Wedding Vows: I Thee Wed: Back to Mr & Mrs / Reunited: Marriage in a Million / Marrying Her Billionaire Boss. Shirley Jump
said I was sorry a hundred times.”
She sighed. “It’s not about being sorry, Cade, it’s about changing what got us there in the first place.”
“That doesn’t work if only one of us is trying,” he countered. “And I’m trying damn it. Go with me, Mel. For one night be my wife again.”
“I can’t put on that show anymore.” She held her ground, arms crossed over her chest. “Besides, did Jeannie tell you she wanted us to make a speech?”
“Isn’t that supposed to be the class president’s thing?”
“She thought it would be…” Her voice trailed off.
“Be what?” Cade asked, leaning closer, inhaling the scent of her skin, the sweetness of fresh-baked cookies, of the woman he’d lived with more than half his life. “Would be what, Melanie?” Cade whispered, his mouth so close to hers, all it would take was a few inches of movement to kiss her. To have her in his arms, against his heart.
“Romantic,” she said after a minute, expelling a disgusted sigh on the word. “The whole Prom King and Queen still together thing.”
He moved back a step. “But we aren’t, are we?”
She shook her head, resolute. “No, we’re not.”
The need for her smoldered inside him, a wildfire ready to erupt. He still loved her, damn it, and refused to let her quit so easily.
His gaze traveled down, to her lips, her jaw, the delicate arch of her throat. The old attraction that had simmered between them for more than twenty years ignited anew in his chest, the embers never really extinguished.
He wanted her, Lord, did he want her. He wanted to sweep her off her feet, carry her out of this shop and back to their bed. Every fiber in his being ached to feel her familiar, sweet body beneath his, to lose himself inside her, to find that connection he’d never found anywhere else.
A slight flush crept into Melanie’s cheeks, warming them to cotton-candy-pink. She opened her mouth, shut it again, then reached for a spoon, succeeding only in knocking it along the counter. It skittered under a display stand of teas. Was she thinking the same thing?
Then it was gone, and she was back to all business. “The idea of going together and pretending we’re still together is—”
“Insane,” he finished.
Melanie reached for a towel, folding, then unfolding and refolding it, a nervous habit he recognized—and also a sign of hope. Maybe not much, but he’d take whatever he could get.
“Completely insane,” she said, watching him, her eyes as unreadable as the Pacific. Her hand stilled, the 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