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Sully threw Hue a vicious look.
“You and Alanna still on the outs?” Theo looked apologetic. “Then, uh, you might want to rethink your help. I just hired her to be my PR rep. She’s the one behind the relaunch.”
Sully’s heart froze in his chest.
“I thought she was going back to Los Angeles,” Hue said, putting one of Sully’s million questions into words.
Theo shrugged. “She can still represent me from Los Angeles. The Internet exists, you know.”
“Aren’t you too small-fry for her?” Hue prodded. “I’m pretty sure she only represents companies with at least seven zeros on their balance sheets.”
“She seems, I don’t know… different,” Theo said thoughtfully. “She wants me as a paying client, eventually, but it’s more than that. I think she loves this place almost as much as I do.”
“Hmmm.” Hue threw back the final gulp of his beer while Sully struggled to process this new information. “Guess the ice queen has a heart after all.”
*
Some time later, Sully found himself sitting on his couch staring at his wall. He possessed vague memories of riding home in Hue’s truck, of his friend grumbling about Jeopardy, and of Janet laying her head on his lap, leaving a keepsake drool stain on his jeans.
And then he was home. How long had he been staring at the wall while Theo’s Alanna-related bombshells ricocheted in his brain?
Didn’t matter.
Whatdidmatter was the realization dawning. He’d made a mistake. Such a fucking epic mistake. It wasn’t just the terrible accusations he’d slung at Alanna during the arbitration hearing. No, he’d screwed up even worse. He’d assumed that Los Angeles was the end of their relationship. Like it was some gulf they couldn’t possibly cross.
But why?
Michelle. His first love hadn’t cared enough to try and make their relationship work across state lines. But—and here’s what had to be the world’s most monumentally dumba-hamoment—Alanna wasn’t Michelle.
Sully had assumed that when Alanna decided to return to Los Angeles, she was choosing her career over him. But had she said that? He racked his brain.
Nope. They’d never even had a discussion about it. He’d been so blindly focused on trying to convince her to stay in Yucca Hills, he hadn’t even broached the topic of what their relationship could look like if she moved back to LA.
“Oh God,” Sully said out loud. He’d been so selfish, trying to get Alanna to stay when that wasn’t what she really wanted. He’d been so scared that a few hours of distance between them would mean she didn’t want to be with him. And then at that fiasco of an arbitration hearing, he’d said those poisonous, cruel words,The woman is incapable of caring for anyone but herself.
“Meow?” Sheba leapt gracefully onto the couch. She walked to Sully’s lap, planting her dainty paws on his thigh as her puffy tail swished across his face.
Oh right, and he’d sorta stolen her cat.
“Meow?” Sheba asked again. Right, it was feather time. Sully would swing the feather toy and Sheba would put every ounce of her soul into destroying it. But he couldn’t move.
He had to apologize. That much was clear. Hell, he should have apologized—no, groveled—a week ago. If he apologized now, would it be enough?
No. Sully remembered the unexpected hurt in Alanna’s blue eyes as she’d slid the rhinestone collar across the table. That collar now twinkled on Sheba’s neck.
Sully stroked Sheba’s head, and she rubbed her cheek across his hand. From his research, Sully knew cats had special scent glands in their cheeks, and this was her way of claiming him.
“What am I going to do?” he whispered to the cat.
The answer came, and the weight of it almost crushed his ribs.
“Meow?” Sheba jumped off his lap and head-butted the ottoman where he kept the cat toys out of her shredding grasp. She turned around and jumped back on the couch giving him a look that said,It’s playtime. Do I need to spell it out for you, human?
“Sheba,” Sully said softly, his voice catching in his throat. “I’m so glad you came into my life. I wish I could be your guardian forever, but…”Damn. She was just a cat. It shouldn’t be this hard. It didn’t matter that he’d spent so many hours working with her, learning all her moods, what every flick of her tail meant.
Sheba seemed to sense his mood. She flopped down next to him on the couch and stared up at him with her ice-blue eyes.
Sully didn’t know if Alanna would ever forgive him for his words. If she might be willing to grant him another chance. It didn’t matter. He knew what he had to do, regardless of how much it hurt him.
