Prologue
Jules
I didn’t plan on him. Or for him.
Or anything that had to do with Cal Donovan from Boston.
Meeting him was a surprise, taking me one hundred percent completely off-guard. I met new people every day in my line of work, and none of them affected me. Wasn’t that the way of things, though? You could meet a thousand people and none of them would mean anything to you, but then you’d meet one, and suddenly they meant everything.
I was a self-professed workaholic, so everyone in my life knew I didn’t date. It wasn’t entirely intentional on my part; I just didn’t make men a priority at this point in my life. But that wasn’t to say that if I met someone who intrigued me, I wouldn’t give it a shot. Because I absolutely would. But therein lay the rub—very few guys sparked my interest and managed to hold it.
And that was perfectly fine with me. Work came first, and I wasn’t about to apologize for that or feel bad about it. Not even to my ex-boyfriend Brandon, when he broke up with me over two years ago because I spent too much time at the office, and he felt I should have been focusing at least a smidgeon of my time and attention on him.
He had played the role of the supportive boyfriend at first, telling me how proud he was of my ambition and accomplishments. But all the while, his resentment secretly brewed until it exploded from him one night as we sat in his living room. To say I’d been taken off-guard and shocked by his anger would be an understatement. I had no idea he’d grown so spiteful.
Brandon hadn’t been entirely wrong in his frustrations, but even his leaving didn’t make me want to change my priorities. All I’d felt when he was breaking up with me, delivering a speech he’d clearly practiced more than once, was a sense of relief. My heart leaped at the idea of focusing on my career without taking anyone else’s desires or feelings into consideration. Oh, the freedom I looked forward to experiencing and the complete absence of guilt.
Yes, that might sound harsh, but I wanted to build a name for myself in the high-end real estate market, and I couldn’t do that by dividing my time. Or maybe I could have. The point was that I didn’t want to, and Brandon reminded me of that.
Besides, when did making yourself your number one priority become such a horrible thing? Men focused on their careers all the time, and that was completely acceptable. But not for a woman; not for me. I learned fairly quickly after the Brandon breakup that men didn’t like being second on a woman’s priority list. And they seemed to be intimidated by a motivated female, calling me things like hard to handle, challenging, and difficult.
The end result was that being single seemed to work best for me, and I had no plans to change my relationship status anytime soon.
Then I met Cal.
And he fucking ruined everything.
Mr. Perfect Lips
Jules
I ran into the hotel, my arms wrapped around my midsection to fight off the bitter cold outside. My long blond hair had whipped around my face in the bone-chilling wind, and I did my best to smooth it back into place as I stepped into the lobby.
Boston was freezing and I hadn’t packed appropriately, tossing short-sleeved tops and sandals into my suitcase instead of cold-weather clothing that I didn’t own anyway. How was I supposed to know an unexpected cold front could move through during early September? Back in Los Angeles, it was still at least eighty degrees every day, and with any luck, I wouldn’t have to start wearing shoes with socks until almost January.
Fingers crossed.
So, yeah, I hadn’t planned my East Coast wardrobe very well, and I hadn’t heard the end of it since I met the three women I was currently hanging out with. They teased me relentlessly, but I enjoyed it. This was my first real estate conference out of state, and I was having more fun than I’d had in a long time.
The warm air from the hotel heaters hit me with welcome relief, and I turned toward my new girlfriends.
“Bar?” I suggested, not ready to call it a night yet.
“Definitely,” Robin from Boston said as the other two women nodded.
Robin was in her forties, had been married forever—her words, not mine—and owned her own real estate company. She was also hilarious, constantly cracking me and the other ladies up when we should have been doing anything but laughing.
“Nowhere to sit,” Robin said as she nodded toward the circular bar, each seat currently occupied.
Glancing around the crowded space, I spotted a single free table that seated four. I pointed at it and we headed for it before I realized that there were only three chairs.
“You guys sit; I’ll find us an extra chair,” I said, scanning the area.
A group of guys sat at a large table nearby, surrounded by at least three extra empty seats as they pored over some notebooks and chatted with each other, oblivious to the crowd around them.
I walked over to them and pasted on my most charming smile, the one I used to close multi-million-dollar deals. “Hey, do you guys mind if I steal a chair, or are you using all of these?”
When they all looked up at once, I automatically smiled at them each in turn before stopping cold on a pair of attractive hazel eyes. My focus dropped to the man’s lips and I sucked in a breath, completely mesmerized as I struggled to remember why I’d walked over there in the first place.
Chairs. Right. Chairs.
Holy hell, guys should not have lips that full and inviting if they weren’t going to be kissing me all night with them.
The man grinned up at me, revealing even white teeth, and I wanted to hop into his lap and show him how much I appreciated what God had blessed him with. His thick dark hair was cut short and spiked up in all different directions, a casual style that probably took him a while to style, but seemed natural, and I wanted to run my fingers through every single strand.