Page 53 of Falling for His Best Friend

Neither had she.

She’d ruined their friendship by sleeping with him, but she couldn’t deal with that reality along with Jess’s death. She had to put Joe to one side. She’d deal with the consequences later, when she was stronger.

She missed him but she didn’t want to see him.

Every time she did she had to fight the urge to run into his arms. Every time she saw him, it felt like her heart was breaking and then she had to start the whole process of getting over him again. She wasn’t sure what hurt more—losing Jess or losing Joe—but she had no choice. She knew she had deliberately cut him out of her life, but she figured that eventually the pain would ease. She was hoping so.

This heartache would pass. It had to.

She bent her head to kiss the soft, downy hair on Lizzie’s head. She breathed in the baby smell as she rearranged her clothes. She had been breastfeeding Lizzie but the baby had now fallen asleep and Kitty need to put her back in her bassinette. No one knew she was still breastfeeding. She was expressing milk so that Cam could feed his daughter too but Kitty loved the closeness she felt when she was feeding Lizzie and she didn’t want to give that up, so she volunteered for the midnight feed when the house was quiet and she and Lizzie could have their moment. She whispered her thoughts to Lizzie at the same time.

She couldn’t talk to Jess. Or to Joe. The closest she had to a confidante now was this little baby. Lizzie was only ten weeks old, hardly a substitute for Joe or Jess, but she was the next best thing. This was bonding time for the two of them. She wasn’t officially the baby’s mother any more, but she was the closest thing to a mother that tiny Lizzie had.

Unless, or until, Cam remarried.

Kitty couldn’t stand the idea of Cam replacing Jess, but she knew it was ultimately a possibility. Cam was only young. He had the rest of his life in front of him.

Kitty wiped a tear away. She was crying for everyone she’d lost. Including Joe.

She stood up to wrap Lizzie and tuck her into her bassinette. She didn’t want to think about Joe. She didn’t have the energy. Cam might replace Jess, but Joe would surely replace Kitty, and she didn’t want to think about how that would make her feel. There was only so much she could handle at the moment, and that didn’t include thinking about her relationship with Joe.

She knew she had pushed him away. She’d been scared of losing him but she’d gone and done it anyway, just as Jess had warned her, leaving her more miserable and even lonelier than before.

CHAPTER TEN

KITTY HAD RETURNED to work but she still hadn’t moved out of Cam’s house. Joe had no idea how long she was planning to stay there. Did she have any intention of leaving? He didn’t know, but he knew she was avoiding him. The only time he saw her was when they were at work. She was a shadow of her former self—her wide smile was absent, her dimples gone, her curves shrunk. She’d shut down completely and shut him out.

He’d called around to Cam’s house—he refused to think of it as Kitty’s even though she still lived there—several times, checking on them both, wanting to make sure they were coping. He’d tried to time it around Kitty’s days off, wanting to see her, but every time he’d visited she’d made an excuse and avoided him.

But Joe was refusing to give her up.

She’d made a decision but he wasn’t going to sit back and let her throw away their relationship. She was too important to him. Their future was too important to him.

So he’d enlisted Cam’s help in order to see Kitty. That had been a major exercise in subterfuge. He’d had to anticipate her every rebuttal and plan a response. He had to co-ordinate with Cam to make sure someone was home to look after Lizzie so Kitty didn’t have that excuse, and he had to make sure Kitty wasn’t either at work or asleep.

He knocked on Cam’s front door and invited her to brunch. ‘There’s something I need to tell you,’ he said, hoping her curiosity would outweigh any reluctance.

‘Now is not a good time, Joe.’

He could tell from her voice that something had upset her and immediately his protective instincts kicked into gear. If Kitty needed him he planned on being there for her, and this time he wasn’t going to let her fob him off.

‘Come for a walk with me to the beach then. Talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.’ Maybe walking would be better than sitting at a café. There would be no one to overhear them and Kitty wouldn’t feel as if he was cross-examining her.

She hesitated, and he was preparing his speech to plead his case when she surprised him be agreeing. ‘OK.’

He waited while she found her shoes and her keys. He heard her tell Cam she was going for a walk and would be back soon.

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