Selling Grace: A Light Romance Novel (Art of Grace Book 1) (47 page)

"Sounds perfect," I said, unable to keep the bitterness out of my voice.

He laughed, although there was no humor in the sound. "Hah, that's the way it looked from the outside, I bet," he replied. "And maybe I would have said that it was perfect, if you'd asked me back then. I couldn't see what was right in front of my own eyes."

"Which was what?"

Sanford shrugged, scratched Whiskers a little harder behind the ears. The cat purred loudly, his eyes squeezed shut in slits of ecstasy. "The first sign was after I proposed," he said.

Immediately, the hand of his not on my cat shot out to hold me back as I lunged up from the chair. "Relax! Just let me finish telling the story before you attack!" he implored, and although part of me screamed out for his blood, I forced myself back down into the chair, although my muscles remained tense and ready to spring.

"Anyway, after I proposed, she immediately started going on and on about how she had all of these perfect ideas for the wedding, how we'd have a huge party, how we could invite all these friends of hers, how she could get a huge and expensive dress. I sat there, listening to her talk about all of this, and it suddenly hit me."

"What hit you?" I gave in and asked, after Sanford fell silent for a minute.

"That she really didn't care about me," he answered softly. "I could have been any other man, literally anyone else, and it wouldn't have mattered to her. She wanted the rich husband to buy all her toys and for her to cling to at parties. She didn't care about my history, about anything that made me unique. She didn't say a single thing about our life together. She just wanted to talk about all the benefits that would come to her."

Thinking back to my brief little encounter with Valencia, I nodded. "That seems to describe her pretty well, still."

"Yeah, she hasn't changed at all." Sanford snorted. "I had hoped that when I dumped her, she might take a look at herself and decide to fix some of the... less wonderful aspects of her personality."

Inside my head, I replayed that last sentence. He dumped her! That meant that they weren't engaged, just as he said! Unless he was lying to me, he had been engaged to Valencia, but wasn't with her any longer!

But what was she doing at his house, then? I forced myself to close my mouth and listen, hoping that he'd reveal the answers. It took all my concentration to not burst out with more questions, but I managed to keep my jaw clamped shut.

Sanford frowned at me for a second, as if wondering why I wasn't exploding with questions. "Even with that realization, it took me four months to finally break up with her," he went on after a second. "I tried to gently change her, at first, but I soon realized that she didn't have any inclination to change. She was happy with her shallow, self-centered personality, only caring about things as they affected her. And try as I might, I couldn't get through to her on why this wasn't what I wanted."

He reached up and rubbed the bridge of his nose with two fingers. "As I bet you can guess, she didn't take the breakup well."

"Didn't take it well? It seems like she didn't even notice," I said, not sure if I was joking or not.

"Oh, she definitely noticed when I did it the first time," Sanford insisted. "She very nearly lit my apartment on fire! She broke most of my furniture before I picked her up, bodily threw her out of my apartment, and then threatened to call the police on her if she showed up again. The last I saw of her, she was standing outside of my apartment on the sidewalk, shouting up to me that she wasn't going to return any of the jewelry I bought for her."

I laughed at that. "Wow. She sounds like a gem, herself."

"Trust me, I was more than happy to give up that jewelry in exchange for getting her out of my life," he chuckled along with me. "But I decided that I needed to get out of there. Every time I tried to meet another woman, to move on past her, I'd soon see that she was after the same things. Every other woman I knew was one of Valencia's friends, or at least ran in the same circles. And they all looked at me like a meal ticket on legs."

"So you decided to move away? Head back to your hometown?" I guessed.

He nodded. "And that's why I showed up here with no plans. I just needed to get away from the city, from all of it. When that offer came in to sell the business, I jumped at it - not because I wanted to get out of the business, but because I wanted to get away from that life that I'd built for myself, all the attention it attracted. I found the Winterhearst mansion for sale, and it seemed like fate was telling me to buy it, so I did - with no other plans or forethought."

In spite of myself, I found my defenses relaxing, dropping away. Sanford sounded like he was telling the truth. If this was a lie, it was unnecessarily elaborate, and it did make sense.

Except, that is, for one big, glaring hole.

"So if you broke up with her," I asked, dreading the answer to this question but needing it nonetheless, "why was Valencia back here, the other day?"

Sanford groaned. "Because she's crazy, that's why!"

I frowned at him, and even Whiskers lifted his head up from the man's lap to look up at him. "Really, I don't know what got into her, but she somehow believed that she could get me back," he went on. "I had to go up to the city to take care of some unexpected problem with closing the deal on selling my apartment up there, so that I could move down here full-time. But when I got there, there wasn't any problem, and the building manager said that some blonde in a slutty getup had been asking about me."

"Valencia," I filled in.

"That's right. And when I got back down here, there she was, trying to move into my house, trying to get her life back! She threw herself at me, insisting that she'd changed, that she was willing to do whatever it took to get me back, that she cared about me."

"And you didn't buy it?" I asked, remembering how the woman looked perfectly made up, sex poured into a slutty little tight dress and heels.

For a moment, Sanford hesitated. "Maybe, a month ago, I might have," he admitted. "I was engaged to her, and that kind of attachment sticks around unless something big happens to disrupt it."

My breath caught in my throat. "And did something big happen to you?"

Before answering, Sanford carefully slipped his fingers under Whiskers and moved the feline off to one side. The cat protested with a soft but annoyed meow, but didn't get up from his new spot next to the man that he'd decided he liked better than me.

"Yes," Sanford did, once his lap was clear. He leaned forward, reaching out and catching up my hands from where they sat on my lap. "It did."

"What was it?"

His eyes seemed to swallow me whole. "I met another woman, one who is the opposite of Valencia in every way, and I fell in love with her."

Chapter Twenty-Eight

*

Oh god, I can't breathe.

"What?" I gasped out, fighting against my chest. Had someone just wrapped their arms around me to strangle me?

Sanford's eyes remained locked on mine, not blinking or looking away. "I found myself stuck with this annoying, exasperating woman living next door to me, and she shattered all of my defenses," he said softly. His fingers rubbed ever so gently against mine, held in his grasp. "I kept on telling myself that I had armored myself against women, that I wasn't going to let myself get caught in that trap of weakness, of falling in love, again. And despite all my defenses, it still happened."

"You love me?" My brain felt as if someone had opened up the top of my head and poured in molasses. I couldn't seem to hold onto any single thought, each one slipping away from my grasp whenever I tried to reach out for it. "But what about you telling me that you didn't want anyone else finding out about us, that you didn't want this to get into anything serious, that we had boundaries?"

Sanford looked almost ready to laugh! That couldn't be right, could it? "Do you know what would have happened if I tried to impose any of those restrictions on Valencia?"

Wordlessly, I shook my head.

"She would have exploded," he finished. "She only wanted me as a status symbol. She would have told everyone, bragged about my wealth. But you never cared about any of that, did you?"

I shook my head again. I hadn't even thought about his money. I'd been too torn between loving his body, drinking in his affection, and getting annoyed whenever he put on his aloof act - which I now saw through like the smokescreen that it was.

"Hell, even the house," Sanford went on. "Valencia probably loved the house when she saw it. She'd see it as just another status symbol, a way for her to show everyone else how important she was. But you?" He laughed out loud. "You'd rather have me come sleep over with you in your little cottage than stay in the big mansion!"

"Well, all of my clothes and things are here," I defended myself, but he just shook his head at me.

"The point is, I told myself that, after Valencia, I'd never fall for another girl like her," Sanford said, tightening his grip on my fingers. "And I didn't. Instead, I fell head over heels, crazy in love with a woman who's different from Valencia, better than Valencia, in every single way imaginable."

Oh god, tears were starting to well up in the corners of my eyes. Why did I always burst out crying whenever anything important happened. I blinked furiously, trying to keep my vision from clouding over.

"Can you stop saying your ex-fiancee's name to me?" I asked, a loud sniff interrupting my words as I tried to pull the tears back into my eyes.

Sanford burst out laughing, but when he lowered his head, I saw that he also had little glimmers of moisture in the corners of his eyes. "I'll never speak her name again, if it makes you happy," he promised me.

Nope, there was no holding the crying back. "Then yes," I said, my voice sounding thick and choked.

"Yes what?"

I yanked back one of my hands from his grip and punched him in the side - lightly, of course. "Yes, I love you too, you big ass!" I cried out, as the tears cut paths down my cheeks, probably making me look puffy and awful.

To make sure that he didn't notice how the tears were probably making my face puffy and red, I threw myself forward, into his arms on the couch. Sanford drew me in, his arms wrapping around me as his lips found mine. We tumbled over onto our sides on the couch, and Whiskers grumbled as we forced him to hop awkwardly down to the floor and find a new spot.

I couldn't bring myself to feel bad for my cat, even with his broken leg. After all, he already had someone he loved - me.

I had him, too, of course - but now, I also had this big, strong man who kissed me and wrapped his arms around me so tightly that I feared he might actually succeed in crushing the life from me.

"I threw her out, by the way," Sanford murmured to me, when we parted long enough to get fresh breaths of air.

"Who?" My thoughts felt scrambled by that kiss, and I didn't want to do anything else but go back to scrambling them further.

"The woman whose name I can't say any more." Sanford grinned up at me as I threateningly drew back my hand to hit him again. "Easy! When I got home and found that Valencia had showed back up, bullying Winston into letting her in, I made it abundantly clear that we were not, nor ever, getting back together."

"Are you sure?" I thought back to that woman, to my encounter with her on the front steps of the mansion next door. She had seemed utterly horrible, but strongly determined to achieve whatever she was after.

Sanford smiled up at me, stroking my hair and tucking it back behind my ear. It immediately sprang loose again, but I still loved the gesture, just like I loved his face, his eyes, his kindness to me. "When she hit Whiskers and I ran to the cat instead of her, I think she started to realize it. And then, just for good measure, I took something else from her."

"What?"

He reached down into a pocket of his jeans, his fingers fumbling for something small. "This," he said, pulling out his hand and unfurling his fingers so I could see the small object resting on his palm.

I gasped at the sight of that massive diamond ring that had decorated Valencia's finger. It glittered up at me from Sanford's palm, bouncing light into my eyes and appearing alight with an inner fire.

"Sanford - you're not-" I stammered, my mind once again hit with that molasses feeling.

A moment later, the man's eyes widened. "What? No, I didn't mean to suggest-" He laughed, but then his face grew serious again.

"Right, because it would be totally crazy of you to try and get me back by proposing," I went on, feeling relieved that he hadn't totally lost his mind. There was a little note of sadness, too, but I wasn't sure what could be causing that. "I mean, that's a bit desperate, isn't it?"

"Probably," he nodded, but he still looked serious. "But then again, that would probably show you that I'm seriously in love with you, wouldn't it?"

"What?" What? He couldn't actually be considering-

But Sanford rolled off of the couch, landing on his knees on the ground beside it. I sat up on the couch, looking down at him in surprise, and he shifted his grip on the diamond ring so that he could hold it up to me.