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

“Why not?”

She sighed. Why did he have to be so obtuse about this? Wasn’t the moving out, the serving of papers, the year apart, all one huge bullhorn announcing that it was over? “We’re getting a divorce, Cade. Please don’t make it any harder than it already is.”

“Is it hard on you, Melanie?” His gaze locked on hers, the deep blue eyes she’d stared into for more than half her life missing nothing, and displaying frustration and hurt. “Because it sure doesn’t seem it.”

“Of course it is.” She turned away, ignoring the sudden burning behind her eyes. Did he think she’d left their marriage impetuously? That any of this had been an easy decision?

She busied herself with wiping an already clean counter, instead of dwelling on the what-ifs and the storm whipped up by Cade’s presence.

When she glanced at him again, he seemed to have tamped down the temporary flare of emotion. As always, Cade was back to being cool, calm and collected. Never betray a weakness, he’d always told her, particularly in a courtroom.

And he never had. Especially with her. And especially not when it had mattered.

If he had…

But he hadn’t.

“Anyway,” Cade said, clearing his throat, “I thought maybe I could work here for a few days. From what Emmie says, this place is busier than a zoo, and you could use the help. She said the student you had working here quit last week.” He grinned, and her heart—which had never done a good job of listening to her mind—skipped a beat. “Plus, I’ll work for free.”

“Work here?” She paused, the sponge dripping onto her toes. Had she heard him right? “Why would you want to do that?”

“I told you. We need to spend some time together. It seems like a win-win to me.”

Melanie eyed the man she had lived with for all of her adult years and knew he was hiding something. It wasn’t just about putting on a good show for Bill Hendrickson at the reunion.

She had to wonder if Cade’s win-win also involved winning her heart again. As much as a part of her—the lonely part that shared a bed with extra pillows instead of a husband—might wish otherwise, Melanie knew that was the one thing not up for grabs.

CHAPTER SIX

“I’M INSANE,” Melanie said to Kelly the next morning. They were alone in the shop, something that wouldn’t last long on a Sunday. Soon as church services were over, the shop would pick up again. The college kids wouldn’t be here until they rolled out of bed and came in for a little caffeine to counteract the frat party headache, but after that, business would be pretty steady until late afternoon. “Why did I ever agree to let Cade work here? I’m trying to divorce him, not hire him.”

Kelly ran a finger along the rim of her coffee mug. “Maybe a tiny part of you doesn’t want to divorce him.”

Melanie shook her head, resolute. “This is the best thing, trust me. Cade isn’t going to change.”

Hadn’t he proved that yesterday? Just when she thought he might be a little vulnerable, might tell her some of the secrets he kept locked in his heart—

He’d mentioned work. Always the job, never the man, never how he felt.

“Whatever you say.” Kelly shrugged, but there was disbelief in her face. “He’s your husband.”

“Not anymore.”

As the words left her, though, they were tinged with sadness. What would her life ahead be like without Cade? She’d been so busy getting the business off the ground that she hadn’t paused to dwell on the empty rooms of her apartment, the lack of a second voice at home.

How would it be to wake up in five years, ten, and realize Cade was truly gone from her life? That the man she’d spent half her life loving was with someone else? Melanie shook the thoughts off. A bit of regret was normal with any divorce, no matter how the marriage had ended. After all, she’d been with Cade for twenty years. She’d only dated two other guys before him. He was what she knew, what she’d always known, and giving that up for good was bound to leave her a little melancholy.

Add to that seeing him again after a year apart and Melanie had a Betty Crocker-worthy recipe for regret. That’s all it was—the opposite of cold feet. Regardless of what she might think she saw in his eyes or felt in her chest, she wasn’t going to change her mind. The decision had been hard enough to make—there would be no rethinking of it.

“So, when’s he coming in?” Kelly asked.

Melanie glanced at the clock, watching the hand sweep upward to nine o’clock. “Any minute now. I thought he could learn the ropes today. The weekdays are way too busy for me to have time to show him anything.”

“Sure you don’t want me to stay?”

Melanie grinned. “You’re just looking for an excuse to get out of that baby shower.”

“Hey, I am so done with diapers, I don’t even want to look at them. Even the smell of rash cream brings back bad memories.” Kelly rose, pushing her empty cup to the side. She laughed. “Oh, what am I saying? I miss my boys being little. Every time I turn around, they’ve grown six inches.” She let out a sigh, then swung her purse over her shoulder. “Maybe I’ll take a sniff of the Desitin. Just for old times’ sake.”

Melanie was still laughing after Kelly had left, a second morning brew in a to-go cup. Five seconds later, the bell jingled and Cade walked in, wearing jeans and a blue T-shirt. Emblazoned across his chest was an ad for a wine festival.

Cade.

She watched him cross the room, still handsome as any man she’d ever seen in a magazine, with that lazy, tempting grin and a twinkle in his eyes that seemed to always tease at the edges of laughter. She told herself he no longer affected her. That she could get through a day of working with him—

And not lose her mind or worse, her heart.

Yet, as he drew closer and she read the words curving across his chest, her heart stopped with the memory of the fall weekend when they’d driven up to Michigan to attend the wine festival. Two, no, three years ago. She’d planned the time away for a couple of weeks, reminding Cade several times to clear the weekend on his schedule.

She’d rented a room at a bed-and-breakfast, bought a little sexy black nothing, and hoped the two days alone would bring back the magic that seemed to have disappeared sometime between late night bottle feedings and school plays. She’d thought it would be as simple as throwing on a lacy negligee and spending a few extra hours in bed.

It hadn’t. The weekend had been a disaster of epic proportions, with Cade talking on his cell phone more than to his wife. There’d been one moment, when they’d spread out a blanket on the grass, shared a bottle of Chardonnay and a block of cheese, and laughed—oh, how they’d laughed. She’d thought maybe…just maybe, they were recapturing the magic.

Then his phone had rung and the spell had shattered as easily as a crystal vase dropped on concrete.

And yet, as Cade approached, Melanie found herself wondering if that spell had really been broken or merely needed to be reworked a bit.

“So,” Cade said, “where do you want me? I’m dressed to work.”

Cade had taken her “dress casual” advice to heart and was clearly attempting to appear relaxed. Between the Levi’s and the way he was leaning on the counter, he was the poster boy for relaxed. Only she knew that underneath that well-pressed T lurked a man who hated any kind of disorder.

Nevertheless, desire stirred within her, picturing them together again. On the counter. Against the wall. In her bed. She ran a hand over hot cheeks and pushed the fantasy away.

“How about we start with the basics?” Melanie said, keeping her focus on work, not the shirt and the memories it resurrected. And certainly not on Cade’s face, on eyes that still had the power to set her pulse off-kilter. “I’ll show you how to brew the coffee, then we’ll work up to cappuccino.”

“Before you know it, I’ll be a brewmaster.” He cocked a grin at her and she found herself returning the smile. He slipped behind the counter to stand next to her. A year ago, when Melanie had opened the shop, the space had seemed so much wider, particularly when it was just her and Emmie. But Cade made the place seem confined, too tight for two.

Or too tight for her and the one man she didn’t want to get close to, not again. Too close and she was risking another heartbreak. One was enough.

“Here’s our, ah, main coffee station,” Melanie said, clearing her throat and indicating a cranberry and black countertop machine with several spouts and dials. “We brew it here, put it in the carafes, then make a fresh pot whenever the coffee’s temperature drops below 150 degrees.”

“Doesn’t that waste a lot of coffee?”

“Not really. On a busy day, we can go through twenty pots or more.”

“Can’t you use the old coffee to make those iced things?”

“No, not unless you want to risk cross-contamination. For iced coffee, I have a special five-gallon brewing pot.” She opened the fridge and indicated a big white plastic container shaped like a coffee urn.

“Do you roast the beans yourself, too?”

She stepped back, surprised. “You’ve been reading.”

He gave her a grin as familiar as her own palm.

“You know me. I always do my homework.”

Except for with me, she wanted to add, but didn’t. Cade, who put thought into every decision from the brand of toothpaste he used to the car he drove, hadn’t quite applied those same principles when it came to that night twenty years ago in the back of his car.

Heck, neither had she. In those days, they’d thought of nothing but each other. Nothing but the feel of his mouth on hers, his hands on her body, and the sweet release from the thunderstorm continually brewing between them.

“Uh, no, we don’t roast our own beans,” Melanie said, returning her mind to the subject at hand. “I’d like to get a roaster, but I don’t have the room for it.”

“Unless you buy the space next door.”

“Right.” Melanie turned away from Cade’s intent gaze and reached for one of the bags of coffee beans, imported from Columbia. “We grind the beans in—”

“Here?” Cade asked, reaching for the grinder at the same time as she did. Their hands collided, sending a rocket propelled grenade of attraction through Melanie. It was a hundred times more intense, a thousand times hotter, than anything she could remember with Cade, as if the time apart had intensified his appeal.

Sexual appeal, she reminded herself. Not marital appeal.

And yet, she didn’t pull her hand back right away. She looked up and their gazes met, held. Want tightened its grip on her, holding her captive to the spot. To Cade.

“Melanie,” Cade said in the same soft way he used to, as if they were lying together in the dark, not standing in a brightly lit coffee shop on a Sunday morning.

Oh, how I miss him, she thought, the arrow of that lonely, disappointed pain piercing through her. She missed the Cade he used to be, the marriage she had dreamed of having.

Then he leaned down, slow, tentative, his gaze never leaving hers. The heat between them multiplied ten times over with anticipation. With a craving that had never died, despite the year apart.

Kiss me. Her mind willed him to read the unspoken words, to hear the message throbbing in her veins.

He reached for her chin, his large hand cupping her jaw. A tender touch, filled with all the things that Cade never said. “Melanie, I—”

Suddenly she couldn’t hear him talk about work. Couldn’t bear to hear him disappoint her, to shatter her fantasy that someday, Cade would put her—and their marriage—at the top of the list.

Melanie jerked away, then pushed the button on the grinder, pulverizing a lot of innocent coffee beans. “This, ah…” Her mind went blank.

“Grinder?” Cade supplied, withdrawing and giving her a knowing smile.

“Yes, thank you.” Melanie shifted to business mode. Treat him like a customer. Treat him like anyone other than the man you pledged to love forever. “This grinder will take the beans down to grounds in less than thirty seconds. Grind them too long and the grounds become dust. Too short and they’re chunky. Grind size can really affect the finished product, so you want this setting right here,” she said, pointing at a number on the grinder’s dial,

“and then the beans are the perfect size for the filter.”

Yet, even as she explained the pros and cons of different grind sizes, she was aware of Cade. A few inches away, close enough to touch, should she have that desire.

Heck, she had that desire. Always had it. She simply knew better now than to let her hormones make all the decisions.

Twenty minutes later, Cade was brewing his first latte. He’d picked up the intricacies of coffeemaking quickly, as she’d expected. He was a smart man, one who paid attention to the details.

It was the big picture he so often missed.

“You did great,” Melanie said, taking a sip of the small latte breve he’d made. “And you added caramel,” she said with a smile, noting the flavors that slipped across her taste buds.

“If I remember right, it’s your favorite flavor.”

“Cade,” Melanie began, intending to tell him to stop trying. Her mind was made up, and there would be no undoing the divorce. Regardless of what might happen in one day, or one night, she had nineteen years of mistakes to look back on. Leopards didn’t change their spots and career-driven husbands didn’t change into family men.

The bell rang, ushering in the first slew of customers. Before she could finish the sentence, she and Cade were busy filling orders and dispensing caffeine. For his first day, he kept up surprisingly well, only looking to her for help a couple of times on a complicated order.

She and Cade slipped into a rhythm, maneuvering around each other in the tight space with ease. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have thought Cade had been here forever.

“You did great,” Melanie said after the last customers had been served and the door stopped opening. The sun was beginning its late afternoon descent, telling her it was nearly closing time.

“Thanks.” He leaned back against the counter and took a long drink of ice water. “I’m not used to moving so much, though. Guess all those years behind a desk are catching up to me.”

Cade was still trim, a man who worked out three mornings a week, rising at four to fit in a trip to the gym before work. He’d kept the same routine all of their married life, jogging in those early days when they couldn’t afford a gym membership. She bit her lip instead of telling him he looked as refreshed as the minute he’d stepped in the shop today, as he had the day she’d met him. As sexy as the day he’d told her he loved her. The day he’d asked her to marry him.

“How long until the next rush?”

Melanie glanced at her watch and for a second couldn’t read the numbers. She redoubled her focus.

“Anytime now. It won’t be long before the study groups and coffee dates head in.”

“I never thought this would be such a busy place,” he said.

“Yeah.” Melanie didn’t add anything more. There was no sense in reopening an old wound.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have supported you when you said you wanted to open this place.”

Melanie stared at Cade, stunned into silence. The man who rarely admitted fault, had just apologized? And over the last straw, the one that had made Melanie finally realize she was being suffocated by her marriage?

Enough avoiding the subject, Melanie decided. “Are you trying to convince me we should get back together? Is that why you’re working here? Why you apologized?”

He gave her a grin she could have drawn in her sleep. “Would that be so bad?”

“Yes, Cade, it would be.” She lowered her voice, then waited until the final customer had left the shop before continuing. “It’s over between us. Don’t read anything into this—” she gestured toward him and the coffeemaking “—or my attending the reunion. We made a deal, plain and simple.”

“That’s all it is? A deal?” He took a step closer, invading her space, once again making her nerves hypersensitive. “Nothing more, Mellie? If so, then I have a deal for you. A very different kind of deal.”

Heat and desire wrapped around his words, awakening senses that had been tamped down for so long. Kiss him, her body urged. Kiss him.

She wanted to, oh how she wanted to. She wanted to pretend the words had never been said, the hurts never inflicted, and that she and Cade could go back to that fairy tale from high school.

She reached out a hand, craving the feel of his cheek beneath her palm, the hard line of his jaw softened by freshly shaven skin. She inhaled, and with that breath, brought in the scent of Cade, a mixture of woods and mint, the same scents that had filled their shared bathroom for a thousand mornings.

She turned away, and started prattling on about the difference between a cappuccino and a latte. If she talked long enough, maybe her mouth could overrun the pounding drumbeat in her pulse.

Drums pounded in his head, an insistent rhythm of want, beating along with the soft jazz coming from the sound system. For a second, Cade thought he had read the same need in Melanie’s eyes.

If he bent down and kissed her, would she respond in kind? Melt into his arms, her lips soft and sweet beneath his?

Before he could find out, she’d turned away and started a coffee demonstration that Cade didn’t hear. Every sense had been attuned to her, and it was a long time until his brain stopped picturing her in his arms and his bed.

Cade had what he wanted—an uninterrupted block of time with Melanie. Now he just had to figure out what the hell to do with it.

He’d already screwed up his marriage once—he wasn’t one of those men who planted blame squarely on the wife, there had definitely been moments when he hadn’t been the best husband—and he had no intentions of doing it a second time, assuming he could figure out what he’d done wrong.

As he listened to her run down a laundry list of ingredients for a Frazzle, his mind reached back over the past years, but he didn’t find one place he could point to as the fault line. Sure, there’d been arguments. Moments when neither of them was especially happy, but no one event that glared back at him, an arrow pointing to the big mistake, saying “fix me and all will be as it was.”

His marriage had dissolved gradually, like threads in a blanket that came undone a little more each time you placed it on your lap. At night, he paced the living room of the house where he and Melanie had once lived—happily, he’d thought—and found no clues in the beige wall-to-wall carpet and soft sage walls.

He’d played that mental game a thousand times since she’d left and never come any closer to finding the solution than wondering if maybe he’d worked too much, been too unavailable to her. He was willing to be available now—and had told her so that night she left—but Melanie had still shut the door and drove away.

Even now, she was shutting him out, except this time she had a cappuccino machine between them, as if holding him at bay with a little steam.

They worked together for a few more hours, the day passing quickly. Before he knew it, Melanie was locking the door and counting the money in the cash register. “We’re done already?” he asked.

She nodded. “I close early on Sundays. There’s not enough business to justify staying open as late today as I do on the weeknights. During the week, we have the business people and the college students, but on the weekends, the businesses are closed and the students are more often out on dates than here.”

Cade glanced at his watch. “It’s early.” He paused, then figured he needed to bite this bullet someday. “Are the students the only ones with a date?”

“Me?” she looked surprised, then laughed. “No. I wouldn’t have the time or the energy even if someone had asked me out.”

No man had asked her out. She was spending her nights alone. Cade figured all the men in Lawford had to be either blind or brain dead to not want Melanie.

“Then how about dinner?” he asked, the words leaving his lips before he could think about the wisdom of the question. “With me.”

“Oh, Cade, I really don’t think—”

“It’s dinner, Melanie. Two chairs, a table and a meal. No hidden strings. No innuendo.”

Exhaustion had shaded the area below her eyes. No wonder, too, given the hyperspeed she worked at. He wanted to scoop her up, take her home and tuck her into their queen-size bed, letting her sleep until those shadows disappeared and the smile on her face became brighter, more like the Melanie he used to know.

“You need to eat,” he said softly.

“No, I need to get home.”

“To what?” Cade took a step closer. “To an empty house? An empty fridge?” Two things he was far too familiar with. “Have dinner with me, Melanie, for old times’ sake. Not because you’re my wife or because it might lead to something else. Hell, just go because you’re hungry and I’m offering a free steak.”

“Cade, we’re getting—”

“You don’t need to remind me every five minutes of the divorce,” he said, lashing out, unable to hear that word one more time today. “I know where we’re heading. I may not like it, but I’ve accepted the inevitable.”

She took a step closer, her chin upturned, her green eyes afire. “Have you?”

Hell no, he hadn’t, but he wasn’t going to say it. Instead he let his gaze sweep over her, reading in her eyes the same riot of emotions as earlier. He moved closer to her, coming within inches of her lips. Want curled around his heart, humming within him the familiar song of Melanie, of how she would feel, taste. “Have you?”

“Of course I have.”

“Then prove it,” Cade said, lowering his head, his breath whispering across her lips. “And kiss me.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

WHEN CADE KISSED HER, everything within Melanie went from ice-blue to red-hot. It was as if he’d never kissed her before, as if she’d waited for this touch for a lifetime.

With a clarity that astounded her, Melanie remembered every detail of that first, electric touch from twenty years ago, how she’d wanted him all night, fantasizing about the moment when he would finally go beyond holding her hand.

They’d gone to the mall, wandering the tiled space, not buying anything. They’d talked and laughed, all the while aware of the tightening tension between them. When they’d stopped to throw a penny into the fountain, Cade had moved into place behind her, ostensibly to guide her hand, but more, she knew with that instinct every woman possessed, to touch her.

She’d tossed the penny, made the wish that had simmered inside her all night, then turned to him, hoping. As if he’d heard her thoughts, he’d kissed her, under the pale white cast of the lights above them. It had been everything she’d dreamed about—and more. Cade Matthews hadn’t disappointed her with his touch.

Not then, and not now.

Those memories washed over her, whispering against this new kiss. Desire arched within her, rumbling through a body that had been focused on business matters for far too long. His lips were tender against hers, drifting over her mouth, an easy, sweet taste of what was to come. Then, when she didn’t pull away, his kiss deepened, taking her down a sensuous path so familiar, it nearly made her cry.

She’d missed him, damn it. Missed his kisses, missed his touch. Before she could stop herself, her arms stole around his neck, feeling the ends of his short hair tickle against her skin, making every inch of her want him with a fierceness that bordered on frenzy.

His tongue slipped between her lips and every resolve she’d had melted in the seductive waltz he played on her mouth. She did the same to him, nerve endings tingling with awareness and memory, one fire stoking the other.

He reached up and cupped her jaw, tenderly, in the way he used to, back when their focus had been on each other and nothing else. Behind her closed eyes, a slideshow of memories flashed through Melanie’s mind, teasing at the edges of their kiss, urging her to forget the divorce, forget the hurts.