Page 17 of Love You, Mean It

It took me half the box to realize that wasn’t going to happen without outside intervention. I pulled out my phone, opened my texts, then thought better of it, clicking the telephone icon in the corner.

“Ellie? Is everything okay?” Bella’s voice was tight with worry, and a little echoey. It sounded like she’d ducked into one of the bathrooms at her work.

“Yes. I mean, no one’s hurt or anything. Or, well…no onereallyimportant.” If Bella wasn’t over Theo ten-plus years on, that was her problem.

“Okay, good. Jeez, you scared me. Whocallsin the middle of the day?”

“I know. But…it’s kind of an emergency. I…may have convinced Theo Taylor that I’m his fiancée?”

“Sorry,what?”

I ran through the barest outline of the details.

“Wow. Okay. That’s…okay.”

“Yeah,” I said. “So…what now?”

“Let me finish up a few things. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

I hadn’t exactly calmed down by the time Bella arrived, but I had effectively quieted the brain buzz through constant application of reality TV. Theoretically I could have opened the shop for a few hours, but the idea of trying to manage small talk with the Ruth Pinskys of the world actually set my teeth on edge.

“Sorry it took so long, I figured we’d need fuel,” Bella said from the doorway, balancing a gigantic pizza box on one hand as she heeled out of her trendy black booties.

“Veschio’s?”

“What do you take me for?”

Thank god Bella understood priorities. They made byfarthe best pizza in a twenty-mile radius, but they were at the very edge of that radius and refused to deliver to me, no matter how many times I tried to bribe them with deli leftovers. I crossed to the dated kitchenette.

“Wine?”

“Yeah, we’re gonna need alotof wine,” Bella replied from the entryway. “I’ll sleep over if I have to.”

Fifteen minutes later we had settled into the squishy cushions of my faded hand-me-down sofa, the entire pizza box open on the scarred wooden coffee table, our wines perched at opposite ends.

“So he just…believedyou were engaged?” Bella’s second slice had sat untouched for several minutes now, the little grease pools in the pepperoni slowly turning waxy.

I nodded, stuffing a huge bite into my mouth. Clearly we reacted to stress differently.

“But why didn’t you tell him you weren’t?”

“Because the nurse was right there! And then this Sam woman came in and the nurse toldher.” My chest tightened uncomfortably as I remembered the genuine fear on Sam’s face when she realized the extent of Theo’s memory loss. Her so clearlycaringabout him made the lie feel a million times more uncomfortable. But I pushed that thought down; it was too late, and she’d left pretty fast. Odds were there hadn’t been any real damage done there…right? Regardless, I didn’t have time to worry about some stranger, there were more immediate concerns. “What if they’d…I don’t know, called the cops on me or something?”

“I don’t think they’d do that.”

“No offense, but it didn’t seem like the time to trust toeveryone being good at heart or whatever. I mean…canyouimagine Theo just taking that in stride?”

“No, probably not.” She frowned, taking a meditative bite of pizza. “But you have to tell him sooner than later.”

“Okay, I’ve been thinking about this all day, and I guess my response to that is…What if I didn’t? I mean, it’s not like I’d sleep with him or anything, I’d just let him believe we were a thing until the Mangia deal was off, then—”

“Ellie!” Her eyes went so wide I couldn’t see the lids. “No! You’d be manipulating him, badly. He doesn’t deserve that.”

“You’ve met him, right?”

Bella’s lowered brow expressed her disgust far more eloquently than words could have. And yes, I’d known it was a Hail Mary, but a tiny sliver of me had hoped she’d come back with “Interesting…and clearly a wise and considered option, allow me to help fill in the details of Theo’s personal history to help the cause.” After all, even Ted Taylor wouldn’t be able to justify driving his son’s fiancée out of business, right?

Actually…considering Theo’s reaction to the mere possibility of phoning his father, I probably shouldn’t be so confident about that. I pinched my eyes tight, leaning over my knees to scrape my fingers through my hair.

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