Married To Her Ex

by Cantrell, Kat

“Fine. Play dumb.”

  She stalked over to Debbie and flung herself, butt first, into the recently vacated spot on the love seat. They whispered to each other behind their hands, malevolent sneers aimed explicitly in his direction. And Layla’s. So that was what had stuck in her craw.

  He hadn’t forgotten Danny was bringing her. A little reminder of the stakes never hurt, and her memory looked to be crystal clear. Of course she’d realized Layla’s presence here wasn’t coincidental. Alexia had always had his number, a mystical ability as confusing as it was alluring.

  The steaks weren’t going to cook themselves, so he went through the motions of grilling dinner. This date wasn’t starting off any better than anything else he’d tried thus far. Alexia wasn’t speaking to him, Layla had Danny cornered by the pool house, and Ben was thumbing through e-mail on his phone while his wife listened to Alexia’s grievances.

  Had he miscalculated by letting Danny bring Layla?

  He flipped the steaks and pretended they still needed an eagle eye on them while he stood there and ran through his mental ledger again. The only thing he hated more than failing to fix something was failing because he’d made a mistake.

  And he was pretty sure he’d screwed up. Hadn’t he already decided something needed to change? Yet at the first opportunity, he’d grasped for the upper hand, like always. It was second nature, born from never having anything to call his own while growing up.

  The problem was that he couldn’t be like that with his wife, no matter how ingrained it was to dig in. If he hoped to get anywhere with Alexia, he needed to let her drive the bus. And hope she steered it in his direction.

  Chapter 5

  Alexia ate dinner without tasting it. Jesse’s heavy-handedness didn’t mesh well with steaks. The Layla message couldn’t have been clearer—he was in charge, and this deal would be played according to his rules. And she wasn’t allowed to win.

  Combined with the memory of the kiss he’d laid on her and the yearning for Before she couldn’t suppress… well, she’d rather be anywhere else.

  Jesse’s leg grazed hers as he chatted with Danny, and she shifted a couple of inches away but smiled sweetly when he glanced back. She was being nice on their date, as specified, especially to Ms. Montoya. Alexia had kept her mouth shut instead of correcting Layla’s poor attempts to preach memorized rhetoric from every MBA textbook on the planet, which had to count for something.

  At the end of the meal, Jesse served Moki’s German chocolate cake, which Alexia ate because she deserved every gooey, calorie-laden bite for putting up with Layla.

  Jesse settled back into a chair with a piece when his phone rang. He glanced at the caller ID. “Hennessy.”

  Concern lined his face as he listened, and she tried to pretend she hadn’t noticed or, better yet, hadn’t been watching him at all. He jumped up and stepped away from the group, keeping his voice low as he talked to whoever was on the other end.

  Something was wrong.

  After a few minutes, he returned, his expression tense. “Sorry, guys. I have to leave unexpectedly. I wish I didn’t, but it’s unavoidable. Ben, can I have a word?”

  Outlaw had a problem, then, and a pretty bad one if he sought Ben’s legal advice. The two men bent their heads together and talked briefly but too quietly for anything audible to waft in her direction.

  Jesse called out to the rest of them. “Stay and take advantage of the free beer. I might be back in a couple of hours.”

  Outlaw was worse than an invalid, constantly vying for Jesse’s attention, sucking him so dry he had nothing left for anything else, even his wife. Especially his wife. Worse, he clearly preferred it that way or he’d do it differently, compartmentalize better. Leave work early on occasion. In the interminably long days after the miscarriage, she’d seen his back far more times than his front as he deliberately chose Outlaw over being in the same room with her.

  Ironically, his head for business had been a major attraction at first. She’d just graduated from college, fresh from classes on business theory, and his real-life experiences fascinated her. Outlaw had been built from the ground up, not handed down like a lot of companies, and they talked about his dreams and plans until she fell in love with the man behind the business.

  Mutual, she’d thought. They shared smoldering glances in restaurants until the thrumming sexual tension threatened to explode. Like teenagers, they’d dashed to the car when they couldn’t stand it any longer. They’d stay awake all night making love on the floor, the couch, the countertops, and occasionally the bed. Always with Jesse’s music in the background because he couldn’t express what went on inside him—unless it was about Outlaw—any other way.

  But Outlaw hadn’t seen a good bottom line yet. Sixty hours a week at the factory became eighty. A hundred. Jesse ate, slept, and breathed his company. When he switched from the easy, laid-back tunes of their courtship to the darker, regret-filled and angsty lyrics, she caught the first clue something was wrong.

  Even now, accidentally stumbling upon an Alice in Chains song caused a similar quickening inside, that panic of not understanding what was happening to them.

  Jesse strode toward the gate to between the detached garage and the pool area. Alexia scrambled to catch up, wobbling across the flagstone in four-inch heels. She had a perverse need to help him handle their relationship differently all at once.

  This was a date, and if nothing else, he owed her his time.

  “Jesse, wait. What’s going on?” she asked and caught his hand to keep him from lifting the gate’s latch. “Can’t you let this go until morning?”

  He didn’t turn around. “No, I can’t.”

  She let his hand swing free. “Of course not. You’re always at Outlaw’s beck and call. I should have added a clause to the deal that dates can’t be interrupted by your other marriage.”

  “Alexia.” His voice was low and tight and laced with warning. “I’m not doing this with you now. I have to leave.”

  “Right. Run off and leave me here with Layla all night.” She crossed her arms against the sudden chill. “Rub it in my face you have someone better to do the marketing, someone with a degree, and if I don’t sit back and take whatever you dish out you’ll be happy to buy my share. You’ve never thought I could handle the Thigh Thing by myself.”

  That was an out-and-out lie. But this rapidly disintegrating evening was wearing on her, and she’d blurted it out without thinking, aiming for blood.

  Jesse went still. “Sounds like you’ve been talking to Shannon. Don’t put her words in my mouth.”

  She took a half step back at the bite in his tone. Perhaps she’d gone a teeny bit too far, though he didn’t deny Layla’s presence had significance. Backpedaling, she implored him. “Stay, just this once. Spend the evening with me.”

  If there was a smidgen of a chance they could learn to be there for each other again, here was the test. She desperately hoped he’d pass.

  “I can’t. There was an accident on the second shift.” His brows drew together in a grim line. “My employee might not make it. I’m going to the hospital to see what I can do.”

  She winced. Okay, then, he had a really good excuse for interrupting their evening. As much as she wanted to make this about the gaping holes in their relationship, he wasn’t using work to avoid her. Not this time.

  “Take me with you.” The request was impulsive, and not at all a good idea, but the words came out before she could stop the ridiculous attempt to meet him halfway. “That’s part of marriage. Being together to support each other, even through the bad stuff.”

  Say yes. Let’s change things. For once.

  Suspended, he stood there, bathed in the mystical glow of the landscape lighting and eerie dark waves bouncing off the water. His eyes were obsidian and liquid and unreadable. “The hospital is not the place for a date night. It’s not going to be fun. You should stay here. Have another beer. Hang out.”

  Yeah, that gelled. It was so like him to be
ar his burdens alone. Did he not realize it drove the division between them that much wider? Marriage was so more than fun and games, to her at least. Obviously, he didn’t know her as well as she’d supposed if he thought she’d rather drink beer than be there for him as he sorted through a difficult issue.

  “I live here.” She flattened her mouth into a straight line. “I don’t have a choice.”

  He went through the gate without a backward glance, phone in hand, already stabbing the screen as he walked. Then he lifted the phone to his ear. “Dolores, send someone to Jose Lopez’s house tomorrow to take care of things while his wife’s at the hospital…”

  The rest was lost as he disappeared into the garage.

  The evening went from bad to intolerable. Alexia’s laugh sounded fake, and her body felt too heavy.

  Shannon was wrong for once. This deal was solely about the Thigh Thing, regardless of whatever lies Jesse made up about his reasons. He knew a good business deal when he saw one and wasn’t about to miss out. If he and Alexia made up, he got full control of the product and her. If he’d wanted this reconciliation to be about their marriage, he was doing a terrible job of convincing her of it.

  When Layla excused herself to disappear inside, Danny called Alexia’s name and waved her over.

  Cautiously, she joined him. They’d always gotten along well, but that was before he started dating The Enemy. Fortunately, all she had to do was a wait a minute, and he’d be on to the next hot young thing to cross his path.

  “What do you think of the house?” he asked with a smile.

  Danny had an awesome voice, and as long as Layla wasn’t around, she didn’t mind listening to him talk. He was handsome too, for a blond, though he couldn’t hold a candle to Jesse’s dark, sinful looks.

  “It’s beautiful. All of Tres Lagos is.” She gulped down half of her beer and realized she’d lost count of which number it was. Who cared? She wasn’t driving, and it made Jesse’s absence less cutting. “Your news piece didn’t do it justice, I’m afraid.”

  He chuckled. “Exactly what every enterprising field reporter trying to make anchor likes to hear. Did he get all the colors right?”

  “Did who get what colors right?”

  “Jesse. He spent hours arguing with the builder and then the decorators about getting everything precisely right, like you described.” Danny stabbed his free hand toward the waterfall spilling into the pool’s basin. “That was all his, though. He said it reminded him of the place you guys went on your honeymoon in Cabo.”

  Her ears rang like he’d smacked her in the back of the head. “How I described it? What are you talking about? I’ve never been here before.”

  He scowled. “No, he didn’t get a chance to show it to you because you tossed him to the wolves before he could.”

  Beer sloshed dangerously close to the edge of the glass when her hand jerked. Somehow Danny had the idea she had been the one to split up the marriage. Had Jesse told his friends it was her fault?

  “I didn’t leave him,” she countered hotly. “He did all the walking out on his own. And besides, he hadn’t started building it yet when we split up.”

  A knowing light in Danny’s eyes stopped her cold. “He built this house for you. You and the baby. He started building it as soon as you told him you were pregnant.”

  “No! That’s not possible. You did the piece after we split up. He wouldn’t have had time to—” A million ants crawled through her stomach, and she swallowed the rest of her words. She couldn’t have said them anyway.

  Jesse didn’t want children. He would never have built the house for their baby, let alone her. He thought she’d gotten pregnant on purpose and had gotten so angry, accusing her of awful things. It was one of the few times his temper had truly frightened her.

  Disbelief puckered Danny’s mouth. “I did the feature in January. Six months is plenty of time to build a house, especially with Jesse at the helm. This is your dream house, or at least as close as he could get without consulting you. Look around and tell me I’m wrong.”

  No point in looking around. She’d been resisting the urge to love the house since first stepping foot across the threshold. Now she knew why all the touches gave her the vague feeling of déjà vu and why the furnishings looked like things she’d have picked out.

  Danny continued, oblivious to the spike he was hammering through her chest. “Tres Lagos was nothing more than scrub oak and dirt at first. Jesse talked about his vision endlessly, what you’d say about the lines of the house, the floor plan. Then he moved on to the crown molding, the paint, how you’d like the granite patterns. Light fixtures, faucets. Drove me insane.”

  “Why didn’t he tell me?” she whispered.

  Like that was the most important question of the moment.

  He shrugged. “Got me. I think he started it as a surprise. You’d have to ask him why he finished it.”

  Her head spun. Jesse had built this house for her without her knowledge. For her and the baby, if Danny could be believed. What other secrets and half-truths and misunderstandings had she been oblivious to all this time?

  Or was this some bigger game Jesse had devised to gain an advantage?

  It was after six a.m. before Jesse pulled into the garage at home. He fell face first onto the bed, but nausea kept him from passing out like his fatigued body screamed for. Nausea and an ache in his head from the horrific images chopping through it like a blender stuck on high.

  Being the CEO had its perks, like being able to wear whatever he pleased to the office, but the nightmare of failing to keep his employees safe wasn’t one of them. Failure alone was bad enough without the additional burden of Ben yammering at him to consider what steps Jesse had to take to avoid a lawsuit.

  Legal issues had been the last thing he wanted to focus on while hunched in a horrible plastic green hospital chair next to Jose Lopez’s wife, who’d thanked him—thanked him—four times for sitting with her through the night and letting her cry on his shoulder. Anyone would have done the same, and it didn’t begin to compensate for the damage his machines had caused to her husband and their whole family.

  He would have someone’s head for selling him that piece of machinery and daring to call it properly installed. The situation would never be fixed, not fully, but it was a start.

  Scratchiness against his cheek reminded him he needed to shave, but he couldn’t pry his eyes open. Maybe he should sleep for a few minutes and then take a shower. He drifted, images of Alexia in last night’s outrageous red dress parading through his mind interspersed with flashes of the bleak hospital and bleaker faces of his employee’s family.

  A muted thud startled open his eyes. Alexia was awake and moving around in the bedroom next door. He liked imagining her asleep in the bed he’d picked out or pulling a scrap of lacy white underwear out of the matching dresser. For once, she’d curbed her stubborn streak and settled into the bedroom next to his. It was more than he’d expected and far less than he anticipated.

  The awfulness of the accident extended past the injuries to his employee—he’d also missed out on the last half of his date. Perhaps after the Layla screw-up and Alexia’s subsequent mood, it was for the best to chalk up the evening to a lesson in what not to do. Today was a new day and as good as any for starting over. Maybe he could apologize with breakfast.

  So tired his body hurt, Jesse dragged his legs over the edge of the bed and swayed to his feet. He weaved down the hall to where Alexia’s bedroom door stood wide open. He swore. She’d already gone downstairs.

  The unmistakable sound of water running drew him to the doorway. Inside her room, double doors leading to the adjoining bathroom had been opened fully, giving him an unobstructed view of the European-wet-room-style shower, which had one short glass wall and no shower curtain.

  Alexia was in it. Naked. Fully, superbly bared.

  Her back was to him, and she bent slightly to slough a lathered ball of netting up one leg. Ensconced in steam, hot wate
r sluiced over her wet skin.

  Unadulterated lust spiked through his groin, and his eyelids slammed shut as he went so hard, he saw stars. Idiot. He pried open his lids before he missed the rest of the show. She was staring at him standing there like a peeping tom.

  Hands on hips, she narrowed her eyes, making no effort to cover herself. “Go away.”

  Not likely. With shoulders thrown back and breasts jutted out, she was absolutely the most stunning woman alive. Rosy nipples called to him, inviting him to do something he had no right to visualize but couldn’t stop. Sweat broke out along the back of his neck as he recalled exactly what they’d taste like, how one fit perfectly in his mouth.

  “I’ve seen it before,” he said, nonchalance rolling off his tongue. A miracle, since it had gone numb. Nothing south of his waist had that problem. His hard-on grew more and more painful the longer he stood there not moving.

  He ached to take the few steps between them, to close the gap. Pull off every stitch of his clothing and succumb to her. Skin against skin. Erase the memories of the ghastly night, so drenched with Alexia he couldn’t think.

  “So? Doesn’t make it okay for you to spy on me.”

  He shrugged, and the small movement stretched his midsection uncomfortably. “You left all the doors open. I figured you were asking me to watch.”

  “You gave up your right to see me naked.” She grabbed a towel. A big towel, which covered everything. What a crying shame. “Did you want something?”

  “Yeah.” Just not the same thing he’d wanted when he came in here. And he wanted it now, but unfortunately, he’d have to wait until she wanted it too. “I’m not going to the office until later. I’d like to have breakfast with you, since our date was cut short last night. We can eat after I take a quick shower. Unless you have a better offer?”

  He nodded to the running water behind her and waggled his eyebrows.

  “Keep dreaming.” Water streamed from her hair, sluicing down her glowing skin and into the loose towel.

  He chuckled and ordered his lower half to cease and desist before he lost it. His body pretty much ignored him. “The day will come when you want me so bad you can’t stop yourself.”