Just as I skid to a halt on my wet feet into the kitchen, I find Jase there, shirtless, of course, with my cell phone to his ear.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you too, Ms. Wright, but now that I think of it, you have a different last name than Hendrix. Oh. You changed it back so it’d match. That makes sense,” he says.

My eyes bug out of my head as his cheeky grin meets my horror. “No,” I gasp.

Jase holds up his hand for me, as if he’s got this under control, before he continues speaking. “Your daughter is . . .” His eyes scrape up and down my long legs and desire heats in his eyes when there’s no way he can already want me again. “Incredible.”

Those words along with the look in his eyes have my heart fluttering in my chest.

He’s not supposed to make me feel this way. His words aren’t, the looks he gives me shouldn’t, and yet since the first moment we met, hasn’t that been what’s been happening?

“I know, I know,” he says as I am dying to hear the other side of the conversation and try to motion for him to put the call on speaker. He just grins, his dimples deepening, and keeps it to his ear in an act of playful defiance. “And we apologize for not including you in the big day. I know to you it feels like it was impulsive and reckless but—” His eyes light up as he listens to her. “Yes. I agree completely. Sometimes you just can’t stop love when it’s as strong as ours.” He chuckles and lifts his eyebrows at me like my mother is out of her mind. She very well could be. “Well, Nosy Natalia is right. She’s quite the social media sleuth. Hendrix and I met and it’s been a storm brewing beneath the surface over the months waiting for the right time to erupt.”

“Erupt?” I mouth to him and groan.

“I’d like to call it more of a surrender of our wills. A sweet surrender,” he says and when his eyes find mine, the softness in them hits me squarely in the gut. “But your neighbor is wrong. Hendrix isn’t pregnant. This wasn’t a shotgun wedding for that reason.” He nods his head. “Hmm. Yes, well, she definitely has a temper and a lot of fight in her, but that’s part of the reason I love her. She learned her lesson with Paul—” He laughs. “I stand corrected—with Fucktard—and she won’t ever allow herself to be treated like that again. And sure as shit, not by me.”

There is a pause as I adjust my towel, drawing his eyes again.

“One hundred percent agree.” He nods and his eyebrows furrow. “I’ll keep that in mind.”