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Her eyebrows disappeared behind her messy bangs. “After a day like today? That cup had better have wine in it.”

I laughed, shaking my head. “Wine it is.”

Ducking into the fridge, I pulled out a chilled bottle of rosé. I hunted in the drawer for the opener, focused on tearing off the foil and popping the cork.

“So, why didn’t you call me yesterday?” she asked. “You know I hate the idea of you having to go through something like that on your own. One call, and you know either me or your mama would be there in a flash.”

There was a hint of hurt in her tone. A little bit of conniving, too.

Because Jenna knew me so well that I was pretty sure she’d waltzed through that door and saw everything about me was different.

That my insides had been rearranged to make room for something new.

Something beautiful and wonderful.

Magical.

I could feel the flush race up my neck, and I dropped my face toward the floor, trying to conceal what was probably written all over me, anyway.

“Harley Hope Masterson, you better fess up right now . . . because I see that pink hitting your cheeks, and you haven’t even had a sip of your wine.”

I peeked up at her. “I didn’t have to go through it alone.”

“And who might it have been at the hospital with you?”

Evan caught my attention in my periphery when he sat upright, nonchalantly signing, K-A-L-E.

Little stinker. He had a knack of knowing exactly when to start paying attention, picking up on the little bits I might want to keep hidden.

But there had been no hiding what I felt this morning when I’d gotten up and could hear the deep tenor of Kale’s voice echoing through my walls.

After I’d thought he was sneaking out when I’d wanted to beg him to stay.

I’d tiptoed out to find the staggering sight of the man in there with my son. Cooking for him. Laughing with him. Caring for him.

After the night we’d shared together, seeing him there like that had almost been too much.

Triumph glinted in Jenna’s eyes as they slanted from Evan toward me. “Oh, really.”

Evan was back to divulging all my secrets. YUP. AND HE SPENT THE NIGHT AND MADE ME BREAKFAST. HE’S HER BOYFRIEND.

The last he said with a little shrug.

No big deal.

Jenna choked, sputtered over her laugh, that original triumph shifting to an all-out celebration of victory. “You little slut.”

“Jenna,” I hissed, glancing at Evan, who’d decided we were boring after all, his attention wrapped up in watching Josiah dancing around the screen with his face the center of a flower.

She stalked toward me, a gleam in her eyes, and then turned so her back was toward Evan. “Was he good? Oh, God, I bet that doctor is amazing with those big hands. I told you all you needed was a big, yummy dick and all would be right with the world.”

Her words deviated from a salacious secret to a breathy wisp to the worst kind of tease.

“A lady never tells,” I tried to defend.

Though I might as well have been shouting it from the rooftops with the way heat went flushing over every inch of me, the memory of the way he’d touched me. Bringing me to ecstasy as if he were the one who’d always possessed my pleasure, the one sent to deliver it.

“Oh, come on, Hope. That’s a total crock, and you know it. You’ve at least got to tell me if the man knows where the clicker is.”

How she and I were friends, I didn’t know. When I didn’t answer, her grin just grew, yet, her voice turned soft. “At least tell me he knows how to treat you right. That’s the only thing I want for you. Don’t ever settle. Not again.”

I cracked, whispering, “He definitely knows how to treat me right.”

In every way.

We were all hushed secrets behind the corner Jenna had backed me into. “How right?”

“So right.” My tummy flipped at the thought.

“Like . . . how . . . how right?” She angled her head, prying the truth out of me.

“Like, so very right. Like I’ve never felt anything close to the way I do when I’m with him. Not in all my life.”

She squeezed me in her arms like a miracle just had happened. “Praise Mary.”

Then she pulled me back, staring at me as all the prying tease left her voice. “Are you okay?” she asked me again. Though this time, the question was entirely different.

Because when I said she knew me, she knew me. She knew I’d never have slept with him if it didn’t mean something to me.

I searched around inside myself for what to say. How to express what it was I really felt. “My life is crazy with Dane right now . . . I feel like I’m running faster and faster, trying to outrun him, praying he doesn’t catch us.”


Tags: A.L. Jackson Fight for Me Romance