Stacking the Deck (A Betting on Romance Novel Book 2)(72)

And for the next few days, he’d looked at the world with new eyes. Everything had seemed brighter. Crisper. There was a promise in the air. A sense of possibility.

Carter ran a hand over his face as he waited for the printer. He glanced at the clock. It was almost eight a.m., and he felt like he’d ridden an emotional roller-coaster over the last twenty-four hours. He’d come home, exhausted and confused, and poured all that frustrated energy into working up the bid for the fountain project. Now, three and a half hours later, he was spent.

He pulled the completed bid from the printer and took a breath.

Well, this was it.

He laid it on the desk.

Ironic how a single project could hold such power. But, like that kiss, it felt like a turning point. Hell, he’d thought about his future more in the last couple of weeks than he had in the last ten years.

Liz did that to him. She got him thinking about the past and who they’d been and who they were now. And where they were headed.

He wouldn’t pretend he didn’t want the future he saw for himself when he was with her.

He reached for a pen and paused. He didn’t blame Liz for balking when she saw the cabinets. He didn’t blame her for looking at him like he’d lost his ever-lovin’ mind when he’d suggested she buy the house.

Lord only knew what he’d been thinking, except he didn’t want what he’d found with her to go away. He wanted to preserve the feeling that Liz always carried with her that the possibilities were endless, that any person could make him or herself exactly and whatever they wanted to be no matter what they’d been in the past. And, at four a.m., when he’d looked at her in the predawn light, he’d not been able to stop himself from reaching across the divide between them just to test if it were as wide as she seemed to think it was.

A bittersweet feeling settled in his chest as he signed the bid, slid it into a manila envelope and wrote ‘Beautification League of Sugar Falls’ on the outside.

He blew out a careful breath. Done.

And just like ten years before, Liz would never know how close he’d come to believing they could magically become two people who had more in common than lust and a taste for Twizzlers.

He stared at the envelope. Weird that he wasn’t more nervous. And yet, over the last couple of weeks, Liz had given him all sorts of ideas on how to improve cash flow, restructure pricing and create his own market niche in hardscapes. It was easy to see why she was successful. She had a knack for seeing how any business could work better.

Granted, a lot of it sounded like a bunch of marketing mumbo-jumbo, but even so, it sounded good.

She sounded good.

He leaned back in his chair with a sigh.

He got such a kick out of watching her mind work. Her eyes would light up, her pen would go a mile a minute on one of her yellow pads and it was as if she got as much of a thrill out of solving his problems as he got out of watching her do it.

He loved watching her. Loved...

Carter’s chair snapped upright.

No. No way. He shook his head and leapt from his seat. Shit!

His chest felt tight, and he began to pace, alarm coursing through him.

As carefree as he was about so much in life, he was never this careless about his relationships. He always, always stopped himself before stepping over the line. Because, unlike casual sex, love was dangerous. And, yes, objectively, he knew love didn’t always lead to a tragic end like it had for his parents, but he was absolutely sure of one thing.

Someday, somehow, inevitably… where love was concerned… someone would get hurt.





CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

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AFTER CARTER LEFT, Liz threw herself into punch-list tasks. It made it easier to deny she’d been making one whopper of a mistake after another. Eddie joined her as if sensing she needed him. He sat on her extension cord.

What had happened to her since she’d come home? She’d gone from having everything clicking along like clockwork to spiraling out of control and falling in love with a man who was not even her boyfriend!

As if on cue, her cell phone rang. She contemplated letting it go to messages, but then decided she wasn’t a coward. She could always pretend she’d lost cell service if things got dicey.

“Grant!”

“Hi,” he said. “How are you?”

“I’m… okay.” Crazy. In love with another man. Horribly unfaithful. “You?”

“Good. Good. Things are good. Really good, in fact.”

“Good.” She swiped her hand on her forehead and waited.

“You sound tired,” he said.

She grimaced. “I am.” In so many ways.

“That’s probably my fault.”

“Not entirely,” she admitted. “But some.”

He chuckled softly. It was strange to hear his laugh. It seemed a lifetime ago she’d been with him. “I deserve that,” he said. “I know I’ve leaned on you more heavily than I’d planned to since you’ve been away. It’s been crazy on this end. I’ve been pulling together a lot of loose ends, and I know I’ve been short with you, but things are coming together now. I’m sorry I made things stressful.”

“Me, too. Crazy on this end, I mean. Too.”

He paused. “Andy says thanks for the, ah, wedding gift.”