Southern Playboy (North Carolina Highlands 4)

Still, I thought I understood Jim’s predicament. I was happy to be patient if it meant being part of his family in the long run.

But what if his ex isn’t an alcoholic? I’ve never met her.

What if his ex isn’t an ex at all?

What if I’ve been sleeping with a Woodword Academy parent who is married?

The cherry on this shit sundae: Jim is on Woodward’s board. Which means accusations of favoritism are going to fly.

A career at Woodward is what I’ve dreamed about since I could remember. Mom founded the school in the hopes of making a difference. Preschool is prohibitively expensive for many families, so she immediately began fundraising to provide scholarships for lower-income students who lived in underserved communities.

Our scholarship program has grown every year since. Mom set the goal of providing all students with financial aid, and while we haven’t gotten there yet, I’ve made it my mission to help get us over the finish line. I teach full-time, but I’m also learning how to fundraise alongside our excellent development team. I love the work.

The pay could be better, yeah, but I feel like I make Mom proud every morning I show up for our kids.

What the hell was I thinking? How did I lose sight of that goal? My dreams?

You thought you were in love. You thought you were finally getting a family. You believed him when he said he’d put you first.

“Ma’am. Excuse me, ma’am, we’re gonna need you to step back,” a fireman with friendly eyes and a buzzcut says. I blink, my gaze catching on the blond spikes of his hair. I can see his scalp, red, already glistening with sweat. “Is this your car?”

Nuria gently guides me several steps back. The fireman puts on his helmet, eyes still on my face.

“It is,” I manage.

And then I burst into tears at the same moment my car bursts into a ball of flames.

The neon green sign with jagged edges—the kind that pops up with a pow anytime Batman lands a punch in the ’60s cartoon—declares this particularly cheap, and particularly bad, vodka the deal of the week.

I grab one of the plastic handles off the shelf. Contemplate grabbing another, but then I remember I just got fired with no severance and probably lit any future in my dream career on fire (ugh, the fire puns just keep coming). So cheap liquor it is.

My grandmother is going to be so, so disappointed in me. I can’t even contemplate what my mom would think. The school she founded—the school that was her life’s work—giving her only daughter the boot for being careless enough to sleep with a parent.

A married parent.

I got a grip on my tears on the Uber ride over here. Didn’t want to chance the cashier seeing what a mess I am and refusing to sell me anything. But now I’m hit by a new wave of emotion that makes my eyes swim.

Guess that’ll happen when your life is over.

I called Jim as the firemen doused my poor Honda in enough water to fill a lake. He didn’t pick up at first, which I knew was a bad sign. Then I got a text: I’m sorry.

Another bad sign.

I called him three more times. He finally picked up, and when I asked him if he was married, he said he was. He kept apologizing, and I kept crying. Apparently, he and his wife had separated—for a month. That’s when he and I started dating. He got back together with his ex shortly after, but he somehow forgot to break up with me in the meantime.

“I was just having the best time being with you,” he said.

“Were you ever going to tell me you were back together with your wife?”

“Yes?” A pause. “Eventually?”

Pure, one hundred percent dickhead.

And I’m a pure, one hundred percent idiot for not seeing it sooner.

In my defense, after years of dating duds, I wanted Jim to be the one so, so badly.

Badly enough that I’d overlook a red flag or three in the hope I was being cautiously optimistic instead of willfully stupid. The sex was good. We laughed a lot. We went on some incredible hikes together and had a blast taking fly fishing lessons on our weekend getaways in Tennessee.

Now I know why Jim insisted we always skip town for our dates.

I put my head down and turn toward the cashier. I don’t see the hulking figure in front of me until I literally bump boobs-first into his massive—and massively firm—chest.

“Oh my God, I’m so sor—”

“Amelia?”

My gaze catches on a pair of familiar blue eyes.

Rhett Beauregard.

Stomach dipping, I’m hit for half a second by something like relief. The kind you feel when you see a good friend, and you know everything’s going to be okay, even if it really isn’t.

He looks bad. I mean, he looks good—damn, he really is smuggling grapefruits—in his athletic shorts and sweat-stained T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. But his eyes are red, and his scruff is even scruffier than before.