After hearing what Amy had just said, Leslie leaned forward, finally showing a spark of interest in Ellie. “Your fiancé cheated on you with another man?”
Ellie squirmed under Leslie’s horrified regard. When Amy had said they were taking Ellie out to get her mind off a broken engagement, Leslie had barely reacted. But the circumstances of her failed relationship made Ellie that much more pathetic. When Ellie caught her fiancé with his “best friend,” whom he’d known since college—Don was the one who got Leo hired at the BDC—she’d also come face-to-face with the realization that all the “golfing” trips the two had taken since she and Don started dating hadn’t been as innocent as she’d been led to believe.
The one man who’d told her he wanted to spend forever with her hadn’t really been attracted to her in the first place. He’d been using her as a cover so he wouldn’t become estranged from his ultrareligious parents.
That hurt more than her lost dream of having a family.
But the fact that she was ill at ease in a nightclub wasn’t Don’s fault. She’d never felt comfortable in large groups, didn’t consider herself particularly adept at the kind of social interaction they required. She’d been too devoted to getting her PhD in biomedical engineering—and following that with a postdoctoral fellowship at the BDC, where she’d met Don, a fellow scientist—to have much time for clubbing, so she’d had little experience.
She shouldn’t have let Amy drag her here, she decided as she gazed around. But maybe one of Amy’s friends would show up and make her feel like less of a loser. Nothing else had worked since Don’s betrayal, so she forced herself to hold out hope. If she didn’t make some effort to recover and move on, even if it resulted in only a very short rebound relationship, she’d die an old maid, as her grandmother would’ve put it. That had never seemed more of a possibility than now. Her thirtieth birthday loomed ahead, but instead of planning her wedding, as she’d anticipated, she’d be doing all she could to continue her research while bumping into her ex-fiancé and his lover on a daily basis.
A man from across the room came toward them. With his sandy-colored hair swept up off his forehead, he was attractive in a frat-boy way—well built and preppy, which was a look she found attractive.
“Mind if I join you?” he asked.
Frat Boy immediately singled out Amy—not that Ellie could blame him. Dressed in a short, tight-fitting black dress, six-inch stilettos and smoky makeup with bright red lipstick, Amy oozed sex appeal. So did Leslie, for that matter. Due mainly to Amy’s insistence, even Ellie had had a complete makeover and was dressed in a similar fashion, except her dress was white and dipped low in the back instead of the front—the only concession Amy would allow Ellie’s natural modesty.
“You need to get laid. That’s what you need,” her friend had said when she’d balked at wearing the skimpy lingerie she had on under her dress or complained about the height of the heels Amy had pressed on her. If someone did ask her to dance, she’d probably turn an ankle, which was hardly conducive to hooking up later. Then her first Brazilian would definitely not be worth the shocking pain.
Amy looked Frat Boy up and down before widening her smile. “Sure. It’ll save me the trouble of searching for you when I’m ready to leave.”
He obviously liked that response. Ellie had to admit it was evocative. She almost brought up the notes app on her phone so she could jot it down—except she was fairly certain that line wouldn’t come off so smoothly if she ever attempted to use it. Flirting sounded silly coming from her. She loved sarcasm, had always traded put-downs with her father, but she doubted that talent would impress other men.
With some effort because of the throng of people who filled the club, the man located a chair and dragged it over before introducing himself as Manny. He made small talk for a few minutes. Then he waved over his friend, a shorter, stockier version of himself, who’d been getting drinks at the bar.
Manny explained that they were both commercial real estate agents with a local firm and introduced his friend as Nick. Nick focused on Leslie, since Manny already had dibs on Amy, making Ellie the third wheel she’d expect to be in a situation like that. She tried to contribute to the conversation but found herself peeking at her phone when Amy wasn’t looking. Not only was she uncomfortable, she was bored. But if she tried to get a taxi, Amy would remind her of the “friends” who were coming to meet her.
As the two couples got up to dance, leaving Ellie alone at the table, she let out a long sigh and flagged down a waitress. “Bring me three shots of vodka,” she said.
Maybe if she forced herself to get buzzed, the rest of the night would pass in a merciful blur. The alcohol wasn’t good for her liver. As a scientist, she couldn’t help acknowledging that. But as far as she was concerned, it was vital for her poor aching heart.
* * *
Hudson King loved women, probably even more than most men did, but he didn’t trust them. He’d gotten his name from the intersection of Hudson and King, two streets in Los Angeles’s exclusive Bel Air community, where he’d been abandoned and hidden under a privacy hedge as a newborn, so he figured he’d come by that lack of trust honestly. If he couldn’t rely on his own mother to nurture and protect him when he was completely helpless, well...that didn’t start him off on the most secure path. Even once he’d been found, hungry, cold and near death, screaming at the top of his lungs, his life hadn’t improved for quite some time.
Of course, he’d been such an angry and unruly kid, he was undoubtedly to blame for some of the hurdles he’d faced growing up. He’d made things more difficult than they had to be. He’d had more than one foster family make that clear—before sending him back to the orphanage.
Fortunately, with his foster days long behind him, he’d buried most of the anger that had caused him to act out. Or maybe he just controlled it better these days. Some people claimed he played football with a chip on his shoulder—that his upbringing contributed to the toughness and determination he displayed on the field—and that could be true. Sometimes it felt as if he did have a demon driving him when he was out there, making him push himself as far as possible. Perhaps he was trying to prove that he did matter, that he was important, that he had something to contribute. Several sports commentators had made the suggestion, but whether those commentators had any idea what they were talking about, Hudson couldn’t say. He refused to go to a psychologist, didn’t see the point. No one could change the past.
Either way, once he was sent to high school at New Horizons Boys Ranch in Silver Springs, California, where it became apparent that he could throw a football, his fortunes had changed. After that, he was named First Team All American in college. Now, as starting quarterback for the Los Angeles Devils, he’d been named MVP once, played in the pro bowl three years running and had a Super Bowl ring on his finger. In other words, he had everything a man could want—a successful career, more money than he could spend and more attention than he knew what to do with.
Not that he enjoyed the attention. For the most part, he considered fame a drawback. Being in the spotlight proved to some of the families who’d decided he was too hard to handle that he might’ve been worth the effort. But it made his little problem with women that much worse. How could he trust them when they had all that incentive to target and mislead him? Getting involved with the wrong girl could result in false accusations of rape or physical abuse, lies about his personal life or other unwelcome publicity, even an intentional effort to get pregnant in the hopes of scoring a big payday. He’d seen that sort of thing happen too many times with other professional athletes, which was why he typically avoided the party scene. He wasn’t stupid enough to fall into that trap.
So, as he sat back and accepted his second drink at Envy in South