AllFreeNovel
Share Us
At the end of the runway, she pivoted and held the pose to thunderous applause. Lord above, they were clapping for her dress. And her design. And Cara herself. It was heady and gratifying and fulfilling.
It flooded her all at once.
This is what Keith had meant by being cake. This feeling, this sense of accomplishment, this being in the essence of something she’d created from nothing. He’d encouraged her to forget about the frosting and focus on the substance underneath.
Cara Chandler-Harris Designs wasn’t a business; it was an extension of Cara, a manifestation of her wedding dreams. Those dreams would live forever, caught in visions of silk and lace.
Marriage wasn’t the most important thing she could do in her life.
The realization was freeing in a way she’d never expected. During this time in Grace Bay, she’d liked that Keith saw her as an equal, but she’d never quite figured out that to him, marriage meant inequality.
That was an aspect of the man she loved that she’d never known before. No wonder he’d fled from their first wedding. In a misguided way, he probably thought he was doing her a favor. And really, he had, in so many ways.
Keith’s dark head rose above the crowd, catching in her peripheral vision as she walked back up the runway to the head of the stage, where the other girls stood in various poses. He hung back, arms crossed, watching her with a slightly hooded expression. But he couldn’t have hidden his six-three frame, not in a crowd. Not from her.
Her heart recognized him instantly.
They’d parted last night in complete agreement—their island fling was over. He’d go his way, she’d go hers. But she seemed to be the only one unhappy about it.
After the show ended, Cara turned to follow Meredith and the other girls back to their rooms. The dresses should go back into airtight bags as soon as possible, especially because Cara had a feeling she might be selling all of them very shortly.
“Ms. Chandler-Harris?”
Cara turned to the male speaker, an elegantly dressed man in his midthirties who obviously knew his way around a stylist and wasn’t afraid to be seen shopping at Bloomingdale’s. His name placard read Nick Anderson—Buyer for Ever After Boutiques.
She swallowed a great big ball of sudden nerves. “Mr. Anderson. How lovely to meet you. I’ve spent many hours in your boutiques.”
“Checking out the competition?” he asked with an innocuous smile as they shook hands.
“Daydreaming,” she corrected graciously. “That’s what we both sell, right? A bride’s dreams, plucked from her mind and brought to life in fabric.”
Hooking arms with Mr. Anderson, she walked with him along the beach and spun the tale of a woman who loved being a bride so much, she’d created wedding dress after wedding dress to celebrate that bright, brief moment when all eyes were on the most beautiful woman in the room.
And when it was Nick Anderson’s turn to talk, he smiled. “You’ve hooked me. What will it take to get your designs in my stores?”
“Well, my stars. You flatter me,” Cara drawled to cover the hitch in her throat. And she only wished it was because she’d just been handed a golden opportunity.
But that was secondary to the intense desire to leap into Keith’s embrace and tell him she’d done it. She wanted him to kiss her and say how proud he was.
Instead, she smiled through the twinge pulling at her heart. “Let’s get down to business, shall we, Mr. Anderson?”
* * *
Keith watched Cara stroll off with a man entirely too well put together to be trusted. And she was still wearing her long white dress. It was the same one she’d been wearing that first day, when he’d accosted her in the pavilion during the fashion show run-through—on purpose because he’d wanted to catch her off guard.
Of course, he’d been the one flattened.
She’d been just as stunning then as she was now and always had been. The white dress with the high collar and clean lines only heightened her lush beauty, as if she’d been born to wear that exact dress as she walked down the aisle toward a besotted groom. They’d promise to love each other forever and the poor dimwit would whisk her away to a honeymoon at a resort like this one, where they’d hardly venture out of their suite because they were too wrapped up in each other.
Maybe her groom wouldn’t be this too-carefully dressed expo guest, but she’d marry someone eventually.
Jealously—big, green and ugly—flared in Keith’s gut, and he did not care for it any more than the sharp longing and utter confusion Cara had provoked the moment she’d stepped out on that stage.
