Rhonda Nelson - The Ex-Girlfriends' Club

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For the makers of Butter Rum Life Savers,

Crunch ’n Munch, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups,

Super Bubble, Stride Gum and

Diet Mountain Dew, without which this book

would not have been possible.

And to Pudd’nhead,

whose charming personality inspired Cerberus.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Epilogue

Coming Next Month

Artemis525: I’m thinking someone needs to break Bennett’s* heart. *Literally.* Like maybe snatch it from his chest, then run over it with a lawn mower. < BEG>

EDEN RUTHERFORD READ the new drive-by post and felt another nudge of unease prod her belly. Granted she was still a bit of a rookie on Hell, Georgia’s, police force, but even a rookie could discern the somewhat unsettling menace behind this most recent message. She instinctively picked up the cordless to call Kate, her best friend and cofounder of the Ex-Girlfriends’ Club, but the thought was interrupted by the ringing of the phone. A quick check of the caller ID confirmed that Kate had beaten her to the punch.

“Did you see it?” Kate asked gravely.

“I did,” Eden told her, equally unsettled. And annoyed, dammit. The board was their cyberspace playground and this weird chick was kicking sand. “I was just about to call you.”

Kate released a worried breath. “This woman is really starting to freak me out, Eden. Run over his heart with a lawn mower? Sheesh. She’s got issues. I seriously think we need to consider banning her from the board.”

The same thought had occurred to Eden, but she wasn’t even certain it was possible. Granted the sole purpose of the Web site and message board was to bash Bennett Wilder—or any other man who employed his hit-and-run style of romance—but this…

A huge proponent of the old you-reap-what-you-sow adage and justice in any form—be it poetic or otherwise—Eden still thought this fell smack-dab into over-the-top territory.

Quite frankly, after all the heartache he’d heaped upon her and the rest of her little club, Bennett having a broken heart in the figurative sense would be particularly gratifying. She inwardly snorted. Hell, he’d certainly left a lot of casualties in his wake—most notably her, Eden thought.

But literally was out of the question.

Or at least it was to all of Bennett’s victims but one.

Artemis525 had started posting to the board a couple of weeks ago—which was strange in and of itself—and there’d been something about her even then that had given Eden pause.

Though the site was dedicated to Bennett, within a couple of months after it had gone live, their cathartic vengeful-humor sort of therapy had served its purpose, and now the site was more about lamenting daily woes: problems at work, meddling mothers—usually hers, Eden thought with a mental eye roll—PMS and the occasional Mr. Wrong. Having a broken heart courtesy of Hell’s third-generation bad boy might have been what had originally gotten them together, but it certainly wasn’t what kept the group talking now.

That’s what made Artemis525’s posts so strange. Despite the fact that she seemed to have materialized out of thin air, they hadn’t even been discussing Bennett. Hadn’t in months.

Without warning, dark brown hair, even darker heavily lashed old-soul eyes and lips a little too full to be anything short of sexy materialized all too readily in her rebellious mind, making a melancholy tide of longing rise up inside her. Tall, hard and lean with a smart mouth, a smoother tongue and a smile that epitomized wicked, Ben Wilder should come with a warning label. After all this time, the mere memory of him could still cause her foolish heart to jump into an irregular rhythm and a hollow, woeful ache to appear in her belly. Eden released a small breath.

Bennett might have left town three years ago, but there was rarely a day that went by that she didn’t think about him. Pathetic? Eden rolled her eyes. Without a doubt. Despite considerable evidence to the contrary—particularly where Bennett was concerned—she wasn’t stupid.

But…Eden couldn’t seem to help herself.

In fact, to her immeasurable shame and chagrin, she’d never been able to keep her wits about her when it came to Bennett, a fact that became glaringly evident with each botched attempt at resisting him. He crooked his finger, she came. The end. The emotional tug and off-the-charts attraction she’d always felt for him had never been governed by anything remotely close to rationale. It had been ruled by her heart and her body, completely excluding her brain and anything close to common sense.

He was Bennett—her Ben—and, as such, he would always hold a special place in her pathetically miserable broken heart.

Though he’d been a good kid, an A-plus eager-to-please—almost desperate-to-please, in retrospect—student and a budding athlete through the majority of their school years, something had happened to Bennett in their senior year of high school, and for no apparent reason he’d done an about-face.

For starters, he’d dumped her—right before prom, which at the time had been the mother of all humiliations—without reason, without provocation and without warning.

She’d been devastated, and to this day Eden still didn’t know why he’d done it.

Then his grades had plummeted, he’d started hanging out with the wrong crowd and within a month had become their ringleader. Most painful of all, he’d turned into a skirt-chasing fiend bent on bedding practically every girl in the county.

In short, the seemingly manic effort he’d put into toeing the line—a misguided attempt to atone for the bad reputation of his parents, she knew—had been nothing compared to the effort he’d put into crossing it.

He smoked. He drank. He cursed. He grew long hair and pierced his ear. Tame by regular standards but positively scandalous in their little hometown. A strange set of rules for a city named Hell, of all things, she’d admit, but just as rigid as any Bible Belt burg below the Mason-Dixon Line.

And the first time he’d tossed one of those heavy-lidded, baby-I-could-rock-your-world glances at her, she’d melted.

She’d fallen hook, line and sinker. Eden let go a shallow breath.

But Bennett Wilder had the rare ability to make a girl feel as though she were the only woman on the planet, and more importantly, the only one for him in the entire galaxy. When he’d looked at her and smiled—just smiled—the rest of the world had simply fallen away. Eden grimaced.

Unfortunately, being with Bennett meant that her world was in danger of being rocked, flipped, shattered and otherwise knocked for a loop and off its axis.

Prior to his move to what she’d dubbed his dark side, they’d been high school sweethearts. The term sounded so blasé, so casual—unsubstantial, even. And yet even now Eden couldn’t competently describe what that time—every minute spent with Ben—had meant to her.

Holding hands, planning futures, building dreams while she watched him whittle away on a piece of wood. He’d been funny, earnest, dark and sexy and, though she hadn’t realized it at the time, curiously grateful for being with her. She smiled sadly, remembering. He’d been her hero, her warrior, her confidant and best friend. And on a hot summer night by Fire Lake, he’d been her first. She’d been his, too, which for Eden had made it all the more sweet.