PROLOGUE: MEREDITH
“Ha! You’re the one who walked out, and I was left to pick up the pieces.”
I regretted my outburst immediately.
I shouldn’t have said all that. But I just couldn’t believe my eyes.
After all this time, I was sitting in the same room with him.
Josef Aziz.
The man who broke my heart. Only, he wasn’t the same man I knew.
This Josef looked harder, older, a little scary, to be honest.
His thick hair was the same rich mahogany color I remembered. He wore it shaved on the sides and long on top, carefully combed away from his chiseled face. The full beard was new.
Meticulously trimmed and combed, it did nothing to detract from his appearance. No other man affected me the way he did.
I wonder if it is as soft as it looks. I wonder if he’ll let me touch it.
Oh my god! Stop it.
Fifteen years ago, Josef Aziz was the most mesmerizing man I’d ever met. Larger than life, he’d exuded a confidence I could only have ever dreamed of possessing.
Unfortunately, all of that still held true today.
Josef was every bit as intriguing now as he’d been before. The suit he wore was tailored to fit his muscular body. They didn’t make jackets with shoulders that wide off the rack. A man his size, with the obvious wealth he now had, would definitely have a private tailor see to his needs.
He looked good. Rich. Handsome. Fool that I was, I imagined what his wife or girlfriend looked like.
She would have to have been equally stunning. A man like that did not have to settle. Someone tall, thin, well-dressed—the total opposite of me.
Why that thought should send sharp slices of pain shooting through me was something I didn’t want to look closely at. Hurt and jealousy had no business at this meeting.
But the past was a tricky thing to let go of. I clasped my hands together beneath the table, trying for a calm I didn’t feel.
Once upon a time, I’d been in love with Josef Aziz.
Foolish girl that I was, I thought he loved me, too. But that had been a lie.
Fifteen years hadn’t dulled the pain of his rejection and abandonment.
God, he’d walked away so easily. I wanted to hate him for that. Maybe I did.
I wished I had a better story about how I spent my life after he left. I wish I could just brush it off and say it was all forgotten now. Bygones and all that.
But the hurt was as fresh now as it was then.
How did a woman get over the first and only man to break her heart?
Was there a secret society? A book of how to instructions?
Goddamnit.
I wanted to slap his face. I wanted to kiss his lips. I wished I could close my eyes and count to ten, but I couldn’t break eye contact.
He was staring at me. Looking for something. I wasn’t sure what.