Page 16 of Her Greatest Mistake

“Great. What are you doing here? I doubt either of you has ever stepped foot in an animal shelter, let alone one as small as ours.”

Bentley clears his throat, earning a glare from everyone in the room. “Sorry, but how do you two know each other? I’m feeling very out of the loop right now, and I don’t like being out of the loop. I like being in the loop, preferably dead smack in the centre of it.”

I double blink at him. “I don’t mean to be rude, but who exactly are you, Bentley?”

His lips part in surprise, and he stares at me intently, like he’s trying to figure out if I’m playing him. “Serious?”

“Dead.”

He’s about to speak when the door opens, and the world stills around me. My pulse feels like a jackhammer in my skull as I stare with quickly blurring eyes at the bottom half of the new arrival. At a pair of tight blue jeans wrapped around thick, powerful thighs and clinched to narrow hips. I don’t have to look up at the man to know who it is.

If the sudden change in the atmosphere wasn’t enough, the throbbing in my chest is.

Like two pieces of the same whole that have been kept apart for too long, my half cries out for his, begging and pleading to be mended back together again.

His voice moves through me like a serrated blade. “Braxton?”

As if someone just punched me in the stomach, the air is pushed up and out of me, leaving me gasping. Gripping onto my last ounce of willpower, I ignore him and reach to the side to grab Hades’ leash from the ground. I hook him up with shaking hands before pushing to my feet. Self-preservation tells me to get out of there while I still have my dignity, but his angry laugh makes me freeze.

“Running away again? I see not much has changed.”

And just like that, I look up, and our eyes meet.

7

MADDOX

There area million things I wish I could forget about Braxton Heights. Her obsession with ’80s rock music and vinyls, the way the freckles on her right shoulder make the perfect shape of a star, her bouncy black curls, and her eyes. Those round, bright sapphire-blue eyes flecked with white and grey. There isn’t another person on this earth whose eyes I’ve stared into more than the ones looking at me right now, for the first time in nearly a decade.

It’s her eyes that I ached to forget more than anything. If I had, maybe I wouldn’t have spent years keeping myself up at night because every time I closed my eyes, it was hers I saw.

I lied to her just now. She has changed—in ways that piss me the fuck off.

Gone is the teenage girl with permanently pink-stained cheeks and baggy clothes she wore to hide the body she hated. The woman in front of me now is just that. Awoman. One who radiates confidence and poise, even now, as she tries to run from me. Again.

Even wearing the ugliest pair of scrubs I have ever seen, she’s stunning. The teddy bear–printed pants hug the swell of her hips and thighs, and I can only imagine how perfectly they hug her ass. Each time I blink, I see the way her curved jaw tensed and those pouty pink lips twisted in distaste when she saw me walk into the room. Like my eyes had taken a damn picture of her and slid it into my memory.

Her pink-toned, pale skin is still covered in freckles, and I hate the part of me that wants to count them all to find out if any more have popped up since the last time we saw each other.

Despite the fact I know I shouldn’t, I find it hard not to let my gaze stray from the hold her eyes have on me. I want to look her over again. Deeper this time.

Fuck.Not happening.

Instead, I flatten my lips and say, “You can’t take off yet. It seems that we have things to talk about it.”

The last statement is just as much for Dougie as it is for her. When the whole prospect of choosing an animal shelter as my, quote, unquote, “charity work” came to light, I figured it would be easy enough. Not that I think charity work should be easy—I’ve been taking part in this stuff since I was a kid and know how hard it is—it was just that spending time with animals was an appealing idea.

The last thing I expected was to come face to face with the only woman I’ve ever loved and have ever let break my heart since. This place has to be hers.

I’m a fucking idiot for not looking for a sign outside before walking blindly in here.

Helping animals and running her own clinic has been Braxton’s dream since she was six. Dougie knew it was hers and sent me here anyway.

The wheels are always turning in that old guy’s head, but it would seem as though they’ve picked up speed in the past twenty-four hours.

“We can’t talk here. Hades doesn’t like men,” she says, her voice so damn smooth and the perfect mix between sultry and sweet. Goosebumps break out along my arms as I grind my jaw.

“Hades?”

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