Candy Store

parents, “Did Derek say anything to you about needing to leave early?”
    His mother and father shook their heads, looking worried. “No. I wonder if something he ate didn’t agree with him?”
    Callie murmured something that was supposed to be comforting, but her heart wasn’t it in. Her boyfriend had walked out on her for the second time in twenty-four hours. She fought back the tears that threatened to spill, not wanting his family to see her looking so pathetic.
    Jed, clueless as ever, sneered and said, “Geez. The dumb little brother of mine doesn’t even know how to take care of his lady.”
    Something inside Callie snapped. “You don’t know the first thing about your brother,” she said and then turned and walked out the restaurant.
    He didn’t want her.
    No man who was worth anything had ever wanted her.
    Callie had been dumped before, but this time everything was different.
    He had said he loved her. No one had ever said that before.
    She took a breath to pull some oxygen into her chest, up into her brain cells.
    He'd said I love you.
    And he'd meant it.
    Something must have happened at the restaurant. Something bad enough to make him run.
    She was going to find out what it was.
    And by god, she was going to fight for him.
    And for love.

Chapter Eleven

    Callie walked the three blocks to Derek’s loft in a driving rain. She didn’t care that she was getting soaked to the bone. She didn’t care that her teeth were chattering.
    Love like this only came once in a lifetime, and no matter what she had to do, or how much of her pride she had to give up, she wasn’t going to let it go.
    Her hand a tight, frozen fist, she banged on Derek’s steel door with all of her might. When he didn’t answer immediately, she banged again, using the pain of bone and flesh against metal as a reminder of all that she was fighting for.
    Of what she was fighting against.
    The rain poured down on the front stoop in sheets and still he didn’t answer the door. Intent on waiting for him for as long as it took, Callie slid down to the floor, shivering in her thin sheath dress and heels.
    She wrapped her arms tightly around her and rocked back and forth, finally letting the tears that she had been holding back merge with the streaks of rain across her face.

    * * * * *

    Derek pushed his Ferrari as hard as it would go on the farm roads outside of Saratoga. On a night like this, where the hail was as big as his fist, everyone else had the sense to keep off the roads. Which suited him just fine as he watched his speedometer inch past eighty, then ninety, then one hundred. He drove like a madman, heedless of his own safety, until he skidded to a stop, narrowly missing both a large deer and a deep ditch.
    He'd been a fool, not once but twice.
    Only, Callie's betrayal cut him a million times deeper than anything else ever had.
    Gripping the wheel tightly, he skidded back onto the road, heading for home. He was going to drown his sorrow in anything other than tequila—Derek was never going to drink tequila again, all it did was remind him of Callie’s taste—and then he was going to take care of something he had been putting off for too long.
    He was going to shut down Sweet Returns.
    What did he need with true love and a job he loved? All they’d ever done was cause him trouble.
    But when Derek came to a screeching halt in front of his loft, he flew out of his car, unable to believe what he was seeing.
    Callie was curled up like a sick child on his front steps, her eyes clenched tightly shut to keep out the rain, her arms and legs covered with red welts from the hail.
    His anger forgotten in his fear, he ran to her and picked her up in his arms. Murmuring sounds of comfort into her hair, trying desperately to warm her with his heat, he fumbled with the lock in the door. Finally managing to get it open, he hurried inside and kicked the door shut.
    “I’m so cold, Derek. So cold,” she said through the loud clacking of her teeth.
    Goosebumps covered her skin and he hugged her tighter to him.
    “I’m going to run a hot bath for you, sweetheart,” he said, the endearment slipping from his lips before he could stop himself.
    He' d never stop loving her.
    The shock of realization rocked him the rest of the way off his axis. “Once I take these wet clothes off of you, I promise you’ll feel better.”
    She didn’t say anything, she just shivered and looked up into his eyes as if she was trying to tell him something