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She shrieked for what seemed like absolutely no reason. Next, she pointed to an impossibly tall dude wearing a beret while juggling two Rubix cubes, two orange balls, and a small green beanbag.

“He can do five, Uncle Tyler!” Carly shouted, her eyes going wide.

“Five isn’t too shabby,” I said with a shrug.

She turned to me with a questioning stare. “I’ve never seen you do five before.”

“That’s because I haven’t shown you all my tricks yet.”

“Can you really juggle five balls?”

I scoffed. “Please, I can do that my with eyes closed.”

I didn’t put myself through law school juggling for nothing.

Just kidding.

You can’t put yourself through law school juggling anything but insane class schedules and lack of sleep.

Carly arched an eyebrow. So did the juggler, as he kept up the cascade of his quintet. Show-off.

“I want to see. Show me,” Carly urged.

Yeah, Carly’s a chip off the old block. She’s all about challenging me, and I’m all about rising up to the challenge.

The stick-thin guy with the beret raised his chin. “Have at it, man.”

With clockwork precision, he let the balls fall out of orbit and into his palm. Next, the Rubix cubes. Then the beanbag. He stepped closer, handed me the objects, and flashed a crooked, put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is grin.

Game on.

Packs of runners jogged along, cyclists wheeled over the black asphalt, and roller bladers whizzed by on the concrete. With my feet parked a hip’s width apart, I stood at the edge of the grass, getting a feel for the items, palming them, weighing them, and then one, two, three, four, five, I whisked each one up into the air in a long oval arc. Round and round, in a perfect five-ball cascade.

Carly clapped, then demanded more. “Yes, close your eyes now!”

I groaned. What was I thinking? Juggling with eyes closed is fucking hard. But, I could pull it off for a couple seconds, I guessed. My special skill. I obliged my niece’s request, pulling off a few quick blind ovals. Five seconds later, after I’d clearly proven that I’d mastered that party trick, since any successful man needs at least a few party tricks at his disposal, I opened my eyes.

And I saw a vision from my past.

A blond beauty, with long legs, a lovely round ass, and a high ponytail swishing back and forth across her shoulders. She ran along the path in tiny orange can-I-peel-them-off-with-my-teeth-pretty-please running shorts. And that face. Dear lord, that stunning face of an angel. High cheekbones. Deep brown eyes that knew me like no one ever had. Those red lips, shaped like a bow. Fuck me, the things she could do with those lips. The things I taught her to do with that sinful mouth.

She sure as hell knew how to use it, and I don’t just mean in the bedroom. We used to talk about anything and everything.

I’d recognize Delaney anywhere, not just from all the times with her, but from my dreams too. My dirty, filthy dreams from college.

Days with her. Nights with her. Best time of my life. That woman was full of spark. Full of fire. So damn passionate. And look at her now.

Jesus Christ.

Who the hell said it was acceptable to become even hotter?

It had to be illegal to be that smoking hot.

She wasn’t alone. She ran with two other chicks and a couple of dogs.

And as for me? Fast on his feet, quick with a word, never met a situation he can’t talk his way out of? Scratch all that right then and there. Because I dropped the cubes. I dropped the beanbag. And I dropped the orange balls in a pile of wreckage at my feet.

My jaw fell too.

But the best part? All that came out of my mouth was a muffled Hey.

Yup. Eight years later and all I could utter was a monosyllable.

Height of my mother-fucking unbrilliance.

She rolled her eyes, and shook her head as she trotted past me. Over her shoulder, she called out: “How’s the juggling working out for you now, Tyler?”

Oh, zinger, how you slay me.

The lady won.

The lady killed it.

“Great. I kept it up,” I shouted.

Then, she gave herself away for a sliver of a second, and if I were in court, I’d have known then I had her. She let her gaze linger far too long. Giving me that patented you-were-in-my-fantasies-last-night look that I knew so well as her eyes roamed down my face, my chest, and yeah, there, right fucking there to her favorite part.

She loved that part.

But this wasn’t a courtroom battle.

Because when she cast her pretty brown eyes to my niece after that, I saw Delaney adding up the years in the span of a nanosecond. Computing possibilities. “Looks like you sure did,” she said, deadpan all the way.

She snapped her gaze from me, zeroed in on the path in front of her and sprinted.

With her friends and the dogs flanking her, and me with my balls, and my jaw, and my composure splattered on the dirt, she tore past me, leaving me in the dust.