Thest time I stepped foot in a church, I was eleven years old, and my mother read me the riot act for whispering duringmunion. Now, I’d just finished turning one into a luxury hotel and event space.

    Sloane Rousseau, the proud owner of The Chapelle, took me out for dinner to celebrate, not just the end of the project but the renovation being featured in Architectural Digest as part of their Reiming Old Churches in America edition.

    I liked Sloane. She was smart without being a bitch about it; beautiful without being arrogant, and rich without being stuffy.

    Was she interested in me because I was far from the kind of man she usually went out with? Who knew and who cared!

    When she asked me out once the project waspleted, I agreed, hoping maybe this time it would stick—perhaps this time I’d be able to live like I used to without feeling like something was missing.

    Like how I used to be before Naomi.

    Sloane had booked a table at Saffron when I told her my favorite cuisine, after Cajun, was Indian.

    “I’m still so stoked about this.” She tapped the copy of Architectural Digest on the table between us. “They called the design ‘ethereal with bones of the divine.’ That’s you, Gage.”

    I grunted. “Sounds like a fancy way of saying I didn’t fuck it up.”

    Sheughed, all elegance and business savvy. Sloane was one of those women who wore her ambition like perfume—undeniable, but never overbearing. She had vision and taste, and knew how to go after what she wanted—all things I liked in a woman.

    I’d started working with Sloane two years ago when she bought, at auction for a steal, the crumbling St. Jean the Baptist Church on the edge of the Bywater, tucked just past St. ude, half-eaten by vines and time.

    The ce was damn near falling in on itself.

    Water-damaged murals.

    A bell tower that looked like a drunk sailor.

    A pipe organ that hadn’t made music since the seventies.

    Now the church was The Chapelle, a boutique hotel and event space with twenty rooms carved out of old choir lofts and sacristies, and a reception hall that still held its vaulted ceilings and stained-ss windows. The altar had been preserved and framed with gold-trimmed drapery. The floors were original—cypress, refinished by hand.

    It was sacred in how it had been preserved, but it was also contemporary when it came tofort.

    I was proud of this project.

    “I love that the rectory is the restaurant and the confessional, the bar. Very irreverent.” Naomi hadughed when I’d shown her some of the photos of the work in progress.

    “When it opens, I’m going to see if maybe I can book the Presidential Suite for us.” I’d been so fucking smitten that it hadn’t registered that I was making promises for something that wasn’t going to happen for months.

    “Having dirty sex in a church.” Naomi smirked. “I like it.”

    Damn! I needed to stop thinking about that woman while I was out with another. I didn’t need another debacle like the one I had with Barb. I’d been disgusted with myself. I had no business treating a woman, even one as irritating as thewyer, like that and had decided to stay the hell away from women for a while.

    Sloane raised her ss. “To resurrection.”

    I clinked mine against hers. “Amen.”

    “Oh look, it’s Jonah Lamarre,” Sloane murmured, her eyes looking past the top of my head.

    I followed her gaze and froze.

    Yeah, that was Jonah, and he was with my Naomi.

    My chest clenched, making it hard to breathe.

    They were walking toward their table, the hostess ahead of them.

    Naomi’s arm was tucked through Jonah’s. Her hair was pinned up, loose curls escaping around her jaw. She wore emerald silk—simple, wraparound…devastating.

    He said something, and she smiled, unaware that she was ying me from across the room.

    “I wonder who’s the woman with him,” Sloane murmured. “He was seeing the mayor’s daughter thest time I saw him.”

    I wasn’t even listening to her, there was a humming sound in my ears…like when a bomb goes off.

    “But then, you know Jonah, he has the attention span of a housecat in a room full of mirrors. He goes through women like Kleenex.”

    I suppressed a growl at Sloane calling Naomi fucking disposable.

    Well, you treated her exactly like that, so keep it in your pants, asshole.

    I forced myself to look away, to focus on the woman I was here with, on the reason we were celebrating. But the wine turned bitter in my mouth, and my chest burned like I’d swallowed fire.

    The hostess seated Jonah and Naomi in my line of sight because the universe was fucking with me, punishing me by making me watch her while she was on a date.

    I had no doubt that’s what this was when Jonah pulled Naomi’s chair out for her.

    What a fucking gentleman.

    I knew Jonah a little because we sat on the Jazz Festival board. But for the fact that I loved jazz, I wouldn’t have agreed to spend time in hotel meeting rooms with men in suits.

    How the hell was she with Jonah? Didn’t she know that he was the kind of man who made a woman feel like she was the only one in the room, until she found out he made every woman feel that way? Wealthy, charming, and slick as hell—he was the exact kind of man I was proud not to be.

    We ate our food—which was probably amazing—but it might as well have been sawdust.

    If I’d only been half-listening to Sloane earlier, now I wasn’t hearing a damn thing. My mind had left the table entirely.

    Had she seen me?

    No?

    Why the hell not?

    Was she so entranced by her date that she couldn’t even look around to see who the hell else was in the restaurant?

    So, she was over me now? It was all done?

    I love you, Gage.

    Well, love didn’tst long, did it? I thought bitterly when she smiled at Jonah, her face alight.

    She used to smile at me like that.

    Why the hell was she so happy to be with this asshole?