Back to Mr & Mrs
Shirley Jump

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For the man I married, who fished my manuscript out of the trash and insisted I follow my dream. His support has given me the courage to make writing my full-time job, even though I still whine about deadlines and characters who refuse to cooperate.

A special thanks to the coffee shops in Indiana that kept me sufficiently caffeined up, so that I was working instead of napping or perfecting my FreeCell skills. In particular, thanks to the staff at The Grind, who gave me an insider’s view of how a great coffee shop operates.

All those lattes were research, honest.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

EPILOGUE

COMING NEXT MONTH

CHAPTER ONE

IF HER HANDS HADN’T been covered in double chocolate chip cookie dough, Melanie Weaver would have slapped duct tape over her mouth to stop herself from doing it again.

Saying yes when she really meant no.

Even when she had the best intentions of refusing, that slithery yes word slipped out instead. “Do you want a slice of Great-Grandma’s fruitcake?” “Can you call Bingo for the Ladies’ Auxiliary?” “Don’t you just love this orange sweater?”

She hated fruitcake, had grown tired of the “B-4 and After” jokes, and never wore orange. Yet every year, Great Grandma brought a rock-hard fruitcake to Christmas dinner and Melanie choked down a slice, praising the wrinkled dates and dried cherries. On Tuesday nights, she dutifully showed up at the Presbyterian Church and called out letters and numbers in a smoky room filled with frantic reddotters. And in Melanie’s closet, there were three orange sweaters, birthday presents from her aunt Cornelia, who took Melanie’s compliment of a mango-colored afghan as sure evidence of love for the color.

So it stood to reason, based on her history of always saying the wrong word at the wrong time, that on a bright spring Friday morning she would accept an invitation to her twenty-year class reunion when her life was as jumbled as a ten-thousand-piece puzzle.

“It’ll be wonderful to have you!” Jeannie Jenkins, former cheerleader, blasted Melanie out of her reverie with a voice that hit unnatural decibels on the phone. “Everyone is, like, so looking forward to seeing you. I just knew, when I saw your name on the list, that you’d want to go. I mean, you must have just forgotten to RSVP or something.”

“Or something,” Melanie said. She hadn’t returned the card because she hadn’t intended to go, nor to answer all those questions about where Cade was.

Or, worse, see Cade there with another woman on his arm. She may be ending her marriage, but she wasn’t quite ready to imagine him with someone else.

“The reunion is only, like, a week away. We’ll all be together again, in just a few days. Isn’t that so exciting?”

“Absolutely.” Melanie tried to work some enthusiasm into her voice. She wanted to see her old friends, to catch up on their lives, but the thought of running into Cade, surrounded by memories of happier days, was unbearable. Her resolve would falter, and all those maybes would pop up, the same maybes that had stalled her leaving over and over again because she’d thought things might change. Go back to the way they were.

Either way, there was no return to those days. Melanie had changed, and Cade hadn’t accepted those changes. She now had her shop, her new life. A life that no longer included Cade.

It was early afternoon and Cuppa Life was empty, save for Cooter Reynolds, who was sipping his daily mocha latte while reading the Lawford News and tapping his foot along with the soft jazz on the sound system. She had an hour until the college student flood poured into her coffee shop on the west side of Lawford, Indiana. And hopefully, only about five seconds until her daughter, Emmie, who worked part-time in the shop, was here for her Thursday shift. Melanie had started the cookies, sure Emmie would be in any second, but twenty minutes had passed since Emmie’s shift was due to start and she still wasn’t here.

“Did you like, go to college?” Jeannie didn’t wait for an answer. “Me, I totally couldn’t go. I was so done with school when it was over. The last thing I wanted was more.” She let out a dramatic sigh, as if Westvale High had been the equivalent of a stint in San Quentin.

Jeannie continued chattering on about how hard high school had been, how much she’d hated sophomore grammar, how the guidance counselor had tried to talk her into at least a two-year degree.

The words struck a note of pain in Melanie’s chest. Ever since she’d been a kid, Melanie had dreamed of owning her own business. She’d spent her summers here in Indiana, working in this very space, helping her grandparents run what had then been a very successful antiques shop. Her grandfather, who’d seen that spark of entrepreneurial spirit, had encouraged Melanie to go to school and get a degree in business.

Melanie had had a scholarship to Notre Dame—a free ride to the college of her choice—and then been sidetracked by marriage, a child. Always, Cade had said, there would be time for Melanie—until her chance came up and he’d dismissed it faster than a perpetually tardy employee.

But Melanie refused to be put off. When Emmie was grown, Melanie had started taking night classes in business, working part-time at the Indianapolis university’s coffee shop.

There, she had found her calling. In the camaraderie and coffee, she’d laughed more, looked forward to her days, and started thinking of that future she’d put on hold.

After leaving Cade, she’d moved to Lawford and opened her own coffeehouse, to create that community atmosphere in the city’s busy business district. She’d gotten her certification as a barista at a conference for coffee shop owners and put those business classes to work.

It may not have been the dorm life and college experience she’d dreamed of during high school, but that didn’t matter. She wouldn’t have traded those years of raising Emmie for credit hours and a degree.

Emmie had been worth every sacrifice, ten times over. Her giggles, her first day of preschool, her scraped knees and bicycle riding attempts. Even the early years with Cade had been wonderful, filled with laughter and meals eaten while sitting on the floor of their sparse apartment living room, with candlelight providing the mood and pillows serving as furniture.

Melanie shook off the thoughts and concentrated on stirring chocolate chips into the already chocolate dough, while Jeannie chattered on about how cool the reunion would be, how awesome it would be to reconnect with the other Westvale Highers. Jeannie was clearly a woman who didn’t need much oxygen.

“So whatcha been doing all these years?” Jeannie asked when she came up for air, her voice interrupted by a blank sound in the phone line. “Oh, damn. Can you hold on a sec? I have another call, probably from ex number-two.” Jeannie clicked off to retrieve Call Waiting.

Melanie pictured her personal resume: thirty-seven-year-old woman, almost divorced, running a coffee shop that had finally started showing a profit three months ago. Experience included nineteen years of running a vacuum and a dishwasher. Hey, but she could Calgon with the best of them.

It had been a conscious decision—the only decision she could imagine making—once she saw those two pink lines three weeks after prom night. She remembered being excited and scared, all at the same time. But Cade—and, oh, how she missed that old Cade sometimes—Cade had held her and told her it would all be okay. They’d work through this life twist together.

So she’d married him, had Emmie and then stayed home while Cade worked and went to law school. Later, she’d hosted the dinner parties, sent the thank you notes and held down the home fort while Cade worked his way up the Fitzsimmons, Matthews and Lloyd ladder.

“Melanie?” Jeannie again, back from her other call. “You still there?”

“Yep.” Finished with the cookie batter, Melanie stepped to the right and peeked around the corner of the shop and chuckled. Cooter had fallen asleep on one of the sofas, the paper across his chest, his snores providing an undertow of rhythm to the soft sounds of the stereo system.

“Remember Susan Jagger? She was saludadorian,” Jeannie said, mangling the word, “and can you believe she started her own business selling dog sweaters? She’s about to hit two million in sales! Oh, and remember Matt Phillips, the kid who always sat in the back and never said a word? He’s, like, a famous software nerd now, like that Gates guy. I didn’t really listen when he was telling me. I mean, it was computers.” Jeannie paused to inhale. “And you, why I bet you’ve, like, invented a cure for cancer or something.”

“Not quite.” Melanie shouldn’t be envious that other people had accomplished more than she had.

But she was. Green as the Jolly Green Giant.

Admitting she’d spent the last two decades helping her husband succeed seemed…embarrassing for someone who had been voted Most Likely to Become President and even more, a woman who had graduated in the top ten of her class.

“Then what are you doing?”

Melanie drew in a breath. So what if she wasn’t running a huge company. Cuppa Life was something to be proud of. It was hers, all hers, and every inch of its success was due to Melanie, no one else.

She’d done it—opened a business and survived that critical first year. Sure, she was running an espresso machine instead of a multimillion dollar business, but she was happy. And that, she’d found, was all that mattered.

“I own a coffee shop in Lawford,” Melanie said.

“It’s doing really well.”

“Well, that’s cool,” Jeannie said, the words coming out with that exaggerated care that spelled unimpressed. “Like, everyone drinks coffee.”

Melanie dropped cookie dough balls onto the sheets, refusing to let Jeannie’s tone get her dander up.

“Anyway, I was, like, at the state courthouse the other day. Had a little incident with my neighbor’s underwear.” Jeannie let out a dramatic sigh. “Long story.”

“I bet,” Melanie said, biting back a laugh as she slid the first two cookie sheets into the oven. She peeked around the corner again for Emmie, who was now thirty minutes late.

“And while I was there,” Jeannie continued, “I ran into Cade. He was doing some kind of lawyer thing. We got to talking and I told him I didn’t have your RSVP, and he gave me your number here. So, we owe our little reuniting all to Cade!”

Melanie’s breath got caught somewhere between her windpipe and her lungs. When would the mention of Cade’s name stop doing that? She no longer loved him, hadn’t in a long time, and shouldn’t be affected by his voice, the sight of him or a discussion about the man she was about to divorce.

But some part of her, that leftover teenage romantic that had believed in happily ever after, still reacted. Still wanted him and still thought about him when the night closed in and loneliness served as her blanket.

“Anyway, he said you two were still together. Ever since high school. I think that’s so romantic.” Jeannie sighed. “You guys, like, give people hope.”

The oven door, released from Melanie’s grasp, shut with a slam.

“Still together?” Melanie echoed. How could he? He’d received the divorce papers. Seen her walk out the door a year ago. Except for the occasional conversation about Emmie and seeing him at a distance on the sidelines of Emmie’s college soccer games, there had been nothing between them. Melanie had done everything she could to send the message it was over.

Clearly Cade hadn’t been listening.

“Here I can’t even hold onto a man for five minutes,” Jeannie said. “I don’t know how you do it.” She took in a breath. “You guys got married so fast after graduation, then moved to what, Indianapolis? I don’t blame you. When we were kids, we might as well have lived in Mars, what withWestvale so far out in corn cob country. So, did you guys have any kids?”

“Yes, one. But, Jeannie, listen—”

Jeannie barreled on, not even hearing her. “You guys are, like, my idols. I’m divorced, twice now, soon to be three times. But it’s not so bad. The alimony is almost like a full-time job.” Jeannie laughed. “Anyway, you must have the coolest husband in the world. Especially if you stuck with him and had a rug rat.”

At that word, Melanie heard the bell over the entrance to Cuppa Life jingle. She peeked around the corner again, and smiled. Enter one rug rat, or rather, a nineteen-year-old-sweetheart named Emmie.

“Hi, Mom,” Emmie said as she headed into the kitchen.

“You deserve it, Melanie,” Jeannie was saying. “I mean, like, someone should get the fairy tale ending. Besides Snow White. That girl never even changed her dress in the whole movie. I mean, what man wants that? Like, wouldn’t she start to smell?”

“Jeannie, Cade and I—”

“Oh, almost time for my manicure! I need to get to the salon.”

Melanie looked down at her own hands, glistening with butter. There was dough under her short, no-nonsense nails and in the creases of her knuckles.

She needed to tell Jeannie the truth. That Melanie and Cade, the “it” couple at Westvale High, had fallen prey to the divorce statistics. Melanie had ended up pregnant at eighteen, married and living in a cramped apartment in Indianapolis before her nineteenth birthday. That she was changing diapers and figuring out the best way to potty train before she was old enough to drink.

That Cade had been the one to go on to school, thanks to his father funding the tuition and providing a part-time job at the family law firm to cover other expenses. Cade had been the one to rise to the top of his field, with Melanie by his side, providing that home front support.

Since then, her biggest accomplishment had been learning how to make a good latte.

Well, that and Emmie, she thought as her daughter came into the small kitchen area, pressed a quick kiss to her mother’s cheek, then slid into place beside her to help with the rest of the cookies. Emmie was tall and lithe, with the same blond hair as her mother, but the wide, deep eyes of her father. She had Cade’s athleticism, Melanie’s wit, and on most days, a sweet, compassionate way about her that had survived the ugly teen years. She was Cade and Melanie’s pride and joy—

The one thing they had done right together.

Yet, since the separation, Emmie had become more distant, more rebellious. Her short cropped hair was now topped with red, her ears tripled in earrings and her attitude less friendly and more filled with annoyance.

Jeannie sighed. “I so wish I’d had that kind of happy ending, too.”

As Melanie opened her mouth to tell Jeannie the truth, it somehow got lodged in her throat. Maybe it was pride, maybe it was the thought of everyone in her graduating class giving her that pitying look at the reunion, as if she hadn’t measured up to their expectations.

Or maybe it was simply that she had yet to take off her wedding ring.

The ring fit tight, considering she’d gained a couple dozen pounds in the years of marriage. That was all. It certainly wasn’t because somewhere deep in her heart, she saw taking the ring off as that final, irrevocable step.

“Ohmigod, I almost forgot!” Jeannie said, interrupting before Melanie could stop letting a simple gold band make the decisions. “Me and the committee had, like, this brainstorm last night. I swear, I saw a lightbulb over Susan’s head, it was just so cool. Anyway, we were thinking you and Cade could give the welcoming speech together. The sweethearts of Westvale High, still together and happy.”

“Sorry I’m late,” Emmie whispered in her mother’s ear. “My car wouldn’t start so I had to find a ride.” Melanie put up a finger to signal she’d be done in a minute.

“You guys are, like, the perfect high school love story,” Jeannie went on. “Wouldn’t it be so neat?”

“I don’t think so, Jeannie. In fact, I’m not even sure I’m coming.” Melanie moved to the sink to rinse her hands. Emmie had already washed hers and was busy dropping balls of dough onto cookie sheets.

Emmie helping with the baking she dreaded—without being asked? And, in a good mood, one that involved an actual smile? Melanie cast a quizzical eye over her daughter. Something was up.

“Oh, come on, Melanie. You have to do it. I mean, you two were prom King and Queen. It’ll be like a fairy tale, only in real life.” Jeannie sighed.

Melanie remembered that prom night, the magical star-shaped lights twinkling overhead, the way Cade had looked in a tux.

Especially the way Cade had looked. The man had yet to meet a suit that didn’t make him look more attractive than a ten-pound chocolate bar.

She and Cade had stood on that stage, hands clasped, beaming at each other, thinking nothing and no one would ever separate them.

They’d been wrong.

“Uh, Mom?” Emmie said, her voice now an urgent whisper as she put on a pair of oven mitts and switched out baked cookies for her loaded sheet of dough. “When I needed a ride to work, the only person available was—”

The door to the kitchen swung open and for the second time in five minutes, Melanie drew in a sharp breath that became a block in her windpipe.

Cade.

He entered the small kitchen, seeming to take up half the space without even trying. Melanie swallowed hard, surprised by the instantaneous, explosive gut reaction to her husband.

Correction: almost ex-husband.

Apparently her hormones hadn’t received the separation papers, nor read over the draft of the divorce agreement, because they were still screaming attraction.

And why wouldn’t they? Cade hadn’t changed at all in the year they’d been apart. A few more crinkles around his blue eyes, the perpetual worry line above his dark brows etched a little deeper, but overall he was as handsome as he had been when she’d still loved him. He may be a bit disheveled by the stress of his day, but he was still sexy.

Really sexy. Familiar desire rose inside her, coupled with the longing to touch his face, run a hand down his chest, feel the security of his long, lean body against hers. The temperature in the room seemed to multiply. Melanie pulled at the neck of her T-shirt and checked the air conditioner. Nothing broken there—

Except for her resolve.

Attraction, though, had never been their problem. Marriages weren’t based solely on the swirling, tangling pulses of estrogen and testosterone. They needed communication, understanding, give and take.

And a man who wanted more for his wife than perfecting her baked Alaska and diaper changing.

Cade still sported the same athletic physique—trim, broad-shouldered, a chest of hard, tight planes. It had never been solely his body that had attracted Melanie, though she hadn’t minded the nice physical package that had wrapped around Cade.

It had been his eyes. And his smile.

Right now, the smile was absent, but those eyes—the same big blue eyes that had drawn her attention that first day in freshman year, standing in the hall outside Mrs. Owen’s art class—they now riveted her attention for a brief, taut second, before she remembered the man may have incredible eyes, but horrible husband skills. He’d never listened to her, not really, never heard her when she talked about her dreams, her goals. He’d been as focused as a horse with blinders, seeing only one road ahead—for both of them.

And when it had really mattered, Cade hadn’t been there at all.

The oven timer dinged. Cookies. She needed to tend to the cookies. Melanie grabbed a spatula and a pot holder, but her attention was still all on Cade, not the hot pan she withdrew from the oven.

“Melanie?” Jeannie asked, her voice concerned, seeming to come from a thousand miles away. “I really have to get to the salon, but I wanted to be sure you and Cade can do me this eensy weensy favor. You will do it, right?”

“Hi, Melanie,” Cade said, his voice the same deep baritone she’d known for more than half her life. Once upon a time, that sound had made her heart sing. “Is it okay if I stay here for a bit?” he said. “I’ve got some time to kill before a meeting.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Melanie said. And promptly dropped the spatula. It landed on the vinyl floor with a soft clatter.

“Oh, great!” Jeannie cried. “I’ll see you a week from Friday then!” She giggled. “You and Cade. It’ll be the best speech ever. You guys always did have a way with words. And a lot more.” She let out another laugh, then hung up.

“No! I meant to say no!” Melanie yelled into the phone, scrambling for the spatula, but Jeannie was already gone, off for some French tips.

The yes had been for Cade, not Jeannie. Somehow, the sight of him after so much time apart had knocked her off-kilter. As it had in the early days, before their “way with words” became more about flinging them around the living room in arguments that went nowhere.

Emmie tossed her mother a grin, then turned away and started sliding the cookies onto the cooling rack. Melanie tossed the spatula into the sink, all thumbs and as consternated as a chicken in a fox den.

She grabbed a warm chocolate chip cookie off the wire cooling rack and stuffed it in her mouth before she could make the same mistake twice—

Say yes when she really meant to say no.

CHAPTER TWO

AS HIS DAUGHTER HANDED him a cup of coffee, Cade watched the woman he’d once thought he knew better than himself hurry between the espresso machine and the bakery case, greeting customers by name, laughing at their jokes, dispensing coffee with a happy, friendly cheer—and wondered for the thousandth time when they had slipped off their common track.

Somewhere between “I do” and “I don’t,” something had gone wrong in his marriage. He was a corporate lawyer. His specialty was fixing tangled legal messes. Why couldn’t he fix the one in his own house?

He’d tried, Lord knew he’d tried, but Melanie had thrown up a wall and refused to remove a single chink in the brick.

God, he missed her. Every morning, he woke up to an empty space in his bed and an ache in his chest that no painkiller could soothe. At night, the talking heads on TV kept him company instead of the soft tones of Melanie, telling him about her day, about something Emmie had said or done.

He took a seat at one of the tables, watching his wife’s lithe, fluid movements. She was still as beautiful as the day he’d married her. A little heavier, but over the years he’d found he liked the extra weight on her hips and waist, the fullness in her breasts. The womanly curves had always held a magical comfort, soothing him at the end of a stressful day.

Always, Melanie had been there, supporting him in those early days when it seemed he’d never rise above the minion position of law clerk.

He poured sugar into his cup. It dissolved as easily as the bonds of his marriage.

Still, he’d put off signing the papers that would file their divorce. He had hope, damn it, that this could be fixed. That he could broker a mutually satisfactory agreement, a return to business as usual, something he had done a thousand times between warring corporations.

Every time he looked at Melanie, a constant smile curved across her face as she chatted and poured, the ache in his chest quadrupled. Need for her—not just sexual need, but an indefinable, untouchable need that ran bone-deep—stirred in his gut, rushing through his veins. He wanted to take her in his arms, hold her to his chest and kiss her until he made this past year go away.

But deep in his heart he knew they’d gone way beyond the point where a simple kiss could solve anything.

“Dad,” Emmie said, coming over to him. Now a college sophomore, Emmie had the same heart-shaped face and delicate features as her mother, except now her hair was spiked, her lips painted a dark crimson.

“Sit at the counter. It’s way more comfortable.”

Before he could protest, his daughter had taken his cup of Kenyan roast and put it on the laminate surface. Three feet from Melanie. He and Melanie exchanged a quick, knowing glance.

Obviously she knew Emmie was trying to bring them together. Why shouldn’t she? Emmie hadn’t asked for the divorce and she’d made it clear she didn’t like alternating between her two parents’ homes for weekly dinners and occasional laundry stops, like a perpetual ping-pong game.

Cade sure as hell wasn’t happy watching his marriage whittle away, either.

He rose and crossed to the wooden bar, settling onto one of the cushioned stools. “You’ve created a nice place here.”

He hadn’t seen his wife in a year and that was the best he could come up with? This is nice?

After this, he was heading to the bookstore to see if there was a Resurrecting Your Marriage for Dummies. Because clearly this dummy was failing at Wooing Back a Wife 101.

“Thanks,” Melanie said. She wiped off the steamer spout, then tossed the dirty cloth into a bucket of laundry inside the kitchen. She washed her hands and picked up the rack of freshly baked cookies and began loading them into the glass case, arranging them as carefully as she used to arrange the pillows in their living room.

“Is it going well?” Cade asked. “From what I’ve seen, this place is as popular as an elf at Christmas.”

She laughed. “Things are going much better than expected.”

He heard the undertones of their last fight in those two sentences. Cade was smart enough to back away from that. “I’m happy for you, Melanie.”

Emmie brushed by him, giving him an elbow hint. “Say something, Dad,” she whispered.

Cade held up his hands and looked to Emmie for help. She gave him the duh look she’d perfected by her sixteenth birthday. Oh, yeah, he was the dad. He was supposed to have all the answers.

He did—all but this one.

Cade shifted on the stool. “Are you going to tease your hair and unearth that Kiss concert T-shirt for Friday night?”

She chuckled. “Oh gosh, that was a thousand years ago. I don’t think I saved the shirt.”

“You did. Bottom drawer, on the right.” He knew, because he’d been in their dresser after she’d left, looking for something, and come across the worn image of Gene Simmons. For a moment, Cade had been back there, in the thirtieth row, rocking along with Melanie as they held up a lighter during a ballad and sang along until their voices cracked.

“I remember that night,” she said softly, then shook her head and got busy with the cookies again. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter because I’m not going to the reunion. I’ll have to save the Aqua Net for another night.”

She’d tried to pass it off as a joke, but Cade wasn’t laughing. “Didn’t you just tell Jeannie you would go?” He gestured toward the phone. “I couldn’t help but overhear. Jeannie’s voice is like a bullhorn.”

“I only said yes to—”

“Get her off your back?” He chuckled, reaching for that light, easy feeling again. It seemed to flit in and out, as ungraspable as a moth. “I know the feeling. It’s why I said yes, too.”

Emmie headed into the back of the shop, to get supplies or something, Cade supposed. As soon as their daughter was out of earshot, Melanie stopped working on the cookies, leaned an arm over the glass case and glared at him. “Why did you tell Jeannie we were still together?”

“I think there’s still a chance to work this out. You don’t throw nineteen years away on a whim.”

“You think this was a whim?” She shook her head, then lowered her voice. “It was the hardest decision I have ever made.”

Hurt stabbed at his chest, thinking of how quickly she’d been gone, how fast she’d escaped her half of their life. “I doubt that.”

She let out a gust of frustration. “Sign the papers, Cade. It’s over.”

“No.” He slipped off the stool and came around to the back of the glass case. “I’m done catwalking around the issue, biding my time. Thinking all you needed was a little space. I want answers, Mel, a solution.” He drew within inches of her. “Tell me what went wrong so I can change it.”

She threw up her hands. “Our marriage isn’t a clock, Cade. You can’t replace a couple gears and call it good as new.”

“And you can’t just throw it out because you wanted a better model.”

“That isn’t why I left.” Melanie circled the counter and began wiping down the case’s glass with an ammonia-scented cleaner and a white cotton cloth. An old man snored lightly on the sofa across the room, the paper on his torso fluttering as his chest rose up and down. “We made a mistake,” she said under her breath. “Why can’t you just let it go?”

“Because I still love you.” The words tore from his throat, contained in his chest for so long, fenced in by a hope that grew dimmer with every day Melanie refused his calls, ignored his e-mails, refused his requests to talk.

She shook her head and when she did, he saw the glimmer of tears in her eyes. “You don’t even know me.”

I would if you’d give me a chance, he wanted to scream. Let me try again. Don’t take away the one rock I’ve always stood on.

Before he could say anything, the bell rang and a woman in a business suit strode into the small shop and up to the register. Emmie came out of the back, headed to the register and greeted the woman, but her attention, Cade knew, was half on her parents.

Melanie took out some of her frustrations on the glass case, scrubbing it until it gleamed like silver. As her left hand rose up to swipe away a smear, a glint caught Cade’s eye.

Her wedding ring.

The same plain gold band he’d slipped on her finger in the county courthouse nearly twenty years ago.

A wave of hope rose within him, but he held it back. Cade was nothing if not a practical man. His wife may still be wearing her ring, but she’d gone back to using her maiden name and hadn’t slept in his bed for over a year. A piece of jewelry didn’t mean anything.

And yet, he hoped like hell it did.

“Mellie,” he said, slipping into the habit of her nickname. He grabbed her hand, stopping her from cleaning the glass into oblivion. He lowered his voice and turned so that the customer—and Emmie—couldn’t see or overhear them. “Go with me to the reunion. Wear that T-shirt and that bright pink lipstick you used to love. Go back in time with me, for one night. We could go out to dinner first, talk—”

“About what, Cade?” A glimmer washed over the deep thunderstorm of green in her eyes. Behind them, Emmie watched out of the corner of her eye, her movements quiet and small as she finished the customer’s latte and poured the steamed milk into a paper cup emblazoned with the bright crimson Cuppa Life logo.

Melanie noticed their daughter’s interest and led Cade into the small kitchen space, letting the door shut behind them. The close quarters only quadrupled Cade’s awareness of Melanie, of the way her chest rose and fell with each breath, the silky blond tendrils drifting about her shoulders, the jeans hugging her hips.

He wanted to kiss her, to close the gap between them. If only a simple meeting of their bodies would be enough to bridge the chasm. But even Cade knew it wasn’t that simple.

“Talk about what?” she repeated. “About how I failed you?” she said. “As a wife, a mother? About how you were at work—always at work—even when I needed you most?”

Regret slammed into his gut. He didn’t want to think about that day. Ever.

It was the one tape he couldn’t rewind. Couldn’t delete. Couldn’t do over. “Melanie, I’ve said I was sorry a hundred times.”

She sighed. “It’s not about being sorry, Cade, it’s about changing what got us there in the first place.”

“That doesn’t work if only one of us is trying,” he countered. “And I’m trying damn it. Go with me, Mel. For one night be my wife again.”

“I can’t put on that show anymore.” She held her ground, arms crossed over her chest. “Besides, did Jeannie tell you she wanted us to make a speech?”

“Isn’t that supposed to be the class president’s thing?”

“She thought it would be…” Her voice trailed off.

“Be what?” Cade asked, leaning closer, inhaling the scent of her skin, the sweetness of fresh-baked cookies, of the woman he’d lived with more than half his life. “Would be what, Melanie?” Cade whispered, his mouth so close to hers, all it would take was a few inches of movement to kiss her. To have her in his arms, against his heart.

“Romantic,” she said after a minute, expelling a disgusted sigh on the word. “The whole Prom King and Queen still together thing.”

He moved back a step. “But we aren’t, are we?”

She shook her head, resolute. “No, we’re not.”

The need for her smoldered inside him, a wildfire ready to erupt. He still loved her, damn it, and refused to let her quit so easily.

His gaze traveled down, to her lips, her jaw, the delicate arch of her throat. The old attraction that had simmered between them for more than twenty years ignited anew in his chest, the embers never really extinguished.

He wanted her, Lord, did he want her. He wanted to sweep her off her feet, carry her out of this shop and back to their bed. Every fiber in his being ached to feel her familiar, sweet body beneath his, to lose himself inside her, to find that connection he’d never found anywhere else.

A slight flush crept into Melanie’s cheeks, warming them to cotton-candy-pink. She opened her mouth, shut it again, then reached for a spoon, succeeding only in knocking it along the counter. It skittered under a display stand of teas. Was she thinking the same thing?

Then it was gone, and she was back to all business. “The idea of going together and pretending we’re still together is—”

“Insane,” he finished.

Melanie reached for a towel, folding, then unfolding and refolding it, a nervous habit he recognized—and also a sign of hope. Maybe not much, but he’d take whatever he could get.

“Completely insane,” she said, watching him, her eyes as unreadable as the Pacific. Her hand stilled, the towel limp in her grip.

A breath hitched between them. Another. Cade’s grip curled around the countertop, willpower keeping him from reaching out and pulling her to him.

“If we don’t go, or if we go separately, everyone’s going to know we’re getting…” He left off the word, still unable to believe it was going to happen. It was why he had yet to even look at the divorce paperwork. Seeing the word, speaking it, would make it a reality.

And Cade sure wasn’t ready to let go yet.

“Divorced,” Melanie finished. The eight letters that were changing Cade’s life hung between them, as bright as a neon sign.

“Yeah.” His marriage was so far off track—hell, they weren’t even on the same cross-country route anymore—that he wondered if there was even a chance of getting it back to where it had been.

“I should probably get back to work,” she said, folding the towel one last time before leaving it on the counter.

“I hear you’re thinking about expanding this place,” Cade said, changing tactics, avoiding the dreaded “D” word.

Someday, he’d have to deal with it. Just not today.

“How did you…?” Surprise flitted across Melanie’s delicate features, then disappeared when she realized the daughter outside the kitchen was the source of the information. “Yes, I am planning an expansion.”

“As in a mini-mall or world domination of the cappuccino industry?”

She laughed. “Nothing that big.” Then her brows knitted together and she studied him. “Do you really want to know?”

He nodded. Was that what it was? He had stopped listening and she had stopped talking? “I do.”

“Do you promise not to give me a list of pros and cons?”

He winced at the memory, then put up two fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

She laughed, the merry sound such sweet music to his ears. “You were never a Boy Scout.”

He grinned. “I always had Boy Scout intentions, though.”

“I remember,” Melanie said quietly.

“I do, too.” The memory slipped between them, the shared thought coming easily, as if they shared a brain. Their first date. A car broken down on the side of the road. Two elderly ladies standing outside of the Mazda, looking confused and helpless. Rain pelting down on Cade’s head as he filled their radiator with a jug of water he kept in his trunk, then put a temporary duct tape patch on the leaking hose.

Melanie had called him a Boy Scout, then, when the women were gone, drawn him to her, her lips soft and sweet. He’d have rebuilt fifty transmissions that night if he’d known a simple act of kindness would turn Mellie’s interest in him from mild to five-alarm hot.

“You wanted to hear my plans,” Melanie said, interrupting his thoughts.

Cade recovered his wits. “Yes, I would.”

“Okay. It’s slow and I could use a break. Let’s go in the back.” As the customer lingered, asking about the different types of muffins, Melanie poured herself a cup of coffee, then gestured to Cade to follow her to the rear of the shop, where she’d set up a cozy nook with two leather love seats. It was a small area, but the bronze wash on the walls and the deep chocolate sofas made it inviting and warm. Melanie always had had great decorating skills.

She and Cade took seats on opposite sofas, a few feet away from the armchair holding Rip Van Winkle. “My plan is to double the space,” she said, laying her cup on the end table. “Add some game tables, a children’s play area, build a room for business people to hold meetings. Maybe even add a stage for open mike nights.” Excitement brightened her eyes. He got the feeling she wanted to tell someone, to maybe…just maybe, get his take on her idea.

In the old days, before Emmie had come along, Melanie had been filled with ideas, their evenings in that dingy apartment passing quickly with energetic conversations about what could be if they took this path or that path. In the end, there’d only been one road to follow. Cade had always thought it was the right one, but now, seeing his wife’s enthusiasm, he wondered if he’d missed a detour.

Beside them, the old man snarfled in his sleep. “Bad deer,” he muttered.

Each of them laughed quietly at the non sequiter, providing a moment of détente, connection. Then Melanie cleared her throat and directed her attention to the room. “Anyway, we’re really cramped in our four hundred square feet here. I figured if I could get a bit more space, I’d get more of the college crowd. The building next door is up for sale and the owner has already offered it to me. If I could buy it, knock down this wall—” she gestured toward the plaster finish “—I’d double the space.”

He let out a low whistle, impressed. The Melanie he knew had been intelligent, witty, cool under pressure—but never had he seen this business savvy part of her. “You’ve taken this place a lot further than I thought it could go when we looked at it last year, after you inherited it from your grandparents. I guess I didn’t see the potential then.”

She studied the brass studs on the armrest’s seam. “No, you didn’t.”

A pair of size fifty boots had a smaller heel than Cade. Had he crushed her dream? He’d only been trying to be pragmatic, to steer her away from a potential mistake. Clearly he’d done the opposite. “I’m sorry, Melanie.”

She didn’t meet his gaze. Instead she smoothed a hand over the leather. “It’s in the past. I’m all about moving forward.”

The implied word—alone. “You have a lot of plans for this place. For that you need additional funding, right?”

She nodded.

“Something that’s hard to get when you’re a relatively new business.” From Emmie, he knew she’d financed the opening of the shop on her own, with a little from her grandparent’s inheritance, the rest from the nice folks at Visa.“Tell me about it,” Melanie said, clearly frustrated. “Banks want me to have years of success under my belt before they’ll lend me any money. But I can’t get those years of success without investing in my business. It’s that old Catch-22.”

It was also an area he knew well—and an opportunity to help. And maybe, just maybe, she’d let him in again. At this point, Cade would knock down the damned wall himself if he thought it would help defrost the glacier between them.

“I have a proposition for you,” Cade said, deciding he wasn’t going to let his marriage go without a fight. He could only pray this was an offer Melanie couldn’t refuse.

CHAPTER THREE

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN—a proposition?” she asked.

Cade rose, slipped over to her love seat and sat down beside her, not too close, but close enough that their conversation couldn’t be overheard by the snoring man or the woman still hemming and hawing about blueberry versus peach crumble.

He was also close enough to catch the vanilla scent on her skin, the same fragrance he always associated with Melanie. Like cookies, homemade bread…all the things he’d missed in his childhood and had found in his wife.

His wife.

Damn, he missed her. Missed coming home to her smile, missed holding her. Regardless of what that piece of paper on his desk said, he’d never stopped thinking of Melanie as his wife.

“If you stayed married to me…” Cade paused for a second, letting the last word linger in the air as the idea took root in his mind, “just for a while, you could get that funding a lot easier.”

She backed up against the arm of the sofa, warding off his idea. “No. I want to do this on my own, Cade. Without your help or your family money.”

He heard the seeds of the familiar argument taking hold in her tone. Eighteen months ago, they’d stood here in this very space, Cade glancing around at the dusty antiques, the cluttered room, seeing only years of books in the red, not potential. He’d offered to help, to give her the business guidance the place clearly needed, to invest some of the inheritance from his grandfather that had done nothing but sit in the bank, but she’d refused.

I want to do this on my own, Cade, she’d said then. I don’t need you to tell me what’s wrong. I just want you to say go for it and let me do it.

Instead he’d pulled out a thick stack of research he’d done on the antique industry, statistics proving what worked—and what didn’t. She’d shoved the papers back at him, and in doing so, shut the first door on their marriage.

He’d shut the second one himself.

He tossed her a grin. “Just think of it as a little payback for all the years you helped me.”

She rose, frustration running through every inch of her face. “Where is this new and improved Cade coming from? Since when did you want me to be all independent?”

He blinked. “I never said you had to be some Stepford wife, Mellie. I’ve always wanted you to have your own life.”

“As long as it wasn’t at the expense of yours.” Melanie took in a breath, erasing the quick flash of hurt in her eyes. “Cade, you just don’t understand how important it is for me to have something of my own. To do this myself.”

“I’m trying, Melanie.” He paused, waiting until she sank back onto the seat beside him. “I promise not to do anything more than let you have my credit score,” Cade continued. “We have a lot of assets together, Melanie, a financial record, a damned nice nest egg of Matthews money. The bank will look more favorably on your loan if—”

“If I pretend I’m still married to you.”

“It’s not pretending. We are married.”

“Only because you won’t sign the divorce papers.”

“I’ve been busy.”

She gave him the eye roll Emmie had inherited. She sighed, considering him for a long moment.

“I’m not agreeing to anything. Not until I know what you want in exchange.”

“Nothing.”

She shook her head. “I know you, Cade. You don’t make a deal without both sides gaining something. You help me get my loan, but what do you get?”

“Nothing, except—” he drew in a breath “—a date to the reunion.”

In her green eyes, the thoughts connected. “As your wife, you mean.”

Cade had brokered enough deals to know when he’d reached the crux, the point where the agreement could be broken by one party leaning too far or pushing too hard.

Melanie would eventually be awarded the divorce with or without his signature. He glanced at her left hand, at the circle of gold on her ring finger.

He weighed his next words, trying to figure out what wouldn’t make Melanie bolt, or worse, encourage her to throw the countertop Capresso machine at his head. “Not as my wife,” he lied, “more as a…fellow reunion attendee. Let people assume what they want.” He voiced the idea as calmly as he would the terms of a corporate merger. Start with business-only, and pray like hell it turned into something more personal later.

Her gaze narrowed. “Why are you suddenly so interested in going to the class reunion? If I remember right, you skipped the fifth and the tenth. What’s so big about the twentieth?”

Cade didn’t miss a beat. “Bill Hendrickson.”

“The kid who carried a briefcase to school every day?”

He nodded. “He’s now the owner of one of the largest law firms in the Midwest and he’s looking for a new partner.”

That much was true. For a month or so, Bill had been trying to meet with Cade, but their respective schedules had kept them from finding a common time. Bill suggested a quick meeting at the reunion. “Bring your wife,” Bill had said, unaware of the rift in the Matthews marriage. “I’d love to introduce her to my Shelley.”

Bill had made it clear he liked to employ family men because he thought they were more committed, more honorable. Cade wasn’t so sure he agreed with Bill’s logic, but he did know one thing for sure—he’d love to work for the massive, national firm that Bill headed. They’d handled clients Cade could only dream of working for; the kind with names that everyone in America knew.

It was what he’d worked for, toiling away under his father’s thumb, hoping to prove himself and then break into the big leagues.

“What’s wrong with staying at Fitzsimmons, Matthews and Lloyd?” Melanie asked.

Cade’s gaze swept over the hourglass shape of his wife, down the dusting of freckles that trailed a pattern from her shoulder to her wrist, a path he’d kissed more than once. The ache that had become his constant companion in the last year tightened its grip. “Because I need a change of pace.”

If this divorce happened—and as more time went by with Melanie remaining resolute in her plans, he knew it would—then he knew he’d have to leave. He couldn’t stand living twenty minutes from Melanie, knowing she was moving on with her life.

And worst of all—dating other men.

He tore his gaze away from her. A woman as gorgeous and vivacious as Melanie wouldn’t be going to bed alone for very long. “Bill’s firm is in Chicago and—”

“You’re moving to Chicago?” she said, her voice soft, surprised.

“I’m considering it, if everything goes well with Bill. Chicago is only a few hours away, which means I can still see Emmie.” He grinned. “Half the time she’s here or out with friends. I’m more of a laundry dump than a dad.”

Melanie echoed his smile. “I know the feeling. She does the same thing to me. If I hadn’t hired her, I don’t think I’d see her for more than a five-minute conversation a month.”

“Our little girl has grown up, hasn’t she?” Cade’s memory ran through a quick tape of Emmie’s first steps, first day of school, first bike. The years had rocketed by too fast. Hindsight berated him for missing far too many of those firsts.

“Yeah,” Melanie said, and the bittersweet expression on her face told him she was watching the same mental movie. “If you get the job, are you selling the house?”

Back to the logistics of divvying up a marriage. “I’ll keep it for a while,” Cade said. If there was a chance Melanie would ever live there again, would ever sit at the oak dining room table they’d bought for their fifth anniversary and share a dinner with him, he wanted to have that familiar three-bedroom in Indianapolis waiting.

He shook off the thought. Cade had to be pragmatic instead of getting caught up in the green of her eyes, the scent of her skin. The sheer magic of being so close to her again, separated only by a few inches of love seat.

This reunion idea was a last-ditch effort, brought about because he’d thought he’d read some meaning in the gold band on her left hand. Assuming, that was, that she’d ever loved him at all. That she hadn’t married him just because she’d been pregnant with Emmie. In the still, dark night, that was the possibility that haunted Cade. Had he been so clueless, he’d imagined a love that had never existed?

“I had no idea you were considering a move,” Melanie said.

“I haven’t broken it to Emmie yet, so please don’t tell her. I want to have something definite in hand first.”

More, Cade needed to know for sure there was zero chance with his wife. All year, he’d kept telling himself that given a little time, Melanie would be back. She hadn’t.

With all the signs she’d been sending him, he could have taken out a billboard: Your Marriage Is Over. And yet, the glutton in him continued to hope that the past nineteen years had formed a foundation they could come back to, build a new beginning on, after they moved the last few years of wreckage out of the way.

The realist in him whispered their foundation was made of sand, not stone.

“Oh.” Melanie’s mouth formed the vowel, held it for a minute, as if it was taking her a moment to get used to the idea of him moving away. “Okay.”

“Anyway, you know how I hate to go to those things, especially alone,” Cade said, putting on a smile, making his case, treading carefully. “I can never remember anyone’s name. I need a wingman.”

I need you.

It wasn’t until Melanie responded with a smile of her own that Cade found himself able to breathe again. “You are pretty bad at that. Remember when you kept calling Jim Sacco ‘Stan’?”

Cade laughed. “He was a former partner at Fitzsimmons, Matthews and Lloyd, too. We even worked together a couple times. I’ve never lived that one down.”

Melanie joined his laughter. Cade wished he could reach out, capture that sound in a jar and bring it home with him. The walls in the house had grown as silent as tombs without Melanie.

“Oh, and what about the time you forgot the name of the governor?” She chuckled softly. “So much for any political ambitions you might have had.”

“That’s when my wingman came in mighty handy,” he said, thinking of that nightmare dinner party seven years ago, of Melanie slipping in with her easy touch and smoothing everything over. With them so close together on the love seat, it was almost like before. Cade and Melanie, staying up late, finishing off the appetizers while they rehashed the night. “You told him some story about me getting the flu or something—”

Another smile from her, the kind that could disrupt a man’s best intentions. “And I told him the medicine had some kind of mental side effects.”

“All that mattered was that he bought it and signed the firm as his personal counsel. You made that save, Mellie.” He leaned forward, careful not to invade her personal space, to keep it casual, to act as if his heart didn’t still trip over itself every time she smiled.

“That’s why I need you with me at the reunion. You make me look good.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Her glance flitted away. She reached for her coffee, her hand a nervous flutter that nearly toppled the cup. It clattered against the table, then settled into place.

“I’m serious. Your talent is people. Making them feel comfortable, welcome.” He glanced around the corner of their little nook, into the main part of Cuppa Life. The cozy coffee shop was beginning to fill with chattering college students, clustering around the tables and doing homework, playing cards, or just talking. It was the polar opposite to the stuffy, serious law offices of Fitzsimmons, Matthews and Lloyd. For a minute, he wondered what it was like to work in a place like this. To escape the daily grind of a job that had never felt quite right, as if all these years he’d been wearing the wrong size suit.

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