Page 6 of Peaches

But I can’t help myself, as my mind indulges in the daydream once more. The one involving a tempting, forbidden fruit. Oh, how those fucking peaches will kill me if I let them. Which is why the best thing I could do is walk away and leave them for someone else to indulge in, even if the thought of someone else even remotely doing so has my lower stomach in knots and a sick feeling settling deep into my selfish bones.

“Tell me again why we had to relocate to this town,” I hear Josh say as I look over the hood of the car and watch him surveying the street like a tourist who just found out his dream vacation is anything but the damn dream he had envisioned.

I glance around us, take in the cobble stone streets, Spanish moss hanging from trees, the centuries old buildings made of stone, the steamboat that rests in the broad Savannah River to our left, and shrug. Once upon a time, I called this place home. Once upon a time, I swore I’d never leave. But the thing about tragedy is, sometimes the destruction, the suffering, it’s too much to bare and the only way to escape the oppressing shadow is to go somewhere else and start over. Much like I did several years ago, when I relocated to the West Coast and met Josh.

“It’s not that bad,” I say, knowing that the only light that shines in this town is the one I didn’t have even an hour ago.

Peaches.

Those tempting, seductive, heavenlyPeaches!

“It could have its perks,” I shrug again, thinking about things I know I shouldn’t when what I really need is to keep my head in the game. The business game, that is. I don’t have time for such - pleasures. Something I’m sure my ex could tell you all about.

“Yeah! Like humidity, crime, cost of living. Whenever it rains, it floods. Case in point,” he says, gesturing towards me and rolling his eyes. I look down at my white shirt and sweatpants and can’t help but smile. I doubt Peaches would’ve admired the man in front of her if I was in my normal suit and tie. Something about that woman tells me she’s not impressed by glitz and glamour. Something, I oddly find makes her even more appealing.If that’s possible.

“Hell, that’s nothing. What you need to watch out for is the red bugs,” I say as we both climb into his car and fasten our seat belts.

“Red bugs?” I can see his eyes grow wide behind his dark sunglasses and hear myself let out a laugh. “What the fuck is a red bug?”

Seeing as Josh has barely seen anything past the sunny West Coast, I grin as if I hold a dark secret that could be the one thing that gets him high tailing it back to California and never, ever, thinking of stepping foot in the South again.

“Red bugs. Mosquitos. Cicadas,” I chuckle, “You’ll get used to them.”

He pulls out onto River Street at a high speed and makes a couple tourists jump out of the way. I shake my head and know he’ll learn to slow down around these parts, too, that is if he knows what’s good for him. Our conversation about the dreaded town he is now a permanent fixture in left back where we were just parked. I take my phone out of my pocket and start to text Jeeves, my butler, at the Alida, Savannah. A posh hotel a little further down the road on Williamson Street. With any luck, he’ll have a new suit ready, pressed, and better than the last by the time I get back and shower.

“How’d Kimberly take it,” Josh asks just as Jeeves responds and I breathe out a sigh of relief glancing at the time knowing I will still make my eleven o’clock.

“Like the bitter, vindictive, spiteful debutant she is,” I exhale as I run my hand through my dark brown hair and focus on the street in front of us. “Never thought such nasty words could fall from a ladies’ mouth that normally demands everyone cover their own, while she also insists on being pampered, spoiled rotten, and drenched in the finest clothes, diamonds and Southern pearls.”

“Want mypearlsof wisdom?” Josh laughs as he quickly cuts off a car to our right and swerves into the valet of the hotel. He shifts into first gear and pulls the parking break as he turns to look at me over his shoulder. “You should’ve dumped that bitch a year ago, after you walked in on her cheating with Sebastian. Why the hell your chivalrous ass didn’t, I’ll never know.”

Climbing out of the car, I watch as he throws his keys to the valet while I grab my suit in the coffee shop bag from the backseat, and then fall in step at his side as we enter the lobby.

“Call it the Southern gentleman in me,” I joke. “Besides, I never witnessed them fully engaged in the act, and Kimberly can be very convincing, if you hadn’t noticed yourself over the five years we were together.”

“Convincing,” he laughs as we enter the elevator and I press the button for the penthouse. “How about mendacious? That better describes the type of woman she was, hell sheis, and you’re all the better for finally being rid of her. Besides, we all knew the truth. Including you, though you try hard to deny it. You’ve been too busy building an empire to really care about anything else.”

Truer words were never spoken.

I didn’t care.

Something that stings as it settles in my soul.

I should’ve, shouldn’t I have? I mean, I was engaged to marry the woman. Five years of my damn life I can’t get back. Five years that felt like fifty as I think of the weight of it.

But he’s right. I didn’t care who she was fucking. I couldn’t care less who she flirted with in front of me. She was arm candy at best. A position that could’ve been filled with an escort service, but those who know me well, know I could never be that type. Which is why I wasted five years having a woman on my arm that, when it came down to it, I didn’t care who she was sleeping with as long as it wasn’t me. Well, at least for the last year, that is.

I laugh at the irony, because as much as she was unfaithful, I never once strayed. A thought that makes me realize maybe that’s why I was so attracted to the thought of peaches just a half hour ago. After all, three hundred and sixty-five days is a long time to go for any man. The nights are cold, and your hand can only satisfy you so much before you need the real deal. Something I haven’t been tempted to indulge in over the last year as my mind was wrapped around only one thing, my business, and not curves, long legs, perky breasts, breathtaking eyes, peaches -fucking peaches.

Dammit! I attempt to shake the thought of her again from my mind and will my dick into submission as I accept the fact that I’ve had a one tack mind for far too long.

The doors open and we walk into the space just as Jeeves comes around the corner from the Kitchen.

“Your suit will be ready in twenty minutes, Sir,” he readily explains as I hand him the bag with my soiled linens and start to rip the white shirt over my head as I walk off towards the shower. “Your father sent word. Said he’s been trying to reach you on your cell but couldn’t get through.”

I roll my eyes and toss the shirt in the dirty clothes pile on the master bedroom floor. “That’s because I’d rather reconcile with Kim before giving him the satisfaction of a call back,” I grit out as I turn to look at my butler. “What did theThe Generalhave to say this time?”

My father hates when I call him that, which is why I insist on doing it whenever I can. It’s not just a nod to his time in Vietnam, but to the way he raised me, hated me, pushed me away. and undoubtably, I believe, he’s the reason for the death of my mother, though he’s always denied it.

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