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  I knew I worked a lot and had a tendency to get lost in my work when I was working on a new project. I knew this. So, I had set my alarm to force me to stop working and had gone over to Whitney’s to surprise her with an early dinner and night out.

  Surprise was right.

  The surprise had been walking into her apartment-because after a year, why wouldn’t I have a key-and hearing sounds coming from her bedroom that should have only been made with me.

  I had paced her living room, trying to convince myself that she was just masturbating, and the male grunts had been from the porn she’d been watching. When I couldn’t deny the obvious any longer, I had turned that goddamn doorknob and had walked in on my worst fears confirmed.

  Whitney had been laying on her bed, legs spread, while her fucking gym trainer’s white ass had been pumping into her from above. I had lost my shit, pulled Glen from her body, and had beaten the shit out of him until Whitney had threatened to call the police.

  And to think I thought she could possibly be The One.

  I had hit the first bar I saw once the red haze of rage had dissipated and all to hear some woman start talking about how men sucked.

  Fuck that shit.

  Red-because I didn’t know her name-was growling like a rabid dog. “If men treated women with respect outside of the bedroom, then maybe we wouldn’t feel so used inside the bedroom when you wanted to roleplay,” she snapped. “Ever thought of that?”

  “Roleplay?” Was she out of her mind? “When was the last time you sucked dick without the poor sucker having to beg for it?” I scoffed. “And you think you guys are up for roleplaying? You’re delusional.”

  Her green eyes were blazing with hate. Any other time, I could appreciate that she was fucking stunning. She had dark auburn hair, green eyes, and alabaster skin. There was a smatter of freckles over her petite nose, and her lips were sexy enough to make a man beg for a blowjob. However, they left a lot to be desired right now as she spewed her misguided hate my way.

  Men were not the enemy here. Women were.

  As for her body, I couldn’t tell much because her movements were limited to leaning close enough to me to snarl and chomp at my arguments, but she looked to be slim. She didn’t have a huge rack underneath her pale-yellow blouse, but there was enough to fit in my hands or mouth-wait. I meant, some man’s hands or mouth. Certainly not mine.

  “Well, maybe if men would help wash a dish, we’d have the energy to be the sex goddesses you obviously need,” she shot back before flagging the bartender down. The man wisely rushed to replace the shots of tequila we had taken earlier. I wasn’t big on shots, but the whiskey I’d been drinking hadn’t been doing the job. So, when the bartender placed the shot in front of me, I had taken it.

  “We don’t need sex goddesses,” I clarified. “We just need you to fucking communicate.”

  “We do!” she insisted.

  Before I could explain that they don’t, we toasted our shot glasses, and tossed them back. I knew I needed to stop after this one, but like hell would I look like a pussy in front of this woman. Especially, watching her finish off her Bud Light and sliding it across the bar like a pro for the bartender to replace.

  “Bullshit,” I said, getting back to the topic at hand. “We ask you guys what’s wrong and you automatically say ‘nothing’, then get pissed because we believe you or can’t figure it out for ourselves. Just tell us what the fuck’s wrong. We’re not goddamn mind readers, you know.”

  “Why bother?” she countered. “It’s not like you guys really care about what’s bothering us.”

  “See? That’s such bullshit.” Of course, we cared. I did every fucking thing I was supposed to. I remembered anniversaries. I bought flowers for no reason. I might have been neglectful when I got caught up in a new project, but I made up for it damn it. “We wouldn’t ask if we didn’t care.”

  She pfft’ed me.

  She actually pfft’ed me.

  “You only ask to pretend to give a shit,” she said accusingly.

  I downed the fresh glass of whiskey placed in front of me. “Then why be with you if we don’t care?”

  Red jumped down from her barstool in triumph. “Exactly!” However, her victory was ruined as she stumbled a bit and I had to wrap my arm around her to keep her from face planting.

  And I did a great job of ignoring how good she felt in my arms.

  I was in the middle of a heartbreak. I didn’t need to notice how good another woman felt in my arms right now. I was trying to make a point of how men could be good and faithful. My dick getting hard for another woman, hours after the woman I truly cared about had stomped all over my heart, was probably not a good look. But then Red stumbled again, and my other arm had to come around to steady her.

  It accidentally ran across her ass.

  Her thick, plump, wide ass.

  Where Red was petite up top, she was packing some serious weight in the hips and ass department, and a vision of her bent over had me reeling.

  “Are you okay,” I asked begrudgingly. She was assassinating the integrity of men all over the world, but I didn’t want her crashing to the floor in her passion for her fight. Compassion got the better of me when I realized she wouldn’t be here drinking so early-shots of tequila, no less-unless she was nursing a broken heart, too.

  Love fucking sucked.

  She pulled out of my arms and her face turned red. “Of course, I am.” She looked over at the bartender, and the poor bastard walked over slowly and possibly frightened for his life. When he got to us, she said, “I need my bill, please.”

  I wasn’t sure what compelled me, but I said, “It’s fine. Add her drinks to mine.”

  Red whirled around on me. “You think picking up my tab makes you right? Because it doesn’t,” she said. “I did everything I was supposed to.”

  “What?” What was she talking about?

  “After working my ass off at work all day long, I came home and cooked. I cleaned. I did the laundry. I did the shopping. I paid the bills. When Arnold brought work home, I didn’t bitch. I encouraged him to move up in the company and chase his ambitions.”

  Arnold? The was crying over a man named Arnold?

  “Sure, we argued from time to time, but I wasn’t a nag.” The bartender placed our combined bill on the counter and Red reignited the rage that had been easing when she reached into her purse, pulled out a hundred-dollar bill, and slapped it on the counter. “Keep the change.”

  This time I jumped off my barstool. “What? Oh, fuck no.” I wrestled my wallet from my pocket. “Do not take her fucking money,” I warned the bartender. “I said put the drinks on my tab.”

  “I don’t need you paying for my drinks,” she spat. “I don’t need a man for anything.”

  I slapped my credit card on the bar and shot a look at the bartender, demanding he take it, and he did, leaving the hundred on the counter. I looked back down at Red, who only came up to my chest. “Except for dick,” I pointed out.

  She didn’t even flinch. “They have stores for that,” she pointed out. “And silicone doesn’t judge, or nag, or fail.”

  That hit a nerve.

  I’d never been insecure about my capabilities in the bedroom before, but knowing Whitney had gone elsewhere for satisfaction, well, it still plagued the back of my mind.

  My ego and dick demanded satisfaction like I was fighting for my honor on an eighteenth-century dueling field. “I don’t fail in the bedroom,” I bit out.

  Her green eyes narrowed in challenge. “Neither do I,” she tossed back.

  The bartender handed me back my card, but my eyes never left Red’s as I signed, what I hoped looked like my signature, and stuffed the card back in my wallet and replaced it in the back of my pants.

  I looked down at the stunningly angry woman in front of me and knew we’d both been hurt by people we were supposed to have been able to trust, and we needed validation that it wasn’t us. We needed reassurance that we hadn’t been the
problem.

  “What’s your name?” I asked. I wasn’t going to call her Red while I was balls-deep in her.

  “Henley,” she answered warily. “What’s yours?”

  “Dash,” I answered.

  We stared at each other a full minute before I finally asked, “Your place or mine?”

  Henley didn’t miss a beat. “The hotel across the street.”

  Six hours later, Henley had snuck out while I was passed out from exhaustion.

  Chapter 3

  Henley – (Three Months Later)~

  “You need to snap out of it,” my sister, Ellie, said. “You know they say indifference is the only truth to being over someone.”

  I cradled the phone to my ear and looked out the window. Sheets of rain were pouring down, distorting my view of the city. It was fitting weather for my craptastic mood.

  My day had started out pleasant enough. I hadn’t overslept. There were no slips in the shower. I’d even had enough time to stop at Charm and get a tall coffee and pastry. I hadn’t had to drive to Egypt for a parking space in the employee garage at Salinas Advertising and Marketing. It had been a good morning.

  That is, until I had walked into the employee breakroom, to put my lunch away, and saw the balloons and box of congratulations donuts on the table with Arnold’s name scripted in perfect calligraphy across the top.

  Motherfucker.

  Being the grownup that I was, though, I had put my lunch away and had headed straight for my office. I was self-aware enough to take responsibility for dating someone I worked with. Everyone knew it was a bad idea, but we had done it anyway.

  Or, at least, I had.

  Three years ago, Arnold had come to work for S.A.M. from a competing advertising firm, and he’d been a rising star from the beginning. He was smart, ambitious, and dedicated to his climb up the ladder. He exuded confidence, and he had that home-town boy charm that snagged clients left and right.

  It didn’t hurt that he was good-looking with his sandy-brown hair and light green eyes. Arnold was also six-foot, and every girl loved a tall man. He wasn’t ripped with abs, but he took care of himself and was nicely built.

  And I fell for the slithering snake hook, line, and sinker.

  “I am over him,” I insisted. “It’s not that.”

  “Well, it can’t be because he landed another client,” she argued. “He’s always doing that.” Ellie was right, but before I could comment, she let out a long, annoying, sibling laugh. And, yes, siblings had a very specific laugh that was designed to specifically irritate the shit out of your brothers and/or sisters. And, in this case, it was sister, as I was Ellie’s only sister and sibling. “Don’t tell me you’re still in a funk over Hotel Guy.”

  “He has a name, you know,” I retorted childishly.

  “You would know,” she teased. “According to you, you screamed it for hours.” My head dropped back in my chair, the groan of embarrassment real and emerging from my soul.

  The morning after I had snuck out on Dash, I had called Ellie and spilled everything. I told her about flying to Austin, catching Arnold with another woman, stuffing my engagement ring down his throat, flying home, going to the first bar I came across after dropping off my shit at home, and the six hours I spent with a stranger at The Lux. I didn’t tell her every little thing the man had done to me, but I gave her enough details to apparently tease me for the past three months.

  And she was right.

  I had screamed his name for hours.

  “This isn’t about Dash either,” I denied, because even I could admit I’ve been in a funk since that night. But any woman with a working hoo-hah would be sad knowing another night like that was probably not likely to happen again.

  After Dash had passed out from a job well-done, and the pleasure of his touch was no longer distracting me, shame had immediately washed over me as I laid naked next to him.

  I had used him.

  Sure, the tequila shots had played a part, but by the time Dash had entered my body for the third time that night, I couldn’t blame it on the alcohol anymore. I wasn’t sure what his story had been, but I had needed to feel wanted, plain and simple. And, all the baby angels in Heaven, he had delivered on that score.

  It had also been the best sex I had ever had in my life.

  The only cringe worthy part of the night had been the lack of condoms. Neither of us had planned on ending up at a hotel with a complete stranger, but whatever demons we’d been fighting that day, they’d been stronger than responsibility and common sense. That was another reason I had snuck out like a married athlete out of town for a game. Dash’s words from earlier, about how women didn’t know how to keep their legs closed, had slammed through my head and I had wondered how I could have fallen in bed with a man, only hours after having my heart broken by a man I was supposed to have been madly in love with.

  I had planned on marrying the prick, for Christ’s sake.

  Sure, it could be argued that Arnold deserved it and I had the right to act out, but that didn’t change the fact that I had used Dash to make myself feel better. And I couldn’t rid myself of how it made me feel…icky, not to mention he was basically a woman-hater. But that hadn’t taken away from the fact that he hadn’t fucked me like he hated women.

  No.

  He had fucked me like he loved women.

  “Then what’s your damage, Henley?” Ellie asked. “Your life is pretty spectacular, save for those two men.” Ellie’s big sister advice sucked. At thirty-three, Ellie was two years older than I was.

  “Karma’s not working fast enough for me, I suppose,” I told her. After the walk of shame, I had gone home and used the time off I had taken to surprise Arnold to move out of our apartment. I had put all my stuff in storage and had gone to a hotel. It had taken me two weeks to find a place to live that was reasonable, but the part that really sucked? Arnold had stayed in Austin, landed his client, and, by all accounts, has been leading a charmed life since then.

  “Henley, Arnold has a small dick,” she reminded me. “Karma got him a long time ago.

  I winced.

  Once night, when I was in my feelings, I had confessed to Ellie that Arnold had been lacking a bit in the man-package department. But I had been in love and had professed that sex wasn’t everything. Turns out, neither was fidelity.

  “I just hate that he got away with his cheating unscathed,” I replied. “I feel like he got off easy.” I was scorned enough to flip my middle finger at the high road.

  “Happiness is the best revenge,” Ellie replied sagely.

  “Yeah, I read that in a fortune cookie once and it was shit then, too.” I said sourly. “Why can’t you just let me be miserable? What kind of sister are you?’

  “The kind that’s not going to let you wallow over a small dick,” she snorted. “Personally, if you’re going to be miserable, be miserable over that eight-inch cock you rode for six hours.”

  “I’m never telling you anything ever again,” I lied.

  “Sure, you are,” she came right back. “You don’t have any other friends.”

  I groaned.

  Ellie wasn’t wrong. While she was a stay-at-home wife, working on getting pregnant, so she could rock the stay-at-home mom gig, Ellie was a people-person. She knew all her neighbors and the names of every cashier and bagboy at the supermarket. She made friends wherever she went, and she was genuinely interested in the people she befriended.

  Me?

  Ellie was my best and only real friend. Sure, I had co-workers I gossiped with and a couple of neighborly acquaintances in my apartment building, but no real friends to speak of. It wasn’t that I was anti-people, more as I was pro-self. I liked my time free and I liked doing what I wanted with it.

  “Oh, and Mom and Dad are threatening to come visit if you don’t call them soon,” she said, making me cringe.

  Don’t get me wrong. I loved my parents. Donald and Marianne Everhart were wonderful people. However, they were retired and l
iving the life in Cayucos. With no jobs or business, calling to their attentions, they had plenty of time to stay for weeks on end if they decided to visit me or Ellie in Ferndale. I prayed for Ellie’s fertility quest constantly. The sooner Max got her pregnant, the better.

  “I’ll call them after work,” I promised.

  “You better. If they make the trip up here, fuck paper, rocks, and scissor. They’ll be staying with you since your neglect will be the reason for their trip,” she threatened.

  “Geesh. A little aggressive, are we?”

  “Henley, the last time they stayed with us, Max almost left me,” she reminded me.

  “Hey! We’re family,” I reminded her. “If Max can’t handle some innocent questions about his sperm count, maybe he needs to dial down the sensitivity notch a bit.”

  “Mom asked him if he felt his size was adequate enough to make sure his swimmers were within reaching distance of my womb, Henley,” she said, recounting the horror that were our parents.

  “I’ll call tonight,” I said again. “I promise.”

  “Call them. Quit worrying about Arnold. And, for the love of God, go back to that bar, pray Hotel Guy is there, and get laid again, because your negative vibes are killing me.” She hung up before I could say anything more.

  Today fucking sucked.

  Chapter 4

  Dash~

  “The only reason you’re still alive is because I don’t want to upset Mom,” Scott said. “With Aaron still deployed, she’d miss you. But once he’s done with the Marines, all bets are off.” I rolled my eyes. It wasn’t the first time my brother has threatened me, but lately he’s been sounding more serious than normal.

  “I just don’t understand why you need me for this shit, Scott,” I said, tired of the same conversation. “I’m the workhorse and you’re the brain. That’s the deal. Why do I need to go to some marketing meeting?”

  “Because we’re marketing your visions, Dash,” he sighed. “Advertisement isn’t about the numbers, business laws, or profit and losses. It’s about promoting your visions. You’re a software developer who incorporates computer networking architecture with self-security analysis. You sell your shit for millions, Dash. My degree is in business management, not marketing or computer science. You need to go to this meeting, so you can explain to them what it is you’re selling and how you want it presented to the world.”