Page 109 of The Backup Groom
I held my palms up. “What are you doing? Are you crazy?”
“You are the one who’s crazy if you’re thinking of marrying that man,” Stella said.
“I didn’t even have a chance to give him an answer because apparently my best friend is now a nightclub bouncer!” I said.
Stella dragged me over to the couch, pushed me down, then sat on the couch next to me. “I told you to think about your future, not your inheritance. That money will not bring you happiness. Sure, it will help you start your own agency, but there will still be a big hole in your life and you know it.”
She was right, but there was still something that hurt so badly. “Scotty lied to me.”
“I know,” Stella said. “But Dean told me he did it with the best of intentions. Would you have gone out with him if you knew he wasn’t divorced yet?”
I thought about it. “Probably not, but I didn’t get a chance to make that decision.”
“There—don’t you see?” Stella said. “That’s why Scotty didn’t want to tell you. He didn’t want to lose you. He thought he would have the final divorce papers in time to marry you. Dean told me Scotty had been obsessed with the status of his divorce. Other than you, that was the only thing on his mind twenty-four-seven, so he could move on with his life and marry you. That man loves you so much. He’s miserable without you.”
I was miserable without him.
He always made me feel so special.
I missed the way he looked at me.
“I get that, but there’s a lot more at stake than that,” I said. “I mean, come on, you’re unemployed because of me.”
“I quit on my own,” Stella said. “Nobody twisted my arm.”
“You were counting on me to get my inheritance so we could start our own agency. I let you down and I’m so very, very sorry.” The weight of my own words hit me with the blunt force of a semi-truck hitting a hen house, obliterating it. I started to cry. Once the tears started, I couldn’t stop them. I sat there blubbering for all the loss, and not just mine, Stella’s too.
“Please, can you focus here?” Stella said. “You and I will bounce back with our careers. I’m not the least bit worried about that. The only person I’m thinking about at the moment is you. I want you to be happy. This is about love, pure and simple, and I’m scared you’re going to let your soulmate slip away.”
I sighed. “My hands are tied. The bottom line is, Scotty is not divorced and the deadline for me to get married is tomorrow. What am I supposed to do?”
“Listen to me closely.” Stella held my hands tightly. “Screw the money and the deadline, Amber. Wait until Scotty’s divorce is final and then marry that man. Otherwise, you’re going to regret it for the rest of your life.”
ChapterTwenty-Four
Scotty
“I’m moving to Tibet to become a monk,” I said to Dean, as I prepared the last drink of the evening. “You’ll need to manage the business while I’m gone.”
Maybe a drastic change was the best way to deal with my botches and blunders.
There was no coming back from the granddaddy of all screw-ups. Since then, I had been calling myself every name in the book and had even invented a few new ones. I had made a mess of everyone’s lives, and for how much I hurt Amber, I could never forgive myself, and neither would she. I deserved whatever happened to me, but Amber didn’t deserve any of this. Her expression when I couldn’t deny Mercedes’ accusation would be imprinted in my brain forever.
“I wanted to become a monk, but I never got the chants,” Dean said, grinning.
Brayden, my part-time evening employee, laughed. “Good one.”
I rolled my eyes and wondered how much more silliness I would have to endure from my best friend this week. Dean had been trying to cheer me up, but I was a lost cause.
The love of my life was gone.
Amber used to be my sunshine on a cloudy day, but neither of us really stood a fighting chance against the likes of Hurricane Mercedes. She was a category five storm in human form, whose only mission was to destroy anything in her path, all in the name of greed.
And if disposing of me weren’t enough, Amber also gave up on her coffee, which added to my pain since she told me it was one of her greatest pleasures in life. I was actually thinking of removing Caramel Spockiato from the menu because every time I made one, I thought of her.
It was too much to bear, but it’s not like I could say I didn’t see this coming. Had it been some stupid death wish to sabotage my life? Because it sure felt that way.
Not only had it backfired in my face, it had also ripped out my heart and stomped on it with spiked shoes. I deserved this, there was no doubt about it. I’d hurt that wonderful woman by not being upfront with her, and I would pay the price for the rest of my life.
