“I doubt that’s what happened,” Clara said, even though she couldn’t be certain.
“There was a reason I asked how the designer-cupcake thing was going.”
“Oh.” Back to business.
“I was trying to make sure you didn’t feel swamped by the amount of work you have to do.”
“No. Creating recipes is the best part of my job. I’ve been having fun with this one. I’ve actually done most of the experimental baking and tasting with our panel, and I have a few standout favorites, plus some that need to be improved. And then I’ll have to narrow down the selection, because it just won’t be feasible to have too many different kinds on the menu at once.”
“So that was the long, detailed version of you telling me you aren’t too busy at the moment?”
She shot him a deadly look. Jilted or not, he didn’t need to be a jerk. “No, I’m not too busy.”
“Good, because everything was set for me to head to Chiang Mai tonight.”
“And you need me to make sure everything is running smoothly at corporate?” That wasn’t usually the role she fulfilled. She wasn’t an administrator, not even close.
“No, I want you to get packed, because you’re coming with me.”
Her stomach honestly felt like it plummeted, squeezing as it made its way down into her toes. “You’re not serious. You’re not actually asking me to come on your honeymoon with you?”
“The trip is booked. I have appointments made. I’m not canceling the honeymoon just because my bride neglected to show up.” He looked at her, like he had thousands of times, but this time felt … It felt different. The inspection seemed closer somehow, his gray eyes more assessing, more intimate. She swallowed hard and tried to ignore the fact that her heart seemed to be trying to claw its way out of her chest. “I think you’ll make a more than fitting replacement.”
IF he had physically hit her he couldn’t have possibly hurt her worse. A replacement? The consolation prize. The stand-in for tall, lean, angular Hannah who possessed the cheekbones of a goddess. Not that Clara had noticed, or compared.
Well, she had. And in some ways, on some days, the fact they were so different made it easier because there was no question of what the other woman had that she didn’t.
But she had never, never put herself in the position of trying to vie for Zack’s attention, not in that way. Because she’d known that she would be the consolation prize if he ever did decide to look in her direction. And she’d decided that was one thing she couldn’t do to herself. The one thing worse than watching the man who meant the world to her tie himself to another woman. Being the one he’d settled for.
And now Zack was shoving her into that position. It made her want to gag.
“I’m not a replacement for anyone, Zack. And if you’re suggesting I am, then I think we’ve become a little bit too comfortable with each other.”
She turned and walked out of the reception hall. She left the cake. She didn’t care about the cake. The staff of the hotel could have it for an early, sugary breakfast when they came in tomorrow morning.
She breezed through the hall and out the front doors, into the damp, salty air. It had been a cool day, but now, with the sun dipping down below the horizon, the air coming in off of the bay was downright chilly. Which was good, because now, if anyone saw her lip tremble a little bit, she could blame the cold.
She didn’t want to be emotional, not over something that wasn’t even intentional, and with Zack, she knew it wasn’t. Zack wasn’t mean, more than that; he simply wasn’t all that emotional, so he never assumed that anyone else was.
Everything was so surface to Zack. Nothing seemed to get under his skin. Nothing seemed to throw him off, even for a moment. Not even a canceled wedding.
Anyway, she’d had enough intentional digs taken at her in her life to know that things could get far too dramatic if she didn’t make people have to work at hurting her feelings.
But since her feelings for Zack were a constant jumble, her reactions to anything involving him were always strong. Most of the time, though, she managed to keep that fact hidden from Zack. A lot of the time, she kept the extent of her feelings hidden from herself.
“Clara.”
She turned and saw him standing just behind her. She didn’t say anything. She crossed her arms beneath her breasts and fixed him with her best glare.
“You’re the second woman to abandon me today.”
Her face flooded with prickly heat. “See, that comparison is not very flattering, considering you’ve already used the word replacement in regards to me.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?”
“That I need someone to come with me, and actually, under the circumstances you’re a better fit than my ex-fiancée.”
For a full second she could only think of one thing his statement could possibly mean. Images clicked through her mind like close-up still-shots. Tan hands on a pale, bare hip. Masculine lips on a feminine throat. Blood roared through her body, into her cheeks, making her face burn. She was sure they were the color of ripe strawberries, broadcasting her thoughts to anyone who looked at her.
“What?” she asked.
“Hannah’s smart, don’t get me wrong, but she doesn’t know this market quite like you do. Prices on stocks, maybe, but it will be nice to have you on hand to offer an opinion about marketing and flavor.”
Business. He was talking about business. And somehow, to Zack, business was more important than romance and making love on his honeymoon?
At least he was pretending it was. There was something different about his expression, a dark light behind his gray eyes. She’d seen Zack nearly every day for the past seven years. She knew his moods, his expressions as well as she knew her own.
And this was a different Zack. Well, she thought it was. For some reason, the hardness, the intensity, seemed more true than what she thought she knew of him.
Strange. But then, the whole day had been strange. Starting with the interminably long silence after the strains of the Bridal March had faded from the air and the aisle remained vacant.
All right, he’d made her mad. It wasn’t the first time. He was bullheaded and a general pain in the butt sometimes. He was also the smartest man she knew, with a cutting wit that always kept her amused. He was one of the few people who’d never doubted that her ideas were good.
If she didn’t go with him, she would spend her evenings hanging out by herself, reading and experimenting with cupcake recipes and licking the batter off the spatula. Fun, sure, but not the kind of fun she could have in Thailand.
Again, those images, erotic and explicit, assaulted her. No, that wasn’t the kind of fun she would be having in Thailand. Zack had never looked twice at her in that way and for the most part, she was fine with that. She’d had a crush on him at first, but even then she hadn’t expected anything to come of it.
And, yes, Hannah had come in and stirred up some strange feelings. Because as long as Zack had simply been there, at work every day, and available for dinner meetings and a lot of other things, it had been comfortable. Zack was in every space in her life, at work