Love, Chocolate, and Beer (Cactus Creek) (43 page)

He gave her an annoyed look. “Don’t stop now. You’re on a roll. Spit it out. Have the guts to do what you should’ve been doing the whole time. Tell me the truth—when later?”

She swallowed thickly. “Valentine’s Day.”

His razor sharp flinch cut her just as deep. She closed her eyes miserably. “That’s when I found out Noah had contacted Derek. But it wasn’t until the day after that I learned how my hasty proposal had started an avalanche effect—the wineries that made offers on your building only did so because Noah had been calling around to follow-up on my idea.” She sank further into her disdain for herself. “After that, it felt like I just couldn’t ever find an appropriate time to tell you.”

“Right, because I was so busy being a Valentine schmuck, making it impossible for you to bomb that news on me.” Luke’s jaw was clenching in measured beats, as if he were forcibly restraining himself. “Then what?” he barked.

“Well, then I broke Derek’s heart a little.” Now Dani was the one sounding bitter. “I got to first describe, then yank my brilliant plans away from my big brother, the person who has shoved all his dreams of having a winery onto the backburner just so I could keep running my brewpub. Just so I wouldn’t have to suffer through all my failures that put us in this situation to begin with.” Suddenly, she felt so young, so stupid. “I failed him yet again.”

His angry gaze faltered a bit, concern for her softening his glare. With one last glimmer of hope, she tried to grab hold of that lifeline. “I know it was way late in the game, but I
did
tell Noah I couldn’t go through with it. Not at your expense.”

He averted his eyes and threw out flippantly, “You know, if you’d just trusted me enough to be honest with me, you could’ve saved yourself a whole lot of guilt.” His jaw ticked. “And you wouldn’t have had to waste all your time ‘helping me’ so much.”

“None of that was out of guilt,” she shot back forcefully.

With a disbelieving snort, he countered stonily, “You mean to tell me you don’t feel a smidgen of guilt over being responsible for what Quinn and I are going through?”

Her heart tore at the seams at the betrayal she saw in his eyes. “Of course I do. I know this is all my fault.” She reached out but stopped herself from touching him. “I’m so sorry.”

Silence filled the room and all emotion disappeared from Luke’s expression.

Dani felt her legs almost give out when Luke reached forward and slid his hand along her jawline, cupping her face tenderly as he wiped the tears running down her cheeks. “I know you’re sorry, Dani.” With a low, tortured sigh, he leaned forward and buried his lips in her hair for the briefest of moments before whispering, “But I think I need some time away from you right now.”

Then he left the apartment without another word.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

AS FAR AS
refuges for escape go, his shop wasn’t exactly the most clandestine, but Luke didn’t care. He knew Dani wouldn’t come after him.

The look she wore when he’d shut the door behind him was burned into his retinas.

But he just hadn’t been able to remain there another second.

Glancing at the clock, he was surprised to discover how long they’d been fighting.

Midnight.

Usually the only time of night he and Dani could be asleep in bed together—the few nights a week she wasn’t scheduled to close—before he got up to make his four a.m. chocolates. This would be the first night in weeks that he wasn’t going to be there to see her open her eyes and sleepily wish him a good day at work.

If it were up to him, he’d never miss another morning like that for the rest of his life.

That still didn’t erase what she had done though.

Regardless of how much his heart wanted to forgive her, his head just…couldn’t. Quinn and Cooper were paying the price, and he was about to lose everything he’d worked years to create and achieve.

His mind couldn’t help but replay all the instances over the past months where Dani had to have lied to him—white lies or lies of omission, it didn’t matter. Regardless the reason, or the clean-up that followed, like a barrage of bitter bullets, every little memory, even to the tiniest detail, pelted at him. Pissed him off. Made him hurt even more. Mostly because they were secondary wounds that were simply adding new pain to the already gaping hole in his heart that she’d torn out of him by the betrayal of trust. Not his trust for her, but rather, the opposite.

She should have trusted him enough to tell him the truth. Trusted that he’d continue to love her. Trusted their relationship enough to stop hiding from him.

This whole time, he thought he’d been making progress, building a foundation for the future. But tonight, it was obvious—she still didn’t trust him.

His phone chirped just then.

An incoming text.

He couldn’t get himself to open it.

Two more chirps about five minutes apart, and then a chime. A voice mail.

That was odd. Dani never left him voicemails. Pulling out his phone, he scrolled through the messages and felt his heart stop.

The texts weren’t from Dani. They were from Derek.

>> GET TO THE HOSPITAL JUST OFF THE NORTH EXIT. MY SISTER NEEDS YOU.

>> LOOK, I KNOW YOU TWO HAD A FIGHT BUT YOU’RE NEVER GOING TO FORGIVE YOURSELF IF YOU’RE NOT HERE.

>> SWALLOW YOUR DAMN PRIDE AND GET DOWN HERE YOU STUBBORN ASS!

Holy shit. What the hell was going on? Luke grabbed his keys and ran.

The fastest, and slowest, ten minutes of his life later, he was rushing into the emergency room to find Derek and Dani talking to a doctor at the far end.

Seeing Dani standing there, and not lying in some gurney on the way to surgery, hit him with a wave of relief so strong, he felt sucker-punched.

When he got near enough to hear their exchange with the doctor, however, the next sucker-punch he felt was one of sheer shock.

“We managed to stabilize your father for now,” explained the doctor, “but you two will need to make a decision shortly. We can transport him back to the care home but really, we don’t advise it given the circumstances. I know this isn’t an easy one to make but you really do need to consider all I’ve told you about his quality of life from this point on.”

Luke had never been more confused in his life.

Dani and Derek’s father was still alive?

Not wanting to barge in, he held back and watched Dani follow the doctor through the double doors that led to the ICU.

Derek turned and looked up, relief blending with the concern etched in his expression. He headed over to sit next to Luke in the deserted waiting area.

“Thanks for coming, man. I just really thought you needed to be here. You and Dani are both so stubborn—ˮ

“Derek, what in the world is going on? I thought your dad passed away from a heart attack a few years ago.”

“He did have a heart attack, which resulted in a massive stroke that sent him into a coma shortly after. Dani would never have told you our dad died. Most folks just assume he did. And you wouldn’t have heard otherwise from any of us that know differently because frankly, none of us will ever talk about it.” Luke saw the stark pain streak across his face. “Dani blames herself for our dad’s heart attack.” His voice was rough with long-held sympathy for his sister. “Every spare dime she has goes right into his life support and the care home he’s been in for the past three years. And every spare moment she has, she spends there at his side. Apologizing. Praying for him to come back. Begging him to forgive her for failing him so badly.”

Luke felt icy dread prick across his skin as each memory of her little personal jabs about how she’s failed in the past came rushing back.

“Dani has been blatantly ignoring the doctors who’ve been telling her for years that our father is almost assuredly never going to wake up, definitely never as more than a vegetable even if he did. Still, she simply won’t let him go. And I have no doubt that she’d sooner bury herself in debt then be the one to pull the plug on him. So she just tortures herself by keeping him alive at the Cactus Creek care home and going through her weekly rituals of apologizing for being the one that put him in there all because of her misguided trust.”

Trust.

Shit. He should’ve known there was something more to it. He should have forced her to talk about it. The mere thought of Dani going through this maimed him. He couldn’t possibly imagine being the one experiencing it.

“Why does she blame herself?” he asked finally.

“Because it was all my fault,” she said simply as she came up behind them.

Turning, Luke was struck mute by how devastated she looked. Broken.

Her dull voice turned hollow as she continued through gritted teeth, “Because I made the stupid mistake of trusting a man who stole my father’s most prized accomplishments, who nearly destroyed our family business, and who I was foolish enough to believe loved me as much as I loved him.”

Instantly, Luke’s hands fisted with rage. Not in jealousy. In pure, deadly fury over the man who would have done this to her—betray her to such a vicious degree. He destroyed her. Her heart, her ability to trust, her faith in love.

This
was what Derek had been talking about on Valentine’s Day. Luke had thought it was a bad break-up, akin to his being left at the altar by his ex. But nothing,
nothing
had prepared Luke for the magnitude of how badly she’d been hurt.

Dani walked over the rest of the way and stood just out of arm’s reach. “Starting about six years ago, my dad began finally making a name for himself in the craft beer world, taking home trophies and creating brews that distributors were offering small fortunes to bottle. But like I told you before, bottling was never his thing. He turned all the offers down. And there were many. One more persistent than the rest.” The last glimmer of life in her eyes dimmed then. “After his first heart attack four years ago, I took full control of the brewpub. Dad stayed on to brew occasionally but all decision-making became mine alone. That’s when it all began tumbling downhill. The day our dad decided to choose me as his successor instead of Derek.”

Derek broke in with a sharp, “That’s
not
true and you know it, Dani. You were born to that position in ways I never was. And as far as your decision-making, you ran into a string of bad luck. It happens. Hell, we both saw how much bad luck Dad used to have to overcome. And just like him, you did. You got us through it all.”

“Except one,” she argued back weakly.

This version of Dani standing before him was breaking Luke’s heart. Even her arguments held no fire, nothing but anguish, and suffocating guilt.

Over what, he still didn’t understand.

Derek gripped her shoulders. “The sheer amount of Dad’s hospital bills would have crippled most small businesses, Dani. You did what you had to do.” Turning to Luke, he explained, “Our dad didn’t have more than the bare minimum health insurance. Before the first heart attack, he’d been healthy as a horse. He rarely even came down with a cold. In our toughest years, shortly after our mom left, he cut back on a lot to make ends meet, his health insurance being one of the first to go on the chopping block. And none of us knew.”

Anger leapt into his voice. “Those vultures who’d been trying to distribute dad’s beers had done their research. Because they knew exactly how much we owed when they came knocking on our door with their offer.”

A bitter, self-flogging laugh drifted out of Dani. “And I opened that door wide open for them to come right in and take everything our dad worked his entire life to build, to be proud of, to leave behind as his legacy.”

When Derek started to object, a small spark of life ignited in her voice. “No! You don’t get to play this off. This was on me. I knew dad didn’t want to bottle his beers and I took the meeting anyway. A guppy thinking she could play in the same tank with the sharks. What’s worse, I did it without
hiring
a lawyer.”

That last statement had Derek’s mouth snapping shut, his jaw clenching harshly as if holding back a tidal wave of words.

This time it was Dani who turned to give Luke an explanation. “I didn’t hire a lawyer, I just trusted him is all. After finally convincing our dad that bottling was our last option, I had my boyfriend broker the deal for us.” Her eyes narrowed, her voice taking on a hateful edge he’d never heard her use before. “Eric was a corporate lawyer working in one of the biggest firms in Phoenix; deals like this one were child’s play for him. And when he refused to let me retain his services fully, I thought he was just being Eric. The great boyfriend he’d always been. The one man I’d allowed myself to fall in love with and actually trust.”

Her shoulders fell with the weight of utter disappointment her memories brought. “It wasn’t until long after we had no legs to stand on did I discover that the real reason he hadn’t wanted us to retain him officially was because he’d already been retained…to negotiate on behalf of the bottling company, who’d apparently also given him an exorbitant finder’s fee to set the whole thing up. To set
me
up.”