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

And way too easy to fall into.

“We really can’t—” Melanie cut in.

“Oh, please,” Jeannie said, hands clasped, eyes as wide as a baby beagle’s. “You have to do it. Like, everyone is counting on you.”

Guilt—the kind that seemed to come attached to every woman’s psyche—forced a reluctant agreement past Melanie’s lips. “Okay, but—”

“That is so awesome!” Jeannie blasted, her words riding roughshod over Melanie’s. “You two will be, like, the whole reunion.” She took one last sip, then rose and sent a two-finger wave at Melanie and Cade. “See you all on Friday night. I need to get my Stickly home!”

Then she was gone, hustling out the door as quickly as she’d come in, her nearly full coffee sending up a final curl of steam.

“Well,” Cooter said, rising out of the armchair and plopping his hat on his head, “wasn’t that a little bit of vinegar in your honey?”

With that, Cooter left the shop—leaving Melanie and Cade alone. Cade’s arm still lingered around her waist, as if he’d forgotten he’d put it there—or fallen into old habits. She wheeled around, causing his touch to drop away. “What were you thinking? We can’t play the happy couple all night. We were supposed to meet with Bill, make a speech and get out of there.”

He scowled. “It’s a dance, Melanie, not a lifetime commitment.”

“Is it, Cade? Because it sure seems to me that everything you’re doing is designed to get us back together.” She shook her head, thinking of how many times she’d come close to doing exactly that this week. How easy it would have been to believe that a few days of making lattes together could solve everything. “It’s not going to happen.”

“And why is that, Melanie? Don’t tell me it’s because you don’t love me anymore.” He took a step closer, his hand going to her jaw.

“I don’t.” But she couldn’t meet his gaze.

“So when you kissed me, you didn’t feel anything at all?”

She didn’t deny or agree. Melanie might be strong enough to stick to her guns on the divorce, but she wasn’t strong enough to deny she hadn’t felt a thing in that kiss. “You can’t build a marriage on a kiss, Cade.”

“No, we can’t.” His jaw hardened, his frustration clear as he released her. “But we can sure as hell try instead of giving up.”

“Is that what you think I did? Give up?”

“You walked out, Melanie. I wouldn’t say that was fighting for us.”

“I fought for us for nineteen years, Cade. And where were you? At work. On a business trip. Anywhere but with me and your family.”

“My job—”

She threw up her hands. “It’s always been your job. Your career. What you needed. It was never about me. A marriage takes two. It means both people have their needs met.”

“But isn’t this,” he said, indicating the coffee shop, “the need you wanted me to meet? Supporting you in your business?”

“It was part of it, yes.”

“And I’m doing that. I’m here, working with you. I’m cosigning on the loan. What more do you want?”

She tore off the apron and tossed it to the side, sliding out from behind the counter. To keep her hands busy, Melanie folded the newspaper Cooter had left behind, fluffed pillows, picked up a couple of stray napkins. “I want a man who knows me. Who knows what I like. What my favorite color is. What I dream of for the future. Who I am, not what he thinks I am.”

Cade was there, his hand over hers, stopping her from grabbing a forgotten paper coffee cup, forcing her to face him. “I know all that.”

“No, you don’t, Cade,” she said, yanking away from him. “You stopped paying attention a long time ago. Or you wouldn’t have asked what you did that night.”

Emmie was striding up the sidewalk and toward the shop. Melanie grabbed her purse and coat, and headed out the door at the same time her daughter headed in. “I’m going to the store to pick up more milk,” she said, knowing there were four gallons still in the fridge, but needing to get away from Cade and the conversation more than she needed to replenish her dairy products.

Cade waited a good ten minutes before he started picking Emmie’s brain. “Your mom really loves this shop, doesn’t she?” he began.

Emmie let out a gust. “Dad, I’m almost twenty years old. If you want to pump me for information, you can get right to the point.”

He chuckled. “You’ve always been too smart for me.”

She grinned at him. “No, I just inherited a little of that lawyer gene.”

He laughed again, proud as hell of his daughter. She had always been able to hold her own in any argument, often winning over her parents when it came to getting the keys to the car or extending her bedtime. During the teen years, there’d been days when her smarts and argumentative spirit had been a nightmare more than a plus, but that had ended as she aged. “Okay, yes, I wanted to see what you knew about your mom.”

Emmie started brewing a fresh pot of decaf. “I don’t know why you’re asking me. You should be asking Mom.”

Cade looked toward the door where Melanie had exited a few minutes before. “I tried that.”

“Mom’s easy, Dad. Just listen to her.”

“I’m trying, Em, but she’s not talking.”

“Maybe not with words, but she is talking.”

He poured himself a cup of coffee, then leaned against the counter and looked at his daughter.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means,” Emmie said, running a hand through her short, red-tipped hair, “that everything that is important to Mom is in this room.”

He looked around the space, feeling as clueless as if he’d stepped into a foreign country where he didn’t know the language and didn’t have a handy travel guide. Had it gotten that bad, as Melanie had said, that he couldn’t discern much about his wife from a room? From her own business?

“Looks like I have some work to do,” he said.

“I’ll say,” Emmie muttered. But in her eyes, he saw the glisten of tears. She gave a one-shoulder shrug, as if she didn’t care, but he could tell she did.

“I hope you guys work it out, Dad.”

“Yeah,” Cade said on a sigh. “Me, too.”

CHAPTER NINE

THE NEXT FEW DAYS with Cade were business only, which was exactly what Melanie told herself she wanted. Yet even as she watched him move around the shop, interacting with the customers, brewing up their favorite blends, she wanted him. Wondered if their next kiss would be as good as the last one.

When business slowed down on Friday afternoon, she went outside to straighten Cuppa Life’s patio furniture. When she was done, Melanie looked at her building for a long minute, then at Ben’s shop next door, and its hand-lettered For Sale sign, put up just the other day. As she watched, Ben reached in the window and took the sign down, sending a friendly wave Melanie’s way. She’d made her offer yesterday, with tentative bank approval, which Ben had said was good enough for him.

Cade had left to pick up Emmie, whose Toyota was once again putting up a fuss and had broken down two miles from the shop. Once they returned, Melanie and Cade had an appointment with a local bank, to find out if she had received her loan or not.

Given the loan officer’s enthusiasm on the phone yesterday, Melanie figured it was probably a done deal—and clearly Ben believed that, too. She’d done it—albeit with Cade’s credit score as a boost and their combined savings as well as the house in Indianapolis as collateral—and now she could watch her business become all she’d dreamed. After a year or two, maybe she’d be doing well enough to open a chain of locations. Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania—those states were just catching the coffee craze and would make great choices for additional locations.

Melanie had no doubt she could capture a segment of that market, given half a chance. That thought made her excited about the future. She could do this—and do it well. Success with Cuppa Life represented so much to Melanie, and also she knew, to her grandparents, who were undoubtedly watching from above with a smile.

She sighed, missing their calm wisdom, their kind, encouraging words, and most of all, the summers she’d spent here. Not to mention the respite those months gave her from the hectic, messy house in Westvale where she’d spent her childhood. A house where Melanie was often forgotten by her scatterbrained mother and her solitary father.

“We’re back,” Cade said, striding up the sidewalk with Emmie at his side. Emmie had her book bag over her shoulder, heavy and bulging with homework.

As she watched him stride ahead to hold the door for her and Emmie, Melanie realized how much she’d started looking forward to Cade’s arrival. She’d gotten used to him being here, and knew when Monday dawned and he went back to the law firm, there’d be an empty spot in Cuppa Life.

And in her.

“How was school?” Melanie asked as the three of them headed inside, feeling oddly like the family they used to be, or rather could have been, had Cade been home often enough.

Emmie shrugged. “Okay. Though I’d rather watch cockroaches mate than sit through another of Professor Beach’s World History lectures.”

Cade laughed. “Glad to see our dollars are funding a good education.”

“How’s Liam?” Melanie asked. Emmie had broken off a year-long relationship at the end of high school and ever since, had been dating casually. It was pretty sad, actually, that her daughter had ten times the dating experience that Melanie had. But she was glad to see it. The last thing Melanie wanted for her daughter was a rush to the altar and a slew of regrets later in life.

“He asked me to go to the movies tomorrow night.” Her eyes shone, the excitement clear in her voice, her face.

“He’s the one from your Psych class, right?” Cade said.

Emmie nodded, clearly pleased that her father had, indeed, been listening.

Melanie looked from Cade to Emmie, surprised. All the years they’d been married, Cade had been pretty oblivious to Emmie’s day-to-day activities. On any given morning, he couldn’t have named her favorite cereal, the boy who’d given her that all-important first kiss, or who was taking her to the prom.

She and Cade had joked about being ships that passed in the night, but after a while, Melanie got tired of being another buoy in Cade’s busy life.

“You guys have been talking,” Melanie said, as Emmie headed to the rest room.

“It’s hard not to when we’re working together.” He watched his daughter’s retreating form and smiled. “She’s a great kid, isn’t she?”

“Yeah.” Melanie grinned. “And it’s nice to see her attitude improving this week as well.”

“I missed a lot with her,” Cade said, then sighed.

“I should have been here more. Spent more time with her.”

Melanie could have jumped on him then, pointed out the mistakes, the weekends he’d spent at work instead of at school events, or the business trips he’d taken, leaving Melanie to help Emmie with a science project on tornadoes. But she didn’t.

Regret swam in his dark blue eyes, coated every syllable. Instead of recriminating, Melanie stepped forward and laid a hand on Cade’s shoulder. “There’s plenty of time ahead,” she said softly.

He nodded, mute.

“Working here was one of the best things you could have done to get to know Emmie,” she went on. “When she was a little girl, we had some of our best mother/daughter conversations in those odd moments. Like riding in the car or folding laundry.”

“You and she always had that closeness,” Cade said, turning to his wife. “It made me feel like an outsider sometimes.”

Melanie blinked in surprise. “It did?”

“When I came home, I always felt as if I’d walked in after the punch line of the joke,” he said, his gaze on some distant point in the past. “You and Emmie are like two peas in a pod.”

“She was an only child, Cade. That meant all she had was me.” Melanie realized what she’d just said and hurried to make it up. “I meant, you weren’t home that much and—”

“I know what you mean.” His attention swiveled back toward her, and in that second, a memory slipped between them, written in that unspoken mental language of longtime spouses. “It almost wasn’t that way, though, was it?”

“Cade—”

“Are we ever going to talk about it, Melanie? Or just pretend that it never happened?”

She waved toward the back of the shop. “Emmie will be out any second now.”

“Fine,” Cade said. “But we have to talk about it sometime.”

“Sure,” Melanie said, intending no such thing. That day had been painful enough. Cade’s absence, her guilt. There was enough fodder there for a soap opera.

“Mel, didn’t you want the baby, too?” Cade asked, his voice just above a whisper.

She turned away, straightening mugs, aligning the handles until they were like little circular soldiers marching along the shelf. “I can’t talk about this.”

“Can’t or won’t? It takes two to kill a marriage, you know. And two to bring it back to life.”

“I don’t want to bring it back to life,” Melanie said, wheeling around. “I don’t want to go back to being Suzy Homemaker.”

“When did I ever say you had to do that?”

“Last year,” Melanie said, “standing in this very space. I said I wanted to run my own shop and you asked me how I could possibly do that if I had another baby. You just assumed I wanted to try again. Assumed I wanted to go back to being a housewife and a mom. Assumed I wanted to put my dreams on hold one more time.”

The rest room door squeaked as Emmie opened it and both Cade and Melanie let the subject drop. A couple of students wandered in, followed by two men in suits who took a corner table and flipped out their laptops.

Cooter ambled in next. He tipped his cap Melanie’s way and ordered his usual. His light blue gaze flicked between Cade and Melanie. “That old dog, he’s still whining from what I can hear,” Cooter said, taking his mug. “And there ain’t nobody happy when the dog’s not happy.”

Cade gestured toward Cooter as the old man headed to the back of the shop. “What’d he mean by that?”

“He told me a story about some dog that got sick eating mulch or something.” She shrugged. “I don’t know, it’s supposed to have meaning for my life.”

“Mulch? And a dog?” Cade chuckled. “Jeez, if I’d known the secret to life was that easy, I’d have brought home a golden retriever and landscaped the front beds.”

Melanie laughed, glad for the break from the tension of their earlier conversation. Emmie joined them, looking from one parent to the other. She smiled. “Good to see you guys getting along so well.”

“Oh, we’re just—”

“Sharing a joke,” Cade intercepted. “Nothing more.”

“Uh-huh,” Emmie said, clearly not believing them. “Either way, you two better get out of here. Don’t you have a meeting?”

“I almost forgot!” Melanie slipped off her apron, grabbed her coat and purse off the hook inside the kitchen. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Em.”

Emmie smiled, her gaze again split between Melanie and Cade. “Have a good time tonight.”

Hidden meaning—work those marital problems out on the dance floor.

“Thanks for taking my shift, honey,” Melanie said, ignoring the hint to get back together with Cade and instead laying a quick kiss on her daughter’s forehead. Emmie gave her mother another eye-roll, but didn’t move away. Despite her being well past the age when kisses were dispensed with the abandon of confetti throwers, Melanie was convinced Emmie still secretly liked the occasional tender touch. Even if it was from her mother.

The shop door jingled and Liam entered, his attention more on Emmie than Cuppa Life’s offerings. “Hi, Liam,” Emmie said, a soft, private smile curving across her face.

“Hi, Em.” He slipped onto a stool and returned her smile.

“I think that’s our cue to go,” Cade whispered in Melanie’s ear.

A thrill charged through her at the feel of his warm breath along her neck. She closed her eyes for a half a second, giving up to that feeling, before dismissing it. The bank loan, the reunion, it was all part of a business deal. Not a date. There wasn’t going to be some miraculous happily ever after created while the band played “Always and Forever.”

Even if a tiny part of her was starting to hope otherwise.

Cade stood in his kitchen, wrestling with the black bowtie that went with his tux. Carter leaned against the wall, watching his twin with clear amusement. “Need some help?” he asked.

“No. I can get it.”

Carter arched a brow, then glanced around the messy kitchen. “This place is really starting to scream bachelor. You gotta do something.”

Why was everyone telling him that? He was doing something—it just wasn’t working. He’d thought, after the meeting with the bank this afternoon, that things might change. That the minute the loan officer said, “Congratulations,” Melanie would have turned to him, and called this whole divorce thing off. But she hadn’t. Instead she’d thanked him as politely as she had the bank manager, then told him she’d see him tonight.

It couldn’t have been more businesslike if they’d been standing in a boardroom.

“Did you come over just to complain about my decor?” Cade said to his twin.

“Nah. I was hungry, too. You have anything to eat around here?” Carter opened a cabinet, rifled through it for a second, then turned back to his brother. “Are you sure you don’t want some help with that tie? It’s a mess.”

Cade threw his brother a glare.

Carter just laughed. “All right, but don’t blame me if you end up looking like a guy who wrapped his own Christmas present.” He moved some cans of green beans, found nothing behind them, then shut the cabinet door. “This is sad. Old Mother Hubbard had more than you do, Cade.”

Cade hadn’t eaten at home in so long, he couldn’t remember what he had on hand—if anything. “Check the fridge. There might be some leftover Thai food.”

Carter rose, opened the Whirlpool and withdrew one of the paper takeout boxes. He took one whiff, then shoved it back inside the refrigerator and slammed the door. “You need to fix things with Melanie, man, before you die of e-Coli or typhoid or something.”

“My vaccinations are up-to-date,” Cade said with a grin. “And I’m making progress with Mel.”

“How so?”

“I worked with her at the coffee shop all week.”

“Five days serving up lattes? Should have been enough time to solve your problems, the world’s problems and have some time leftover.” Carter grinned.

“You don’t know my wife.”

“Neither, apparently, do you, if you couldn’t get her to talk.” Carter opened the freezer, but found only several inches of frost and one pizza box that had started to curl at the corners. He shut the door again, fast. “Did you ever try to figure out why she won’t talk to you?”

“Because Melanie is more stubborn than a herd of donkeys.”

“Or maybe because she is talking and you aren’t listening.”

Cade started in on the tie again. That was the same thing Emmie had said. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“All along, you’ve been saying it’s her that won’t talk. Saying she’s the one who walked out on the marriage. Did you ever think that it might have been you?”

“That’s insane. I’ve always been there.” The final bow tightened against his neck and he turned around.

“Well, except when I was at work.”

“And how great of a husband do you think Dad would have been if he’d married again?”

“Dad would have been horrible. Heck, he wasn’t even good at the father thing. Never home, always talking about the office, leaving us to do our own thing.”

“Uh-huh. Do you recognize anyone in that picture?”

Cade shook his head. “I’m not like Dad.”

“You are, too. You’re just not as crabby as he is.” Carter grinned. “And you don’t share his opinion that I’m an idiot.”

“He just wants you to make something of yourself.” Cade had served as the go-between for the two for years, but he might as well have been a brick wall, given how little Carter and their father communicated. Cade wondered sometimes if his Type-A, workaholic father envied Carter’s footloose approach to life.

“I did make something of myself,” Carter said.

“What I made wasn’t good enough. He wanted me to be a lawyer. I’d sooner commit hari-kari than spend all day locked up with legal briefs.” Carter snorted at the very idea. “Do you even like being a lawyer?”

Cade sighed and dropped into one of the kitchen chairs. “No, I don’t.”

“Then why the hell are you doing it?”

“Because Dad paid for me to go to college. Gave me a job when Melanie and I had nothing. No money, no apartment, nothing but a baby on the way.”

“And he’s made you pay him back ten times over,” Carter said, sliding into the opposite seat. “If you hate your job, quit.”

“I don’t have a backup plan, Carter. It’s not like I can take my law degree and be a really good bartender.”

“You took your law degree and made really good coffee. Mixing a margarita on some beach in Jamaica should be a piece of cake after that.”

Cade laughed, then returned to reality. To a mortgage, college tuition and a retirement to fund. “I’m not going to throw away a twenty-year career to serve women in bikinis.”

“You have got issues, my brother.” Carter chuckled. “I’d do just about anything to serve women in bikinis.”

“That’s why you’re the bachelor and I’m the—” Cade cut himself off. He wasn’t the married one, not really. “Okay, bad point. Still, I’m not applying for any jobs in Jamaica.”

“There may be an opening as a toy company CEO soon if I keep helping this business run into the ground,” Carter said, then glanced at his watch.

“Anyway, I have to go. I have a date.” He rose. “I may be a bachelor, and a disappointment to my father and a guy whose still trying to figure out who he is, but at least I’m honest about it. One piece of advice. The sooner you get honest with yourself, the sooner you can get honest with Melanie, too.”

Then Carter left, leaving Cade with a mental mirror finally large enough for him to see the reflection of himself. He got out a piece of paper and began to write.

CHAPTER TEN

“LAST TIME I SAW YOU in one of those, it was light blue,” Melanie said. “You looked like the Easter Bunny.”

Cade chuckled. “If you prefer the blue…”

“Oh, no. the black is nice.” Maybe too nice because she had to remember to breathe. She noticed everything about him, especially the way the tux framed the muscles and planes of Cade’s body. Every hormone in her body itched to undo the tie, then start on the tiny black buttons, unfastening one after the other until she got him down to his boxers—

And nothing else.

It was a major change from the business casual he’d worn to the bank earlier. True to his word, Cade had stayed quiet throughout the loan process, letting Melanie run the show—and collect the check at the end. Cuppa Life was going to finally fulfill what Melanie had envisioned, which made her excited about the days to come.

But right now, the only thing increasing her pulse was Cade and the sexy cut of the fancy black suit.

“You look amazing.” The compliment shone in his eyes as much as it did in his tone. Cade took a step forward, then reached out and ran a finger along the thin strap of her dress. “Absolutely incredible.”

Her breath caught in her throat, her gut twisted with a want that had never seemed this strong, this overpowering. Before she could think about what she was doing, Melanie closed the gap between them, lifted her chin and pressed her lips to his.

He groaned, then his arms stole around her waist. He pulled her to him, hard and fast, nearly catching her breath in her throat. She knew all it would take would be one word—no, one glance—and she and Cade could be in her bedroom, undoing all they had so carefully done to get ready for tonight.

“Oh, Melanie,” he said against her mouth, his voice heavy with want, need—the same river rushing through her veins, begging for release.