After dressing in jeans and a T-shirt, he reentered the living room to find that it was now spotless. In the ten minutes he’d been gone, Annabelle and Holly had carted off the pizza boxes, gotten rid of the beer bottles and even wiped down his coffee table. The flowery scent of air freshener hung in the large space, and both women were sitting on a couch now cleared of the random items of clothing previously strewn on it.
“Jeez, you really are my mother,” he muttered.
Holly looked over at him with sharp green eyes. “What happened with Savannah? Did she dump you?”
“No.” He set his jaw. “I dumped her.”
Two pairs of wide eyes.
“Why would you do that?” Annabelle demanded.
“None of your business.” He swiped his keys from the little basket on the table by the couch and jiggled them. “Do you want a ride or not?”
He could practically feel the curiosity radiating from them, but to his extreme surprise, neither female pushed him for details. He chalked it up to the wedding they were heading to, knowing that if the two weren’t occupied with something else right now, they’d be all over him, prying information from him like a dentist extracting teeth.
“We need to stop by Shelby’s bakery,” Holly said as she slid into the backseat of the SUV. “We stored all the food there.”
Annabelle slid into the passenger seat, and she buckled her seatbelt and shot him a sideways glance. “Thanks for doing this. Ryan was going to lend me the Jeep but it’s still in the shop.”
Matt wrinkled his brow. “He wrecked it?”
“Jeez, were you in an alcohol-induced coma for the past three days? He called you the day before yesterday to tell you about it. A dog ran right in front of his car and he had to swerve to avoid hitting it. He crashed into a tree, remember?”
Matt had a vague recollection of Ryan’s voice bitching in his ear about a dog or something. Fuck, how much had he drank in the last seventy-hours?
“He’s okay, though, right?”
She sighed. “He’s fine.”
Shoving his aviator sunglasses onto his nose, he focused on driving to Shelby’s bakery. The shower had helped clear his head, and the two beers’ worth of alcohol he’d consumed this morning were starting to leave his bloodstream. He felt alert now. And pissed off.
Yup, still pissed off at Savannah for being so damn stubborn and so damn scared.
But what could he do about it? No way was he going to beg. He was way too proud for that. Besides, what would it achieve? Savannah wanted to live in her heartache-free world of first kisses and whirlwind thrills, and who was he to force her into a relationship?
Best thing to do was move on.
Put her out of his mind, find a new, cute female to strike up a thing with and proceed to fuck the love he still felt for Savannah right out of his body.
Savannah examined her reflection in the mirror, wondering if the low-cut violet dress she’d chosen was too sexy for a first date. The silky material fell down to her knees, so it wasn’t too indecent, but her breasts practically poured out of the bodice. After a second, she shrugged and moved away from the mirror. Whatever. You could never go wrong with sexy.
Her arms ached in protest as she lifted them up to adjust the artfully messy twist of her hair. She was still sore from yesterday. She’d gotten up at six in the morning and spent seven hours getting the flowers ready for the wedding. She’d driven around town like a maniac, first to the Rose Room, the banquet hall where Jeannine and her husband-to-be Henry were holding their wedding reception. Along with bringing Chad, Savannah had hired a few temporary workers to help her set up all the tables, chairs and wall panels. She’d left half of the workers to finish up, then went with Chad and a couple of others to St. Augustine’s Chapel to get the aisle and altar ready for the actual ceremony. She’d left Chad in charge, headed back to the banquet hall, then back to the chapel, back to the hall, and so on, until she found herself ready to collapse by the time noon rolled around.
During one of her trips to the Rose Room, she’d had a moment to chat with Annabelle and her business partner, Holly, who mentioned Matt had just left. Apparently he’d given them a ride and stayed to help unload supplies. Savannah had just missed him, and she hadn’t been sure whether she was happy or sad about that.
His parting words had been buzzing through her head like angry wasps for three days now.
Hope you had fun.
He hadn’t sounded cruel when he said them. Just sad and resigned. She almost wished he’d been cruel. At least then she could feel better about the way things ended. If she hated him, then she wouldn’t have to miss him.
Unfortunately, she didn’t hate him.
And she totally missed him.
Good thing she had a solution for that.