When You’re Ready (Ready #1)(37)
Author: J.L. Berg

His lips left mine, trailing kisses over my chin, down my neck and then up to my ear. His voice low and seductive, he whispered, “Find another night for Maddie to spend with Leah or your parents. Because the next time we’re alone, you’re mine.”

Chapter Ten

~Clare~

“Clare Elizabeth Murray! You little slut!” Leah nearly screamed as we made our way through the aisles of one of our favorite clothing stores.

It was a Monday morning, and I was enjoying a few hours to myself while Maddie was at preschool. Leah had the night shift today, so she and I decided a little retail therapy would be nice. Leah searched the clearance rack, her long blonde hair pulled to the side in an artfully designed braid that would have taken me hours to create. Today she wore a short summery dress that made her look like she’d just stepped off a runway in Paris. God, I hated that woman.

“Leah, would you freaking shut up! I think China heard you!” I scolded.

“News flash! They probably heard you moaning in the back of that car Friday night!”

I groaned, completely embarrassed. The store clerk was seriously trying to ignore our conversation but I could hear her muffled giggle behind the rack of clothes she was pretending to sort.

“Okay, we are done talking about me. Let’s talk about you and how you totally bailed Friday night. And don’t tell me it was to go to some lame cemetery,” I said, changing the subject and calling her out on her one-nighter.

She opened her mouth and shut it again, speechless. What the hell? Leah was never speechless. Like never. She always had something to say about everything. Sometimes I wish she came with a muzzle.

“We went to the cemetery. He’s working production on this film, apparently that’s his true love. Acting is just something he fell into ‘cause he’s got a pretty face. But that’s it. He took me home.”

“You are a goddamn liar, Leah.”

“Am not,” she said. I could tell she was lying by her sudden interest in a ridiculously ugly dress. There was a reason it was on the clearance rack. There was no way Leah wanted to buy it. She was avoiding me.

“Are too.”

“Am not!” she repeated.

“Are too,” Annoyed now, I said, “Oh my God. Are we children again? Have we reduced ourselves down to Maddie’s age now?”

She looked at me, trying to give her best poker face. Problem was, Leah didn’t have a poker face. She was usually an open book, willing to tell anyone virtually anything. Sometimes I wondered if her thick skin came from being raised by an alcoholic dad, but she always brushed it off and said this was the way God made her.

“You mean to tell me you left a bar with a Hollywood celebrity who is hotter than f**k, which by the way, if you tell Logan I said that, I will kill you, and you didn’t sleep with him? That’s like your ultimate fantasy!” I confronted her.

“Okay, fine! Yes, I slept with him!” she snapped, before pulling us to into a dressing room and closing the door with a huff.

“And it was amazing. Like five times amazing, okay? I’ve been having sex with vibrators for so long I’d forgotten what an actual man felt like…and this one? Holy shit! He was like an Olympic gold medalist for orgasms.”

“So why didn’t you want to tell me?” I asked, still wondering why we were hanging out in a dressing room. And if we were, I was at least going to start trying on the dresses I picked out.

I start stripping down for my first dress as she took a seat in the corner and explained.

“Because I knew you’d make a big deal out of it. You’re in that ‘I just fell in love!’ stage, and it’s radiating off your damn body in waves. You’re naturally going to want everyone around you to feel that same exact thing. And this is the exact opposite of what you have. It was purely physical and a one-time thing. Okay?”

“I’m in love?” I asked, completely forgetting everything else she just said and focusing on the one thing I still hadn’t come to grips with.

“Well duh,” she snorted.

“Isn’t it too soon?”

“Does love have a time restriction?” she asked.

“Then why haven’t I opened the letter, Leah?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart. I don’t know,” she said, standing to pull me into a tight hug. We stood there in the small dressing room, holding and supporting each other, like we’d done for the last twenty years. With her head resting on my shoulder, Leah whispered, “You’re rack looks fabulous in this dress. You should wear this one. He’ll lose his shit when he sees you in it.”

“You always know the right things to say,” I joked.

“I know. I’m like a super-hot version of Yoda.”

I snorted, giving myself a long pause before saying, “You’ll be there Wednesday morning?”

“There’s nowhere else I’d be, Clare.”

I tiptoed into Maddie’s room, hoping to catch a few moments alone with her before she woke. The clothes I had carefully laid out the night before were laying across her rocking chair, and the CD I put on repeat was still chattering on about sheep and numbers. I gently sat on the edge of her bed, looking down on her tiny face, trying to remember how it looked three years ago today. She was barely into her toddler years, just starting to leave infancy. When I held her in my arms sobbing, I thought she looked so big compared her to the tiny baby we’d brought home. Looking down at her now, I felt that overwhelming lack of control every parent has watching their child grow before their eyes, unable to stop it, or slow it down. How had she gotten so big? She would start kindergarten next year, and he wasn’t here to see it.

He was gone.

It had been three years, today.

Maddie shifted in her sleep and made an incoherent noise before her eyes fluttered open and focused on me.

“Hi Mommy,” she mumbled, her voice still sleepy.

“Hey, baby.”

“Whatcha doin’?”

“Just looking at how pretty you are,” I smiled, reaching down to smooth out her tiny red curls.

“Are we going to go visit Daddy today?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Do I get to wear my pretty dress?”

“Of course, baby,” I choked out.

“Do you think Daddy would like my pretty dress?” her voice filled with curiosity over a man she would never know again.

“Oh definitely. Green was Daddy’s favorite color.” It was the color of my eyes.