Easy Kisses (Boudreaux 4)

I sigh and push my hands through my hair, frustrated.

“Fine. Grab someone from the waiting list.”

“So, you’re not going to tell me what happened.”

I stand and stomp across the office, staring out the window. Todd’s the only one who has known everything as it happened in my life. He’s my closest mate, and I trust him implicitly.

But talking about it cuts deep.

“Yesterday was a bloody disaster.” I pull my phone out of my pocket, bring up Alex’s email, and hand it to Todd, then turn back to the window.

He reads silently behind me for a moment. “What the fuck?”

“Keep reading.”

“‘You know that I never would have been able to have an affair with Amy if you’d been keeping her happy. You were too obsessed with work.’ Fuck him. I always hated Alex.”

“I know.”

“‘But speaking of the company, you wouldn’t be where you are now without my contribution in the beginning. My lawyer agrees that I’m owed compensation.’”

I turn around to see Todd stare at me in horror. “Is he on motherfucking medication? He thinks he’s going to get money?”

“He won’t,” I reply, much more calmly than I feel. My blood is still boiling over that email. “I forwarded it to my lawyer, and they’re on it. He doesn’t have a case. He’s just broke and grasping at straws.”

“He’s an arsehole,” Todd says and finishes reading the email, then passes it back to me. “Not a great way to start any day.”

“No.” I shake my head and sit at our conference table. I can’t get comfortable, no matter what I do. I spent all night pacing my flat.

“So now you should tell me why Savannah sent that email and Charly isn’t here.”

“Charly is no longer a part of my life,” I reply shortly. “That’s all there is to it.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Todd says. “What happened?”

“The same thing that always happens. I went to surprise her at work and walked in on her with another man.”

I glance up and Todd is scowling, shaking his head. “I don’t buy it.”

“Saw it with my own bloody eyes.”

“Charly Boudreaux was fucking another man. You saw it.”

I shake my head and decide bugger it and take a sip of the horrible coffee. “They hadn’t gotten that far yet, and I wasn’t about to stick around and watch.”

“So you didn’t actually see it.” Todd sits across from me and fiddles with his wedding ring.

“I saw enough.”

“Sounds like you were having a shit day and saw what you wanted to see.”

“Fuck you,” I reply and throw the coffee against the wall. “I made the mistake of trusting her. Of trusting me with her. And it didn’t work. I may give good advice, but my own love life has been one big fuck up.”

“Well, that’s true enough,” he says, unfazed by the coffee dripping down the wall. “But Charly isn’t Amy, Simon.”

“Seems they’re not that different.”

“But you’re different. You didn’t love Amy, mate. You cared for her, sure, but you were with her out of some misguided sense of responsibility. You thought you could save her, but she didn’t want to be saved. Amy is a bitch, plain and simple, and you can’t fix bitch.

“Are you saying Charly is a bitch too?” Todd asks and I clench my fists, ready to come out swinging. “Guess that pissed you off.”

“You don’t know shit. You aren’t walking around in my shoes.”

“Because you have horrible taste in shoes,” he replies. “But this time around, you didn’t have horrible taste in women. You don’t know for sure what you saw yesterday because I bet you didn’t stick around to ask many questions.”

I bloody hate it that he knows me so well.

“It doesn’t matter,” I reply and hang my head in my hands. “I’m not going down this road again. Even if it wasn’t what I think, it just goes to show that I can’t trust, her or me. And without trust, we have nothing anyway.”

“That’s a sad way to live, Simon.”

“I’m not discussing this anymore. We have work to do.” I open my agenda and look at Todd expectantly. “What do we have this week?”

***

“I’ve wanted to attend one of your workshops for ever,” a blonde in her mid-thirties raves as I sign her book and pose for a photo. “Thank you so much.”

“My pleasure, darling,” I reply and smile as she walks away. That was the last one in line and I’m bloody exhausted. I just spent six hours coaching a room of six hundred women on dating techniques. The last hour was open to questions, followed by another hour of signing books and meeting the attendees, and my energy is now gone.

Todd walks back to the makeshift greenroom that the hotel provided.

“This was a great workshop,” he says. “The attendees were riveted. Of course, they always are when it comes to you.”

“It went well,” I agree. Since I returned from New Orleans three weeks ago, everything has been in a fog. I’m not numb, but nothing excites me. Today went well simply because I know my material inside and out and I know how to charm a room from years of experience.

But my heart isn’t in it anymore.

Because despite my better judgement, I left my heart in New Orleans. With it being several weeks since I last saw Charly, I can admit that I miss her, but it doesn’t change what happened. It doesn’t change that I can’t trust her, and I can’t control the jealousy I feel when another man even looks in her direction.