This Changes Everything by Jennifer Ashley Page 0,18

resolutely aside and get ready for my first meeting. I’m driving out to a site, which will distract me from making calls. Of course, I can always use the phone hands-free while I drive. Damned technology.

I sigh, take up the tempting phone, and leave the office for my meeting.

Somehow I make it through the day without calling Abby. I think about it fifty times an hour, but I resist. Helps that I’m taking up Ryan’s clients in addition to my own—Austin and I have split them between ourselves.

I do a lot of driving today, but I don’t mind. I’d rather be out on the road, in spite of crappy traffic and too many construction zones, than sitting behind a desk. It’s why I like what I do. I see new houses and historic ones all the time, and I help people make a nice place for themselves.

Today I drop by the house we’re building for people who qualify for our grant and donation program—we help those who need housing but can’t afford to live in something decent. I was put in charge of the charity program, because it was my idea in the first place.

The couple who are getting our latest donation have one little boy and another kid on the way. They’ve come out to see what we’re doing.

McLaughlin Charities searches for and buys lots in older neighborhoods where a house has maybe been torn down or abandoned. The house or lot is usually difficult for the owners to sell, or else it’s been foreclosed on.

We either renovate the hell out of the existing structure or simply build a new one, which is often cheaper and easier. We cover the cost and consider applicants who are the most needy but also not likely to move in with their gang and start robbing the neighbors. Folks my mom refers to as having “fallen on hard times.”

I like when people are smiling and excited about moving into a new house. I talk with the dad, who is my age. His wife doesn’t say much but grins at me as she holds on to her son with one hand. He wants to see everything, so I give the little guy a tour.

Ryan and Calandra will be like this in a few years, I realize, with one or two kids in tow. I’ll be an uncle. A proud one.

I have a sudden flash of myself as a dad, my wife next to me, touching my arm with comfortable familiarity, like this man’s wife does with him. The wife in my vision is Abby, and she holds the hand of a little girl who has brown eyes ringed with gray, like Abby’s.

Holy shit, where did that come from? Abby and I had a one-night stand, for crap’s sake. Not a relationship. Not even close.

I shakily say goodbye to the couple and move on to my next client, and the next. But I can’t shake the vision.

I take my phone and throw it into the far corner of the back seat.

“Working late?” Austin says to me as he leans on my office doorway.

It’s after six, and I’m typing notes into my computer, getting ready for the next day. The showroom is closed, and everyone else is gone.

“Looks that way,” I grunt.

I’m avoiding going home. The phone will sit on my kitchen counter, mocking me while I slurp down take-out Kung Pau Chicken. You want to call her, you want to call her.

But does she want my call? Let’s go over the facts:

When I dressed myself in her hotel room yesterday morning, Abby didn’t ask me to stay. She said something about going home to work on a project for her job. I said “Okay, see you” or something equally inane before I departed.

Abby didn’t tell me to wait or suggest we have breakfast together, not even room service. By the time I’d showered, packed, and reached the lobby, she’d already checked out. Brooke had told me she’d gone. Why had Brooke told me? Because she felt sorry for me, not because Abby instructed her to. If I hadn’t run into Brooke, I’d never have known.

Brooke thought I should call Abby. Abby herself never said a word about calling, hadn’t given me her phone number, hadn’t asked for mine.

Is Abby cringing about the night she spent with me? We’d been drunk, bonding over old times, catching up, and … that was it.

I’m not cringing at all. I want to relive every second of Saturday night, and