Dream Keeper (Dream Team 4)

And I was at my desk so I could be at my laptop and do a deep dive into Facebook.

I’d unearthed my high school yearbooks from my freshman and sophomore years (the years I shared the same school with Birch), so I could remind myself of the names of his friends.

From there, I tried to find them on Facebook and see if Birch followed them.

In the past, I had (more than once) tried to find him on every social media platform there was.

No go.

So I was perusing profiles and pictures of people who weren’t super big on privacy settings in hopes my brother was keeping in touch (maybe under a different name) with old friends.

Okay, so it was a figurative rainy day, but I didn’t have to pay a PI to do a Facebook search I could do myself. And if I could find him myself, when I got a flat tire or the hot water heater went out, I didn’t have to sweat it.

This was what I was in the throes of when the car pulled into my drive.

Shiny.

Black.

Expensive.

BMW.

Corbin.

For the first time ever, I wondered if my love of the Lord as practiced through meditation and prayer and taking my daughter to our nondenominational Christian church was not enough and maybe I should be Gonzo for God.

Because I’d somehow karmically earned a really freaking bad day.

I was standing in my opened front door before Corbin made it from his car to the porch.

This meant I was in position to watch Corbin walk up my steps.

I’d always known I was pretty. No conceit, just fact. I was tall and slim, but I had good tits, round hips, a nice booty and long legs. Added to that, I had long, thick honey-blonde hair that was almost, but not quite, strawberry and I had features that put me firm between a California Surfer Girl and a symmetrically gifted, local-gigs-only (thus not super) model.

All great attributes for a stripper.

All fantastic attributes for attracting assholes.

Corbin having been one of those assholes.

My ex was a wolf in sheep’s clothes.

A sheep’s expensive clothes.

He, too, was tall. Dark. Good-looking and built in a rough-hewn way, like he was a lumberjack in a suit.

And he was affable.

Very affable.

He could talk to anybody.

Get on an elevator with him and he’d know how many kids you had, their names and your favorite restaurant before you got off.

In this time, if you were a woman, you’d feel listened to and your confidence would have received a healthy boost that this handsome man was talking to you in a way that was just that tad bit flirtatious. If you were a man, you’d feel listened to and wonder if he golfed because you needed another guy to complete your foursome.

You’d also be in possession of his business card.

Yes.

That was Corbin.

When it came out that he’d betrayed me, my heart had been so shattered, I’d lost my mind and I hadn’t gained it back until I met Auggie.

Because Corbin had made me feel beautiful and listened to, he was great in bed, he was driven, an excellent provider, and he changed lightbulbs, never missed the yearly rotation of switching out batteries in smoke alarms and took out the trash without being asked.

Thus, he was a good lover, a good partner, and he made me feel like we were a great couple who could tackle the world and face our future strong and together…always.

As such, I’d been a mess when I found out that was so far from true, it wasn’t funny and I’d lost what I thought was (but was not in truth) a really great guy who took care of me, Juno, gave me orgasms (most of the time) and was not hard on the eyes.

Then I’d met Auggie and all pining for Corbin and the life we’d had was gone.

Now, all I saw was a grifter.

And for reasons unknown, he was on my porch.

“Hey, honey,” he said.

Okay, so I was over Corbin, and as such, he shouldn’t have any power over me.

But it pissed me off no end that on occasion he still called me “honey.”

He had at times, since we broke up, tried to pretend all was hunky-dory, we still had love and affection, we just lived in separate houses now.

All was not hunky-dory and not because we were broken up or how we had broken up.

Because our parenting styles differed vastly.

One could just say tech was not limited for Juno at Corbin’s house, mostly so he could use it as a sitter.

And I’d already gotten into the women.

“Corbin,” I returned, not leaving the doorway. “What’s up?”

Suffice it to say, I did not want to know what was up.

In the time I had between now and Juno coming home, I had Facebook searching to do, not to mention I had to research private investigators, also figure out how I was going to talk to my daughter about the stuff she’d pulled that day at school with Auggie. Primarily, why she did all that, but also how.