Tortoise sat on the floor in front of her, keeping his gaze on Libby’s friends.
Megan shut the door and eyed the messy room. She opened the lid of the pizza box on the coffee table and cringed, then carried it into the kitchen. “That’s not why we’re here.”
“Obviously.”
Blair grabbed a kitchen chair and dragged it into the living room in front of Libby. “Sarcasm won’t help.”
“Nothing will help.” She hadn’t meant to sound so defeated, but it was true.
Megan sat in the overstuffed chair between Libby and Blair. “We’re worried about you. This isn’t like you.”
“You expect me to be all sunshine and rainbows? Sorry to disappoint you there too.”
“Libby,” Megan said apologetically.
“Enough,” Blair barked, pulling a legal pad and a pen from her case. “I’m here to get the facts. Are you legally married to Noah?”
“You saw the photo,” she sneered. “What do you think?”
Blair put the notebook on her lap. “From what little information Josh was able to get from Noah, you left him less than twenty-four hours after your wedding. Did you mail the marriage license to the courthouse?”
Libby stared at her in shock.
“Was there a marriage license?”
“Well, of course.”
Blair gave a half-shrug. “Not necessarily. If you were drunk, you might not have thought about it, although the chapels out there usually ask.”
Libby groaned and leaned her head back against the sofa. “I told you. We weren’t drunk. We were perfectly sober when we got married.”
“So what happened to the license? Did you take it?”
She sighed, thinking back to the best night of her life. How had it crashed and burned so quickly? “No, we didn’t take it. In fact, I forgot my dress there.”
“Your wedding dress?” Megan asked.
Tears filled her eyes. “No, the black dress Gram packed in my bag.”
“What black dress?” Megan asked, but then she shook her head and smiled. “She wanted me to pack that sexy cocktail dress she found in your closet. She must have snuck it in when I was grabbing your makeup bag.”
That and several other things she’d never needed. Tears spilled down her cheeks before she realized it. “I left my wedding dress in the hotel room in Vegas.”
“Oh, Libby,” Megan’s voice broke. “I’m so sorry I was such a bitch. I’ve been a terrible friend.”
“That’s not what we’re discussing at the moment,” Blair said in her no-nonsense voice, but she sniffed and kept her eyes down on her legal pad. “What was the name of the chapel?”
“Little Heaven. Why?”
Blair scratched notes on her legal pad. “I’ll have Melissa give them a call to see what happened to it.”
“Why?”
Blair looked up and gave her an exasperated look. “We need to file the annulment papers as soon as possible, although I suspect we won’t have grounds if you continue to insist you were sober. It could end in divorce instead, but given your career, it shouldn’t adversely affect you.”
“Annulment?” she asked in surprise.
“Libby. You’re here. He’s there. It’s obvious this is over. Let’s put an end to it as quickly as possible.”
“But . . .” How had she not considered the legal ramifications? Of course they needed to file for a divorce, but the thought had her on the edge of a panic attack.
“Do you have a physical address for Noah?”
“Why?” Her voice sounded as panicked as she felt.
Blair shrugged again, writing on her notepad. “It’s okay. I can use the address of their office in Seattle. It’s probably better to serve him there.”
“Serve him what?”
She looked up and rolled her eyes. “Divorce papers, of course.”
“But . . .” More tears fell.
Blair looked up and pinned her gaze on Libby, although Libby could barely see her through her tears. “Do you love him?”
“Blair,” Megan admonished as she sat next to Libby and pulled her into a hug. Megan stroked her hair. “Libs, do you love him?”
She nodded, breaking down into sobs.
“Then why are you here instead of Seattle?”
“Because . . . I’m so . . . stupid,” she forced out.
“What did you do?”
She took a breath to settle down. “I accused him of cheating on me.”
“What?” Blair demanded. “Is there something I don’t know?”
“Blair. Enough. We’ve caused enough damage,” Megan said softly, keeping her eyes on Libby. “Libs, what happened?”
“I started freaking out after you called me. It didn’t make sense for him to be in a business meeting if he’d really quit his job. There was a message on the phone in our room . . . from a woman. She called Noah by name and asked him to meet her in a hotel room. I freaked out and went to the room.”
“And?” Megan asked.
“A woman opened the door with a champagne glass in her hand. I thought I had gotten it wrong since she was fully clothed and so perky, but then she said something to Noah—calling him by name again—and I marched in and found him sitting on the bed drinking champagne.”
“Naked?” Blair asked.
She shook her head. “No. He had all his clothes on.”
“So what was his excuse?” Blair asked.
“He said it was a business meeting. He said he’d closed some deal for Josh. I accused him of lying, especially when he admitted that he’d slept with her before.”
Megan took her hand. “He was telling the truth about the business meeting. He was working on that deal for a couple of months and the whole thing fell apart on the Friday he was supposed to fly in for your wedding. Josh wasn’t very nice to him about it, so Noah quit.”
Libby’s chin quivered. She was such a fool.
“But that doesn’t explain why he didn’t tell you about quitting his job,” Blair pointed out.
“He said it was because of everything I was going through.”
A soft smile lit up Megan’s face. “He was thinking about you instead of himself. He was being selfless, Libs.”
“I know that now.” A sob broke off the last word.
“I was wrong.” Megan glanced over at Blair. “We were wrong. We couldn’t look past Noah’s history to see what was right in front of our faces.” She paused and squeezed Libby’s hand. “He loves you, Libby. I had no idea how much until I saw him yesterday. He’s a mess.”
“He is?” she asked, feeling guilty at the relief she felt over his pain.
“He knows he screwed up by not telling you about his job, and I’d bet my life that he didn’t cheat on you. He loves you too much to think about another woman.”
“I love him too.”
“Then what’s keeping you apart?”
Before her plane took off from Vegas, she’d realized how wrong she’d been. A small part of her hung on to the belief that Noah had cheated on her, but now Megan was bashing that belief to smithereens. It made her heart ache for him even more . . . all the pain she’d caused him. “I—I hurt him. I was horrible. He’ll never forgive me.”