Stealing the Groom (15 page)

Chapter Fourteen

The next afternoon, Chad was still wrestling with himself. After they’d gone to the lake, they’d returned home. Amelia had made chocolate chip cookies, he’d made the popcorn, and they’d watched a movie together. She’d talked through it as usual, but he hadn’t minded. And he’d known why.

Because she was Amelia.

She was the last thought on his mind before he’d gone to bed and he’d spent a mostly sleepless night hashing and rehashing the friendship-versus-more idea.

On one hand, he didn’t want a real marriage with love, but on the other hand…

His gut twisted. It was too late.

My God. What had he done?

He’d fallen in love with Amelia.

Chad scrubbed his hand down his face. He couldn’t picture himself letting her walk out of his life. If she ever did wed, she’d end up marrying some other guy who wasn’t anywhere close to being good enough for her.

He’d never really thought what that meant before. But now that he’d spent time with Amelia as his pseudo wife, touching her, kissing her, sharing things that went beyond anything they’d shared as friends, he realized he never wanted her to do any of those things with anyone but him.

He’d find a way to deal with his issues about love as long as it meant having Amelia in his life. Having her in his home, in his bed, by his side. Sharing her hopes, encouraging her dreams. He wanted to take her dancing while jazz music played. He wanted to watch her face light up with laughter and have the right to claim her lips with his. He wanted it all.

He was going to take the biggest risk of his life with his eyes wide open.

Decision made, Chad pulled out a sticky note. As soon as he was done here, he’d stop and buy her favorite flowers. No, her favorite candy. No, jewelry.

He exhaled.
Get a grip, Chad.
First, he needed to go see Amelia and tell her how he felt. See if the possibility existed that she felt the same.

No. He needed to finish what he was doing. Getting some personal paperwork in order. He needed to add Amelia to his life insurance policy. He wanted to increase it, to make sure she never wanted for anything financially if something happened to him. But first, he needed that copy of his marriage license he’d instructed his secretary to get.

The intercom on his desk buzzed and his secretary announced that she needed to speak with him. Chad frowned. She sounded agitated, and she was never agitated.

When she walked in, she looked uncertain.

“What is it?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Walker, but there’s no record of your marriage.”

“Maybe it wasn’t recorded yet.”

She shook her head. “When I couldn’t find it, I had it researched, both in the county and at the capital there where the licenses are on record. I don’t know what’s going on, but you did not get married.”

“I see.”

“Is there something else?”

“No, that’ll be all.” Chad dismissed her and got on the phone to make some calls himself. He’d get to the bottom of this. There had to be a mistake. His grandfather had arranged a special license.

His grandfather, who had been determined for him to settle down. Who had even thrown Amelia’s name out a few times before he made his arrangement with Claire.

He considered the last few months leading up to the wedding and everything started clicking into place.

Half an hour later, Chad rocked back in the chair, his gut churning. His grandfather had played him. Had Amelia been in on the scheme? She’d been the one to disrupt the wedding to Claire. At the rest area on the way out of town that same day, she’d suggested he could have asked her to marry him, that she would have helped him. Surely there was a logical explanation.

He left the office and rode the elevator down to the parking garage. His grandfather had played him?
Amelia
had played him?
Why?
No, he wouldn’t believe it. Deceit wasn’t Amelia’s style. He was overreacting, but one way or another, he was going to get to the bottom of this.

The drive to the estate seemed to take twice as long as it normally did. He hit every red light on Main Street. By the time he pulled onto the circular driveway, he’d entertained and rejected a dozen reasons either of them could have had for faking a marriage.

Parking before the front door, he caught his grandfather returning from a game of golf.

“Hello, Chad. I hope you’ve had a good—”

“Did you lie and arrange to trick me into marrying Amelia?” he asked without preamble. His grandfather eased the golf hat back on his head to scratch his forehead.

After a moment of staring at each other, Henry said, “We should go inside, Chad, there’s no need for the gardeners to hear our conversation.”

“Fine. Because I want some answers.”

Henry led the way into his study and pushed the door closed. He studied Chad for a long moment and then sighed. “I did lie and I accept full responsibility about that. I pressured Amelia into not telling you about the arrangement by telling her about my bad heart. I’m not going to be around much longer. And I pressured her into not telling you that, either.”

Chad stilled, his heart dropping to his feet while his world rocked as one truth after another hit him.
The wedding hadn’t been real. His grandfather was dying and Amelia knew. And they’d both lied to him about it.

“Go on.”

Henry eased his body down into the chair behind the desk and removed the plaid golf hat. He tossed it onto a stack of folders.

“I was going to tell you.”

“When? After the real wedding? How could you keep all of this from me?”

“Because I love you and if you never listen to another word I say, listen to this. Amelia loves you. And you deserve to be happy.”

Chad’s disbelief was evident. “The Amelia I’ve always known wouldn’t have kept something this important from me.”

“She wanted to tell you. I begged her not to. To be fair to her, son, I put her in a really tough spot. I could tell she was upset about agreeing to help me.”

“And yet she did it anyway.” He could hear the disgust in his voice. “I have to go.”

When Chad turned, Henry asked in alarm, “Where are you going?”

“To see my fake wife—correction,
fake friend
—where else?”

…

Amelia called Chad on his office phone but his secretary said he was out. She’d left a message on his cell, but that hadn’t worked either.

The doorbell at her sister’s house pealed and for one second, Amelia thought it might be Chad surprising her.

She was right.

But the moment she saw the hard look in his eyes, she knew something was drastically wrong.

“What’s happened?” She reached for his hand but he pulled away from her touch. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his navy-blue dress pants.

“I tried to get a copy of our marriage license.” His voice was sharp though studiously controlled.

“And?”

“Unbelievable,” Chad raked a hand through his hair. “How can you stand there with such an innocent expression?”

“Chad, I can explain everything.” Amelia sank down onto the sofa.

“Uh-huh. Next I suppose you’ll tell me you didn’t know anything about my grandfather’s heart or him setting us up to marry in Honeymoon Hills.”

Amelia’s face paled. “I did know about that, but please, let me explain.”

“What’s to explain, Amelia? I thought we were friends. Best friends. I told you this marriage would ruin us, and look what happened. You deliberately deceived me. How much did my grandfather promise to pay you to stop my wedding to Claire?”

Getting to her feet, her chest rising rapidly as she took short breaths, Amelia said, “You know me better than that.”

“I thought I did, but right now it seems like I don’t know you at all. You went to a lot of trouble to make sure I didn’t marry anyone but you.” Chad swept his arm around the room. “Maybe my grandfather gave you a few hundred thousand dollars? Was that it? Abby needs the money. Did you do this for her?”

“Chad, listen to yourself,” Amelia said, pressing her hand against her chest, feeling the pain from his words stabbing her. “You can’t truly believe what you’re saying.”

He took a step closer, her words falling on deaf ears. “He’s always wanted us to marry. How did he finally convince you? If it wasn’t the money, what was it?”

Knowing he was feeling betrayed to the depths of his soul, Amelia remained silent against his anger, waiting him out.

“You see Amelia,
this
is what’s wrong with love. It destroys everyone it touches.”

“Dammit, Chad, it doesn’t destroy everything. Your unwillingness to love is what set everything in motion to begin with. If only you’d open your eyes and see that what I did was for you—”

“So this is my fault?” he roared. She flinched. She’d never seen him this angry before.

“No! Yes! I don’t know!” She felt tears well up in her eyes. “We love you and want you to be happy. Why can’t you believe that? Why won’t you let me love you?” Her voice broke on the last sentence.

He shook his head, his features hard. “How could I ever love someone as deceitful and manipulative as my mother?”

His words washed over her like boiling oil. Chad had hated his mother. So to compare Amelia to her…

“I want you to know that I don’t ever want to see you again. This friendship is over.” His tone was ice cold.

She racked her brain thinking of something to calm him down, something to change his mind. But for once she was at a loss. Everything was ruined.

“Fine,” she replied, her voice dull. “And Chad,” she called when he had one hand on the door, “I hope you and your anti-love issues will be very happy together. Shut the door as you go.”

As she watched him go, she swore she would not cry. She would not waste any more time on Chad Walker.

If only her heart would listen.

Chapter Fifteen

After the conversation with Amelia, Chad drove back to work and cloistered himself inside his office. The torment in his heart was like a physical pain. His entire body ached as if he’d come down with a bad case of the flu.

He needed to make sense of his grandfather’s illness and what had transpired between him and Amelia.

Picking up the phone, he made two calls and a few minutes later, Eric and Nick entered his office and sat on the opposite side of his desk. They wore concerned expressions.

He told both men the story of his arranged first wedding to Claire and of the hasty one to Amelia. Perhaps he should refer to it as the non-wedding, since technically he and Amelia had never legally married.

Eric whistled when Chad finished recounting everything. “You can see how she played me,” he said glumly.

“I don’t know about that,” Eric said. From behind his glasses, he gave Chad a level, unblinking stare.

“Did you hear her out? Give her a chance to explain?” Nick asked.

He assessed his friends with an unwavering stare. “She deceived me along with my grandfather. What’s to explain?”

“I agree that she should have been honest with you, but are you going to throw away a lifelong friendship over this?” Eric asked.

When Chad didn’t answer, Nick leaned forward and spoke with a sense of urgency. “Look, you feel betrayed by both, but you’re also upset because of your grandfather’s illness and because you love Amelia.”

“How do you know that? I never told either of you that I love her.”

His friends looked at each other, and he hated that. A pity glance.

“You didn’t have to. I knew from all the ‘Amelia this’ and ‘Amelia that’ stories you bored me with,” Eric said.

“To hear him talk, you would have thought Amelia could walk on water.” Nick laughed. “You should have seen the way he watched her every move at the reception party the other night.”

“For months, I pointed out hot girls to Chad and he’d just launch into another tale about Amelia,” Eric said.

That brought Chad up short.

He hadn’t done that. Had he?

Nick nodded. “I know what you mean. He went out on a date with this one girl and afterwards said, ‘She’s not funny like Amelia.’ So I hooked him up with a girl with a great sense of humor. What did he say? ‘She didn’t know how to be serious like Amelia.’ In other words, they weren’t Amelia.”

“Enough.” Chad held up his hand to stop the stories. He didn’t want to entertain the possibility that he’d misjudged her, that his own insecurities about love had blinded him and caused him to make such a huge mistake.

That while she’d agreed to keep up his grandfather’s ruse, it was done out of love, not greed because his grandfather had paid her. That in her own impetuous, headstrong way she was trying to save him from his own worst enemy: himself.

“Look, buddy. I don’t give you orders too often. But it’s time for you to get out of that chair and go work things out with your wife. Sort-of wife. Whatever the hell she is,” Nick said and pointed to the stack of paperwork Chad planned to work on. “That can wait.”

“No,” Chad said, unsure of himself. “I’ll wait until I’m done here. I need time to think to come up with a plan so I’ll know what to say to her, how to fix things.” He ran his hand through his hair. “I told her I didn’t want to see her ever again.” He winced remembering how harsh he’d been.

Again, that damned pitying look between his two friends. “If we know women, and I think we do,” Nick said, “the moment you realize you’ve made a mistake, you need to grovel and make it right. Otherwise, the door of opportunity narrows. The door could even close.”

“You could lose her,” Eric said. “You’ve been friends for years. Is losing her worth the moral high ground? Is not forgiving her really the route you want to go?”

Realization slammed into Chad.

Lose Amelia? His world shifted from its axis.

He could lose her. Not because of love, but because he hadn’t trusted love. His father’s love for his mother had destroyed him. But his feelings for Amelia…

He thought back to everything they’d been through. How she’d always been there for him. Had even risked her own reputation, her own freedom, to save him from something that would only bring more bitterness into his life.

And he’d accused her of manipulating him for money.

He’d been as guilty as anyone for damaging their relationship.

He jumped up and reached for his suit coat. “Lock up for me.” Tossing the office keys to Eric, he pulled his phone from the clip on his belt and dialed Amelia’s cell.

Voice mail.

He left a message telling her he was coming to her house, everything moving as if in slow motion.

He’d been such an idiot.

How could he have ever doubted her? She’d never lied to him, never tried to trick him. He had to get to her, to apologize for the awful things he’d said before it was too late.

There was an urgency in his heart to see her, to tell her what was in his heart. That he loved her, and didn’t want to live a second of his life without her.

In the past, whenever he’d heard sappy stories about how love changed a man, he scoffed. But now he knew he’d crawl across broken glass to get to her, to make this right.

God, he’d beg if need be.

He would tell her he loved her. If she’d give him a chance, maybe, just maybe she’d someday come to love him that way, too.

Parking the Mustang in the driveway of her house, he leaped from the car, not taking time to shut the door, and rushed onto the porch. Leaning into the doorbell, he pressed it repeatedly and when no one answered, he opened the screen door and knocked hard. “Amelia! Open the door.”

The door swung open and Noah’s face told a tale Chad didn’t want to hear.

He swallowed, fear lodged in his chest. “Where’s Amelia?”

“She’s gone.”

Chad rested his head against the doorframe.
Too late.

Noah stuck a hand into the pocket of his brown cardigan. “She’s on a flight right now.”

Chad lifted his head. “Where? I can have the company jet take me wherever she is. I’ll meet the plane.”

“On assignment for work. She wouldn’t give me the location. Said me and Henry might try to meddle if we knew where she was.”

“Would you?” Despite himself, Chad felt a bit hopeful. Maybe with some reinforcements, he could fix things with Amelia.

“No, not this time. We’ve learned our lesson about playing Cupid.”

Chad’s heart contracted in a viselike grip. “Noah, this can’t be the end. I have to find her.”

“Give her a little time, son. Right now, both of you have had too many people interfering with your personal business. We all had good intentions, but I see how it still didn’t make it okay. Amelia needs some time to come to some conclusions about what she wants in life on her own. She needs to learn to fight for what she wants, instead of run away, like she usually does. Maybe once things calm down, she’ll call. And if she does, you might get your chance to patch things up.”

Chad prayed that Noah was right.

…

Amelia slid the key card into the door and walked into her hotel suite. She set her purse on the side table. Another day, another hotel. The gray, dismal weather outside reflected the mood she’d been in all day.

She’d managed to get some photographs, none of them great, and one editor had even said as much. She knew the usual satisfaction she found behind the lens was missing.

She kicked off her shoes and opened her laptop. She had a Skype date with Ann.

After a few minutes of insignificant chatter, Amelia said, “I can sense your disapproval. You’ve been biting your tongue all night. Might as well say what’s on your mind.”

“I’m not sure you want to hear it.”

If anything, Amelia knew she could count on Ann to tell the truth whether it was what she wanted to hear or not. “Out with it.” Amelia leaned back on the tightly stuffed sofa.

“You’ve changed.”

“Change isn’t always bad,” Amelia replied, toying with the necklace she wore.

“Change isn’t always good, either,” Ann shot back. She pointed her finger to the top of Amelia’s hair pulled into a no-nonsense bun. “All you have to do is take a look in the mirror to see what I’m talking about.”

“What?” She spread her hands in a tell-me motion.

Ann shifted in front of her computer camera, an accusing expression on her face. “You look miserable. You have lines on your face. You’ve become all business and no frill. And the pictures you sent me… Your photographs lack something. Before, they were as vibrant as you were. Now, they’re dull and, well…boring.”

Amelia crossed her arms. “What’s wrong with being more sensible?”

“You’ve become Chad, that’s what’s wrong. And don’t you give me that look. You know I’m right.”

Amelia stiffened. Like little arrows, Ann’s words pierced the protective shell she’d begun to build around herself.

“Have you heard from him?”

“He’s called, but I haven’t answered.” Amelia set down the compact she’d pulled out seconds before to study her face, not wanting to see any more of the changes in herself.

“How many times has he called?” Ann asked.

“Twenty-one times. He’s left voice messages, but I deleted them without listening to any of them.”

“Hmmm,” Ann murmured. “Well, if you don’t want to talk to him, I suppose there’s nothing more for me to say.”

“What is this ‘hmmm’? There was no need to listen to the messages.”

“He loves you.”

Amelia shook her head. “No, he doesn’t. He just misses our buddy-buddy relationship. For Chad, having me around was like having a comfortable pair of bedroom shoes. He wanted me, but that was just physical.”

“I don’t think so. If we’re going with the shoe analogy I think Chad started to see you as a pair of stilettos and it scared him.”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“I’m telling you I’m right.”

Amelia wanted to believe her sister, but Ann hadn’t been there when Chad had said he never wanted to see her again. They had been friends for years, but they’d never had a fight like that. He’d said to get out of his life, and she truly believed he meant it.

“My relationship with Chad burned to the ground. Let the ashes rest.”

“The relationship is only burned if you want it to be. You can rebuild stronger on the same foundation. You’ve always been a can-do person, sis. You’ve had a setback, for sure. But that doesn’t mean you have to give up and run. You can fight to fix things, you know.”

“Maybe, but for how long? Life is full of mistakes, Ann. I can’t be with someone who flies off the handle blaming love every time I screw up. Who is always going to assume the worst because ‘love is the enemy,’ instead of giving me a chance.” She tucked a strand of hair that escaped the bun behind her ear, considering her sister’s words. “I know. I just…don’t know.”

“Hmmm…I don’t think that’s how it would be. Not after this time.”

Amelia shrugged.

“Well, sis, I’ve got to go. I’ll leave you to stew on what I’ve said.”

After she and her sister disconnected, Amelia walked into the bathroom and turned on the water, not allowing herself to think of Chad or his smile or the way his eyes darkened right before he kissed her.

She missed him with an ache that hadn’t gotten any better, and she doubted it would no matter how much time passed.

Her head said leaving had been the right course of action to take, but her heart wanted to debate. Chad had wounded her deeply for the first time in their relationship. Heck, they’d wounded each other.

Now she understood why he always avoided matters of the heart. Even if they found their way back to each other, how could she trust him not to hurt her this way again?

…

Twenty-one days. Two hours. Nine minutes.

Life without Amelia.

Chad stared through the window of his office, seeing nothing through the darkness. The pouring rain accentuated the way he felt.

Lately, he’d spent every waking hour at the office, and most nights, he didn’t leave to go home and sleep. When an exhausted sleep did finally come, he crashed on the couch.

Mornings he’d shower in the adjacent bathroom and start his cycle of days and nights all over again.

His life had become an endless routine of grief and worry for both Amelia and his grandfather. His grandfather had adamantly refused to even consider a transplant no matter how much Chad had begged him to.

Assuming he even got a heart from a donor.

The collie whimpered and rested his head against Chad’s leg. He picked the puppy up and stroked his head.

“I know how you feel, buddy,” he said.

He missed Amelia with an ache that went bone deep. He’d called her repeatedly to no avail, turned over every stone he could think of, even hired a private detective to track her.

He’d flown out several times hoping to catch her only to arrive in city after city minutes after she’d left. He’d traipsed through hotel lobby after hotel lobby and airport after airport.

All he could do now was wait, and he wasn’t a man comfortable with waiting while his world slipped further away from him.

Time without Amelia had not been good to him.

He knew he looked awful. He’d lost weight, his clothes barely fit, and half the time he didn’t bother to shave any more.

He’d heard the whispers. Chad Walker was working too hard. Chad Walker had been too young to be at the helm of Walker Industries.

But he knew the truth. Chad Walker was suffering from having lost the only woman he ever loved.

His office door flung open and he squinted against the sudden brightness when Eric turned on the overhead light.

The collie barked and bristled, backing up protectively against Chad.

Nick stood beside Eric, and both men stared.

“What time is it?” Chad asked, not really caring, only knowing that since Amelia left time moved snail-like from one second to the next.

“Time for an intervention,” Nick said and closed the door behind them. The two advanced on Chad.