Proposing to Preston: The Winslow Brothers #2 (The Blueberry Lane Series Book 8) (16 page)

“I know.”

He flinched, tightening his jaw as he searched her eyes. “Why are you here, Elise? Why the hell would you walk into my sister’s engagement party without—”

“Without?”

Preston looked around quickly, then reached for her wrist again, moving her hand to his elbow. “We’re attracting attention. Come with me.”

She tried not to think about the warm muscle encased in his dark blue suit sleeve. She remembered what it felt like to be held by that arm, to feel it around her shoulders at the end of a long day, the hot weight of it slung across her bare breasts as she fell asleep beside him.

“Why the
hell
are you here?” he leaned down to whisper, guiding her toward a French door that presumably led outside.

“I’m shooting a movie next door, and Jax is producing it. She thought… I mean, she thought that coming tonight would be good research…” She let her voice trail off. It sounded so contrived and made her feel foolish and thoughtless.

Preston held the door for her, and Elise preceded him outside onto a quiet patio, bathed in lavender twilight.

“Did you know whose engagement party this was?” he demanded.

“Yes.”

“Then I don’t understand.”

Say you’re sorry.

“I’m sorry,” she blurted out.

His face, so fiercely angry, softened for just a moment before turning to stone again. He jerked his chin toward Chateau Nouvelle. “I’ll tell Jax you weren’t feeling well.”

She gulped, scanning his face. “You’re kicking me out?”

“This is
my
home,” he said, locking his eyes with hers and throwing back the words she’d said to him in L.A.. “
My
life. And you’re not a part of it.”

“I’m still your wife,” she answered softly, shocked by the words, wondering where in the world they came from.

His eyes narrowed and he scoffed. “That’s a joke, right?”

“Pres…”

“That’s a
joke
,” he said more forcefully, taking a step toward her.

She stood her ground, refusing to be intimidated by him, tilting back her head to look up into his face.

Say it again
.

“I’m sorry.”

“Well, you can fix that by leaving. Now.”

“No,” she said. “I’m not just sorry for being here tonight. I’m sorry for hurting you. I’m sorry for leaving you. I’m sorry for… everything.”

His breathing was so rapid and shallow, his chest almost touched hers every time he inhaled, but as she choked out the word “everything,” she heard it hitch. She heard it pause just for a moment.

“Preston,” she whispered, stepping closer to him. “I’m so desperately sorry.”

His eyes were wild, dark, and furious as he stared down at her, and for one nail-biting moment she imagined he was deciding between kissing her or slapping her…and she honestly couldn’t decide which one she’d welcome more. She longed for the first, but felt she deserved the second. In the end, he did neither. He stepped back from her, clenching his fists by his sides, and flexing his jaw before looking up at her again.

“I don’t need your sympathy.”

“It’s not sympathy, it’s remorse.”

He winced, his eyes softening again, the tension slipping from the thin line of his lips as he gazed down at her. Suddenly he blinked, as if rousing himself from a trance.

“I have divorce papers,” he informed her, crossing his arms over his chest. “Can you come by my office on Monday and sign them?”

Her initial instinct was to say no.
No, I will not come and sign divorce papers, because there is no part of me that wants a divorce. I still love you. I know I messed up terribly, but I want another chance to be your wife.
But she knew that if she refused him, he would withdraw his invitation. And if she was going to ask for his forgiveness, she desperately needed the opportunity to see him alone.

“What time?”

His lips parted in surprise and his face fell. For just a moment, he searched her eyes before dropping them. When he looked up a moment later, his glare was as flinty as sharpened steel. “Ten.”

“I’ll be there.”

“I work at—”

“Clifton, Jackson and Webb.”

“Y-Yes. That’s right.”

The door to the ballroom opened suddenly and a petite blonde woman in an elegant, very expensive cocktail dress stepped onto the patio. “Pres!”

He turned to the woman, stepping toward her and holding out his hand.

“Beth.”

His voice was warm, and it sounded so much like the Preston she’d pushed away two years ago, it made her breath catch.

“I’ve finally found you.” The woman laced her fingers through Preston’s easily, and Elise could barely contain the acid-like flare of jealousy that made her want to scratch the woman’s eyes out. “Wow! I recognize you! You’re Elise Klassan. You were in that movie…”

“
The Awakening
,” offered Preston, raising Beth’s hand to his lips and kissing it slowly as he kept his eyes locked with his wife’s.

“Yes, of course! That was it. You were marvelous!”

Elise slid her eyes from Preston’s to the pretty blonde, forcing a smile. “Thank you.”

“You didn’t tell me you knew a famous movie star, Pres!” said Beth, beaming at him as he lowered their hands.

Preston’s eyes didn’t flinch from Elise’s as he answered.

“That’s because I don’t….” He paused, staring at her intensely. “…
know
her.”

Beth gestured to the ballroom, offering Elise a kind smile. “Won’t you join us inside? I think Olivia’s about to make a toast.”

“No, I…” started Elise, but her voice failed her.

She was bereft. She was stupid and ridiculous and way too late. He hadn’t waited for her. Not that she’d given him any reason to, but seeing him with someone else hurt like hell. Worse than hell. Like nothing she’d ever felt before. He had moved on with this woman, this interloper, this Beth, who,
damn it,
seemed genuinely nice. Elise’s eyes burned as her heart plummeted.

“Miss Klassan isn’t well. She was just leaving,” he said, his voice oddly gentle after so much vitriol. “Weren’t you?”

“Yes,” she said, thanking God for every acting lesson that was helping her get through the rest of this scene.

“What a shame,” said Beth. “Another time, then.”

“Good night, Miss Klassan,” said Preston softly, turning his back to her and ushering his girlfriend back into the ballroom.

Preston barely heard a word his mother or Brooks said, only clapping when the rest of the guests had already broken into applause, his brain buzzing to the point of aching, and his heart beating so loudly it throbbed in his ears.

Once his brother had finished speaking, he leaned down and whispered in Beth’s ear, “I’ll be right back.”

Hoping she would assume that he was using the restroom, he strolled out of the ballroom as casually as possible, accepting handshakes and congratulations on behalf of his family, and exiting through a side door that led down a corridor to the back staircase. He quickly climbed until he’d reached the second floor landing, striding down the gallery to his father’s study which his mother had kept preserved as a place for all of the Winslow children to find communion with their father after his passing. He slammed the door shut behind him and stood in the dark, empty room that still smelled comfortingly of cigar smoke even after eighteen years.

Clenching his fists together, he bellowed a sound somewhere between a roar and a sob, his chest heaving with the ragged force of his breathing. Finally taking a deep breath through his nose, he held it for a long moment before releasing it slowly and crossing the room to the bar where his father had always kept good scotch on hand. Preston picked up the crystal decanter, holding the bottle up to the moonlight that flooded through the massive windows behind his father’s desk. The amber liquid sloshed around in the cut glass, the angles catching the light from Chateau Nouvelle next door.

Setting the bottle down unopened, Preston stepped behind the desk, sitting down on the window seat that looked out over Westerly’s lawns and gardens to the Rousseau mansion…where his wife was presently in residence.

His
wife
.

His breath caught as he stared at the house in the distance, wondering what she was doing. She’d been on the verge of tears when he left her on the patio. He could see them in her eyes and hear them in her voice. They had almost softened his heart at the last moment…made him forget how she’d callously rejected him when he’d visited her in L.A.. Even now, his heart lurched with compassion and regret at the very idea of upsetting her.

Old and inconvenient feelings
, he  thought, turning away from windows.

She was every bit as beautiful today as she’d been two years ago—not as fresh-faced and far more sophisticated, he thought with a sad smile, but she was still Elise and his masochistic heart had throbbed with love for her as they’d stood together on the moonlit patio. Over the past two years, he’d desperately wished for someone to unseat her as the loveliest woman he’d ever seen, but now that he’d seen her again, he knew it was impossible. He couldn’t imagine being as attracted to another woman alive as he was to his wife. At one point, before Beth had interrupted them, he’d actually considered yanking Elise into his arms and kissing her wildly, madly, punishingly…for every torturous night without her, for every moment that he’d missed her, for every beat of her treacherous heart, wishing it didn’t still belong to her. 

Huffing at himself with disgust, he shifted his gaze back to his father’s darkened study, remembering how quickly she’d agreed to sign the divorce papers tomorrow. She hadn’t even hesitated, only asking him for a time and confirming where he worked. Huh. She’d known where he worked. Did that mean she kept tabs on him? His stupid heart leaped with pathetic hope, and Preston crushed it as quickly as possible.
Of course she knows where you work.
Asking
her
for a divorce was probably just beating her to the punch. She wanted her freedom. That was more than clear.

Pulling out his father’s desk chair, he couldn’t help thinking back to the last time he’d seen her in person, (which excluded the six or seven or fourteen times he’d watched
The Awakening
drunk before banning himself from further showings.)

After Elise left New York, she’d called him a couple of times, leaving him weepy voicemails, even though he refused to answer her calls or call her back. At first, he’d been incredibly hurt by the way she’d left New York, abandoning their brand new marriage. But as days turned into weeks, he’d had ample time to think about his whirlwind proposal, their 48-hour engagement, and the fact that she’d not only gotten married, but lost her virginity in the space of an afternoon.

He could tell—both on their wedding day and on the morning after—that she had worries. She’d expressed some of them to him, but more than that, even, he’d sensed it. Her suggestion that they have a “Marriage Summit” to discuss their careers and futures had clued him into the fact that she was concerned about how their lives and careers would mesh. He knew how hard she’d worked to be where she was, and he truly celebrated her success; he’d never have willingly gotten in the way of it. The problem was that she’d been spooked…and she’d rushed off to L.A., he believed, because it offered her a plausible escape from dealing with the challenges of blending their lives.

But what bothered him the most over those terrible, lonely two weeks was the fact that he couldn’t remember one time that she’d told him she loved him after the wedding and before she left. He’d been so distracted by their engagement, taking the bar, their wedding and finally sleeping together, that at the time, he hadn’t really acknowledged how much distance she’d put between them…or how much it indicated, proportionally, that she was freaking out.

So much that she hadn’t even been able to give them a chance.

Angry with himself for not putting their emotional intimacy first, Preston had booked a ticket to L.A., opting to surprise her with a visit, and hoping to have a chance to really talk to her, reassure her and get things between them back on track between them. He’d arrived on Saturday around lunchtime and taken a cab to her house, only to find it locked and dark. After three hours, he’d finally given in and texted her:
Here in L.A. Can’t wait to see you.

The text had gone unanswered for three more hours when his phone finally buzzed at a nearby café with the message:
You’re here? Why didn’t you tell me? Still at rehearsal for three more hours. See you at nine?

He’d been disappointed to have to wait even longer, but had returned to her house around eight o’clock, sitting on her front porch with her favorite herbal tea and hoping she might be earlier. She wasn’t. It was almost eleven when she finally showed up in a cab.

But Elise’s smile—her larger-than-life, beaming smile and glistening eyes—had suddenly made it all worthwhile. She’d hurtled herself into his arms, and he’d held her and kissed her, running his hands through her darkened hair as he inhaled the sweet smell of his wife.

“I missed you!” she said, drawing back to look at him.

He couldn’t help but notice the dark circles under her eyes and the fact that she appeared to be considerably leaner than she’d been two weeks ago.

“I hated the way we left things,” he said, searching her eyes for a sign that she did too.

Her expression had clouded for a moment, her smile faltering. She drew away from him, fishing her keys out of her pocket, then facing him again. “How long are you here?”

“My flight leaves tomorrow afternoon.”

She dropped his eyes. “My call is at six a.m.”

“Elise, we have to talk,” he said.

“We have seven hours,” she’d murmured, her eyes swimming with tears when she raised them to look at him.

“Call in sick tomorrow. You get sick days, don’t you?”

“Not an option,” she’d said softly, but firmly.

Her refusal frustrated Preston mightily. They’d had a scorching fight the day after their wedding that was completely unresolved, hadn’t seen each other in two weeks, he’d flown all the way out here, waited around for eleven hours to see her, and she needed to go back to work in seven hours?

Putting his frustration aside, however, he looked at her more closely: exhausted and emotional, her bottom lip trembled as she shrugged her thin shoulders with regret and…and what? Defeat. She looked like she was giving up on something, and since it wasn’t her career, it must be…

Them.

Desperately, he tried to buy time. “How about you sleep a little, and then we’ll… we’ll…talk.”

“Okay,” she’d murmured, and he’d put his arm around her shoulder as they walked inside her house.

Even now, sitting at his father’s desk almost two years later, he could remember the feeling of despair, of frustration, of disappointment that had infused him as he’d walked into her house. It was as sharp today as it had been then. It hurt just as much. He’d felt her slipping away in New York, but by the time he’d gotten to L.A., she was almost gone…and unfortunately, it had just made him try to hold on tighter.

And after he’d left L.A.? She’d never called him or written to take back the ugly words she’d used to push him away. Until tonight.

How many times had she said “I’m sorry” tonight? He counted at least three, plus she’d corrected his impression of sympathy as remorse. What was she sorry about? He considered her words: For hurting him. For leaving him. For everything.

Did she still love him? Could she possibly be here in an attempt to reconcile? His palm moved on its own to cover his aching, yearning heart, which was still desperately in love with her. He hated how much he still wanted her, how much he hoped that her work was only secondary to their reconciliation.

“Stop it. You know her better than that,” he whispered bitterly into the darkness.

He did. Unfortunately, he did.

He knew her too well to let himself believe even for a moment that she was here for him. She wasn’t here to reconcile with him. She was here to work, first and foremost, and secondly—it appeared from the haste with which she’d accepted his invitation to sign the divorce papers on Monday—for her freedom. He could see her motivations as clear as day. She wasn’t here
for
him. She was here to
say goodbye
to him once and for all.

Glancing at his watch he realized he’d been in his father’s office for almost half an hour and surely Beth would be looking for him. Though he had no interest in spending the night with her anymore, he wasn’t interested in hurting her feelings either.

He stood from his father’s desk and crossed the quiet office.

Elise is here for work and a divorce, not for you.

Preston vowed to be cold as ice as he watched her walk away for the final time.

And God help me, this time I will let her go.

***

Being kicked out of Westerly on Saturday night had been unexpected.

Thought Elise
had
expected Preston to be surprised and yes, angry with her, she hadn’t expected the level of vitriol she’d received. Looks aside, he seemed like a totally different person from the playful, charming, patiently persistent man she’d fallen in love with in New York. Not to mention, with perfect
Beth
on his arm, it certainly seemed too late for a ninth hour reconciliation.

After telling Jax that she wasn’t feeling well, Elise had spent most of Sunday in her room, crying about what Preston was probably doing with
Beth
and hating herself for waiting so long to ask him for another chance. She thought hard to remember if she’d seen an engagement ring on Beth’s hand, but she couldn’t recall. Two things were for certain: first, with the papers all drawn up and ready to go, Preston was certainly eager to get a divorce, and second,
Beth
appeared more than happy to take Elise’s place as the next Mrs. Winslow.

She narrowed her eyes, whipping the covers off her body, and reminded herself that until they signed those papers she was
still
Preston’s wife, regardless of
Beth
.

Crossing the guest room purposefully, she flung open the closet doors and pulled out a new dress that she’d bought to impress Preston. Likely something
Beth
would choose, it was a tailored, coral-colored Escada power suit with a peplum skirt that looked both elegant and trendy while still managing to be flirty. Checking the time, she had over an hour to do her hair and makeup and choose a pair of matching shoes and—

Holding the suit in front of her body and staring at herself in the mirror, she was distracted by the sight of her favorite jeans slung over the back of a chair behind her. She’d worn them around her room yesterday and they looked worn-in and comfortable. In fact, they were the same ones she’d worn all the time when she lived in New York, when she’d fallen in love with Preston and he’d fallen in love with her.

She considered the suit for another moment before hanging it back up.

Tugging on the jeans, she plucked a sky-blue T-shirt from her bureau and pulled it over her head. While the rest of her figure had slimmed down, her breasts had remained stubbornly voluptuous, and the words “Keep Calm and Carry On” stretched across her chest, the little white crown a beacon at the valley of her breasts. She pulled her hair into a ponytail, securing it at the nape of her neck with a simple tortoise-shell barrette, and eschewed her usual makeup for a little mascara and a swipe of  strawberry Chapstick.