“Mom –” I repeated but there was a knock at the door and my eyes fell to Tate’s nightstand. I saw his cell, wallet and the Marriott keycard so I figured Tate went out without the keycard and he needed me to let him in. “Listen, there’s a knock at the door, Tate’s back. I’ll talk to him. If he has to go home then he has to go home.”

“Maybe, if he has to go home, he’ll come back,” she suggested hopefully.

There it was. My Mom thinking my life could begin again now that I found a man. Then again, she’d married my Dad when he was twenty-one, she was nineteen. She’d never known a life without a good man in it so she would think that.

Another knock came at the door, this one louder. Tate was getting impatient or perhaps thought he needed to wake me.

“I’ve got to go,” I said to Mom. “See you at breakfast.”

“Yes, say eight, or whenever you’re ready,” Mom replied. “I just want to get there before visiting hours. See if we can talk to the doctors.”

“Okay,” I threw off the covers and swung my legs off the bed. “See you at eight. Love you.”

“Love you too, Laurie, and glad you’re here.”

“Me too.”

“Glad Tate’s here too.”

I sighed.

“Me too.”

“Bye hon.”

I stood up and bent over the phone saying, “Bye Momma.”

I hung up and rushed across the room to the door.

Not looking because it could be no one but Tate, I pulled it open while talking, “You forgot the –”

I stopped talking because Brad stood there.

I couldn’t believe my eyes so all I could do was stand there and stare, which was a bad thing. It was bad because Brad took that opportunity to move into the room and he might not have been as big as Tate but he was bigger than me and I had no choice but to move back with him and I did, walking backwards staring up at him.

“What are you doing here?” I asked when we stopped.

“I saw him running,” he told me.

“Tate?”

“I knew you’d be alone.”

Oh for goodness sake.

I heaved a sigh then said, “Brad –”

“We need to talk, without him here.”

“No we don’t.”

He looked at me from top to toe then smiled his killer Bradford Whitaker smile. “You look great, darling.”

I was just awake, my Dad was in ICU and I was not in the mood for Bradford Whitaker’s killer smile or to contemplate the fact that it had, for the first time since I’d seen it, not even the slightest effect on me. Instead, I focused on forcing myself not to roll my eyes.

I hated it when he called me darling and just then I remembered that I hated it even before he screwed me over. He was from Indiana too. We’d moved to Phoenix for his work. People in Indiana didn’t call people “darling”. They might call them “darlin’” but not with the “g”. I always thought that was totally fake. Even people in Phoenix didn’t say that. He wasn’t an English lord of the manor for goodness sakes, even though he wanted to be or, at least, acted like he was.

Thinking this moved me to thinking about Phoenix, a place I liked, it had great shopping and excellent restaurants and out of this world Mexican food. It was also close to Sedona and Flagstaff, both of which were amazing. And the desert in bloom was not to be believed. But, even so, I never settled there. It was too hot. I never got used to the heat. I hated the summers, they were torture.

Brad loved it. He detested cold and adored golf. No matter how often I talked to him about it, he never even entertained the idea of moving anywhere else, not even when his work offered jobs in DC (where I really wanted to live, it was beautiful, historical and exciting) and Seattle (where I’d been before and I thought it was great, so much so that was the first place I headed after I left my old life – but it didn’t hit me like Carnal did when I got there, too big, too wet, so I didn’t stay).

Thinking these things made me straighten my spine, look Brad in the eye and say, “Please go.”

He didn’t go. He got close and put his hands to my waist.

“You look great tan, always did.”

I put my hands to his and tried to remove them, repeating, “Go.”

His hands slid around to my back. “And your hair… I like it like that, sun-streaked.”

“It’s fake Brad. It isn’t sun streaks. It’s highlights delivered from a plastic brush wielded by Dominic, the g*y stylist to all biker babes.” I was still pushing at his hands.

He put pressure on my back so our h*ps touched. “Whatever,” he muttered then went on. “The length of it suits you. I wouldn’t normally say a woman of your age should have long hair –”

“Brad!” I snapped, interrupting him because he was annoying me in a variety of ways. “Go!”

He ignored me, leaned a bit back without letting me go as I still struggled with my hands now at his wrists behind my back trying to push them away. “How much weight have you lost?”

“I don’t know. Who cares? Let me go.” I pushed harder.

He pulled me closer.

“What you were wearing yesterday,” he murmured and I tried to remember what I was wearing yesterday. It was another tank top, this one salmon, ribbed and fitted, with jeans and a belt and flip flops. Not exactly haute couture but even I knew they fit really well. “God, Ree.” That came out as almost a groan. I noticed his eyes were locked on my mouth, I knew what that meant and I belatedly realized the situation was quickly deteriorating.

I jerked back but his arms only got tighter.

“Brad! Let! Go!”

His eyes came back to mine. “We were good together.”

I stopped struggling and glared at him. “Yeah, we were. Then we weren’t.”

His head bent and he shoved his face in my neck. “I missed you,” he whispered against my skin.

I started struggling again, squirming against his body but his arms only wrapped tighter around me and I felt his lips slide up to my ear.

“She cheated on me,” he whispered and I went still.

“Sorry?” I asked.

His head came up. “Hayley. Traded up for a new model.”

Oh my God.

He continued. “I made more money than Scott. Her new guy is a doctor. A surgeon. Obviously he makes more money than me.”

I didn’t know what to make of this, though I’d always suspected Hayley was with Brad because Scott, her husband, wasn’t as successful as Brad, my house was bigger than hers and she could only afford Griselle to come once every two weeks, not once a week. I also knew by things she said she wanted more. I didn’t want to think ill of my best friend so I’d let her little comments slide, dozens of times, but they always made me feel weird.