Her heel caught on the stair, and she teetered. Tucker grabbed her, steadied her. Feeling light-headed, Gillian made sure to hold onto the railing as she finished descending the stairs. She only vaguely noticed that Tucker didn’t let her go until she’d planted both her feet firmly on the ground floor.
Now, all of her attention was directed at her fiancé. He wore his gray suit and the green tie she’d given him for Christmas. “Jeremy?”
His green eyes widened when he spied her, and a brief instant of alarm flashed across his face. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m wondering the same about you. This morning you were still sick in bed with the flu.”
He lifted his chin slightly. “I told you I intended to go into work today. I had a lunch scheduled.”
And…? Gillian waited.
“I’m delighted I could help y’all get this building.”
How could he?
Jeremy didn’t elaborate beyond his lunch statement. Not verbally, anyway. But she knew this man well. She recognized the gleam that had come into his eyes. She noticed the way he smoothed his blond hair, adjusted his cufflinks, and subtly widened his stance. He was on the defensive, and that’s when he usually got aggressive.
Gillian’s temper began to seethe. He’d betrayed her! And now he was spoiling for a fight? Did she want to give him one?
Maybe. Maybe so. That depends. “Jeremy, how long have you known the McBride family intended to purchase this building?”
“I got the news sometime before Christmas.”
Yes. Yes, Gillian did want to give Jeremy a fight. However, she wouldn’t do it in front of the McBrides. So she lifted her chin and smiled a smile that could have cut glass. “Speaking of lunch, I’d better get along on my way. I need to get home to let Peaches out for her lunchtime potty break. If you gentlemen will excuse me?”
Without waiting for anyone’s response, Gillian sailed out of the mercantile. Her home was an eight-minute walk away. Today, she made it in six and managed to hold off her angry tears until she walked inside and was met with excited puppy yips. Releasing Peaches from her crate, Gillian sank down onto the floor with the puppy in her lap.
Peaches was ten weeks old, a little mop of a Bichon–Shih Tzu mix with floppy brown ears and a white face and a little pink tongue that even now licked at the tears flowing freely down Gillian’s cheeks. The puppy had been Jeremy’s Christmas gift to her, presented with a red bow around her neck and nestled in a wicker basket he’d set beneath Gillian’s tree. Gillian’s beloved collie, Princess, had died the previous spring, and she’d nursed a hole in her heart ever since. She’d been ready to adopt a new pet from the animal shelter last summer, but Jeremy had lobbied against it. He didn’t want a dog. He preferred cats. They’d debated the subject for weeks and eventually agreed to wait until after their honeymoon to adopt any pet.
The Christmas surprise had melted her heart.
She heard the front door open and recognized Jeremy’s footsteps as he headed for the laundry room where Gillian kept Peaches’ crate. Without looking up, she asked, “Peaches was a guilt gift, wasn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“You were never going to agree to buy the building, were you? Why didn’t you just tell me? Why weren’t you honest?”
“Would you put down the damned dog, and stand up, so I don’t feel as if I’m looming over you?”
Holding Peaches close, she rose gracefully to her feet and headed for the kitchen door. “She needs to go out.”
Jeremy sighed, shoved his hands into his pants pockets, and followed her. At the edge of her back patio, Gillian set Peaches down in the yellow winter grass. The puppy dipped her head and started sniffing. Gillian folded her arms and waited for Jeremy to speak.
“You are right. I didn’t want to buy the building. It’s ridiculous to invest that much on a new, unproven business. I was watching out for us.”
“What us? You made the decision all by yourself! Without discussing it with me.”
“Sort of like you and all the wedding planning.”
“I included you in the wedding planning.”
“Did you? Or did you inform me of the decisions you made with your mother? You’re all about the wedding, Gillian, and this wedding has been more hers and yours, than yours and mine.”
Gillian’s seething temper became a rolling boil. She recognized this tactic. He was attempting to divert her attention from the subject of the building betrayal. She wouldn’t allow him to attack her mother. “That’s not fair, Jeremy, and it’s not true. The wedding is two parts—the ceremony and the party to celebrate the service. The ceremony is the important part, and you and I have done all the planning and made all the decisions for that. As we should have done. But my parents are hosting the reception. You and I have picked the photographer and the band and menu and a million other details. My mother loves flowers. She loves to set a pretty table. If flowers are important to her, then she gets to pick the reception flowers! That’s not too much to give her when she’s paying for it!”
“See, you’ve proved my point. The wedding is all you care about. You’re marrying me. You’re supposed to put me first. I wanted roses, not those fluffy things. You sided with her.”
Gillian rounded on him. “They’re hydrangeas, not fluffy things, and that argument is ridiculous. What is this? What is really going on here? It’s not wedding floral. It’s you and me. Things haven’t been right with us for months. I thought it was premarital jitters, but it’s bigger than that. What are you trying to say, Jeremy?”
“I was scared, okay?” He waved his hand wildly, frightening the dog, who scuttled to Gillian’s side. “I didn’t want to start a new business. I didn’t want wedding planning to become our lives. You weren’t paying attention to me. You shut me out.”
“So you sabotaged me! You sold our dream!”
“Not our dream. Your dream.” He folded his arms and lifted his chin pugnaciously. “When I learned the McBrides had made an offer on the mercantile building, I took it as a providential sign and declined the opportunity to counteroffer.”
“You declined. You decided. You decided our future all on your own.” A white-hot storm of rage blew through her. “How dare you. How dare you! This isn’t the 1950s, Jeremy. I’m not a little woman who you get to pat on the head and say, Make me a sandwich and bring me a beer. Marriages today are partnerships. You don’t get to make unilateral decisions that affect both of us. If you felt this way about my dreams, then you should have manned up and been honest and started a conversation about it.”
“Maybe so, but that’s water under the bridge now. I’d do it differently if I could. If I could go back in time, I’d do a lot of things differently. But I can’t.” The fight seemed to go out of him then as he added, “What’s done is done.”
He gripped the back of one of Gillian’s patio chairs. His knuckles were white. He wouldn’t meet her gaze. A long silence stretched between them before he nervously licked his lips and said, “Gillian, I can’t marry you. We need to call this thing off.”
Never mind that she had been working her own way to this same realization, hearing him say it was a fist to her solar plexus. “Wh-wh-what? Y-y-you what? You want to … to…”