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“No.”
“There you go, then. Stop over-thinking this thing and let yourself live in the moment for once. He’s going to be working half the time anyway, so just go with him and have fun.” She lifted the last bite of cupcake as she looked at Roxanna. “Don’t you agree?”
Honor’s pulse picked up speed as she waited for the brunette’s response.
“Yeah, definitely.”
The indifferent agreement didn’t settle Honor’s anxiety, but Mae didn’t seem to notice as she rose to her feet and picked up her coffee. “See? And if you ask me, I think you should skydive, too.”
“Well, I didn’t ask you.”
She grinned and headed for the door. “Let me know when you’re leaving.”
After the chimes faded back to harmonious flutes, Honor met Roxanna’s somber gaze. Her stomach flipped over as she asked, “What do you really think?”
“Skydiving could be fun.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
Roxanna’s soft sigh confirmed she did. “I think…if you’re in this…relationship with the expectation it’s going to end, then you’ll find a reason to end it. That doesn’t seem fair to Asher or you.”
After a moment, Honor realized she was right. It wasn’t fair to him at all. She didn’t want to get hurt, but hurting him would be worse. Letting this thing between them go too far would be much worse.
The voice in her head tried to speak it was far too late, but she drowned it out with a goodbye to Roxanna and turned up the radio on her way home.
CHAPTER 30
A sher unpacked cartons of Chinese take-out on his coffee table and glanced at Honor sitting to his right on the couch. She’d appeared apprehensive when she first arrived, but then she’d melted into his kiss hello in that way that always melted his heart. Yet, once again, when she stepped away, something seemed to shift, and it had felt like an end to more than their kiss.
Unease formed a knot in the pit of his stomach that refused to go away. Everything had been going great, especially the past couple of days. This mornin
g, they’d slept in and then snuggled in her bed with coffee and croissants. They’d parted with a long, lingering kiss…so, what had changed from then to now?
“Everything okay?” he asked carefully.
She shot him a quick sideways smile while reaching for chopsticks and a carton of chicken and broccoli. “Fine. How was the shoot?”
Last thing he wanted to talk about right now was work when she wouldn’t look him in the eye. “Same old routine. I can’t wait for next week.”
Her fingers tightened on her chopsticks, and he recalled Roxanna’s earlier text. Don’t push too hard. When she’d refused to elaborate, he’d been stuck wracking his brain as to what she meant. Honor’s texts through the day had seemed normal, but what could really be judged from texts?
Seeing her tension now at the mere mention of the Wyoming trip, he was pretty sure he’d figured out what not to push too hard about. “Speaking of next week,” he began.
“I can’t go,” she blurted out. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” He forced himself to sit back casually with his food when he really wanted to take her hands and kiss her and seduce her into saying yes. The tactic had worked well the past few weeks whenever he sensed her head getting in the way of her heart. “If you don’t want to go, you don’t have to go. It’s not that big of a deal.”
Her gaze met his for a long second, then shifted away. “It’s just that even though I don’t have a wedding cake client, I still need to make cupcakes for Roxanna’s. I need the sales to make up the difference from the cancellations so I can make my house payment. And I need to start figuring out a way to drum up some more bookings, or I won’t be living here very long.”
At first he was thinking about her over-justifying saying no when he’d already more than let her off the hook, but then the very last part registered. He hadn’t realized her budget was so tight. “Do you need help? Because I can—”
She jerked her head up, resentment blazing in her eyes.
Shit. Wrong thing to say.
“I don’t want your money, Asher. I don’t need a man to bail me out.”
“I didn’t mean it that way.” Confusion and frustration swirled inside his chest, and he scrambled for a substitute solution that wouldn’t piss her off and offend her independence. “I was going to say, I could put together a brochure for you, like the one for the climbing school. You could use them for promo.”
