Emily Maynard and Jef Holm may be remaining friends after all, just as Holm said he'd hoped.
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The former The Bachelorette couple -- who confirmed the end of their engagement and split last week -- spent this past weekend together in Charlotte, NC.
Maynard and Holm reunited in The Bachelorette star's hometown on Saturday, according to E! News, and were photographed out in public with Maynard's daughter Ricki on Sunday, Us weekly reported.
After two months of reports that their relationship was on the rocks, Maynard and Holm -- who got engaged at the conclusion of this summer's edition of The Bachelorette -- confirmed they had split last Tuesday.
Holm had expressed hope they would remain friends in his statement confirming the split.
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"Emily and I are great friends and I hope we can continue to be friends forever," he said.
The break-up marked the second unsuccessful TV engagement for Maynard, a 25-year-old single mom, as she also previously got engaged to Brad Womack when she competed as a bachelorette on his second The Bachelor edition last year (they eventually split in June 2011).
However on Friday, Radar Online reported The Bachelorette producers are considering having Maynard return to star in -- similar to what Womack did with The Bachelor -- a second season of the ABC reality dating show.
"Even though she has been burned twice, they are hoping that she will be open to the idea because they know it will be ratings gold and they know that she really likes being on TV and actually has fun on the show," a source told the website.
"ABC loves Emily, there are tons of Emily fans and the producers think it could be an amazing twist that would really get people watching, even if it is haters tuning in to see what she will do a third time!"
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Maynard selected Holm as her final bachelor -- and he subsequently proposed -- when The Bachelorette's eighth-season finale was filmed on May 12 and the pair had presented a happy front since the finale aired on July 22. However, reports that the couple's relationship was on the rocks had swirled since late summer.
In August, Us Weekly reported Maynard and Holm, a 27-year-old entrepreneur from Salt Lake City, UT, got into a blowout weekend argument while they were vacationing with his family after Holm discovered explicit text messages which indicated Maynard was cheating on him.
Maynard and Holm subsequently denied the report, but Holm's brother, Mike Holm, publicly claimed he was present for the argument and Us' claims were "100% true" -- leading to Holm alleging his brother was lying and has "a history of doing hurtful things to the family."
Us later reported that Maynard and Holm had already been close to breaking up before the fight and were only remaining together "for business reasons."
Then, late last month, Kaylee Shepherd -- a 21-year-old Utah college student who claims to have dated Holm for about nine months before he left her to go film The Bachelorette "for the experience" in March -- publicly alleged Holm had recently attempted to reunite with her and told her Maynard was paying Holm, at his request, to continue faking their engagement to preserve her good-girl reputation and cover-up the fact she cheated on him.
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"Jef said their relationship isn't what it seems. It's all basically for TV," Shepherd told Us in an interview published in the magazine's October 8 issue.
"He said the [cheating] story was 100 percent accurate," she said. "Emily told him, 'I'm so sorry,' and he said, 'Well, we have two options: The first is I can go to the media and tell them the truth and let everyone know what you're really like. Or two, I will deny the whole thing, and you can give me half the money you made from The Bachelorette.' She picked option two," Shepherd said.
"He said, 'If I was happily engaged, I never would have texted you [to meet me].'"
About The Author: Steven Rogers