The Bridal Chase

She needn’t have worried. He had it all covered.

Maybe she wanted to talk about Roxanne.

He’d felt all last night through the meal the weight of the unsaid between them. It didn’t feel right that she could ignore what had happened.

She’d had every opportunity to question his affection for her after seeing him with Roxanne at the bar, the same woman she’d seen him with the other day.

Did she trust him that much?

Did she love him that blindly? Hell, he was a fool. How could he doubt his own affection for his fiancée now…when she was obviously so in love with him, and just weeks before the wedding?

She loved him.

It was in everything she did. The time she spent with him and his friends. The time she took out of her busy schedule to visit his family. The time she was taking away from him to make their special day unforgettable.

How could he even spend a moment thinking about the woman in red at the bar?

He sighed. He couldn’t believe how the communication between him and Heather had gone awry that day. He was sure her message had been that she couldn’t make it. Then she’d turned up out of the blue.

She must love him so much to get out of some meeting to spend time with him. And he was making an idiot out of himself.

Maybe it was just cold feet. Nerves. The last fantasy of an engaged man…with under a fortnight to go until he walked down the aisle.

He sucked in a deep breath and pushed down his negative thoughts. He should concentrate on spending all the time he could with Heather, focusing on her needs, helping her with their wedding plans and being her rock.

She was doing so much for them both, and the time she spent away from him was probably as hard on her as it was for him…when they needed to spend time together and affirm their connection.

He crossed his arms and leant back, leaning on his car, surveying the basement garage of Heather’s apartment complex. She’d probably realised it herself and needed to see him tonight…for him to hold her and tell her how much he wanted to marry her, for her to tell him how much she loved him.

Cade sighed. No doubts and no distractions would be nice until the wedding, but he knew that life rarely worked like that.

It had been a funny thing to meet that stunning woman again. He’d thought meeting a woman like that last week had been special, fated, a sweet reminder of all the things he had to look forward to with Heather, once they were married.

He’d wondered about her all weekend, considering what the story might be behind her making the first move.

There was no reason why a woman that beautiful had to go putting herself on the line to find nice men.

Hell, were nice men blind?

To meet the mystery woman again had been surreal. She was so different. Intriguing. And damned hard to get out of his mind.

‘Cade,’ Heather barked, striding towards him, stunning in a white three-piece suit, her hair curled up and her lips pulled thin.

Cade frowned. He’d never heard that tone before—hard and icy—she must have had a rough day and needed him all the more.

‘Heather.’ He opened his arms for her warm embrace but she stopped two paces too short, her face sober, her eyes narrowed. ‘What’s wrong?’

She grasped the engagement ring he’d given her, yanked it off her finger and held it out to him, her palm flat. ‘I’m afraid the engagement is off.’

‘Off?’ he echoed, peeling himself off his car and standing tall, staring at the ring in her hand, his mind tumbling around for the significance in her words. Was she being serious?

‘Off,’ she snapped, shoving the ring into his jacket pocket and shrinking back as though she was loath to touch him. ‘I don’t want to marry you any more.’