Read Online The Billionaire's Bridal Bid by Emily McKay - Free Book Online

were never boring,” she tried to tell him.
    “Tone down the geekiness and take out the wallet. Isn’t that what you said? Well, you wouldn’t believe how well that works with most women.”
    She couldn’t stomach the bitterness in his voice or knowing that it had colored the way he saw women. The way he saw himself.
    “Matt, when I left—” But she stumbled on the explanation. How could she make him understand thetruth about the past? “Has it ever occurred to you that when I left, it wasn’t about you at all?” His expression was impassive as he stared at some spot over her shoulder. She willed him to meet her gaze. To see the truth of her words. She searched her memory, dredging up all the awful lies she’d told him. “It had nothing to do with you being geeky or too smart or boring. It was none of that stuff.”
    “Then what was it about?” He spit the words out between them.
    “It was about me and my family and—”
    “Right. You’re a family of runners. That’s what you always said, right? So that’s your excuse? You were just running away?”
    She sucked in a deep breath, feeling like she’d been slapped in the face. Had she been?
    She’d left Matt to return home and help her younger sister. Surely he knew that by now. Everyone in town knew why she’d come home and everything that happened since then, so surely he knew, as well. When she’d left Matt, she’d said so many things to make sure he wouldn’t follow her, she barely remembered them all. Matt bored her. He was too geeky for her. She’d met someone else. She was going to New York with Mitch, a real man who rode a motorcycle and never talked about work at dinner.
    They had all been lies. He hadn’t bored her. She’d loved his passion for engineering. Most of all, there had been no Mitch. There’d been no one else. Ever. Mitch was a name she’d pulled from her mother’s unsavory past.
    But since he’d been back, it hadn’t once come up in conversation. No “Hey, how’s your sister?” or “So how’dthat teenage pregnancy turn out?” He knew about it and clearly didn’t want to talk about it.
    But for the first time, she considered the possibility that she hadn’t left only to help Courtney. Had she also been running?
    The possibility made her skin prickle. Like she’d brushed against a live wire. Slowly, she shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe. I was so young. And scared. I loved you, but you—” She squeezed her eyes shut. “You loved me so much. Your future seemed so bright and I was terrified of ruining all of that.”
    She opened her eyes to see him staring at her, his expression dark and unreadable in the flickering candlelight.
    And then his phone buzzed again, just the silent vibration of the phone moving in his pocket. He took it out and set it facedown on the table by his arm, but before he could say anything else, a waiter appeared, all solicitous concern.
    “May I take this, sir?”
    “Yes,” Matt said. “We’re done here.”
    The waiter left with their plates and still Matt said nothing about her confession. Obviously, he was going to ignore it. She didn’t blame him and she hadn’t really expected him to forgive her. Besides, he was good at ignoring things.
    Finally, she leaned forward. “Look, this isn’t working. This has been amazing, but it’s enough, okay? The plane, the restaurant…by now, you’ve made your point.”
    “My point?” he asked slowly.
    “Yes. Your point. I get it. You’re very rich. You’re also very smooth and very capable of wooing any woman on a date. But now, I’m just ready for it to be over because the stress—”
    “No.” He gave her an assessing look. “Why not just relax and try to enjoy the evening. Pretend it’s just a normal Saturday.”
    “If this was a normal Saturday, I’d be at home watching Dancing with the Stars on my DVR.”
    His lips twisted in a wry smile. “Okay, pretend it’s just a normal first date.”
    “I