Chapter 50

“Oh, Nick.” She stopped herself. She couldn’t humiliate him in front of his unbelievably sexy brother. “Sorry, I got confused.” She laughed dorkily. “There’s another guy at the office with a girlfriend named Emma. I mixed them up. Cat, girlfriend…I do that stuff all the time.”

Nick mouthed thanks. His eyes pleaded for forgiveness. She’d forgive him. Though she might have to shriek at him first. Why on earth had he felt the need to pretend with her? Of all people. As if him being single would have made any diff— Oh, no. If there was no Emma—as Candace suspected, and maybe Michelle did, too, deep down—that meant Nick was totally available. That meant Michelle didn’t have to date someone like Nick.

She could date Nick.

A powerful surge of panic drew her up off the couch. “I should go.”

“Hey, pizza’s here, beer’s here.” Stoner’s hands landed on his hips. She was not going to examine what was between them. “And you’re here, Mic-he-lle. I can’t think of a better party.”

“Oh. Thanks.” Michelle headed for the door, eyes on the floor. “But I really—”

“Hey.” Stoner stepped into her path with such graceful speed that she nearly bumped into him. “Don’t go.”

She mumbled an excuse, kept her head down. If she looked at him she was lost.

“Stay?” His voice was a sexy bad-boy’s manipulative plea that made her want to wrap her legs around all that black and get shot to the moon.

She’d never be healthy, she’d never get it right, she’d never find the kind of love she dreamed about. Not as long as there were men in the world like Stoner who turned her upside down with a single glance.

“Okay. I’ll stay.” She gave in, looked up into his hot, melting, blue, blue eyes.

And fell deeply and forever in love. Again.

____________

Candace sprayed on the outside of the storm window in her bedroom, balanced on the ledge, leaning out with the scrubber stuck on an extension pole, squeegee inside within easy reach. A fly buzzed past into her bedroom. The scrubber whooshed across months of dust and dirt cemented into place by raindrops and snowflakes. She changed tools and reached with the squeegee, missing spots, smudging others. Finally she jammed a paper towel on the end of the extension pole and tried to manipulate it into the corners, sweating and puffing in the heat and humidity.

Yup. Windows. She’d gone over the edge.

If this was love, she’d rather go back to shallow infatuation. Michelle might have figured out everything about herself and about Candace, but it hadn’t helped her any, either. Emma was apparently a cat, which meant Nick, her best friend, had been lying to her for two years; Nick’s brother was so sexy Michelle had wanted to drop her pants right there in Nick’s apartment; and after all her theorizing, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell Nick what was on her mind even when she had the chance. To say she was discouraged was an understatement. She’d even been on time for work again today because she hadn’t been able to sleep.

So, for sake of argument—which argument Candace had been having in her head for the past two days, which was what made window-washing start to look pretty good—what if Michelle was right, and Candace was operating out of fear of commitment? What if she were moving to Rosehill because she was scared of her feelings for Nolan, scared of the vulnerability, scared of the potential for pain, of losing herself inside a man the way Michelle constantly did, the way their mother had, over and over?

What then? She couldn’t fix it by wanting to. And she wasn’t willing to stay in town for years of therapy while she tried. On the other side of that same coin, what if she really was leaving because subconsciously she knew staying even for someone as wonderful as Nolan wasn’t what she truly wanted? Maybe she knew she’d worry about her grandparents 24/7 and hate herself for sacrificing them to her desire for hot sex.

No, of course, Nolan wasn’t just about hot sex, though, um, yes, mmm. Even plain vanilla sex had been beyond anything she’d ever experienced.

Because he was a skilled lover? Because she was wildly in lust? Because this was really forever-love? Where the hell was the manual that came with emotions?

Page four: if you experience this-and-such and that-and-so-on then definitely yes, do this-’n-that. Oh, that would be so nice.

In the meantime, she had raging confusion, nightly sleeping pills— except that one night at the lake house in Nolan’s arms when she’d slept like a baby—and…windows.

Her phone rang; she bumped her head coming back inside, then scraped her hip climbing back onto the floor, and nearly tripped racing for it.

It was Michelle. “Hello?”

“’Candace.”

“Michelle?” She put her finger in her free ear and bent forward in that stupid way people did, as if being closer to the ground would help them hear better. Was her sister drunk? “You okay?”

“M’m’s her’.” She sounded as if she were talking through her teeth.

“What? I can’t understand you.”

“I s’d M’m’s her’.”

“What?”

“Hang on.” Rustling sounds. Murmured words. Walking sounds. What the— “Candace?” Her voice was clear now, but echoing.

“Michelle, what is going on?”

“I couldn’t talk before—she was with Nick—I said the boss was calling so I could—she just showed up—I can’t believe—she looks totally —”

“Wait, whoa, calm down. I can barely understand you. Start over. Who showed up, a real Emma?”

“No, not Emma. Mom.”

Air entered Candace’s mouth in a weak gasp. She sank onto the bed and jumped up again when something sharp poked her. “Mom? Our mom? Is there? With you? Now?”

“She just showed up at work out of the blue, bang, like that.”

“Oh my God.” She turned, groped on the bed, flung a hanger off onto the floor and sank down again…then jumped up and started pacing. “Why didn’t she come here to the house?”

“She doesn’t know—she didn’t know you were there. I told her. She’s going to come see you next.”

“Oh my God.” She closed her eyes. More emotional confusion. On the one hand, Tricia was her mother. There had been happy times together, and in her own odd way, Candace was sure she loved her daughters. But. There was another hand, and on it was years of neglect that bordered on abuse. Forget windows. Candace was going to flip out the rest of the way and start scrubbing baseboard corners with an old toothbrush.