Cosette’s cat palace was gone. The kitchen was spotless, not a single cup or plate in sight, and near the door, no flip-flops were strewn. The stacks of romance novels that cluttered up the coffee table were gone, and there were no signs of Tessa’s current puzzle.

The spare bed was tidily made.

And all her stuff was gone.

He had to sit down on the couch for balance. Just like that, their sham marriage had ended as quickly as it had begun. So quickly it took his breath away.

He was free to live out his dream the way he’d intended. Free of any woman tying him down. Free from his dad’s expectations that he marry in order to fulfill his ideas for the business. Finally, he could lead his life on his own terms.

His plan had totally worked in every way.

He was footloose and fancy free again.

Except he wasn’t.

On the kitchen island, his blue bouquet of flowers lay limp and lifeless. He promptly swept them and the printed tickets into the trash.

Tessa was gone. Yet he didn’t feel normal or relieved or even excited to be on his own.

…

Leo usually drank one cup of coffee in the morning before work and he was good for the day. But today he’d had three. Which made him jittery but also feeling just as sludgy as the dregs of coffee left in the pot at the restaurant. It seemed like nothing was capable of snapping him out of his brain fog.

He’d almost ordered five hundred heads of lettuce instead of fifty. The breaking point came when he discovered he’d been adding numbers into an Excel file the entire morning only to find he’d screwed up every. Single. Column.

“What’s the matter with you?” his father finally asked point-blank as Leo sat in the back room, trying to fix all the numbers.

He propped his elbows on the desk and ran his hands through his already-sticking-up hair. “I just ruined everything I’ve been working on because I made a really bad mistake.”

A really bad mistake. Yes, he’d made a lot of those. And not just on this spreadsheet.

His father took a big sniff. “Did you take a shower this morning?”

“Yes!” He raked his hands through his hair again. “No. I don’t remember.”

His dad sat down across from him and closed his laptop.

“Hey! What are you doing, Dad?”

“How much coffee have you had today?”

“Not enough.” Not nearly enough to function. And definitely not enough to forget about Tessa.

“Well, don’t have any more, okay? You’re going to scare your Aunt Loretta.”

Leo sat back and folded his arms. He was tired. He was jittery. And a little sweaty. But feeling his forehead with the back of his hand didn’t reveal a fever.

“Where’s Tessa?” his dad asked.