Steven let go of Emma’s hand then, puffing out his chest and moving toward Jason. “You’ve got that right, buddy. You’re history. Emma doesn’t want anything to do with you anymore. She’s with me now.”

Bile rose up into Jason’s throat and he had two choices: Be sick or beat the crap out of Steven.

He chose a swift right hook into Steven’s bedrock jaw. It hurt like hell when his fist hit bone, but the pain was good, reminding him that he was still alive. That he’d move past today, forget all about Emma.

One day she’d barely be a memory.

Steven came at him, but Jason was quick from years of holding his own in the kind of neighborhoods that Emma’s parents wouldn’t be caught dead driving through.

Jane cried out to warn Steven just as Jason was about to lay another slam dunk on his pretty face.

“He’s not worth it, Steven,” Emma’s mother screeched.

The wordsnot worth it, not worth it, not worth itslammed around Jason’s brain, getting louder and louder, running into each other.

“Don’t say that,” Emma cried. “They don’t mean it,” she said, moving toward him, but already Steven had turned his back on Jason.

“You’re mother’s right, baby. He’s not worth it. Let’s go. We’ve sullied Easter enough with this trash.”

Jason watched Emma stand there, watched her assess her two choices: Turn her back on her family, the perfect Wonder Bread, picket-fence future she would have with Steven, or risk it all with a boy who didn’t look to have much of a future outside of a kitchen.

Another tear followed the first down her pale cheekbones. She’d made her choice.

He turned to walk away, but he couldn’t. Not yet.

“Tell me this is what you want and I’ll leave you alone.”

She licked her lips, the very mouth that he’d been loving just hours ago, and said the words that condemned their love straight to hell.

“This is what I want.”

Jason relived the scene as if it had just happened, as if ten years hadn’t passed since the moment Emma had walked out of his life on the arm of an utter ass**le. Ten years later, Emma’s ex had come back for her. For all he knew, she and Steven had been reconciling for some time now and the country boy chef was a convenient way for her to make her ex jealous. No wonder why she’d told her parents about him.

He knew something was up with that, knew Emma could never stand up to her mother in a million years.

Yet again, Jason was the perfect foil to get Steven to go down on bended knee. Steven might not want her, but more than that he didn’t want to lose his ex-wife to trailer trash. And Emma likely agreed with him. Just as she always had.

Why the f**k had he actually thought she could change? That she could make the right choice for once?

Especially when he knew exactly the choice she was going to make.

The safe one. The same damn choice she’d made before: A life of leisure over real love.

Well, that was fine. He was perfectly happy to let her screw up her life again. Except for one small thing: There was no way he was going to make it easy for her.

Because now that the lesson had been hammered home yet again, now that he’d been proven to be a lovesick fool for the second time, he wasn’t going to let anything get in the way of his plan for payback.

He’d just about been stupid enough to chuck it all after one great day with Emma and a few superb screws.

But he didn’t have time for this right now. He had a restaurant to run. He’d find her after lunch and set his plan for revenge back into motion.

And this time there’d be no turning back. No matter what.

Sixteen

Heading out blindly for a place to hide from Steven—God forbid he actually came after her again—

Emma realized she only had one option. Jason’s house. If Steven had the nerve to follow her there, she’d sic Marvin on him. As far as she knew, the huge dog couldn’t hurt a flea, then again, didn’t animals have a sixth sense about protecting people they cared about? At the very least, she knew that Marvin liked her.

Even if she was more confused than ever about his gorgeous owner.

What had he meant byIs this your ride home? He hadn’t even waited three seconds before jumping to the assumption that she was leaving with Steven. That she wanted to.

How could he possibly think the last four days meant so little to her?

Sadness washed through her, tasting of defeat. The truth was, she knew exactly why he thought she’d choose to leave with Steven. She’d done it before and no amount of apologies or justifications for her behavior could change the past.

She’d held her worries, her fears, her sadness inside herself for thirty-two years. But after five days with Jason, she couldn’t do it anymore. She didn’t want to. Maybe that had been her problem all along: If only she’d been willing to admit to someone else that her life wasn’t perfect…maybe she could have at least started thinking of ways to make it better.

Grabbing her cell phone, she dialed Kate’s office, forcing down the part of her that told her she was being too needy. She and Kate hadn’t talked this frequently on the phone since the summer between freshman and sophomore year in college. Then again, Emma had never really wanted to admit what a mess her life really was. Not until now, when she could no longer avoid the god-awful truth.

Kate picked up and a loud sigh of relief shot from Emma’s lungs. “Thank God you’re in.”

“Emma! Did you get my messages about your parents forcing me to spill where you were? I’ve been trying to get ahold of you all morning.”

“I did. After I had a nice little chat with my mother.”

“Oh no. Was it bad? What am I saying? Of course it was bad. What did you do?”

“I told her I was staying with Jason and then I hung up on her.”

Kate was silent for a long moment. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Nope.”

“Damn, girl, way to live your own life!”

The word “finally” hung in the air, but for once, Kate was tactful enough not to say what she so obviously meant.

Emma would have smiled at her friend’s exuberant response, but she was all out of joy right now. “It felt great for about two hours.”

Kate knew Emma’s parents all too well. “They didn’t drive up there to haul your butt home, did they?

That’s too much, even for them. You’re in your thirties, for God’s sake. Don’t they know you’re not their little girl anymore?”