Southern Heartbreaker: A Charleston Heat Novel

by Peterson, Jessica

  “Sounds good to me!” he calls from behind the door.

  Mom looks at me and smiles, a tight, closed-lipped thing. “Sounds delicious. Have I told you how happy I am that you’re here, mija? I love it when we can all be together like this. I miss you.”

  I grab a cocktail shaker, a juicer, and a cutting board. The alarm system chirps again, and this time it’s my younger sister Alex who walks through the front door. She’s in jeans and her white chef’s jacket, looking crisp and pretty as ever.

  “Smells fucking amazing,” she says, toeing off her sneakers.

  Mom rolls her eyes, even as her lips twitch. Every once in a while she’ll comment on Alex’s cursing, but for the most part, she’s given up trying to censor her.

  I grin. “You kiss your mother with that mouth?”

  “Yup.” Flashing us a wide, white smile, she trots over to the kitchen and plants a kiss on Mom’s cheek first, then mine. “Did I hear someone say margarita? I could use a stiff one.”

  “Were you working at that gorgeous grump’s house again?” Mom asks.

  “Oh yeah. And he was extra asshole today.”

  I glance at Alex. “Gorgeous grump? Who’s that?”

  “He’s Alex’s new client.” Mom grins. “He’s some big shot here in town who looks like—wait, who did you compare him to, mi amor?”

  My sister is digging more limes out of the bottom drawer of Mom’s refrigerator. “He looks like Chris Evans but growls like Tom Hardy.”

  Laughing, I say, “Sounds like a solid combo to me.”

  Alex shoves the drawer shut with her knee. “Strongly disagree with you there. He’s a total nightmare to cook for. Aside from being an all-around prick, he has the palate of a toddler. He won’t even try seafood, and claims he doesn’t like onions.”

  My mother gasps. I smile.

  “But you still call him gorgeous.”

  “Not my type,” my sister replies, grabbing a knife and slicing open a lime with more force than necessary. I take the half and juice it into the cocktail shaker. “Honestly, I can’t stand the guy.”

  “The lady doth protest too much,” I reply.

  She points her knife at me. “The lady doth need to get laid so she might mindeth her own business.”

  While Alex hasn’t brought a ton of significant others home—neither of us have—the ones I have met have been handsome, athletic, gregarious.

  This guy sounds different. Which makes me take note, as Alex hasn’t kept the others around.

  “Speaking of getting laid,” she continues. “Mom was telling me that Julia and Greyson’s baby shower is co-ed. You think Ford’s going to be there?”

  My gut twists at the mention of that name. I’m helping to host a baby shower for my friend Julia Lassiter in a few weeks. She’s having a baby with Greyson Montgomery, who just so happens to be brothers with Ford, the guy I dated back in college.

  Ford was my first everything. First boyfriend. First love. First guy I slept with.

  He was also my first real heartbreak. The kind that doesn’t leave you. Took me years to get over him.

  I’m hoping—hoping—he won’t be there. But Julia said he and his brother are tight, so my prospects aren’t looking good.

  “I’m not sure,” I say carefully. “Not like it matters. I’m not holding a torch for the guy or anything—it’s been, what, almost a decade since—” Since he ripped my heart out.

  Alex arches a brow. “Whatever you say.”

  I shake up a pitcher of strong, tart margaritas while Alex helps Mom assemble the rest of the Pastel Azteca. Dad emerges from the bedroom in fresh clothes, and together the four of us sit down to eat.

  Dinner is delicious. We linger over the table for an hour. The conversation is pleasant. Alex, being a chef, offers up some ideas for my book. So does Dad.

  My parents are laughing, dad pouring margaritas, mom shoveling seconds onto our plates that we happily devour. They don’t directly interact with each other all that much, but they chat plenty with my sister and I. I feel my heart swelling with gratitude.

  This is the family I know and love. This is what I’ve been missing.

  Still, Mom’s words haunt me on the drive home. Give an inch, and all of a sudden those inches turn into miles.

  I don’t know what I’m going to do about my cookbook.

  I don’t know what I’m going to do if I see Ford at the baby shower.

  I definitely don’t know what I’m going to do about my parents. They’re clearly on the brink, and my mom is clearly suffering.

  Seeing her hurt like that—ugh, it’s like my heart’s been tossed out a car window to skid across hot pavement. It’s physically painful.

  One thing I do know? I don’t want to have kids or become a mother myself.

  On a rational level, I know that I won’t necessarily end up like my mom if I have a baby one day. I’m sure there are plenty of women—men, too—who are genuinely fulfilled by parenthood. Who genuinely enjoy it, and who haven’t had to sacrifice their freedom and personal happiness to keep their families afloat.

  But why risk it? Especially if I’m content with my life as it is?

  It’s not only that my mom has had to give up her dreams to have kids. But becoming a parent has also trapped her in this relationship with my dad that is definitely not a happy one. She’s stuck.

  And I never, ever want to be stuck like that.

  Like mom said, parenthood forces you to give inches, and make sacrifices, that eventually lead to you giving up your dreams.

  Giving up your shot at happily ever after.

  Chapter Two

  Eva

  My heart skips a beat when my friend Gracie parks her Jetta in front of a gorgeous red barn half an hour’s drive outside Charleston. Glancing out the window, I run my palms down my thighs.

  To be honest, I haven’t thought all that much about the possibility of running into Ford at the shower today. I’ve been too busy either freaking out about my complete lack of progress on my cookbook or lending a helping hand to my mom. Whenever I have a free morning or afternoon, I try to spend it with her. Keep her occupied in the hope that having a good time will take her mind off things at home.

  I’ve tried to talk to her and dad many times about going to therapy. About talking things through with each other. But those conversations have gone nowhere. I gave up on talking, and just continued doing. Saving. Helping when I can.

  But now that I’m here at the shower, Greyson’s blue SUV parked in the spot beside ours, I am thinking about Ford. Nonstop.

  What if he’s, I don’t know, super successful, or he’s aged well, or his picture perfect wife and kids are here? I’m proud of my choices. Proud of my path. But I’m struggling a little right now in both my personal and professional life. I’d strongly like to avoid any reminders of where I’m falling short, or how I’m fucking up.

  “Hosting duties got you nervous?” Julia asks from beside me, one hand on her swollen belly. “You know it’s just a baby shower, right? Y’all really didn’t need to do this.”

  “Yes, we did. And no, I’m not nervous. No, wait, that’s a lie. Maybe I am a little nervous.”

  “About running into Ford?” she asks.

  My friends know about my history with him. They know we haven’t seen each other in almost ten years.

  They also know not to talk to me about him. It’s an unspoken rule between my girlfriends and I not to discuss Ford Montgomery. Years ago, it just hurt too much. Now it just seems silly, my nerves notwithstanding.

  “So he is going to be here,” I say.

  “He is,” she says with a nod, expression softening.

  My stomach does a backflip. Lord save me.

  I scoff. “God, how pitiful does that make me? Being nervous like this. Ford and I broke up years ago. This shouldn’t—I shouldn’t care this much, I know.”

  Gracie grins at me in the rearview mirror. The two of us met a few years ago through Julia, and we’ve become close
since. “It’s all right to care. He’s a really nice guy. Really good looking, too.”

  I let out a little moan.

  “Sorry, sorry. Wrong thing to say,” Gracie continues. “I just worked with him on the expansion at Holy City Roasters last year. And I guess what I’m trying to say is that I get it—why you’d be feeling off-kilter about seeing him. What happened with y’all, by the way? In college, I mean.”

  I lift a shoulder, eyes still glued out the window. “We met sophomore year and pretty much got hot and heavy right off the bat. We were both free spirits back then—both English majors. We were obsessed with books and concerts and cheap beer. Ford was this lethal combination of brilliant student and dirty talking bad boy. He was always the one who wanted to rage at a party or get a new tattoo. And the things that guy could do in bed…the dirty things he would say in bed...” I shake my head. “Anyway. The college we went to was kind of an intense place. Campus was full of overachievers who wanted to become doctors and consultants and stuff. I never got caught up in that game, but over the years, Ford did. He ditched English for Economics. And then he ditched me the day we graduated.”

  “Are you serious?” Gracie asks, wide-eyed.

  I offer her a grim smile. “Yup. Five minutes after we threw our caps, he pulled me aside and said, quote unquote, that we’d never work because the futures we wanted were too different, and that my plans and my career choices weren’t ambitious enough. He was off to get his MBA at Stanford, and I was going to work at a barbecue restaurant in Atlanta. When we first started dating, he loved that I wanted to be a pit master. But over the years, his opinion of me clearly changed.”

  The car erupts in a collective ouch.

  It doesn’t hurt now. But Lord, did the pain of that breakup almost kill me when it happened.

  I knew Ford had changed between sophomore and senior year. But I was still madly in love with him. How could I not be? He was kind (most of the time). Handsome as hell. Great in bed. Charismatic and interesting, too, even though he was increasingly obsessed with keeping up with our classmates.

  When he pulled the rug out from under me, it sent me into a tailspin. For months I couldn’t eat. Couldn’t sleep.

  He never called. And I never called him, even though I wanted to. So badly.

  To be fair, I was starting my first job at that barbecue joint in Atlanta (it was the hub of southern cuisine at the time, in my mind at least). Working eighty hour weeks, washing dishes and sweating my ass off tending to smokers, meant I had zero time for any kind of personal life.

  Besides. Ford had made it sound like his mind was made up. He didn’t want a pit master for a girlfriend. He wanted a banker. A surgeon. Someone who’d chosen a stable, prestigious career path.

  I was clearly not that someone, and never would be.

  So I doubled down on my passions. I started my blog. Wrote like crazy at night, and worked at barbecue places during the day.

  I missed Ford less, and liked myself more. I was doing what I loved. Granted, the pay was shit and so were the hours. But I stuck to my guns.

  I stayed true to myself.

  And you know what? It worked. Looking back, that period of my life was a painful, lonely, very broke time. There were days when I hated everything and everyone. But I kept at it. I leaned on family and friends. I saw a therapist.

  I saw other people.

  Now, a decade later, I’ve created a life for myself that I’m insanely proud of. It’s not perfect—hello, writer’s block, anxiety, and uncertainty—but it’s me. And I’m not sure that would’ve been the case if Ford and I had stayed together.

  “Yeah,” I say. “It was awful at the time. But it was ten years ago, and I really do believe things happened the way they did for a reason, so…”

  “So you’re going to walk into that barn like you own it,” Julia says, giving my leg a squeeze. “Remember you’re a kickass cookbook author and entrepreneur who built her own business from scratch. And—oh yeah—you look super hot in that dress.”

  I tug at the hem of said dress, a strappy, flowy number in bright coral. I am kind of obsessed with it.

  “You’re right,” I say. I clap my hands on my thighs. “You’re right. I’ll get the cake.”

  I grab said cake—it’s enormous, stored in an equally enormous box—carefully lifting it out of Gracie’s trunk. I head up a gravel path toward the barn’s main entrance, keeping my eyes trained on my feet. Don’t want to twist my ankle in my new platform wedges.

  Also don’t want to make unintentional eye contact with any fellow guests.

  One guest in particular.

  The barn itself, and the twenty acres of farmland surrounding it, belong to Gracie’s boyfriend Luke. He bought the Wadmalaw Island property a few years back. He grows heirloom varieties of corn out here that he mills into the most delicious grits on Earth. Recently, he hired Julia and Greyson to restore the barn into a storefront and gathering place where he can sell his grits and host monthly potluck brunches.

  It’s why we decided to host the shower here. Julia and Grey fell in lust, then love, while working on the barn together. Not difficult to see why. The place is gorgeous. Carolina Lowcountry at its best. Late morning light filters through the giant oak trees that dot the property, their branches dripping with Spanish moss.

  Stepping into the barn, I can’t help but smile. Julia’s talented designer touch is everywhere. The simple wrought iron chandeliers. The touch of European glam in the shiny brass cabinet hardware and plumbing fixtures. Shiplap on the walls, antique beams overhead.

  I came out here last night with the other girls who are hosting the shower to decorate the space. We went with a honey bee theme, complete with balloons, swags of tulle, and cheesy but fun letter garlands that read: WHAT’S BUZZIN BABY. WELCOME HONEY BEE.

  My chest swells with pride. I’m so damn happy for Julia. Things were looking a little dicey there for a minute for her. Her dad died last year. She got unexpectedly pregnant from all the hate sex she was having with Greyson, who was her boss at the time. She really wanted an equal partner in parenthood, but wasn’t sure Grey would be up to the task.

  And now, how many months later, the two of them are crazy in love. Case in point: they’re currently holding hands in the middle of the barn, marveling at Julia’s work. She laughs; Grey kisses her.

  My smile grows. Their story was less than perfect. Complicated. A little fucked up.

  Love at its finest.

  I want to find that brand of romance myself. I’ve had my fair share of relationships over the years. Boyfriends, eHarmony dates, booty calls. I wouldn’t say I’m unsatisfied.

  I just haven’t found the kind of overpowering, soul-deep love I’m looking for.

  I set the cake box on the long farm table at the front of the space. Tuck my hair behind my ear. Damn it, I don’t even know why I curled it this morning. The humidity has already made a mess of—

  “Nice box.”

  A tremor bolts through me—electrifying but silent, like heat lightning pulsing inside my skin—at the voice behind me.

  It’s the kind of deep that sounds like it’s been roughened by sweet-smelling vices. Expensive cigars. Barrel-aged Kentucky bourbons.

  The kind of deep I’d know anywhere.

  Oh, Jesus.

  I turn around, and my stomach dips.

  He is standing there. All six-foot-two inches of him, hands tucked casually into the pockets of his perfectly tailored, perfectly pressed grey trousers.

  Dark hair, light brown eyes, heavy scruff that borders on a beard.

  Ford Montgomery. In a suit.

  At heart, I may be a pit master who normally has no interest in power suits like this one. But I’m also a red-blooded woman.

  And damn does Ford look good.

  Really, really good.

  He’s gotten broader in the shoulders and chest. Trimmer around the waist. He’s not wearing a tie; the neck of his crisp white button-down is open, tanned skin and a smat
tering of hair peeking through the v.

  He wears his hair combed back. Smooth and corporate and polite.

  But then I’m taken off guard, because there’s nothing polite about the hot flash in his whiskey-warm eyes when they meet mine.

  Eyes that, once upon a time, belonged to the tattooed bad boy I fell for at nineteen.

  So which is he? The pretentious power suit, or the sensualist English major who could quote Emily Dickinson by heart and do all kinds of lewd, delicious things with his tongue?

  “Terrible pun,” I manage. “Hey. Hello, Ford.”

  One side of his mouth quirks upward.

  Shit, that smirk. It’s downright wicked.

  “Sorry,” he replies. “It’s the Michael Scott in me.”

  “That’s what she said,” I reply, pulse skipping at the reference. How many times did we flirt and snuggle and fuck to a background of The Office reruns?

  His smirk broadens into a smile. “God, I haven’t seen that show in forever. I haven’t seen any show in forever.” He shakes his head, eyes going soft as they move over my face. “Hello, Eva.”

  The backs of my knees melt a little. Him saying my name is like getting hit by the tastiest, juiciest red wine buzz ever.

  Stop.

  The guy dumped me ten years ago because I wasn’t “ambitious enough”, for Christ’s sake. I should give him the finger and walk away.

  But then I remember we’re at a baby shower. Not just any baby shower—Julia and Grey’s shower. Two people who just so happen to be my best friend and Ford’s only brother.

  I have to be polite. And maybe some inane small talk will send him running. It always did back in college.

  “How crazy is this?” I say, nodding at the shower decorations around us. “Your brother and my best friend falling in love and having a baby together. What are the chances?”

  But instead of running, he laughs. This velvety, low chuckle, and takes his left hand out of his pocket to smooth back his hair.

  He’s wearing a fancy pants watch—Patek Philippe, same one Bobby Flay wore when I glimpsed him at a cooking competition a few months back—but no ring.