Page 581 of Hell Hath No Fury
DARKEST DESIRES
NICOLE BLANCHARD
CHAPTER ONE
I delete another text from my ex-boyfriend and manage to feel only the slightest twinge of guilt. It’s not his fault I broke up with him, but the least I can do is not lead him on anymore. Much as I enjoyed his charm and sense of humor, those just aren’t the qualities in a man that get me off.
My tastes are much more…complicated.
And much more than a pretty little frat boy like him could ever manage to handle.
I sigh and crank up the A/C on my ten-year-old sedan, crossing my fingers it’ll be able to make it the remaining twenty miles to Nassau, Florida, my hometown. Nothing like limping back home with no job, no apartment, and no love life to speak of.
Apparently, the bigger your dreams, the harder you fall when they don’t come true. Considering I’ll be bunking with my mom for the foreseeable future I’ll officially consider this move the splat on the ground I’ve been waiting for. Definitely not the star of Broadway like I’d always dreamed.
My phone buzzes and I snatch it up from the center console to give the pretty little frat boy a firm fuck off, when I recognize my mom’s name on the caller I.D. I smother a groan.
“No, I’m not there yet,” I answer without preamble.
“Well, considering that I’m sitting in the living room and you’re not here, I’m not surprised, but that’s not why I called.” Even though my crushing failure in New York hasn’t given me much to smile about, the sound of my mother’s Southern twang brings one to my lips.
I flick on my blinker and take the exit to Nassau. Dread settles low in my stomach. I blow out a series of short breaths. Would moving back home be just another on my list of failures? Brushing those doubts away, I say, “Then why did you call?”
She murmurs to someone else in the room and then fumbles the phone. “Sorry, had to let Fifi in. Anyway, what was I saying?”
Only half paying attention to her, I merge with traffic. “Well, you haven’t really said anything yet.”
“Oh!” she exclaims. I hold the phone away from my ear at the increase in volume. “I remember. Well, you know Jennifer, from work?” She doesn’t pause for my response before continuing. Her rambles are often one-sided, so I reapply my lip gloss as I wait at a stop sign. “She was telling me yesterday about this new ER doc on the floor. He’s about your age, maybe a little older. Handsome.Single. Apparently, he just so happens to love theatre.” Her smug tone is apparent even over the spotty cell phone connection.
Scowling at my flushed expression in the rearview mirror, I find myself considering her news. I don’t know if I’m embarrassed because I have to resort to my mom choosing my dates, intrigued because: doctor, single, theatre lover, or if I’m just plain tired of the whole dating game. I forego all three and just go to my default setting: dismissive. “Please tell me you aren’t trying to set me up.”
“It’s not a setup, I’m justsaying.” If I know my mother, I know she’s smiling now as well as smug.
“You’re meddling.”
“I can’t help it. It’s what I’m supposed to do.”
“I’m starting to regret moving back already and I haven’t even gotten there yet.”
“You won’t regret it,” she says. “We’re going to have so much fun. We can go out to dinner, see movies. Oh, I know! There’s a new club that just opened up that I’ve just been dying to try.”
Her enthusiasm is catching, and I smile. At least one thing about moving back won’t completely suck. “Your social life sounds more exciting than mine.”
“We’ll just have to get you out of the house,” she says. “Maybe you should meet this doctor,” she adds nonchalantly.
Intuition prickles and I groan. “You set me up, didn’t you?”
There’s a telling pause before she says, “I may have mentioned your name to Jennifer to pass on in case he was interested.” Another heavy pause. “Then, I may have convinced him to take you to dinner.”
I groan. “Mom.”
“Stella,” she mocks.
“I haven’t even been here a day and you’re already interfering in my personal life.”
“I don’t consider it interfering if the end result is good for you.”
Tilting my head to the side, I change the radio stations, lowering the volume so I can concentrate on her words. “I guess I don’t have much else to do when I get there.”
