Mad, Bad and Blonde - Cathie Linz [3]
Faith’s uber-workaholic father owned the most successful investigative firm in Chicago. If Alan wasn’t in an emergency room, then her father would be tempted to put him in one.
“Where’s my BlackBerry?” Faith heard the edge of hysteria in her voice but couldn’t do anything to stop it.
“Here. It’s right next to you.” Megan handed it to her. Sure enough, there was a text message from Alan that had been sent two minutes ago.
“thought i wanted marriage. i don’t. i need to find who i really am. I want adventure and excitement. Don’t want u. Sorry.”
Alan hadn’t left her because she could shoot a gun. He’d left because he didn’t think she was exciting enough. She’d scared him away by boring him to death.
“What did he say?” Megan demanded.
Her cousin was her best friend, but even so, Faith was too humiliated to show her what Alan had written. Instead she turned the BlackBerry off with trembling fingers. “I’ve been dumped in a text message,” she said unsteadily. “And not just dumped, but left at the altar.”
“We never actually walked down the aisle.”
“Close enough.” Faith angrily wiped away the tears that were starting to stream down her face. “There are people waiting out there. Lots of them. And they’re all expecting a wedding.”
“They’ll all be on your side.”
That was cold comfort at this point. Faith welcomed the anger starting to surge through her. It kept the pain and humiliation at bay.
So much for her happy ending. Faith had continued to believe in her fairy-tale wedding even when Alan hadn’t shown up for the preceremony photographs, even when his best man had refused to look her in the eye, even when the minister had approached her privately to ask if she wanted to delay the proceedings.
“He’ll show up,” Faith kept saying. “You’ll see. He’ll show up. And he’ll have the lamest excuse for being late.”
Her belief in Alan and her faith in a positive outcome had lasted longer than it should have and was now as tattered as the lace handkerchief she’d nervously shredded with her beautifully manicured fingers.
Last night he’d claimed he loved her, yet today he didn’t want her. How did that work? Did Alan love her like he loved fine wine and the Cubs instead of the way you loved the person you were supposed to marry? Weren’t Cub fans supposed to be the most loyal guys on the planet?
Faith was having a hard time thinking coherently, and she felt cold enough to get frostbite. The man she loved didn’t want her. She couldn’t think about that, or she’d dissolve into a sobbing mess. But she could think of nothing else.
Her parents burst into the anteroom. “I finally tracked him down,” Jeff West said. His usually smooth brown hair was messed from his running impatient fingers through it. “The bastard took a flight to Bali an hour ago. One-way.”
Alan has gone to Bali searching for adventure and excitement, because he couldn’t fi nd any with me. So much for love and commitment. I guess those things don’t matter to him. I don’t matter to him.
What had she done to make him change his mind about marrying her? He couldn’t have thought she was boring when he’d proposed. So what had changed?
Would Alan have stayed if he’d known she was a crack shot with a gun? Her dad had taken her to the firing range and taught her himself when she was ten. Faith had never told Alan about her weapons training because she didn’t like to brag about the marksmanship awards she’d won. Maybe she should have. Maybe then he’d have thought twice about dumping her. Maybe then he’d have thought she was more exciting. A children’s librarian who had a gun and knew how to use it. Yeah, that ranked right up there on the excitement scale with . . . what?
What was Alan’s definition of exciting? Interest rates and the stock market? Sex in the middle of Wrigley Field? A blow job in Bali?
“You poor baby.” Faith’s mother, Sara, sat beside her and hugged her. “He seemed like such a nice investment banker.”
“There was nothing in his background to indicate he’d bolt like this,” her dad said. “I had him thoroughly checked