If there were, she would still be with Garrett Lowry.
She clanked her now-empty glass on the bar to get the bartender’s attention. “Another, please.”
He shot her a grin as he poured her drink. “Must have been some kind of Monday.”
She grabbed the glass out of his hands. “You have no idea.”
The deposition had run nearly two hours longer than planned, and she’d barely made it to LAX in time to catch her plane. Her feeling of relief had been short-lived; the severe turbulence had convinced her and most of the other passengers that they were about to meet their maker. By the time they landed in Phoenix, many of the connecting flights had been canceled or delayed, and Blair discovered she was stuck overnight in Arizona. The airline had sent her to this hotel, but there had been a problem at the check-in desk.
Half her whiskey was gone before she realized it. There were so many things she needed to do in Kansas City, and she wouldn’t get back until at least mid-morning, which meant she’d have to rush to get to her morning deposition. To make matters worse, the damn airline hadn’t even confirmed her on the six a.m. flight. They’d only made a vague promise to text her around four in the morning to confirm if she had a ticket.
So now she was well on her way to getting drunk in the bar of an Embassy Suites, playing another round of This Is Your Life, Blair Anne Myers Hansen, and she wasn’t too happy with what she saw.
Practical, pragmatic, sensible Blair wanted a heart-stopping, butterflies-in-her-stomach kind of love.
All that turbulence must have rattled her brains.
But she couldn’t deny the fact that she’d been thinking of Garrett a lot over the last two months—much more than the asshole deserved. Truth be told, he was the only man she’d ever loved. And look how that had turned out. Five years later, she could finally admit to the role she’d played in their breakup, but that didn’t make it suck any less.
The rift had formed the night Blair had received word of her estranged father’s death. Rather than share the news with Garrett when he came over, she had lashed out at him, picking a fight over some nitpicky complaint. Anger had always been her go-to reaction, and Garrett had weathered many a storm, but that night he’d responded with a fire equal to her own. The fight had spiraled out of control, and before she realized what was happening, Garrett had packed the toiletries and clothes he kept at her apartment into a duffel bag. And then he was gone.
She had spent the next day drowning in an emotional fog of dismay, grief, and loss, and even skipping classes—something she never did. After hours of stewing in her turbulent emotions, she had realized she felt an intense ache for Garrett. For the first time ever, she truly needed someone. She had decided to swallow her pride and go to him, ready to beg for his forgiveness and ask him to go with her to her father’s funeral. Never in a million years would she have guessed the surprise she had found in his apartment.
Jody Stewart, a fellow second-year law student, who’d made no secret of her lust for Garrett, had opened his door wearing cheap superstore lingerie. Neon green, to make matters worse.
Blair had turned around and never looked back, not even when Garrett had run after her. Or when he’d pounded on her apartment door for an hour begging and pleading with her to let him explain. Not even when he’d tried to approach her in class every day for two solid weeks.
When he’d begun to single-handedly plow his way through nearly every available woman in law school the next year, not to mention a couple of not-so-available ones, she knew she’d made the right decision.
Garrett Lowry was a player.
He may have taken a momentary side-stop with her, but he’d wasted no time before jumping back into the game. She was better off without him.
Still, the memories chafed.
Between Garrett’s betrayal and her father’s bad behavior, it had been easy for Blair to decide what type of law to practice. In fact, she should thank them both. Maybe she’d take daisies to her father’s grave when she came back from her honeymoon. He’d always hated daisies.
She was motioning to the bartender to bring her another drink, wishing the hotel staff would finally give her a damn room key, when she noticed him—the man standing in the entrance of the bar, his gaze fixed on her. She did a double take, certain the Embassy Suites was now including hallucinogens in their drinks, because standing in the doorway was the player himself—Garrett Lowry.
She stopped the bartender as he grabbed her glass. “I’m going to need you to make that a double.”
Chapter Two
Garrett Lowry wondered if he should just divorce his family and be done with them. Unfortunately, while he’d seen quite a few unusual divorce cases in his four years of practicing law, he’d never seen anyone divorce his mother and aunt.
All this fuss over a damned one-third carat diamond ring.
There was no disputing that his Great-Grandma Marie had bequeathed her engagement ring to her granddaughter. The trouble was that she hadn’t specified which granddaughter. Garrett’s Aunt Debra claimed that possession was nine-tenths of the law, and since she had possession of the ring, it was, ipso facto, hers . . . or rather, her son’s. She had given it to her son for his fiancée six months ago. Garrett’s mother felt otherwise, and so the colossal argument had begun. Though he had no real desire to contest his aunt’s stance on the issue, Garrett could think of half a dozen legal cases that disputed her claim. But even if he’d felt any familial connection to the round rock on the gold band, surrounded by multiple smaller diamonds, he had no present use for it. He hadn’t had a steady girlfriend since law school, when—in a moment of profound idiocy—he’d broken up with the one woman he’d ever loved.