The Sweetest Fling (A Stupid Cupid Book) (9 page)

Yes, so he’d heard all his life. Better and longer, because that’s what mothers did. To his mother, he only smiled and rolled his eyes a bit.

Tyler motioned him over. “Why did Mom know you were coming?” he asked, pulling out a chair for him as Cody, their nephew, clamored for a hug.

“Where’s your daddy?” Jace asked Cody, the spitting image of Davis, right down to the dimples. When Cody didn’t answer, he directed the question to Tyler.

“Davis has a late shift tonight, so Cody gets to sleep over,” Helen answered from the stove in singsong tones.

Jace didn’t ask about Cody’s mom. Gini, the waitress Davis seduced at Lawrence and Ashley’s wedding ran off more than two years ago, and every time he recalled it his heart ached for the sweet little boy.

“So?” Tyler said.

Damn. He’d hoped he’d forgotten his question, even if he hadn’t. Would things be different today if Tyler had made it to lunch yesterday?

“Jace introduced me to Belinda yesterday,” Helen chimed in, as his dad came over and kissed Jace’s forehead.

“How’s my boy?” his dad said.

“Good,” Jace said to his dad. “Bels,” he said to Tyler, loud enough for his mother to hear the correction. Why he still felt the need to was another matter entirely.

Tyler’s eyebrows rose to appropriately high heights as he nodded and flipped a thumbs-up.

“And now he’s here to find out what I thought about her.” Helen Fletcher was nothing if not politely direct. “But he should know better. He wants to know what I saw with my own two eyes, that he should already know, and doesn’t really want me pointing out.”

Jace was hard pressed not to turn and gauge his mom’s expression. What exactly did Helen Fletcher mean by that? Had she recognized the awkward sparks flying between him and Claire?

Not that he would ask, or ever find out.

Tyler began serving the moment the food hit the table, but otherwise kept pretty quiet. Jace wondered what their mom had told Tyler, and about whom. Someone had better tell Tyler about seeing Claire. And it wouldn’t be Jace.

“Eventful day, huh?”

Shit. Tyler knew. Three little words, and Jace knew that
Tyler
knew that Claire had been the event of the day. He nodded and filled his plate.

His belly quaked to a new level of dread. It would all come crashing down if he didn’t handle things just so. Never mind his broken heart resurfacing or the intermittent itch to call Claire, to find her, and demand some answers. Never mind all that. He had a brother he’d almost betrayed to worry about. Plus, a pretty wonderful girlfriend to consider. A girlfriend who had picked up on his attraction to Claire.

Hard.

Claire would have to wait.

Wait? What was he doing even thinking that the only ghost of his dark past would ever be seen or heard from again, let alone available and willing to explain all those unreturned phone calls. To explain the letter. The most gut-wrenching, sweet, sincere, and final love letter imaginable. No, stupid! Not the letter, either.

A pile of peas sat on his fork, and Cody was looking at him to see if he’d eat them. If he didn’t, Cody would announce it. Then Tyler, or worse, his mother, would suspect he was not here to find out how well his mom had liked Bels.

He felt terrible for it, but really didn’t care what his mom thought about Bels. And that was a huge change. This was only the third girl his mom had ever met and the other two had not stacked up well. But, that had been fine. Bels was the first who he really wanted his mom to care about.

Bels was the first woman who had come close to making him feel like Claire did.

Until one chance meeting unraveled all his neatly tied knots covering up the past, hiding a longing that never went away.

Jace put the peas in his mouth and grinned at Cody. Yummy. The kid wasn’t buying it. Jace wasn’t much for faking it right now, though. He should be. Missing Claire had become like wearing a watch, but the watch was gone. Jace still felt it there, and checked it for the time.

Claire. She’d always been there. To compare other women to, to miss, to rage over, to love. After so many years, he’d come to believe he was in love with an idea more than the actual woman. Had decided it was an easy excuse to hold back, to never fully commit to another woman. Jace wasn’t scared that Claire might call up, show up, and beg for him back.

“Uncle Jathe,” Cody asked. “Do you like puppieth?”

Clearly, he wasn’t ready for Bels. If he were, seeing Claire would not have affected him so drastically. He would have been able to keep his mind on the conversation instead of wondering if Claire tasted as good she looked. Did she taste like vanilla? “I do. Dogs are great.”

“Dogs are a very big responsibility, Cody,” Helen said, cutting a piece of chicken down to smaller, bite-size pieces. “Once you have one, you have to keep him, even if he chews up your favorite toy.”

“Thath okay. He could have all my toyth.”

Jace hid a grin in his napkin and coughed. He pushed his half-empty plate away.

Tyler turned to him. “Hey, did you see my new car?”

He’d seen it. Fifty or so times already. But he recognized the hint. He wanted to talk, the way they always did.

“I wanna thee it,” Cody said.

Jace almost said yes.

“Not until you finish your peas, young man,” Helen said.

Saved by the mom.

Jace followed Tyler out as dishes clanked and water hushed the air. Cody almost followed anyhow, but Helen grabbed him in time to save them, making Jace love her even more. She knew her children too well, but in the best way.

“How did she look?” Tyler said, his hands inside the back pockets of his jeans. He stared at the Arizona sunset blazing orange across the sky.

His chest stabbed. “She looked great.” Another pang. “Her hair is longer, but she looks the same.” He left out “unbelievable” and “perfect.”

Tyler looked down at his feet for a long time. “Did she ask about me?”

Jace fought to recall the details through the blur of emotion. “Yeah. She did. Mom told her about how awesome you’re doing.” Jace folded his arms. “Did Mom tell you she’s getting married?”

He nodded slightly, kicked the dirt with his shoe. “I don’t know why I miss her so much.”

Jace almost puked. “Because you loved her,” he said simply, the words being as much of a struggle for Tyler as it was for himself. “Because no one has come along since that made you feel the same or better.”

Tyler looked at him. His eyes were shining. “Yeah, I guess.” He looked back to the sunset. “Do you think she felt the same? Do you think I’m the one that got away?”

Jace swallowed, but the tightness didn’t ease in her throat. “I hope so.” And he meant it. For both of them. It would be so much easier if Claire had never returned Jace’s feelings.

He didn’t really know what to hope for. To never see her again? Would it help? How could he turn cold to Bels so suddenly, based on one glimpse of an unreachable dream?

He wanted to ask Tyler, to lay it all out and ask his brother to help him find a way back to the person he was yesterday morning—carefree, worried about nothing more than Bels impressing his mom, excited. In love.

He didn’t know where to begin, or how to form the words yet. So, he sat on the front steps with Tyler, silent, until darkness stole the sun and pink turned to cobalt. And he slept in his bed alone, telling himself things would look better come the morning.

They didn’t.

~~

Chapter Ten

“I stare at the ceiling,” Claire said, over her latte straw.

“So you’re self-diagnosing with sudden onset insomnia.” Beverly didn’t sound skeptical as much as amused. The beads on the ends of her braids clicked with the bob of her head. “Definitely not just jitters?”

“I wish. Seriously, I haven’t slept in a week. I’m just not tired. Oliver snores next to me, legs sprawled. And I lie there.” At first she’d blamed the whole Trina disaster for the change, an easy enough conclusion, considering the light she now saw Oliver in.

They’d managed to calm down enough to talk, to decide the wedding was on. That Oliver would have to get over his one wish.

But as the days passed and she busied her mind with the firm, with taking on cases and her workdays grew into nights, it became clear. She was avoiding her fiancé. But not because of Trina.

There was only so much she was willing to say aloud to Beverly about that night, so she stuck to the rest. Oliver bringing Trina home had been bizarre and offensive—but not once did she feel jealous. Even now, imagining Trina after her man didn’t bother her.

She almost wished for it.

“What about Oliver? How is he acting?” Beverly blew on her tea. The noise of the café’s afternoon crowd hummed around them.

“He’s been sweet. Cuddly, romantic.” He was trying to reassure her, she supposed. He’d lie close each night, talk wedding stuff, the honeymoon, and the life that they would create together. To her, though, it felt like he was prepping for closing arguments.

“It all seems sweet and wonderful and ... unreal. Not unreal like surreal, but unreal like unrealistic,” Claire said, plowing on, needing to say the words. “Like it might not ever happen.”

How could one moment reverse her life so instantly? Well, not reverse exactly. More like shift. Unalterably, but in a way that it didn’t feel foreign or strange or changed. Visible was what it was. As though she had been living the last six years sideways, and someone had come along and righted her shoulders and chin, and she was able to see ahead clearly rather than peripherally.

“Sounds like jitters to me,” Beverly said. “Cold feet.”

A change, for sure. But she no longer recognized the previous vision for her life. Oliver wasn’t the sweet, hold-her-and-talk-to-her type, but he had been lately. Did he sense it, too? Had the same shift had happened to him?

Doubtful.

“How do I get them warm again?”

So much was on the line. The wedding. Their families bonded at the hip. Her new job at his dad’s firm. Not marrying Oliver wasn’t an option.

Why was Oliver able to share her with anyone, let alone a woman? A freakish vision of the two of them twenty years down the road, exchanging house keys with some other attractive and affluent couple, tormented her. Was she that wife? Was he that husband?

Did she care?

“What are you going to do?” Beverly said after a moment, watching Claire intently but never speaking the conclusions apparent in her eyes. “Postpone?”

“I don’t know. Kiss a life of sleep good-bye?” Her once neatly strung plan unraveled.

She actually knew what to do. Stop thinking about Jace Fletcher. Stop wondering what-if. Stop wishing Oliver left her for Trina.

“Well, honey, you’ve got to figure it out, fast.” Beverly set her cup down and tilted her chin thoughtfully. “Three weeks can be a lifetime for some, but it will fly by if you let it.”

Claire worried her lower lip with her teeth. Three weeks until she married Oliver.

Everything was done. All was paid for, confirmed, fitted, and registered. She’d even picked out a veil.

Three weeks until the gears of four years of meticulous decisions and planning clicked into place.

Three weeks before any different path—and any separate future—would be null.

A detached numbness grew inside her. She stared out the window at the empty sidewalk and imagined what her other paths might be like. And the only one that mattered was the one including Jace.

What would have happened if she’d called him back? Who would have yelled, and who would have cried? Where would she be today if she hadn't written that dumb letter and sealed her decision?

She’d still be at the WRC, sitting at her dingy cubicle, instant messaging Beverly between tragic but eager clients, and helping abuse survivors find legal protections. Or not.

San Diego might have become home rather than Phoenix. Maybe they would have moved away. Run away is more like it. In extremes, running was Claire’s style. Can’t take the heat? Get out of the kitchen. Fast.

And it worked. Didn’t it?

She suddenly wasn’t so sure.

It wasn’t Oliver attempting a threesome that had turned her life upside down, but that day. It was Jace. It was being faced with that other possibility, the one she thought she’d killed and buried. The one she revisited in her deepest longings and wished had been possible.

It had felt so
impossible
then, but now, sitting across from Beverly, feeling the numbness grow into something different, something alive and quivery, it felt like she might have one last chance to find out.

Maybe it had been kismet, fate, meeting Jace in a bridal shop last week. Was it possible that life was giving her a chance to see if she’d made the wrong choice, and instead make the right one?

Claire jerked, suddenly alert. She looked at Beverly, the window forgotten.

“What?” Beverly said, hesitation in her voice. “You look like you just got one of your lunatic ideas about a case we’ve hit a brick wall on. And we are
not
working on a case here, Claire.”

Claire couldn’t help but smile at her friend’s tone. “Just hear me out.”

“Uh-uh.” Beverly was already shaking her head. “The last time I heard you out, we delivered an order of protection to a man whom
we
needed protecting from more than his ex-wife did.”

Claire steepled her hands. “But this isn’t dangerous.”

“In the middle of the night,” Beverly continued, as though she hadn’t heard a word. “Calling a cop to arrive at the same time we did, and then having him show up late, since serving papers weirdly comes in second to an armed robbery—”

“It’ll be daylight hours only. And no cops. Ever.”

“... Or rape. Or worse.” Beverly set aside her empty cup and started gathering her things. “No, ma’am.”

A knot of panic slid up her throat. “Please, Beverly. You’re all I have, and if I don’t do this, I may lose my only real chance to correct the biggest mistake I ever made.”