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  Carly arched an eyebrow. So did the juggler, as he kept up the cascade of his quintet. Show-off.

  “I want to see. Show me,” Carly urged.

  Yeah, Carly’s a chip off the old block. She’s all about challenging me, and I’m all about rising up to the challenge.

  The stick-thin guy with the beret raised his chin. “Have at it, man.”

  With clockwork precision, he let the balls fall out of orbit and into his palm. Next, the Rubix cubes. Then the beanbag. He stepped closer, handed me the objects, and flashed a crooked, put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is grin.

  Game on.

  Packs of runners jogged along, cyclists wheeled over the black asphalt, and roller bladers whizzed by on the concrete. With my feet parked a hip’s width apart, I stood at the edge of the grass, getting a feel for the items, palming them, weighing them, and then one, two, three, four, five, I whisked each one up into the air in a long oval arc. Round and round, in a perfect five-ball cascade.

  Carly clapped, then demanded more. “Yes, close your eyes now!”

  I groaned. What was I thinking? Juggling with eyes closed is fucking hard. But, I could pull it off for a couple seconds, I guessed. My special skill. I obliged my niece’s request, pulling off a few quick blind ovals. Five seconds later, after I’d clearly proven that I’d mastered that party trick, since any successful man needs at least a few party tricks at his disposal, I opened my eyes.

  And I saw a vision from my past.

  A blond beauty, with long legs, a lovely round ass, and a high ponytail swishing back and forth across her shoulders. She ran along the path in tiny orange can-I-peel-them-off-with-my-teeth-pretty-please running shorts. And that face. Dear lord, that stunning face of an angel. High cheekbones. Deep brown eyes that knew me like no one ever had. Those red lips, shaped like a bow. Fuck me, the things she could do with those lips. The things I taught her to do with that sinful mouth.

  She sure as hell knew how to use it, and I don’t just mean in the bedroom. We used to talk about anything and everything.

  I’d recognize Delaney anywhere, not just from all the times with her, but from my dreams too. My dirty, filthy dreams from college.

  Days with her. Nights with her. Best time of my life. That woman was full of spark. Full of fire. So damn passionate. And look at her now.

  Jesus Christ.

  Who the hell said it was acceptable to become even hotter?

  It had to be illegal to be that smoking hot.

  She wasn’t alone. She ran with two other chicks and a couple of dogs.

  And as for me? Fast on his feet, quick with a word, never met a situation he can’t talk his way out of? Scratch all that right then and there. Because I dropped the cubes. I dropped the beanbag. And I dropped the orange balls in a pile of wreckage at my feet.

  My jaw fell too.

  But the best part? All that came out of my mouth was a muffled Hey.

  Yup. Eight years later and all I could utter was a monosyllable.

  Height of my mother-fucking unbrilliance.

  She rolled her eyes, and shook her head as she trotted past me. Over her shoulder, she called out: “How’s the juggling working out for you now, Tyler?”

  Oh, zinger, how you slay me.

  The lady won.

  The lady killed it.

  “Great. I kept it up,” I shouted.

  Then, she gave herself away for a sliver of a second, and if I were in court, I’d have known then I had her. She let her gaze linger far too long. Giving me that patented you-were-in-my-fantasies-last-night look that I knew so well as her eyes roamed down my face, my chest, and yeah, there, right fucking there to her favorite part.

  She loved that part.

  But this wasn’t a courtroom battle.

  Because when she cast her pretty brown eyes to my niece after that, I saw Delaney adding up the years in the span of a nanosecond. Computing possibilities. “Looks like you sure did,” she said, deadpan all the way.

  She snapped her gaze from me, zeroed in on the path in front of her and sprinted.

  With her friends and the dogs flanking her, and me with my balls, and my jaw, and my composure splattered on the dirt, she tore past me, leaving me in the dust.

  To say I’d been thinking of her every day for the last eight years would be a lie. To say I’d gone those eight years without ever once thinking of her would be an even bigger lie.

  But I sure as hell didn’t expect to run into her one fine Sunday morning in the park. I wasn’t prepared. I wasn’t ready. And my first thought was to catch up and explain that I hadn’t ditched her to have a kid. Closing the distance would have been easy. I can run like the wind. I can put one foot in front of the other and hoof it. But I had my favorite person with me and no way was I going to drag Carly in a chase after a girl I once loved like the sun.

  Still, I tried.

  I grabbed her hand and yelled. “Delaney!”

  She didn’t even turn around, and soon she was a speck rounding the bend.

  I suppose, in retrospect, the last words out of my mouth when I dumped her shouldn’t have been, “It’s too hard to juggle classes and you.”

  * * *

  Her Prologue

  * * *

  I’m cursed.

  There’s no other explanation for this thing that happens to me every time I get close.

  I’m not talking about horseshoes close either.

  I mean every single time I take the rabbit out for a ride.

  The bunny makes it clear it needs a certain stallion to get over the hump.

  Do bunnies even like horses?

  I don’t know, but it pisses me off that my traitorous body seems to need one man, and one man only to fly off the cliff.

  I don’t ask for this kind of sexual haunting. Hell, I don’t even believe in ghosts. But the ghost of boyfriends past has been inhabiting my fantasies for years. I try like hell to rely on Henry Cavill, Chris Hemsworth, or Michael Fasbender. I mean, really. Michael Fasbender. And we all know what he’s packing.

  But nope.

  My brain won’t bend to his Fas.

  I’ve learned to stop fighting it. I just go with it when my ex pops into my solo flights. I grit my teeth and bear it, and let him join Bunny to take me to the magic land. Then I turn off the pink toy, tuck it into the drawer, and drift asleep, satisfied, but not entirely satisfied either.

  That’s how it goes when the biggest and littlest Os come with double-A assistance and have for the last year and a half. I kid you not. Have you seen the men in New York City? They are fine, but most come with some kind of baggage, and I’m no longer interested in carrying theirs, so I’ve been on a nightly love and dating diet. More like a 500-day fast. So Bunny and I have gotten a lot closer. Sometimes, we make it a double.

  And in the mornings, I pretend I didn’t get off to Tyler Fucking Nichols.

  That man.

  That cocky jerk who broke my heart.

  But even if he inhabits my naughty imagination, I do take some solace in knowing I’m over Tyler. I’m so over the way he ended things eight years ago. I’ve moved on, thank you very much. This is purely a physical possession, nothing more. Hell, it’s not really a surprise that my mind wanders to his particular talents, given the way he owned my body when we were younger. But, I sure as hell wish I could find the trick to eradicating him from the guest list of the parties I host with my battery-operated nightstand drawer friends.

  One Sunday morning, I stumble upon the key to exorcising him.

  Here’s how it all went down.

  I popped out of bed, washed my face, brushed my teeth, pulled my hair into a ponytail, and tugged on my running shorts.

  A little later, I met up with my good friends Penny and Nicole at the entrance to Central Park, and we began our training run for a 10K race we’re doing in a few weeks. I figured it would be just another morning jog, followed by a plate of two eggs, any style with a strong cup of coffee at my favorite sidewalk cafe, The Charmi
ng Breakfast Spot.

  Instead, I saw him.

  Juggling.

  Of all things, the man was juggling.

  The spitting image of irony.

  At the edge of the grass by the running path, he spun five objects in an oblong blur with the most adorable little brown-haired girl by his side. Who looked just like him.

  And in the blink of an eye, I seethed.

  I ached.

  As I ran, I broiled. I went from zero to 60 miles per hour of hurt in mere seconds. All I could think was the bastard had found a way to juggle in the end. I couldn’t believe he’d moved on so easily after me. And he didn’t just rebound to another girlfriend. He leveled all the way up to fatherhood.

  The worst part? The absolutely, completely, horrifically unfair part? He was still so goddamn handsome, with that chestnut hair I wanted to run my hands through, that square jawline I could have touched all night, those lips made for kissing me everywhere.

  In last night’s unbidden appearance in my mind, he sure as hell had. He’d been my first in that department; he was still the best.

  At that and at everything.

  Look, any woman who says she doesn’t rate her lovers is a liar. She might not have a whiteboard with a numbered list, or a diary with rankings. But we all know who rocked our world and claimed our bodies.

  He was the one for me. Top of the list. End of the line.

  But no more.

  That’d be the end of his voodoo sex tricks on my brain. Tonight, I’d kick him out of my head, no matter what it took.

  “Look,” I hissed to my girls. “It’s Tyler The Juggler Nichols.”

  Penny’s amber eyes simulated moons as her mouth fell open. She jerked her head to Tyler. “Holy smokes, he is hot,” she whispered, as she ran with her little chihuahua trotting along with her.

  I could so trip her for that. But I loved her too much, and her dog as well.

  “He’s not hot,” I muttered, as I breathed hard from our pace.

  But Tyler Nichols was indeed a specimen, just like he’d been when we were in college. From the day we met in an advanced poli sci seminar, the man hooked me, he lined me, he sinkered me. He was my best friend, my boyfriend, my most fearsome competitor, my greatest ally, and my first love.

  Then he’d broken my heart, and a few weeks after that my ego shattered too, smashed to bits too when he’d finished me off at a debate tournament.

  That was devastating . . . and yet, at the same time it wasn’t. But before I could linger too long on all the ways my future shifted during the tumultuous ending to my senior year of college, the present shifted too. When Tyler opened his eyes and met mine, the expression in his was priceless. He blinked, then recognition flashed in those dark brown irises.

  He was clearly shocked to see me, and yet, he seemed excited too. Like he was gazing upon his favorite work of art. The way he stared at me almost made me think I was a regular attendee at his private one-man shows.

  And if that was the case, the man could eat his heart out.

  This time, I was going to have the words. All of them. All the hurt and the sadness that had crashed back into me morphed into something beautiful and wholly necessary—the right words at the right time. “How’s the juggling working out for you now, Tyler?”

  As I ran past him, he uttered a strangled string of words: “Great. I kept it up.”

  “Evidently,” I said, locking my stare briefly with his pretty little girl.

  I looked away, and I thanked the lucky stars that I finally had all I needed to eject him from the driver’s seat of my fantasy life. Even as he called my name, we kept running.

  Leaving him far behind where he belonged.

  If I had to go on a Tyler starvation diet, I’d sign up right then. Because no way, no how was I getting off anymore to a man who’d fathered someone else’s baby.

  Goodbye, Tyler Nichols curse.

  It ended today.

  * * *

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  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to Helen Williams for the gorgeous cover! Thank you to KP Simmon for all the things. Big hugs to Kelley for running the ship, and to Candi and Keyanna for all they do. Love to Nelle for her NYC eyes and ears. Huge gratitude to my girls, Laurelin, CD and Kristy, and a special shoutout to Lili Valente.

  Big love Jen McCoy and Dena Marie, who loved Chase and Josie, and helped bring their magic to the page. I am grateful to Lauren McKellar for her keen eye, to Karen Lawson for her eagle eye, and to Janice and Tiffany for their fine attention to detail.

  Thank you to my family and my husband, and to my fabulous dogs! Most of all thanks to YOU – the reader.

  Xoxo

  Lauren

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  Contact

  I love hearing from readers! You can find me on Twitter at LaurenBlakely3, or Facebook at LaurenBlakelyBooks, or online at LaurenBlakely.com. You can also email me at [email protected]

 

 

 
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