“What the fuck, man?” Trent’s face is still twisted in anger. I’ve never seen him look this mad. At least not since …

Not since the last time I lied to him.

I put my hands out in front of me, as if I can stem the tide of his anger somehow.

I look over my shoulder, to see if I can spot Celia, but she’s already dashed out of the restaurant. I’m torn between wanting to explain things to my brother, and wanting to chase after the woman I just might …

“She’s not your fiancee?”

Trent’s teeth are gritted, his jaw hard.

I know there’s no point in lying — he heard what he heard.

“No,” I admit.

“So where’s your real fiancee?”

I don’t say anything and understanding dawns on Trent’s face. “There is no fiancee. I’m such an idiot. I can’t believe I thought you’d actually grown up. I should have known — same old Jace.”

My fists are balling at my side, but I don’t know if I’m more mad at Trent or at myself. I’m suddenly transported to that day ten years ago, when he’d called me into his office to bitch me out about losing the client. The day he’d fired me.

“So what is she, some kind of escort? A prostitute?”

“No!” God, is that what he thinks of her? “No, she’s just someone I know from the bar. Someone who agreed to help me out.”

But the truth is so much more.

Celia isn’t just a friend. She isn’t just someone I know from the bar. She’s someone I could really love.

Someone I might actually already be in love with.

Looking at Trent’s red face, though, I have no time to explain all this. I need to get to Celia. I need to tell her how I feel, before it’s too late.

If it isn’t already.

“Look, can we talk about this tomorrow?” I try to push past Trent but he grabs my arm.

“No, we can’t talk about it tomorrow. Tomorrow is my wedding, Jace. Or have you forgotten that?”

I sigh, even though he has every right to be mad at me. “I haven’t forgotten, Trent. I just have something I need to do right now.”

He snorts. I try to push past him again, but he grabs my arm.

For a second we both just look at each other.

“Let go of me, Trent. We can talk about this later.”

“No. I’m sick of this bullshit, Jace.”

My body tenses. His hand is still gripped around my arm. I can feel his fingers digging in through my suit jacket.

“Trent,” I say, through gritted teeth. He doesn’t let go though. If anything, his grip tightens. I need to get out of here. Celia is out there somewhere, wandering the streets, alone and upset.

I yank my arm from his grasp and push past Trent, but he grabs me by the shoulder and spins me back around.

I punch him.

It happens before I even realize I’m doing it. My hand balls up and my arm sails forward and then my fist is connecting with his face. He staggers back a step, shock and anger and sorrow all flitting across his face in equal measure.

“What the fuck, man?”

Shit. Shit shit fuck.

I bounce from foot to foot, still eyeing the front door of the restaurant. I make a choice.

“I’m sorry, man. I have to find her. I love her, and I hope that under your anger you can see that my heart’s in the right place this time.”

I don’t wait for him to answer, because I’ve already been standing here for too long. And because I can tell by the expression on his face that he doesn’t understand. Not at all.

Fuck it.

I have to find Celia.

I burst through the restaurant and out the front doors onto the sidewalk. I look frantically around for her, for any sight of the pale pink dress she was wearing. There are a million people around, or at least it seems like it, but Celia isn’t one of them.

“Celia!” I call her name, and then shout it louder. People are leaving me a wide berth on the sidewalk now, and I know I must look half deranged.

Fuck. I don’t see her anywhere. I go to the end of the block and peer around the corner, looking around in all directions, trying to see if I can figure out which way she went. My breathing is coming hard now, and it’s half adrenalin and half terror. Adrenalin from punching Trent and terror that I might have irrevocably fucked things up with Celia.

I grab my phone out of my pocket and jab at her contact info as I walk back toward the restaurant, but the phone just rings and rings before finally going to voicemail. Even the sweet sound of her voice in the recorded greeting is enough to slay me.

“Can I help you, sir?”

I spin around and see the valet from the restaurant, the blonde kid who’d parked my car for me earlier. I breathe deeply.

“Yeah. Did you see a woman in a pink dress? Black hair?”

He grins. “Big tits? Really…” he holds out his hands in front of his chest but drops them as soon as he sees how meanly I’m glaring at him. He swallows. “Yes, sir. She got into a taxi just a couple of minutes ago. Right before you came out of the restaurant.”

Fuck. Okay, Jace, breathe. This is okay. She probably just went back to the hotel. You can find her there, tell her how you feel. Tell you were an idiot not to see it sooner. Tell her you’ll fix things with Trent, that you don’t care.

The kid is still staring at me, his expression somewhat wary. “Can I get your car for you, sir?”

“Yes, you can get my fucking car for me. Jesus. And hurry.”

The kid scurries away and I run my hands through my hair in frustration. As I stand there waiting, I realize that Trent hasn’t come out of the restaurant looking for me. In fact, no one has.

By now he’s probably told all of them about my lie. My whole family will know that Celia isn’t my fiancee, that I’m still just the fuck-up I was ten years ago.

How did this go so wrong?

I shake my head. Because you’re an idiot, Jace. Who but an idiot would think that a half-cocked scheme to enlist a fake fiancee would actually work?

The kid still hasn’t come back with my car but I’m tired of waiting. I have to get back to the hotel. Now.

I flag down a cab.

“Grand Windsor Hotel,” I tell the driver. “And there’s an extra hundred in it for you if you can get me there in ten minutes or less.”

“You got it, Mister,” the cabbie says, tipping his hat at me in the rear view mirror and then pealing away from the restaurant faster than a bat out of hell.

* * *

We get to the hotel in seven minutes, and as promised, I pay the twenty dollar fare and tip the driver an extra hundred for his lead foot.

I race up to the room as fast as I can. Please let her be there, I think. Please let her be curled up in the bed, wearing that skimpy little tank top and watching Pawn Stars or something.

But when I slide in the keycard and open the door to our room, my heart sinks.

It’s empty. No Celia.

I sit down on the edge of the bed for a minute, trying to collect my thoughts. Where else would she be? Maybe downstairs at the bar, having a drink? Maybe she ran out to get something to eat, since we never got a chance to finish our dinner?

That’s when I notice that there’s something different about the room.

I look slowly around — the fluffy white hotel bathrobe Celia had been wearing this morning, when she’d come out of the shower looking so sexy and fresh, is still hanging over the back of the wingback chair, where she’d thrown it. But I don’t see anything else of hers in the room — the suitcase that had been sitting on the floor, the stack of clothes that had been neatly folded on top of it, not even the stick of deodorant that she’d left on the desk — all of it is gone.

I get up off the bed and walk over to the bathroom, praying that I’m imagining all of this. But there’s nothing in here either: the white and blue toothbrush is gone, the silver bracelet she’d worn to dinner last night, the bottle of coconut shampoo that she’d lugged here in a big Ziplock bag.

It’s all gone.

She’s gone.

I step back out into the main part of the room, running my hands frantically through my hair. I’m practically spinning in circles now, at a loss for what to do. Where would she go? How could she have left?

Then my eyes light on a piece of paper on the desk. It’s just hotel stationery, with the Grand Windsor logo printed in faint burgundy ink at the bottom. Celia’s handwriting is neat, and even though the paper is unlined, her words go in rigid lines, straight across the sheet.

I start to read, my breath already catching in my throat, dread filling my stomach.

Jace,

I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I screwed everything up for you. This was a huge mistake, for so many reasons. I think it’s best if I don’t go to the wedding. The cat’s obviously out of the bag now and I think you’ll have a better chance at patching things up with your family if I’m not here. I’m going to go back to New York.

I had a really special time with you this week, and I’m sorry things didn’t work out differently.

All my love,

Celia

I crumple the note up in anger, and then immediately smooth it back out so that I can reread it again.

How could she do this? How could she just leave? I know she’s upset, but it should be my choice how to deal with my family — and I want her here by my side.

“God dammit,” I say, to no one in particular.

I grab my phone out of my pocket and hit her number again, but once again, she doesn’t answer and after a half a dozen rings, it punts me to voicemail.

“Celia,” I bark and then pause. I have no idea what to say to her, but I know I can’t say it on the phone. “Don’t go anywhere,” I tell her in the message. “Just, whatever you do … promise me you’ll stay put, okay? Wherever you are.”

I hang up and then open up the web browser. I type in six words and then I’m on the phone again:

Flights from Chicago to New York.