“No. I’m relieved. I thought I loved him. I wanted so desperately to love him. He seemed perfect. But, oh my God, the ego. Everything was always about him. And he was incredibly selfish in bed.”
“Yuck. TMI. Seriously between this and Daisy last night, I—” Daff broke off abruptly when Daisy burst into tears. “Shit. Deedee, I’m sorry.”
“It’s just . . . I think—I think I’m heartbroken. But how can I be heartbroken? You have to be in love to have your heart broken. Isn’t that how it usually works?” God, she was a mess. And this wasn’t even about her. Her sister’s wedding was in a shambles, and she could think only of herself.
“Everybody knows now. I feel so stupid and humiliated. I don’t understand why he would tell her.”
“Are you sure it was him?” Lia asked, and Daisy shook her head and buried her face in her hands.
“I don’t know. He’s always seemed contemptuous of her; I don’t see him deliberately telling her, but how else would she know?”
“What are you going to do?” Daff asked and Daisy lifted her face to stare at her concerned sisters resolutely.
“Deal with it.”
“And what about you?” Daff directed the question at Lia, who shrugged.
“Mom and Dad are going to be so disappointed,” she said, regret adding weight to her words.
“They’d be more disappointed if you wound up marrying a man you don’t love,” Daff said.
“But they went to so much effort. Look at this place; it cost the earth. And all the guests; they’ve all lost money. How can I possibly repay everybody?”
“The people who love you want you to be happy, and the guests got a nice relaxing weekend at a beautiful venue for their trouble. Time to be selfish and think of yourself, Lia.”
“Then I suppose I have a wedding to cancel.”
“Hey, angel.” Mason smiled when Daisy walked into their suite ten minutes later. He looked totally relaxed, kicking back on the sofa with a well-worn paperback facedown on his chest. “How’d it go?”
“The wedding’s off,” Daisy told him, without any inflection in her voice. She kept her gaze carefully averted as she opened the closet and dragged out her suitcase.
“No shit. So you told her? How’d she take it?” He sounded concerned, and Daisy flipped open her suitcase and scanned the interior intently, happy for the task because it allowed her to keep avoiding his gaze.
“The wedding is off. How do you think she took it?” She walked over to the bureau where she had stored a couple of T-shirts and her underwear and withdrew the carefully folded clothes and carried them over to her case.
“She’s okay with you?”
“Uh-huh.” She began to carefully place her clothing back into the case and—from the corner of her eye—she could see his body language change subtly.
“What are you doing?” he asked. His voice had a lethally soft edge to it.
“Packing.”
“Why?”
“No more wedding, so there’s no need for this farce to continue.” She was happy that her voice and hands remained steady, but she still couldn’t meet his eyes, not even when he got up from the sofa and came to stand right beside her. He was much too close. Close enough for her to smell his cologne, to feel his body heat, to hear his soft breathing.
“So we’re going home?” he asked quietly.
“I think it’s best if you went home. Today. I’ll catch a ride back with Daff.”
“What’s going on? Why are you being like this? Has someone upset you?”
“I’m releasing you from our agreement,” she said, with barely a wobble in her voice, and Mason swore before taking hold of her elbow and turning her to face him. The movement dislodged the tears that had been brimming in her eyes, and he swore again as he watched the twin silvery tracks scorch their way down her cheeks.
“Who made you cry?” His quiet voice promised retribution to anyone who had dared hurt her, and the hypocrisy of it just made the silent tears flow faster. “Daisy, tell me what happened.”
“Everybody knows,” she said on a broken whisper. “Everybody knows. I’m a laughingstock, a pathetic object of scorn and pity. How ridiculous is that? An entire wedding is being called off, and the only thing people will be talking about is the fact that Daisy McGregor blackmailed a man into being her date.”
“What?” He sounded horrified. God, could he really be this good of an actor? Daisy didn’t know what to think, what to believe; all she knew was that it would be best if he left. Everything between them had happened way too fast; she’d been too caught up in the fantasy of what could be to accept the reality of what was. And the reality was that they would never work. She had allowed herself a brief moment of “what-if,” but that was over now, destroyed by the truth that she’d seen in Shar’s eyes. She and Mason didn’t work. And they never would.
“I need you to leave.”
“Daisy, me leaving would be the wrong move,” he said, his hands tightening on her elbow. “It would just confirm whatever the hell people are thinking. I should stay, make them doubt whatever it is they heard. We should keep up a united front.”
“Why are you doing this?” Her voice was as fractured as her heart, and she clamped her trembling lips together in an effort to regain a modicum of dignity and control before she spoke again.
“I’m doing this because I care about you,” he confessed hoarsely. “Because I don’t want you to go through this alone. Because I want to show them that nothing about what we have is fake.”
“It’s all fake!” At the end of her tether, her voice rose sharply until she was practically screaming. The volume shocked both of them, and she inhaled deeply before speaking again. “I want you out of my life, Mason. This little sideshow is over.”
“Daisy.”
“Permanently out of my life, do you understand?”