towel limp in her grip.
A breath hitched between them. Another. Cade’s grip curled around the countertop, willpower keeping him from reaching out and pulling her to him.
“If we don’t go, or if we go separately, everyone’s going to know we’re getting…” He left off the word, still unable to believe it was going to happen. It was why he had yet to even look at the divorce paperwork. Seeing the word, speaking it, would make it a reality.
And Cade sure wasn’t ready to let go yet.
“Divorced,” Melanie finished. The eight letters that were changing Cade’s life hung between them, as bright as a neon sign.
“Yeah.” His marriage was so far off track—hell, they weren’t even on the same cross-country route anymore—that he wondered if there was even a chance of getting it back to where it had been.
“I should probably get back to work,” she said, folding the towel one last time before leaving it on the counter.
“I hear you’re thinking about expanding this place,” Cade said, changing tactics, avoiding the dreaded “D” word.
Someday, he’d have to deal with it. Just not today.
“How did you…?” Surprise flitted across Melanie’s delicate features, then disappeared when she realized the daughter outside the kitchen was the source of the information. “Yes, I am planning an expansion.”
“As in a mini-mall or world domination of the cappuccino industry?”
She laughed. “Nothing that big.” Then her brows knitted together and she studied him. “Do you really want to know?”
He nodded. Was that what it was? He had stopped listening and she had stopped talking? “I do.”
“Do you promise not to give me a list of pros and cons?”
He winced at the memory, then put up two fingers. “Scout’s honor.”
She laughed, the merry sound such sweet music to his ears. “You were never a Boy Scout.”
He grinned. “I always had Boy Scout intentions, though.”
“I remember,” Melanie said quietly.
“I do, too.” The memory slipped between them, the shared thought coming easily, as if they shared a brain. Their first date. A car broken down on the side of the road. Two elderly ladies standing outside of the Mazda, looking confused and helpless. Rain pelting down on Cade’s head as he filled their radiator with a jug of water he kept in his trunk, then put a temporary duct tape patch on the leaking hose.
Melanie had called him a Boy Scout, then, when the women were gone, drawn him to her, her lips soft and sweet. He’d have rebuilt fifty transmissions that night if he’d known a simple act of kindness would turn Mellie’s interest in him from mild to five-alarm hot.
“You wanted to hear my plans,” Melanie said, interrupting his thoughts.
Cade recovered his wits. “Yes, I would.”
“Okay. It’s slow and I could use a break. Let’s go in the back.” As the customer lingered, asking about the different types of muffins, Melanie poured herself a cup of coffee, then gestured to Cade to follow her to the rear of the shop, where she’d set up a cozy nook with two leather love seats. It was a small area, but the bronze wash on the walls and the deep chocolate sofas made it inviting and warm. Melanie always had had great decorating skills.
She and Cade took seats on opposite sofas, a few feet away from the armchair holding Rip Van Winkle. “My plan is to double the space,” she said, laying her cup on the end table. “Add some game tables, a children’s play area, build a room for business people to hold meetings. Maybe even add a stage for open mike nights.” Excitement brightened her eyes. He got the feeling she wanted to tell someone, to maybe…just maybe, get his take on her idea.
In the old days, before Emmie had come along, Melanie had been filled with ideas, their evenings in that dingy apartment passing quickly with energetic conversations about what could be if they took this path or that path. In the end, there’d only been one road to follow. Cade had always thought it was the right one, but now, seeing his wife’s enthusiasm, he wondered if he’d missed a detour.
Beside them, the old man snarfled in his sleep. “Bad deer,” he muttered.
Each of them laughed quietly at the non sequiter, providing a moment of détente, connection. Then Melanie cleared her throat and directed her attention to the room. “Anyway, we’re really cramped in our four hundred square feet here. I figured if I could get a bit more space, I’d get more of the college crowd. The building next door is up for sale and the owner has already offered it to me. If I could buy it, knock down this wall—” she gestured toward the plaster finish “—I’d double the space.”
He let out a low whistle, impressed. The Melanie he knew had been intelligent, witty, cool under pressure—but never had he seen this business savvy part of her. “You’ve taken this place a lot further than I thought it could go when we looked at it last year, after you inherited it from your grandparents. I guess I didn’t see the potential then.”
She studied the brass studs on the armrest’s seam. “No, you didn’t.”
A pair of size fifty boots had a smaller heel than Cade. Had he crushed her dream? He’d only been trying to be pragmatic, to steer her away from a potential mistake. Clearly he’d done the opposite. “I’m sorry, Melanie.”
She didn’t meet his gaze. Instead she smoothed a hand over the leather. “It’s in the past. I’m all about moving forward.”
The implied word—alone. “You have a lot of plans for this place. For that you need additional funding, right?”
She nodded.
“Something that’s hard to get when you’re a relatively new business.” From Emmie, he knew she’d financed the opening of the shop on her own, with a little from her grandparent’s inheritance, the rest from the nice folks at Visa.“Tell me about it,” Melanie said, clearly frustrated. “Banks want me to have years of success under my belt before they’ll lend me any money. But I can’t get those years of success without investing in my business. It’s that old Catch-22.”
It was also an area he knew well—and an opportunity to help. And maybe, just maybe, she’d let him in again. At this point, Cade would knock down the damned wall himself if he thought it would help defrost the glacier between them.
“I have a proposition for you,” Cade said, deciding he wasn’t going to let his marriage go without a fight. He could only pray this was an offer Melanie couldn’t refuse.
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