Wedding Vows: I Thee Wed: Back to Mr & Mrs / Reunited: Marriage in a Million / Marrying Her Billionaire Boss. Shirley Jump

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СКАЧАТЬ the vulnerability still lingering in her chest. If he touched her again, she’d surely dissolve.

      “I need you, Melanie,” he said, his voice hoarse.

      “I’ve always needed you.”

      “No, you don’t. You never did.”

      He cupped her jaw, tipping her chin upward, waiting for her to meet his gaze. “Melanie, I’d never be where I was today if it wasn’t for you. You were always the better half of my success. Of everything.”

      She shook her head, causing his touch to drop away. “Cade, all I did was bake the leg of lamb and set the table for the dinner parties.”

      “It was much more than that and you know it.”

      “Was it? Because I never felt that way. I put on the parties, smiled until my lips hurt, served coffee, tea and your best qualities to every guest. At the end of the night, you were toasting another success and I was washing the damned dishes.” She put up a finger when he started to protest. “You forgot me, Cade. Left me behind as you hurried ahead in your career. The only time you needed me was when there was a party to host or a client to impress.”

      “I never meant to do that.”

      She drew in a breath, cooling her temper. “I know, Cade. I guess I just wanted to feel like something I did, something other than raising Emmie, meant something. I never felt that when I was pulling a roast out of the oven or pouring champagne.” She glanced around the coffee shop. “Until now.”

      “What you did mattered, to me,” he said.

      “You never said it.” She let out a little laugh.

      “Heck, you were never home long enough to say anything.”

      He reached for her, but she turned away. Instead of letting her go, Cade moved forward, taking her hand with his. “I’m here now, Melanie.”

      How she wanted to believe that. To think that it could be different—that she could have the marriage she’d dreamed of, and the dreams she’d just achieved. To trust Cade would be there, physically and emotionally, when she needed him.

      But if there was one thing Melanie couldn’t take, it was more disappointment.

      “Cade, it’s too late,” Melanie said. “We drifted apart. I became your personal assistant, not your wife. And then, when it looked like I might have my chance, you wanted to put me right back into the same box I was trying to climb out of.”

      “All I wanted was a family,” he said. “How can you hate me for that?”

      She reached out, touched his hand, but then retreated. Each of them had been hurt that night, but instead of coming together, they’d ended up on opposite sides of a common fence. “I never hated you, Cade. I just wanted to go down a different road.”

      “You’ve never told me why, Melanie,” Cade said, coming around her, forcing her to face him. “Why did you leave me?”

      Melanie sighed. Why couldn’t he just let their marriage die? “I told you. A hundred times over the past few years, but you never listened.”

      “I’m listening now. Tell me what it is, so I can fix it.”

      She threw up her hands. “That right there, that’s part of the problem. You can’t fix everything, Cade.”

      “I can fix this, Melanie. Give me a chance.”

      For a second, she wanted to do just that, but then she thought back to the dozens of times they’d had conversations that echoed this one. Things would change for a week, maybe two, and then Cade would go back to being Cade, relying on Melanie to do everything but live for herself. When she’d finally had her chance, all he’d wanted to do was return to the status quo.

      She shook her head, then crossed the room, her keys in her hand. She held open the door, waiting for him to exit before shutting and locking it. “No, Cade. You can’t fix this.”

      Then, before she did something really stupid, like revisit that kiss, she turned and went home to her empty apartment, her stomach as disappointed as her heart.

      An hour later, Cade walked into the offices of Fitzsimmons, Matthews and Lloyd, although Fitzsimmons had died ten years ago and Lloyd last summer, leaving it technically just Matthews. Even though it was late on Sunday night, he found his father exactly where he’d expected him to be—behind his desk.

      The imposing office had been a major part of Jonathon Matthews’s life for forty-plus years, and it showed in the dark paneling, the heavy furniture, the deep, plush carpeting. Every inch of the room reflected Jonathon’s personality, his high expectations.

      When Cade entered the room, his father barely looked up from the brief he was reading. Jonathon had aged well, the only concession to his sixty years a pair of glasses that he wore when no one was looking. His gray hair was cut short, his suit tailor-made. The same attention to detail that marked his office wore well on every inch of the man.

      “Cade,” his father said, laying the brief aside.

      “Glad you came in. I wanted to talk to you about the Tewksbury case.”

      “I’m not here to work, Dad.” The look of surprise on his father’s face told Cade he’d spent far too many weekends here. “I wanted to talk to you.” He slipped into one of the two claw-foot chairs facing his father.

      “I’m taking next week off.”

      “Off?” his father echoed, surprise in his tone, his brows arched above the gold frames. “What could possibly be more important than the Tewksbury case?”

      “Melanie.” Cade swallowed. “I’m going to go work in her coffee shop this week.”

      The silence in the room was as heavy as a steel beam. “You’re what?”

      “Going to—”

      “I heard you the first time.” His father scowled.

      “What the hell are you thinking?”

      “I’m trying to save my marriage.”

      “At the expense of this firm. She’s divorcing you, Cade. Let her go, for God’s sake.”

      “She’s my wife.”

      Jonathon waved a hand in dismissal. “You can always get another. A hell of a lot easier than I can find a lead attorney on this Tewksbury mess.”

      Anger boiled inside of Cade. He knew, since the day he’d told his father Melanie was pregnant, that the marriage had been a disappointment, a detour from the path Jonathon had planned for the son he saw as the heir to the firm. “Is that how you look at wives? Interchangeable?”

      “That’s how I look at the ones who walk out on their husbands for no good reason.” His father dipped his head, attention on his work again.

      But just before he dropped his gaze, Cade saw a flash of vulnerability in his father’s eyes. A sheen of hurt, that had СКАЧАТЬ