Bridesmaid for Hire Read online

  Besides, maybe she didn’t really want to hear about Shane and Ellie’s mother. She might not be able to handle it. It was one thing to tell herself that she knew Shane had moved on, it was totally another to actually see living proof that he had.

  As it was, she was trying to block the sudden ache she felt in the pit of her stomach.

  “You said something about a bridal shower?” Shane prompted, the sound of his voice breaking the awkward silence growing between them.

  “Yes, I did,” she said, forcing herself to come around. “I was wondering if you could possibly see your way to providing some of your pastries for the bridal shower. Nothing unique,” she quickly qualified, not wanting to put any undue pressure on him—or give him a reason to turn her down.

  “If you don’t want anything unique, why don’t you just go to your local Costco and get the pastries there?” Shane asked.

  She wasn’t doing this right, Gina thought. She tried again. “Okay, maybe we do want something unique,” she qualified.

  And then, because she felt this wasn’t going well, Gina stopped and took a deep breath. She couldn’t keep tap-dancing around the very large elephant in the room like this any longer. It was obvious that ignoring it wasn’t working. She needed to get it out of the way if she had any hopes of making progress.

  “All right,” she said, bracing herself, “you want the truth?”

  Shane’s eyes held hers prisoner. “That would be a unique experience,” Shane agreed. “Go ahead, tell me the truth,” he challenged.

  “The truth is I was trying to find an excuse to see you again. The bridal shower seemed like the right way to go.” Gina wanted to look away, but she knew that would be a mistake. She needed to tell him this to his face, not address his shadow. “I thought that maybe the more we saw each other, the less awkward it would be.”

  The silence threatened to engulf them. And then he said, “I guess you were wrong.”

  Her heart sank. “I guess I was.” Gina gathered her courage together. “But I’d just like to go on record to tell you that I’m sorry. That I behaved like an idiot that day you proposed to me because I was afraid of having anything change between us. I thought if we changed one thing, the magic we had would disappear. I realized how dumb that was practically from the moment I pushed you away.

  “And I did try to go back and apologize,” she stressed, “but by then you’d taken off somewhere. I asked everyone who was still there and no one knew where you were.” Her voice throbbed with sincerity. “I tried everything. Your social footprint disappeared completely. But I kept trying anyway. After a year, I finally realized that you didn’t want to be found.” She pressed her lips together. “I just wanted you to know that,” she told Shane.

  It was hard to talk when she could feel tears gathering in her throat. But somehow, she had managed.

  With that, Gina turned away from him. She was almost at the door, her hand on the doorknob when she heard Shane ask, “You looked for me for a whole year?”

  She tried but she couldn’t read his tone. Was Shane mocking her or did he finally believe her? She couldn’t tell.

  Gina turned around to look at him. “I did. I tried to find your friends but the ones who were still around hadn’t seen or heard from you. They were just as surprised as I was that you’d vanished.” She pressed her lips together, debating telling him this, then decided there was no point in hiding it. “I even filed a missing person’s report.”

  He stared at her, stunned. “You did what? With the police?” he asked incredulously.

  She couldn’t tell if he was angry or not, but now that she’d said it, she had to give him the details. “I was afraid something had happened to you. I knew I had hurt you, but I didn’t think you would just disappear like that without telling anyone. That’s why I filed the report. But the police couldn’t find you either,” she said.

  She shrugged helplessly. “Eventually, I suppose the missing person’s report was filed with all the other unsolved cases and went into missing person’s limbo.” She took another deep breath, searching his face, waiting for an explanation for his disappearance.

  He didn’t say anything.

  She gathered up her courage again. “I know that you don’t owe me any explanations, but where were you all that time?”

  His eyes met hers. He could still read her, he thought. That was oddly comforting. “You were really worried?”

  “I thought if something hadn’t happened to you, then maybe you had done something to yourself and that it was all my fault,” she said, letting out a shaky breath. She hadn’t admitted that to anyone before. It felt good to finally get it out. “You have no idea what went on in my head.”

  “I guess I didn’t,” he admitted. “After you turned me down, I couldn’t deal with it. I just wanted to get away, so I left. Alan told me that he welcomed any help I could offer. He was a doctor volunteering his services in the poorest region in Uganda,” Shane explained. “There was nothing keeping me here any longer so I went.”

  She should have known. Shane had found something good to do with his life, something that hadn’t even occurred to her.

  “And did what?” she asked, hungry for any details he could spare her.

  He shrugged. “Anything and everything. I cleaned wounds, carried water, drove hundreds of miles for much-needed supplies when they became available. I did whatever my brother’s small band of selfless doctors and nurses needed. I guess you could say I was their Man Friday,” he added with a touch of self-deprecating humor.

  Well, that explained why she couldn’t find him. But not how he got to his present position. “So how did you get from there to being a renowned pastry chef?” she asked in wonder.

  He wasn’t about to get into that right now. He couldn’t. “It’s a long story,” he told her. “And I have a full schedule.”

  She nodded. She hadn’t expected him to tell her as much as he had.

  “Right. I won’t keep you,” Gina told him, pushing her purse’s strap up her shoulder.

  She was almost out the door again when she heard him ask, “When’s the bridal shower again?”

  She swung around, grateful for the chance to exchange a few more words with him. “This coming Sunday. At two. It’s local,” she added, then crossed her fingers as she told him, “You’re welcome to come.”

  “To a bridal shower?” he questioned, bemused.

  “It’s a Jack and Jill shower,” she said. Thinking he might not know the term, she started to explain. “That’s when—”

  “I know what that is,” Shane said, cutting her short. “But I’ll pass. On the shower, not on bringing the pastries,” he clarified.

  At least that was something, she thought. “Really? Sylvie will be thrilled. And I was serious about the invitation,” she reiterated, giving it another shot. She wanted them to at least be friends. “You could bring your wife.”

  That caught him totally off guard. “My what?”

  “Your wife,” she repeated. “The more the merrier.” Did that sound as trite to him as it did in her head? she wondered.

  Rather than answering, he asked his own question. “What makes you think I have a wife?”

  “Ex-wife?” Gina asked. Had she made a mistake, or didn’t he want to talk about his situation? When he just went on looking at her, she felt she had to explain why she had assumed he was married. “Isn’t Ellie your daughter?”

  “Look, I’ve got a full schedule—” he began, attempting to dismiss this woman who had materialized out of his past.

  “I know,” she assured him quickly. “I didn’t mean to keep you, I just—”

  A quick getaway was impossible with Gina. He should have remembered that. “You still don’t let me talk, do you?” he marveled. “I was going to say that I have a busy schedule, but if you’d like to get a cup of coffee with me say about s
ix, maybe we can talk then.”

  Talk? He wanted to talk. Hope sprang up in her chest. Maybe they could be friends after all. She needed to rearrange a couple of things to make the meeting, but there was no way she was going to stand him up.

  “I’ll be here at six,” she told him.

  “Not here,” Shane told her. “Why don’t you meet me at the coffee shop at the other end of the shopping center. Molly’s,” he told her in case Gina was unaware of the place.

  “Molly’s at six. Got it. I’ll be there,” Gina promised. She had an urge to hug him, but she refrained. She didn’t want to scare him off.

  She walked out of the small shop feeling happier than she remembered feeling in a long time. She had no delusions that having coffee with Shane would lead to anything else. It wasn’t going to change anything. The man was married or at the very least had been involved with Ellie’s mother and still might be. Knowing his personality, she didn’t think that there was any chance that she would be able to suddenly pick up with him after all these years, especially if there was someone else in the picture. And she didn’t want to ruin whatever it was that he had going on.

  She had missed her chance and she had to make her peace with that all over again. But she did want the man to be happy. That hadn’t changed.

  * * *

  “I have wonderful news,” she told Sylvie, calling her client once she got into her car. “I talked to...Cassidy,” she said, stopping herself from referring to him as Shane. “And he said that he would be happy to make the pastry refreshments for your bridal shower.”

  “Oh, Gina, you really are a miracle worker!” Sylvie gushed.

  “No, not really.” She didn’t want to take any credit that wasn’t due to her. “He wasn’t all that hard to convince. Now that he’s handling your wedding cake, I think he feels as if he has a stake in your wedding, as well.”

  “He wouldn’t be doing the wedding cake if it wasn’t for you. I’m going to tell all my friends about you—some of them aren’t married yet,” she added. “With any luck, you’ll be getting so much business coming your way, you won’t have time to breathe.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Gina said.

  This way, if she’d be busy she wouldn’t have time to think about the one who got away and what a mistake she’d made pushing him out of her life.

  Chapter Eight

  Gina shifted in her seat and looked down at her watch again. If she didn’t know that it was impossible, she would have said that her watch had stopped. But it certainly felt that way because the hands on her wristwatch hadn’t moved since the last time she had looked at it.

  Or the time before that.

  She had made sure that she’d gotten here at five fifty, arriving ten minutes earlier than the time they had agreed upon. It wasn’t her habit to arrive early, but she didn’t want to take a chance on finding herself stalled in traffic. Granted this wasn’t LA with its soul-sucking traffic jams, but Orange County wasn’t exactly smooth sailing during rush hour, which wasn’t an hour but more like three. Or four.

  The last thing she wanted was to have Shane walk into the coffee shop at six and not find her there. With her luck, he would wind up jumping to the very logical conclusion that she had decided not to come and see him after all.

  He didn’t come in at six.

  She had been sitting here at this table for two for almost thirty minutes now, Gina thought, staring at the analog numbers that were flashing across her watch. What if he wasn’t coming? What if Shane had thought better of having her meet him for coffee and had just decided not to show up?

  How long did she have to sit here before she finally gave up?

  There were a million reasons why he wouldn’t show up. But none that she could come up with that would keep him from calling and letting her know that he wasn’t coming.

  Maybe it was just a simple matter of getting even, her mind whispered.

  No, Shane wasn’t like that, she argued the next moment.

  She was thinking of the old Shane, Gina reminded herself. What did she know about what the new Shane was like?

  Maybe this was payback. Maybe he wanted to pay her back for breaking his heart the way she had when she had so abruptly and thoughtlessly turned him down.

  She saw the server behind the counter who had made her coffee drink looking at her with pity in her eyes. She was so obviously waiting for someone.

  What was she doing here anyway? Gina silently demanded. If she had a lick of sense left, she’d get up and walk out instead of sitting here like some kind of a mindless robot.

  But despite her silent pep talk, she just couldn’t get herself to get up and leave, couldn’t get herself to give up the hope that Shane was just running late. After all, he had told her that he had a busy schedule.

  In addition to his work, there was that little girl of his. What if the reason he was late had something to do with her?

  So she remained sitting at the table, silently making up excuses for Shane and all but jumping out of her skin every time the entrance door opened. And each time it did, she could feel her heart sinking, dropping down into her stomach with a thud because it wasn’t Shane.

  This couldn’t go on indefinitely, she told herself. She could only nurse her overpriced coffee for so long. It was almost all gone and she couldn’t just continue sitting here once it was finished. She knew that the store had a strict policy about loitering. She supposed she could always order another container, but she had never developed a taste for these high-caloric drinks.

  And then, at six forty-two when she had finally convinced herself to get up and leave the shop, the front door opened and this time it wasn’t some stranger coming in. It was Shane.

  Maybe it had something to do with the fact that she had consumed a large container of designer coffee while she’d waited, but her mouth suddenly went incredibly dry. So dry that she was worried her tongue was hermetically sealed to the roof of her mouth.

  She raised her hand halfway so he could see where she was, although the place wasn’t that big.

  He’d quickly scanned the area. Seeing Gina, Shane crossed to her small table over in the corner. He nodded at her and spared her the barest hint of a smile.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he told her.

  She was about to say something flippant about just having gotten there herself, but she decided against it. She didn’t want to start off their renewed relationship with a lie.

  So instead Gina merely nodded at his apology. “I’m sure you have your reasons for being late, and besides,” she stressed, “this isn’t anything formal. It’s just two old friends getting together for coffee.” She watched his face to see if he agreed with her, but she couldn’t read his expression.

  “Is that what you think?” he asked her. It wasn’t a challenge, it was a simple question. “That we’re old friends?”

  Gina felt as if she was trying to make her way across a tightrope. Determined, she pushed on. “I think we could be. We were once,” she reminded him.

  “Were we?” Shane questioned. And then, with a shrug, he changed the subject. “I’d better go get some coffee. They don’t like people just sitting around without buying anything.”

  With that, Shane got up and walked over to the counter. He placed his order, then, to her surprise, he came back to the table to wait for that order to be filled. She would have thought that he’d use the excuse of waiting for his drink to continue standing by the counter rather than to sit with her.

  Maybe there was hope, she thought.

  Which was why she said, “We were,” as Shane sat back down.

  He looked at her blankly. She realized that he had lost the thread of their conversation—or was pretending he had.

  “We were what?” Shane asked.

  “Friends. You asked if we were friends just before you went to place your order.
I’m answering your question. We were.” Her voice grew more confident as she went on to make her point. “We were friends before anything ever developed between us.”

  This was killing her, this limbo she suddenly found herself lost in. Did he forgive her? Hate her? She couldn’t tell and the not knowing was seriously adding to this agitated state she felt growing within her. One minute she was hopeful, the next she was courting despondency.

  “Why did you ask me here?” she asked. She thought she had convinced herself that just being able to see him was good enough, but it wasn’t. Not when she wasn’t sure where she stood with Shane.

  He was quiet for a moment, as if deciding whether to answer her or not. And then he asked, “Did you really file a missing person’s report on me?”

  At least this she could address. “Yes, I did. I was desperate and I’d run out of ideas on how to find you. You’d just packed up and disappeared,” she reminded him. “It was like you didn’t exist, like I had just conjured you up in my mind. Except that I hadn’t.”

  “And you felt what, guilty?” Shane guessed, his eyes intently on her.

  The server at the counter called out his name and he rose. “Hold that thought,” Shane told her as he went to get his drink.

  When he returned, Gina answered his question. “Guilty, scared, angry. You name it, I felt it,” she said honestly. “It was like everything suddenly stopped and wouldn’t start up again until I could find out what happened to you.”

  “But you just said you didn’t find out,” he reminded Gina.

  “No,” she agreed. “I didn’t. One day I realized that my living in limbo was getting to my mother and the rest of my family, so I forced myself to snap out of it.” She sighed. None of this had been easy at the time. “I pulled myself together, got a job, then got another job until I finally decided that what I had studied in school really wasn’t me. None of that was me. So I found something else to do with my life.”

  He took a sip of his drink before saying anything. When he did, it wasn’t exactly a revelation. “And you became a professional bridesmaid.”