“Let me walk you to your car,” Will said.
His silence as he escorted her to the parking lot made her stomach hurt even more. Amelia bit her lip. “I wasn’t sure where you planned to stay tonight.”
He shrugged. “I got a room downtown since I’m just here for the night. I guess we should talk,” he said as he opened her car door for her.
Amelia had the sudden feeling of dread, the same, she’d bet, that someone being led to the guillotine would feel. She’d had this sensation when he’d broken up with her before. Amelia couldn’t fool herself any longer. Will was going to dump her once and for all.
Maybe not, her hopeful naïve side argued weakly.
But deep down, she knew. He was going to give her the biggest heave-ho of her life and there was nothing she could do about it. She sank blindly into the driver’s seat.
Will slid into the passenger seat and turned toward her. He sighed. That sigh was never a good sign.
“I don’t know how to say this, Amelia, but I’m not in love with you anymore.”
Her heart sank to her feet. No, lower—it had to be lower, lower than the bottom of her car and the paved parking lot. He’d never put it exactly that way before. She shook her head, her mouth opening, but she couldn’t find any words.
“I don’t know how it happened, but I fell in love with someone else.”
Amelia’s brain screeched to a halt. “Pardon me? There’s someone else?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t mean to fall out of love with you, bugaboo,” he said, his pet name suddenly grating on her raw nerves. “It’s just that I met Sidney and she knocked me on my butt. She’s everything you’re not.”
She felt as if someone were shifting her internal gears without the benefit of a clutch. “She’s everything I’m not,” she echoed, confused. “I thought I was everything you wanted.”
“I can’t explain it. She’s as ambitious as I am, always doing something that surprises me. She’s impulsive, has a temper, but she makes me feel alive every minute.”
Amelia couldn’t digest it. She couldn’t believe what he was saying. “Did you even notice that I fixed my hair the way you always said you loved it?” she asked him. “I’m wearing your favorite dress. Did you notice that? I’m wearing your favorite perfume.”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Amelia. I just don’t feel that way about you anymore.” He sighed again. She hated his sighs. “Sweetheart, I think I just outgrew you.”
Outgrew her. Fury blasted through her fear. Some small bit of pride and self-preservation bubbled up from her desperation. She had made sacrifices for Will. She had traded a scholarship to a prestigious university for a state school where Will could gain admission, too. She had cut and colored her hair for him, dressed for him, put her career ambitions in the backseat for him. She had agreed to delay their wedding so they could be more financially stable. She had made sacrifices.
For the first time, she had the ugly feeling that she had made too many sacrifices.
“Would you mind giving me a ride to my hotel?” he asked. “I can tell you need time to think about all this. You can go ahead and give me the ring back, too,” he added casually. “And bugaboo, we’ll always be friends.”
Amelia felt something inside her shift. She could almost hear the sound of stone platelets scraping against each other. It was monumental. She’d based most of her life on the plan that she and Will would be together forever. That plan had just been cancelled for good. After six weeks of waffling, she could tell that Will didn’t want her anymore, even though she’d done everything she could to make him love her.
To be honest, she’d known it for a while, but had been too terrified to face it. Everything had changed. Everything would be different.
But her heart kept beating. She kept breathing. Her brain kept working. She was still living. She laughed in relief. Maybe the anticipation had been worse than the reality.
She looked at Will, really looked at him, without the gauze of love covering her eyes. He had a weak chin, he chewed with his mouth open and he rushed her during sex. He had chosen her engagement ring based on his taste, not hers, and he was cheap.
She removed her engagement ring from her finger and handed it to him.
Then she started her car. “Get your own ride and get another friend.”
“But—”
“No buts,” she said. “Get out of my car.”
Looking at her as if she’d sprouted a third head, he complied. Still dazed, she headed back to her suite at Aubrey’s house, where she smashed Will’s favorite CD into a million pieces, poured his favorite bottle of wine down the toilet and gave his homemade apple pie to a sympathetic but appreciative Harry.
AMELIA HELD ON TO HER anger as long as she could. Anger, she decided, was loads better than sadness. Anger had energy and kept her from getting weepy. Anger was big and hot and bright. It filled up her bewildered insides like fireworks filled up the black sky on the Fourth of July.
The problem was that Amelia had never been able to hold on to anger that long. It had always seemed like a stupid waste of energy. So four days after Will had dropped the big bomb on her, the ache inside her overrode the anger. She felt so empty and so sad.
Her mother had always said the best way to deal with feeling sad was to bake a pie for someone. Focusing on someone else would help you feel better about yourself. Even the good book said, “It’s better to give than to receive.”
A lot easier, too, Amelia decided and began to bake some pies. She baked pies for thirty straight days, until her boss and friend Trina Roberts took her aside and gently referred her to a shrink.
The nice balding man listened and nodded his head and told Amelia she needed to experience herself more. Amelia didn’t really understand what that meant.
During her next visit, the shrink told her she needed to be nice to herself. “You can’t truly love another until you love yourself,” he said wisely. “It sounds like maybe you lost sight of who you really are when you tried so hard to be what Will wanted.”
He even quoted the good book. “‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ means you need to love yourself, too.”
Even though Amelia was pretty sure her father would refer to the shrink as a flaming liberal, his advice made a little bit of sense.
When she couldn’t quite figure out how to love herself, the shrink gave her homework. She needed to write down what she liked and what she didn’t like, things she wanted to try. That was how she came to start the list. The first thing she wrote on it was that she’d like to live at the beach sometime. And studying what she’d written, Amelia decided it was time to get a life, her own life. At last.
CHAPTER TWO
Three weeks later
DRINKING HIS SECOND CORONA, Jack O’Connell watched the little blonde at the other end of the bar as she wrote on a cocktail napkin and sipped a drink with a colorful umbrella.
Amidst the tanned beach babes exposing yards of skin, she looked like a fish out of water as she kept pulling up the strap of her sundress. Her skin was alabaster white. Poor thing, he thought, she probably burned like a beast.
Her earnest intensity about whatever she was writing on that cocktail napkin made him curious. Which just showed he had too much time on his hands. Vacations made him edgy. He always felt that if he took time off, he would miss something. Even though he was down here to grease the skids on his biggest deal ever, he had a lot of dead time to fill.
He glanced