loved him at all. That she hadn’t married him just because she’d been pregnant with Emmie. In the still, dark night, that was the possibility that haunted Cade. Had he been so clueless, he’d imagined a love that had never existed?
“I had no idea you were considering a move,” Melanie said.
“I haven’t broken it to Emmie yet, so please don’t tell her. I want to have something definite in hand first.”
More, Cade needed to know for sure there was zero chance with his wife. All year, he’d kept telling himself that given a little time, Melanie would be back. She hadn’t.
With all the signs she’d been sending him, he could have taken out a billboard: Your Marriage Is Over. And yet, the glutton in him continued to hope that the past nineteen years had formed a foundation they could come back to, build a new beginning on, after they moved the last few years of wreckage out of the way.
The realist in him whispered their foundation was made of sand, not stone.
“Oh.” Melanie’s mouth formed the vowel, held it for a minute, as if it was taking her a moment to get used to the idea of him moving away. “Okay.”
“Anyway, you know how I hate to go to those things, especially alone,” Cade said, putting on a smile, making his case, treading carefully. “I can never remember anyone’s name. I need a wingman.”
I need you.
It wasn’t until Melanie responded with a smile of her own that Cade found himself able to breathe again. “You are pretty bad at that. Remember when you kept calling Jim Sacco ‘Stan’?”
Cade laughed. “He was a former partner at Fitzsimmons, Matthews and Lloyd, too. We even worked together a couple times. I’ve never lived that one down.”
Melanie joined his laughter. Cade wished he could reach out, capture that sound in a jar and bring it home with him. The walls in the house had grown as silent as tombs without Melanie.
“Oh, and what about the time you forgot the name of the governor?” She chuckled softly. “So much for any political ambitions you might have had.”
“That’s when my wingman came in mighty handy,” he said, thinking of that nightmare dinner party seven years ago, of Melanie slipping in with her easy touch and smoothing everything over. With them so close together on the love seat, it was almost like before. Cade and Melanie, staying up late, finishing off the appetizers while they rehashed the night. “You told him some story about me getting the flu or something—”
Another smile from her, the kind that could disrupt a man’s best intentions. “And I told him the medicine had some kind of mental side effects.”
“All that mattered was that he bought it and signed the firm as his personal counsel. You made that save, Mellie.” He leaned forward, careful not to invade her personal space, to keep it casual, to act as if his heart didn’t still trip over itself every time she smiled.
“That’s why I need you with me at the reunion. You make me look good.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Her glance flitted away. She reached for her coffee, her hand a nervous flutter that nearly toppled the cup. It clattered against the table, then settled into place.
“I’m serious. Your talent is people. Making them feel comfortable, welcome.” He glanced around the corner of their little nook, into the main part of Cuppa Life. The cozy coffee shop was beginning to fill with chattering college students, clustering around the tables and doing homework, playing cards, or just talking. It was the polar opposite to the stuffy, serious law offices of Fitzsimmons, Matthews and Lloyd. For a minute, he wondered what it was like to work in a place like this. To escape the daily grind of a job that had never felt quite right, as if all these years he’d been wearing the wrong size suit.
“This place is ‘Cheers’ with caffeine.”
She laughed. “Not quite as successful, but, yeah, I guess it does have that kind of atmosphere. Speaking of which, I better get back and help Emmie with the afternoon rush.” She rose and turned to go.
Cade reached for her arm. Everything within him begged for more contact, more of her. With reluctance he held back, tempered his touch to border on acquaintance, not spouse. “Melanie, go with me. Please.”
She paused, her emerald gaze meeting his for a long, silent second. “Are you really moving to Chicago?”
Once again, the belt tightened around his heart. If this didn’t work, there was no way Cade could stay in that house another second. “Yeah.”
Emmie shouted to her mother that she needed help making something called a “Frazzle.” With an apology, Melanie hurried back to the counter.
In a blur of activity, Melanie dumped a slew of ingredients into a blender and whirred the icy concoction together. She poured the frothy liquid into a cup, handed it to the customer, then set to work on a couple of lattes, filling the orders of the group of twenty-somethings who’d all come in at once. It was a good five minutes before she had a second to return to Cade.
He rehashed their conversation in his head, as if a replay could show him how to fine tune it next time, to get a different result.
“Did you mean what you said about helping me get my loan?” she said when she came back.
He nodded. “As much or as little as you want. I can even give you the money from our account.”
She shook her head. “I want to do this alone.”
“It’s our money, Mel.”
“It’s your inheritance. I want to earn my own. I want this—” she indicated the shop “—to be mine.”
“Okay. Whatever you want. You call all the shots, Melanie.”
She hesitated so long, worry began to crowd onto Cade’s shoulders.
Then she thrust out her hand. He took it, feeling the familiar delicate palm inside his much bigger one, knowing that if he inhaled the fragrance of her skin, he’d be swept back up into what could have been, instead of what really was.
Instead he shook when she did, the businesslike stance feeling so odd, he wanted to laugh.
“Then you have a deal, Cade Matthews.”
“WHAT WAS I THINKING?” Melanie slumped into one of the bar stools beside Kelly Webber, a frequent customer turned good friend. The college crowd had begun petering out as night began to fall and discussion of dorm room parties replaced the complaints about professors with homework fetishes. Emmie was sitting at a table in the corner of the room, ostensibly doing her homework, but really chatting with a friend while their dueling laptops accessed Cuppa Life’s wireless Internet connection.
Melanie let out a sigh. “Once again, I said yes when I should have said no.”
“That’s called Momitis. It’s how I got roped into doing the PTL dinner and
