Coming Back To You (29 page)

Rob and Holly kissed. It was sweet and
chaste, but Mark could feel the love and passion they had for one
another, and in that moment, his heart beat a little harder for the
woman he loved. His Karma.

Thirty minutes later, with hope in his soul,
the band playing, and the dance floor full, Mark absently took out
his phone. This was the first chance he’d had all day to stop and
check his messages and make sure nothing had blown up while he was
away.

He rifled through his e-mail. Mostly updates
from the team leaders. Nothing serious. Then he saw an odd message
from Lisa.
Regarding personnel report -You need to see this
was the subject line. Huh? He opened the e-mail. It was just a
link. When he tapped it, a blog called
Chocolate Chunk
Brownies
came up.

Chocolate Chunk Brownies
? Was this
Karma’s blog? The brownie analogy was something he’d used with her
and was too coincidental for it not to be.

His heart began to beat a little harder,
almost panicked. Something didn’t feel right.
Regarding
personnel report
. That’s what Lisa’s subject line had said. He
flipped back to his e-mail, found the report, and opened it.

Resignations: Karma Mason.

No. NO! He burst out of his chair and dialed
Lisa’s number as he rushed away from the noise and laughter of the
reception, searching for someplace quiet. But he was wasting his
time by calling the office. It was past eight o’clock in
Indianapolis. The office was closed. He disconnected even before
Lisa’s voice mail picked up and rifled through his list of company
contacts as he paced in the outer hall. He was pretty sure Lisa had
a company cell phone. He nearly jumped out of his skin when her
name came up in the company listing and he stamped his thumb on her
link to dial her.

One ring.

“Come on, come on. Answer.”

Two rings.

Shit, Lisa needed to pick up.

Three rings.

“Hello?”

“Lisa! What’s going on? What’s wrong?” His
urgent thoughts tumbled out of his mouth in no particular
order.

“I guess you got the personnel report.”

“Yes. What happened? Why is Karma
leaving?”

“Did you get my other e-mail? The link?”

“Yes. Is that Karma’s blog?”

“Yes.” She sighed. “She’d kill me if she knew
I sent it to you…or that I’m even talking to right you now,
but—”

“Lisa, why is she leaving? Where is she
going?” Despite having enough alcohol and Valium in his system to
put down the Incredible Hulk, his heart raced and his hands
shook.

“She told me about Friday night. Why did you
bail on her like that, Mark?”

“Bail? I didn’t bail. I had to leave.”

“You didn’t leave a note. You didn’t—”

“Yes I did. I left a note on her kitchen
counter.”

“Well, she couldn’t find it, and now she
thinks you regret what happened.”

Wait, what? Karma hadn’t seen his note? What
had happened to it? And now she thought he regretted what they’d
done? Well, in a way he did, but not for the reasons Karma probably
imagined.

“Do you?” Lisa said. “Do you regret it,
Mark?”

“No. I mean, yes.” He rifled his hand through
his hair, almost frantic with confusion. “I mean…in a way, I did,
but not because of her. She’s
engaged
, Lisa. What I did was
wrong. I never—”

“Not anymore.”

Mark’s breath caught, and he froze in the
hallway. Had Lisa just told him Karma had broken off her
engagement?

“What do you mean?” He began pacing again,
his fingers combing through his hair over and over.

“She broke up with Brad today. Gave back the
ring and everything.”

That was good news, right? Great news. It
meant she was free and clear. But that still didn’t answer the
question about why she was leaving Solar? “I don’t understand. Why
did she turn in her notice?”

Lisa huffed. “Because she’s in love with you,
Mark. She can’t work with you when she doesn’t think you’ll ever
want to be with her.”

Mark stopped, dumbfounded. “I…” Words
suddenly failed him.

“Mark, after you left last year, she went
into a major emotional meltdown. I swear, there were times I wasn’t
sure she’d recover. Thankfully, she did, and then you came back,
and she started falling in love with you all over again, even
though she didn’t want to. She knows how you feel about commitment,
so she tried to keep her distance, but she just couldn’t. From what
she told me today, as well as what she’s written on her blog, she
had decided that maybe she could accept that you didn’t want to get
married as long as you still wanted to be with her. That’s partly
my fault, by the way, but the point is, Karma was willing to look
past your inability to commit, and then you took off without a word
Friday night. Now she’s worried she’ll always be wondering when
you’ll leave for good…that you regret what the two of you did and
that you’ll always be a flight risk. She doesn’t want to live that
way. She doesn’t want to always be wondering what will spook you
and scare you away for good.”

Oh God, oh God. This wasn’t good. “I can’t
lose her. Not again.” The words whispered from his mouth before he
could catch him.

“Then you’d better do something to stop her,
and I mean fast, because she’s not just leaving Solar. She’s
leaving the state. This new job she’s been offered is in St.
Louis.”

He combed his hand through his hair again.
This was a major cluster fuck. How had he let this happen? If only
he hadn’t felt so filthy for enabling her to cheat on her
fiancé.

“Did she break up with Brad because of me?”
Please don’t let the answer be yes.
He didn’t want to be the
reason for something so devastating.

“No.” Lisa’s voice held a touch of
understanding. Somehow she knew this was important to him. “She
broke up with him because they were too different. She wasn’t happy
with him. You just helped her see that.”

“How?”

Lisa sighed. “Because she’s happy with
you.”

“Then why is she leaving?” None of this made
sense.

“Didn’t you hear me a second ago? She’s
leaving because she’s afraid you’ll leave her again. And she can’t
take that kind of pain a second time, Mark.”

Mark knew better than anyone what that kind
of pain felt like, so he couldn’t blame her for not wanting to go
through that.

He planted his fist on his hip and spun on
his heel, lifted his gaze toward the ceiling, then exhaled heavily.
“She never told me.” Then again, he hadn’t told her, either, so
could he blame her?

“She didn’t know how. And honestly, I don’t
think she even put all the pieces together about how she felt until
recently.”

He was surprised Lisa was giving him this
information at all. She was Karma’s best friend. As such, shouldn’t
she be siding with her right now? Divulging Karma’s secrets could
be construed as breaking the bonds of friendship.

“Why are you tell me all this, Lisa? Aren’t
the two of you friends?”

“That’s why I
am
telling you. Because
we
are
friends.”

“I don’t get it.” He collapsed onto a nearby
settee.

“Karma can get in her own way sometimes.
That’s something I think the two of you have in common, by the
way.”

“Touché.” How was it that Lisa and Rob could
see right through him when he could barely make sense of what he
was feeling? This must be what was meant by being unable to see the
forest for the trees. He was so deep in the thick that he couldn’t
even tell what direction he was going, but Lisa and Rob, from the
outside, could see all.

“You make her happy, Mark. She loves you. And
if I’m not mistaken, you’re pretty crazy about her, too, aren’t
you?”

“You’re good at this.”

“I try.” Lisa huffed. “So how are you going
to fix this? You can’t let her leave.”

“I’m not sure I can make her stay. If she’s
already decided—”

“Mark, you’re the only one who
can
make her stay. But you don’t have a lot of time to do it. She’s
already
unofficially
accepted the other job.”

No, no, no. “She can’t.”

“Then get your ass back here and tell her how
you feel.”

Good idea. He had to leave tonight. Right
now. He didn’t want to waste another minute of what little time he
had being three hundred miles away from her.

“Lisa, I’ve gotta go.”

“That’s what I want to hear.”

He hung up, raced back into the reception
hall, and corralled Rob. “I’m sorry, but I have to leave.”

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s Karma. I have to get back.”

“Did something happen?”

Mark turned for the exit with Rob hot on his
heels. “She’s leaving. I’ve made a mess of things and need to set
things right.”

“Whoa. Wait a minute. You’re not driving back
tonight, are you?”

He pushed through the doors and turned toward
the elevators. “I have to. I can’t let this happen, Rob. I can’t
let her leave.”

“You can’t drive.” Rob emphasized each word.
“You’re on a cocktail of Valium and champagne. Are you crazy?”

“Then I’ll take a cab to the airport and
catch a flight.”

“There’s a winter storm coming in. Flights
are already being cancelled. Holly and I just got word that ours
was.”

The elevator doors slid open and Mark stepped
inside. “I’ll find a way. One way or another I’m going back to her
tonight.”

The doors closed but not before Rob shook his
head and mumbled something that ended with
crazy
bastard
.

In his room, he wasted no time and
frantically tossed his things into his suitcase before shutting off
the light and hurrying back downstairs.

Holly and Rob met him at the checkout desk as
he was negotiating with the clerk to help him find
transportation.

“Tell him I’ll give him a thousand dollar tip
if he takes me,” he said to the clerk, who was on the phone with
the second limo service they’d tried.

The clerk shook his head. “I’m sorry, Mr.
Strong, but he still says no. They can’t risk it with the
storm.”

Mark hung his head.

“Our limo driver said he’ll take you,” Rob
said. “He’s got family in Indianapolis he says he can stay
with.”

Mark turned toward them. “I can’t do
that.”

“We want you to.” Holly nodded and pulled
Rob’s hand into both of hers.

Rob placed his hand on Mark’s shoulder. “Like
I said, our flight’s been cancelled. We’re not going anywhere. We
have no use for a limousine.”

“We’re going to stay here and ride it out.”
Holly smiled. “That’ll probably be better, anyway.” She snuggled
against Rob. “It will sure make our honeymoon memorable being
snowed in.”

These two had been made for one another. They
were both glass-half-full people.

“I owe you guys.”

“Just get down there and make things right
with your girl,” Rob said. “That’ll be enough.”

Mark removed the key to his car from his key
ring and retrieved his valet ticket from his wallet. “Take my car.
I’ll come back and get it next weekend.”

Rob tucked the key and ticket into his
pocket. “Will do. Now go. The limo’s waiting for you.”

Mark hugged them both then hurried out into
the spitting snow. The stretch limousine sat at the curb.

“There’s a thousand dollar tip in this for
you if you can get me there in one piece,” he said to the
driver.

“Yes, sir.” The chauffer grinned and held
open the door for him. He didn’t waste time loading his bags in the
trunk and just tossed them into the back.

Less than a minute later, they pulled into
traffic and headed for the interstate.

For the next two hours, Mark read Karma’s
blog on his tablet.

He started at the beginning, reading about
how he’d been her first true love. She’d used his initial instead
of his name, but that didn’t diminish the impact of learning how
she felt, and his heart broke and mended with each post he
read.

As he continued to read post after post about
him and their time together, he felt like a voyeur, peeking through
the window of her soul. No detail was spared. No memory left out.
She’d written about how she suspected he felt as strongly for her
as she did for him, her thoughts about how he’d told her Carol was
in the past but how she felt Carol was still affecting him even
now, and about how she didn’t think she’d ever find another man who
made her feel the way he did.

Why hadn’t she told him all this when they’d
been together?

But that was like a maple leaf accusing a
blade of grass of being green. Hadn’t he withheld his own feelings?
He’d loved her two months into their affair, and yet he’d never
told her. Except for one night when he whispered the words to her
as she slept, he had never admitted his love aloud.

He continued to read, but when he got to the
part about when she met Brad, he had to take a break. Reading about
their relationship proved difficult, even though they were no
longer together. Or maybe that was why it was difficult, because he
had the gift of foresight. He knew how their story ended. So,
despite her blogged professions of how she loved him and had
finally moved on from “M,” he knew better. She’d only been denying
her true self.

The other thing that bothered him was that
she’d had to see a professional to battle the depression she’d
fallen into after he left. He hadn’t realized. For months, he’d
wanted to call her, text her, confess that he loved her, but he’d
worried she had moved on and would rebuke him. Now he knew the
truth. She’d wanted to hear his voice as much as he’d wanted to
hear hers. If only he could go back and do things differently, but
he’d been so caught up in trying to wrestle control from the
universe by demanding a sign, he’d failed to miss the most obvious
sign of all. That his heart beat only for her and that they
belonged together regardless of the cost.