Midnight Kiss (Virgin River #12)(11)

At seven-ten, right before her father made an announcement to the wedding guests, Sunny quietly got into the bridal limo. She took her bouquet—her beautiful bouquet filled with roses and orchids and calla lilies—made a stop at her parents’ house for her purse and honeymoon luggage and had the driver take her home.

Home. The town house she shared with Glen. Her parents were frantic, her girlfriends were worried, her wedding guests wondered what went wrong. She wasn’t sure why she went home, maybe to see if he’d moved out while she was having a manicure and pedicure. But no—everything was just as she’d left it. And typical of Glen, the bed wasn’t made and there were dirty dishes in the sink.

She sat on the edge of their king-size bed in her wedding gown, her bouquet in her lap and her cell phone in her hand in case he should call and say it was all a bad joke and rather than pulling out of the wedding he was in the hospital or in jail. The only calls she got were from friends and family, all worried about her. She fended off most of them without saying where she was, others were forced to leave messages. For some reason she couldn’t explain to this day, she didn’t cry. She let herself fall back on the bed, stared at the ceiling and asked herself over and over what she didn’t know about this man she had been willing to commit a lifetime to. She was vaguely aware of that special midnight hour passing. The new year didn’t come in with a kiss, but with a scandalous breakup.

Sunny hadn’t had a plan when she went home, but when she heard a key in the lock she realized that because she’d taken the bridal limo and left her car at her parents’, Glen didn’t know she was there. She sat up.

He walked through the bedroom door, grabbing his wallet, keys and change out of his pockets to drop onto the dresser when he saw her. Everything scattered as he made a sound of surprise and he automatically reached for his ankle where he always kept a small, back-up gun. Breathing hard, he left it there and straightened. Cops, she thought. They like always having something, in case they happen to run into someone they put away…or a pissed-off bride.

“Go ahead,” she said. “Shoot me. It might be easier.”

“Sunny,” he said, breathless. “What are you doing here?”

“I live here,” she said. She looked down at the bouquet she still held. Why had she clung to that? Because it was sentimental or because it cost 175 dollars and she couldn’t return it? “You can’t have done this to me,” she said almost weakly. “You can’t have. You must have a brain tumor or something.”

He walked into the room. “I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “I kept thinking that by the time we got to the actual date, the wedding date, I’d be ready. I really thought that.”

“Ready for what?” she asked, nonplussed.

“Ready for that life, that commitment forever, that next stage, the house, the children, the fidelity, the—”

She shook her head, frowning in confusion. “Wait a minute, we haven’t found a house we like and can afford, we agreed we’re not ready for children yet and I thought we already had commitment…” His chin dropped. “Fidelity?” she asked in a whisper.

He lifted his eyes and locked with hers. “See, I haven’t really done anything wrong, not really. I kept thinking, I’m not married yet! And I thought by the time—”

“Did you sleep with other women?” she asked, rising to her feet.

“No! No! I swear!”

She didn’t believe him for a second! “Then what did you do?”

“Nothing much. I partied a little. Had drinks, you know. Danced. Just went out and sometimes I met girls, but it didn’t get serious or anything.”

“But it did get to meeting, dancing, buying drinks. Talking on the phone? Texting little messages? Maybe having dinner?”

“Maybe some of that. A couple of times.”

“Maybe kissing?”

“Only, maybe, twice. At the most, twice.”

“My God, have I been brain damaged? To not know?”

“When were we together?” he asked. “We had different nights off, we were like roommates!”

“You could have fixed that easy! You could have changed your nights off! I couldn’t! People don’t get married or have fiftieth anniversary parties on Tuesday nights!”

“And they also don’t go out for fun on Tuesday nights! I guess I’m just a bad boy, but I enjoy a ball game or a run on a bar or club on a weekend when people are out! And you were never available on a weekend! We talked about it, we fought about it! You said it would never change, not while you took pictures.”

“This isn’t happening,” she said. “You stood up two hundred wedding guests and a trip to Aruba because I work weekends?”

“Not exactly, but… Well… Look,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m twenty-six. I thought you were probably the best thing for me, the best woman I could ever hook up with for the long haul except for one thing—I’m not ready to stop having fun! And you are—you’re all business. Even that wedding—Jesus, it was like a runaway train! Planning that astronomical wedding was like a second job for you and I never wanted anything that big, that out of control! Sunny, you’re way too young to be so old.”

That was one way to deliver what she could only describe as a punch to the gut. Of all the things she thought she knew about him, she hadn’t given enough credence to the fact that even at twenty-six, he was younger than she. More immature. He wanted to have fun. “And you couldn’t tell me this last month? Or last week? Or yesterday?” She stared at him, waiting.