much he loves you. The boy who makes you believe it.
And she’d never met a guy like that. And so here she was, a virgin at twenty-seven. Honestly, she’d begun to doubt love like that really existed. Yes, her parents were daily proof that it did, but she knew their relationship was rare. Maybe even a throwback to a simpler time and place. Maybe her generation had lost the ability to love so completely. Maybe decades of rising divorce rates and instant gratification had bred it out of them.
But listening to Ward compare Cara to sipping tequila, for the first time she believed love like that was really possible.
This man standing before her had faced every temptation imaginable. He had to have had countless opportunities to be unfaithful, but he’d loved his wife too much. Even now, three years later, he loved her too much to live in the house they’d shared together. He couldn’t even discard her sunglasses.
How could that kind of devotion offend her, no matter what terms he couched it in?
She may not be able to understand the full depths of his grief. But she could respect it. And she certainly wasn’t going to judge him for it. She hardly knew him well enough to have an opinion on what was a healthy way for him to grieve for his wife.
Circling back to his earlier request, she said, “If you don’t want Chase to know you’re living in the carriage house, he’s certainly not going to hear it from me.”
He nodded slowly and smiled. “Thanks.”
But the smile looked sad. And a little rueful. Like he knew it was time to move on, but still wasn’t sure if he wanted to.
She buried a wistful sigh. Her reasons for coming now seemed so self-serving in the face of his obvious grief. “I’m sorry I invaded your privacy. I should have left you alone.” She set down the tumbler of tequila and headed for the door. He stopped her after only a step.
“Why did you come here?”
It sounded silly now. She had the unmistakable impression that the things he’d told her just now weren’t the sort of thing he shared with just everyone. So she’d probably been wrong. And if she hadn’t, so what? Why invade his privacy just to feed her insecurity? She’d worked with plenty of people she didn’t like in the past. She was professional enough to do it this time around.
Except, of course, that she did like Ward. Immensely. And that, of course, was part of the problem. She didn’t want there to be a likable person beneath the glamour of the megastar. But since there was, she’d have to figure out how to deal with him on her own.
Since Ward was still waiting for an answer, she smiled ruefully and said, “I thought you didn’t like me.”
However, when she looked up at Ward, she realized he’d gone completely still. He looked at her over the rim of his half raised tumbler with one eyebrow quirked. “What was that?” he asked, his voice pitched low.
That sultry tone sent a shiver down her spine, one she did her best to hide the effects of. She forced a nonchalant laugh. “It sounds silly now. But I thought maybe you’d been avoiding me.”
“Avoiding you?” he asked. There was note of humor in his words. Like she’d just unwittingly repeated some private joke.
“Yes,” she tried to keep her frustration out of her voice, but didn’t succeed. “Avoiding me. You took a different flight out to Charleston, even though there wasn’t really a board meeting. You haven’t been at CMF, even though Stacy assures me that you’re usually there every day that you’re in town.” His smile broadened, and her hands automatically went to her hips. “The other day at Hannah’s Hope, you totally got in my face about whether I had a problem working with you. So, what? I’m not allowed to do the same thing?”
Her irritation crept back into her voice. Dang it, what was it about him that got under her skin?
She blew out a sigh and gave her shoulders a little roll to relieve the kinks of tension before adding, “It’s not a big deal. I just thought I’d ask.”
He slowly lowered his tumbler and grinned. “Let me get this straight. You think I’m avoiding you? Because I don’t like you?”
She gritted her teeth for a second before answering. “Yes. And I don’t want it to affect my work at—”
But before she could finish her sentence, he