Rising from the Ashes by Jessica Prince

“I’m talking tears and snot—the whole ugly-crying thing. I could barely make out a word she was saying.”
    Oh God.
    “What was wrong with her?” I asked in a small voice. I knew damn good and well what had been wrong with her.
    “Well, my lovely Savvy, that’s the good part. Charlotte and Jeremy broke up!” Emmy screeched into the phone.
    I had to pull it away from my ear to prevent any permanent hearing loss.
    “Um…did Charlotte say why they’d broken up?”
    “No,” Emmy replied. “She didn’t say why. She just said that he’d dumped her, so she couldn’t work here anymore because she knew we were all friends, and she didn’t want to risk running into him.”
    I sat there, trying to figure out how I should feel. While part of me was glad they had broken up because she was a horrible person, the other part couldn’t help but feel a little bad for her.
    “Well, it sucks that you’re out a waitress,” was the only lame-ass reply I could come up with.
    “You don’t sound surprised. Why don’t you sound surprised?” she demanded.
    “What? No! I’m totally surprised!”
    I was so full of shit. I knew Emmy saw right through me, but there was no way I was going to be the one to tell her about Jeremy’s little epiphany from the night before. She would sink her teeth into that one and never let go. Besides Jeremy himself, the only person more determined to get us back together was Emmy. I needed to keep this one close to the vest while I figured out what in the world I was going to do.
    Faking a work deadline, I quickly hung up the phone and dropped my head down on my desk. When had my life turned into such a roller coaster?

I was losing my freaking mind. There was no doubt about it. It had been two weeks since Jeremy had started operation Prove Savannah Wrong, and it was official, I was losing— big time !
    The Thursday after he’d made me breakfast, he’d shown up at my job with Chinese takeout, and he’d eaten with me in my office. Friday, I’d pulled up to my house after work, and he had been there, cleaning out the gutters that I had neglected for as long as I’d lived in the house. The following Monday, he’d fixed my leaky bathroom faucet.
    Everything that had needed fixing around my house managed to be fixed over the last two weeks. He’d shown up with takeout or cooked for me at least four times each week. And every time he’d left, he would make sure to leave me with a skin-tingling, brain-muddling kiss that was hot enough to make my panties combust.
    Lizzy was the only friend who knew the full reason behind the end of my relationship with Jeremy. Therefore, she was the only one I could call to vent my sexual frustrations.
    “So, what’s he doing now?” she asked from the other end of the phone.
    I stood at the bay window in the small kitchenette area off of my kitchen with a cup of coffee in my hand. “Mowing my lawn.”
    “Well, that doesn’t sound so bad,” she replied.
    I pulled the phone from my ear, snapped a quick picture and texted it to her. A few seconds later, she put me on hold to check out what I’d just sent.
    “Hot damn! Has he always been built like that?”
    I looked back out my window at Jeremy, taking in the broad chest, ripped abs, and muscular arms pushing the mower around my front lawn. Sweat was running down his sexy-as-sin torso, pulling my eyes to the worn out jeans that were resting low on his hips. The white T-shirt he’d shown up in earlier had been discarded and was hanging out the waistband of the back of his pants. He was a walking advertisement for sex, and even my neighbors couldn’t help but come outside to appreciate him.
    I let out a sexually repressed sigh and went back to my conversation with Lizzy. “He’s bulked up a bit over the years, but yeah, for the most part, he’s always been pretty cut.”
    She was silent for several seconds. “No offense, babe, but how in the ever-living hell did you give up having sex with that for