Page 32 of Suddenly Yours

After dessert, a dark chocolate pots de crème that nearly made me moan inappropriately, Cade checked the time and stood, brushing a hand lightly against my shoulder.

“I should get to work,” he said softly. “They asked me to do the electrical stuff after eight.”

I nodded, even though I suddenly didn’t want him to go. “Okay. I’ll probably head up and read or something.”

“You should get one of those spa treatments Sarah mentioned,” he murmured, eyes warm. “You deserve every second of special treatment you can get.”

The words curled somewhere deep inside me, soft and dangerous.

He hesitated for a heartbeat, as if there was something else he wanted to say, then he touched my shoulder again lightly.

“I’ll see you in the morning.”

He turned and disappeared through the elegant archway toward the stairs.

I watched him go. My heart was thumping far too fast for something that wasn’t supposed to be a date.

Chapter Nine

Cade

I left Missy in the warm glow of the dining room and headed upstairs to change and get to work. I hated leaving her there with her soft curly hair catching the candlelight, her laugh mingling with the murmur of the other guests, but I knew I had to go before I talked myself into staying with her all night.

I made it halfway down the hallway before the familiar tug pulled at my chest. I always wanted to stay with her. Always had.

But work waited.

Back in our shared suite, I changed into my work clothes, then grabbed my tool belt, checked the charge on my flashlight and cordless drill, and headed out. The resort was quieter in the evenings since there were far fewer guests wandering around after dark. I didn’t see any staff on the main floors, but when I stepped into the basement, a half dozen people were rushing around, some in the laundry rooms, others delivering food carts from the kitchens.

The air shifted when I descended the stairs. Down there it always smelled like concrete dust, old wiring, and the faint salty breeze that somehow worked its way through the vents. I stepped into the electric closet and flicked on the lights. The bulb’s buzz filled the silence. I knelt beside the outdated circuit panel that I needed to upgrade.

I’d had what I needed delivered before my arrival and spent time unboxing the new panel and circuits. Then muscle memory took over as I worked, leaving my mind free to drift.

And, of course, it drifted straight to Missy.

Our conversation at dinner replayed in my mind, how excited she sounded as she talked about her bakery, the resort weekend, the things she was building on her own. Not because she wanted to prove anything, but because she could finally follow her own dreams. Talking to her felt so damn easy, like breathing. It always had.

As I loosened the first panel screws, old memories surfaced. I could still see us as kids— Missy with her pretty dresses and big laugh, dragging me along on adventures that usually ended with one or both of us in trouble. My parents adored her. Hell, my mom once joked that she’d keep Missy even if she had to trade me in.

It wasn’t like that with Missy’s parents.

Her mother, Elizabeth, had always been kind to me. She saw me. Talked to me. Asked me things.

As an adult, I can finally see it for what it was—interest in me and her daughter being more than just friends. After all, I came from wealth just like Missy did. Older wealth than the Sharpe family. I was a good match for her daughter. In our late teens, when it was obvious we were just friends, her attitude toward me shifted.

But Gerald Sharpe? He’d treated me like chewing gum stuck under his Italian loafers. Like I wasn’t worth the dirt under his manicured nails. He’d loved Levi though. My parents tell me that the two still hit the golf course together several times a month.

In all honesty, the pair were a good match— womanizers who believe they are better than everyone else. It was the number one reason I had hated Levi from the first moment I’d met him. It was so easy to see through his facade.

I twisted a wire a bit too tightly and made myself ease off.

Gerald was a narcissist wrapped in a tailored suit. The man had been cheating on his wife for years. Everyone knew it. Hell, I had figured it out when I was only ten and overheard whispered arguments from the Sharpe mansion kitchen while waiting to walk Missy to school.

There was even a time, years ago, when I wondered if my mother had been mixed up in his orbit. She never said a word, and my dad pretended he’d never noticed anything was off. That silence had its own gravity. I just didn’t know which part of it was truth and which part was denial.

It was one of the reasons that, when I finally settled down, I was going to make damn sure my eyes never wandered. Whatever happened, I was not going to end up like them.

And now? The mess was blowing wide open. Elizabeth was divorcing Gerald and finally breaking free. She had moved into her own townhouse in New York and was working at Sharper Image again after years of being absent. Not dancing, since her old injury kept her off the stage, but choreographing. She sounded lighter, freer, in the little updates that Missy shared with him, at least when she wasn’t bitching about Missy’s life decisions.