There was not even a drop of heartbreak.
Because the deepest, darkest, ugliest secret I would never share with anyone was the fact that I had been ready to marry a man I hadn’t been in love with.
Not even a little bit.
–
Flashback – 18 months before –
He wasn’t a workaholic by nature.
In fact, his job didn’t even demand it.
He was simply meant to step in when a suave tongue and his particular type of charm was needed. To deliver news no one wanted to hear. To land metaphorical blows. Occasionally actual ones. Or receiving them. That happened less than you’d think given that his presence usually meant that everything you gave a damn about was going to hell.
He’d also pitch in on everyone else’s cases if they needed a hand.
But he wasn’t – in any way shape or form – married to his job.
So why was he suddenly at the office three hours past when he wrapped up his file on his most recent case?
Yeah, that was the question.
And the answer?
Jules.
The answer was always Jules these days.
Why was he happy to crawl into work at the crack of dawn?
Jules.
Why was he happy to be heading stateside again after a job when he was normally a fan of traveling?
Jules.
Kai reached up, pulling his hair loose, having noticed a few weeks ago that she was oddly fascinated with it, had found her watching it, found her fingers curling into themselves like she was trying to hold back from touching it.
There were a lot of things he could chalk up to wishful thinking when it came to the redhead who single-handedly kept the office from catching fire most days.
This was not one of those things.
He knew it.
He’d seen it often enough to be certain.
She was fascinated with his hair.
So he had – naturally, since he didn’t have a whole lot of other cards to play – played that one. Always remembering to free the strands from the tie he usually pulled it back with if he was going to be in close proximity to her.
At this time of night, you would normally find Jules at her desk, typing up the handwritten notes everyone threw at her – barely anything more than chicken scratch.
If it was just half an hour later, it would be too late.
Because then she would be moving restlessly around the office, wiping surfaces, straightening magazines, loading up the coffee bar, her heels clicking relentlessly as she did her final nightly rituals.
Jules was a creature of habit.
And she got snippy if he got in the way of her cleaning process, having a system that she didn’t like getting interrupted. Not even by help.
So if he missed her between her note dictation and shoulder-roll, he wouldn’t get to spend any time with her at all.
Perhaps it was pathetic of him.
To watch her.
To search for windows.
To leap through them when they opened.
Hell, he even felt embarrassed about it himself at times.
But what were you expected to do?
When you found that person?
That one who came into your life just like any other person, suddenly one day, unexpectedly, innocently even.
But turned your entire life on its ear.
He couldn’t even tell you why.
She’d been beautiful, sure, but his life afforded him the luxury of seeing countless beautiful women in an untold number of countries.
Beautiful was as common as not-beautiful.
But it was something else.
It was something that made him stop breathing, finding the air hard to inhale because it was suddenly thick with something he didn’t have a name for, something that made everything slow down, made a tingle work its way up his spine.
And he knew.
He knew like he knew the sun would rise the next day, like he knew he would have jet lag after a trip to Australia.
He knew.
She was it.
The one.
It was something he hadn’t planned on, had hardly been a participant in.
It happened.
He’d been along for the ride.
And what a ride.
So he didn’t care that he looked weak and pathetic, that he seemed like some lovesick puppy.
You did whatever it took to spend some time with the woman who you knew you were meant to be with.
Even if she was clueless about the whole thing.
So he stopped at the coffee station, making her a cup while he straightened up a bit before she could see him and yell at him about it, and he made his way toward her desk, finding her sitting there, spine set to steel as it always was. He’d never seen her so much as slouch a day in this office. Her long, delicate fingers topped with perfectly manicured light pink nails tapping relentlessly at her keyboard, eyes pinned to the piece of paper with Lincoln’s messy handwriting scrolled across it, at an angle instead of on the actual lines, as he oddly did.
He moved forward, placing the coffee down beside the one she had been nursing for an hour, stone cold no doubt. Pulling a chair over from the sitting area, he reached across to tidy her desk organizer, to tap the papers back inside their file folders, to toss curled up sticky notes into the small bin under her desk.