Make Me Believe: Jilted: The Bride Read online

  Rowan sighed. “I’ll call her tomorrow. I’m going to go to bed and sleep for the next twelve hours.”

  “All right, get some rest,” he said. “Come home if you need to, okay?”

  Tears stung the backs of her eyes. “Thanks, Daddy.”

  “Love you, pumpkin.”

  “Love you, too.” She hung up and clasped the phone to her chest.

  If she didn’t go home, her dad would probably fly out to make sure she was okay. She didn’t want to deal with all the questions, especially if the rumor was that she and Luke eloped.

  Rolling off the chair, she hung up the cordless and retrieved her cell phone from her purse, powering it up on her way to the bedroom. Ten seconds after the home screen appeared, it began pinging incessantly—to the point it gave up and a text box appeared telling her she had new messages.

  Eight-four texts alone. She didn’t have Messenger set up for notifications, so there was no telling how many she had in there.

  Sierra wanted to know why she hadn’t said anything. Several other co-workers wanted to know how she knew Luke Stone and whether they’d eloped. Tomorrow would be fun if she went into work.

  Claudia, Maria, her parents, and sister all wanted her to call to let them know she was okay. She’d taken care of her parents and her mom would tell Adalynn, so she thumbed Claudia’s texts.

  Let me know when you get there

  Saw the weather rpt-did you beat the rain?

  Where are you?

  Are you okay?

  I hope you’re not answering because you don’t have reception & not because you’re in a ditch somewhere

  Well, Luke ended up in a ditch.

  Maybe we should drive up and check on you

  OMG! Maria just told me what she did. I’M SO SORRY!

  Maria and I are fighting. I want to check on you but she hid my keys and told me her gut said you were fine.

  Seriously thinking about punching her in the gut.

  P.S. Not really

  Please call. We’re worried.

  The stream of messages continued, but Rowan hit the call button rather than reading them all.

  “Where are you?” Claudia asked as soon as she answered.

  “I’m home. I’m safe. We didn’t elope.”

  “Ugh. I’d hoped you hadn’t seen all that.”

  “I haven’t. Dad told me.”

  “How are you really?”

  “Drained. Hungry, but I don’t have any food in the house. I got rid of it all because we were supposed to be gone for two weeks.”

  “We’ll be right over—what do you want?”

  Rowan didn’t really want to people—even with Claudia and Maria. At the same time, she was starving and if she put them off now, they’d be there tomorrow come hell or high water.

  “Pizza and ice cream.” The ultimate breakup food. Might as well go for broke.

  “All right. We’ll be there soon.”

  “Okay. Let yourselves in.”

  “Okay. Bye.”

  She slipped her phone under her pillow and curled up, staring at the wall, trying not to dwell on any of the thoughts flitting through her head. Tomorrow, after she’d hopefully had a good night’s sleep, would be soon enough to figure out what she should do. Whether she should try to call Michael. Whether she should go into work.

  There she went thinking.

  The bed jostled her awake and her eyes snapped open to find Claudia lying down in front of her.

  “Hey,” Claudia said.

  “Hey.”

  Maria’s arm wrapped around her waist from behind. “I’m so sorry. I really felt like it was the right thing to do.”

  “I’m not mad anymore,” she said. “I was when he showed up, but I figure if he found me at the church, he would have found me here or at work or anywhere else if he was really determined.”

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Maria said.

  “I know you didn’t. It wasn’t too bad. I was able to say some things I’d wanted to say for a while and had never been able to.” She glanced over her shoulder. “But maybe next time you get one of your feelings you can just ask for some Tums?”

  Maria smiled. “I can’t make any promises, but I’ll try not to interfere anymore.”

  “Thanks.” She rolled back over and faced Claudia.

  “Do you know what you’re going to do?” Claudia asked.

  “As much as I like my current plan of avoid-at-all-costs, I can’t do it forever. I can only have a pity party for so long and I can’t lay around feeling sorry for myself, as fun as that sounds. I’ll probably go into work tomorrow and figure out how to find out what normal looks like going forward.”

  “We’re here if you need anything. You know that, right?”

  “Yeah. Thank you.”

  “It might not be the right time, but…what happened between you and Luke?” Maria asked.

  “You mean up at the cabin or before?”

  “Both?”

  “I want to know about the cabin,” Claudia said.

  Rowan took a deep breath and summed up from Luke showing up at the door to when she dropped him off at the hotel.

  “Wow,” Claudia said. “That’s…”

  “Obnoxious and out of line?”

  “Kind of romantic…?” Maria said behind her.

  “Maybe…if it had happened to anyone other than me.”

  They lay in silence for several minutes and Rowan soaked up the feeling of unconditional love and acceptance.

  “You know,” Claudia said. “This would be really hot if you were a lesbian. We could make a fortune from internet porn.”

  Rowan laughed at the abrupt suggestion. “I love you guys and I’m sorry to disappoint, but I’m firmly in heteroville—even though I’m about to swear off guys. I wish I was—it might make my love life easier.”

  “Men don’t have exclusivity on being assholes,” Maria said. “Love is love and no one is immune to heartbreak.”

  “A very sad and true statement,” Rowan said.

  “On that positive note,” Claudia said, “we got pizza and pralines and cream ice cream. Wanna Netflix and chill?”

  “As long as chill means eat our weight in pizza and ice cream and cry while we watch a Nicolas Sparks movie,” Rowan said.

  “What else would it mean?” Claudia asked.

  “With you two? Voodoo hexes and a sacrificial virgin.”

  Claudia rolled out of the bed. “Like we know any virgins.”

  Chapter 19

  Rowan turned into the shopping center where the dental clinic was located and pulled around back to the employee parking. She’d taken Claudia and Maria’s suggestion to stay home yesterday and relax, but it had been a miserable failure. Instead of relaxing, she’d analyzed and reanalyzed everything about her relationship with Michael and where it had gone so wrong that he’d been able to walk away. She’d analyzed her non-relationship with Luke and why, after all these years, he’d come back into it—in the middle of her wedding no less. More than anything, she’d wondered what it was about her that made it so easy for the men who supposedly loved her to walk away.

  All the avoidance she’d managed had come crashing down like a house of cards. No amount of ice cream was going to fix that. She needed to be busy—to have something to occupy her mind so she couldn’t think because now that she’d started to think, she couldn’t stop.

  Flipping down the sun visor, she checked her makeup one last time. It had taken forever to cover up the circles under her eyes. Now she only looked slightly tired instead of like she hadn’t slept in four days.

  Grabbing her bag from the passenger seat, she exited the car and used the remote to lock the car.

  “There she is!”

  She looked over her shoulder at the shout. A group of people with cameras rushed toward her from the parking lot of the sports bar directly across from the clinic. She glanced around to see who they were talking about before she realized they were talking about her.
r />   Damn it. They must have found out where she worked from her Facebook profile. Never, ever again would she be so careless with her profile. She was still considering deleting it and being done with it completely. Direct messages from people she hadn’t spoken to since high school—hell, half of them she’d never spoken to in high school. Complete strangers asking her personal questions she would think twice about asking her best friends. What was wrong with people?

  She tucked her head down and made a beeline for the door of the clinic.

  “Rowan! Rowan! Did you marry Luke Stone?”

  “Rowan! Are you pregnant?”

  “Rowan! How do you feel about getting left at the altar?”

  “Who were you cheating on? Luke or your fiancé?”

  Her mother’s voice rang in her ears. A lady does not point fingers. She may not have been talking about the middle finger at the time, but the lesson was fitting for the situation. Besides, Rowan didn’t want to give them any more reason to post unflattering pictures of her on the internet—she could only imagine what these would look like.

  Not giving them the satisfaction of an answer, she swung the door to the clinic open and slipped inside, pulling it tight behind her.

  “You’re here.” Sierra stared wide-eyed at her.

  “I’m sure you’ve heard there was no honeymoon,” she said.

  “Yeah. I…uh. Sorry? I mean…let me go get Doctor Joyce. She’ll want to talk to you.” Sierra scurried around the desk without making eye contact.

  Rowan watched her leave, then turned back to Rosie, the clinic’s receptionist. “What was that about?”

  “The paparazzi have been all over this clinic since we opened yesterday,” she said.

  Her shoulders sagged. “Awesome.”

  “It got so bad Doc J had to call the police to get them to vacate the premises.”

  “Wonderful.” She crossed the reception area and pushed through the door to the examination rooms and headed directly to the lead dentist’s office. There was no point in putting her things in her locker—she had a feeling she was going to have to take her time off whether she wanted it or not.

  Sierra exited the office as Rowan approached and gave her a half smile, half wince. “Sorry,” she whispered.

  “It’s okay. I should have expected something like this,” Rowan said.

  She knocked on the open door and stepped in.

  Joyce came around her desk. “Rowan, why don’t you close the door and have a seat?”

  Doing as she was asked, Rowan sat on the edge of the cushioned chair.

  “I know you’ve had some upheaval in your life over the last few days, weeks really with your mom’s health scare, and I’m truly sorry for that. But this is a family business and some clients have expressed concerns about the type of attention this situation has brought to the clinic,” Joyce said.

  “What type of attention?” Rowan was confused. What had she missed?

  “Yesterday the photographers and reporters outside made it extremely difficult for some of the patients to get in for their appointments. We were fielding so many calls, patients couldn’t call in and the few that did manage to get through canceled because they didn’t want to deal with it.”

  “But that’s going to happen whether I’m here or not.”

  “Not if I’m able to put out a notice that you aren’t working at the clinic,” Joyce said.

  Rowan gasped. “Are you firing me?”

  Joyce reached out a hand, covering one of Rowan’s. “No! Of course not. I just think it would be better if you took the time off that you were already planning to take. Maybe a few extra days until this whole thing can die down and they get distracted by the next piece of celebrity gossip.”

  “What if it doesn’t die down?”

  “We’ll cross that bridge if we get to it.”

  That wasn’t exactly encouraging, but what choice did she have? “Okay.”

  “Rowan, this isn’t forever. I’m not firing you, but I do have to think about what’s best for the practice and for the patients. Maybe this will give you some time to figure things out as well.”

  “Sure.” In a daze, she stood and turned to leave the office.

  “Do you need anything?”

  Rowan shook her head. “Nope. I’m good.” Since she couldn’t have the one thing she needed—a distraction from her life—there wasn’t anything else she needed.

  “Call if you do, all right?”

  She nodded and left the office, leaving without saying anything to Rosie or Sierra. It wasn’t fair to them, but she couldn’t handle any more looks of pity and or uncomfortable offers of help.

  Bracing for the onslaught of questions, she walked as calmly as she could to her car, head down and silent. Now she understood why celebrities always wore huge sunglasses when they were out in public. She ignored the questions and got in her car, locking the doors. Checking her rearview, she backed out of the space—if they didn’t want to get hit, they’d jump out of the way.

  A few rushed to their cars to follow her and she made no effort to speed off. Let them follow her because she planned on driving aimlessly for as long as possible.

  She couldn’t go to work. Soon she might not even be able to go home, or leave home if they found out where she lived. None of this would have happened if Luke had just let the past be in the past. Who the hell did he think he was, waltzing back into her life as if she hadn’t moved on? As if she hadn’t been minutes away from marrying someone else? Was she a freaking toy that he had to have because someone else wanted her? Was that what this whole thing was about? He was jealous because she had finally, finally moved on and tried to be happy.

  How dare he? And he probably wasn’t dealing with half the crap she was because he probably lived in some big house with lots of security and a fence. She didn’t even live in a gated complex.

  The longer she drove, the angrier she became until she pulled into the parking lot of a liquor store because she was out of ice cream and vodka calories didn’t count, damn it.

  She stormed into the store and found the vodka aisle, grabbing a bottle of Grey Goose and a bottle of soda water. Setting the bottles down with a thud, she drummed her fingers on the counter.

  “Hey, aren’t you—?”

  “Yes,” she snapped. “I’m the woman who got left at the altar when Luke Stone interrupted my wedding. No, we didn’t get married. No, I’m not pregnant. No, I don’t know where he is.”

  The guy blushed and looked down at the bottles. “Uh, I was going to ask if you worked at Hill Family Dentistry because I think you’re my dentist.”

  Rowan blanched and covered her face with her hands. “I’m so sorry.” She dropped her hands and looked at him. “Richard, right?”

  He nodded. “Yeah.”

  “I’m really sorry. It’s been a rough couple of days. I just assumed…” She shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. Half the people who come in here come in because they’re having a bad day. Out of curiosity…who’s Luke Stone?”

  “You—Really?”

  Richard put the bottles in paper sleeves, then in a larger bag together. “Never heard of him.”

  “He’s a country singer,” she said.

  “Ah. That explains it—I’m more of a death metal fan. Thirty-five forty-seven.”

  She handed him her debit card.

  “He really interrupted your wedding?”

  “Yup.”

  He gave her card and the receipt back. “Wow. That’s ballsy.”

  “Yup.”

  “Well, try not to drink it all at one time, okay?”

  She cracked a smile. “Sure. Thanks.”

  “Hope your day gets better.”

  “Me, too.” She took the bag and returned to her car, scanning for anyone with a camera. No one stood out and she hoped she had lost them while she’d driven around aimlessly. So aimlessly, she wasn’t entirely sure where she was.

  She set the bag on the floor
behind the passenger seat and started the engine. Poor Richard. He hadn’t deserved her blowup.

  Luke deserved her blowup.

  She snatched her phone out of her purse and scrolled through her recent calls, stopping at the unassigned number from three weeks ago.

  It answered on the second ring. “Rowan?”

  “Why did you do it? Why couldn’t you leave well enough alone? Is your life so boring and unfulfilling that you had nothing better to do than interrupt my wedding and ruin my life? Again? I just blew up at Richard because I thought he was going to ask me if I was the woman who got left at the altar.”

  “Who’s Richard?” he asked.

  “It doesn’t matter! I can’t go to work because it’s too disruptive to the patients. I—”

  “You were fired?”

  “No, I wasn’t fired, but I may as well have been. The clinic owner is making me take the time off that I had scheduled for my honeymoon. Except I’m not going on my honeymoon and I have nothing else to do except sit around my house drinking ice cream and vodka floats.”

  “Come to Nashville.”

  “What? I’m not going to Nashville,” she almost shouted. Did he not understand she was angry with him?

  “Why not?”

  “Why? Because we’re not together.”

  “But we could be if you gave us another chance. I’m sorry this is affecting your work, but I’m not sorry about what I did. I should have done it a hell of a long time ago. Come out here. I’ll put you up at a hotel if that’s what you want, but I want another chance, Rowan. Let me prove to you that I’m serious.”

  For a dangerous millisecond—a microsecond—she considered it. What would it hurt? Would she be any worse off than she was right now? Probably. Because the last few days had shown her he could still break her heart into thousands of pieces.

  “You’ve disrupted my life enough.” She hung up the phone and tossed it onto the passenger seat.

  Chapter 20

  “Mmm. There is no way he’s going to be able to make that work, Tim,” Rowan said. Tim Gunn left the workroom on Project Runway and she fast-forwarded through to the runway show. She didn’t care about the drama—she had enough drama in her life—she wanted to see the dresses.