Waiting for Your Love (Echoes of the Heart) by Anna DeStefano Read Free Book Online Page A

said.
    A knot of dread lodged directly over his heart. “What?”
    “To Charlotte,” she explained. “Once I oversaw transitioning the ALL PAWAS grooming and pet care storefronts and kennels and customers into PetClub locations, the deal is I’d relocate as part of the merger to their North Carolina corporate headquarters. To work with their teams on expanding the PAWSMatch concept and app, and then training PetClub associates to implement my approach in their existing markets. I’d be traveling back and forth until then, whenever I’m not here making sure we don’t disrupt the customer base I’ve established around Atlanta.”
    She stroked Conrad’s cheek this time, his face frozen with shock beneath her touch.
    “I’ll be consumed with business for the better part of the next two years,” she said. “Maybe longer. Just like my father made work his priority my entire childhood, no matter how little time that left for my mother or me or Ra. It wouldn’t happen overnight. Chandlerville would still be my home base for a while. But I’d be moving away, Conny, most likely before the end of the year. And PetClub would become my priority. How could we possibly figure us out with that going on?”

“You’re leaving?” Conrad had to have misheard her.
    “Relocating.” Clair sounded excited, and sad.
    “To Charlotte?”
    She reached for him again.
    He jerked back. “And you decided all of this without even talking with me? That’s why you’ve been avoiding me?”
    “I’m sorry, Conny. I—”
    One second she seemed genuinely apologetic.
    The next, she was hands-on-curvy-hips furious.
    “Why on earth,” she said, “would I think I had to talk with anyone about my business? I’m a big girl, and up until a few minutes ago I had no reason to suspect there was anyone else to consider when it came to making decisions about my future.”
    Anger had flushed her cheeks. And she was right to lay into him. She owed no one an explanation for how she ran her life or ALL PAWS. But she was weeks ahead of him, processing the reality that they could soon be living two states apart.
    “I know this is a surprise.” She ran her fingers through blond curls that sprang back, releasing the fresh scent of her shampoo. “I’ve was trying to find a way to tell you last night, when I was…”
    “Out with some dude? Only you ditched him and got drunk. And then I was the dude you called next, to exfiltrate yourself from your latest calamity?”
    Her eyes rounded. “That’s not how I think of you.”
    “How do you think of me?”
    She’d frozen him out of a decision that could shape the rest of her life.
    “I mean,” he said, “I’m fine being your safe place to land when you’re feeling low, or when your mother’s cornered you into another disaster of Don Lovette proportions. But…”
    She simply couldn’t be leaving Chandlerville, quite possibly for good.
    Her anger fizzled into a visible wave of guilt. “You’re not a convenience to me, Conrad. I’m sorry I’ve frozen you out of this. You know you’ve always been more than just someone to help me pick up the pieces when things go wrong.”
    He did know that. Especially after the way she’d been there for him and Harper these last few years. He was taking this way too personally.
    But how much more was he to her? And how did he support her this time, the way he’d promised he always would, while she made plans to leave him?
    “Is PetClub why your mother’s been so worked up lately, even for her?”
    Clair snuggled closer instead of answering. She wrapped her arms around his waist.
    “Let me guess.” He kissed the top of her head, giving and taking comfort. “Barbara thinks that if you find the right guy here, you’ll—”
    “Settle down in Chandlerville and give her more grandchildren.”
    “Instead of giving birth to more business opportunities that will steal you away forever, the way her very successful businessman husband spends all his time