“I can’t imagine how hard that must have been,” he said, his voice and the look in his eyes a loving stroke to her pride. This was the man who had listened to all of her dreams, stroked away those early tears before they were both flooded. This was the man who bolstered her when she was down, made her rest when she was weary and told her, every day, how special she was.
She busied herself wrapping the bread and putting it away so she wouldn’t do something stupid such as reach out for him.
What happened? part of her howled. Where did that man go? She’d forgotten about him, lost him in the years that followed their string of tragedies.
“It was hard,” she said. Stupidly, tears burned behind her eyes and she would have sworn she’d cried all she could for Zinnia. “The divorce and losing the restaurant—” She took a deep breath, mortified when it shuddered in her chest. “It was a pretty powerful one-two punch.”
On top of the miscarriages, she didn’t add, because he’d leave and suddenly she didn’t want that. She hadn’t just lost her husband in the divorce, she’d lost her very best friend. Her partner. A person who understood her inside and out.
And right now, in her warm and beautiful kitchen, she missed him. She missed Gabe, her husband, best friend and partner. The scrape of his stool against the terra-cotta tiles was like a low growl.
She could feel him—in her skin and along her nerve endings—approaching her.
“Hey,” he whispered and she looked up to find him a breath away from her.
His hand brushed her arm, pushed back the black hair that had slipped from her bun. “I’m so sorry,” he said.
She swallowed, unable to speak, unable to breathe because there was no air in the room.
Her eyes met his and the heat in those beautiful familiar blue depths melted her bones, her resolve, her better sense. So when he put his arms around her, she collapsed willingly into his chest, finding that familiar place under his chin to rest her head.
She slid her arms around his back as though the past five years hadn’t happened, as though she still had the right to his touch, his long strong embraces.
She closed her eyes and, with a sweet piercing ache, she let her body be reminded of his.
“Alice,” he murmured and she looked up, knowing how far away his mouth would be, knowing the stormy depths of those eyes and knowing that what she’d see there—confusion and desire—was the same thing he’d see in hers.
“This is a mistake,” he breathed across her lips.
“I know.”
But they did it anyway. Slowly, like magnets across a small space, their lips found each other’s. She sighed at the touch, at his remembered taste, and he pulled her closer still while their kiss remained careful, chaste.
The sound of the outside doorknob turning shattered the reverent cocoon of her kitchen, and Alice hurled herself away from Gabe.
She expected Max or Patrick to walk in and she put cool hands over her hot face.
What would she say to them?
What would Gabe say?
With trembling hands and pounding heart she packaged up the homemade ham.
The outside door stuck and finally pushed open to reveal, not her ex-in-laws, but Daphne and Helen bathed in the gorgeous light of sunset.
Gabe was rarely caught speechless. Almost never since the divorce. But looking at Daphne and Helen in that doorway, while his body still screamed for Alice, literally struck him dumb.
“Hi,” Daphne said, her wide eyes taking it all in.
“Hello, ladies,” he finally said, forcing a smile.
“You told us to come watch the sunset here,” Helen reminded him, unaware of the treacherous adult undercurrents swirling around the kitchen. “You said this was the best place in the world for that. So we’re here.” She hopped forward in her bright pink galoshes and Gabe’s heart staggered and paused.
Right. Date two with Daphne. A sunset hike to the Hudson. Yesterday that had seemed like a good idea, but watching Alice from the corner of his eye blanche and brace herself momentarily against the fridge, he cursed himself.
“Is this a bad time?” Daphne asked, her face bland but her eyes piercing. She was no fool and wasn’t about to be played like one.
He did not know what to do. How to make this right. He glanced at Alice, searching for some clue, some hint of how to not hurt her.
Hurt her? he suddenly thought. She’s my ex-wife and we made a mistake. There’s no hurt here. There’s just a mistake.
That justification seemed right. How could they be hurt if days ago they were screaming at each other? They’d gotten caught up in working together. That’s all. Talking about Zinnia and the divorce in a darkened warm kitchen had allowed them to forget for one brief moment that the past was best left in the past. That’s all.
“No,” he finally said, pushing Alice and the disaster of that kiss away. “This is a perfect time.” He took a deep breath, willing Alice to understand what he so clearly knew to be the truth. The kiss was a onetime mistake. “You good?” he asked Alice. “I mean for the budgets?”
“No problem,” she said, her head buried in the fridge. “Have a good time.”
He smiled at Daphne, held out his hands and ushered them back out the door. “Let’s go for a walk,” he said, hoping he’d done the right thing but feeling Alice at his back like a burning fire.
10
“Hey, run on ahead, Helen, and see if you can find me some river rocks for the porch,” Daphne said. The words weren’t even totally out of her mouth before Helen was just a flash of pink and blond ponytail behind the bend in the river.
Uh-oh, Gabe thought, carefully pulling the fronds from the center stem of a fern leaf he’d plucked to keep his hands busy. His stomach churned in knots. There were words, explanations to Daphne, to Alice, to all of them knocking at his teeth and he worried that if he opened his mouth, he might say something dumb such as, “I kissed my ex-wife because I like her. I like her but she’s like poison to me.”
He worried that if he opened his mouth he’d turn to this wonderful woman and say, “I am so confused.”
Not exactly the right thing to say on a date.
“Gabe, I don’t know what’s going on with your chef, but we interrupted something tonight and I think—”
“Alice is my ex-wife.”
There. I said it.
He felt some of the knots loosen in his stomach.
Her mouth hung open for a second, then shut as she digested what he’d said. “Are you in the process of getting back together?” she asked.
“We are in the process of—” He stopped, unsure. “Working together.”
“That’s all? Because it didn’t look like you were just working together. And that’s fine.” She held out her hands as if she had given up any interest she had in the situation and he didn’t want that. He wanted her interest. He liked her, he really did. She was a potential future while Alice was and would always be the past.
Gabe grabbed her hand and stopped walking, turning her to face him.
“As a rule,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest, her gray eyes shooting out sparks, “I don’t date men who are still in love with their ex-wives.”
He nearly laughed. Still in love with Alice? Good God, he hoped he wasn’t that dumb. “I am not still in love with Alice. She’s had a rough go of it lately and tonight she finally talked about it.” He took a deep breath. “Things got emotional on both sides, but there is nothing going on with her. I swear it.”
Daphne studied him, the intelligence in her eyes made him uncomfortable, as if she could see truth that he didn’t.
“Why did you split up?” she asked.
“Why does anyone split up?” he asked, as if all couples, in some deep place, shared the same reasons.
“My husband and I wanted different things,” she said. “He thought living a simple life out on a farm was what he wanted. Two years in he changed his mind.” She shrugged. “I figure I should have s
een it coming.”
He shook his head. “Alice and I wanted the same things.” Family. Home. A tribe of our own. “We just couldn’t give it to each other.”
He tossed the frond. “I needed a chef and she needed a job and it seemed like it could work.”
“It’s not?” Daphne asked.
He stepped forward, away from her eyes, tired of being questioned for the truth. “No, it is. It’s working out fine.” Better than fine, it’s like the dream we had a million years ago. Better even than that. Kisses at dusk, troubled kids working out their problems in the kitchen, weddings being planned—there was nothing he could ask for that would be better. Except…if his chef wasn’t Alice. If his blood didn’t hum for his ex-wife. If it was another woman with whom these two months could actually build into something more. Then it would be perfect. There was no chance of that with Alice. “I should have been prepared for that as much as I was prepared for it not working out.”
“What was the thing you couldn’t give each other?” Daphne asked.
His throat was tight. Thick. And he didn’t know where this emotion had sprung from. “Children,” he finally managed to say.
“What happened? Was she—”
“I’ll tell you, Daphne. Someday. Just not today.” When Alice wasn’t here. He could tell Daphne was dissatisfied by that answer. She was a good woman who deserved more, but that was as much as he could give her.
Alice would kill him if she knew he was talking with Daphne about the things he could never to talk to her about.
They continued walking, the sound of Helen ahead of them like a lighthouse in a dark night. And just when he’d controlled the unruly ends of his emotions, Daphne slipped her hand in his, her fingers brushed his, and her grip, true and firm, a warm surprise, held him strong.
Alice closed her eyes behind her sunglasses and rested her head against the tree at her back. It was nearly 3:00 p.m. and she could not muster any enthusiasm for baking. None.
Chocolate turned her stomach, the smell of lemons made her gag, everything was too bright and looked too rich. She didn’t want to touch food. Or smell it.
She took a sip of coffee and her stomach nearly rebelled.
The demons had run her ragged last night.
And she was paying the price today.
At some point in the middle of that bottle of wine she’d realized what had gone wrong; her mantra had changed over the last two weeks. She’d gone—subtly and in small steps—from not wanting anything, to wanting everything. It had started with the kitchen, and the food, and Cameron. Then she’d started wanting to make more decisions, she wanted to impress her ex-husband, Max and Patrick. She wanted everything she touched to be perfect, yet two weeks ago she’d been grilling grade-B steak at a chain restaurant so she would never want anything. So that she couldn’t long for perfection.
She’d kissed Gabe last night. She’d kissed him because she wanted him. And there’s no telling where that would lead. Sex? Wanting to try again? Try again to have a baby? Try again to be a family?
Those were ridiculous notions, suicidal. She couldn’t survive another go-around with Gabe even if she wanted it—which she didn’t. And, more to the point, it was very obvious from the way he walked away from her last night that he didn’t want it.
So what am I doing? She wondered. Why am I feeling so crappy?
This morning she practiced her old mantra, the one that made it possible for her to wake up in the morning and not weep for all that she couldn’t have.
There is nothing I want.
There is nothing I need.
“Hey, Alice!” Cameron jogged up the small hill to where she sat overlooking the parking lot and the trailhead Max had so carefully made. “I looked for you in the kitchen,” he said. He looked like a puppy, floppy brown hair and an overeager smile.
“I’m not there,” she said, managing to surprise herself with the flatness in her voice, the harsh edge to her words.
“Yeah.” The overeager smile fled. “I figured.”
He watched her for a minute, the look in his eyes slowly changing, slowly reverting to the hard, who-gives-a-shit kid he’d been over a week ago, and she hated that she had so much influence over him. That what she said or did mattered so much.
I want to be alone, she thought. I just want to be alone.
“What’s the matter with you?” he asked, his sneer creeping back onto his mouth.
She didn’t answer. She didn’t have an answer. Heartsick and stupid? Foolish and hungover? Tired and battered? Kissed and forgotten.
“You’re working with Max today,” she said instead.
“But—”
Oh, God. The wounded look in his eyes shattered her and she had to look away.
“You said we were working on desserts.”
“Well, it’s complicated.” She pushed herself to her feet. “It’s better if I do it by myself.”
She walked by him, the ground uneven, and she stumbled slightly. “You’re drunk,” he snapped and his tone froze her. Such vivid loathing was something she only heard in her own voice.
Cameron ran away, down the hill, across the parking lot and onto the trail, probably toward Max. She figured it was for the best.
She swallowed the last of her coffee, hoping it would wash away the taste of self-loathing and headed back to her kitchen.
The door swung open before she put her hand on the knob and she stepped out of the way as Gabe came storming out. He stopped, just shy of touching her.
“I was looking for you,” he said. “I wanted—”
“It was a mistake,” she said, glad for her sunglasses so he couldn’t see her eyes. “It won’t happen again.”
“But—”
Ice filled her veins and she understood why Gabe froze her out so much. It felt good to feel nothing.
To not be responsible for someone else’s pain.
“You get your wish, Gabe. We’ll never talk about it again. I won’t wallow and you can pretend it didn’t happen. And in a month and a half you’ll never have to see me again.”
He swallowed, his strong throat flexing and relaxing. Her belly coiled with tension of all sorts. She took a step away, hoping distance would help her breathe, would help her body relax, but it didn’t. She could still feel him there, just out of touch.
“I wanted to tell you we’re having a staff meeting this afternoon,” he said finally.
She didn’t even feel embarrassed, she was that cold.
“Fine,” she said and blew past him.
“Our first guests arrive on Thursday,” Gabe said, looking out at his staff, which included his dad, brother, ex-wife and four women and three men who’d answered his ad to help clean and serve food to the guests.
“We have two couples coming from Canada, Joy Pinter from Bon Appetit and Marcus Schlein from New York Magazine.” His hired staff paid attention, but his chef seemed wildly distracted. Alice stared at him, or rather through him, as if he wasn’t here, as if he was just a voice from the heavens. The breeze that blew from her was icy cold and that worried him. It worried him that she looked more like the woman he’d met behind Johnny O’s than the woman who drew funny pictures of giant lizards for his amusement, than the woman he’d kissed last night.
He’d awoken this morning like an amputee searching for a missing limb, patting down the side of the bed he’d never stopped thinking of as hers. He’d dreamed of her with him, in his bed, her slight snores, the way she mumbled kitchen lists, the sweet swell of her backside pressed into the cradle of his hips, the smell and feel of her hair across his pillow, because she’d always slept better close to him.
He’d tried to forget the dream, but his chest and arms felt the phantom shape of her against him, no matter how much he tried to think of Daphne.
Oh, man, this is a mess.
A mess made worse by his father mooning around like some teenager for a woman who’d left him to raise two small boys by himself over thirty years ago. Gabe kne
w Dad wanted to talk about it, but what the hell was he supposed to do? She’d left and Gabe wasn’t about to start talking about her now as if she’d never been gone at all.
His stomach was in knots, his head ached, and his hand, which had been held by Daphne, burned as much as his lips, which longed to kiss Alice.
Such a mess. A disastrous mess.
A little more than a month, that’s all they had to get through. Then the wedding would be over and Alice would be gone. It didn’t matter that this was the most important month of his career.
“I’ve written all their arrival and departure dates, the cottages they will be staying at and any dietary concerns they have.” He handed out the papers he’d copied, and his staff, except for his family, looked at it.
“Is everyone ready for this?” he barked. “Opening weekend, we have two huge magazines—”
“We’re ready, Gabe. Relax,” Max said, and turned to Alice. “Have you seen Cameron today?”
“Yeah, about three,” she said, folding up the paper without even reading it, which meant she didn’t know one of the couples from Canada was vegetarian with a milk allergy.
Wonderful. Great. This is going to go so well.
“I sent him to you,” she said and stood as if they were done.
“He didn’t come to me,” Max said. “Why didn’t you let me know your change of plans?”
“I didn’t know I had to.” Her voice was lifeless as she walked away.
Wedding At the Riverview Inn Page 11
