Love, Chocolate, and Beer (Cactus Creek #1)(100)

She recoiled as if he’d just slapped her. Hot tears flooded her eyes. “Do you really think I’d do something like that behind your back?”

“How the hell should I know? Before today, I didn’t think you’d ever do anything behind my back, let alone something like this. You kept who knows how many things from me for months. Against Noah’s advice to tell me the truth too, apparently. My god, the entire time he was working with me on shop matters—” He flipped his head back, laughing bitterly. “The man must think I’m a total idiot.” Shaking his head, mortification tinted his tone dark and ugly. “When I first told you how I might lose the shop, you just stood there pretending...” His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Were you even going to tell me before Derek opened shop? Or were you planning on dumping me before then so you wouldn’t have to?”

“You’ve got it all wrong! It wasn’t like that at all. What I’ve been working with Noah on is a way to help you, I swear. Luke, the only reason I didn’t try to undo everything right after you introduced yourself was because I didn’t think there was anything to undo. I thought Noah had dismissed the idea because he never called to follow-up. That is, not until later…”

He gave her an annoyed look. “Don’t stop now. You’re on a roll. Spit it out. Have the guts to do what you should’ve been doing the whole time. Tell me the truth—when later?”

She swallowed thickly. “Valentine’s Day.”

His razor sharp flinch cut her just as deep. She closed her eyes miserably. “That’s when I found out Noah had contacted Derek. But it wasn’t until the day after that I learned how my hasty proposal had started an avalanche effect—the wineries that made offers on your building only did so because Noah had been calling around to follow-up on my idea.” She sank further into her disdain for herself. “After that, it felt like I just couldn’t ever find an appropriate time to tell you.”

“Right, because I was so busy being a Valentine schmuck, making it impossible for you to bomb that news on me.” Luke’s jaw was clenching in measured beats, as if he were forcibly restraining himself. “Then what?” he barked.

“Well, then I broke Derek’s heart a little.” Now Dani was the one sounding bitter. “I got to first describe, then yank my brilliant plans away from my big brother, the person who has shoved all his dreams of having a winery onto the backburner just so I could keep running my brewpub. Just so I wouldn’t have to suffer through all my failures that put us in this situation to begin with.” Suddenly, she felt so young, so stupid. “I failed him yet again.”

His angry gaze faltered a bit, concern for her softening his glare. With one last glimmer of hope, she tried to grab hold of that lifeline. “I know it was way late in the game, but I did tell Noah I couldn’t go through with it. Not at your expense.”

He averted his eyes and threw out flippantly, “You know, if you’d just trusted me enough to be honest with me, you could’ve saved yourself a whole lot of guilt.” His jaw ticked. “And you wouldn’t have had to waste all your time ‘helping me’ so much.”

“None of that was out of guilt,” she shot back forcefully.

With a disbelieving snort, he countered stonily, “You mean to tell me you don’t feel a smidgen of guilt over being responsible for what Quinn and I are going through?”

Her heart tore at the seams at the betrayal she saw in his eyes. “Of course I do. I know this is all my fault.” She reached out but stopped herself from touching him. “I’m so sorry.”

Silence filled the room and all emotion disappeared from Luke’s expression.

Dani felt her legs almost give out when Luke reached forward and slid his hand along her jawline, cupping her face tenderly as he wiped the tears running down her cheeks. “I know you’re sorry, Dani.” With a low, tortured sigh, he leaned forward and buried his lips in her hair for the briefest of moments before whispering, “But I think I need some time away from you right now.”

Then he left the apartment without another word.





CHAPTER EIGHTEEN


AS FAR AS refuges for escape go, his shop wasn’t exactly the most clandestine, but Luke didn’t care. He knew Dani wouldn’t come after him.

The look she wore when he’d shut the door behind him was burned into his retinas.

But he just hadn’t been able to remain there another second.

Glancing at the clock, he was surprised to discover how long they’d been fighting.

Midnight.

Usually the only time of night he and Dani could be asleep in bed together—the few nights a week she wasn’t scheduled to close—before he got up to make his four a.m. chocolates. This would be the first night in weeks that he wasn’t going to be there to see her open her eyes and sleepily wish him a good day at work.

If it were up to him, he’d never miss another morning like that for the rest of his life.

That still didn’t erase what she had done though.

Regardless of how much his heart wanted to forgive her, his head just…couldn’t. Quinn and Cooper were paying the price, and he was about to lose everything he’d worked years to create and achieve.

His mind couldn’t help but replay all the instances over the past months where Dani had to have lied to him—white lies or lies of omission, it didn’t matter. Regardless the reason, or the clean-up that followed, like a barrage of bitter bullets, every little memory, even to the tiniest detail, pelted at him. Pissed him off. Made him hurt even more. Mostly because they were secondary wounds that were simply adding new pain to the already gaping hole in his heart that she’d torn out of him by the betrayal of trust. Not his trust for her, but rather, the opposite.