Happily Ever After: A Novel Read Free Page A

Ian and Oliver and Gavin and so on and so forth.
    After my safe harbor of Roger turned out to be in shark-infested waters, I decided, quite reasonably, I had played all the angles, tried all the variations, and I was done. I was giving up men, romance, and anything related to either. The new, practical, very alone me would be just fine.
    Of course, it only took about six months to realize I would never actually be alone again. In that short span, Roger’s evolution took a hairpin turn and he began to behave like an insecure teenager. I now had two children to mind. It was a sobering thought for a newly single mother.
    The wall clock indicates it’s close to midnight, and I quit at midnight no matter where I am or what I’ve accomplished. Allison will be up asking for things by 7:00 A.M. , and if I don’t log at least six hours in the sack, I’m done for. The only advantage of sleeping alone is that you know you’re going to sleep. I mean, what the hell else are you going to do?
    Now where was I?
    But before Lily could even get her mind around what was happening, this intense and fiery man returned all her garments to exactly how they’d been. No. No. No!
    “It’s really too bad about the shirt,” he said, stepping away from her.
    Lily, still leaning on the wall, felt her whole body quiver. She was nothing more than a shell, now filled with lust and longing. Unable to even open her mouth, she clutched her laptop bag to her chest, as if she could simply disappear behind it forever. Her breath came in ragged gasps.
    Calm down, she told herself.
    The elevator chose that moment to land smoothly on the fifty-eighth floor. The doors slid back to reveal a modern reception area and Peter Jensen himself standing by the large and not altogether welcoming receptionist’s desk.
    “Lily, great,” Jensen said with a grin. “I see you’ve already had a chance to meet Aidan Hathaway.”
    Lily turned to the man whose intense eyes now registered a degree of amusement.
    “You’re Hathaway?” she asked, her legs almost too wobbly to carry her out of the elevator with any dignity.
    In response, Aidan Hathaway gave her a smile that could only mean trouble.

Chapter 3

    A t 6:50 on Friday morning, Allison stands at the foot of my bed and clears her throat. In the background, the air conditioner hums. It’s only April, but we are on day two of a heat wave that is making the local meteorologists hysterical. They keep throwing out words like Armageddon and Apocalypse. Yes, it’s hot, really fucking hot, in fact, but I don’t exactly see the end of the world angle, at least not this morning.
    “Mom? Are you awake?”
    “No,” I mutter, pulling the blankets up over my head. “I’m not even close.”
    “Which jeans?” Allison yanks my covers back and shoves two pairs of dark blue, impossibly small pants in my face. How can a body be that rail thin and still house all the necessary internal organs? Maybe it’s the macrobiotic brown rice her father feeds her. He swears it will change my life. I tell him so will macaroni and cheese, although I doubt we’re talking about the same kind of change.
    “Mom, wake up! Which jeans?”
    “They’re the same,” I say.
    “No,” my daughter says emphatically. “They are not the same. You aren’t paying attention.”
    “You’re right,” I say. “I’m sleeping.”
    This earns me a classic tweener pout. Allison’s lower lip juts out far enough to provide a comfy landing spot for the finches I hear outside my window. But I know better than to mention it. A pout I can handle. A full-on snit will have to wait until after I’ve had coffee.
    “Those,” I say, pointing to the pair of jeans in her left hand.
    “I don’t like those.”
    “Okay, the other ones.”
    “Thanks, Mom,” Allison says, and skips off to her room, where I’m sure she will commence agonizing about what shirt to wear. If I get up now, I can be safely locked in the bathroom by the time she comes