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Maybe he was healing.
“Really, Temperance?” he said.
She put a hand on his knee. “God, I’m so sorry, Harry.”
“You’re an asshole.” His tone was dry.
“It’s true. I am ashamed,” Temperance said theatrically. After a beat, she asked, “Does she know about Nicola?”
Harry fidgeted with a loose thread on the cuff of his sleeve. “Yes.”
“Does she knoweverythingabout Nicola?” she pressed.
“Nicola has been out of my life for a long time, you know that. She isn’t relevant.”
“Rowan might not share that opinion, Harry.” Temperance’s expression was guarded. “You should consider giving her the full story.”
“It’s not—ah, we’re not in a place where it would make sense for me to bring it up. But I’ll figure it out.”
At first, he’d kept the details of his relationship with Nicola to himself because of Rowan’s dogged insistence on “casual.” But now—his reticence was simple fucking cowardice. He couldn’t bear for Rowan to use Nicola as ammunition in her crusade to prove that relationships—and love—never lasted.
“Be patient with her,” Temperance said. “You know what a disaster Noah was.”
“Wait.” Harry dropped his voice when he noticed Nate flick his eyes upward at him in the rearview mirror. “Who the hell is Noah?” he whispered.
Temperance slouched low, and her ears turned pink. “She hasn’t told you about Noah?”
“No, Temperance, she hasn’t told me about anyone named Noah.” Just saying the other man’s name made his throat close.
“Shit, Harry, I’d just assumed—since she knew about Nicola…,” she trailed off.
Harry groaned and leaned forward to press his forehead into the back of Nate’s headrest.
Temperance leaned over to put her face close to his. She whispered, “Look. I love you both, and I want the best for you. You two are the best. It’s easy math. But Noah is a very sensitive subject, and I amnotequipped to be the one to tell you about him.”
He sat straight. “It’s fine. Forget it.”
Harry had enough pride left—and respected Rowan’s privacy enough—that he didn’t press for more details. Hell, he should’ve assumed there had been someone else. Someone who’d skewed Rowan’s perception of love. But she’d exiled any backstory behind a doorless wall. Noah was as forbidden of a topic for her as Nicola was for him.
And anyway, it didn’t change how he felt about her. If anything, it made him crave access to her even more.
“She’s the most incredible person I’ve ever met, T.J.”
Temperance dug a sharp knuckle into his leg. “Damn it, I thought that was me?”
“You had the title, until you made that shitty comment about bleeding out a few minutes ago,” he said.
She smiled gently and patted his leg. “That’s fair.”
THE WEDDING WASan evening ceremony in the lobby of the mountain lodge. Rustic wooden chairs sat in an intimate cluster around a granite fireplace, decorated with boughs of evergreen threaded with tiny lights. The huge crystalline chandeliers hanging from the slanted ceiling were an opulent contrast to the rustic exposed beams. Creamy sherbet light from the sunset lit the lobby through the wall of windows on either side of the fireplace.
Harry had spent the day with Patrick’s other groomsmen, sequestered in a wing of the lodge opposite Mercedes’s attendants. He hadn’t seen Rowan since their hushed conversation in the library that morning. Now, as he took his place beside his brothers at the front of the crowd, he looked for her.
She wasn’t difficult to find. Her bright hair shone like a lighthouse beacon on a dark sea. Harry felt his nervous system stammer, stop, then reboot back to life too keenly aware, too potent. Too everything.
He was used to seeing her in tattered old jeans, and her shabby, patched-knee overalls. In flannels, sweatshirts, or her threadbare T-shirts with the silly plant puns. Tonight, though—the champagne-gold dress she wore accentuated every curve and dip of her body, leaving her luscious arms, shoulders, and collarbones bare. Freckles adorned her skin in lieu of jewelry. Her curls were twisted in an elaborate knot at the back of her head. As she turned her head to watch the last attendant come down the aisle, he had an unrestricted view of her neck and the elegant shape of her jawline.
Harry wanted to break away from the wedding party and kiss her mindless in front of his friends and family. He didn’t even try to hide that he was staring. When the audience stood for Mercedes’s processional, the violin soloist began an achingly slow rendition of “Can’t Help Falling in Love.”
