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“Yes. Five bedrooms. Why?”
“What if I go with you for a few days? I’ll take my laptop. Sometimes a change of scenery is good for creativity.”
She cocked her head and studied him. It stood to reason that he would be delighted to have her out from underfoot, his bachelor solitude undisturbed. “Oh. My. Gosh,” she said, disgusted. “Jason made you promise to keep an eye on me, didn’t he?”
Harry’s cheekbones flushed, but he didn’t say a word. He just stared at her.
Cate sighed. “I give you full dispensation. I won’t go into a decline or take a bottle of sleeping pills, I swear.”
Harry shot to attention, his posture rigid and angry. “Don’t joke about it, Cate. If I thought that was even a remote possibility, I’d never let you out of this house.”
“Sorry,” she muttered. “My bad. But seriously, you don’t have to babysit me. Why would you want to go to Blossom Branch?”
“I could see my mother,” he said, his voice mild now.
She gaped. “You have a mother?”
“Everyone has a mother, Cate, even me.”
Eight
They ended up leaving town in the worst of Friday afternoon traffic.
“I’m sorry,” Cate said when they slowed to a halt on the 285 connector for the third time in forty-five minutes. “I guess we should have gone tomorrow.”
Harry rubbed the back of his neck. “I know better. But we were both eager to get on the road.”
It was true. They had each packed a suitcase in record time and tumbled into Harry’s elegant luxury sedan. For a split second, the memories of riding in this car on her wedding day intruded, but Cate pushed them away, determined to enjoy the trip.
Harry shot her a sideways glance. “Will your grandparents be okay with me sharing the house with you?”
Cate frowned. “I don’t see why not. Years ago, Blossom Branch was a hotbed of gossip, but lots of new people have moved to the area. Except for the immediate neighbors, I doubt anyone will notice we’re in town.”
The trip passed mostly in silence. Cate couldn’t decide if that was because the radio was on and they were enjoying the music, or whether Harry had purposely turned on the music to avoid awkward silences.
There was no getting around the fact that except for Jason, the two of them had little in common.
Even so, Cate found herself feeling happy. The emotion was such an anomaly given the past week that she had to poke and prod at it to see if it was real.
If she let herself think about Jason and the wedding, her warm feeling of contentment faded quickly.
She missed him.
But was she heartbroken? She couldn’t tell.
Hurt? Yes. Humiliated? Yes. Humbled by the depth and width of her mistakes? Yes.
But heartbroken?
It was hard to say. And because the not knowing made her uneasy, she avoided the topic.
Blossom Branch was eighty miles northeast of Atlanta give or take. The longer they drove, the odder it seemed to be sharing this relatively short trip with Harry. Something about inhabiting the confines of a car with another person was intimate. You were breathing the same air. Sitting close.
Eventually, she picked up her phone out of habit and checked Instagram. Her mood plummeted a few minutes later when she scrolled past a post that made her gasp. Quickly, she dropped her phone into her purse on the floor of the car and wrapped her arms around her waist. As she stared out the side window, her chest ached with familiar despair. Is this who she was now? The poor little rich girl who got what she deserved for daring to have a splashy wedding?
Harry was not as disengaged as she thought. Even though she believed she was covering her emotions, he barked out a question. “What’s wrong?”
She swallowed hard. “Nothing.”
