“So you deliberately came after me to best your friend?”
“That was part of it…” he hedged.
“All of it,” she corrected.
“But that’s not how it is now.”
“Sure,” she said with a short nod. Her mouth twisted and pain shimmered in the depths of her eyes. “I believe you. It wasn’t a game. And I believe you love me. Why not?”
“Bella, dammit.” He took one step toward her and stopped. If he got too close, he’d reach for her and it would kill him if she wouldn’t let him touch her. His heart ached, his throat was tight and dry and Jesse felt as if he were fighting for his life. And losing.
He shoved one hand through his hair again and wished for the right words. Finally though, he simply had to start. “I admit I started seeing you in the beginning because I wanted your business. I wanted to beat Nick out. But I wanted you again, too. You haunted me for three years!”
Her mouth worked, but she didn’t say anything, she just stood there, watching him, and Jesse felt like a bug under a microscope.
“Everything changed. So damn fast.” He laughed a little, shook his head and scrubbed one hand across the back of his neck. “Hell, Bella, I stopped thinking about just your business weeks ago. And I forgot about the blasted eviction notice because I was spending so much time with you, nothing else mattered.”
Her expression stayed blank. The hurt remained in her eyes. “I don’t believe you.”
“I know.” He took the eviction notice and ripped it in half. Then ripped those halves again. Tossing them to the floor, he said quietly, “Forget about this, Bella. Stay in the damn shop. Stay rent-free! And forget about King Beach taking over Bella’s Beachwear. I don’t want your business. I just want you. I don’t want to lose you.”
“You already have.” Bella looked at him and felt her heart break. Nothing he said now could change the fact that he had deliberately set out to seduce her business out from under her. How could she ever trust that he was telling her the truth?
Pain was so sharp and thick inside her that she could hardly draw a breath. He’d said I love you. And just hours ago, she would have given anything to hear those words from him. Now it was too late. Now he used those words too easily in an attempt to gloss over what he’d done.
She’d lost everything.
In one fell swoop, it was all gone. Dreams. Hopes. A future with the man she loved. It was all dust, blowing out to sea.
“Besides, I was never really yours to lose,” she whispered, realizing the stark truth.
“I don’t accept that,” he told her and in his blue eyes, she read a determination to fight.
Well, it was too late for that.
“You have to accept it, Jesse,” she said, shaking her head and backing away from him. Her fury was gone. The righteous indignation that had spurred her to come here to witness the destruction of everything she cared about had faded away. All that was left now was the pain.
Stepping back from him was the hardest thing she’d ever had to do, but if she didn’t pull away now, she’d never be able to live with herself. “It’s over. All of it.”
“Bella, if you’ll just listen—”
“No.” She headed for the door, never taking her eyes off him. “I’ll move out of the shop. I’ll be gone before the end of the month.”
“I don’t give a damn about that shop. You don’t have to move out,” he snapped.
“Yes, I do.” Her hand closed around the doorknob. She glanced back at him over her shoulder and knew she’d keep this picture of him in her mind always. Backlit by the sun glancing off the ocean behind him, his hair was golden, his eyes in shadow and his jaw tight and hard.
Everything in her wanted to run to him, throw her arms around him and pretend for one more day that what they’d shared was real. That what she felt was reciprocated. That, for once, she had someone who loved her.
But if it wasn’t real, then none of it mattered.
Sighing, she told him, “You won’t be getting my business. Because I am my business and you’ll never have me. You don’t deserve me, Jesse.”
His features tightened and his body flinched as if she’d struck him a physical blow.
“Bella,” he said softly, “give us a chance. Give me a chance.”
“No more chances. I should have known this was how it would end,” she said sadly. “You’ve never made a commitment to anything in your life. I get that now. And I know that’s why you would never commit to me.”
“You’re wrong,” he argued. “I’ve made plenty of commitments and if you’d just listen—”
She interrupted him. “Jesse, you drifted into owning your company. You hired someone else to build your ‘green’ house. All you had to do was show up and live in it. You pay someone to recycle your trash. You pay people to run the Save the Waves foundation. Don’t you get it? You hire people to make commitments for you, so you never have to bother.” She shook her head. “That’s not how I want to live my life.”
“Bella, don’t go.” Three words that sounded as though they’d been forced from his throat.
It was too little, too late.
“If it helps, I won’t be signing with Nick Acona, either.”
“Bella…”
“Goodbye, Jesse.” She opened the door, left the office and closed it behind her with a quiet snick of sound.
Two days later, Jesse was still stunned.
No one had ever told him off the way Bella had.
No one had ever been so right about him.
He’d wanted to argue with her, to refute everything she’d said to him, but she’d pegged him perfectly.
He had gone through life looking for the easiest route. He’d stumbled into a business that suited him, and only when it was placed right in front of him had he made the effort to grow it successfully. He did take a backseat in the running of his ocean foundation. He’d found good people to run it, then salved his conscience by writing hefty checks.
And damn it, she was right about something else, too. He could put two trashcans into every cubicle at the office. The janitorial staff would probably thank him profusely for making that job a little easier.
It was a hell of a thing when you got a wake-up call from the woman you loved and she was telling you that you didn’t deserve her.
Even worse, he thought, when she was right.