Chapter 45
Chapter Forty-Five
Hayden
I miss my wife.
My wife.
No matter how many times I tell myself it’s not real, I’m jolted by pleasure and pride every time those words go through my mind.
For better or worse, Cara Gamble is my wife, and I do miss her—fake vows or not.
It hasn’t even been thirty hours since the car service picked her up to whisk her back to Sumac Falls.
But every one of those twenty-eight hours has felt emptier.
We shouldn’t have crossed that line. To be fair, it probably would have taken some kind of natural disaster to stop us, but blurring boundaries isn’t a good idea in any business deal.
Blurring the boundaries in a business deal that has me married to the first girl I ever loved—and maybe never stopped loving—has the potential to be a disaster.
Leaving my feelings out of it has been a struggle the entire time, and to say having her naked in my bed didn’t help is an understatement.
And to continue my streak of making bad decisions where Cara is concerned, I pull out my phone and send her a text message. Maybe it’ll be enough communication to take the edge off.
HAYDEN
I’ll be back in town tomorrow afternoon. The office is closed Thursday and Friday for the Fourth, so we can do the Fourth of July on the town square together.
She must be busy with a client because it’s almost forty minutes before my phone chimes with a reply.
CARA
Sounds good.
I was hoping for more than that, but there are no dots indicating she’s sending another message through. Frowning, I type a response.
HAYDEN
Should I pick you up or will you drive your own car to my mother’s house?
The dots appear and disappear several times before they go away completely, deepening my frown into a scowl. We had a plan for navigating looking married when I was in town. The entire charade is pointless if we sleep in separate houses.
The dots come back, lingering for what feels like forever.
CARA
I have ten minutes until my next appointment. If you’re free, just call me because I don’t have time to text everything out.
That doesn’t sound good, so I immediately flip to my contacts and tap the button to call her.
She answers on the first ring. “Hey.”
“Hey. What’s going on?”
Her sigh is loud through my phone’s speaker. “I don’t think I’m comfortable staying at Colleen Reilly’s house, you know?”
“You can just call her your mother-in-law now.”
“Whatever I call her, I know she’ll hate having me there. The idea of it is like a lead weight in my stomach.”
It’s my turn to sigh, and I rub the spot between my eyebrows with my thumb. I understand what she’s saying, but I don’t see any way around it.
“I’m closed Thursday and Friday, too,” she says. “Maybe I should just come back to Boston.”
“I already promised Daisy and AJ I’d be there for the holiday.”
“I don’t—” She cuts off whatever she’s about to say and falls silent.
I wonder if it feels worse because I’m not there. Without me at her side, it might feel like nothing’s really changed. Four generations of animosity can’t be shaken off by a ring on her finger. But if I’m there, she might be more confident about it.
“It’s okay,” I tell her, even though it’s not. “I’ll be back tomorrow and we can talk about it. We’ll figure it out together.”
“That sounds good,” she says, and I can hear the relief in her voice.
Her relief sticks with me long after the call ends. Cara really doesn’t want to stay at Colleen’s. I know my mom, and she’ll be nice, but maybe nice isn’t enough. There’s still going to be a low-key negative vibe in the air.
The problem of the optics stays in the back of my mind as I finish out my workday, and then it keeps me from getting a good night’s sleep.
Maybe the feud is enough? The people of Sumac Falls might believe neither Colleen nor Gin will welcome the other’s child into their home, and they can make it clear they haven’t had time to find a place of their own yet—unless Gin’s told everybody about his intent to buy the house.
Then people might believe they’re waiting until it’s official.
It feels weak, though. We’re supposedly so madly in love we had to get married immediately, but we sleep separately under our mothers’ roofs like teenagers?
That doesn’t work for me.
By the time I drive into Sumac Falls the next night, I feel mostly prepared for the drama I’m about to unleash on the Gamble household.
“I guess we’re doing this,” I tell Penny as I pull into their driveway and park behind Cara’s car. “I know it’s going to be rough, but we’re in this together, right?”
She just rolls her eyes at me, sighs, and then rests her chin on her paws. Hopefully seeing Cara again will help ease the anxiety of being in a strange house. And I won’t leave her here alone. She’ll be with me or with Cara at all times.
That doesn’t make it any easier for me to unclench my fingers from the steering wheel and get out of the car.
I swore I wouldn’t step foot on this property until I owned it, but that was before Gin’s stubbornness changed the rules of the game. I might not have taken Marcus Gamble’s house—yet—but I married his daughter.
My wife is inside that house, and her family can’t keep me away from her anymore.