Can’t Hurry Love by Nadine Millard (little red riding hood ebook TXT) 📗

supposed. But to keep something that big from her? Why? She didn’t understand it. And if he was divorced, why was she here saying they were working things out?

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” she hissed. “How could you not have told me something like this? What is she doing here?”

“I-I don’t know,” he said. “It’s complicated. She’s — she’s had some problems.”

“Yeah, she told me,” Beth pulled her arm from his grip. “Told me how you went through a rough patch, and you’re working things out. So that’s why you spent a year not wanting me? That’s why you said you couldn’t be with me, right? Why you couldn’t offer me anything?”

“Beth, please. I know how it seems.”

“Just answer me, Josh. For once, just be honest.” She knew that this wasn’t a conversation they should be having in front of witnesses, but she was too upset and angry to care. “Is she the reason that you didn’t want to be with me after that first night?”

He stared at her, his jaw tense, his eyes filled with pain. “Yes,” he finally answered. “But you don’t understand!”

“No, I don’t,” she said. “Because you never told me, Josh. You never told me any of it. Good luck working things out with your wife.”

She turned and walked away, not even knowing where she was going.

“Beth—“

She heard him move toward her again, but someone obviously stopped him because it was Zoe’s arm she felt around her shoulders as she cried her way down the street.

“I don’t even have my purse.” She sniffled.

“I have it,” Zoe said. “Come on, honey. It’s all going to be ok.”

But it wasn’t. Beth thought of all those books she’d read where the characters talked of feeling their hearts breaking. She never thought it could really, truly happen to a person.

But it could. And it hurt like hell.

Chapter Twenty-Four

“What the hell did you do, man?”

Josh looked up from his desk to see Grayson Carroway standing in the doorway of his office.

He jumped to his feet. “Have you seen her?” he asked, hearing the desperation in his voice. “She won’t answer the phone, and she’s not at the bakery.”

“No, she’s at home.”

Josh ran a hand through his hair. “I figured,” he said. “I half thought I’d get shot if I went near the place.”

“You might,” Grayson said, unsmiling.

“Look, I don’t know what she told you, but—“

“She didn’t tell me anything,” Grayson spat. “She came home with Zoe Beckford last night crying her eyes out and locked herself away. Didn’t leave for work. Hasn’t left her room. If you hurt her—“

“What? No, of course I didn’t hurt her.”

But that wasn’t true, was it? He had hurt her, just not in the way Grayson was implying.

“I’ve never seen her like this,” Grayson said. “Not about some guy.”

Josh looked helplessly at the man he’d considered a friend but who was every inch the big brother of the woman he’d hurt right then.

“I messed up, Grayson,” he said honestly. “But if I could just get the chance to talk to her—“

“That’s not up to me,” Grayson cut in. “But you’re a decent guy. At least, I think you are. So maybe if you do come by, we’ll hold off on the shooting. Unless Beth decides otherwise.”

There was a clear warning in Grayson’s tone, but at least he’d promised not to shoot him. At this point, Josh would take what he could get.

Grayson turned to leave, but before he was out the door, Josh called out to him. “I want to fix it,” Josh said sincerely. “She’s important to me, Grayson. The most important thing to me.”

Grayson stared at him, but Josh held his gaze.

After a while, the other man nodded. “I’m not the one who needs to hear that, Doc,” he said.

No, he wasn’t. But the one who needed to hear it wouldn’t take his calls.

Please just give me some time to explain. Whenever and wherever you want. I never wanted to hurt you, Beth. It was the last thing I ever wanted.

It had been a long-ass day, and the hard part wasn’t even starting, Josh thought as he put his phone in his pocket.

He was pretty confident that if Beth were to show her phone to Sheriff Callahan, he’d be arrested for harassment.

He wanted nothing more than to drive out to the Big Sky Ranch and try to see her, but he couldn’t risk going out there right now. Not with Elaine still to deal with.

Josh stood outside his door and took a deep, steadying breath. He had no idea what he’d find on the other side. He could only hope that Elaine would keep her promise to stay put.

After he’d gone back inside last night, she’d been acting like the last two years hadn’t happened. She’d talked about finding herself in LA and being ready to get back on track.

He’d looked closely at her pupils, and they hadn’t been unusually dilated. As far as he could tell, she wasn’t on anything.

But the truth was he’d been so devastated by that look in Beth’s eyes, and knowing that he’d been the cause of it, that he hadn’t particularly cared one way or another.

Elaine had been relatively calm, but completely delusional. That wasn’t talking as a doctor but as an ex-husband whose life had just imploded because of her. Even as he thought it, Josh knew he wasn’t being entirely fair. If he hadn’t been dishonest with Beth in the first place, Elaine’s arrival couldn’t have broken them apart like this.

Her parents were due to fly in tomorrow to pick her up. She needed help, Josh knew that. And whether he should or not, he felt like he needed to help her now.

Having met Beth, he knew that he’d never loved Elaine the way a husband should love his wife. But that didn’t mean that he hadn’t cared a lot about her, loved her in some way. Not in the all-consuming way he loved Beth, but enough to