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PART ONE
Present Day
The Wife
HONEY ADAMS
Present Day
Five years did little to stifle the jolt to my heart or the butterflies in my stomach when Buddy Rodgers took the stage. Not more than twenty feet in front of me, he stood with the microphone in hand, praising the two men beside him for their role in influencing the fine arts scene in Boston. He hadn’t changed much, at first glance.
A little pale, maybe, since the last time I saw his face, and slightly deeper hollows in the cheeks, as one gets when they age. The thick-rimmed glasses were new, too, hiding his eyes like a mask. The deep azure blue within them only a memory to me now.
But oh… How they could always see right through me and shake me deep down to my core.
Whatever his speech, it failed to register with me when staring. Tall and stately in his perfectly tailored pinstripe suit, he commanded the stage at the gala, and I couldn’t move. The last time we spoke, we’d agreed he’d stay on his side of the country and I’d stay on mine. But here we were, in serious violation of our self-imposed pact.
He pushed the glasses up his nose, the only indication he could be nervous. He never got nervous though, he once told me, unless he was in front of his father getting a scolding about not taking life seriously. I’d kept tabs on Buddy enough to know the elder man had passed away a few years back. So why the nerves now?
Buddy had inherited the great Rodgers’ estate since we were last together. Not that it mattered much, as he was a self-made millionaire in his own right.
I squeezed my eyes closed and swallowed back regrets. Like my mother, I’d chosen the wrong path and paid dearly for it. The price I paid was losing Buddy and his money. But compared to her, at least I was alive.
“Honey?”
My eyes flew open at his voice forming around my name. He gaped at me as if I were someone he clearly didn’t expect to pop out of the woodwork tonight.
For a split second, our gazes locked and I transported back into his arms. But I never had a right to be there in the first place.
How did my life become so screwed up?
“Honey!” He dropped the mic with a thud and moved quickly to descend from the stage, but I turned and fled out the nearest door of the event. Wasn’t that the best response after running into the man I had disappointed years ago? The man who had offered me the world, and I turned him down?
Shit. The footsteps running behind me in the parking lot turned my heartbeats up to a wild rhythm. I questioned his sanity. After everything I did to him, why would he follow?
At my car, I stopped, and his steps halted as well. I cast a glance at the driver’s side mirror, angled just so, enough to see him by. The sight of him still took my breath away, and my knees buckled. A quick hand on the car steadied me and I struggled to keep from falling over.
“Don’t come closer, Buddy. There’s no reason to?—”
“Are you kidding me right now? It’s been years and you appear out of nowhere. And what happened to our agreement? You stay on the west coast; I stay on the east. Heaven help us if we stumble across each other in the middle.”
“I had family matters to take care of,” I explained, as if that’d stop this inquisition.
“Family? You have none. What little scheme are you running now?”
“It’s not a scheme.” I turned, huffing, and he was closer than I’d realized, a mere five feet away. Enough to see the years matured him, a little silver detected, in streaks like a fox, from what I could tell by the moonlight. Still the most handsome man ever, taking my breath away.
I recovered quickly before the sight of him triggered any reaction between my legs. “After Cal passed, I found secrets he’d been hiding about my birth father. I have half-siblings, a few that I know of, so far, maybe more. Together, we have a legitimate claim on his estate. I finally have a real family, Buddy. And you know I’ve always wanted that.”
“I offered you my name once. That was real. You would have had a family with me.” His voice spat out disdain, but his eyes told the truth. They darkened as they raked slowly over me from head to toe and back up, licking his bottom lip like a feral animal who hadn’t had a fuck in some time.
I didn’t mind the intrusion. Everything else might have been fake between us. But not the attraction and the sex. No, not those.
“You were my wife.” His mocking scoff trailed behind him as he walked away. Those two words shot straight into my heart, killing me with all its intention.
“Wait—we can’t at least have a drink? One friendly, tame, pleasant drink together? For old time’s sake?” I blurted, before I could stop myself.
He froze in his tracks. The indecisive wheels turning in his head hit me loud and clear, plus maybe some cursing under his breath, before he swiveled to face me. His eyes burned right through me into my soul, and it woke up, resurrected in his presence.
