Page 7 of Begin Again, Part 1

"What do you mean he's getting married?" Lydia scratched her head, confusion flickering in her eyes. "He has a three-month rule."

"He found someone who made him want to break his three-month rule." Eden took a Kleenex from Sienna and blew her nose.

"That can't be," Cassandra said. "There's no way Rock Castle's numero uno billionaire playboy will ever get married."

"He is," Eden insisted, and promptly explained how she learned about his wedding.

"So that's why they were there? It was his bachelor party?" Lydia asked.

"Yep!" Eden nodded.

Sienna was incensed as she placed her hands on her hips. "And he still took you home with him? Unbelievable! What a dick!"

"I asked him," Eden confessed. It would have been so easy to let Liam take all the blame, but she couldn't do it. She had to own her part.

Cassandra stepped into her fatherly role, asking in a patient tone, "why, when you know he's taken?"

"I wanted to be a little reckless!" Eden snapped, stunning everyone with her misplaced anger. "I was a good girl for twenty-four years. Followed all the rules. Saved myself for the right guy. And what the hell do I have to show for it? A broken engagement one month before what should have been the happiest day of my life?"

"Edie, I'm so sorry," Cassandra said.

"If everyone played fair and stuck to the rules, I'd still be in Corfu, enjoying my honeymoon," Eden said. "I know it was wrong, and now I'm as nasty as Olive for sleeping with someone else's man. But you know what, for a few hours, I was happy in Liam's arms. God, I was so happy, and now that same hollowness I've felt since Simon left is back. If I could see Liam again, I would."

"Oh, dear!" Sienna said. "You sound like you have it bad for this guy."

Her words blew Eden's mind, and she couldn't understand how she'd even reached that conclusion.

"No. Liam was my rebound guy. I'm still in love with Simon."

"Is that why you're still wearing that?" Lydia pointed at the princess cut diamond ring dazzling on Eden's finger.

"You have to take it off," Cassandra repeated what she'd been saying since Simon bolted.

Eden pretended not to have heard them. Keeping the ring was tacky. She knew that. But it was the only tangible reminder she had of the past four years with Simon. It was the only proof she had that their love was real, and she'd meant something to him.

Eden would have given him his ring back if he'd allowed her to keep Snow, their Maltese poodle.

"I'm going to bed," she said as she finished her coffee and placed the mug on the coffee table.

"Are you seeing your parents today? Should we wake you up later?" Lydia called after her.

Eden shook her head as she made her way to her room. Her parents had made it clear she was to blame for the end of her engagement. She wasn't in the mood for one of their self-esteem bashing sessions disguised as a well-meaning lunch.

She drew her curtains and spent a long time under her bright duvet on her four-poster bed, wondering if she'd ever sleep on a memory foam mattress again or feel Egyptian cotton sheets on her skin.

Yawning, she closed her eyes, and before long, dreams about Liam filled her troubled sleep.

Chapter

Three

DESTINY

It was past noon when Liam finally came out of his post-coital coma, expecting to find Eden beside him. It wouldn't be the first time his hook-ups overstayed their welcome. But when he turned onto his side, Eden's spot was oddly empty.

He sat up and clutched his head when his butler flicked the switch on the wall and drew the blinds. The pounding in his temples worsened at the light bursting through the windows.

"Christ, Dave, do you mind?"

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