FLIRTING WITH 40

Our stares hold for a beat, his smile faltering and then widening as he presses a kiss to her cheek before pointing to me and calling out my name.
“Blakely!”

Slade
“I love her to death . . . but, man . . .”
“What? You’re a grown man who needs his space?” Lane’s laugh comes through the connection.
“My own space. Silence without the constant badgering about who I’m dating, why the past chicks weren’t good enough, how I need to find a good woman to settle down with but only after she approves. Shit, Lane, I miss her till she’s here, but when she is, I’m ready to send her back home.”
“You don’t mean that,” my cousin says.
And he’s right. I don’t. I love my parents to death, but loving them to death and having my mother take it upon herself to move in for a few weeks while I’m on suspension from work is trying my patience.
Watcha doing? Where are you going? Whatever happened with What’s-Her-Name? The one with the blonde hair and crooked toes? How come you organized your kitchen drawers like this? It’s against the flow of the space.
“The questions are endless, but I’m not going to complain about the home-cooked meals and laundry service.”
“Bastard.” He snorts. “So, other than avoiding your mom, what have you been doing?”
“I’m working on a few papers for medical publications and journals. You know me—”
“You never could sit still.”
“Never. Hey . . .” I look down the sidewalk ahead of me.
I recognize the dark hair, full mouth, and subtle sophistication. Every part of me is sucker punched by the sight of her.
Blakely Foxx.
The woman who walked away the other night.
“I’ve gotta go. A friend’s walking up,” I lie to Lane, ending the call without waiting for his response.
My first instinct is to walk over to her and put her on the spot. Ask her why the fuck she left me someone else’s business card before ghosting me in the bar last week.
No one’s ever done that before.
No one.
I shouldn’t care because, who is she anyway? A random woman amidst a million other random women in this city? Another proverbial fish in the sea?
Realizing that the confrontation isn’t worth my time regardless of how intriguing I find her, just as I make the decision to walk away, I see it. The sudden slumping of her shoulders. The emotion shoved away when she looks at the man before her, and the fake smile she plasters on her face when she turns her attention to the woman beside him. A woman who could easily be her doppelganger in every sense of the word, save for age.
I stand twenty or so feet away, unable to tear my eyes away as I size up the situation. How the doppelganger makes a show of using her left hand as she speaks, ensuring the sun glints off the diamond on her ring finger. How she continually turns into the man, touching him and laughing too loud, as if to stake her newly minted claim.
It isn’t my business.
No damn part of it is.
And yet, I picture the look in Blakely’s eyes the other night when she went off on me. The anger mixed with frustration edged with shame and exasperation. How, when she got to the part about her ex-husband getting engaged, I could feel the hurt there.
Staring at the three of them, I can still feel it.
“Not your problem,” I mutter as I close the distance, knowing I’m going to regret what I’m about to do, but know I’m going to do it anyway.
“Blakely. Sweetie,” I say. Her head startles toward the sound of her name, and then her eyes grow wide as they land on me.
Yes, I’m the man from the bar.
But even better is the confusion etched in her expression when I step up beside her, slide a hand around her waist, and pull her toward me. “I thought we were meeting at the restaurant?”
Her hesitation allows me to finish the sentence and lean in and press a chaste kiss against her utterly shocked lips. I lift my eyebrows as I wait for her to respond, and then I decide to use the moment to turn to look at a very wide-eyed ex-husband.
Perfect.
“Oh, hey. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.” I keep my hand firmly where it is on Blakely’s waist. “Slade Henderson. Blakely’s boyfriend, man, plaything. I respond to all.” I laugh, watching her ex’s face pull tight as I offer my free hand for him to shake. My smirk is one hundred percent meant to goad. “And you are?”
He stares at my hand and then Blakely. When he finally turns back to me, he reaches out and takes my hand strictly out of manners.
“Paul Foxx. I’m Blakely’s—”
“Ex-husband.” I nod and squeeze my hand on the side of her waist. “Nice to meet you in that awkward, no-one-wants-to-meet-an-ex kind of way.”
We hold each other’s stare, size each other up, and in that brief second, I can surmise he’s a smarmy, too-good-for-everyone, know-everything prick. Fucking figures.
And with perfect timing, Blakely overcomes her utter surprise and stirs to life. “Hi. Yes.” She gives a subtle shake of her hand as her arm slides around my waist and she turns her body more into mine. “I was on my way to meet you when I ran into Paul here and his girl—”
“Fiancée,” the doppelganger says, her eyes roaming up and down the length of me. The look tells me that the ring on her finger wouldn’t stop her if I offered. She holds her fingers out to me in that debutante handshake—hand cupped as if she expects me to kiss the top of her hand instead of shake it.
I don’t kiss knuckles, sweetheart.
“I’m Barbie soon-to-be Foxx.”
“Nice to meet you,” I say.
I can see it more clearly now. The similarities in the two women. The smugness on his face. How he thought the grass on the other side would be so much greener, and yet Barbie’s so damn young she probably has no clue