God I fucking hate this town and the people in it so much at times. No one takes fidelity seriously here.
"I'm thinking you deserved to have your wife cheat on you," I grit out at Paul, and push down on his hand a bit more. He grimaces even as anger fills his eyes.
"Let go, bitch," he snarls at me.
Fortuitously, my door opens and the limo driver stands there, shocked to see the positions of his passengers.
"Have a lovely evening, Paul," I say in a voice that's anything but grateful as I release my hold on him. "I appreciate the ride home."
I quickly exit the limo, jogging up to my front door in my four-inch strappy Choos and unlocking it. I turn the alarm off in the entryway, closing the door and then turning the dead bolt. I then reset my alarm, as I always feel safer with it on.
My cellphone rings and I sigh, pulling it out of my clutch. Not surprising, it's Colleen O'Hearn, my business manager. She's the best in the business, and of course she's already up to speed on everything that's happened. Her network of spies is vast, but apparently not needed tonight.
"It's all over the Internet and on a few news channels," is how she greets me. "We need to do damage control."
"Damage control?" I ask astounded. "He cheated on me."
"Not the way he's spinning it," Colleen says gruffly. "His publicist released a quick statement right from the fucking movie theater confirming that as of tonight you two had split. He's apparently admitted falling in love with his costar while they filmed Code Zero. He claims you repeatedly spurned him in bed, and what little you did give was not that great, thus leading him into the arms of another woman."
"He did not say that, did he?" I practically screech in disbelief, and tears start streaming again from both hurt and anger.
"Sorry, kiddo...but you said he had erectile dysfunction. Did you think he'd let that go?"
"That's on the news too?" I ask incredulously.
"Only from about five different smartphones where people were videotaping the entire exchange," she says dryly. "Of course, they caught Lilliana's dramatic faint and Brad catching her suavely in his arms, then carrying her inside the theater. The articles are calling him 'gallant.' He's managed to paint himself in damn good light."
"That...that...that asshole," I curse, because nothing more creative is coming to mind. In fact, I can feel my entire brain starting to shut down on me. The hurt starts to overcome the anger, and my heart feels like it's being crushed in a vise grip. I loved that asshole, but apparently he didn't feel the same about me.
Tonight I was publicly humiliated, lost my fiance, and I already feel the terrible weight of anxiety pressing down on my chest, wondering what tomorrow's headlines are going to bring.
I really hate this town sometimes.
Chapter 2
I'm not a commitment type of guy...
Coop
I hang up the phone in frustration and walk over to the whiteboard on my office wall that holds the schedule of all my employees for the workweek. Using the eraser, I remove Todd Crawley's name from tomorrow's mulch job at the public library. With a grunt of dissatisfaction, I pencil my name in to take his place. Can't be too mad at the dude, though. He's got a stomach bug that's been sweeping through our little town of Newberry, Georgia, and it's knocked out practically every one of my staff, which includes four men and two women landscape maintenance workers.
Tossing the erasable marker onto my desk, I sit back behind it and stare at my computer. I've got about four more hours of work on these 3-D landscape renderings for a new client I picked up in Athens. It's a doctor who bought a house on a small lake, and he wants to redo the entire front and backyard. It's a huge project, with man-made structures and water features. It will come in at close to seventy-five thousand dollars for the entire thing, and while the yard maintenance part of my business yields decent money, I make my really good gravy from my design projects.
My plan had been to complete these tomorrow, as I had a meeting with the client the following day. But now that I'll be working in Todd's place on the mulch job, it looks like I'll be working into the night.
Oh well...wouldn't be the first time, and as the owner of this company, I do what it takes to keep the doors open. Besides, I don't mind getting out there and working up a sweat under the hot Georgia sun. I've been doing it since I was eleven years old, when I'd help my dad with the business. Back then it was just simple yard maintenance: he would cut lawns, trim hedges, and spread mulch in flower beds. But when I came on board after I graduated from the University of Georgia with a degree in landscape architecture, we sort of bumped the business up a notch. Dad was certainly proud, and not a day goes by that I don't miss him being in this office with me, or outside working with our hands in the dirt. He raised me on his own, and it's still hard for me to believe he's gone.
So work comes first, and I'm not all that put out by it. I nab my cellphone off my desk, prepared to call Ashley to cancel our date tonight. I know I should be more upset about it, but I'm not. She's been getting a little clingy lately.
My jaw drops, though, because before I can even flip through my contacts for her number, the little bell above the door of Mayfield Landscape and Design jingles and Ashley herself is strutting in my door. I grit my teeth, because I do not like social visits at my office, and I can't imagine what would be so important that she couldn't have waited to tell me on our date that's not actually going to happen tonight.
Mayfield Landscape has a small lobby with an empty desk because I really don't need a full-time receptionist. To the left is my glass-walled office, and to the right, a small break room, and that's all there is to it. I pay extra rent in this small shopping center two blocks off the main street that runs through Newberry for extra parking spaces for my trucks, trailers, and other daily landscape maintenance equipment. My heavier equipment is locked up at Goodnight House in one of the large barns on the property.
Ashley smiles at me through the glass wall and walks right in with a distinct sway to her hips. She's wearing a pair of very short shorts today, as it's blazing hot, and a low-cut V-neck T-shirt that reveals the soft swells of her breasts. I know those tits well, and in fact fucked them three nights ago. No doubt about it...Ashley's hot as hell.
"Hey, sugar," she says in her thick southern accent. It's so thick it's lost a lot the charm and sometimes makes me wince. I give her a pass on it, though, because that mouth is really quite talented in other things.
"What are you doing here?" I ask her, keeping my tone pleasant. Although I don't like people showing up at my place of business, in fairness to Ashley, I've never told her that. Never thought I had to, as we weren't that serious and had only been seeing each other about a month. And by seeing each other, I mean once, maybe twice a week, because my schedule is insanely hectic.
"I just was walking by on my way to get my nails done," she says as she leans half of her shapely ass on the corner of my desk. "Thought I'd stop in for a kiss. I know I'll be seeing you in a few hours, but I just couldn't wait that long to get me some of your sugar, sugar."
I wince again, because that right there...that smacks of a woman who wants to sink her nails into me deep. Swinging by my place of work for a kiss because she can't wait two fucking hours to see me? Something like that would have me breaking this off with her, because it's definitely signifying she's not maintaining the boundaries we set.
Still, she's a firecracker between the sheets, so I tell myself to exercise a little patience with her. Ashley knows the deal with me, as I spelled it out about as clear as I could when after our first date she invited me into her house and the minute the door closed, she dropped to her knees to give me a blow job. Had to say I wasn't expecting it, but I wasn't turning it down either. After an all-night bender where I swear she almost broke me, I had to have that "serious" conversation with her about the way I am.
I'm not a long-term type of guy, and this is well known in our little town of Newberry not only because the residents
have watched me be a playboy my entire adult life, but because I've made it very clear to more than one lady that I'm only into casual dating.
"I'd love to keep seeing you, Ashley, but I don't do relationships," I had explained to her the next morning as I was leaving. And she had assured me she understood.
Regardless, I'm definitely giving her a pass on stopping by for a kiss, mainly because I have to cancel our date tonight. And since I'm a big believer in up-front communication, face-to-face works just great for me.
"Listen," I say as I get up from my desk and come to stand in front of her. I reach out and tug on her long blond hair, which is a calculated gesture of touch but not too intimate. "I'm going to have to cancel tonight. I've got too much work to get done for this design project."
As expected, Ashley forms that sweet little mouth into a pout. Her hands come to my chest and she sweeps them upward to curl around my neck. She purrs like a cat when she says, "Are you sure there's nothing I can do to get you to change your mind?"
I just stare at her, watching in fascination as she tries to work her magic on me.
"Anything at all?" she adds with enough innuendo that I get what she's offering.
I could whip my dick out and she'd get me off with that mouth. Or I could bend her over my desk and fuck her hard. But I'm not interested, because it's too damn easy, and without challenge comes mediocrity. Besides...I give in to her, I'll have to go out with her tonight, and that's something I cannot do.
Work comes first.
"Sorry, Ash," I say as I step back from her and go back to my desk chair. "But I'm really swamped. Raincheck, okay?"
"When?" she asks as she stands up from the desk.
I sigh. I know she isn't going to let me be complacent about our next date. "Maybe Saturday? We'll eat wherever you want and then maybe we'll go to Tilley's and listen to the band."
"Saturday?" she says, and the whine grates on my nerves. It's subtle, but it's there. "But that's four days away."
"But I'll be able to focus all my attention on you," I say playfully as I reach out and tug on the edge of her shorts.
This pacifies her somewhat, but I can still see the calculation in her eyes. She's trying to figure out how I could possibly go four days without her golden pussy. Why I'm not entranced enough with her to want to spend every single night with her.
The answer is simple.
I haven't felt that way about someone in a long fucking time, and doubt I ever will again.
Ashley finally gives me a smile, and my shoulders relax to know she's heading out and I can get back to work. But her next words feel like a punch in the chest. "Did you see the news about Eden?"
I'm nonchalant. Casual. Don't care. "Nope. She win another award or something?"
Ashley laughs with clear delight. "Maybe the 'loser' award. She found out her fiance had been cheating on her while she was walking the red carpet for a premiere night before last. It was all on video. Some reporter showed her the photographs just seconds after she got done posing for cozy little pictures with Brad Wright."
I don't hear much of what she says, as a loud buzzing started in my ears when she said Eden had a fiance. And then I distinctly heard Brad Wright.
Eden was engaged to Brad Wright? Like the biggest-action-star-in-the-world Brad Wright?
The buzzing recedes as my mood deflates.
Well, of course she was fucking engaged to him.
She's Eden Goodnight.
I give a slight cough to clear my throat, the rest of what she said coming back to me. "He was cheating on her?"
Ashley nods and leans in closer to me to deliver the rest of her gossip. "Apparently with his costar, Lilliana Prentice. Eden made a big scene about it, and then later Brad confirmed to the press that they'd broken up, and that he was driven into his costar's arms because Eden was terrible in bed."
She finishes that last part with a cackle of glee, then tacks on, "Of course, I'm sure you know all about that."
Now granted, my time with Eden was many years ago and we were young, didn't know what we were doing half the time. But she was in no way bad in bed. In fact, I remember her to be very, very perfect. We had been wildly in love--or so we thought, as we were only eighteen--and both of us had been devastated when we broke up. It was mutual, after a very long time of trying to make it work long distance. And you know what happens with time? You move on and you leave that shit behind. It's what I did, and it's why I don't really keep up to speed with Eden's glamorous Hollywood life. I just really don't care; not in a mean way, but there's nothing left there to care about. She left and she never came back. I've only seen her once in fourteen years, and frankly, I'm just not that curious about her.
Eden was a lifetime ago, or so it seems, and besides that, I'd never talk bad about any of the women I've fucked, and not going to start now.
"So, I'll see you Saturday night. Pick you up at seven?" I say in a complete change of subject. Then I tilt my head toward the door. "And you better hurry along to your nail appointment. Wouldn't want you to be late."
Ashley nods, disappointment filling her eyes because I won't engage in the gossip about Eden with her. Ashley went to high school with us and she knows how serious we were. I have no clue why she'd feel threatened about that now, but I'm not going to bad-mouth Eden to make Ashley feel good about herself.
No, any bitter feelings I have for Eden will remain my own, and they have nothing to do with us breaking up. Those came much later.
Chapter 3
He's just a gardener...
Eden
My phone rings as I drive along Highway 142 toward Newberry and I don't want to answer it but I do. I put on the happiest voice I can manage. "Hi, Colleen. What's up?"
"What's up is that you had a meeting with me and Carlos set to start half an hour ago and you're still not here," she snapped. "You know we have a life too."
"Um, yeah," I say carefully. "About that meeting. I'm not coming."
"Of course you're coming," she says in a tired voice. "I know this isn't ideal, but you have a contractual obligation and the movie execs want to make sure everything will work out okay. You know Carlos has reviewed the contract and you're sort of bound to it."
I snort. "Carlos wants his fifteen percent. It's what agents do. And I know the contract well, as I had an attorney review it."
"Damn it, Eden," Colleen huffs. "This petty shit needs to be put aside and we need to talk this out. Brad's camp is willing to talk."
The meeting that Colleen is so peeved about is to discuss my ability to work with Brad in the movie we were set to start shooting next month. Contracts have been signed, advances made. It's expected that I'll be on set with the cheating, lying, bastard douchebag, ex-fiance, Brad Wright, and I'll do so with a professional smile on my face.
Of course, he's been spouting his mouth off to every entertainment news station and magazine that will listen, making me seem like an arrogant bitch who was too demanding on him and was cold as ice in bed. His lies are just lies, but as of last night, I'd fucking had enough of them. People were believing him. Most articles were slanted in his favor. While some of my fans defended me, apparently Brad's legion of female fans were absolutely vicious in their attacks. I was also tired of my business manager and my agent harassing me, I was sick of reporters calling me and paparazzi ambushing me, and there was no way in fuck I was going to work with Brad on that film.
I fluctuated between burning-hot anger at Brad for not only cheating on me, but continuing to twist the knife more, and being tremendously hurt by someone I thought loved me. Brad has been only the second man in my life that I loved, and while it may have been a different kind of love, it was real to me. I thought it was real to him. The thing that hurts the most, though, is learning that the reason he cheated was because I just wasn't satisfying him enough, and that causes my insecurities to flare up hard.
What I needed was an escape, and I needed it to be somewhere no one would think to find me. And that pl
ace would be Newberry, Georgia, as I hadn't returned but once in fourteen years, and that was for my grandmother's funeral ten months ago. I wasn't even back in my hometown a full day then. The paparazzi would never look here when they couldn't find me at my home in Pacific Palisades and instead would be buzzing around either my vacation home in Vail, Colorado, or the getaway condo I kept in Miami. But more than hiding out, what I really needed was some peace and quiet. I needed time to lick my wounds before I ventured back out in the public eye. I could hide myself away at Goodnight House, and if I was lucky, I wouldn't be found.
But I also felt Newberry calling to me. Over the last few days, I've latched on to the good memories of my life here, particularly the first fifteen years of my life before my parents died. I missed the small-town camaraderie and safety of being with my peeps. While I don't really expect that to be the case now, because I've been gone too long and haven't kept up with anyone, I do imagine just being at Goodnight House will be a balm for my soul.
"Just get your ass in gear and get over here," Colleen says impatiently. "This problem isn't going to go away."
Oh yes it is, I think. At least for a little bit longer while I'm in Newberry. In fact, I might not come back at all. I've got more money than I could possibly spend, and the thought of telling Hollywood a big old fuck you is very appealing.
"I'm not in Los Angeles," I tell Colleen, and I hear her gasp.
"Where are you?"
"None of your business. I'm taking some time away for myself and I'm really going to try to figure out what I want to do."
"What you want to do?" Colleen practically screeches into the phone. "There is no 'want' in this industry. You're under contract to film a movie next month."
I see the long gravel drive to Goodnight House in the distance flanked by large magnolia trees on each side. I slow down and put my turn signal on, even though there's no one behind me. "That's next month. This is now. I'm taking some time off and I'll let you know when I'll be back."
"But Eden--" Colleen starts to argue, but I cut her off.
"For fuck's sake, Colleen. I've worked my ass off for fourteen years with hardly any time off. It's been really hard accepting the fact my fiance cheated on me, I was publicly humiliated, and I'm being made to look like the bad person for it. A little empathy would go a long way here."