The Breakup

Chapter 1

I wanted the blonde.

I have a bad habit of always being attracted to women who are unavailable. Emotionally unavailable. I don’t know why I do that or what it is. If it’s just as simple as wanting what I can’t have, or some deep-seated bullshit about needing to win because I’m one of five kids from a family that was the town joke.

It’s also a protective measure because I’m not parading a bunch of women through my son’s life. I keep it casual. But I could do that with unattached women too, though probably not as easily.

So mostly I think it’s just because I’m an asshole.

Whatever the reasons, it had gotten me into trouble in the past, and as I watched the rich blonde, Bella Bigelow, stumble up to the bar totally drunk on Friday night, I knew I was doing it again. Chasing trouble. I had met her once before and I had thought she was gorgeous. All long legs and tan skin and juicy tits. A perfect face with a lean nose and plump lips that I wanted to suck on.

Her sister was screwing my twin brother.

But her sister wasn’t engaged to be married.

She was.

“What can I get you, Bella?” I asked, leaning on my elbows on the bar top so I would be closer to her. She smelled like a rich girl. All lotions and perfume and expensive clothes. It was amazing to me that someone could smell like money, but she did. Being a bartender in a tourist town on the coast of Maine, I had seen my fair share of rich girls up from Boston. This one shouldn’t be any different.

And yet, for some reason she intrigued me.

“A vodka cranberry,” she said, sounding a little defiant and more than a little drunk.

This was her bachelorette party, and apparently she was taking the last-week-of-freedom crap all very seriously. The first time I had met her she had been sweet and polite. Now she was loud and demanding.

“Sure.” I lifted up a glass and poured vodka in it, reminding myself that while I liked unavailable girls, I didn’t like drunk girls. Not in bed anyway. Too sloppy, too limp. I liked naughty girls who dove into misbehaving with their full wits about them. And their mouths open.

Drunk girls gave the worst head. It was a proven fact.

“Here you go.” After squirting in the cranberry juice, I slid the glass to her. “Seven bucks.”

“Put it on my tab.” She flicked her long hair over her shoulder and turned to go.

“You closed out your tab,” I reminded her. “Last round.”

She paused and frowned at me. “Then why do you still have my credit card?”

“I don’t.” Her platinum express credit card that read Bradley Alexander, presumably belonging to the rich fiancé, had been returned to her at least fifteen minutes earlier. “I gave it back to you.”

“No, you didn’t.” Now she just sounded belligerent. “What are you trying to pull? Are you trying to steal my credit card?”

That pissed me off. “No. I am not trying to steal your credit card. I gave it back to you. Check your purse.”

“I don’t have a purse.”

“Well, it had to appear from somewhere,” I drawled, using my typical charming voice, not wanting her to see that inside I was seething. My whole life people had been accusing me of shit just because I was a Jordan brother and my father was a thief and a career criminal. I resented the hell out of it. “Maybe you pulled it out of your tight little ass.”

Her jaw dropped. She looked outraged. Yet . . . I knew she found me attractive. I had been noticing her giving me signals all night. She gave me sidelong glances. Her eyelashes batted. She licked her lips. I don’t think she even knew she was doing it, but her body language said she was curious about me. About me in her.

She took a huge gulp of her drink then shook her finger at me. “You can’t talk to me like that.”

“And you can’t steal that drink,” I said mildly. “Someone has to pay for it, and it’s not going to be me.”

“Put it on my tab,” she said. “God, you’re such a local loser.”

There are a lot of things she could have said that wouldn’t have bothered me. But that . . . that got under my skin. It was an old wound and she had just dashed salt on it with her pretentious stare and cutting words.

She stole the drink, whether she realized it or not. I had to assume she was too drunk to know where her credit card was and I could have let that slide. But once she purposely insulted me, I knew I wasn’t going to do the right thing.

Nope. I wanted to screw her.
And I was going to make her want to screw me.