Page 78 of Filthy Little Midlife Fling

Sitting at the computer while he takes a seat across from me, I navigate to the search engine on my screen. I type in “Organizing Goddess Heart’s Cove” and wait for Audrey’s business to pop up.

That’s when I see her star rating and the slew of one-star reviews that have recently been posted. My brows climb up and up and up. Did Terry do this? Is he trying to get back at Audrey for turning him down?

Protectiveness slams into my gut like a punch. We might not be perfect for each other, but she sure as hell doesn’t deserve this. This man is sitting in an office she redesigned and reorganized; I know for a fact that she’s good at what she does.

“Unprofessional,” the reviews scream. “Showed up late, did a poor job.”

All of them have the same bad grammar, and I’m sure they were all written by the same person: the man sitting across from me with a stupid, smug smile on his face.

This pathetic excuse of a man was so insulted by her rejection that he’s trying to tear down the thing that’s most important to her. What a scumbag. What an ass.

I want to strangle him. I want to go back in time and snatch Audrey away from him before he could ever hurt her. She deserves so much better than someone like him. Hell, she deserves better than me.

Suddenly, I look back on the past week with more clarity. My anger lifts like a curtain at the start of a play, revealing a scene I couldn’t possibly have glimpsed before.

Audrey is on her own. Just like I am. She told me she was dealing with emergencies at work, told me there were scheduling and inventory issues. She didn’t tell me about the reviews, but that would have been only one of the many fires she had to put out.

Her business is everything to her. She built it from the ruins of her divorce. Her business is her. She must have been panicked, overwhelmed.

Yes, she messed up. She forgot to pick Danny up. That can’t happen…but maybe, if I’d taken the time to talk to her, we could have prevented this.

Things aren’t perfect, but we could be a team. I could have called someone else to pick Danny up or rescheduled my meeting with the lawyer. Audrey has been through hell these past few weeks, and when she needed me most, I pushed her away.

She made a mistake, but she’s not a bad person.

I retreated when she needed me most.

The worm on the other side of the desk drums his fingers on the armrests of his chairs and grins at me. “Do we have a deal?”

Ha. He wishes. I narrow my eyes at him, and I wonder if Audrey has lumped me in the same category as him. Am I just another man who’s let her down? Another man who expected perfection from her and tossed her aside when she couldn’t achieve it?

The thought makes me sick. I want to be there for her. I want to be the one she turns to when things get rough because she knows I’ll always help her. I don’t want to be the type of man who gets angry, who punishes the woman he loves because she’s swamped by life.

And that, I realize, sitting across from Audrey’s ex-husband, is exactly what I feel. Love. Deep, thrumming, undeniable love.

I love Audrey, with her cutlery trays and her stationery. I love her brain. I love her body. I love the little wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and the way she laughs at things I say. I love the thought of forever with her.

Am I really going to throw that away because she dropped the ball one single time? Danny is resilient; he wasn’t bothered by the extra half hour playing with Jace. I can put him first and still be there for the woman who’s stolen my heart.

Because right now, Audrey needs a protector, a defender, a partner. She needs someone in her corner.

And that someone is going to be me.

An idea sparks, vindictive and vengeful. I braid my fingers on my desk and lean forward, staring Terry in his beady black eyes. “I think we can come to an agreement,” I tell him, and Terry gives me an oily, triumphant smile. The moron.

As soon as Terry is out of my garage, I drive his car over to one of the lifts and make sure he won’t be able to drive it out of here without my say-so. Then I head to the office and open one of the filing cabinets. I take out the records on Audrey’s work van, which I find in a folder labeled with this month and year, exactly in the spot I’d expect to find it. Because the woman I love is an organized goddess.

I find the VIN—vehicle identification number—and plug it into an online database to find the previous owner.

That’s another man who tried to screw her over, who nearly succeeded. Another pathetic scumbag who didn’t deserve to be in her presence.

Is there any wonder she backed off when I withdrew? Every other man in her life has used her in one way or another. No one has ever taken care of her.

I was so angry about not being first in her life that I didn’t even consider that she might want to be first in mine. The realization hits me, and I have to lean back in my office chair to let it set in. I scrub my face, feeling ashamed of myself.

Audrey must have felt exactly the same way I did. She’s had to fight for everything she has. She’s been on her own, even when she was married.

Instead of being angry, I should have been there to support her. I should have forgiven her, wrapped my arms around her, and told her I was there. I should have been compassionate, empathetic, worthy. Instead I tossed her aside like garbage at the first hurdle.

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