The knock on the cottage door sliced through her like a rifle shot.
Ariana Westwood, heir to the Westwood oil-and-gas fortune and imminent bride to Jackson O’Connell, dug her fingernails into her palms and froze in place on the sofa.
The knocking turned to pounding.
“Ariana, open the door.”
Hunter Joseph, multimillionaire real-estate developer, scorchingly hot male and instigator of her massively cold feet was reacting just as she’d thought he would.
He was not a think-first kind of guy.
She walked to the door of Riley James’s rustic cabin tucked deep in the woods on his private island, undid the deadbolt and swung the thick wooden door open. The black look on Hunter’s face made her heart pound.
“I’m thinking this is a bad idea.”
“Too bad,” he growled, pushing his way past her. “This conversation is happening seven years too late thanks to your mother and it isn’t waiting a minute longer.”
She pushed the door shut and turned to face him. “You haven’t exactly been crying into your cereal, Hunter. You never could make up your mind between Rachel and me, but I guess you finally did.”
“I came for you that night, Ari.” His blue gaze blazed into her, singeing her skin. “You knew it was killing me here. That there was no way I could stay. But your mother convinced me it would be best for everyone if I left you alone. She made it clear I wasn’t good enough for you.”
Her heart splintered apart. “I was in love with you, Hunter. I would have followed you to the end of the earth. You should have known that.”
His face darkened. “You were a Westwood, Ari. You were untouchable. And what did I have to offer? The legacy of my father?”
“So you shacked up with Rachel? How in the world did you think that would make me feel? Seeing you with her nearly killed me.”
He raked a hand through his hair. “She wanted me. She made me feel like I wasn’t a second-class citizen.”
“And I didn’t? God, Hunter, you were everything to me.”
His mouth twisted. “My father annihilated half your father’s retirement funds. How do you think he would have felt about me carting his baby off to New York?”
“You are not your father,” she snapped, waving her hand at him. “I hope you’ve at least had that epiphany.”
He wasn’t listening. His gaze was trained on her hand. On the two-carat solitaire Jackson had placed on it.
“He couldn’t even get the ring right.”
“The ring is beautiful, Hunter.”
He shook his head. “It’s not you. Ari. You always said you wanted a square-cut diamond. That a square-cut was solid…that it would last forever.”
A solitaire was too delicate, too tenuous…As if when love fell off the edges, it had nowhere to go.
She felt the colour drain from her face as she remembered her words. “So here are the rules,” she told him hoarsely, feeling herself fall off the edge. “We talk. You stay there—” she pointed to one end of the sofa in the living room where a fire was burning, “—and I stay there.” She pointed to the other.
His eyes glittered. “Scared if I touch you your wedding will go up in flames, Ari?”
She was afraid it already had.
She pointed wordlessly at the sofa. Hunter sat. But somehow she knew it was far too dangerous to do even that, so she paced. “Why now? Why do this now when I’ve finally found happiness? When I’m about to marry someone else?”
“You know I wouldn’t be here right now if you loved him, Ari.”
A hot wetness stung the backs of her eyes. “You’re asking me to give up everything. Jackson is a good man, Hunter. He has never let me down. Ever.”
“Neither will I.” He clenched his hands into fists as she paced toward him. “‘Sit down or I swear I will put my hands on you and I promise, if I do, I won’t take them off.’
She sat, her heart slamming against the wall of her chest.
“I was hurting, Ari,” he said roughly. “Your mother was right about one thing. It wasn’t the right time for us. I needed to go away and find myself. To figure out who I was before I could be with you.”
“ You got engaged to another woman. That’s more than finding yourself. That’s moving on.” Fury mixed with heartbreak, sending her hurtling beyond the point of no return. “I hate you for that.”
“Hate, I can work with,” he said grimly. “Do you want to know why I broke off my engagement, Ari? Because I bought that piece of land on the point. And I built a house there.”
If her heart wasn’t already in a million pieces it was now, knowing he’d built a house on the land that had been their place. Without her.
He took her hand. “Not once when I was building that house did I mention it to Rachel. It was insane, here I was planning my future and I didn’t even tell her about it.”
“Hunter—” She wasn’t sure she could do this.
He kept his gaze on hers, willing her to listen. “The day the house was finished, I got out of the boat, stood there looking up at it and the only thing I knew for sure was that it was your house, Ari. Our house.”
She heard a sound and realized the broken “Oh” had come from her.
“I went back to New York and ended things with Rachel that night. Your wedding invitation came a day later.”
“You built us a house?”
He shook his head. “I built us a future. You’re the only woman I’ve ever wanted. The only thing I doubted was whether I was good enough for you or not.”
Her gaze fell away from his as her heart went into free fall. Jackson’s diamond glinted in the firelight.
“Take it off,” Hunter said softly. “And I’ll spend the rest of my life proving my love for you.”
A moment of blinding certainty came over her. It came from the place deep down inside her that had never stopped loving him even for a moment. She tugged off the ring and set it on the coffee table without taking her eyes off him. The square-cut, canary-yellow diamond he pulled out of his pocket made her gasp.
He dropped down on one knee and slid it on her finger. “You marrying me tomorrow?’”
Her head was spinning far too much to even contemplate answering that question. Hunter smiled and scooped her up into his arms. “Allow me to convince you.”
***
Tyra Brown climbed the steps to Riley James’s cottage, the sight of him standing there with a dish towel slung over his shoulder doing funny things to her stomach.
“You shaved.”
“It was time I cleaned up.”
And how he cleaned up.
He cocked his head to one side. “You managing a wedding tomorrow?”
“I have no idea. The whole thing is a shambles. Claire and Bradley aren’t talking to each other, Jackson was working his way through a bottle of Scotch when I left, and Ariana is still nowhere to be found.”
Riley shrugged. “Out of your hands.”
She nodded. What was within her control was a kiss, however, and tonight she was getting one from Riley James.
Tomorrow? Who knew what would happen. Quite frankly, she was prepared for anything.