“Well, isn’t this some piss-poor timing,” Paige mutters under her breath from beside me, echoing the reaction going on inside my own head. “Where the hell’s our getaway car when we need it?”
“I can’t ignore him.”
Evelyn catches my troubled gaze. “You sure? Here comes my car. We can be gone in the next five seconds.”
Part of me would like nothing better than to flee the scene and not look back, but running has never been the way I handle problems. Never mind that’s what I fully intend to do where Jared Rush is concerned.
Daniel motions me over to him, a big, welcoming smile plastered across his face. “Melanie, sweetheart, come here for a minute.”
I exhale a pent-up sigh. “I’ll be right back.”
The men all turn toward me as I approach their group. Daniel hurries forward to meet me with a quick kiss on my cheek before lacing his fingers through mine.
“Gentlemen,” he says, leading me over to his colleagues. “I’d like you to meet my better half, Melanie.”
They all chuckle politely at the tired adage and bob their heads at me in greeting. Daniel wraps his arm around my waist. He’s trying to appear relaxed, but his hold on me and his grin are both too rigid to be sincere.
“We just came back from touring one of the firm’s newest projects,” he tells me. “Not only are we ahead of schedule, but it looks like we’re also coming in well under budget.”
“Congratulations.”
The elder of the two other men in suits gives me a nod as he pats Daniel’s shoulder. “Thanks to your fiancé, we’ve all got plenty of cause to celebrate today. You keep delivering the way you have been lately, son, and we’ll have no choice but to promote you to partner.”
“Thank you, Mr. Merritt.” Daniel’s tone is so deferential, I almost expect to see him bow.
“Young lady, would you care to join us for lunch and a cocktail?”
“Oh, I—”
“—She’s already eaten,” Daniel blurts over me. His anxious glance flicks to my face. “I mean, I assume you’ve already eaten with your friends.”
“Yes, I have.”
“But I’d love it if you joined us,” he hedges.
“I can’t.”
“Well, then,” Mr. Merritt says. “We’re going to head inside now. Melanie, it was a pleasure to finally meet you. We’ll have to have you both out to the house sometime. My wife is always eager to meet the significant others of the firm’s shining stars.”
Daniel inclines his head. “We’d enjoy that very much, sir.”
I can’t muster any kind of reply. All my words are clogged at the back of my throat, kept in place by the disbelief I’m trying desperately to bite back.
“My fiancé?” I gasp after the men disappear inside the restaurant. “You told your boss we’re engaged?”
“It’s no big deal,” he says in a hushed tone. “It just slipped out one day when I was talking to him. You have to understand, Crowne and Merritt is a small family firm. They care about things like this. Stability and traditional values. Appearances matter, especially in their prospective partners.”
“Do they care about the truth?”
He blows out a short breath. “I don’t understand why you’re upset over this. There’s no harm in saying we’re engaged.”
“No harm, except it’s not true and you’ve just dragged me into the lie.”
I don’t know why I’m arguing. I have no intention of spending any time with Daniel’s colleagues or their wives. I’m not even sure why I’m still standing here talking to him at all.
Maybe it was only a careless fib, a small white lie blurted out because he was nervous or thought it would win his boss’s approval. I don’t care about the hows or the whys. It’s the principle of what he did that bothers me most.
Because if he can lie about small things, how can I ever be sure he’s not lying about the big things. Things like gambling problems and enormous debts owed to Las Vegas loan sharks.
Things I’m afraid I wouldn’t discover until he has no choice but to admit them.
If not for what happened with Jared, I’d still be blindly believing I could trust anything Daniel Hathaway says.
But I can’t now.
“I’m done, Daniel.”
He frowns. “Done?” His face collapses momentarily, a look of distress, even panic, washing over him. “If I’ve upset you this much, let me fix it. I told Mr. Merritt we’re engaged, so let’s do it. Let’s get engaged.”
He says it as if the thought of marrying me is as life-changing to him as asking me out to a movie. As if the more important thing to him is propping up this lie with an even bigger one. He doesn’t want to marry me. He only wants to smooth things over for himself.
God, I’m an idiot. For days I’ve been swamped with guilt over my uninvited attraction to Jared Rush. I’ve been mentally berating myself for kissing him when I’d left things with Daniel unresolved.
Now I feel nothing. I look at this man I thought I loved and I wonder how I ever could have thought he truly cared about me.
He reaches for my hand, but I pull it back. “Shit, Melanie. Please. I can’t afford to lose you. Not right now. Not over something as stupid as this. Let me make it up to you. Marry me.”
I laugh because I can’t help it. As far as proposals go, this has got to be the lamest effort any man has ever uttered. Worse than that, I don’t believe a single word of it.
Not that it matters. I wouldn’t have said yes anyway. Not when my head has been full of doubts and misgivings about him ever since Jared exposed his first lie to me.
“My friends are waiting, Daniel. I have to go now. Goodbye.”
I turn to walk away. He ducks into my path, his body an obstacle blocking my escape.
“Melanie, wait. You don’t mean this.” There is a wildness in his eyes, an authentic fear. “I agree, we can’t have this conversation out here. I’ll come by your house later today
