He'd known who she was too—she could see it in his expression. But he’d asked her name, as if to make sure. She swore his nose turned up when she’d muttered Emory, her mother’s last name.
As if the look he’d given her as she slunk to her seat wasn’t bad enough, ten minutes later he thoroughly bashed her in front of all the other students.
The next day she’d bought brown-colored contact lenses.
The humiliation from that first time still burned.
Yes—the first time, because there’d been other times over the years. She was an attorney in the same city—they were inevitably going to appear at the same functions. And each time, to her utter shame, she ducked her head and pretended that she didn’t know that he existed, even though she was aware of him with every fiber of her being.
She felt acid in her stomach just thinking about it. She opened her purse and fished out an antacid, popping it in her mouth, hoping it’d work today. Lately, they didn’t do their job anymore, as if her stomach was building up a resistance to them.
She took a deep breath, trying to call on the breathing exercises Louisa had given her to control her anger when she’d been sixteen. Those exercises had been a lifesaver.
Louisahad been a lifesaver.
Louisa Merriam ran Sunflower Alley, the homeless shelter on the South Side that Jules had tried to check herself into, and Connor was Louisa’s billionaire husband. She’d met Louisa when she was sixteen, when she decided to leave her mother. She knew if she stayed on the streets, she’d go down the same path her mother had been on—drugs and prostitution.
She didn’t want that.
She’d heard some people talk about Louisa and Sunflower Alley, about how the formerly homeless woman was tough but fair. Tough but fair had sounded good to Jules, so she’d gone to find her.
Sunflower Alley had been full that night. She’d had no idea that a homeless shelter could turn people away. She’d had a moment of panic until Louisa had suddenly offered to take her to stay in her own house. She’d been suspicious for a moment, but she’d always been good at reading people, and Louisa had been all candid kindness. She’d been wary when she met Connor, but he put her at ease right away.
Their house hadn’t been a house—it’d been a home.
She’d never been in that sort of house before. She and her mother had moved around a lot—her mother used their rent money for drugs a lot of times and they’d been evicted more times than she liked to think about. If there’d been a magazine calledSlums and Cesspools, any of those apartments could have featured in it.
When she’d walked into Louisa and Connor’s home, she’d had one thought: it was soclean. There weren’t beer cans lying around; there were no needles lining the walkway; the couches weren’t ripped open and spilling out stuffing. The rooms were bright and lit, with throw pillows and real art on the walls.
What struck her most were all the photos, in color as well as black and white, of happy, smiling people. Family, based on some of the resemblances, but not like any family she’d ever seen. The only base for reference she’d had was the people in her tenements, andhappywasn’t a word she’d ascribe to any of them.
She’d decided right then and there that she wanted a house like that.
In the morning when she’d woken up, there was a note in feminine handwriting propped against the sink in the bathroom she’d been told was hers:
Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
Louisa had been right.
In the twenty years that she’d known Louisa, they’d become more than friends. Louisa had gone from being a mentor to being family.
Louisa and Connor were the only other living people who knew the identity of her father. Her mother had overdosed almost seventeen years before, right as Jules had started college.
Of courseheknew too, but he’d never acknowledged her, despite the fact that she’d been named after him. His name wasn’t even on her birth certificate. Her mother had protected him, despite him abandoning them.
All the old feelings of anger and bitterness welled at the base of her throat, choking her. She cleared them ruthlessly, adjusted the sunglasses on her face, and reached for the door handle.
The door flung toward her harder than she expected given how heavy it looked. With a gasp, she jumped out of the way before it hit her.
“Hell, are you okay?” a deep masculine voice asked. “I didn’t expect anyone to be out here.”
Hand on her sunglasses, she looked up. Standing on the other side of the threshold was the most attractive man she’d ever seen.
Her heart began to beat so hard it was the only thing she could hear. She lowered her glasses just enough to really look at him. He had the sort of milk chocolaty skin you wanted to lap at, with a sharp chiseled face and lips that lookedverytalented. His braids were gathered high behind his head, cascading in a spray to his shoulders.
They were very broad shoulders.
He wore only a sweater, despite the weather out, and the kind of designer jeans that she could tell cost a fortune. And if that wasn’t enough, he had on more jewelry than she owned. She could see the dark line of a tattoo snaking out from the collar of his sweater.