2. Carrie
TWO
CARRIE
A groan slipped through my parted lips as I pushed myself up off the ground. My palms stung, and a quick glance told me they’d been scraped up by the asphalt as I fell. The impact had jarred my shoulders, and I cringed at the sight of dirt streaking down the front of my beautiful peach dress. Kneeling on the ground, I tried to shake my foot loose from where it was still jammed in the storm drain.
A sob worked its way up my throat and got caught.
Hailey was going to kill me. I’d lost my memory box, I’d ruined my dress, and my short sprint through the parking lot had succeeded in turning me into a sweaty mess, which meant my hair and makeup were melting off.
The last twenty-four hours came crashing down on me like an anvil in a children’s cartoon. I crumpled.
My relationship was over. I was homeless. I’d ruined my favorite cousin’s wedding. And worst of all, I’d lost the only possessions I actually cared about.
This was my fresh start? This was my grand entrance into my new life?
Derek would cackle if he saw me now. He’d tell me he knew I couldn’t make it without him. He’d say I deserved this for leaving him, for thinking I could do better.
And maybe he’d be right.
Throat clenching as I tried to hold back my emotion, I winced as I tried to loosen my shoe. It was impossible to see through the tears clouding my vision, and all the strength had gone out of my muscles. Pushing myself up only made my palms sting and my muscles tremble.
I was weak—in every sense of the word.
And then I heard the footsteps. Someone was jogging toward me, and before I even looked up, I knew who it was.
The front view of him was more striking than I could have predicted. Wearing black from head to toe, my would-be savior came trotting toward me in shiny black shoes, perfectly fitted trousers, and a slim-fitting button-down shirt. His hair was dark, as were his eyes. His jaw was sharp below carved cheekbones, and thick brows drew together at the sight of pathetic ole me curled up on the ground.
Damn him for being handsome, and damn him double for seeing me like this.
If I’d had a choice, I would have stopped the tears from falling down my cheeks. But they carved tracks down my carefully applied makeup and splattered on the asphalt as the man came to kneel in front of me, his gaze circling my face like he’d never seen anything so pathetic in his life.
Or maybe that was in my head. I couldn’t read his expression through my blurred vision. Couldn’t think about anything other than the one thing that truly mattered.
“Did you get it back?” I croaked.
He reached for me, and the backs of his fingers were warm as they brushed away my tears. “I lost him,” he said, his voice low and regretful.
My head dropped between my shoulder blades, and another mortifying sob made its way out of me. “I would’ve got it back if you hadn’t scared him away.”
The man was silent for a beat, crouching before me as I fell apart right there on the asphalt. When I finally looked up, his face was unreadable.
Finally, his lips parted. “He had a knife in his other hand,” he told me quietly. Breaking it to me gently that no, in fact, I wouldn’t have gotten the box back. I would’ve got a knife in the spleen instead.
I closed my lips. It was hard to gulp past the boulder in my throat. “Oh,” I whispered. I hadn’t seen a knife. Hadn’t even thought to look. All my attention was on that box. On the scraps of paper and the single earring I knew were inside.
“Let me help you up,” he said, extending a broad palm toward me. He was calm, unruffled. I would’ve almost preferred for him to be rude to me, because this quiet kindness was nearly too much for me to handle.
“I’m stuck,” I said, wrenching my leg .
The man moved around me, and the touch of his warm hand on my ankle was a shock. “You’re bleeding,” he said, and I saw the tightness of his jaw when he said it. Then he rotated my foot and lifted it, and the jammed heel came free. I scrambled to my feet, ignoring his outstretched hand, wincing as I put my weight on my rolled ankle.
He made a noise like he was frustrated with me, and I turned a glare on him. “What?” I snapped.
“You’re hurt,” he sniped back, that soft kindness ceding to frustration.
“So? What’s it to you?”
“Good question. Put your arm around my shoulders.” He moved closer, as if to put an arm around my waist.
I reared back, and a lance of pain went through my ankle. “What? No!”
His jaw clenched again. “You’d rather hobble on an injured ankle? It could be broken.”
“It’s not broken.”
“You’re a doctor?”
“I don’t need a doctor to know my ankle isn’t broken, genius.”
“I’m trying to help you.”
“Yeah, well, don’t bother,” I said.
He pinched his lips and stared at me with those dark, dark eyes. I arched my brows and stared right back. I didn’t like this man. Actually, I resented him. Sure, he saved me from a knife attack from some crazy crackhead—so what? He also chased away my only chance at getting my memory box back. And now he wanted to play the hero?
I wasn’t having it. The past twenty-four hours had been too hard for me to put up with another overbearing man who thought he knew what was best for me.
But he kept staring at me, not picking up the hostile vibes I kept trying to send his way. Thinking I needed to be a little more obvious about it, I flicked my hands at him and said, “Shoo.”
All he did was blink, look down at my hands, then look back up at my face. A single dark eyebrow arched. “‘Shoo?’”
“You heard me. Run along.”
“You’re a very rude woman.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment. Now go. I don’t need any more of your ‘help,’” I said, putting the last word in finger quotes.
“I don’t think you know what you need.”
Oh, that was rich. Yeah, he was overbearing, all right. Just another man, wanting to tell me what to do. Damn him and his stupid skeptical eyebrow.
“Yeah, well, maybe I don’t know what I need, but that isn’t any of your—” I interrupted myself with a scream as he bent at the waist and picked me up in his arms. “Put me down!” I screeched, but my hands clung to his shoulders.
Strong, broad shoulders. Triple damn him!
“No,” he said.
“No?”
“No.”
“Some hero you are.”
“I’m taking you inside.”
“You are an arrogant, overbearing?—”
“Quiet, woman. ”
“ Ex-c-use me ?”
“It’ll take two minutes for me to take you inside, and you can yell at me from there.”
“My car window is smashed! All my things will get stolen if I go inside.”
“I’ll handle it.”
“Oh, you’ll handle it!” I scoffed. “Great! Wonderful! Just what I needed. For you to ‘handle’ another one of my issues, because you did such a good job the first time.”
“Didn’t I tell you to be quiet?”
“You are unfathomably rude.”
“Guess we’ve got that in common.”
I spluttered and tried to squirm out of his arms. By this point, we’d made it under the hotel awning where taxis circled to the front door, the man’s long legs eating the distance to the entrance. He had one arm around my back, his hand cupped around my upper arm, and the other cradled below my knees. He moved like I weighed nothing, which I resented. I didn’t want to get manhandled by a handsome man with a savior complex. I wanted to rage at the world.
We made it inside, and I caught the startled glances of the workers behind the check-in desk before the man turned me toward a small seating area.
Then I was unceremoniously dumped onto a two-seater sofa from the great height of my hero’s arms. While I bounced on the cushions and made wordless noises of outrage, he brushed his hands off, put his hands on his hips, and said, “Keys. ”
“What?”
“Give me your car keys. I’ll go grab your stuff. You stay here and try not to get yourself into mortal danger in the next five minutes, if you think you can handle that.”
I would gouge his pretty, dark eyes out and feast on them.
Through clenched teeth, I said, “I’m not giving you my keys. All my stuff is in my car. You could drive off with it!”
The look this man gave me needed no words. It was a look that said, Would a man dressed in clothes as expensive as mine care about your rust bucket full of junk?
Clenching my jaw, I tried to resist. I hadn’t won our first little stare-off, but I’d win this one. I would damn well win this one, because I wasn’t going to let this jerk?—
“Ma’am? Is everything okay?” a woman in a hotel uniform asked. Her name tag told me she went by Beth.
I opened my mouth, but before I could tell her to kick this overbearing, presumptuous asshole out of her fine establishment, he said, “We’ll need the security footage from your parking lot. And someone will need to call the cops to make a report. This woman’s car was broken into, and some items were taken.” He pointed to the luggage trolley by the entrance. “I’ll need one of those to load up all her things. The car is unsecured. And she needs medical attention.”
“Right away, sir.”
“Now hold on a minute?—”
He turned to me and pointed at me with his index finger like I was a mutt and he was my master. “Stay there and try not to get in trouble while I deal with your shit.” Then he grabbed my purse, opened it, and took out my car keys.
Unbelievable. Un-be- freaking -lievable !
“Who even are you?” I yelled at his back, but he didn’t answer. He strode to the luggage trolley while one of the porters trotted after him, and the two of them disappeared outside.
I slumped back on the couch while Beth the front desk attendant made hurried phone calls and waved at the other employees. A man with short cropped hair and an ill-fitting uniform rushed toward me with a first-aid kit clutched in his hands.
Sighing, I resigned myself to my fate. And when I heard my aunt Jackie’s voice calling my name, I couldn’t help the wobble of my bottom lip. She came rushing toward me, all navy sparkles and bright lipstick, and all the rage that had buoyed me to this point evaporated.
“What happened?” she said, waving off the employee struggling to open the first-aid kit. She took my face in her hands. “Honey! What?—”
“I ruined my dress and my hair and my makeup,” I blubbered, unable to stop the tears. “And a crazy drug addict stole my mom’s memory box.”
“Oh,” Aunt Jackie said, slumping onto the couch beside me. “Oh, honey.”
“I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. I’ll skip the wedding. I don’t need to be in any photos. I ruined everything, just like I always do?—”
“Hush, Carrie. None of that. You think Hailey would get married without you standing next to her? Don’t be ridiculous. We’ll fix your hair and your makeup, and I know someone has a Tide pen so we can get these stains out of the dress, or we’ll find a spare somewhere. You can wear a paper bag, and we’ll laugh about it in a decade or two. Stop crying now. Hey. Come on, now.”
I’d already ruined my makeup, so what was a little more snot and tears? But I took the tissue that my aunt handed me and did my best to blot my face. Then I took a deep breath and turned to untie the strap around my ankle, wincing as it hit the wound on the back of my heel.
Stupid blister. It was going to get infected and cause my foot to fall off. Probably.
Aunt Jackie barked orders and rushed off to find me a dress while I ripped open alcohol swabs and tried to clean my wound with trembling hands. I heard the whomp-whomp of someone coming through the revolving door and looked up to see the porter and my man in black come striding through. The porter pushed the luggage trolley piled high with my dented boxes and old duffel bags. Half my stuff was in garbage bags that had been piled on top of the whole dismal tower of worthless belongings. It looked completely out of place in the fancy hotel, and shame burned the back of my throat.
My erstwhile savior came to a stop in front of me, extending my car keys between his thumb and forefinger. I took them and said a begrudging “thank you” while he loomed over me like he’d never seen anything so pitiful in his life.
“I have a lunch meeting to go to,” he told me. “I’ll give a statement to the cops about what I saw. Hope you get your stuff back.”
My voice was gone. I didn’t have the energy to be mad at him anymore. Besides, why would I be angry? He’d only tried to help. And he had helped. He’d chased off a knife- wielding maniac. He’d carried me inside. He’d organized the staff and brought in all my stuff from my car.
But grief had a hold on me, and I couldn’t quite bring myself to be grateful. He was too handsome and arrogant and male . Giving him an inch felt like a loss. It felt like crawling back to Derek’s arms and admitting I never should have left. It felt like admitting that I’d never make it on my own.
Holding my gaze for a long moment, the man dipped his chin, spun on his heels, and walked toward the hotel’s swanky lounge bar. He looked put-together and unruffled by all that had happened, which I resented. I wondered if he could feel my gaze on his back as he walked away. Wondered if he’d give me a second thought now that he was done dealing with me.
But he turned the corner and entered the bar, and he didn’t spare me another glance.
A moment later, Aunt Jackie came rushing over. “We have a spare dress. It’s a couple of sizes too big, but with the lacing up the back we should be able to make it work. How’s the ankle? Can you walk?”
I tested it by putting a bit of weight on it. “I think so,” I said, “but heels might not be a good idea.”
“Forget the heels,” Jackie said, sliding her arm around mine. “Let’s get you cleaned up. Then we’ll marry that daughter of mine and celebrate until the sun goes down. When the cops get here, you can duck out and talk to them, but for now we need to get moving so my soon-to-be son-in-law doesn’t get cold feet. I want Hailey married, and I want grandbabies by the time they get back from their honeymoon. Okay?”
As if Seth would ever leave Hailey. They were made for each other. And wasn’t I just the worst person in the world for being jealous of her right now, on the wedding day I’d nearly ruined?
I gave her my best smile, suspecting it was a little wobbly around the edges. “Sounds good,” I managed through a tight throat, and I let my aunt tow me toward the elevators. When I passed the entrance to the lounge bar, I forced myself not to look inside.