Ignite On Contact
Page 28
He put his arm around her and held her close. “I’m sorry, Erin.”
He’d do anything he could to take this pain away from her, including kicking the shit out of his best friend.
“Have you heard from him?” she asked.
“No. I tried calling him on my way over and his phone went right to voice mail each time.”
“Damn. Has he said anything to you?”
“About calling off the wedding? No. You know I’d have talked him out of it. What was he thinking?”
She tried to smooth her hair into place, then walked back into the living room. “I don’t know. I wish I could talk to him.”
“No. You will not ever speak to him again,” Johnny said. “I, however, have a lot to say to him.”
“Johnny,” Maureen said, “you know you’re not going to say anything to him.”
“What about his parents?” Honor asked. “Has anyone called them? Aren’t they supposed to drive in tomorrow from Dallas?”
“They are,” Erin said. “I hadn’t even thought about calling them.”
Jason pulled out his phone. “Let me do that.”
Every set of Bellini eyes rested on him as he was about to call Owen’s dad. “I’ll just step outside.”
The phone call with Owen’s dad was short, but just about as much of a punch to the gut as hearing Erin scream. When he hung up, he saw Erin standing just outside the front door.
“They know?”
He nodded. “But not for long. They just got off the phone with him about an hour ago. They’re in shock, Erin. They didn’t know anything before now.”
She walked forward and took a seat on the front step, cradling her arms around her knees. She lifted her gaze to his. “Did he tell them anything?”
He took a seat next to her. “Just that he changed his mind, and he knew what he was doing was wrong and would make a lot of people unhappy, especially you, and that he flew to Aruba because he needed some distance.”
She sighed, and he felt the weight of her sigh as if he carried her pain himself. “I don’t understand any of this. Why didn’t he just talk to me?”
“I don’t know. Why didn’t he talk to me? I’m his best friend. If he had second thoughts, you’d think he’d want to sound them out with someone. It seems to me like he didn’t talk to anyone. Not you, not me, not his parents. So I don’t get it, either.”
“See, none of this makes sense to me, Jason. Owen and I always talked everything out. I mean, maybe we hadn’t done a lot of talking lately, but with the wedding planning, my job, his job, we’ve both been busy.” She swept a stray hair away from her face. “I thought everything had been fine. He’d told me he was fine.
“Clearly it had not been fine. Couldn’t he have said something to me? Like, ‘Hey, Erin, I don’t want to get married’? That would have been a great start.”
Jason read the anguish on her face and he wanted to pull her close, to comfort her. But he also read the tension in her body and knew now wasn’t the time.
Damn. How could his best friend do this to . . . his other best friend?
Erin straightened. “Well, anyway, screw him. I’ve decided we’re still going ahead with the reception.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Everything is paid for and arranged and it’s not like at this late date we can cancel anything. So we’re going to have one hell of a party.”
“You don’t have to do that, Erin. Everyone will understand if you want to cancel.”
“But see, that’s the thing. I don’t want to cancel. I might not be getting married, but I’ll have the best damn non-wedding reception this town has ever seen. And I’ll expect everyone to be there. Well, not Owen’s family, of course. But everyone else should come. You’ll come, won’t you?”
If there was one thing he knew about Erin Bellini, it was her determination. And he could tell from the look on her face that she was determined not to spend this weekend acting like the jilted bride. But there was no way to know how that non-wedding party of hers was going to play out. So he planned to be by her side. He wasn’t going to be the guy who let her down.
“Hell yeah, I’m coming. And I’ll wear the damn tux, too.”
He got up and held his hand out for her.
She grinned and slipped her hand in his. “Good, because you and I, Jason? We are gonna dance Saturday night.”
He was counting on it. Owen may have screwed her over, but Jason was going to show her that life went on.
It might not be her wedding on Saturday, but Jason was going to make sure that Erin had the best night of her life.
FIND YOUR HEART’S DESIRE . . .
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