“No problem,” Cedric said, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his slacks. If he could have had his way, he’d be with Anna right now, doing the same damn thing. “I just need to talk to him for a few minutes, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all.” She reached up, rubbed lipstick off Collins’ smiling mouth with her thumb, then turned and picked up her purse off the table. “I’ll let you guys talk. I’ll see you later at my place, honey?”
Collins’ eyes gleamed. “Oh, yeah.”
She was gone a moment later, leaving a trail of perfume behind her.
Cedric looked at Collins. “So, SHE is your girlfriend?” he asked, feeling quite silly for the time he called Collins one of Anna’s boyfriends.
“She is. But is that what you came to talk to me about?” Collins replied, folding his arms over his chest and giving Cedric the kind of hard stare reserved for bad dogs and crazed children. Apparently, Anna had already talked over the situation with her friend and it was no surprise whose side Collins was on. Fine. He could take whatever the guy had to say. Hell, he deserved it. But Cedric wasn’t leaving here without knowing how to find Anna.
“No, it’s not your girlfriend I’m worried about,” he admitted.
“What I thought.” Collins pointed at the chair opposite and said, “Take a seat. Want a Beer?”
“Sure.”
Once they were both seated and the beer Collins ordered had arrived, he took a sip of his beer and asked, “So, why are you looking for Anna?”
“Why?” Cedric just stared at him. “Because she’s my wife. I have to talk to her.”
“Yeah yeah. Sure she is. But it seems to me you guys said everything that needed saying.”
“She told you.”
“She did.” Collins took another pull at his beer, then set the bottle down on the table, leaned back in his chair and glared at Cedric. “She has been crying.”
“Dammit.” He hadn’t thought it possible to feel worse than he had been feeling, but he’d been wrong. He hated knowing that he’d hurt her so much. Hated even more knowing that he’d caused her tears. “She moved out of Haerton.”
“You made her leave.”
Cedric groaned. “No, I didn’t. I told her she could stay. Hell, I wanted to sign it over to her.” Why was nobody listening to him?
“And you think she’d stay after everything you did?”
“No, not Anna,” Cedric whispered. “She’s got too much pride for that. And she’s too hardheaded.”
Collins laughed. “That sounds like pot and kettle talk.”
“What the hell does she want from me?” Cedric demanded, unamused and feeling just a little desperate. The longer he went without talking to her, the worse his chances of fixing this were.
“Seems like she doesn’t want anything from you,” Collins said thoughtfully.
Cedric cupped the cold beer bottle between his palms and felt the iciness creep inside him. But there was nothing different about that for him. He’d felt cold to the bone for months now. Without Anna… “She left,” he said softly. “She’s not at her house and when I call her, I get dumped into voicemail instantly.”
Collins sighed and picked up his beer for another sip. “She doesn’t want to talk to you, man. She wants you to leave her alone.”
“No, she doesn’t,” Cedric insisted, his gaze spearing into Collins. “She loves me.”
“She did.”
Cedric snorted. “What? She’s stopped? Just like that? Turned it off and moved on?”
Collins shook his head. “Why’d you come to me if you don’t want to hear what I’m telling you?”
“I didn’t come here looking for advice,” he muttered. “I came here looking for Anna.”
“She’s not here.”
“Yeah,” Cedric told him with a hard look. “I can see that. So where is she?”
“Now why would I tell you that?” Collins wondered aloud. “You already broke her heart.”
Cedric winced. It hadn’t been easy coming to Anna’s friend. But whether he wanted to admit it or not, he needed help. He had to find her. Talk to her. Convince her to come back to him. Convince her to take a chance. And if anyone would know where she was, it was Collins.
Cedric could just tell the man everything that happened. Then admit that he was madly in love with Anna. But that was private. Between the two of them. He’d tell her. Again and again until she believed him. But damn if he’d tell her best friend. “I have to talk to her.”
“And tell her what?”
“Everything.”
“Didn’t go so well for you the last time,” Collins said.
“No,” Cedric admitted. “She didn’t exactly give me a chance, though. I mean… She won’t even believe anything I tell her,”
Collins smiled, took a sip of his beer and said, “So what are you going to do about it?”
“Apparently,” Cedric told him, “I’m going to sit at a table in this stupid cafe and be tortured.”
“Besides that, I mean.”
“I’m going to find her.” Cedric glared at him again. “Even if you don’t tell me where she is, I’ll find her. Then I’ll tie her to a chair if I have to, to make sure she listens to me. Then I’m going to tell her that she loves me and I love her and that we’ll damn well get married again if that’s what it takes to make her come back to me.”
“I’d almost like to see that,” Collins mused.
“Enjoying this, are you?”
“Not as much I thought I would.” Collins leaned forward, bracing his arms on the table. “Anna is family to me. You hurt her badly, but I’m willing to give you another chance because I know she’s nuts about you, even if she hates your guts right now.”
Hope leaped up in Cedric’s chest.
“But,” Collins added, his eyes steely, his features grim, “I’m warning you now. You hurt her again and I’ll find a way to hurt you back.”
“Understood.” It was a measure of just how far gone he was that Cedric was willing to accept that threat from Collins without batting an eye. Ordinarily, nobody told Cedric Blackwood what to do or how to do it. But as Anna’s “family,” Cedric figured Collins was within his rights.
The other man studied him for a long moment or two, then nodded and said, “All right. She’s been staying at my place, but she went back home this morning.”
“Thanks.” Cedric jumped to his feet and headed for the front door.