Katherine Garbera – One Night With His Ex (страница 2)

One

Hadley Everton both loved and hated living in Cole’s Hill, Texas. To be fair, the town had been growing ever since the joint NASA-SpaceNow training facility had opened on its outskirts, but those small-town minds weren’t keeping up. Today, she had dodged several well-meaning society matrons from the upscale Five Families neighborhood who were all concerned about her lack of a man. Since this was her sister’s engagement party, everyone in her mother’s circle of friends had fixed their eyes on her as the next one to finally wise up and land herself a husband.

It wasn’t as if Cole’s Hill didn’t have its share of eligible bachelors for her to pick from, as her parents’ neighbor Mrs. Zane had pointed out with her usual blend of sweet bluntness. Hadley could choose from any of them. Though in her infinite wisdom, Mrs. Zane advised her to stay away from the Velasquez brothers, especially after her recent breakup with Mauricio.

Seeing two more of her mother’s friends, Mrs. Abernathy and Mrs. Crandall, making a beeline toward her, Hadley faked a sneezing fit and ducked into the country club’s kitchen. The waitstaff were busy living up to her mother’s exacting standards, preparing the trays of food for circulation, so they didn’t care if Hadley had broken up with her “one good prospect” and seemed doomed to a life as a single woman.

She stood in the corner near the door to be out of the way of the staff, which unfortunately left her in earshot of her busybody pursuers.

“I heard she told him if he didn’t put a ring on her finger, she was out of there,” Mrs. Abernathy said.

“And he just said see you later. What is wrong with young people these days? He should have asked her then and there. He’s almost thirty and it’s not like anyone else is going to be interested in him if he couldn’t make Hadley happy,” Mrs. Crandall added.

Hadley turned to leave the kitchen via the back door but bumped into someone. She glanced up with an apology on her lips, but froze when she saw it was her sister, Helena.

Helena was the pretty sister, with a heart-shaped face, naturally thick eyebrows and blue eyes that Hadley had always envied. She stood a few inches taller than Hadley, as well. Today she wore a slim-fitting sheath that showed off her curves in a subtle way. Normally, her sister was very low key and laid back, but Hadley noticed she seemed tense.

“What are you doing in here?” Hadley asked.

“Same as you,” Helena said. Reaching up, she tucked a strand of Hadley’s hair behind her ear where it had escaped from her low chignon.

Hadley pulled the tendril back down to frame her face. Her older sister was forever acting like Hadley was still an eight-year-old and Helena was the more sophisticated ten-year-old.

“Hardly. This is your party,” Hadley said, moving away from the door and the women who were still talking about her and Mauricio.

“Girls. What are y’all doing?” their mother asked as she entered the kitchen. Candace Everton was the spitting image of Helena, just twenty-one years older. She kept the grays at bay in her natural strawberry blond hair with bi-weekly appointments at her hair salon and kept her figure by playing in a women’s tennis league at the club.

Their mother had always had it all together and there were times when Hadley wished she had just a tenth of her mom’s ease when it came to dealing with the social pressures of living in Cole’s Hill. But she never had.

Candace inspected a tray of canapés that one of the uniformed waiters was about to take out and wrinkled her nose at him. “This looks sloppy. Please get a clean tray before you serve my guests.”

The waiter turned around as their mother walked toward them. Hadley found herself standing a little taller and tucked the tendril that Helena had been messing with earlier back behind her ear.

“Just enjoying a moment of quiet,” Helena said. “I asked Hadley to help me with my zipper. It felt like the hook had come undone.”

“Let me see,” Mother said.

Helena turned around and their mother checked the hook and eye before wrapping her arm around both of her daughters’ shoulders. “Ready to get back to the party?”

No, but clearly that wasn’t the answer their mom wanted. She urged them both toward the door that led out of the kitchen.

When she got back out into the living room, Hadley came to a stop as she saw Mauricio Velasquez standing there. Of course, he looked like he’d stepped out of her hottest dreams. That was the thing no one had warned her about with breakups and broken hearts. She might be ready to move on, but her damned subconscious kept churning him up in the middle of the night and giving him a starring role in her sexiest dreams.

He had what she’d heard the old biddies in town refer to as a chiseled jaw; his neatly trimmed eyebrows framed eyes that were as black as her favorite dark chocolate. When he looked at her, she always felt like he could see straight past the layers she used to keep the world at bay to the very heart of her. But she knew that was a lie. Had he been able to do that, he wouldn’t have invited Marnie Masters, the femme fatale of Cole’s Hill, into his bed, while he and Hadley were taking a break in their relationship. She had believed they were going to get back together up until the moment she found out about Marnie.

“Hadley, what are you doing?” Mother said, putting her hand on Hadley’s shoulder.

“Sorry, Mother, I just saw Mauricio.”

“So?”

“I’m not ready to talk to him,” she said.

“This is Helena’s day, sweet child, so you will straighten Grandma’s pearls and walk over there and greet him like he’s an old friend,” Mother said.

She took a deep breath and looked over at Helena. “You’re right. Sorry, Hel.”

She’d known he’d be here. Mauricio and her sister’s fiancé were best friends and had been since high school. It wasn’t as if she could ask everyone she knew to stop socializing with him. Helena had even taken her to brunch at her favorite place to break the news that Mo would be in the wedding party. The picture of him walking out of his bathroom in a towel with the town flirt Marnie Masters right behind him had flashed through Hadley’s mind. But it didn’t matter. She had to be there for her sister.

“It’s okay,” Helena said. “I did warn you he’d be here today. Malcolm asked him to be a groomsman so you’re going to see him at all the pre-wedding events.”

“She’s got this,” Mother said. “I raised you girls to have steel in your backbones. And manners.”

“That’s right, you did,” Hadley agreed. She wished it were that easy, but when she saw Mauricio, he stirred to life so many different emotions. Anger she could understand, and sadness of course; it was hard to move on. Then there was guilt. But another feeling entirely came into play when her gaze drifted down his body, to that tailor-made suit that emphasized the width of his broad shoulders, the jacket buttoned neatly at his waist showing off the slimness of his hips, the pants displaying those long legs to perfection.

She groaned but Helena pinched her in warning. She straightened her shoulders and realized that Jackson Donovan had come in behind Mauricio. Jackson was Hadley’s date for the event, and as he waved at her, Mauricio turned to greet him.

“He better not make a scene at my baby’s party,” Mother said.

“He won’t,” Hadley said with a confidence she was far from believing as she headed off to run interference between her ex-lover and her new boyfriend.

Mauricio had taken care to arrive late at the engagement party, even though Malcolm Ferris was one of his best friends. He’d known today was going to be a challenge and he’d never been one of those men who could just smile when he was pissed off. His twin brother always said it was the reason they were so good at speculative business ventures. They weren’t afraid to fight for the underdog or walk into a bad situation and make the best of it. Though Mo had his doubts, Alec had found a way to make that work. For Mauricio it was real estate, for Alec it was technology and social media. Frankly, Mo didn’t understand his brother’s multi-million-dollar business but there was one thing he did understand... No matter how many months passed, he still couldn’t look at Hadley Everton and not feel his blood start to flow heavier in his veins.

She looked like a perfect Southern lady today. Her dress was a beautiful navy blue that hugged her slim torso, drawing his eyes to her delicate neck encircled with her heirloom strand of pearls. Damn if there wasn’t something sexy about seeing a lady all dressed up and knowing what she looked like naked.

He cursed and started to turn to leave the party. He wasn’t going to be able to keep his cool. But just then Jackson Donovan walked up next to him. The two of them had always rubbed each other the wrong way. Ever since their school days, Jackson had been a goody-two-shoes. The only thing that had changed was that back then he had been a skinny geek and now he was six foot five and muscular.

“Mo, good to see you,” Jackson said, holding out his hand.

Mo shook it, keeping his grip light, but Jackson squeezed before letting go. “I didn’t know you knew Malcolm.”