Their offer was accepted the next day, and they got to work on the plans immediately. Ross was going to file for the permits. She transferred the money for her part of the deal. Everything went smoothly, and they had fun doing it. He hired his mother’s firm as the contractor. Kendall met her and liked her. She was a smart, efficient woman who knew her stuff and made many good suggestions they agreed to follow. So far, she and Ross agreed on all of it, and then they wound up in bed again.
“I’m worried,” he admitted to her late that night.
“What about?”
“We’re slipping. That was only twice today. We’ve been in business together for three days and it’s already affecting our sex life. You may have to spend the night.” She did, and they made love more than once to make up for it. They were running together at full speed, on the house, and personally. And they were both excited about their project, and each other. Every now and then, Kendall felt a wave of panic about how fast it was going and then she decided to ride the wave. He made everything easy for her, and she felt safe with him.
Three months into the project, they had hardly left each other, and the remodel was going well. They could already see improvements in the house and Ross was holding a hard line with the budget. He was good at what he did.
She hadn’t told anyone about him, and after four months of working on the project, she knew she was in love with him. At the six-month mark, they were halfway there on the house, and she moved in with him.
“I think maybe I should introduce you to my mother,” she said one day over breakfast. She felt less inclined to introduce him to her father after the scene on the boat.
They went to Tahoe that weekend, and Ruby liked him, a lot. He reminded her of Alex, her grandfather. While they were there, Kendall asked her if she would do the garden of the house they were working on, and she was excited to do it. Ruby met them in the city a week later and had wonderful suggestions for the garden. She submitted an estimate and they approved it. She had done another job for a family she had met at Lake Tahoe, and it had given her an idea. She told Kendall that she wanted to open a landscaping business and design gardens for people. Kendall was proud of her, and she was in much better spirits than Kendall had seen her in years. Ruby had made another decision as well, but she hadn’t told anyone yet.
* * *
—
The house was finished on time, and they put it on the market. Before it sold, they had another one picked out, which was slightly more challenging than the last one, but exciting.
“Are you game to do it again?” Ross asked her.
“Definitely.” They had an offer for the first house three days later, and they accepted it, and made an offer on the second one. They were on a roll, and their relationship just seemed to get stronger and stronger. She and Ross talked seriously about it. Everything was different this time. They were both four and a half years older, she was more mature, and her goals had changed.
Kendall had also made a decision about her father, which was a big one for her. She didn’t want to be him, or live in his shadow. She wanted to quit her job, and continue flipping houses with Ross. It was proving to be a lucrative business and she had learned a lot with the first one. Somehow she had changed. She was gentler and mellower and had lost her sharp edge. She was happier than she’d ever been.
She told her father at the office that she was quitting, and predictably, he was furious. He thought her remodeling projects were ridiculous, and assumed that Ross was incompetent and trying to take advantage of her.
“I’ve already done one with him,” she said quietly.
“What do you know about flipping houses? And that’s not a career for chrissake. Think of the degree you have, and now you’re going to pick plumbing fixtures for a living?”
“I’m happy, Dad. We got our money out of the first one, and made a healthy profit. And we’ll do better this time.”
“You’re wasting your time and your brain,” he said nastily. She was disappointed by his reaction, but not surprised. She didn’t offer to introduce him to Ross, she didn’t want to expose him to her father’s bitterness. Zack had a million women, but no one he loved, and no one who loved him. He had wasted the one good woman he had ever met, and somewhere deep down, he knew it.
Kendall gave him two weeks’ notice, which was all he needed to replace her. And the day she did, he ran into Ruby just in from Tahoe in the hallway of their house. She had come to town to meet a client and he hadn’t expected to see her. She seemed in a good mood when he saw her, and she smiled at him, which was rare.
“I’m glad to see you, I was meaning to call you, Zack.”
He looked instantly defensive. “What about?” He was afraid Kendall had told her mother about her visit to Antibes.
“I’m starting a landscaping business. I’m just setting it up. I had to meet with the lawyer today,” Ruby told him.
“In Tahoe?”
“I’ll take jobs wherever I get them, Tahoe, San Francisco, Marin.” She looked happy. “And I’m filing for divorce,” she said simply. It was years overdue.
“Aren’t you going to discuss that with me?”
“I am. I just told you.”
“This house is yours. It was a gift. The boat and plane are mine, and my lawyers will make you a settlement offer. But is this really what you want, Ruby? It seems to work like this.” It had for years. They’d been married for twenty-eight years and the marriage had been dead for twenty-six.
“For whom?” she asked, giving him a skeptical look. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve been a member of the walking dead for more than twenty years. You were cheating on me when I had Nick, the day of, in fact, and maybe before that. You cheated on me with that English girl in Saint Tropez three years later. You’ve had dozens of girls ever since, maybe hundreds for all I know. Is that the life you want? Just a lot of sleazy women who are willing to cheat with you and get what you’ll give them? You deserve a nice woman, Zack, one who cares about you.” He looked sad and he knew she was right.
“You cared about me.”
“You’re right, I did. I really loved you, but you beat it out of me, lying to me and cheating on me. I felt like shit for twenty-five years.”
“What changed?”
“I don’t know. My gardens, landscaping, starting this business, people’s faith in me. I don’t feel like second or third or tenth best anymore, the wife you cast away for some cheesy piece of ass. It takes a toll. I finally decided I have to do something about it. I decided to get divorced. I feel better now.”
“Do you think we could put Humpty Dumpty back together? I loved you too. Maybe we could find that again.” He looked momentarily hopeful.
“I don’t think so. It’s been dead for a long time. Our kids aren’t even here anymore. There’s no reason to keep this going. You need to be free and so do I.”
“So you’re firing me?” He looked grim about it.
“No, I’m firing me, as your wife. I’m doing the dirty work for you.”
“You know, I won’t leave you high and dry.”
“I don’t need much. Just enough to live on if I have to stop gardening one day. I’m busy now.” It was over. Finally. For both of them. She felt like a new person.
“Is there a guy?” he asked her as an afterthought, looking as though he would fight for her, but they both knew he wouldn’t. The fight and the life had gone out of their marriage years before.
“No, there isn’t,” she said simply. “You should move your things out. I’m going back to Tahoe tonight. You can do it now, before I come back. I don’t think we should live in the same house anymore.” That had been deadening too, feeling rejected by him, ignored, duped, lied to, unloved, and even hated at times. It was so degrading. They had been terrible years. “I think the kids will be relieved that we’ve finally dealt w
ith it,” she said, and he looked shell shocked. First Kendall had quit that afternoon, and now Ruby was divorcing him. It was a clean sweep. And the alternative women he had suddenly seemed so inferior. They were fine as long as he had Ruby as his wife, as some sort of object he could keep on his mantelpiece. The Wife. But she didn’t want to be The Wife anymore. It had taken her twenty-six years to free herself of him, after she first discovered he was cheating on her. It had taken much too long, but it was never too late. She was nearly fifty now, with a lot of good years ahead, especially once she and Zack were divorced. Now that she had started the process, she could hardly wait.
He was still standing in the hallway, looking shocked and sad, when she went downstairs with a light step.
The only thing missing for Ruby was that she wished her grandmother could have seen her do it. She knew she would have been proud of her. They had saved her as a child, and now she had finally saved herself as an adult. She would have liked to be married like them for fifty-five years, and she thought she could have done it with the right man. But she had picked the wrong one. Now she was free at last.
* * *
—
As Ruby knew he would, Zack recovered quickly. He bought a flashy penthouse apartment in the newest, tallest building in San Francisco, as soon as she told him she was filing for divorce.
The day after Ruby returned from the city after seeing her lawyer to start her business and file for divorce, she noticed activity at the main house of the Tahoe property, which had been uninhabited for eighty years. The first earl who had bought it had seen it three times in his lifetime, his son not at all. The son had died around the same time Alex did, and Ruby knew the original earl’s grandson had inherited it, but he had never come to see the property either, and now someone was moving trunks and boxes into the house. She wondered if it had been sold again. When she asked the overseer, he said that it was in fact the most recent earl who had come to stay for several months to see how he liked it.
“How nice,” Ruby said, hoping they’d be pleasant people. “Does he have a family? Children?” If so, she hoped they wouldn’t trample her flowerbeds, and she thought maybe she should put up some signs. The overseer said he had moved in alone. She was working in her flowerbeds that afternoon, rescuing some roses, when she heard a voice behind her, and saw a large golden retriever wagging his tail at her, and a stocky English bulldog sitting next to it, and their owner smiling at her.
“What beautiful gardens you have. I’ve been admiring them all morning as I walked around. And I peeked and saw that you have orchids in the greenhouse.” He looked friendly and agreeable, with gray hair, blue eyes, and a neatly trimmed beard, and looked very British. He was very distinguished. “I’m sorry. James Beaulieu.” She knew he was the Earl of Chumley, but hadn’t known his other name. And then he turned slightly behind him and pointed to his companions, “This is Rupert,” the bulldog, “and Fred,” the golden retriever. “If I promise not to give away your secrets, will you help me with my garden? I’d like to get it looking more like yours. And I’m sorry for the intrusion. This property has been in my family for eighty years now and no one wants to come here and love it and see to it. I thought it was high time someone did. Have you lived here for long?”
“My great-great-grandfather purchased the land when no one wanted to be here, and my great-grandfather built the houses. My great-grandparents and grandparents came to live here when they lost their house in the city, in the Crash of 1929, and in 1930, they sold the bulk of this property to your family,” she explained. “They retained this very small sliver of the property with the cottage and what used to be the servants’ house where I live now.”
“My grandfather bought it actually.” He smiled at her admiringly. He was mesmerized by her red hair, although it had faded slightly but was still very bright. “How intriguing that you’re still here after so long.”
“And that you still own it.” She smiled in return. “I haven’t been here for eighty years, but my family has. Now I live here some of the time. I’ve just started a landscaping company actually. I’ve fallen in love with gardening, which was my grandmother’s passion, and her mother’s.”
“Music to my ears. I need all the help I can get.” He held out a hand and shook hers. “So happy to meet you. I didn’t catch your name.”
“I’m sorry, Ruby Allen. The original family name is Deveraux. My grandmother was a Deveraux.” She had just requested to change her name back to Allen. It felt liberating to have her own name back.
“Well, I’m very happy to meet my neighbor.”
“If you need anything, or any help, let me know. And you’re welcome to use the boats in the boathouse. Most of them are yours, but two are mine. They’re classics, but they’re all in working order.”
“If I promise to drive reasonably, would you give me a tour around the lake sometime?” he asked and she smiled at him.
“I’d love it.” And with that, he and Rupert and Fred went back to the main house. He looked to be about Ruby’s age, and was a very handsome man. Ruby felt like she had a new lease on life.
* * *
—
Ross and Kendall finished the second house slightly faster than the first one. They needed fewer permits and they completed the work in just under nine months. They didn’t even have time to stage it. It sold before it went on the market, the day after it was completed, before the stager could give them an estimate. Someone in the neighborhood had been watching the remodel and loved it. They had dropped by, Ross had given them a tour, and they made a very good offer.
“Well done!” Ross and Kendall congratulated each other, and the profit margin was better this time too.
They hadn’t found a third one to buy yet, but were going to start looking in the next week or two.
“Now what are we going to do?” Kendall asked him, as they lay on the bed, after accepting the offer.
“Maybe we should take a vacation with all this money we’re making. Europe? Japan? China? Paris?”
“That sounds very exotic. Actually, I like that idea. What about Venice? I love Venice.”
“I have another idea,” he said, as he reached for her hand and rolled slowly off the bed onto one knee. “I actually think that Venice is more of a honeymoon spot, don’t you? And we’ve been doing this house-flipping thing for two years. I think we’re a pretty good team. Kendall Katz, will you marry me?” he asked her formally as she stared at him, not sure if he was joking or not.
“Are you serious?”
“Actually, yes, I am. I think we should get married before we start another house. We cleaned up this time. Let’s take a nice long honeymoon in Europe. Paris, Rome, Venice, what do you say, Miss Katz? What will it be?” He leaned over and kissed her, and when he stopped, she smiled at him. She loved him more than she had ever thought possible, and her feelings for him grew every day.
“That would be a yes, Mr. McLaughlin. Definitely a yes,” and this time, she kissed him.
Chapter 21
The house was filled with flowers. It looked almost exactly as it had for Eleanor and Alex’s wedding, minus the army of footmen, although there were almost as many caterers serving champagne from silver platters. And the guests were wearing black tie, instead of white tie and tails. There were only two hundred guests instead of four times as many.
Zack was waiting nervously in his old study, and Ruby was helping Kendall dress, and carefully step into the eighty-two-year-old gown. It had needed just a touch of restoration, where a few of the pearls had come loose. Kendall was the third bride to wear it. She was taller than her mother, but only a little, and Kendall was wearing the same veil, and her great-great-grandmother’s tiara. Ruby handed her her bouquet, which was entirely made of orchids and lily of the valley, as Eleanor’s and Ruby’s had been. Ruby had grown them herself in the hothouse she’d built in Tahoe. She was weari
ng a simple deep purple gown, which set off her red hair, and she had a tan from working in the sun all the time. She stepped back with a smile and Kendall left the room to meet her father. His hands shook when he saw her. She looked so much like her mother, a blond version this time.
Zack walked down the grand staircase with his daughter, and she smiled at him. He knew his sins hadn’t been forgiven him, but he had been accepted as he was, and he was still her father. It was the best he could hope for, and he was proud of giving Ruby back her family home. She spent occasional nights there when she came to the city, and had improved the gardens immeasurably, adding her own touch to what was already there. It was the perfect place for their daughter’s wedding, and maybe her daughter’s children’s one day too. The wedding gown Kendall wore looked as though it had been made for her. Ross caught his breath when he saw her, waiting with the minister for her to reach him on her father’s arm.
“Oh my God, you look so beautiful,” he whispered when she stood next to him. “You’re the most exquisite woman I’ve ever seen.”
“It’s the dress,” she whispered back, proud to be wearing it, as her mother and great-grandmother had.
“It’s the woman in it,” he said softly. She had just turned twenty-nine, and Ross was thirty-five. It seemed the perfect age to marry in these modern times. They were ready. They both were. Kendall had found herself and knew who she was and wanted to grow old with.
And then they turned to the minister, to get down to business, as Zack took his seat next to Ruby. She patted his hand, and he smiled at her. He hadn’t brought the woman he was living with now and was glad he hadn’t. It was right that he was here with Ruby. And Nick sat on her other side and smiled at his mother, with Sophie beside him.
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