Finding The Love Back Read online

  Finding

  The Love

  Back

  Adina Jan

  By the author of

  The Scheming Co-Worker

  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008W3M7H6

  &

  First Encounters Of The Beautiful Kind

  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0080QGVI6

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. This is a work of fiction.

  All sexually active characters in this work are 18 years of age or older. This book is for sale to ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It contains substantial sexually explicit scenes and language that may be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.

  Table of Content

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 1

  Ava’s phone rang for the thousandth time that day. She sat in her plush downtown Atlanta office. It was located was in the heart of Buckhead, a posh upscale community in downtown Atlanta. Being there allowed her access to clients from all over the city. Plus, anyone that visited the city tended to migrate towards the downtown area, so she was in the perfect location.

  Her building was tall and fully made of glass. She’d chosen an office space on the tenth floor for the offices of Ava M. Ava Marie Collier had come a long way from her south Georgia roots to becoming a fashion consultant to the stars. Atlanta, Georgia was the type of city where everyone was trying to be somebody. The scene was set for those who had money, and those who pretended to have money.

  Ava Collier didn’t come from money at all. She’d worked hard for every dime that she had and as far as she was concerned, she would never return back to the humble roots from which she came. Her life now afforded her whatever she wanted. She shopped at the best boutiques, ate at the finest restaurants, partied with the stars that acted in multi-million dollar budget blockbusters. Ava Collier had done a lot of work to become Ava M. or Miss M. as she was called on the Atlanta social scene. She had turned her love of all things fashion into a growing empire.

  She worked twelve to fifteen hour days taking calls from clients who needed her in California for awards ceremonies or who needed her at photo shoots to style them. Ava had quickly become the hottest stylist in the industry and she didn’t want to lose steam anytime soon. She had more plans for her empire. She wanted to start her own clothing and shoe line and one day she wanted a perfume to go with it. It was all she’d ever dreamed of and she knew that she could make it come true if she continued to work hard.

  “Miss M., line three,” her receptionist said through the intercom.

  Ava picked up her jewel encrusted phone. It was going on eight o’clock and she was ready to shut it down for the evening. Her schedule was clear for the night and all she wanted to do was go home and rest with a glass of wine and some reality tv shows.

  “Thanks, Lisa. Put them through.” Ava sighed while she waited for the phone call to be transferred. She tried to uplift herself because each phone call would be a potential client.

  “Yes, this is Miss M.”

  “Miss M. How are you? This is Baxter Brody.”

  “Oh, yes. How are you, Mr. Brody?” Ava knew of Baxter Brody, the new hunky Hollywood bad boy who was trying to reshape his image so that he could get more movie roles. He had spent the last three years of his life being a socialite; hanging out in bars, dating starlets, and trying to start an unsuccessful rap career. Now word was that his manager was trying to make him more marketable and shop him for film or tv roles and that he needed a stylist to revamp his image.

  “Please, call me Baxter. Look, I hear that you come highly recommended as a stylist. So I’d love to set up a meeting with you so we can go over specifics and get started.”

  Ava snickered. This Baxter was so smug. Usually the manager would be the one to call her and get all of the business arrangements set and then she would meet with the client to get a feel for them so that she could best style them. Baxter Brody was as aggressive as he seemed in the tabloids and blogs, but Ava never missed out on a potential client.

  “Let’s say Seasons 51 on Peachtree Road. Two o’clock tomorrow?”

  “Sure thing, Miss M. I’ll see you tomorrow. I look forward to it.”

  Ava hung up the phone and phoned Lisa on the intercom. “Lisa, please put lunch with Baxter Brody at Seasons 51 on my schedule tomorrow at two.”

  “Sure thing Miss M. And don’t forget you have a photo shoot in the evening with The Dream Boys. I’ll sync your schedule to you in a moment.”

  “Thanks, Lisa. Have a great evening.”

  “Thanks Miss M. You too.”

  Ava knew that Lisa had two small children at home and it was important to her to leave each evening by eight o’clock. Ava did her best to make sure Lisa stuck to doing so. Her employees were important to her and they were like family. Her assistant, Lindsey was her right hand. Lindsey knew everything about how her business ran and she was quite capable of making sure that things were run as efficiently as Ava did it.

  Shuffling through a side desk drawer, Ava found a hair clip. She twisted her blonde hair up onto the top of her head and clipped her hair up off of her shoulders. It had been a long day and she wanted to take the opportunity to rest that evening. She packed up her Mac book and grabbed her purse, ready to enjoy an evening at home relaxing.

  As she bid goodnight to the building door man, she walked out to the parking deck. She was happy that she’d parked close to the exit door and she didn’t have far to walk.

  “Good night Miss M.,” the parking deck security officer said as he rode past in the security truck.

  “Good night,” she replied. The security officer paused for a moment as Ava got in the car. When Ava closed the door and started the car, the security officer tipped his hat and rode off.

  As Ava pulled out of the parking deck, her cell phone rang. She didn’t recognize the number, but the prefix was from south Georgia. She didn’t bother to answer. From time to time, people that she’d known in high school or their friends and family got a hold of her cell phone number and called her “just to catch up”.

  It became annoying to have to force a conversation with people from her hometown who she either hadn’t talked to since she left home nineteen years ago or whom she never had a relationship with in the first place. The common idea was that since she was living in Atlanta, she had made it and would be the personal ATM for everyone in Conner, GA. Conner was a small town about forty miles away from the Florida/ Georgia state line.

  Ava hadn’t really returned home since she left so long ago. Her mother passed away when she was eighteen. Until then, she had been the picture perfect southern belle that her parents wanted her to be. She’d been salutatorian in high school and had gone to University of Georgia, her father’s alma mater, and had declared accounting as her major. Accounting was her father’s idea and she was willing to go with it.

  When her mother died, it changed her life. Ava decided right then and there that she would liv
e her life the way that she wanted to, and not the way that anyone else wanted to. So she packed up her dorm room after her freshman year and took an opportunity in Atlanta to work as an apprentice for a fashion stylist.

  Her father told her that he would never speak to her again if she didn’t return to school in the fall. Ava told him to hold his breath and wait to see what she would do. She knew that she wasn’t going back to college. She would finish a degree in whatever she wanted and that she would have the career in fashion that she always envisioned.

  It was tough to walk away from her father like that. He was pretty much the only family that she had left. Being an only child, her parents had her late in life. Her maternal grandmother was the only grandparent that she knew and had passed away when Ava was around twelve. Both of her parents were only children as well; her father’s only sibling had died in a car accident when they were in their twenties. Ava grew up with her parents doting on her. She was not only popular in high school, but she had done pageants from the time she was five years old until she was in high school. But she’d stopped when her mother became too sick to travel with her to participate.

  Life had changed for her when her mother died. It had caused a rift between her and her father and by the time she had thought to try and repair it, they had spent too much time apart and out of each other’s lives.

  She always sent a Christmas card so he would know where she was, but he never called or returned the favor. She had spent the last nineteen years without so much as a birthday card, a Valentine’s day card, or any correspondence from her only living parent. She simply lived her life as if he had died when her mother did.

  Being alone was something that she was used to by now. She’d made a whole new life for herself and she enjoyed the fruits of her labor.

  Staring at the phone, Ava just let the call go to voicemail. She waited a second and when her voicemail notification didn’t chime, she relaxed. She hoped that whoever it was didn’t bother to call back. She didn’t have time to give out money to yet another person on Conner. She’d promised herself that she wouldn’t keep doing that. She was open to offering jobs to people who wanted to work hard, but she had no sympathy for someone who just sat around with their hands out.

  She’d busted her tail to get to this point and she had more work to do to get to where she wanted to be. There was no way that she could respect things any other way.

  Chapter 2

  By the time Ava made it home, she was starving. She lived in the suburbs of Atlanta about twenty miles north of the city. She loved it that way. She could enjoy the hustle and bustle of the city, but come home to the quiet of the suburbs. Suburban life was the closest to the small town life she had enjoyed as a child.

  She opened the door to her home and was greeted by her dog, Dolce.

  “Hey sweetie,” Ava said greeting her terrier by blowing kisses at her.

  Ava walked back to her bedroom and put down her purse and her laptop bag. Kicking off her heels felt heavenly. She rubbed her feet and started to take off her clothes to put on her pajamas. There was a light knock at the door when she went to the kitchen to grab a glass of wine and feed Dolce a treat.

  She wasn’t expecting any company. Fortunately, she could see out of the windows in her living room to see a blue Benz parked outside of the house. It was Bobby coming to visit. Ava and Bobby Thompson, also known in the music business as Bobby T, had been seeing each other for the past two months. Bobby was handsome and charming. She thought he was a nice guy, contrary to the aggressive, no holds barred entrepreneurial image that he put forward in the industry. The problem was, there was no spark, no passion between them.

  “Hey Bobby,” Ava said as she opened the front door and invited Bobby inside. He had a bag full of food with him.

  “I thought you could use a little dinner after a hard day at work. You know since we missed our lunch date this afternoon.” It was his way of gently reminding her of the fact that she had Lisa call and cancel their lunch date. She had a business lunch come up with a client and it took precedence over a leisurely lunch with her beau.

  “I appreciate it, Bobby. You’re right on time. I’m starving.” She didn’t really want to discuss her decision to work versus play.

  Bobby followed her inside the house and Ava told him to have a seat on the living room couch. Dolce came running in the living room at the sound of company. Bobby sat back on the couch trying to shrink away from Dolce. Ava laughed as she saw Bobby wincing. It was funny to see a man so big and brawny shy away from a small dog. Dolce jumped up on the couch, quickly sniffed Bobby, and with an uninterested expression, jumped down off the couch and walked away.

  Ava swore she saw Bobby breathe a sigh of relief when Dolce jumped down. He spread the food out on the table.

  “I hope that you are happy with some sub sandwiches. I’m trying to eat light.”

  Ava brought in a tray with some bottled water and a few sodas. She wasn’t sure what Bobby wanted to drink. There were two glasses filled with ice as well.

  “Thanks, babe,” Bobby said as he took a glass.

  “Sure thing. What did you bring?” Ava took a seat next to him on the couch and Dolce jumped back up and sat next to her.

  “Well,” Bobby said, looking at the dog from the corner of his eye. “I brought myself a hot Italian cold cut and I brought you a turkey and roast beef mix with cheese.”

  “I don’t know how many times I have to tell you I’m lactose intolerant,” Ava said, trying to sound playful. She was actually kind of annoyed. Every time Bobby ordered food for her, he always had some kind of cheese or dairy on it. She’d explained that she couldn’t eat dairy and he accused her of acting like a diva and would often tell her to just pick the cheese off. All she wanted was for him to respect the fact that she had a dietary restriction.

  She tried to contain the frown as she picked the cheese off of the sandwich. “So, how was your day?”

  “Great,” Bobby replied. He then launched into recounting his entire day to her. Somewhere in between talking about sitting in the studio with a boy band he was managing and discussing an upcoming trip to New York City to accompany his female pop singer while she made a television show appearance, Ava stopped listening.

  She gazed at the television and ate her sandwich, thinking of all of the things that she had to do the next day.

  “You’re not listening to me are you?”

  “What? Oh, I’m so sorry, Bobby. I’ve just had such a long day at work. I’m just so tired and I have so much to do tomorrow.”

  “Come here,” he said as he pointed at her feet. “Let me give you a massage.”

  Ava put her feet on the couch and laid back. Dolce jumped in her lap and curled up. Bobby was fantastic at giving foot rubs. He kneaded and massaged her feet and Ava was in heaven while she gently stroked Dolce’s fur.

  “Tell me about your day,” Bobby offered.

  “Oh no. Completely boring. There’s no way that I would share all of that with you.”

  Bobby shrugged and continued massaging her feet. “Well, just make sure that you can pencil me into the schedule this week when I get back from New York.”

  “I will do that.” She leaned back, enjoying the massage. “You are sensational at this. Maybe you missed your calling as a masseuse.”

  Bobby smiled. Ava loved to see the dimple peak out of his left cheek. He was gorgeous; dark hair, chestnut brown eyes, and the most amazing smile she’d ever seen. He had the build of a football player. Bobby was a great catch.

  “I just may have.” Bobby’s hand slowly rose up toward Ava’s thigh. Dolce jumped from Ava’s lap, just as Bobby leaned over to kiss her.

  Bobby’s lips were soft as they touched hers. Ava closed her eyes and tried to find the spark. Even as Bobby’s tongue danced around playfully with hers, Ava still didn’t feel the passion ignite. Bobby leaned closer, embracing her as he intensified the kiss.

  “I could stay the night,” he offered. Bobby stared i
nto her blue-green eyes.

  Bobby’s touch was tender. He lightly stroked her chin. The offer was tempting, but they had only been dating a few months.

  He gently kissed the freckles on her cheeks.

  “Very tempting, but I have a lot of work to do in the morning.” It was truth that she had a lot of work to the in the morning, but it wasn’t the reason that she didn’t want Bobby staying over. She just didn’t want to lead him on.

  “Fine. But I’m holding you to lunch this week when I get back.”

  “I’ll have Lisa make us some reservations.” Ava smiled and kissed Bobby again. There was still no spark. She wondered if he noticed it as well.