Bad Engagement (Billionaire's Club #10) - Elise Faber Page 0,39

your heart, so how can you expect to be comfortable enough to be in a relationship that deep?” A pause. “Or how do you really know you want that?”

Kate swallowed hard but couldn’t find the words.

It didn’t matter, because Heidi had them anyway.

“You have this mental block, babe. Always have. For some idiotic reason, you think that what’s inside you isn’t valuable or important or grand enough for someone to love every single part—the good, the bad, the in-between.” She brushed back Kate’s hair. “And yet you don’t hesitate to love the people around you, warts and all.”

Kate’s gaze slid away.

Heidi let her get away with that, but that didn’t stop her from having the final word.

“It took me a long time to figure it out,” she said, gently. “You give, Katie girl. You give so much that you don’t have to risk taking.” Heidi cradled her jaw, forced Kate to meet her stare. “You give so much because that means you don’t have to open up those steel plates around your heart and actually let someone in to care for you in return. Because if you did, then you would be vulnerable.”

Then with those words that pierced right through Kate’s armor, she pressed a kiss to her cheek, pulled on her coat, and walked right out of Kate’s house.

In like a hurricane, gale force winds knocking everything that Kate thought she knew into disarray, and then out just as abruptly, the aftermath she left behind heavy and silent and . . . shattered.

Sinking down to the tile, Kate buried her face in her hands.

And then she cried.

For a long, long time.

Fifteen

Jaime

He knew something was wrong.

How he knew, he wasn’t going to second guess.

But from the moment his eyes had slid open, the sun barely cresting the hills in the distance, he’d felt a deep pit of unease in his stomach.

Something was wrong with Kate.

Jaime didn’t bother to hesitate or think through the instinct or take a moment to pause and remember they’d been fake fiancés, and something more, for less than a week—message to first date to family dinner. He simply got dressed and drove over to Kate’s house.

She was sitting on her front porch, hair tumbled around her face, top of her body swallowed by a huge gray hoodie, patterned pajama pants swimming over her legs. But what had his stomach twisting itself into knots was the expression on her face. Bleak and exhausted, despite the mug filled with what he assumed was coffee that she was holding in her hands.

Maybe it would have been more prudent to keep driving, to move past this woman who was beautiful and lovely and fun and not complicate his life.

But it wasn’t even an option that crossed his mind.

He’d decided on this adventure, on this path that would hopefully gain him Kate’s heart, her body, her soul linked to his from two minutes into that conversation at dinner. Hell, if he were being honest with himself, he’d decided on her from the moment that message had hit his inbox.

Such a random, odd request.

And also, one he’d never even considered denying.

It was probably stupid to have been infatuated with a woman he’d only known over social media, probably even more so to have fallen for her two minutes into their first date.

But there it was.

And he was riding it through to the end.

He was going to follow through with what he’d promised. He was going to show patience and perseverance and win the heart of the gorgeous, fun, amazing woman who was sitting so sadly on her front porch.

Decision made.

All in.

No waffling required.

Jaime got out, walked up the drive. Kate’s gaze had fixed on his the moment he’d opened the driver’s side door, and it stayed there as he moved toward her.

But when her lips parted as he approached the bottom step of the porch, he didn’t give her a chance to speak, to find some piece inside her to push him away.

Instead, he snagged the mug from her grip, set it on the wood, and sat, picking her up and plunking her into his lap.

“Jaime,” she whispered.

“Hush now,” he said, stroking the hair off her face, seeing how pale she was, the dark circles under each eye. He brushed his thumb along both. “You didn’t sleep last night, Red?”

She shook her head.

“Because of me?”

Another shake.

“Then why, baby?”

Her eyes filled with tears, the tip of her nose went pink, and he had to struggle to contain the urge to want to pulverize