Loe raamatut: «The Ex-Girlfriends' Club»

1

Artemis525: I’m thinking someone needs to break Bennett’s* heart. *Literally.* Like maybe snatch it from his chest, then run over it with a lawn mower. < BEG>

EDEN RUTHERFORD READ the new drive-by post and felt another nudge of unease prod her belly. Granted she was still a bit of a rookie on Hell, Georgia’s, police force, but even a rookie could discern the somewhat unsettling menace behind this most recent message. She instinctively picked up the cordless to call Kate, her best friend and cofounder of the Ex-Girlfriends’ Club, but the thought was interrupted by the ringing of the phone. A quick check of the caller ID confirmed that Kate had beaten her to the punch.

“Did you see it?” Kate asked gravely.

“I did,” Eden told her, equally unsettled. And annoyed, dammit. The board was their cyberspace playground and this weird chick was kicking sand. “I was just about to call you.”

Kate released a worried breath. “This woman is really starting to freak me out, Eden. Run over his heart with a lawn mower? Sheesh. She’s got issues. I seriously think we need to consider banning her from the board.”

The same thought had occurred to Eden, but she wasn’t even certain it was possible. Granted the sole purpose of the Web site and message board was to bash Bennett Wilder—or any other man who employed his hit-and-run style of romance—but this…

A huge proponent of the old you-reap-what-you-sow adage and justice in any form—be it poetic or otherwise—Eden still thought this fell smack-dab into over-the-top territory.

Quite frankly, after all the heartache he’d heaped upon her and the rest of her little club, Bennett having a broken heart in the figurative sense would be particularly gratifying. She inwardly snorted. Hell, he’d certainly left a lot of casualties in his wake—most notably her, Eden thought.

But literally was out of the question.

Or at least it was to all of Bennett’s victims but one.

Artemis525 had started posting to the board a couple of weeks ago—which was strange in and of itself—and there’d been something about her even then that had given Eden pause.

Though the site was dedicated to Bennett, within a couple of months after it had gone live, their cathartic vengeful-humor sort of therapy had served its purpose, and now the site was more about lamenting daily woes: problems at work, meddling mothers—usually hers, Eden thought with a mental eye roll—PMS and the occasional Mr. Wrong. Having a broken heart courtesy of Hell’s third-generation bad boy might have been what had originally gotten them together, but it certainly wasn’t what kept the group talking now.

That’s what made Artemis525’s posts so strange. Despite the fact that she seemed to have materialized out of thin air, they hadn’t even been discussing Bennett. Hadn’t in months.

Without warning, dark brown hair, even darker heavily lashed old-soul eyes and lips a little too full to be anything short of sexy materialized all too readily in her rebellious mind, making a melancholy tide of longing rise up inside her. Tall, hard and lean with a smart mouth, a smoother tongue and a smile that epitomized wicked, Ben Wilder should come with a warning label. After all this time, the mere memory of him could still cause her foolish heart to jump into an irregular rhythm and a hollow, woeful ache to appear in her belly. Eden released a small breath.

Bennett might have left town three years ago, but there was rarely a day that went by that she didn’t think about him. Pathetic? Eden rolled her eyes. Without a doubt. Despite considerable evidence to the contrary—particularly where Bennett was concerned—she wasn’t stupid.

But…Eden couldn’t seem to help herself.

In fact, to her immeasurable shame and chagrin, she’d never been able to keep her wits about her when it came to Bennett, a fact that became glaringly evident with each botched attempt at resisting him. He crooked his finger, she came. The end. The emotional tug and off-the-charts attraction she’d always felt for him had never been governed by anything remotely close to rationale. It had been ruled by her heart and her body, completely excluding her brain and anything close to common sense.

He was Bennett—her Ben—and, as such, he would always hold a special place in her pathetically miserable broken heart.

Though he’d been a good kid, an A-plus eager-to-please—almost desperate-to-please, in retrospect—student and a budding athlete through the majority of their school years, something had happened to Bennett in their senior year of high school, and for no apparent reason he’d done an about-face.

For starters, he’d dumped her—right before prom, which at the time had been the mother of all humiliations—without reason, without provocation and without warning.

She’d been devastated, and to this day Eden still didn’t know why he’d done it.

Then his grades had plummeted, he’d started hanging out with the wrong crowd and within a month had become their ringleader. Most painful of all, he’d turned into a skirt-chasing fiend bent on bedding practically every girl in the county.

In short, the seemingly manic effort he’d put into toeing the line—a misguided attempt to atone for the bad reputation of his parents, she knew—had been nothing compared to the effort he’d put into crossing it.

He smoked. He drank. He cursed. He grew long hair and pierced his ear. Tame by regular standards but positively scandalous in their little hometown. A strange set of rules for a city named Hell, of all things, she’d admit, but just as rigid as any Bible Belt burg below the Mason-Dixon Line.

And the first time he’d tossed one of those heavy-lidded, baby-I-could-rock-your-world glances at her, she’d melted.

She’d fallen hook, line and sinker. Eden let go a shallow breath.

But Bennett Wilder had the rare ability to make a girl feel as though she were the only woman on the planet, and more importantly, the only one for him in the entire galaxy. When he’d looked at her and smiled—just smiled—the rest of the world had simply fallen away. Eden grimaced.

Unfortunately, being with Bennett meant that her world was in danger of being rocked, flipped, shattered and otherwise knocked for a loop and off its axis.

Prior to his move to what she’d dubbed his dark side, they’d been high school sweethearts. The term sounded so blasé, so casual—unsubstantial, even. And yet even now Eden couldn’t competently describe what that time—every minute spent with Ben—had meant to her.

Holding hands, planning futures, building dreams while she watched him whittle away on a piece of wood. He’d been funny, earnest, dark and sexy and, though she hadn’t realized it at the time, curiously grateful for being with her. She smiled sadly, remembering. He’d been her hero, her warrior, her confidant and best friend. And on a hot summer night by Fire Lake, he’d been her first. She’d been his, too, which for Eden had made it all the more sweet.

Call her stupid, but even after all this time and even knowing what she knew now—that years later they’d get back together and he’d dump her again without so much as a goodbye—she still believed that they’d had something special.

Regardless, that second breakup had been particularly hard to swallow. Four years at Georgia Tech followed by three in Atlanta as a probation officer had given Eden seven years’ worth of distance and perspective…which had promptly fallen by the wayside the minute she’d returned to Hell at twenty-five.

Come home, her dad, Hell’s longtime mayor, had pleaded. Hell needs you. More like he’d needed her, but Eden had been homesick all the same. She hadn’t necessarily missed her mother, who sadly she’d never been close to. But she’d missed her aunt Devi—her mother’s sister and surrogate mama—and all the people of her little town.

Just as she’d feared, though, she hadn’t been back in the apartment above her parents’ garage two weeks before she’d been right back in Bennett’s bed. Time hadn’t changed a thing. The pull, the need, the absolute unadulterated desire to be with him had been stronger than ever.

He’d been working construction for Ryan Mothershed at the time, and she’d happened upon him at the Ice Water Bar and Grill. An hour of playing pool and a single slaying glance later and predictably—poof!—her panties and her good sense had both fallen away. Given his particular talent for making her brain and her undergarments disappear—not to mention his own penchant for vanishing from her life—Eden had secretly dubbed him “the Magician.”

The only thing that never actually managed to fade was the way she felt about him. That, Eden thought with a tired smile, was purely magical.

She’d tried dating a bit while in college and later, working for Fulton County, but nothing had ever compared to the way Ben had made her feel. Sure, she could develop a certain fondness for other guys and drum up a bit of sexual enthusiasm, but it was barely more than superficial, and ultimately Eden had given up the business altogether. Other than the requisite ricochet lay after Bennett had left town three years ago, to help soothe her wounded pride, Eden hadn’t been with anyone since.

Her mother was constantly harping on her to find someone new, get married and produce some grandchildren, but Eden had decided those things simply weren’t in her cards and she’d come to terms with that. Did she long for a family? Sometimes get lonely? Of course. But settling wasn’t worth it, and she enjoyed her own company too much to compromise.

“Do you think we should let him know about this woman, Eden?” Kate asked, thankfully detouring her unproductive walk down memory lane.

Eden blinked, jarred back into the present. “Let him know about it?”

“Yeah,” Kate said. “Something’s not right.”

Eden rubbed an imaginary line from between her brows, tried to gather her focus, which was hard anytime her thoughts drifted to Bennett. She agreed that something wasn’t right, but the idea of contacting him didn’t feel right, either.

Distinctly wrong, in fact.

As far as she knew, Bennett had left town for good immediately after he’d left her bed and had put those woodworking skills he’d learned from his grandfather—Grady Wilder, another rounder, Eden thought with a fond smile—to very profitable use as an artisan catering to the Low Country’s upper crust.

Despite everything that had happened between them, Eden secretly warmed with pride at his success. She was equally proud of him and for him. She’d always known that he had a special talent, and seeing that recognized and knowing how validated it must make Bennett feel was especially gratifying.

By all accounts, he’d created a life as far removed from Hell as possible. Thanks to Kate, she was aware of his monthly treks to the Golden Gate Retirement Home to see his grandfather, but as far as she knew, he’d never darkened another door in town aside from that one.

Thankfully, and much to her shame and ultimate relief, Eden hadn’t seen him again.

Certainly there were times when she fantasized about what she would say if she ever ran into him. What girl who’d had her heart broken didn’t? But the idea of willingly contacting him after he’d walked away without so much as a goodbye had never occurred to her.

Eden considered herself relatively brave—she had to be in her line of work—but facing Bennett required an emotional courage and a sexual wherewithal she wasn’t altogether certain she possessed. In fact, past history had consistently proved otherwise. So her best course of action if she wanted to hang on to her heart, her underwear and the smallest modicum of self-respect demanded that she stay far, far away from him.

Furthermore, she had too much pride and, frankly, didn’t know whether she could get through the confrontation without breaking down and making a fool of herself. She swallowed.

True, he’d broken her heart in high school. But three years ago, when he’d walked away for the second time, he’d obliterated it.

She had no one to blame but herself, of course. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. But knowing that certainly didn’t lessen the hurt. It only served to make her feel more stupid. In retrospect, giving him the second chance—the “by,” as Kate had called it—hadn’t been the wisest move she’d made, but per tradition, she hadn’t been able to resist and…she’d still believed in him.

In them, specifically.

And she’d been wrong.

The Web page had been her bitter brainchild, her way of injecting a little retribution toward Bennett, even if it had been conducted through the somewhat passive-aggressive venue of cyberspace. It had made her feel better—all of them, as a matter of fact. Just because she’d been the most recent casualty didn’t mean that the others’ heartbreak had been any less.

“Eden?”

She started. “Er…do you really think it’s that serious?” she asked Kate. “Serious enough to contact him?”

“Don’t you?”

“I don’t know,” Eden said, knowing as the words left her mouth that they were a lie. Kate was right. Something about Artemis525’s post stirred her instincts, and those instincts told her that the woman—whoever she was—didn’t appear to be wired correctly.

But did they need to call him? Warn him? Honestly, so long as he wasn’t in town she didn’t see any reason to alert him to the threat. Between the psycho’s local ISP address—meaning she was using a local Internet service provider—and Bennett’s reputation, she felt as if this chick was a hometown girl. She shared her opinion with Kate.

“What do you think?” she asked, hoping against hope that her friend wouldn’t call her on being a coward, an agonizing label which set her teeth on edge.

Aside from Bennett, she’d never been afraid of anything in her life.

Kate paused, then let go a breath. “I guess you’re right. But I’m going to let the other nurses know to call me if I’m not on shift the next time he visits Grady.” A significant chuckle drifted over the line. “I’ll let him know about her.”

Eden chewed the smile lurking at the corner of her lip. “So you’re going to tell him about the club?”

“I’ll have to, won’t I?” Kate replied, sounding particularly pleased with the idea. Though Kate hadn’t been a Bennett casualty per se, she’d been there to nurse Eden through her heartbreak. At an even five feet, with short dark hair and pale blue eyes, Kate was small but fierce. Like Tinkerbell, Eden had often thought.

Eden grinned, somewhat heartened by the idea that Bennett—whom she was relatively certain didn’t know the site existed because she hadn’t felt the wrath of his anger pinging her from Savannah—was going to find out what she and the other girls had done. A perverse thrill whipped through her imagining his handsome outraged face.

“Think he’ll ever move back here?” Kate asked conversationally, a question that had been widely speculated, debated, otherwise mulled over and betted on since his swift to-hell-with-all-of-you departure.

Ha, Eden thought as her lips slid into a rueful smile. “Maybe when Hell freezes over.”

And considering how quickly she and her brain and various items of clothing tended to part company anytime he came around, that was soon enough for her.

2

WELCOME TO HELL.

Population 7,958 and growing. The only thing hotter than our hospitality is our barbecue sauce!

A broken laugh erupted from Bennett Wilder’s throat as he read the sign heralding his hometown’s city limits. Now that was apt, he thought darkly. It might not be the literal eternal hereafter for the damned, but it might as well be the equivalent to him. His fingers involuntarily tightened on the steering wheel and he bit back a blistering curse.

He still couldn’t believe he was coming back here. Couldn’t believe that he’d finally found his place in the world, made his mark and now…Bennett expelled a weary breath.

As though the devil himself had a hand in his fate, he’d been lured back to Hell, Georgia, the last place on the globe he wished to visit, much less live. In all truth, nothing short of a hot poker applied to his ass could have brought him back, either—and even then it would have been a hell of a fight—but one call for help from his grandfather had been all it had taken to make a liar out of him.

I’m sorry, but he has to go, Bennett, Eva Kilgore, the director at the Golden Gate Retirement Home, had told him two weeks ago. He’s a pip, I’ll give you that. But he’s simply too…disruptive. Relatives who encourage their loved ones to live here expect what our brochures advertise. Peace, harmony and well-being. Since your grandfather moved in, we’ve had none of those. He’s organizing protests against the menu. He’s fleecing everyone out of their pocket money at the card tables when we’ve repeatedly told him that gambling for cash—or change— she’d emphasized sternly —is forbidden. And that’s only the minor infractions. She’d blown out a disgusted breath and shaken her head. Frankly it’s the womanizing that’s turned this home into a circus. We can’t have the women getting into catfights over your philandering grandfather during movie hour, Bennett, she’d said. It’s not good for them. Not good for anybody.

No amount of pleading, flattery or even bribery had convinced Eva that she shouldn’t kick Grady Wilder out of the retirement home. Since Golden Gate was the only facility in the county, it had left Bennett with no options. Even if Grady would have been willing to move into nearby Willis County, Bennett wouldn’t have had the heart to make him.

Hell, for better or worse, was his home.

So here Bennett was, moving back after three blissful years away from the poisonous gossip and grueling grind of being the bastard son of two of Hell’s most notorious citizens. Kathie Petri, his mother, had been a teenage drifter who’d migrated from southern Louisiana to Hell without parents, without money and without morals. His father, Kirk Wilder—whose own mother had died during child-birth—had been a local boy, but a bad seed. So the two of them hooking up had been as disastrous as it had been inevitable.

Bennett had learned the hard way that no matter how much effort he put into being an upstanding member of the community, he’d never successfully shirk the weight of his parents’ mistakes. He’d always be “that Wilder boy.”

Could he help it that he’d been born to a couple of low-life misfits who hadn’t been fit to own a pet, much less raise a child? Was it his fault that his mother had been a shameless whore the other women had shunned? His father a mean, shiftless, jealous drunk? A perpetual embarrassment to the community?

No.

But that didn’t matter because here in Hell his parents’ drinking-whoring-fighting legacy would always be a shadow he couldn’t shake. Thanks to an unpleasant and ultimately life-altering chat with Giselle Rutherford—the mayor’s wife and the mother of the only girl he’d ever cared about—Bennett had realized that at eighteen, but hadn’t had sense enough to accept it until he was twenty-five. That’s when he’d cut and run, leaving his grandfather and the only girl he’d ever considered a…friend…behind.

Friend couldn’t begin to describe what Eden Rutherford had been to him, but anything more than the casual label made his skin feel too tight for his body. Made his palms sweat and his mouth parch. Made him wish that he’d fought for her rather than taking the path he’d chosen.

You are nothing and will never amount to anything, Giselle Rutherford had told him. Less than the trash your parents were. And I will not permit you to drag my only daughter down with you. You say you love her? She’d sneered as though he were incapable of such an emotion. Prove it. Because every time she sees you, I’m going to punish her. And it will be your fault.

At eighteen, Bennett hadn’t known what to do, had felt powerless to fight back. And he hadn’t doubted for a minute that her mother would make good on the threat. He’d witnessed too many of her spiteful reprimands, most notably when she’d destroyed a wooden heart he’d carved for Eden. The bitch, Bennett thought now, remembering how devastated Eden had been. He’d known at that point that she’d be better off without him, and though it had almost ruined him, Bennett had caved to Giselle’s threat.

With no other choice available, he’d broken up with Eden and had given up any pretense of trying to be good enough to make up for his parents’ reputation. He couldn’t be, he’d decided, because his good would never been good enough. Not by Hell’s standards. By the time he and Eden had gotten back together years later—no longer intimidated by her, he would have as soon told Giselle to kiss his ass than look at her—he’d realized that, in taking that path, he’d unwittingly fulfilled her mother’s condescending prophecy. He’d become the very nothing she’d said he would be.

In what could only be described as divine punishment, he hadn’t made that realization until Eden had told him that she loved him. That’s when he’d left town and made a new life for himself. His insides twisted with bitter humor.

He had Giselle Rutherford to thank for that, if nothing else.

Regardless, the mere thought of Eden made his gut clench, his heart ache and his dick invariably stir behind his zipper. Kind but fierce green eyes, a soft, slightly crooked smile that promised as much mischief as pleasure and an easy yard of hair as pale as a moonbeam.

In a word: gorgeous.

And if Hell had royalty, she’d be it. She was a true Hellion, Bennett thought, smiling in spite of himself, and the label fit on more than one level.

The only daughter of the perpetual mayor—which was not unusual in the South—and his ultimate bitch of a wife, Eden had grown up in a relatively loving home. Her father had loved her, at any rate. Her mother didn’t appear capable of loving anything but an appearance and, as such, had made Eden’s life a living hell.

Despite that, however, she’d been a straight-A student, a cheerleader and choir girl—odd hobbies for a tomboy, but that was Eden—and from the moment she’d shared her apples and cheese with him in the second grade when he’d arrived without a snack, he’d viewed her with equal amounts of suspicion and awe. She was sweet but feisty, with a strong sense of fair play and a penchant for acting first and thinking later. From the time they were small she’d had the unique ability to make him feel like something other than a contaminated outcast. Bennett frowned.

Years later, of course, things would take a romantic turn and she would make him feel something much more substantial and altogether more frightening, something that would ultimately make him ashamed of himself, would drive him out of town and into his new and improved life.

And it was new and improved, dammit, if occasionally empty. But better empty than here, Bennett thought, feeling the familiar niggling of inadequacy erode his self-confidence as he drove farther into town. God, he hated it here. Hated how he felt when he came here.

In Savannah he was Bennett Wilder, sought-after artisan. He’d built furniture for some of Hollywood’s A-list, for pop stars and politicians. He attended all the right parties, could pick and choose his dates—not that he’d bothered much—and enjoyed all the perks of being a local celebrity of sorts. Nobody cared who his parents were or where he came from. It was refreshing, had been like being reborn and coming out right this time. He’d dusted the red dirt off his feet, had made regular monthly visits to his grandfather and had moved on.

Or as on as he could without Eden in his life.

Did he want to live in Hell? Be looked down upon once more? Feel the suspicious stares of the local folk? No.

But that was only the half of it.

Knowing that he was going to be living in the same town as Eden Rutherford and knowing that she could never be his was infinitely worse—his real hell on earth.

Bennett had known when he’d walked away the last time that he was permanently severing ties, though at the time he’d never anticipated seeing her again.

Which, admittedly, made things quite difficult now.

He couldn’t move back here and not see her. Even keeping the lowest profile possible, Bennett knew he’d inevitably run into her again. And when that happened…well, who knew what would happen? Would she slap him? Certainly possible. Frost him? Another option. The only thing he knew for sure—could count on as well as the sun rising in the morning—was that he’d want her again. Ha! As if he’d ever stopped. He’d want her with the same all-consuming, blinding need that inevitably struck him whenever he saw her. Bennett chuckled darkly. Not wanting her was like commanding his body not to breathe. Likewise, not having Eden was about as successful as him holding his breath indefinitely.

A moot point.

Eden had always been his kryptonite, his downfall, his saving grace and his ultimate weakness. For both their sakes, this time he was going to have to be stronger than the attraction, stronger than the emotion that never failed to twine around his heart and make him long for things he knew weren’t in his future. A wife, a family…Nah. He’d let those things go when he’d walked away last time, as well.

Frankly, being flayed alive and dipped in boiling oil held more appeal than moving back to Hell, but there was simply nothing for it. Bennett might have been an out-of-control teen, might have made multiple stupid youthful mistakes, but he was man enough to repay his debts—and he owed Grady Wilder.

The old man had been the only constant in his life, the only person who’d stood between him and a foster home when his parents had perished in a house fire. He’d been eleven at the time. Just old enough to understand that their lives didn’t remotely resemble the families on TV, the beginnings of shame rounding his usually bruised, too-thin shoulders.

Too much to drink, a careless cigarette…a fiery end to their equally combustible lives.

A mail carrier with a penchant for minding everyone’s business—retired now, of course; a fact that the citizens of Hell no doubt appreciated—Grady had been there. Ornery, obstinate and a bit on the eccentric side, but he’d loved Bennett all the same, and that had made the difference. Just knowing that someone had given a flying damn about him had made living seem as though it wasn’t a complete waste of time. Come on, kid, he’d said. Let’s go home.

And that had been that.

He’d moved in, had learned that it was okay to speak even if he hadn’t been spoken to. That spilled milk wasn’t going to land him a backhand across the face and that outgrowing his clothes wasn’t a cause for punishment. He’d learned that a good work ethic and honesty made the backbone of a man—a fact his father had missed though they’d both ultimately been raised by the same man. And most importantly he’d learned that, with patience and creativity, a block of wood could become a beautiful thing. Bennett swallowed.

Damn straight he owed Grady Wilder. And while returning to Hell might not have been on his top-ten-things-to-do list, he’d do it anyway.

After a lot of blustering and roaring, Grady had finally agreed to let him renovate the house and the barn. Speaking of which…Bennett thought, reaching for his cell phone. He needed to call Ryan Mothershed—his previous employer, his soon-to-be contractor and the only friend he’d kept in contact with since leaving Hell.

He and Ryan had forged a friendship on the gridiron which had survived despite Bennett’s abrupt enrollment into Badass 101 after high school, as well as his subsequent move out of town. Ryan had participated in a foreign exchange program to England during college and returned with more than a degree—he’d brought back a wife, as well. Bennett often teased him about successfully transplanting an English rose in Hell. They had a little boy—Tuck—and another baby on the way.

“Mothershed,” Ryan answered by way of greeting. Bennett could hear various saws buzzing in the background as well as the hydraulic whoosh of a nail gun firing.

“I just rode into town,” Bennett told him.

“That explains it.”

“Explains what?”

“The collective gasp of horror from the old biddies I heard echo through the streets.”

“Smart-ass,” Bennett groused, chuckling. “So have you looked at your schedule and figured out when you can get started on my renovations?”

The house needed a little TLC and some updated wiring to competently hold what would be his second office, and the old red barn would house his new shop. In the meantime, there was a small shed in the backyard that would accommodate him. It’s where he’d started, after all. He’d hired movers to transport his must-haves, and barring any unforeseen problems, he should be back on track by the end of the week. In truth, Bennett could have done the majority of the renovations himself, but he simply didn’t have the time. A good thing, he told himself, whether Grady agreed or not.