Healing Beau (The Brothers of Beauford Bend Book 6) by Alicia Hunter Pace Page A

way around it. They were having a New Year’s Day brunch—their first party in their new house—and death would have been the only excuse good enough to miss it.
    She hesitated at the ornate door of the Victorian structure. No doubt Beau was inside, or would be soon. His car wasn’t there, but assorted other Beaufordmobiles were, and he could have come with any of them.
    She hadn’t talked to him since the day after Christmas. He’d called a couple of times, but she couldn’t face talking to him. It didn’t make sense to feel ashamed—after all no one knew how stupid she had been, how much she’d hoped that they had been on the cusp of happily ever after. But she
was
ashamed. Not only had she made it appear that she had flings without a second thought, but she also had been stupid enough to hope an empty hope—again. Even as she’d rushed to say they shouldn’t have sex again, she’d fantasized that he would say no, that she had it all wrong, that he would never let her go. But he hadn’t.
    And just when she’d thought it couldn’t get any worse he’d said, “It could be me.”
    For the barest second, she’d thought this could be that moment—the moment at the end of the romantic comedy when he finally gets it, when he sees that what he wants has been in front of him the whole time, and he says, “It could be me.”
I could be the one for you, for always.
    Fade to kiss.
    But no. She wasn’t what he’d always wanted or what he would ever want. So she’d said all the right things to save face and make it all right for him.
    The one thing she had not been able to do was take his calls. Each time, she sat there frozen, staring at the caller ID. And each time she’d let it go to voicemail. She hadn’t had to find out what she would have done if he had shown up at her door, because that hadn’t happened.
    So here she was on Noel’s porch. And that was another thing. Noel had come to see her as soon as she’d gotten back to town after Christmas, so sure that Christian wanted to bare her soul about how she felt about Beau.
    And she
had
wanted to the day of the knitting class, but no more. Whether it was true or not, at the time she had thought there was a story in progress. Now the story was over, and it did not have a happy ending. So she’d denied how she felt to Noel, lied through her teeth and claimed that Noel had mistaken her concern over Beau’s well being for something more. Noel might not have believed it, but she’d let it drop, and that’s all Christian cared about.
    She might have stood on the porch all day had she not seen Beau drive by and park down the street. No way she was going to look like she was standing out here waiting for him. What she wanted to do was get in, load up her plate, and find a seat so it would seem like she’d been there a while.
    Nickolai opened the door and Noel hugged her. “Happy New Year!”
    “Welcome to our home, Christian,” Nickolai said. Nickolai had been orphaned at an early age and was so proud of having a house. “Didn’t my Noel do a beautiful job with the decorating?”
    Christian had to smile. Lucy Mead Kincaid, an interior designer from Merritt, Alabama, had designed the house’s décor. Between her business and being a hockey wife, Noel hadn’t had time. But since Noel had been the one to consult with Lucy, Nickolai gave her all the credit. It was endearing.
    “It’s beautiful.” And it was. With what the Nashville Sound paid Nickolai, they could have had an opulent mansion set on acres of walled property, but that wasn’t their style. Though large, the house was cozy, and the furnishings very fine without being ostentatious.
    “How
are
you?” Noel’s voice dropped a bit, just enough to show that she didn’t believe for one second that Christian was fine.
    But Christian wasn’t biting. “Great. And you?”
    Noel took her hand. “Come on, let’s get you something to drink. Nickolai, you can greet our guests alone for a few