to Justin.
Cooper’s expression went blank, obviously trying to avoid giving anything away. Dawn sighed. Still, Justin couldn’t have gone far, right? Not if he’d left those notes for Cooper and her that morning. Especially since their bags for the honeymoon, according to the carefully planned and laminated schedule for the day, should be in the boot of the very car she was trying to unlock. Stupid vintage cars and their stupid vintage locks. Why couldn’t Cooper have hired them something with central locking, at the very least?
Wait. Were the bags in the car? She hadn’t checked.
Ignoring Cooper’s lack of reply to her question, Dawn hurried around to the boot of the Caddy—trunk, she supposed, since it was an American car—and fiddled with the key Ruby had pinched from Cooper’s bag for her until the boot popped open.
Empty.
The boot, trunk, whatever you wanted to call it, was empty.
‘Where’re my bags?’ she asked in a whisper.
Cooper followed her round to stand beside her, and they stared at the lack of suitcases together. ‘There should be bags?’
‘Yes!’ Dawn could feel the desperation leaking out in her voice. ‘We packed all the bags for our honeymoon and put them in Justin’s car yesterday.’ They’d had a late lunch together back at Justin’s hotel before Dawn had headed off to spend the night with her sisters at their hotel across town. Justin had been a staunch believer in the ‘bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding’ thing and, quite honestly, Dawn hadn’t wanted to tempt fate either. Which seemed doubly stupid now. ‘He was supposed to transfer them to this car this morning. I figured he’d have at least left mine when he dropped off those bloody letters earlier.’
‘He didn’t.’
‘Well, I can see that!’ Dawn’s voice was getting high and squeaky now, and she didn’t even care.
‘No, I mean he didn’t bring the letters here. I found them both this morning—they’d been slipped under my hotel room door in one envelope, with my name on it. I thought they were the notes for my speech I’d asked my secretary to drop over and just shoved them in my jacket pocket. I only checked them once we realised that Justin still wasn’t here...’
‘So he never even came here this morning,’ Dawn said softly. ‘So all my things...they’re still in his car. Which is probably wherever he is.’
Her clothes. Her ridiculously expensive wedding-night lingerie. Her toiletries. Her honeymoon reading. Her passport. All she had with her here was a tiny clutch bag with some face powder, a dull nude lipstick she’d never wear in everyday life, a spare pair of stockings, her phone and her credit card, in case there was a problem with the open bar at the venue. Even last night she’d borrowed things from her sisters and had worn the ‘Mrs Edwards’ pyjamas they’d bought her—which she hoped they burned as soon as they got back to the hotel.
She had nothing. Not even a husband.
‘I’m sure your family can—’
‘No!’ Dawn cut him off before he could even suggest she crawl back to her family, broken and in need of help. Again.
She’d done that too often in the past. This time, she needed to fix things herself.
Yes, she had nothing. Yes, this was basically the worst she’d ever felt in her whole life.
But that just meant that things could only get better from here on. Right?
At least, they would if she made them better. If she took charge of her life for once and stopped waiting for a happy-ever-after to save her.
‘Okay, I need you to tell me where Justin is,’ she said as calmly as reasonably as possible. ‘He has my belongings. My passport was in his travel wallet with his, ready for our honeymoon. If he’s not going to marry me, then I need to check out my visa, figure out what I do next, and in order to achieve that I need my stuff.’ And she needed closure. She needed Justin to look her in the eye and tell her what had gone wrong. What had changed since lunch time yesterday that had made him run?
She needed him to tell her what was wrong with her so she could fix it and bloody well make her own happily ever after, with or without a man.
But, somehow, she suspected Cooper would react better to the more practical approach.
‘Look,’ she said when he hesitated. ‘You want me out of your brother’s life, right? I mean, that much has been obvious since you called to not congratulate us on our engagement.’ Are you sure about this? was what he’d actually said. Isn’t it a bit fast?
She had no idea where that instant dislike for her had come from, but Justin had told her he was like that with any girl he got serious about, so she was willing to bet it was more of a Cooper problem than a Dawn one.
‘It’s not what I want that matters,’ Cooper said. He left the fact that Justin obviously wanted her out of his life unsaid, which was possibly the nicest thing he’d ever done for her.
‘My point is, it’s quite hard for me to, say, up and leave the country to start over somewhere else while Justin has my passport.’ Never mind that she had no intention of leaving the States if she didn’t have to, especially since it would involve her traipsing back to Britain and her parents with her tail between her legs. If Cooper needed to believe that she was on her way out of Justin’s life to tell her where he was, then he could believe that.
He didn’t need to know that her passport wasn’t the only thing Dawn wanted from Justin. The answers she needed were none of his business.
Cooper sighed, his broad shoulders sinking slightly as he realised she wasn’t going to give up. Dawn stood firm, staring him down, not giving him a second to rethink that realisation.
‘Listen, Dawn, Justin said in his note that he needed to get away, he needed time to think. To refocus himself, he said. He needs to be away from everyone right now—family, friends and especially you. You need to give him that time.’
‘Time to think,’ Dawn echoed, a thought of her own crystallising in her brain.
‘Exactly.’ Cooper sounded relieved. He shouldn’t. ‘Why don’t you spend some time with your family, while they’re over here, try and relax too? I mean, this must have all been very stressful for you.’ The disbelief was strong in his voice on that last point, but it didn’t matter. He’d already told Dawn what she needed to know.
There was only one place Justin went when he needed to get away from everything and think. He’d told her on their third date at that hot new restaurant that served everything with kale.
She knew where she needed to go.
‘I could do that,’ she said agreeably. ‘Or I could head over to your family’s beach house in the Hamptons and find Justin.’
Cooper’s eyes widened, just enough for her to know she’d guessed right.
‘I think I know which I’d rather do, don’t you?’ Dawn smiled triumphantly and enjoyed seeing Cooper’s face fall.
At least she’d come out
