The Year of Living Shamelessly (37 page)

Read The Year of Living Shamelessly Online

Authors: Susanna Carr

Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Contemporary

BOOK: The Year of Living Shamelessly
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Forget it. Bad idea. Katie grabbed the robe and gratefully wrapped it around her cold, trembling body. She was already feeling defenseless and stripped of the last of her confidence.
 
Katie didn’t look at him as she wrapped the robe around her and pulled the sash tightly. She stuffed her shaking hands into the oversized pockets before she finally turned around to face him. He continued to watch her with solemn, dark eyes.
 
“Let me make you some breakfast before you go,” she offered with a bright smile firmly in place. That sounded like something a sophisticated lover would do. And it would delay him from leaving.
 
“There is no need.”
 
“I insist.” She headed for the door, wishing her legs would cooperate and not make her feel so ungainly and awkward. If it was this much trouble to walk, then making a meal was going to be disastrous. “I forgot.” She stopped abruptly and snapped her fingers. “I don’t have anything to cook for breakfast. No matter. We’ll go out.”
 
Ryder got off the bed and approached her. “Katie, you don’t have to.”
 
“I want to.” She took an instinctive step back, not wanting him to touch her. “Please?”
 
“Sure,” he said with a sigh. “Anything you want. My treat.”
 
“Great.” She struggled to keep her smile in place. It was easier if she didn’t look directly at him. “Although I don’t think I’m up for going to the café.”
 
“I’ll wait for you downstairs.”
 
She nodded jerkily. Katie remained still and didn’t watch him leave. When she heard Ryder close the bedroom door behind him, she let out a shaky breath.
 
He was leaving town and not coming back. Katie blinked rapidly. She wasn’t going to last the morning, or even the next five seconds, without crying. Hopefully he wouldn’t hear her sobbing in the shower.
 
Katie thought she deserved a crying jag. She had given her all, and it wasn’t enough. She fought for her man and she lost.
 
A tear stung her eye before falling over her lashes and sliding down her face. She wiped it away fiercely. She couldn’t cry yet, because once she started, she wouldn’t stop. It was time to surrender to the inevitable. She would rather not do it with a bright red nose and swollen eyes. She needed to be gracious in defeat.
 
Or, in the words of Hilary, it was time to suck it up.
 
 
 
 
 
 
“So,” Katie said cheerfully as she sat in Ryder’s truck while he drove to town, “you are going to miss these winters when you’re in Dubai.”
 
“I’ll survive,” Ryder replied, his eyes on the road.
 
“You could always come back here on your vacation. Just to remember what snow looks like.” Great. She only had an hour, two tops, with Ryder and she was discussing the weather. It couldn’t get much worse.
 
“I’ll think about it.”
 
“You do that,” she muttered. Ryder didn’t sound enthusiastic about her plan. She understood that he wanted to start a new life with a clean slate, but that didn’t mean he had to stay away forever.
 
Ryder glanced over in her direction. “I’m going to keep in touch,” he promised.
 
Katie leaned her head back on her seat and looked out the passenger window. “No, you’re not.”
 
“What?”
 
“I’m sorry,” she said with a sigh. “I didn’t mean to put a damper on our last morning together, but it’s true. You’re not planning to keep in touch. You are making a clean break.”
 
Ryder shook his head. “I would never abandon you.”
 
She took an unsteady breath. She sure felt like she was being abandoned. Dropped and kicked to the curb. Maybe she wouldn’t feel this way if he would just tell her why he had to leave so suddenly.
 
Maybe he was leaving today because he hadn’t had a better offer. “You know, since we’re kind of together . . .”
 
“Katie, no.” He was shaking his head like he already knew what she was going to say.
 
“You could stay at the house,” she offered. Katie sat a little straighter in her chair. She liked this idea. “I have the whole place to myself and it gets a little lonely.”
 
“It wouldn’t work.”
 
“It worked just fine,” Katie protested. “Better than fine. It was fantastic, if I say so myself.”
 
“That was for a couple of days.” Ryder stopped the truck at a stoplight, giving him a chance to look directly at her. “If I stayed for longer, soon you wouldn’t be able to stand the sight of me.”
 
“Oh, please.” She made a face. “That’s impossible.”
 
“Not as impossible as you’d think,” Ryder muttered under his breath and returned his attention to the street.
 
“Is that why you’re leaving?” she asked, searching his face for any hint of what was running through his head. “You think it’s only a matter of time before I fall out of love with you? Do you think I’m that fickle?”
 
“No!”
 
Huh.
Katie looked out the window. She had been so sure for a moment there. But if that was the reason why he was leaving, she didn’t know how to ease his fears. How could she prove that she wasn’t going to fall out of love? There was just no way to give that kind of proof.
 
She saw the familiar yellow of the Merrill house coming up the street. It had been a few days since she’d last seen it, but she didn’t think the old farmhouse would give her the peace she desperately needed. Katie frowned when she saw an addition to the for-sale sign posted at the edge of the neglected lawn.
 
“Stop the car!” Katie yelled as she took off her seat belt.
 
Ryder pumped the brakes and his truck slid to a stop just as Katie flung open the door. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he called out as she jumped down from the truck.
 
She wasn’t listening. Katie marched right through the shoveled snow piled against the curb and stood in front of the sign. For years it had stood there like a limp white flag of surrender, and no one paid any attention to it. It had melded into the background until now.
 
“No . . . ,” she whispered weakly as she stared at the red banner that streaked across the white sign.
Sold.
 
Katie took a choppy breath, the cold air burning down her throat. Someone had taken her house. Not just taken it—
stolen
it from right under her nose.
 
“You’re lucky there was no one behind us,” Ryder said as he came up from behind. “What were you thinking?”
 
“Someone bought the house.” The words weren’t easy to say.
 
He looked at the sign as if he’d just noticed it. “Impossible.”
 
She stared at the red banner. Sold. S-o-l-d. She’d read it right. It was no hallucination. Someone was buying her house, and taking away her dream in the process.
 
“Katie? Katie?” Ryder waved his hand in front of her face. “Are you listening?” He grasped her arm and guided her away from the sign. “Let me get you out of the cold.”
 
Katie looked over her shoulder to catch one last glimpse of the farmhouse. “Someone bought my house.”
 
“Someone saved you from a very big financial risk,” Ryder said as he helped her over the pile of snow.
 
Katie yanked her arm away from Ryder and glared at him. “How can you say that? I loved that house. I wanted it.”
 
“You can’t always get what you want,” he said softly, almost pensively.
 
There was no need to tell her that. She knew it firsthand. No matter how hard she tried, how much she changed her life, she was not the type of woman who got everything she wanted. She was the girl who just had to suck it up.
 
She reluctantly got into the truck. Ryder gave her a searching look before declaring, “I’m going to take you back home.” Katie didn’t respond as he closed the door. She leaned forward and pressed her forehead against the window. She still couldn’t believe that the house had been sold right out from under her. Why hadn’t the Realtor warned her?
 
She felt Ryder’s hand on her arm. Katie dragged her gaze away from the house to see that he was now in the driver’s seat. She met his concerned gaze. “Seat belt,” he reminded her.
 
It took a couple of attempts, but she managed to take care of the small task as Ryder started the truck. She continued to stare out the window until the farmhouse was out of view.
 
“Have you heard a word I’ve said?” Ryder asked.
 
Katie looked at him. “What?” She recognized they were on her street again. The ride home had been a blur.
 
Ryder rolled his eyes. “I just spent the past ten minutes telling you why you couldn’t buy the house. Why you
shouldn’t
.”
 
She was so tired of that word.
Shouldn’t.
She shouldn’t go after the Merrill house. She shouldn’t go after Ryder. She shouldn’t care. She shouldn’t cry. Katie felt the sting in the back of her eyes and was afraid to blink in case the tears started rolling. She wasn’t going to have their final moments end with her sobbing. Katie focused on her parents’ house coming up. She could keep a brave face until she got inside.
 
“I—” She stopped as her voice hitched in her throat. To her horror the first tear started to spill before she could stop it.
 
Ryder parked in front of the house. “Katie?”
 
She skipped crying and went straight to bawling. Not little delicate tears and cries, but the heaving, gasping, scary sobs. She tore off her seat belt and reached for the latch, but Ryder moved faster. He had her in his arms before she could open the door.
 
“It’s going to be okay,” he murmured in her ear as he gently stroked her hair.
 
“No, it won’t,” she said, her voice muffled in his chest. She wanted two things out of life and she was getting neither.
 
“It’s just a house.”
 
Something froze inside her. Hardened and crystallized. She couldn’t remember a time when she’d felt so cold. “Just a house?” She pushed away from him. “Did you say it was
just a house
? That house represented everything I wanted out of life.”
 
Ryder stared at her. “
That
house?”
 
“
That
house was perfect.” She sat back in her seat and pushed the hair from her face. “When I had a bad day at work or if you were dating some gorgeous woman, I would drop by that house and imagine what it could be.”
 
“What?” He squinted at her, the confusion clouding his dark eyes. “What do I have to do with this?”
 
“Don’t you get it?” She wiped the tears from her wet face. “Oh, you probably don’t. And you probably don’t want to know. It might scare you.”
 
“Try me.” He placed one arm on the back of the seat, the other arm on the window. His long, lean body was sprawled out and he seemed open to whatever came his way.
 
She paused. She wasn’t up to telling him. Every time she opened up and shared a piece of her dream, he rejected it. All this time she hadn’t wanted to scare him off because she might lose her opportunity. But what did she have to lose now? He never said he loved her, and after today, she would never see him again.
 
“Whenever I drove by that house, I could imagine what life could be like,” she confessed, looking down at her hands. “It included you and me, creating a home together.”
 
He sat up straight, his arms coming down.
 
She gave a humorless chuckle. “Scared you already? Well, brace yourself because that’s just the tip of the iceberg. That house has enough rooms for children.” Katie felt the sudden tension vibrate through him. “Yeah, that’s right. I fantasized about having it all with you.”
 
He ran his hand through his hair. “I thought . . . you only wanted a . . .”
 
“An affair?” she finished for him. “That was going to be the start. My New Year’s resolution focused on us getting together. I really thought that would be our only hurdle.”
 
She saw him pale and his jaw slacken. Ryder moved his mouth, but no words came out. When she saw the panic in his eyes, the last spark of hope fizzled.

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