“Those aren’t the words I’d recommend. But if you show up there, tell her you love her, offer her a ring to prove you’re serious and explain where you’re coming from with all this, I think she’ll understand.”
Wade frowned at his brother, then turned back to stare at his desk blotter. He’d lain in bed night after night replaying those last moments with Tori. If he’d said or done something else, might it have ended differently? Sometimes the door slammed in his face just the way it had happened. But once, Tori had listened to his words. She’d forgiven him. And that was the time he’d imagined telling her the truth.
He wanted so badly to go back and have another try. Heath insisted he still had a chance to turn things around. He had permission to tell her what she wanted to know, but he wasn’t sure if it would make a difference. Could Tori really trust him enough? What if it was too little, too late? Was it possible she was still in love with him after everything that had happened between them?
Wade closed his eyes and pictured Tori as she’d been Friday morning before she left for Philadelphia. Her pale blue eyes were wary, but the love he saw there was undeniable. Maybe he hadn’t lost his chance yet. God, he hoped so. He couldn’t function like this for much longer. He’d have a real heart attack before too long from the stress and the copious amounts of caffeine he was drinking to compensate for lost sleep.
He had to give it a shot. The gaping hole in his chest begged him to at least try. If she turned him down, he would not have lost anything he hadn’t already given away.
Heath looked at his brother. His expression was about as serious as it ever got. “This will work out.”
He sure as hell hoped so.
“You always were the optimist in the family.” Wade rolled his chair up to the desk with a new fire to put his plan into action. “Okay, Mr. Advertising Executive, direct me to the most environmentally conscious jeweler on the market.”
“I should’ve known—” Heath grinned “—that you would pick the only woman on earth able to resist the little blue box. Let me call one of my guys who handles most of our jewelry accounts. But be warned—odds are it won’t be local. You might have to wait a couple days.”
Absolutely not. He would be in Connecticut tomorrow, come hell or high water. “That’s unacceptable,” he said.
“Well, then, get ready to get on a plane.”
Wade nodded and rang his admin to clear his calendar for the rest of today and tomorrow. He’d fly to the ends of the earth to get Tori back.
* * *
“It’s crap. All crap.” Tori ripped the sheet of paper off the pad, then crumpled her latest blueprint into a ball and tossed it into the overflowing wastepaper basket. It had to be the hundredth design she’d sketched in the past week, but she hated them all. Even the ones she’d been really happy with before Wade came into her life.
Now everything felt wrong.
Maybe this whole settling-down thing was just a bad idea. Maybe her mother was right when she said that they had a wandering spirit that shied away from the tethers of the typical American dream. A month ago it had seemed like a great plan. She had been bursting with ideas. Fantasizing about her new closet with room for more than five pairs of shoes. Just the thought of a full-size kitchen and an actual living room with a couch and big-screen television was enough to get her blood pumping with excitement.
Now the only thing that set her heart to racing was Wade. And he was long gone, along with the piece of her he’d taken with him.
Tori cussed and flung her pencil across the Airstream. It bounced off her cabinet door and rolled toward the bathroom. She watched it move across the floor, stopping at the butt of her shotgun, which was leaning against the door frame.
It brought to mind the first day he’d shown up on her property. His charming smile. His infuriating arrogance. The way she’d threatened to shoot him. How was she supposed to carry on with her plans when even the sight of her shotgun brought memories of him to mind? Living on his parents’ old property would guarantee that she could never get away from Wade Mitchell.
But Tori didn’t want to get away from him. She wanted the charming liar back in her arms. She sat staring blankly at her notepad, thinking about what had happened. Since he left, replaying the scene in her mind had given her some clarity. It had allowed her to focus on the words she’d refused to listen to in her anger.
Whatever it was he wanted was important. The land itself had no real value to him, just whatever was on it. Given she didn’t even know what it was, it wasn’t something she would ever miss. A part of her understood his reasoning. If he could take or move what he needed, Tori could keep her land and they could both be happy. Maybe even happy together.