Take the Chance (Top Shelf Romance #9) - Brittainy Cherry Page 0,218

Steph when she really had her heart set on something, plus she’d given me this really amazing blowjob in bed that morning.

She knew all my weaknesses.

Lying there in the dark, I twisted my wedding ring around my finger.

Three years.

It seemed impossible it had been that long. Her glasses were still on her nightstand, her clothes still in the closet, and I still expected her to be there when I rolled over in our squeaky-springed old bed wanting to tuck her little frame against mine.

And then, in other ways, it seemed like forever since I’d heard her singing in the shower, or watched her get ready for bed, or lost myself inside her body. She’d always made me go slow at first, claiming she was worried about my size, even after we’d been together for years. Probably she said that just to flatter me (it worked every time), although she’d been a tiny little thing, with curves in all the right places. I’d never minded the fifteen extra pounds she insisted she had to lose—in fact, I loved them, loved the way her body was soft and mine was hard, the way those curves felt beneath my hands and lips and tongue, the way she’d wrapped herself around me. It had felt so good to take care of her.

Fuck, I missed sex. I missed everything.

“You need to get out there again,” said my oldest brother, Brad, because he knew everything. “Let me introduce you to April, the new realtor at the agency. She’s hot, and I think you’d have a good time. Or at least get laid.”

I told him to piss off.

“Come on, man,” he’d said again last week as we jogged together down one of the dirt roads that bordered our forty-six acre farm. “It’s been three years. You’re not even trying to move on. When are you going to get over her?”

“Fuck you, Brad,” I’d replied, taking off with long, fast strides that left him in the dust. Not trying to move on? Every fucking day I got through meant I was moving on. Every morning I got out of bed meant I was moving on. Every goddamn time I took another breath meant I was moving on.

And as for getting over her, it would never happen, so he could parade an endless supply of hot women in front of me, but it would just be a waste of time.

I’d already met the love of my life; I’d known her since we were kids.

I’d married her, and I’d lost her.

There was no reprieve from that. There was no redemption. There was no second chance.

I didn’t even want one.

Margot

“Are you sure you want to take this on right now?” Jaime reached across my desk and handed me the client file, her expression doubtful. I’d just volunteered to take over a new account that involved a few days of travel, a lot of research, and not much money. The client was a small family farm focused on sustainable agriculture. The perfect place to get the hell out of town and not bump into anyone I knew. “A farm doesn’t really seem like your thing.”

“Why not?” I asked, stuffing the file into my bag. “I used to ride horses, remember? I think I even have a pair of boots laying around.”

“You kept your horse at a hunt club. This is a farm.”

“How different can it be?” I flipped a hand in the air. “I’m sure I can handle a farm. And like I told you, Muffy says it’s best if I leave town for a while anyway, at least until the gossip dies down.”

“Until the gossip dies down?” Jaime grinned as she crossed her arms. “That’s going to take a while, Sconewall Jackson.”

She wasn’t kidding. It had been almost a week, but Sconehenge was still a wildly popular tale among the country club set, who hadn’t witnessed a good Scene in months. (“All this good behavior is so tiresome,” my grandmother had complained at dinner last week.) The story had been embellished to include Tripp taking a scone right in the nuts (a change I liked) and Amber throwing a plate of beignets at my head (one I didn’t). Scones were selling out at local bakeries, the shop that made the ones I threw started calling them Jilted Heiresses (I turned down the endorsement deal), and people were fond of quipping, “Revenge is just a scone’s throw away” at cocktail parties all over town.

My mother was beside herself (“Really, Margot, who on