Page 17 of Bride for Keeps

Until it started to take shape. She scowled down at the square jaw and half-smiling lips.

Why was she drawing the bastard’s face?

A knock sounded on the door and Mom popped her head in, looking fretful. “Sweetheart, Carter’s here. I thought I should let you know before your father chases him off with a hunting rifle.”

“That hunting rifle hasn’t been loaded in twenty years.”

“No, but he’s banking on Carter not knowing that.”

Sierra looked down at the sketch pad, then up at her mother. Determined, she set aside the pad. “I’ll handle Carter,” she said, getting to her feet.

“Are you sure?”

“If I’m going to…divorce him, I have to have the wherewithal to face him.” It was still hard to get that word out,divorce,but she’d made her decision. She would not let her parents fight her battles for her.

“Erm, you’re still in your pajamas.”

Sierra looked down at the baggy flannel sweatpants—his—and the shapeless sweatshirt, which she realized with a wince was also his. “All right. Have him sit down in the kitchen and I’ll be down in a few. And please keep Dad and his fake rifle away.”

Mom smiled, though it was a little sad around the edges, before she left the room.

Sierra immediately moved into action. She didn’t want Carter to think she was lying around in her—his—pajamas all day. She got dressed, put on a light coat of makeup, and fashioned her hair into a messy bun that hopefully fooled him into thinking she’d spent time on it. She even slipped her feet into her cute ankle boots and headed downstairs, chin held high.

She’d pretend she was on her way out.Sobusy. If her heart beat too hard and too fast, and her eyes felt a little teary, well, she’d never let him see it. She sailed into the kitchen trying to find her center of righteous fury.

Carter sat at her parents’ kitchen table. They hadn’t spent much time with her family. She hadn’t wanted to. Her parents’ house was so small compared to the McArthurs’. Shabby. She hadn’t thought much of it, but she’d been embarrassed.

Which was gross. They might not have as much money as the McArthurs, but her parents were good, kind people. They would have treated Carter far better than his parents had ever treated her.

“Sierra,” Carter offered, his tone giving no hint as to why he was here. He was dressed casually, though crisply, and he’d clearly shaved this morning as no golden whiskers glinted in the morning light streaming through the window above the sink. His hair was a little long, but he’d brushed it.

He looked very polished and together. The perfect Dr. McArthur. She wanted to put her head into his lap and ask him to forget about everything. She’d go home with him and they’d pretend the past few months were a bad dream.

But that wouldn’t make her life better. It’d only make her miserable even if it gave her a few moments of relief.

“Have you filed your answer?” she asked by way of greeting.

“No,” he said, watching her with a gaze she didn’t quite recognize. There was something too…assessing. As though he’d woken up from his months-long fog. But even if that were possible, she couldn’t let it change her mind.

They were getting divorced. It was the best, happiest route for both of them, even if it hurt like hell.

The bottom line was her father had always been right. Love and dreams didn’t solve real-world problems.

“Then I don’t know what on earth you could be here for.”

“I’d like to talk,” he said, and luckily he kept that continually maddening calm because it made her angry.

“Yes, well, we’ve been over that.”

“Right. I suppose it’s your right to not want to talk.”

“You suppo—”

“But you have to understand, Sierra. I don’t get this.” There was enough bald emotion in his tone to make her freeze. “I don’t know why you left. Why you’re so angry. I’m lost. Maybe it makes me a fool, but I have to know. What went wrong?”

Sierra sank into the seat across from him. Exhausted and nauseous and incapable of mustering any more righteous indignation. “If I have to tell you, does it even matter? If I have to spell it out then it wasn’t working, was it?”

His eyebrows furrowed and she had to link her fingers together on the table to keep from reaching out and smoothing the tips against the line that wedged there. She always called it his McArthur line and kissed it away.

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