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  I turned my phone back on to see if I’d missed any important messages. Just as I was about to turn it off again, the phone rang, and Jake’s number was on the caller ID. I sighed and answered it. “Jake, this needs to end right now. Please stop calling me.”

  “Ashly! You finally answered.”

  “I’m not sure why. There’s nothing left to say,” I said sternly.

  “Please just hear me out,” he said, his voice deep and pleading. “Will you just have one drink with me? I’m at the White Coyote.”

  “No.”

  “Okay. I respect that. Actually, I deserve it. But if you change your mind, I’ll be here till midnight.”

  “I’d love to meet you, but my boyfriend wouldn’t like that so much…and he really wouldn’t want me to go gallivanting around the country with you either.”

  He chuckled.

  “I’m glad you find my love life so amusing.”

  “You haven’t seen anyone in over a year.”

  I was livid. “And what makes you think that? Have you been spying on me?”

  “We hang out in the same circle of friends, sweetheart. They told me.”

  “Goodbye, Jake,” I said, furious and hanging up the phone.

  Chapter 4

  During my drive home, Jake tried calling a few more times, but I refused to pick up, growing angrier by the moment. How dare he step back into my life? How dare he keep calling me like this! I threw the phone on the passenger seat.

  I needed to see him, though, just so I could personally tell him how pissed off I was. I needed to vent. I hadn’t done a suitable or satisfying job of that back at the lawyer’s office, and I needed closure. Watching that photo melt into nothingness at the restaurant had been a good start, but I needed more. I had never had the chance to confront him for ditching me at the altar; like the coward he was, he had just split and hopped on the first plane out of there. He didn’t even have the nerve to say goodbye or leave a number where I could reach him. He just vanished into thin air and had been gone for years. None of our so-called “circle of friends” knew where he had disappeared to, and his family refused to tell me anything. He’d helped me earn the title of a jilted bride, and I was an authority on getting dumped.

  Worst of all, my ex-boyfriend, my ex-loser, couldn’t face me after ruining our fairytale big day. He’d made it clear that he wasn’t trustworthy or dependable. Most painfully of all, he proved that he didn’t love me and probably never had. Anyone who could stomp on my heart so easily couldn’t possibly have had one of his own.

  I opened the door to my house and thought about the black and white pictures I’d taken of Jake all those years ago. I’d always been a photography buff and had started snapping photos at the ripe old age of ten. I’d often fantasized about the great adventures I could have taking beautiful pictures all over the world, but as a teenager, I developed an interest in fashion, so my job now combined my two great loves.

  After Jake left me, I attended Parsons Fashion School, where I took classes in fashion photography and journalism. I got a job as a fulltime fashion journalist with Blare’s Fashion, which showcased high-end fashion clothing and accessories. I knew the company would push the limits of my creativity. I covered fashion shows and events, interviewed important people in the world of fashion, wrote articles, took pictures, responded to breaking news, created stories for the Web, and performed several other tasks.

  I also had many dreams of my own. After starting a new line with Nadia, I wanted to start my own magazine. I was sure I knew everything there was to know. After all, I had drowned myself in work for years, ever since that despicable loser had left me feeling empty.

  Suddenly, I recalled my memory box that I stored in the basement. I rushed down the stairs and dug through piles of junk, boxes, and bags, until I found it. I quickly thumbed through the pictures and found my favorite one: him, standing naked against a black wall, covering his manhood with his hands. I’d created shadows to cover the top part of his face, giving him a mysterious and intriguing look. The black and white image was amazing, and I wondered how the same shot would look with his more mature, much more muscular body.

  I stared at the picture, then looked at all the others, recalling just how happy and in love we had once been. I hadn’t looked upon those memories, those snapshots of our moments, in years. Nadia told me to burn them, but I couldn’t bear to for one reason or another. Not only were those pictures the embodiment of the beginning of my career, but they were also remnants of precious, albeit painful, memories. Jake had, after all, bought me my first Nikon camera, and I used it all the time and snapped pictures of anything and everything.

  When I wasn’t shooting pictures, I used my tripod to capture so many wonderful shots of us together. I picked up the picture of Jake and me at the river, holding what appeared to be the world’s biggest bass; we had equally huge smiles on our faces. Then I looked at the pictures of us snuggled up together on a blanket in the grass, so carefree and clueless to the dark fate that loomed ahead for us. There was even a picture he took of me, smiling as I held up my finger to show off my engagement ring. It wasn’t big and fancy, but I didn’t care. Unlike my mother, I had never cared much about money. I loved Jake for who he was, and I couldn’t have cared less if that ring had been made out of tin foil and plastic gems. The one thing I wanted it to be was true, and in the end, it was just a lie.

  When Jake crashed into my life, I was a fifteen-year-old; a good girl who had never broken the rules. He was the biggest, bad boy at our school, and my mother was horrified when I started dating him. When I told her I loved him, she cried. According to my mother, he didn’t fit in at all. She saw him as a troublemaker, a poor kid who lived on the wrong side of town in the projects. She didn’t think he was good enough for me, because his father was in jail and his mother had a drug addiction. My mother begged me to end it with him so many times, but I didn’t care what she said. I loved him, in spite of his faults and his socioeconomic difficulties. Because she’d been so dead-set against us being together, I had to wonder why my mother would ask, postmortem, for us to prance around the world together. Her will made absolutely no sense.

  As I thought about that, I realized I had to see Jake, even if I wasn’t sure why. I was in a daze, not even thinking straight. I did need closure, the chance to really say goodbye, which I’d not been granted before.

  I also needed to change into something sweet, sassy, and sexy, just to show him what he’d missed out on. I slipped into my dark-wash designer jeans and a black lace strapless top with beaded heels. In the lawyer’s office, my hair had been pulled back in a French braid, but this time, I was going to let it down. After curling my hair, I gave myself that smoldering, smoky-eye look that made my hazel eyes pop. I pushed my breasts up to give him a glimpse of my cleavage. I worried that I might be showing off too many curves and that maybe I should tone it down a bit, but in the end, I decided he deserved to be tortured with what he would never be able to touch again.

  Practically flooring it, I sped to the White Coyote. I took a moment to gather my nerves, then walked into the bar. Music played, and people laughed and chatted. I scanned my surroundings until my gaze fell on Jake, who was shooting pool. When he let out a laugh at his failure to sink the purple ball, it jarred my memory; I remembered that deep, delicious laugh, the one I could have spent hours listening to. I watched him lean over the pool table. His faded blue jeans clung to his perfect ass like a second skin. Huge muscles bulged through his tight T-shirt as he made the next shot and then reached for his beer bottle that sat on the rim of the pool table.

  All of the sudden, as if he’d caught a whiff of me or was somehow psychically aware of my presence, he met my gaze and gave me that familiar, sexy smile. Tousled hair in disheveled waves skimmed the collar of his T-shirt as he said, “Wow. You look absolutely stunning.”

  Mission accomplished, I thought, throwing a little more sway in my walk as I approached him.

  He motione
d around him. “I’d introduce you, but I’m sure you know all these guys,” he said.

  “Most of them,” I responded, waving to everyone.

  They all stared at me and gave an awkward wave back; whether it was compassion, pity, or shock that I’d even shown up, I couldn’t tell.

  “Can I get you a drink?” Jake asked.

  Ed smiled. “She doesn’t look like she’s here for a beer, man. Get her some champagne.”

  “Ashly’s always been a classy woman,” Mike said.

  “Mike!” I said, blushing. “You know I’m just one of the regular folks.” I grinned.

  Mike walked over and gave me a friendly hug. “I’ve missed you, girl. It’s been years.” He kissed me on the cheek. “I heard you and Nadia started a fashion line and even own a boutique.”

  Jake smiled at me. “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks. We’ve got big plans, and we’ve gotta start somewhere.”

  “Reach for the stars, I always say. Anyway, we’ll catch up later,” Mike said. “I know seeing Jake again must be, uh…quite the shock,” he whispered.

  “I didn’t mean to lose touch,” I said. “I just…”

  He winked. “Don’t even worry about it. Just give me a call sometime, and we’ll play catch-up over lunch. I’m in the phonebook.”

  “Definitely,” I promised.

  Another one of his buddies slapped me on the back. “Does Jake still look the same?”

  “I’m sure any minute, Earth will fall off its axis from all his hotness,” I said sarcastically.

  They all laughed, and I could only grin.

  Jake finally managed to tear his gaze away from my cleavage and smiled. “How about that drink?” he offered again, sounding like he needed it more than I did.

  I pushed my long brown tresses behind my ears. “Thank you, but I won’t be staying long.”

  “I was hoping we could catch up,” Jake said.

  Right on cue, another of Jake’s friends walked in and hugged me. “Ashly! It’s been years. You must be here for Jake.”

  “Yes, I’m here to talk to my absentee groom. And I was the dumpee, so get your stares and whispers out of the way or forever hold your peace.”

  Most of his friends just said hello, then left. Either they wanted to give Jake a little privacy or they were too uncomfortable to face me.

  “Look,” I said. “I chased your entourage away.” I blinked. “Imagine that. It seems I still have that effect on people. I mean, I did somehow chase you away on our big day.”

  “I asked them to leave so we could have a little privacy, Ashly. I know the White Coyote isn’t the best place to meet to hash out our differences, but I couldn’t have you going off on me at a restaurant or something.”

  “So you’re expecting me to go off on you?”

  “I know I deserve it. What I did was rotten, and I’ve never been able to forgive myself.” He inched closer. “I’m so sorry, Ashly. If I could take it all back, you know I would.”

  I reached into my purse and grabbed one of the pictures of me in my lovely wedding gown. “Since you never got to see me in my wedding dress, here,” I said, shoving it into his hand.

  He glanced down and pondered for a long moment. “Wow. You’re so beautiful. I was such an idiot.”

  “You got that right. How could you just leave like that, Jake? How could you do that to me? And the worst part was that you humiliated me in front of all our friends and relatives. I didn’t deserve that.”

  “Ashly, you know as well as I do that I never fit in with your rich family. I was a bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks.”

  “But love conquers all, right? I didn’t care, and you shouldn’t have cared either.”

  “We were so young. I had just turned twenty, and…” he said, trailing off before he blurted out yet another lame excuse.

  Images flooded into my mind. I remembered Nadia helping me take down all of his pictures a few weeks after what I’d deemed Black Saturday. I’d felt shock and rage, depression, and the most intense loneliness anyone could ever feel. For weeks, I couldn’t get out of bed, and taking a shower and getting dressed seemed like pointless, impossible chores. After Jake walked out of my life without ever looking back, Nadia also helped me pack up his belongings. I cleared out the medicine cabinet and threw out his blue toothbrush in the wastebasket, one of the hardest things I ever had to do. I learned the hard way just how much heartbreak could hurt. I worked through the pain eventually, and that helped me to get on with my life, but if it weren’t for my job, friends, and family, I never would have survived the havoc that Jake wreaked on me. I still wasn’t sure I’d ever get past the anger completely, because it was still sitting like a lump in the pit of my stomach.

  “Ashly?”

  I snapped back into reality and stared at his blue eyes glittering in the dim light.

  “Do you want me to beg?” Jake asked. “Please. If you hate me, that’s fine, but let’s go on this trip, take these pictures. We’ll stay strictly in the friend zone, and I promise I won’t even talk to you unless I absolutely have to. After that, we can go our separate ways, and you’ll never have to see me again.”

  “Jake, you put me through a living hell. I’m only here so I could tell you that in person. How could a man declare his undying love the night before his wedding, then just leave minutes before he’s supposed to walk down the aisle?” Before he could answer, I continued, “There’s nothing more I can say, and it doesn’t really matter anyway, does it? We can’t go back in time and fix things. What’s done is done, and I have to move forward with my life. I just wished you would’ve left me a box of tissues that morning instead of a dozen red roses.”

  “You’re pissed, and I don’t blame you. But you’re just gonna walk away from your inheritance, your mother’s dying wish, because you can’t stand the sight of me?” he asked.

  “Something like that,” I said, then turned and started making my way to the door.

  “Ashly, please don’t go.”

  I ignored him and hurried to my car, hoping he wouldn’t jump on the hood and confess his false, undying love for me just so he could dupe me a second time.

  * * *

  The next day after work, Nadia knocked on the door. When I opened it, she looked frantic, totally out of character for her.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “The bank didn’t give us the loan.” She strolled into the kitchen, grabbed a glass, and poured herself a glass of wine from my fridge, then downed half the glass in one gulp. “Our dreams of running our very own fashion business are going down the drain. We don’t have any money left, and we’re going to be thrown out. Our boutique will go down in flames, Ashly! What are we gonna do?”

  “Our clothes are different from the competition’s. We stick it out, Nadia.”

  She poured a glass of wine for me. “Not if we can’t get noticed. Our boutique’s just starting to take off, but not enough to pay the high mortgage. I tried talking to the owner, and when that didn’t work, I resorted to flirtation and cleavage. I don’t know what a girl’s supposed to do when neither begging nor boobs works.”

  “We just need to get our ideas off the ground.”

  “There’s no time. We have to be out by next month, and building a fashion brand doesn’t happen overnight.”

  I swallowed hard. “Yeah. I’ll ask Mr. Hanford for an extension.”

  “Good luck. He’s not an understanding or flexible man, and he obviously doesn’t care about push-up bras either. He just wants his money. Our boutique is on prime property on Fifth Avenue, and he has two other business associates begging him for our space.”

  “We can’t lose that spot. Location is everything.”

  “I agree.” She sighed heavily. “Look, Ashly, I never would ask you this if there were any other way, but…”

  I cocked my head when she paused and trailed off, wincing a bit.

  “You need to take that trip with Jake. It’s the only way to save
our boutique and everything we’re working so hard for.”

  “What!?” I shouted. “No! No way.”

  “I know he hurt you bad, but you don’t even have to talk to him. Just give him the cold shoulder and take those crazy pictures your mom demanded. Turn them into your lawyer, and you’ll have more than enough money to keep us going.”

  “No, Nadia. I mean…I just…I can’t.”

  “Take the damn pictures, Ashly,” she said, patting my shoulder.

  “I can’t leave you alone with the boutique for all that time,” I said, making excuses.

  “I can handle it, and I can hire my sister for cheap to help out. Please take that dream vacation—for the sake of our dreams.”

  I glanced down at the floor, as if it could give me answers. “You have no idea what you’re asking, Nadia.”

  She pondered. “I do, and I’m sorry I had to ask,” she said. “I understand if you can’t do it though,” she said, heading for the door. Over her shoulder, she sadly announced, “We gave it our best shot. That’s the important thing.”

  “Nadia!” I called, but she ignored me and ran out the door. I pondered for a few minutes, then grabbed my purse and hailed a taxi. I directed the cabbie to drive to my boutique.

  After he dropped me off and I paid the fare, I walked up to the display window, pressed my palm on the cold glass, and stared back at my own reflection. I looked at the mannequins, dressed in creations I’d spent countless hours designing. Then I opened the doors and switched on the lights. I spun in a slow circle and looked at all racks of clothing, trendy outfits in all sizes for less than fifty bucks. That place was my dream.

  The décor in our boutique played a vital role in our success. We kept the atmosphere modern and contemporary, with a huge black dresser in the corner, its top drawer open for accessories and the jewelry Nadia designed, from crystal earrings and necklaces to beaded bracelets. We furnished the place with big, comfy chairs and lounge benches with cushions, as well as mirrors, lights, display cases, deep shelves in the wall, dressing rooms, a sitting area, and a public bathroom.