The nameBlake Kasselscaught Sophie’s attention before anything else. Another peek at the pages led her to realize this was some type of report. Breath frozen in her lungs, words and phrases jumped out at her.Blake Kassels facing a lawsuit. Malpractice. Intoxicated at work. Foreclosure proceedings. Wife filed for divorce. Wants full custody.
“Cort Perkins, private investigator?” Sophie read aloud from the letterhead. “Hawaii?”
“Sophie, hey. I didn’t expect you.”
She turned slowly, the pages crunching in her tightening grip. Denver rubbed his head with a blue bath towel. The stab of betrayal dulled the strength of the pull between them. She waved the papers at him. “What is this?”
Denver’s smile evaporated. “I can explain.”
“What did youdo?”
He tossed the towel over the staircase railing behind him. She hated how attractive she found him in his casual mesh shorts and T-shirt, freshly showered and smelling way too good. If she’d never given in to her feelings, she’d have her head on straight now when she needed it most.
He entered the office. “Let me explain.”
Hot, angry tears threatened to escape the corners of her eyes. How could she have been so stupid? There was a reason she’d kept an iron shackle around her heart. “I thought I told you I didn’t want help.”
* * *
Denver
Spiteful fire danced wildly in Sophie’s narrowed eyes, but it was the hurt that cut him the deepest. Denver struggled for words, grasping at anything within reach to recover this situation. This wasn’t how she was supposed to find out. “I was going to tell you,” he promised, instantly regretting how it sounded like such of a line.
“Really? When?”
“Next week.”
“Next week?” she repeated, slamming the stack of papers against his desk. Sherlock startled from the window, abandoning whatever he’d been fixated on from the sanctuary of the living room. But Denver had bigger things to worry about than his couch.
“Yes.” He scrambled to find solid ground. He’d taken a shower to break up the day so he could tackle the last chapter with a fresh outlook. Finding Sophie standing in his office when he didn’t expect to see her until the finish line tomorrow was wonderfully off-putting. Or it had been until she confronted him about the report she wasn’t meant to find. Not like this. “I didn’t want to distract you from your race. He doesn’t deserve to cause you any more grief than he already has.”
Sophie folded her arms. “You don’t get to decide that.”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“I don’t need protecting. From anyone.” The quiet, firm tone was one Denver had never heard before, not even when Caroline refused to listen and got on Sophie’s last nerve. The coldness in her eyes was enough to make him tremble. “I don’t rely on anyone, and I didn’t ask you to interfere. I had this under control.”
Denver shouldn’t have let the laugh slip out, but once it did it was too late to retract it. He tossed his hands in the air as his pacing commenced. Pacing was how Denver coped with writer’s block and stress. “Unbelievable, Sophie. You’re unbelievable.”
“Excuse me?”
“Blake Kasselsneverdeserved you. He didn’t appreciate you.”
Sophie started a rebuttal that choked before it ever found words.
“You’re the most amazing woman I have ever met. You’re kind, generous, fierce, and sweet. You have a bigger heart than anyone I’ve ever known, and you always put everyone else before you. But he ruined your ability to let anyone in. To trust that there are still good people who’d doanythingfor you without expecting something in return. I bet your sisters don’t even know about the bounced check, do they?”
“They don’t need to know,” Sophie said, her voice a notch quieter than before.
“You won’tletanyone help you because one man destroyed your trust. Your sisters would walk through fire to help you if only you let them. They love you.Ilove you, Sophie.” Denver hadn’t meant to let that last bit slip out. Never this way. But now that the words had been set free, Denver couldn’t seem to stop. “I’ve been in love with you for over a year, since the first day I met you in the lodge kitchen. I’ve been waiting for you to heal from the scars that sorry excuse for a man gave you.”
“You—you love me?”
“Of course I do. Are you really that surprised? Have you known me to go on a single date since I moved home? That scarf you’re wearing is from me. The headphones, the flowers—all of it. There is no one else for me; only you, Soph.”
“You can’t possibly mean that. I’m broken. Damaged goods. I come with a daughter. And I will never let a man breakherheart when he decides to abandon us again.”
Furious that he was being compared to her worthless ex, Denver marched to the desk and ripped open the drawer. “I was going to tell you all of this tomorrow after your race.” He grabbed the tiny blue box and spun around. “I was going to ask you to marry me, Sophie. I want the three of us to be a family. I have no plans of ever leaving you, but you have to say yes.”
