Page 64 of Mateo & Nicole

A sick and twisted feeling stirred in Mateo’s midsection. He didn’t want to believe it. In fact, the thought made him feel like he was going to retch right there. Nikki had tried to talk to him about Caroline as if she knew he needed some kind of closure, but he’d refused. He’d continued to kick that can down the road, so he didn’t have to relive the feelings those memories stirred up. It was entirely possible Nikki read his refusal as an inability to move on—especially if she had figured out that he'd reconnected with Caroline.

“I never told her,” Mateo rasped.

“Never told her what?”

“I never told Nikki that I’d bumped into Caroline. I figured it would be better if I kept it secret. I didn’t think anything would come of it. Nikki kept insisting she wasn’t Caroline’s friend anymore.” He tore his hat from his head and raked a hand through his hair. “She had to have figured it out.” Mateo lifted his eyes to Daniel. “Nikki figured out that I saw Caroline. I don’t know how, but she did.” He let out a growl. “No wonder Nikki has been distant. She’s probably thinking that I was interested in going back to Caroline.”

Hot, fiery rage simmered within him at the possibility. It was all just assumptions at this point, but he wouldn’t be surprised if he was right. This was the piece that had been missing.

A flicker of hope lit within him but was immediately doused as another revelation assaulted him. “It doesn’t matter. I might have kept this from her, but she kept it from me to.”

“What do you mean?” Daniel asked.

“I mean that she’s been keeping secrets too.”

Daniel sighed like someone might for an insolent child. “How do you know?”

“Because how else would Caroline have been at that restaurant? How else would she have known that I was dating Nikki? I never told her. I specifically kept that information from her because I didn’t want her to retaliate. I know Caroline. I know the depths she would go to knock Nikki down a peg.”

“And if you’re right about Caroline’s motives, you’d have to admit that this whole thing could be orchestrated.”

Mateo shook his head. “Even if Caroline had a hand in setting this up, she wouldn’t have been able to without connecting with Nikki. She doesn’t live here. She came to visit a friend.” And that friend could have been Nikki.

His heart was being torn in a million different directions. The betrayal. The fury. The desperation. Everything was culminating into one massive, angry bomb, and he wasn’t sure what was going to happen when it finally exploded.

“Hey,” Daniel murmured, drawing him out of his spiral. “Let’s say she was talking to Caroline. She’s allowed to have friends, right? Even ones you despise.”

But that was just it. Nikki had said so many times how much she disliked Caroline. They weren’t friends. “Yeah, I guess,” Mateo said.

“And if they weren’t friends, she must have had a reason for meeting with Caroline. I mean, you got wrapped up in the chaos with that woman. No one knows better than you.”

Mateo hated to admit that Daniel was sounding far too logical for his own good. There was only one problem. Mateo’s heart had been destroyed too deeply for him to be able to march right back into a situation where he could get hurt again.

Before he could voice this, Sophia came running over. She was breathless and her face was red. Not only that, she looked madder than a hornet whose nest had been knocked down. “Mateo,” she gasped. “I know what happened.”

He shifted uncomfortably and glanced to Daniel.

“Caroline is sabotaging you and Nikki. She planned the whole thing, and it’s all my fault.”

“What do you mean it’s your fault?” Mateo demanded. “What did you do?”

She winced, then shook her head. “That day she came to see you? I told her about Nikki. I wanted to rub it in her face. I think that’s what pushed her over the edge.” Her eyes darted to Daniel. “Rachel heard Caroline bragging about it at the salon. She said she was going to get you back and that she was going to make you forget all about Nikki.” The fury in her eyes returned. “She said a lot of nasty stuff, Mateo. But it looks like she drew Nikki to the restaurant and asked the bartender to sit with Nikki, since she was upset or some nonsense.”

Daniel cleared his throat, and Mateo didn’t have to look at him to know that he was likely smugger than the first frog who learned to move on land. He was right. The guy in the picture wasn’t Nikki’s date.

Caroline had played them both.

And he’d messed everything up.

Would Nikki ever forgive him?

29

Nikki

Nikki poured over the classifieds, her headache pounding. It had been a week of searching and she hadn’t managed to find anything that would come close to what she had right now. She threw down the newspaper with a sigh of disgust.

Who was she kidding? She wasn’t going to be able to find anything that would work. No matter how desperate she was to no longer be under Mateo’s roof, she wasn’t willing to put Paxton in any sort of limbo. He’d been through too much for her to let that happen.

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