Page 28 of Yours to Keep

Liana was easy to talk to, warm without being nosy, and funny without even trying. It was also nice, or maybe comforting was the more accurate term, to have found someone at the hospital who knew Sullivan well and didn’t seem terrified of him. She’d said she’d worked with him for years and she’d busted into his office like they were old friends.

Never hurts to have an ally like that.

At six forty-five, I grabbed my jacket and headed out, humming along to the radio as I drove. The bakery Liana had asked me to meet her at was one of those trendy places with a brick exterior, big windows, and warm light spilling out onto the sidewalk.

I’d been wanting to check it out for ages, and I was happy to do it while helping a new friend make some decisions for her big day. I climbed out of the car and walked up to the bakery, my mouth already watering at the thought of tiers of frosting and tiny forks.

When I reached the sidewalk, I spotted Liana through the window. She was standing near the counter laughing with someone and my gaze swept automatically to that side, curious about her fiancé. The man she was with wore a tailored coat, his sandy hair perfectly in place and his posture militarily rigid even in a bakery after hours.

Sullivan Crowne. What the… Logically, I knew it was him, but my brain refused to process it at first. No. Nope. That makes no sense.

It couldn’t be him and yet, when I took another step closer to the glass, he reached for a fork and Liana slapped his hand away, smiling and rolling her eyes when he said something. He smirked, that infuriating, confident smirk I’d seen in the conference room, and my stomach dropped so hard, I was surprised it didn’t crack the sidewalk.

“Oh,” I whispered.

Oh shit.

Sullivan Crowne, my sworn enemy, was my new friend’s fiancé, and I’d promised to go cake tasting with them. As I stared at the scene unfolding in front of me, the two of them laughing and clearly joking around with one another, I felt dizzy, betrayed, and hilariously doomed.

It felt like I’d been dropped into an alternate version of reality, but I’d promised her I’d be here. Which meant I now had to choose between flaking on a girl I truly liked or spending the evening with the absolute worst person in the world.

I just had no idea which would be worse.

12

SULLIVAN

Iwas at the bakery because my sister had insisted I come with her. She’d framed it as support, quality sibling time, and an off-handed I need you because my fiancé bailed.

Another last-minute cancellation for another work emergency apparently, which made this the third time he’d missed something wedding-related. For that reason and that reason only, I was glad I’d been able to come. Otherwise, she would have been alone and that wouldn’t have been fair to her.

It was, however, taking a lot more to keep my mouth shut than it had before, but I didn’t say what I was thinking because if I did, I’d have to tell her that I had my doubts about the guy she was marrying. Plenty of them, rampant and raging just below the surface.

But Liana swore he was a good man and that they loved each other. She insisted the constant work crises were just temporary, her excuse always the same, delivered with a shrug and an easy, “He’s just really busy. You get that, don’t you?”

I did get that. Busy was a language I spoke fluently and yet I always showed up. Even when it meant sitting around a small round table in a bakery that smelled aggressively like sugar and vanilla. I accepted a glass of wine I didn’t want and nodded while the baker explained buttercream versus mousse like it was a TED Talk.

I was bored out of my skull, but I was here. Unlike her fiancé, who would be the one actually feeding her this damn cake on their big day.

When the door opened, I was staring into space pretending to listen, but then I caught a glimpse of the person who had just walked in from the corner of my eye and my brain glitched.

That was the only way to describe it. My body was suddenly throwing up a system error, the screen frozen, and it felt like the mental equivalent of having to pull the plug and plugging it back in again.

For a split second, I was convinced I’d imagined her, stress and lack of sleep finally having scrambled something important. But when I refocused, there she was, stopped just inside the door with her eyes flicking around the bakery until they landed on me.

What the hell is Bree doing here?

Her face did something complicated as she held my gaze, horror and possibly regret ghosting across those pretty features. Absurd, irrational satisfaction surged through me, but Liana lit up when she noticed her. “Bree, you made it!”

My sister rushed over and pulled her into a hug that would make any bystander think they were longtime friends, like this wasn’t the woman who had declared war on my hospital with baked goods and, potentially, office phone numbers.

“You look great,” Liana said. “I’m so glad you came.”

Bree laughed, but the sound was a little tight. “I, uh. Yeah. Thanks again for inviting me.”

When her gaze drifted across my sister’s shoulder and landed back on mine, the fire I was used to seeing in her eyes wasn’t there. No challenge. No sharp retort waiting on her tongue. Just awkwardness and hesitation.

Interesting.