Page 118 of Romance and Peppermint Lattes
Cait’s apartment was dark and lonely. So lonely the silence seemed to echo off the walls. She hung up her coat before turning on the lights, her thoughts as dark as the room had been.
She made herself a cup of tea. Then she sat on the sofa, tucking her feet beneath her as she stared unseeing at the walls, assessing her options. They seemed terribly limited.
Paul was in love with Lindy. And Joe... Cait had no idea where she stood with him. For all she knew—
Her thoughts were interrupted by the phone. She answered on the second ring.
“Cait?” It was Joe and he seemed surprised to find her back so early. “When did you get in?”
“A few minutes ago.”
“You don’t sound like yourself. Is anything wrong?”
“No,” she said, breaking into sobs. “What could possibly be wrong?”
ChapterTen
The flow of emotion took Cait by storm. She’d had no intention of crying; in fact, the thought hadn’t even entered her mind. One moment she was sitting there, contemplating the evening’s revelations, and the next she was sobbing hysterically into the phone.
“Cait?”
“Oh,” she wailed. “This is all your fault in the first place.” Cait didn’t know what made her say that. The words had slipped out before she’d realized it.
“What happened?”
“Nothing. I... I can’t talk to you now. I’m going to bed.” With that, she gently replaced the receiver. Part of her hoped Joe would call back, but the telephone remained stubbornly silent. She stared at it for several minutes. Apparently Joe didn’t care if he talked to her or not.
The tears continued to flow. They remained a mystery to Cait. She wasn’t a woman given to bouts of crying, but now that she’d started she couldn’t seem to stop.
She changed out of her dress and into a pair of sweats, pausing halfway through to wash her face.
Sniffling and hiccuping, she sat on the end of her bed and dragged a shuddering breath through her lungs. Crying like this made no sense whatsoever.
Paul was in love with Lindy. At one time, the news would have devastated her, but not now. Cait felt a tingling happiness that her best friend had found a man to love. And the infatuation she’d held for Paul couldn’t compare with the strength of her love for Joe.
Love.
There, she’d admitted it. She was in love with Joe. The man who told restaurant employees that she was suffering from amnesia. The man who walked into elevators and announced to total strangers that they were married. Yet this was the same man who hadn’t revealed a minute’s concern about her dating Paul Jamison.
Joe was also the man who’d gently held her hand through a children’s movie. The man who made a practice of kissing her senseless. The man who’d held her in his arms Christmas night as though he never intended to let her go.
Joseph Rockwell was a fun-loving jokester who took delight in teasing her. He was also tender and thoughtful and loving—the man who’d captured her heart only to drop it so carelessly.
Her doorbell chimed and she didn’t need to look in the peephole to know it was Joe. But she felt panicky all of a sudden, too confused and vulnerable to see him now.
She walked slowly to the door and opened it a crack.
“What the hell is going on?” Joe demanded, not waiting for an invitation to march inside.
Cait wiped her eyes on her sleeve and shut the door. “Nothing.”
“Did Paul try anything?”
She rolled her eyes. “Of course not.”
“Then why are you crying?” He stood in the middle of her living room, fists planted on his hips as if he’d welcome the opportunity to punch out her boss.
If Cait knew why she was crying nonstop like this, she would have answered him. She opened her mouth, hoping some intelligent reason would emerge, but the only thing that came out was a low-pitched moan. Joe was gazing at her in complete confusion. “I... Paul’s in love.”
