Page 34 of Bride for Keeps

Maybe Mom and Dad had found a little peace with their kids out of the house, and Luke and Dad’s antagonism had cooled. Maybe Kaitlin had found a husband she loved after Sierra had married the man of her sister’s dreams. Maybe,maybe, it all worked out, but that didn’t mean hope was safe.

First you got crushed to bits.

She’d had her own hopes. Silly childish hopes dashed by her father’s heavy practicality and then nasty rumors and stupid middle school stuff that had followed her no matter where she went or how.

So she’d learned to embrace it. All of it. Fling herself into the middle of all that failure.

Until Carter had smiled at her at that party, and she’d had the blinding, idiotic belief maybe she wasn’t as much of a disaster case as she’d always considered herself. If the upstanding, honest, gorgeous Dr. Carter McArthur could look at her like she dazzled him, then, well.

“We should talk, Sierra. Really talk. Not in five-minute snippets. Not trading smart remarks back and forth. An honest conversation.That’swhy I brought you here. It isn’t so sinister, is it? To want to work out where I went wrong.”

She took a few spoonfuls of soup, trying to let that spark of temper outweigh all the sadness inside of her. “Why and what for? It’s just done. No post-mortem or research paper on the subject needed.”

“I don’t get why you’re acting like a conversation is some sort of attack on you,” he said, and with each word his frustration and anger started to become more prominent, which wasn’t like him at all. “I don’t understand your determination this is just over when we haven’t even tried.”

“I tried,” she whispered, because as much as she wanted to be angry it just felt awful and devastating to admit this. He wanted all these admissions from her that only made her look weak and worthless, and no matter that she might be, she didn’t want him to see it. She couldn’t standwatchinghim see it.

If he’d tried even a month ago, she might have been soft enough to give in, but she’d given him too much time and too much hope. She couldn’t jump into that old belief this part of her life would be different. Because it would lead her here, over and over again.

“Try now,” he said, and it was almost imploring, but there was such ego there. That he could just command her to try again and she would when he’d had months upon months.

She pushed back from the table. She could tell him no. Tell him she wasn’t doing this, but she’d been doing that for all these days since he’d finally decided she was worth fighting for.

No, not her, because if it had been about her he would have foughtbeforeshe’d delivered those papers. He was simply fighting now because the only other outcome was divorce and that would shame him. Or maybe he was only fighting now because of the baby. Either way, it wasn’t enough.

“Where are you going?” he asked as she started down the hallway, hoping to find a bedroom or somewhere she could lock herself in a room and sleep until tomorrow.

“Sierra.”

She ignored him and opened the first door she came to. It was a bathroom, so she pressed on.

“Stop.”

She considered flipping him off, but in the end ignoring him worked better. She opened the next door and there was a giant bed with a wall made up almost entirely of windows like in the living room. Perfect. It was dark but she could see the moon. Comforting, and it was early enough she could get a good amount of sleep before the sun came back up.

She stepped inside and then moved to close the door, but Carter slapped his hand on it to keep it from closing. His eyes glittered with fury and his mouth was a sharp, painful slash on that usually calm face.

It was so strange to see him furious she could only stare at him. Part of her wanted to reach out and touch him to see if it was real.

“Damn it, Sierra,” he growled. “You will listen to me. You will answer me. I deserve that much.”

Deserve. That word infuriated her right back. “For what?”

“My God.” He let his hand fall from the door and raked his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know, maybe love?”

“Fine.Fine.” He wasn’t going to let this go. Stubborn man. She often didn’t recognize it because he didn’t dress it up in stomping displays, but hewasstubborn. Sometimes even more than her. “Fine, you want me to try now. Now?” She whirled away from him and stalked toward the window, wishing she could find something to hold on to. Something to keep her focused and from blurting out all the pain inside of her.

“Yes, I do.”

“I spent months having you look through me.” God, that hurt to say, to admit. To tell him she’d seen how little she meant, to watch him see how much it had hurt her. “And that was after you kept this giant secret from me.” She tried to straighten her shoulders, firm her expression, but tears started to fall and her voice croaked. “No matter what I did, you were a blank wall.I triedthrough all of that while I didn’t matter to you. You’re ready to try something like six months too late, Carter.”

“I was… I know I didn’t treat you right.” He reached out and touched her shoulder. “I am sorry, but I was… I wasn’t myself.”

She whirled away from his touch, happy to have some anger to infuse this bone-crushing sadness. “That’s it? You weren’t yourself. You’re sorry.”

“I can’t go back and change it.”

“No. You can’t. And I won’t go back and change my mind about divorce.”

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