds like y’all are making a good second start,” Candace said.

  But to Helena it sounded like her sister was playing a careful game. Helena knew how hard it was to manage a man when there were variables out of her control. In her case, it was whatever the hell Malcolm was up to; in Hadley’s, maybe a baby.

  “Thanks, Mom. I think so too,” Hadley said. “Helena, are you and Malcolm going to Bianca’s baby shower on Saturday?”

  “We plan to,” she said, but who knew if her fiancé was going to be reliable? She needed to sit him down and force him to tell her what was going on, but the truth was, she was starting to think he’d changed his mind about marrying her and a part of her didn’t want to know.

  Of course, she didn’t want to get left at the altar either. She was nervous about what it was that was taking up so much of his time and money and would eventually have to confront him about it.

  “Good. I was going to send a present and my regrets, but since you’re going, I think I’ll attend.”

  The conversation drifted to Kinley Caruthers who rumor had it might have let her husband, Nate, out of the doghouse after he bought their four-year-old Penny a four-wheeler and let her sit on his lap and drive it around the yard.

  Helena laughed but her heart was heavy. All she wanted was to be like Bianca or Kinley, starting a life with the man she loved, not sitting over here like Nancy Drew trying to solve the mystery of what was going on with him.

  * * *

  When Mauricio got home from work that evening, Alec was waiting in his apartment. His twin brother looked harried and not his usual self. Mauricio undid his tie as he walked through the living room where Alec was sprawled on the couch watching ESPN.

  “Hope you don’t mind if I crash here,” Alec said. “I would have called first, but I came from the airport.”

  “I don’t mind,” Mo said. “What’s up?”

  “Today is the release of the latest update,” Alec said. “This time I might have bitten off more than I could chew.”

  Alec was a software genius who wrote code that handled everything you could imagine. His house in the Five Families subdivision was completely automated. But each time his company had a new release, Alec, who was normally the most confident of guys, was nervous.

  “Is it a tequila or beer night?”

  “Tequila,” Alec said. “But I promised to take Benito so that Bianca and Derek could go to their prenatal class, so neither.”

  His brother kept flipping between all the sports channels, finally stopping on one that showed the Formula One rankings. Alec turned up the volume as they both turned their attention to the stats. Inigo was in the top five. Not surprising since he was a determined competitor who’d been driving since he was a teenager.

  When the rankings story was over, Alec turned the volume down. He knew that Alec needed to be distracted. Otherwise, he’d just sit here worrying about the reaction to his latest release, which would be happening on the West Coast this evening at four o’clock...so any minute now.

  “I’ll drive. Let’s get Beni and go play some polo. Text Diego and tell him to meet us there,” Mauricio said.

  “I’m not sure I’m up for—”

  “You’re not. So, I’m going to suggest you play on Diego’s team,” Mo said with a wink. He and Alec had never been those twins who felt each other’s exact emotions, but they were empathetic with each other. Both of them knew when the other one was dealing with something bigger than normal.

  “Ha. Okay. You’re right. Sitting here stewing isn’t going to help,” Alec said. “Which makes me wonder how you knew that. You’re not normally the intuitive twin.”

  He shrugged at his brother. What could he say? He could relate to needing a distraction. He’d been keeping as busy as he could until Hadley let him know if she was pregnant or not. Then it occurred to him that he hadn’t told anyone about it. But what would he say to them if she wasn’t?

  “What is it?” Alec said. “I’ve been having weird dreams again.”

  Damn.

  The one thing that had always linked them was their dreams. Neither of them had ever been comfortable talking about it to their other brothers.

  “Hadley might be pregnant,” he said. “We won’t know until she has a chance to go get a test.”<
br />
  “Wow. Okay, I wasn’t expecting that. Do I need to give you the protection talk? I thought Dad covered it pretty well when he said no one likes using a condom but always use one.”

  Mauricio shoved his hands in his pockets and shook his head. “I did. It broke.”

  “Well, hell,” Alec said.

  “Exactly. And we aren’t really in a place that I can say we’re a couple, which I know isn’t good. Why do things like this always happen with Hadley?”

  Alec studied him for a long moment. “We never talked about your breakup. I mean, I know the details of what happened...her walking in on you with Marnie. But what I mean is how it affected you. I never understood why you both broke up the first time.”

  Mauricio ran a hand through his hair. “I’ll tell you while we go pick Benito up. If we’re late, Bianca won’t be very happy with us.”

  “True,” Alec said. “I’ll drive. I have the prototype of an electronic sports car that I designed the engine for.”

  “That’s yours? I saw it in the garage. Me likey.”

  “Me too. They are going to go into production in the fall. Want me to put you down for one?”

  “Hell, yeah,” Mo said. They took the private elevator to the garage and Alec got behind the wheel. For a few moments, they listened to the radio and Mauricio thought his brother had forgotten about their conversation.

  “So what happened with her?” Alec asked when they were headed toward the Five Families subdivision.

  Mauricio took a deep breath. “I want to say I don’t know, but the truth is, I think I started to take her for granted. You know Hadley. She looks nice all the time, she scheduled all of our social events, she has a good career and she made our place really comfortable. And I thought that she’d keep doing all of that and I’d just be me.”

  Just be me. Like he was such a prize that she’d keep on giving her all to a man who wasn’t really checked in to the relationship.

  “She just got tired of asking me to be a part of the couple and said we needed a break. Instead of seeing it as a wake-up call, I thought it was my chance to be a single guy until she came to her senses and returned to me.”