Goodbye Guy - Jodi Watters Page 0,1

receiving end of her vengeance.

And not when the feeling of that man—as an eighteen-year-old boy to her seventeen-year-old self—moving inside her virgin body felt like a million bucks. Several digits to the left of a decimal point, now that she had a few other men to compare him to.

Oh, her revenge would occur. Of that, she’d ensured. But ten years had come and gone, and there was no sign of the hometown hero everyone loved to gossip about. Speculate on. Worship.

Or, in her case, hate.

So, that revenge she’d plotted to serve up for the last decade? It might not happen while she still had a flat stomach, perky boobs, and all her teeth. Might not happen until she was on the other side of old and washed up, still as single as the day was long.

His revenge on her. No other man could measure up.

And damn, would he revel in that fact.

Poor little rich girl Chloe Morgan couldn’t stay young and tight forever. It wouldn’t be long before she had a pooch belly and pancake tits, her perfect payback falling short. No husband. No kids. No settling of the score.

You’d think ten years and the turn of womanhood would’ve lessened her hate. Her hurt.

You’d be wrong.

But all that aside, she’d gotten something wonderful out of the deal. Two wonderful things, actually, though the first and best was kept at a distance.

This rundown waterfront house was second.

His waterfront house.

Maine Lane was hers now, as long as she made the mortgage payment on the twentieth of every month for the next thirty years, or certainly within the ten-day grace period. Grace she’d need, given all those scary zeroes.

God willing and with a slew of Hamptons weddings on the books, she’d be golden. One hurricane, though, and she’d be toast. Something Borrowed, the business she’d built from the ground up, and the hottest wedding planning company in The Hamptons, would be bankrupt.

“Look on the bright side, Chloe,” she said to herself, testing the temperature of the water filling a clawfoot tub, heaps of frothy bubbles forming on the surface. “You’re surrounded by dicks.”

A dozen dicks, to be exact.

Bath bombs in the shape of mini, yet impressively big when scale was considered, penises. Purple penises—the bride’s favorite color.

Since she’d not had the real thing in many months, the lavender-scented dissolving type would have to sustain her, and honestly, going without was her idea. Wyatt had been hinting at taking their casual, wrong-man-right-time fling to the next level. Chloe was the one dragging her feet, the reasons many and messy.

The man who came before—came first—left a hell of an impression. Her right-man-wrong-time forever love. Not even Wyatt, The Hamptons’ best carpenter and most eligible bachelor, held a candle.

Hate was powerful, yes. All consuming. Strong. But love was stronger. And everlasting. Even when denied.

Detested.

Ironic, considering she was in the business of endless love.

Her cell phone rang, delaying her well-deserved soak. The beautiful notes of “Canon in D”—the wedding march, strummed via acoustic guitar—sounded from the kitchenette, a short distance from the carriage house’s bathroom where she stood beside the rapidly filling tub.

Grabbing it off the chipped Formica countertop and heading back into the tiny bathroom before the bubbles topped the lip of the tub, she simultaneously answered the ring and shut off the water.

“I’m surrounded by dicks, Wendy. And no, I’m not at a male strip club in the city. I’m in my bathroom with hundred-year-old peeling linoleum that’s probably tainted with asbestos, all by my lonesome.”

“You poor thing,” her best friend and only employee replied, genuinely concerned. “You could really use one, based on your skyrocketing stress level. I have one nearby, and while he’s incapable of putting the cap back on the toothpaste, his dick really relaxes me.”

“But is it purple?”

“Not the last time I checked, no.”

Before Wendy could overshare, detailing the last time she and Doug had, uh . . . relations, Chloe changed the subject.

“I tried to tell her, Wen. Nobody thinks a plum-colored penis is appealing, even when gifted to horny bridesmaids doing shots of Fireball in the back of a stretch Hummer. Even when it’s lavender-scented and anatomically correct, balls included.”

Because yeah, each penis-shaped bath bomb included a set of lopsided testicles.

Chloe tapped the speaker button and set the phone on the tub’s wide rim, shedding her paint-splattered T-shirt and shorts while listening to Wendy chatter about balls.

The carriage house now had a fresh coat of oyster white paint, but her muscles were screaming, and she felt far older than