July (Calendar Girl #7)(30)

“You do, only at the time, Alec did too. In a way, he still does.”

Wes’s eyes hardened and then sadness swept across his features. “He loves you.”

I nodded and he closed his eyes. I was quick to respond. “Alec believes that you love the one you’re with for however long you’re with them. That it’s okay to take a piece of each other with you as you carry on throughout your life.”

“Does he want you back?”

And there was the jealousy on my normally laid-back, movie-making, surfer. “No. Not in that way. Alec loves every woman he’s with or he wouldn’t be with her. There are probably hearts all over the globe breaking daily because he’s loving someone new right this very moment.”

“That’s not how I operate. Mia. I’m a one-woman man when I commit, and I’m committing to you. To us. In order for this to work, you have to commit, too.” He cleared his throat. “And we have to get past all this history. Because, honey, that’s what it is. It’s history.”

I thought briefly of Gina, but I didn’t know the timeframe of when he was f*cking her and making love to me. I only knew that now he wouldn’t be, and I believed him.

“That’s all the months. So you only slept with one man since we’ve been together?” His gaze was incredulous. He had reason to be so.

Closing my eyes I braced for it. “No. I was with Tai Niko, the male model, in Hawaii.”

“Hawaii? In May?”

“Yeah.”

“Like a one-time thing?” There was so much riding on my response.

My voice shook. “No.” I admitted because if anything, I wasn’t a liar. There was no way I was going to start out my first real relationship in years built on lies.

“Fuck!” he stood and started pacing, tugging on his hair and cursing. This seemed to be his go-to response.

“You don’t understand. Wes, it was just fun! He’s already with someone else right now. Someone he plans on marrying!” I yelled to get my point across. Wes was too important to not get past this.

Wes shook his head from side to side. His shoulder slumped once more. “Shit. Sweetheart, you’re killing me. You spent a month in paradise loving someone else?”

He used the word paradise to torture me. Playing fair was off the table. “And you spent the last how many months f*cking Gina DeLuca, America’s goddamned sweetheart, hot throb, sexiest woman alive and I’m supposed to be okay with that?”

Like a shot from a cannon he backed up several steps and clasped the side-table behind him. “Mia, she means nothing to me!” He clutched at his chest. “Nothing!” he reiterated.

“I find that hard to believe. You’ve been casually f*cking her for months.” I gestured with air quotes at the word casually. “You don’t think she believes it’s something more?”

He shook his head. “She doesn’t. I swear.”

“Whatever. Tell yourself that until you believe it. At least I can say that I’ve had my time with Alec and Tai and moved on from it. I’m in a different place. I. Love. You! I’ve never said those words that way to them. I may love them as friends, as people I care about who I know care about me in return, but I’m not in love with them. Monumental difference. I’ve never been in love with them. Can you say the same about Gina? Huh?” My voice was at a screech, and I knew I’d lost it when I stood up and threw my tumbler at the wall. It didn’t even break. No satisfaction what-so-ever. Damn Anton and his love for quality glassware.

I groaned and flopped back down to the couch and cradled my head in my hands. “This is why I never fall in love,” I said the words aloud and repeated them in my head, over and over like a chant.

Without warning, Wes pulled me up and turned around so that my knees hit each side of hips in a straddle.

“Don’t you ever regret loving me. That would hurt worse than anything you could ever say or do to me.” He cupped my cheeks. “Is that all? That everything. Two guys? One attacker, and a handful of new friends?”

I licked my lips and nodded.

“Okay, sweetheart.” He swallowed and admitted his own truths. “For me it was just Gina on and off. We can both move past this.” The words made my heart sing. Like a bedtime lullaby, I softened. Being with him, like this, in his lap, his hands caressing my sides made me that easy.

We can work with this.

My eyes filled again with tears. His thumbs swiped them away as they fell. “No, no, baby. Right now, from here on out, it’s just you and me. We put it out there and it’s done. I know what I need to know, you know that Gina is gone. G-O-N-E,” he repeated spelling it out. “Only thing left is this. You and me. Now we can build on it.”

I nodded and shoved my head into his neck inhaling that ocean and Wes scent I adored. “I love you.” I spoke the words to him so that he could hear them and know that I needed to hear them in return.

“Sweetheart, I love you too. Me and you. Just me and you.”





Chapter 10


The trill of my cellphone woke me from the best dream. Wes and I were touring castles in Germany, hand-in-hand, a young couple very much in love. Until the ringing started. As soon as it stopped, it would start again.

Wes leaned over me, grabbed the offending object and answered it. Shit. No. Bad idea. It could be anyone. If it was one of my ex-clients, friend or not, it could go bad. Really bad, insanely fast.