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He took a deep breath. Maybe he wasn’t as over it as he’d imagined.
She sipped her coffee, as if for fortification, and blinked her baby blues. “I’m here to apologize for that, too,” she said. “And to tell you the truth. I didn’t unleash my husband on you. All the rumors and hits to your business, I did that. Not Henry.”
“What?” Shock froze his tongue, preventing him from voicing anything else. No. Not over it at all.
“Henry will be fifty-eight in December. I had no illusions about being in love when I married him and neither did he. When I told him about you, he patted my hand and said it was cheaper than a divorce, then went back to work. I played him up as the jealous husband because, well, I wanted you to believe I had worth to him.”
“Why?” he prompted when she paused.
“Because you’re so hard to faze, Lucas. Emotionally. Do you feel anything at all? I wanted you to love me and you didn’t. I thought...maybe if you believed he loved me, you’d see something desirable in me, too. Only it didn’t work. I was heartbroken. Devastated that it was just all fun and games to you.”
“It was fun,” he reminded her harshly. She had a lot of nerve, talking about love when they’d been nowhere near serious. “It could have been more, maybe. Eventually. At least, I thought it could.”
Genuine sadness laced her small smile. “Could have been. Maybe. Eventually. That’s how it is with you. No commitment. So I lashed out. Tried to ruin you. Instead, you fell in love with someone else, blew past all my efforts to destroy you and went on to be happy without me.”
A catch in her throat cut off the sentence and a catch in his gut kept his resounding “No” from being voiced.
He wasn’t happy.
The rest of it was true. He was in love with Cia, and he needed her, like a tree needed water. She brought out all the best parts of him and kept him on his toes. She challenged him and made him feel alive.
He’d given her up, so sure that if she didn’t need him, they had no reason to be together.
Ironic how Lana hadn’t accused him of marrying Cia on the rebound after all. Instead, she’d put a microscope on his marriage, and the view shook his spine something fierce.
She coughed and touched a finger to the corner of her eye. “I’m sorry, and I’m not going to bother you anymore. I’m in a place now where I can be happy for you.”
And he was in a place where he could accept Lana had cut him deeper than he’d been willing to admit, spilling over into his relationship with Cia and causing missteps visible only in hindsight. Hindsight. The word of the day.
“Okay.” He stood so fast the rolling chair shot away from the backs of his legs. “Thanks for coming by. You didn’t have to, and I appreciate it.”
Surprised, she glanced up. “Rushing me out? I guess I don’t blame you. Good luck, Lucas. You deserve a much better life than what I could have given you.”
In his head, the word life became wife. He agreed. He deserved a better wife than one who betrayed him the way Lana had. But his wife deserved a better husband than one who had betrayed her. Like he’d done to Cia. He’d done all she’d accused him of, and more, and probably not as subconsciously as he’d insisted.
He’d refused to see the truth. He’d been so busy trying to have what Matthew had had that he’d missed the most critical element. It was clear now why his brother hadn’t been able to live in the house he’d built with Amber, why he’d taken off despite being a Wheeler.
Love made a person do crazy, irrational things. Things he’d never do under normal circumstances, like offer a short-term wife millions of dollars to make it long-term. Instead of blowing off Cia’s broken heart like a complete moron, he should have just opened his mouth and admitted he wanted to alter the deal because he loved her and couldn’t live without her.
It might not have changed the outcome. But it might have.
Love. That was the reason he couldn’t move on this time. He’d been too afraid of it, too much a coward to examine what he was feeling, and it would serve him right to have lost Cia forever. But he wasn’t going down without a fight.
He hurried to his office to start on the Lucas Wheeler Philosophy of Cia Wheeler. He had to get it right this time.
* * *
Something was wrong with Fergie. Cia had tried everything, but the bird wouldn’t eat. The blob of gray feathers sat in the bottom of the cage and refused to acknowledge the presence of her owner. It had been like this since the day she’d moved back into her condo.
Every morning, she rushed to Fergie’s cage, convinced she’d find the bird claws up and stiff with rigor mortis, which would be about right for a companion she’d anticipated having for fifty years.
