Coach Love(60)

She reached across the small table and ran a fingertip down his cheek. His body reacted to her but he forced his brain to rule. When he kissed her fingers then placed her hand down on the table something in him surged, filling his chest and his head with a loud noise—one that demanded that he go find Cara now. He shook his head to clear it.

“The redheaded girl,” Melinda said, making him blink. “She’s still something to you, isn’t she?”

“Maybe. Doesn’t matter. She’s getting married in a few days, and not to me.” Resisting the urge to run out of here and drive straight to Cara’s apartment took every ounce of self-control he possessed at that moment.

“You know, you’re probably right.” Melinda patted her lips with a napkin and reached for her purse. He threw a crumpled ten-dollar bill onto the table. “About you being a project I mean.” The little nose wrinkle she gave at the sight of the money made the relieved guy inside him do a victory dance in his head.

He put his arm around her as they walked out. When he opened the passenger’s side door for her, she glanced into the interior of his crappy car before grabbing him and pressing her mouth to his, making him have to think hard about the potential of a farewell screw before peeling her off. “You’re something special, too, Melinda. But I don’t think we’re meant to blend our specials together, you know what I mean?”

He wiped the tear off her cheek.

“I’m gonna get a cab.” She squared her shoulders. “Bye, Kieran. I’ll never forget you.”

“Best of luck,” he said, as she walked away, swallowing the terror that clawed at his throat. “Bye,” he croaked out. Curious why his fingers hurt so bad, he glanced down and noted he was white-knuckling the top of the passenger’s side door.

He let go, flexing his fingers until a taxi collected her. It took him almost fifteen minutes to calm down enough to point his car in the direction of Cara’s apartment building.

Once there, he sat in his car, noting her dark windows and wondering what in the hell made him think she’d dump Mr. Rich Really Nice Lawyer Man. With a curse, he put the car in reverse and headed toward his own building, making plans, thinking ahead, and coming up with excuses not to attend her wedding.

He stumbled onto his couch, tugging his phone out before he passed out from exhaustion and sent Cara a text:

I’ve spent years being mad at you, a few weeks being in lust with you, and am not sure I can watch you get married to some guy who’s not me. So if I don’t see you again, good luck. Have a great life. I will never stop loving you. I wish our timing could have been better.

After staring at the message a while, he tossed the phone against the wall and pulled a blanket over his head, letting sleep take him.





Four Days Later

“Knock, knock,” a familiar voice interrupted Cara’s latest bout of crying.

“Come on in.”

Her mother had finally left her alone, after hovering and fussing and being a pain for the last hour. Cara kept her gaze on her image in the large mirror. The bride’s room in her small church had been outfitted nicely, especially since more suburbanites had discovered its charms for weddings.

Lindsay Love poked her head around the door. Cara smiled at her. “Hey there.” Grabbing a blush brush for something to do with her nervous energy, she set it down when she shook too much to do anything but screw up her carefully applied makeup.

“Oh, honey, you are so gorgeous,” Lindsay said. “You kids all grown up makes me feel old.”

She leveled her face with Cara’s in the mirror.

“Thanks,” Cara said, for lack of anything better. “You’re not old. You look great. Your hip giving you trouble?”

“Not hardly at all anymore.” Cara could sense her unease.

“Is Kieran here?”

“Not yet. He’s coming though.”

“Oh. Okay.” They fell silent. “Thank you for being here.”

“Of course, Miss Cara. I wouldn’t miss this for anything.”

She looked down at the floor and counted to ten when the room got a little fuzzy, acknowledging that skipping breakfast had been a bad idea. But her throat had been so tight the thought of food made her ill. “I wish....”

Lindsay made a tsking sound and patted her shoulder. “Don’t wish on your weddin’ day, honey. It’s all kinds of bad luck.” She squeezed Cara’s arm. “I’m happy for you. For you both.” The woman’s green eyes—identical to Kieran’s—filled with tears before she ducked out into the hall.

Choking on the words she wished she could say, Cara let memories of the past few days crash in on her, relentlessly beating her down like waves. Kent had apologized, had gone far out of his way to convince her he loved her and only her. But the night he’d picked her up from the strip-club party had been what she wanted to consider a new beginning for them. He’d told her everything about the other man coming just shy of using his real name at first. That word lay shimmering and unspoken between them. He explained that he, Kent, had been bisexual for years. But that Paul had been his first actual emotional relationship with a man—and his last.