Southern Heartbreaker (Charleston Heat 4)

She doesn’t have a lot of ink, but what she does have is pretty. Feminine. Lines of text stacked neatly just beneath her arm—the same Dave Matthews make out quote. A small constellation of stars on one side of her spine.

I imagine tracing the path of those stars with my fingertips. Then my tongue.

Fuck me, I still feel a very strong, very immediate pull of attraction to this woman.

It was always like that with us. Heat, tension. Eyes and mouths and legs. Eva lost her virginity to me in my dorm room bed, and we pretty much never stopped fucking from that point on.

She’s the same but different. Just as beautiful. A little more weary. Confident and full of life like always, but there’s this sadness about her. It’s new. A gash on the inside that’s still bleeding.

What caused it? Who?

“I see you still have the Dave Matthews quote.”

Eva nods at my arm. “So do you.”

“Yup.” I lift my sleeve a little farther.

She smiles. So do I. I’m not ashamed of my tattoos, per se, but I definitely haven’t been showing them off these days. For the most part, I have to cover them up for meetings. Conferences. Consults. To the point that I’ll forget I even have them some days.

I’ve forgotten that, once upon a time, I was the kind of guy who was capable of being so moved by something, a lyric or the line of a poem, that I had to have it permanently inked on my skin.

I could be moved by the conviction and the courage of someone like Eva.

Heat gathers in the head of my dick.

I should close out my tab and get back to my house. There are so many fucking things that need to get done.

Then again, I told Hannah I’d be home around ten.

Who am I kidding? I’m definitely staying for another drink if Eva will have me.

The bartender appears, and I look at Eva.

“Whiskey neat?” I ask. My heart lifts, still and hopeful, as I wait for her to reply.Chapter FiveFordEva looks at me for a beat. Then another.

I don’t blame her for hesitating. I’m the guy who, ten years ago, all but mocked her for her creative ambitions and broke her heart. Total dick move.

To be fair, I broke my heart in the process, too. In my stupid college kid lizard brain, I thought I could let her go. Thought getting over her would be easy because we’d grown into such different people.

Spoiler alert, I was wrong. I was the one who changed. Eva stayed true to who she always was. Took me years to stop comparing every girl I met to Eva Lacy.

After our breakup, I thought about calling her all the time. But I’d already caused so much damage. I wasn’t going to reach out to her unless I could promise her forever. Which, at that point, I couldn’t. I was two thousand miles away, broke as a joke. Buried in school and internships and job hunts.

Still. Standing next to Eva, her perfume filling my head, I can’t help but hope she’ll stay. Maybe that makes me an even bigger dick.

Or maybe I just want to buy her a drink. Pick her brain. Soak up her vitality and her enthusiasm for as long as she’ll let me.

“Make it a Manhattan, rocks,” she says at last. “Need something cold when it’s this hot. I forgot how damn muggy it gets this close to the water.”

I almost collapse with relief.

“Two, please,” I tell the bartender. Turning back to Eva, I take a quick glance around the bar. As far as I can tell, she’s alone. “Meeting someone?”

“Yeah. Well, I hope to, anyway. I spent the day—hell, the whole week—wanting to pull out my hair over this cookbook. A stiff cocktail was definitely in order, so I asked Gracie to meet me here. She said she’d swing by after work.”

“Gracie Jackson,” I say. “Love that girl. We knew she’d absolutely kill it with Holy City Roasters.”

Eva’s smile broadens. “I love how y’all support local entrepreneurs. Women especially.”

Montgomery Partners was, and continues to be, the largest investor in Gracie’s growing coffee shop empire.

“Are you surprised?” I ask, handing over her drink.

Her fingertips brush my knuckles as she takes it. My skin warms at the contact.

“Considering the class where we met?” Eva presses her lips to the rim of her cut crystal glass. “Nope.”

“Great British Female Writers,” I reply. “Still one of my all-time favorites.”

She grins. “What? Intro to Economics not do it for you?”

“Not in the least.”

“So was Great British Female Writers your favorite because it introduced you to Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf?”

Taking a sip of my Manhattan, I meet her eyes. “Because it introduced me to all kinds of badass women. Including you.”

“Stop—”

“Absolutely not. You are badass. Always were. I’m sorry I made you feel otherwise. I was the opposite of a badass back then. A jackass, if you will.”