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Approaching her again, her little head tilted at an unnatural angle as she tracked my movements, I knelt in front of her and said, “Paw.”
She lifted her right leg, setting her paw in my hand.
I gave it a shake, then, “Other one”
Skye obeyed, and I rewarded her with the treat, which she devoured in one crunch of her teeth and one big swallow.
Then she trotted off to curl up in the dog bed I’d bought her a few weeks ago, and Cal heaved his load of groceries into the kitchen.
“I bought some stuff to make soup for dinner,” he said, answering my question from minutes ago at last. “It’s not Ezra’s cooking, but…”
“It’ll be perfect,” I said earnestly, my heart squeezing as I considered his thoughtfulness.
I was struck then by how wrong I’d been about this man. But then again, maybe I hadn’t been that wrong at all.
The night we met, I’d been drawn to him in a way I couldn’t quite put words to. Even now, over five years later, I didn’t think I could accurately explain it. It was just…there—some invisible string tying us together, pulling us in, connecting us in a way I’d never experienced with anyone else before. He’d once told me it felt like he had a tether around his chest, dragging him toward me, and it was an apt description. Truthfully, I’d never anticipated that I’d find this, find the same kind of happiness and bone deep contentment as my parents or Chloe and Logan.
Figured Calvin Ryder would be the one to prove me wrong.
Cal moved around my kitchen as though he’d been preparing meals in there for years instead of only a few months. The way he commanded the space was so sexy, and I could easily picture endless nights and mornings just like this one, where he cooked for me while I sat at the island with a glass of wine and we talked about our days, or when I cooked for him and he sipped a beer and studied me in that quiet way of his.
I let the comfortable silence between us stretch as he chopped vegetables and prepared the soup base, unwilling to pop the bubble quite yet.
But, eventually, I could no longer hold my tongue.
“So…Amie,” I said slowly.
Cal, whose back was to me, stiffened at her name, and I winced. My intention was never to hurt him or dredge up painful memories, but if we were together now, if we were making a serious go at this whole relationship thing, I deserved to know.
Didn’t I?
With a sigh, he lowered the heat on the stove to a simmer and turned toward me.
“What about her?”
Half expecting him to launch into some story about how she wasn’t important and it was in the past, his question surprised me. Like he was giving me free reign to pry as deep as I wanted, to ask whatever questions came to my mind.
So I spit out the first one I could think of.
“What happened with the engagement?”
“There never was an engagement,” he said. “I asked, she said no. That was the end of it.”
The space between us went quiet. I was…shocked. That Amie had this man on a knee, offering to spend his life with her, and had turned him down was unimaginable.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly.
I was equally surprised when he opened his mouth and the entire story poured out. How they’d met not long after he’d moved to the area, shortly after Amie had bought the hotel. It used to have a tiny little cafe in the lobby that she’d since converted into a luxury gift shop for guests, and apparently they’d caught each other’s eyes the first time Cal had gone there for lunch.
“It was…easy with her,” he said, offering me an apologetic smile that I understood.
Nothing betweenushad ever been easy, but I honestly wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Then why did she say no?”
“That just wasn’t something she wanted,” he said with a little shrug, though the brief flash of pain across his eyes belied the gesture. “She wasn’t interested in the whole wedding ordeal, the kids, the house on the water. She was happy the way things were between us, and I couldn’t—” He paused, swallowing hard. “I want all those things, Mar. A family of my own. To build a life with someone.”
I knew that about him thanks to endless nights of pillow talk in which he’d filled me in on his upbringing. The older parents who weren’t sure what to do with him, this precocious, curious, too-smart-for-his-own-damn-good little boy who had a heart too big for his chest. The kids at school who didn’t really understand him. How he’d never really felt like he belonged until he moved away to college and started meeting new people outside of the same ones he’d known in his small town his entire life.
