Page 9 of Bride for Keeps

And with that, his sister turned on a heel and stormed out of the cafeteria, leaving quite a few eyeballs trained on him.

A spectacle.

Not a McArthur.

Divorce.

Whatever anger had ignited at Lina’s accusation of selfishness evaporated in an instant. He looked at the envelope and tried to picture his life without Sierra in it. Even these past few months when everything had been an awful void, she’d been there. Some little sparkle of hope that a day might come when it didn’t feel like his whole life was falling in on him. Shewashis hope. The thing that kept all the going through the motions worth it.

At some point he’d wrap his brain around this. He’d feel normal again. Life would… It wouldn’t stay this way. It couldn’t. At some point it’d click again. They just had to be patient and wait for that to happen.

So, no. He refused to accept it. They were not getting divorced.

Now he just had to figure out how to make sure of it.

Chapter Two

March 2016

Sierra lay onan air mattress in a cramped room in her sister’s apartment where she’d been staying for far too long. It wasn’t right to put Kaitlin out like this, not for these three weeks since Sierra had packed a bag and walked out of her home with Carter. She wondered if he’d even noticed.

Regardless, she hadn’t been able to bear the thought of seeing him while she’d been getting divorce papers drawn up. She hadn’t been able to hand him the divorce papers, even if it made her a coward. And even though it had been two weeks since Lina said she’d given them to him, she hadn’t heard a peep from him and the papers had not been filed.

She’d have to face him. She knew she’d have to face him, but every day she woke up in this tiny room that was already decorated for the little girl her sister would have any day now. She woke up and her head felt like it was full of cotton. She was exhausted and achy and sure she was coming down with some weird flu that never fully hit.

She blew out a breath and looked at the changing table where she’d set her rings last night. She’d tried to sleep without them. It had been fitful, and even this morning she desperately wanted to put them back on.

Desperately wanted to go home and find Carter and say she didn’t mean it. She’d sit quietly in the corner and never say anything just so long as they were together.

Not that he’d filed the damn papers, which meant if she really wanted to she could walk back into their house and pretend like the past three weeks apart didn’t exist.

The fact shecoulddo that made everything harder. There was only so long she could wait. Once Kaitlin had the baby, Sierra was on her own. Which inevitably meant moving in with her parents, which…

God, she was tired of being their little failure.

A knock sounded on the door and Sierra forced herself out of bed to open it. She had to brace herself against the doorframe as a wave of dizziness came over her.

“You okay?” Kaitlin asked, eyebrows drawn together in concern.

Sierra managed a nod. “Just a little light-headed, I guess.”

Kaitlin’s concern didn’t disappear from her face, but she smiled. “I made some breakfast. You probably need to eat.”

“I should be making you breakfast,” Sierra said, feeling utterly awful for taking advantage of her pregnant sister like this.

Kaitlin waved it away as she walked, well, in fairness, waddled to the tiny kitchen. “I’m uncomfortable and need to move. I’mrestlessand it’s too cold to be wandering the streets—at least that’s what my husband tells me.”

“Where is Beckett?” Sierra asked, shooing Kaitlin out of the way so she could at leastservebreakfast even if she hadn’t made it.

“Went in to the shop early. He’s got the next few days off for the impending arrival.” Kaitlin patted her large, rounded belly. “So today he’s trying to finish up a few projects.” She awkwardly lowered herself to a chair.

Sierra got out two plates and tried to ignore the panic at the thought of Beckett being on vacation from work and Kaitlin having her baby and the fact the only place Sierra had to go was her parents’ house.

Because she had no job and no skills and hadn’t even tried to do anything except survive the crushing weight of failure and pain of losing Carter.

“I can’t thank you enough for letting me stay here so long,” Sierra managed to croak. Because what would she have done if Kaitlin hadn’t offered her this little respite? If Kaitlin hadn’t offered some semblance of friendship, which was something they hadn’t had since probably elementary school if even then.

“It’s been nice. I’m sorry for what you’re going through, but it’s been nice to…be friends. And really you’ve been indispensable around here. Helping me with baby stuff, and the whole getting up out of chairs things. If you hadn’t been here I would have been stuck on the couch day in and day out waiting for Beckett to come home.”

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