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The notion planted itself in his chest and spread. Cara was in love with him. For real, this time. She wouldn’t have told Meredith if it wasn’t true.
Meredith shook her head with a grunt of disgust. “I take it back. I don’t like you. You’re a moron and Cara can do much better. You deserve to spend the rest of your life alone. Good luck with that.”
Mahogany hair flying, Meredith turned her back on Keith and stomped off through a sea of wedding professionals socializing on the beach.
Keith’s gaze lit on Cara and her friend as they stood talking near the shoreline. Their faces fuzzed under his scrutiny and his own face superimposed itself over that of the man standing by the woman Keith had held in his arms last night. The woman he’d walked away from once again because he couldn’t do what she wanted.
No, he’d refused to do what she wanted. Refused to even consider the possibility that marriage could be something other than a cold union designed to give a woman a life of luxury. Maybe it was like that with some people. Maybe it would have been that way with the Cara he’d almost married the first time.
But everything was different now. She was different. And he’d skipped right over the possibility that marriage could be something else. Cara had never even given him a chance to figure out what their relationship could be, just waltzed out the door and didn’t even bother to tell him something so important as the fact that she’d fallen in love with him.
And hearing it from Meredith instead of Cara was unacceptable. She owed him an explanation for how she’d figured out something so monumental.
Suddenly he had a perverse need to hear it from Cara’s own lips.
“Mr. Mitchell.” One of the groundskeepers launched into a question about the mock wedding setup that Keith barely heard.
“Excuse me.” Keith stepped around the uniformed man, leaving him hanging midsentence, and strode across the sand with nary a thought for his best Italian shoes.
He crashed Cara’s little party with the same amount of remorse—none.
“Keith Mitchell.” He stuck his hand out and sized up the man as they shook. He was too pretty, too well dressed and too short for Cara.
And their conversation was over.
“Come with me, Cara,” Keith said shortly and drank in the luminous vision in white, so beautiful, his lungs hitched.
“I’m a little busy,” she responded just as shortly. “Can’t it wait?”
No. It couldn’t. And he was this close to picking her up and throwing her over his shoulder to take her somewhere private so she could explain right now why she could tell Meredith about her feelings but not Keith. He wanted to hear her say she loved him and then he could figure out what to do about it.
That’s when he actually read the guy’s name tag. The word buyer leaped out and whacked him upside the head. This must be the source of Cara’s good news. And he’d intruded like a jealous lover.
Well...he kind of was a jealous lover. And he deserved every bit of the heat in Cara’s glare.
“It can wait.” Keith nodded to the man who was likely offering Cara the business proposition she’d mentioned. “Sorry I intruded. Cara, text me when you’re free. Meet me in my office.”
“Sure. See you later,” she said and shifted her gaze pointedly. Go away. It wasn’t hard to interpret.
Morosely, Keith cooled his heels in his office for a solid thirty minutes, holding his phone like a lifeline, shaking it occasionally. Still no text messages.
But he did get three phone calls from Mary asking his opinion about the mock wedding setup and all Keith could tell her was to use her best judgment. Mary’s return comment summed it up.
“You should keep Cara around permanently. That woman knows brides.”
She did. And she knew that she wanted to be one. Keith had bad-mouthed marriage for the past week, so of course she’d bailed on him. Yeah, he was a moron. Cara hadn’t told him she’d fallen in love because he hadn’t given her any reason to.
Just as he hadn’t given her any reason to meet him in his office. She wasn’t coming. And he couldn’t blame her.
If he hoped to salvage anything from this debacle he’d made of their relationship, he needed to go big or go home. It was time to turn around the one thing he’d resisted thus far—himself. Mitchell the Missile had a very worthy target to hit.
And if he wanted to hear from Cara’s lips that she loved him, he probably needed to admit he’d fallen in love with her, too. Out loud. To her.
