Wedding Vows: I Thee Wed: Back to Mr & Mrs / Reunited: Marriage in a Million / Marrying Her Billionaire Boss

CHAPTER TWO

AS HIS DAUGHTER HANDED him a cup of coffee, Cade watched the woman he’d once thought he knew better than himself hurry between the espresso machine and the bakery case, greeting customers by name, laughing at their jokes, dispensing coffee with a happy, friendly cheer—and wondered for the thousandth time when they had slipped off their common track.

Somewhere between “I do” and “I don’t,” something had gone wrong in his marriage. He was a corporate lawyer. His specialty was fixing tangled legal messes. Why couldn’t he fix the one in his own house?

He’d tried, Lord knew he’d tried, but Melanie had thrown up a wall and refused to remove a single chink in the brick.

God, he missed her. Every morning, he woke up to an empty space in his bed and an ache in his chest that no painkiller could soothe. At night, the talking heads on TV kept him company instead of the soft tones of Melanie, telling him about her day, about something Emmie had said or done.

He took a seat at one of the tables, watching his wife’s lithe, fluid movements. She was still as beautiful as the day he’d married her. A little heavier, but over the years he’d found he liked the extra weight on her hips and waist, the fullness in her breasts. The womanly curves had always held a magical comfort, soothing him at the end of a stressful day.

Always, Melanie had been there, supporting him in those early days when it seemed he’d never rise above the minion position of law clerk.

He poured sugar into his cup. It dissolved as easily as the bonds of his marriage.

Still, he’d put off signing the papers that would file their divorce. He had hope, damn it, that this could be fixed. That he could broker a mutually satisfactory agreement, a return to business as usual, something he had done a thousand times between warring corporations.

Every time he looked at Melanie, a constant smile curved across her face as she chatted and poured, the ache in his chest quadrupled. Need for her—not just sexual need, but an indefinable, untouchable need that ran bone-deep—stirred in his gut, rushing through his veins. He wanted to take her in his arms, hold her to his chest and kiss her until he made this past year go away.

But deep in his heart he knew they’d gone way beyond the point where a simple kiss could solve anything.

“Dad,” Emmie said, coming over to him. Now a college sophomore, Emmie had the same heart-shaped face and delicate features as her mother, except now her hair was spiked, her lips painted a dark crimson.

“Sit at the counter. It’s way more comfortable.”

Before he could protest, his daughter had taken his cup of Kenyan roast and put it on the laminate surface. Three feet from Melanie. He and Melanie exchanged a quick, knowing glance.

Obviously she knew Emmie was trying to bring them together. Why shouldn’t she? Emmie hadn’t asked for the divorce and she’d made it clear she didn’t like alternating between her two parents’ homes for weekly dinners and occasional laundry stops, like a perpetual ping-pong game.

Cade sure as hell wasn’t happy watching his marriage whittle away, either.

He rose and crossed to the wooden bar, settling onto one of the cushioned stools. “You’ve created a nice place here.”

He hadn’t seen his wife in a year and that was the best he could come up with? This is nice?

After this, he was heading to the bookstore to see if there was a Resurrecting Your Marriage for Dummies. Because clearly this dummy was failing at Wooing Back a Wife 101.

“Thanks,” Melanie said. She wiped off the steamer spout, then tossed the dirty cloth into a bucket of laundry inside the kitchen. She washed her hands and picked up the rack of freshly baked cookies and began loading them into the glass case, arranging them as carefully as she used to arrange the pillows in their living room.

“Is it going well?” Cade asked. “From what I’ve seen, this place is as popular as an elf at Christmas.”

She laughed. “Things are going much better than expected.”

He heard the undertones of their last fight in those two sentences. Cade was smart enough to back away from that. “I’m happy for you, Melanie.”

Emmie brushed by him, giving him an elbow hint. “Say something, Dad,” she whispered.

Cade held up his hands and looked to Emmie for help. She gave him the duh look she’d perfected by her sixteenth birthday. Oh, yeah, he was the dad. He was supposed to have all the answers.

He did—all but this one.

Cade shifted on the stool. “Are you going to tease your hair and unearth that Kiss concert T-shirt for Friday night?”

She chuckled. “Oh gosh, that was a thousand years ago. I don’t think I saved the shirt.”

“You did. Bottom drawer, on the right.” He knew, because he’d been in their dresser after she’d left, looking for something, and come across the worn image of Gene Simmons. For a moment, Cade had been back there, in the thirtieth row, rocking along with Melanie as they held up a lighter during a ballad and sang along until their voices cracked.

“I remember that night,” she said softly, then shook her head and got busy with the cookies again. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter because I’m not going to the reunion. I’ll have to save the Aqua Net for another night.”

She’d tried to pass it off as a joke, but Cade wasn’t laughing. “Didn’t you just tell Jeannie you would go?” He gestured toward the phone. “I couldn’t help but overhear. Jeannie’s voice is like a bullhorn.”

“I only said yes to—”

“Get her off your back?” He chuckled, reaching for that light, easy feeling again. It seemed to flit in and out, as ungraspable as a moth. “I know the feeling. It’s why I said yes, too.”

Emmie headed into the back of the shop, to get supplies or something, Cade supposed. As soon as their daughter was out of earshot, Melanie stopped working on the cookies, leaned an arm over the glass case and glared at him. “Why did you tell Jeannie we were still together?”

“I think there’s still a chance to work this out. You don’t throw nineteen years away on a whim.”

“You think this was a whim?” She shook her head, then lowered her voice. “It was the hardest decision I have ever made.”

Hurt stabbed at his chest, thinking of how quickly she’d been gone, how fast she’d escaped her half of their life. “I doubt that.”

She let out a gust of frustration. “Sign the papers, Cade. It’s over.”

“No.” He slipped off the stool and came around to the back of the glass case. “I’m done catwalking around the issue, biding my time. Thinking all you needed was a little space. I want answers, Mel, a solution.” He drew within inches of her. “Tell me what went wrong so I can change it.”

She threw up her hands. “Our marriage isn’t a clock, Cade. You can’t replace a couple gears and call it good as new.”

“And you can’t just throw it out because you wanted a better model.”

“That isn’t why I left.” Melanie circled the counter and began wiping down the case’s glass with an ammonia-scented cleaner and a white cotton cloth. An old man snored lightly on the sofa across the room, the paper on his torso fluttering as his chest rose up and down. “We made a mistake,” she said under her breath. “Why can’t you just let it go?”

“Because I still love you.” The words tore from his throat, contained in his chest for so long, fenced in by a hope that grew dimmer with every day Melanie refused his calls, ignored his e-mails, refused his requests to talk.

She shook her head and when she did, he saw the glimmer of tears in her eyes. “You don’t even know me.”

I would if you’d give me a chance, he wanted to scream. Let me try again. Don’t take away the one rock I’ve always stood on.

Before he could say anything, the bell rang and a woman in a business suit strode into the small shop and up to the register. Emmie came out of the back, headed to the register and greeted the woman, but her attention, Cade knew, was half on her parents.

Melanie took out some of her frustrations on the glass case, scrubbing it until it gleamed like silver. As her left hand rose up to swipe away a smear, a glint caught Cade’s eye.

Her wedding ring.

The same plain gold band he’d slipped on her finger in the county courthouse nearly twenty years ago.

A wave of hope rose within him, but he held it back. Cade was nothing if not a practical man. His wife may still be wearing her ring, but she’d gone back to using her maiden name and hadn’t slept in his bed for over a year. A piece of jewelry didn’t mean anything.

And yet, he hoped like hell it did.

“Mellie,” he said, slipping into the habit of her nickname. He grabbed her hand, stopping her from cleaning the glass into oblivion. He lowered his voice and turned so that the customer—and Emmie—couldn’t see or overhear them. “Go with me to the reunion. Wear that T-shirt and that bright pink lipstick you used to love. Go back in time with me, for one night. We could go out to dinner first, talk—”

“About what, Cade?” A glimmer washed over the deep thunderstorm of green in her eyes. Behind them, Emmie watched out of the corner of her eye, her movements quiet and small as she finished the customer’s latte and poured the steamed milk into a paper cup emblazoned with the bright crimson Cuppa Life logo.

Melanie noticed their daughter’s interest and led Cade into the small kitchen space, letting the door shut behind them. The close quarters only quadrupled Cade’s awareness of Melanie, of the way her chest rose and fell with each breath, the silky blond tendrils drifting about her shoulders, the jeans hugging her hips.

He wanted to kiss her, to close the gap between them. If only a simple meeting of their bodies would be enough to bridge the chasm. But even Cade knew it wasn’t that simple.

“Talk about what?” she repeated. “About how I failed you?” she said. “As a wife, a mother? About how you were at work—always at work—even when I needed you most?”

Regret slammed into his gut. He didn’t want to think about that day. Ever.

It was the one tape he couldn’t rewind. Couldn’t delete. Couldn’t do over. “Melanie, I’ve 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 studied the brass studs on the armrest’s seam. “No, you didn’t.”

A pair of size fifty boots had a smaller heel than Cade. Had he crushed her dream? He’d only been trying to be pragmatic, to steer her away from a potential mistake. Clearly he’d done the opposite. “I’m sorry, Melanie.”

She didn’t meet his gaze. Instead she smoothed a hand over the leather. “It’s in the past. I’m all about moving forward.”

The implied word—alone. “You have a lot of plans for this place. For that you need additional funding, right?”

She nodded.

“Something that’s hard to get when you’re a relatively new business.” From Emmie, he knew she’d financed the opening of the shop on her own, with a little from her grandparent’s inheritance, the rest from the nice folks at Visa.“Tell me about it,” Melanie said, clearly frustrated. “Banks want me to have years of success under my belt before they’ll lend me any money. But I can’t get those years of success without investing in my business. It’s that old Catch-22.”

It was also an area he knew well—and an opportunity to help. And maybe, just maybe, she’d let him in again. At this point, Cade would knock down the damned wall himself if he thought it would help defrost the glacier between them.

“I have a proposition for you,” Cade said, deciding he wasn’t going to let his marriage go without a fight. He could only pray this was an offer Melanie couldn’t refuse.

CHAPTER THREE

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN—a proposition?” she asked.

Cade rose, slipped over to her love seat and sat down beside her, not too close, but close enough that their conversation couldn’t be overheard by the snoring man or the woman still hemming and hawing about blueberry versus peach crumble.

He was also close enough to catch the vanilla scent on her skin, the same fragrance he always associated with Melanie. Like cookies, homemade bread…all the things he’d missed in his childhood and had found in his wife.

His wife.

Damn, he missed her. Missed coming home to her smile, missed holding her. Regardless of what that piece of paper on his desk said, he’d never stopped thinking of Melanie as his wife.

“If you stayed married to me…” Cade paused for a second, letting the last word linger in the air as the idea took root in his mind, “just for a while, you could get that funding a lot easier.”

She backed up against the arm of the sofa, warding off his idea. “No. I want to do this on my own, Cade. Without your help or your family money.”

He heard the seeds of the familiar argument taking hold in her tone. Eighteen months ago, they’d stood here in this very space, Cade glancing around at the dusty antiques, the cluttered room, seeing only years of books in the red, not potential. He’d offered to help, to give her the business guidance the place clearly needed, to invest some of the inheritance from his grandfather that had done nothing but sit in the bank, but she’d refused.

I want to do this on my own, Cade, she’d said then. I don’t need you to tell me what’s wrong. I just want you to say go for it and let me do it.

Instead he’d pulled out a thick stack of research he’d done on the antique industry, statistics proving what worked—and what didn’t. She’d shoved the papers back at him, and in doing so, shut the first door on their marriage.

He’d shut the second one himself.

He tossed her a grin. “Just think of it as a little payback for all the years you helped me.”

She rose, frustration running through every inch of her face. “Where is this new and improved Cade coming from? Since when did you want me to be all independent?”

He blinked. “I never said you had to be some Stepford wife, Mellie. I’ve always wanted you to have your own life.”

“As long as it wasn’t at the expense of yours.” Melanie took in a breath, erasing the quick flash of hurt in her eyes. “Cade, you just don’t understand how important it is for me to have something of my own. To do this myself.”

“I’m trying, Melanie.” He paused, waiting until she sank back onto the seat beside him. “I promise not to do anything more than let you have my credit score,” Cade continued. “We have a lot of assets together, Melanie, a financial record, a damned nice nest egg of Matthews money. The bank will look more favorably on your loan if—”

“If I pretend I’m still married to you.”

“It’s not pretending. We are married.”

“Only because you won’t sign the divorce papers.”

“I’ve been busy.”

She gave him the eye roll Emmie had inherited. She sighed, considering him for a long moment.

“I’m not agreeing to anything. Not until I know what you want in exchange.”

“Nothing.”

She shook her head. “I know you, Cade. You don’t make a deal without both sides gaining something. You help me get my loan, but what do you get?”

“Nothing, except—” he drew in a breath “—a date to the reunion.”

In her green eyes, the thoughts connected. “As your wife, you mean.”

Cade had brokered enough deals to know when he’d reached the crux, the point where the agreement could be broken by one party leaning too far or pushing too hard.

Melanie would eventually be awarded the divorce with or without his signature. He glanced at her left hand, at the circle of gold on her ring finger.

He weighed his next words, trying to figure out what wouldn’t make Melanie bolt, or worse, encourage her to throw the countertop Capresso machine at his head. “Not as my wife,” he lied, “more as a…fellow reunion attendee. Let people assume what they want.” He voiced the idea as calmly as he would the terms of a corporate merger. Start with business-only, and pray like hell it turned into something more personal later.