Engaged in Embellishments: Tulle and Tulips, Book 5.5 Read Free

times since, he would not allow a day to pass without asking her to marry him. He promised, every day, at least once, he would tell her how he felt and remind her how serious he was about spending his life with her.
    He’d gotten in later than anticipated last night, but he’d had a plan. She’d derailed his plan with her seduction. Then the days and weeks of work and travel had caught up to him in the afterglow.
    Pushing off the ballroom floor, he went after his shirt, finding it where it had fallen when she stripped him. His pants and shoes were where they’d fallen too. On the rare occasion he fell asleep before Lori, or left a mess, she cleaned it up. Having everything in its right place helped her feel in control and settled, like her world was right.
    She’d left his clothes, not even bothering to straighten them. Silently impactful, the basket of goodies he’d brought sat where she’d left it the night before. Untouched.
    Her world was not right.
    Trevor’s heart pounded with the painfully precise force of a jackhammer. Life had forgotten kindness for too long, endangering them and then separating them, but they’d found their way back to each other. They’d found happiness capable of chasing away darkness. They didn’t even argue, not that he gave her anything to get upset about.
    Until now.
    Pulling his phone out, he called her. Every unanswered ring was a jab to his heart. Her world was really not right.
    Dressed, he grabbed the basket she’d left behind and went to find her. He wasn’t sure what he’d say when he finally found her, but he needed to come up with something. It had taken a long time for her to open up and tell him everything she’d gone through, every bit of darkness she’d lived. The more she’d shared about herself and her past, the more he understood why she didn’t accept his proposals.
    She loved him. He had no doubt about that. But anytime she’d found herself in a relationship she wanted to keep she’d ended up losing it. She’d have backed out of Tulle and Tulips if her lone, longtime friend Misty hadn’t stood by her the whole way. Lori was afraid to believe he would be different, and allowing herself to say yes to a proposal meant she believed. Waiting for that day, for her, would be worth however long it took. He’d thought she was getting close to acceptance.
    Until he’d hurt her.
    “Damn it.” Slamming into his car, growing angrier with himself over every second that ticked by, he headed toward her home.
    The hurt on her face in the moments before the accident that had almost killed him, an accident she saw herself as being responsible for, couldn’t hurt as intensely as what she must be feeling.
    The fear of rejection in her eyes when she’d stepped off his elevator after a long absence, when she’d thought he would reject her, couldn’t be as fierce as what she feared now.
    He’d let her down in a way that would have her doubting the security of her world.
    She wasn’t at her apartment, though she rarely was these days. She hadn’t gone to his, where they spent most of their time. She hadn’t gone to his office apartment. The only option left was that she’d gone to stay with one of the Tulle and Tulips women, but there were eleven of them. And it was the middle of the night. He would call every one of them if it wasn’t the early morning hours of an important wedding day.
    Lori would not appreciate him putting a blight on Darci’s wedding.
    He tried calling her again, tried every few minutes, but she never answered. Voicemail after voicemail he pleaded desperately for her to call him back. To let him know where she was. To let him say he was sorry.
    She didn’t even text him.
    He grabbed a fresh suit and tie on his way out of his apartment but didn’t change. Instead of going back to the hotel right away, Trevor went to the beach where he’d tried to take her on a date before. There’d been a fair in town, with a Ferris wheel.
    As far as he