Page 17 of Love or Leave

He knew Blake Hunter wasn't the right guy for her.Hewas the right guy for her. And he could explain to Fran later that Cara was just a friend doing him a favour. Everything would work out in the end.

The only thing he wasn't sure of was whether his and Max's friendship would survive if he ever found out Antonio used Cara as a date.

five

Cara gazed at the dark night sky through the telescope she'd positioned out her bedroom window. That night, the sunlight from the other side of the earth illuminated a full moon, and despite its low position in the sky from her viewpoint, it sat perfectly centered in her window.

Thinking about the vastness of space always helped her put her problems into perspective. Well, not always. Maybe more like ninety-eight-point-three percent of the time.

Unfortunately, this situation fell into that rare one-point-seven percent.

She'd typed and deleted a dozen messages to Cooper, all of varying degrees of anger, but none of which made her feel better about the situation.

She knew what she should do—forward the tickets to Cooper so she could finally wash her hands of the mess, and just see Jalen next week at golf. But it all felt icky somehow.

She couldn't let Cooper get away with bullying her out of the tickets. Not after everything he'd said to her. Still, it wasprobably best for her mental health to cut her losses and never see him again.

She stepped away from the telescope, grabbed her phone from the nightstand, and belly-flopped onto her bed.

"Just do it," she said to herself, suppressing her agitation.

She opened the text thread to Cooper and started typing a simple, to the point message.

You win. Fuck off forever.

Her finger hovered over the “send” arrow for a split second before her phone started ringing.

Unknown caller.

With a shrug, she answered the call, assuming it was just some scammy scammer that would ask her for her social insurance number and mother's maiden name. Her brain lit up, suddenly energized. Maybe scamming a scammer would bring her mood up.

She forced a silly accent that made her sound like a sweet old lady ripe for the taking. "Hello there."

A pause met her.

"Is this Cara?" a smooth, deep voice asked.

Holy shit.

Was this the world's sexiest voiced scammer? If so, her bank account was in trouble.

"Um, yes. Who's this?"

"Antonio."

Ohhh…

Wait, what? How did Antonio get her number?

And why?

And how?

Unless…

She gasped, then darted up onto her knees as the tension she’d been holding released. "Have you changed your mind?"

A moment of silence passed. "How did you guess?"

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