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“Me too,” she murmured, selecting a brush from the mason jar beside her work sink. “Me too.”
“I should have come up there myself.”
Her hand froze, the brush submerged in a pool of red paint. “Why didn’t you? If you thought it was so important to keep me from picking up a guy, why didn’t you come yourself?”
“You wouldn’t have listened to me,” she said.
“Because I barely know you anymore.” Lucia lifted the brush to the canvas. “You never even mentioned your best friend or your dog.”
“I’m trying to give you space. I wanted you to rebuild your life free from the past,” her sister said. “Those families, even the well-meaning ones, they stripped away our voice in our own lives.”
“We were kids,” Lucia countered. “It was their job to be the parent.”
“But they weren’t our parents,” Natalie said, enunciating each word as if she needed someone to hear and understand her. “They didn’t love us.”
“I miss them, too. Mom and Dad.” Lucia glanced up. The painting Cade had asked about last night, the one where each brushstroke expressed just how much she missed her parents, hung on her wall. “But I love you, Natalie. And I always will.”
“Forgive me?”
“Yes,” she said. “But I might not tell you where I’m going the next time I decide to take a vacation. And one day, I’ll get you back. I’m not sure how, but I’ll find a way.”
“I’ve given up on men, so if you’re thinking about sending a friend to California to seduce me, it won’t work.”
Lucia gave a mock sigh. “Then I’ll have to think of something else.”
“There’s one more thing. And remember that you just promised to love me forever,” her sister said quickly.
“Natalie—”
“Cade called and asked for your address in Tennessee.”
“And you gave it to him?”
“After what happened, he owes you flowers and chocolates at the very least,” Natalie insisted.
“We said our good-byes,” Lucia insisted. “Cade doesn’t owe me anything.”
Except the one thing he can’t give me—a future together built on love and trust.
“After lying to you? We both owe you a lot more than chocolate,” Natalie said. “I wanted to let you know so you weren’t wondering how he got your information. I know it might seem hard to believe right now, but he really is a good guy.”
“I kn
ow,” Lucia said. “Not everything was a lie.”
“He cares about you. He wouldn’t go anywhere near a spa if he didn’t.”
“The spa wasn’t exactly the first example that came to mind.” Lucia swiped her brush over the canvas.
“Spare me the details. The idea of my sister and my best friend…I don’t want to think about it.” The dog began barking in the background. “I need to take Mufasa out before I head to work. Talk to you soon?”
“Yes.”
After ending the call, Lucia returned to her canvas, determined to paint one last memory of her Navy SEAL before she locked him in the past. She raised her brush—
And the doorbell rang.
Cade.
