He sat back in his chair, a hole in his chest with a cold wind blowing through it.
“Alice!”
“Marcus!” Her face lit up, her eyes sparkled, and for a moment she was the Alice of a week ago, before the kiss, the Alice before the miscarriages. The wind whistling though his chest blew colder when he realized they were the same Alice. Happy Alice. Glowing Alice. Infectious and laughing. Alice in love.
Marcus hugged her, his hands trailing across her back. Alice grinned up at him.
“God,” he said. “How long has it been?”
“Five years,” she said.
“You look good.” The way he said it made Gabe’s ears perk up. As though she looked good good. Jealousy, unwanted and stupid, gripped him.
“Never thought I’d see you here,” Marcus continued, gesturing at the cathedral ceilings. “I thought you were a bright lights kind of girl.”
Ha! Gabe thought. That’s how well you know her.
“A girl can’t live in the city forever.” She smiled. “Look at you, hotshot reviewer for New York Magazine.”
“Well, you’re partially to thank. You urged me to apply.”
Alice smiled and assured him he would have found his way to New York City eventually.
Gabe let their words wash over him while he made every effort to shake the inappropriate jealousy. Was this how Alice felt when he left with Daphne? Even as he wondered, he knew she must have felt worse.
He suddenly was torn between smart and stupid, right and wrong, what he wanted and what he should want.
He missed Alice in love. He missed being the man to make her light up. And while he knew those days were behind him, he hated being the person responsible for taking the light out of her eyes.
He let the truth of what he needed to do sink in. He didn’t expect it to make her happy again, but he’d at least be taking responsibility for the one thing he could control.
They were still connected, by the past, by their marriage, by whatever lingering feelings had survived the carpet bombing of the divorce and, while she was here, he needed to respect that.
He took a deep breath. As soon as the interview was over he’d call Daphne.
Alice pulled the frozen cinnamon rolls from the freezer to thaw and proof on the counter overnight. Most of the guests were leaving tonight, but Joy Pinter from Bon Appetit was staying one more day in order to get a tour of the grounds from Gabe.
And Alice had noticed that Joy seemed to like her espresso hazelnut cinnamon rolls.
Max walked in the side door, looking every inch the cop he’d once been—stone-faced, straight backed and exuding a general displeasure, a disappointment directed right at her.
Guilt leaped in the pit of her stomach. She’d handled the Cameron thing all wrong, and if she were less of a wimp, she’d actually deal with it. She’d ask to bring him back to the kitchen. She could take it, she was tough. The conversation with Gabe this morning had actually moved some of her baggage so she could deal with other people. Such as Cameron.
“Cameron’s been arrested,” Max said and the cinnamon rolls fell from her hands to clatter on the floor.
“What?” she asked, her hands and feet numb.
“They’ve sentenced him to the group home in Coxsackie.” Max flexed his shoulders as though being around her made him uncomfortable and she realized that she wasn’t a wimp—she was a coward, and the one who suffered was Cameron. “I thought you’d want to know,” he said and turned for the door, as though he couldn’t quite get out of her kitchen fast enough.
She wiped her face with a shaky hand. “What can I do, Max?”
“It’s a little late to do anything.”
She grabbed his arm, held him in place. “What can I do to make it right?” She shook her head. “I…God. I was so wrong to treat him that way.”
Max watched her for a long time weighing, she was sure, her sincerity. “Well, we can’t get him out. But you could visit.”
An idea sprang up in the back of her head, one she might pay for in the long run but that was the nature of doing the right thing.
“All right.” she picked up the cinnamon rolls. Scanned the counter and her mental to do list and figured she had three hours before she needed to be back. She untied her apron and set it on the chopping block. “You have time to drive up there?” she asked Max, and his lips lifted in the smallest smile.
“That’s my girl,” he said and Alice nearly crumbled. He didn’t know how wrong he was.
Forty-five minutes later they pulled up to an old white farmhouse surrounded by modern outbuildings. One looked big enough to be a gymnasium and the other looked as if it might be dorms.
Alice didn’t know what she expected, but a group of kids playing basketball in the parking lot wasn’t quite it.
“It’s a school,” Max said. “School and dorms and treatment facility.”
“Treatment for what?” she asked, watching the kids, who all wore khaki pants and white shirts and couldn’t have been older than fourteen, scramble for the ball. A tall boy with short hair grabbed the ball and tossed it toward the basket, missing spectacularly.
“Alcohol and drugs,” Max said, parking the car and turning off the ignition. “Let’s go. We need to talk to the director before we can talk to Cameron.”
“You think this will work?”
“I’m not sure. They often have work-release programs, but usually not so far away.”
“If he just had a car, he could get to school.”
“I know. Let’s go see what we can do.”
Alice had stones in her stomach. She knew she wasn’t totally responsible for this, but she couldn’t help feeling that her sudden change in the way she’d treated Cameron had led him here.
Max waved at the faculty member working the basketball game, and the tall kid with the short hair stopped running and watched them.
It was Cameron, hardly recognizable without his long hair and filthy, oversize clothes. Alice waved but he just watched her walk by.
The director was a kind man, unassuming but with two huge dragon tattoos up his arms. Alice explained her plan to hire Cameron in her kitchen and asked if it was okay. He wholeheartedly approved.
“He’ll need a ride back and forth after class,” he said. “We don’t have the staff to provide a chauffeur all the way out to the inn.”
“We’ll be able to work it out,” Max said. “Don’t worry.”
“Worrying is my job, Max.” The director laughed and gave Alice an empty classroom to use to talk to Cameron and then sent the secretary out to pull him from the game.
Alice waited in the room, looking at drawings of dogs and horses and mountains and homes that had been tacked on the walls.
She couldn’t help the flutter of nerves, the kick of worry that he’d yell at her, or refuse to see her. That she wouldn’t have a chance to try to make things right. It had been over a week since she’d seen him and it felt like a month.
The door banged open and Cameron stood there, fresh faced and angry in properly fitting clothes.
The mother instinct in her that had survived her efforts to drown it for the past five years sighed. What a good-looking boy.
“What do you want?” he asked, his face twisted in an ugly sneer.
“To apologize,” she said. “Come in.”
He hesitated for a moment, then stepped inside, the door sliding shut behind him. He watched her, offering her nothing, and she almost smiled, recognizing his behavior and his need to protect himself from her.
She had a Cameron inside of her—a small girl, petulant and hurt and scared. And she’d been letting her run things for far too long.
“I’m sorry you got arrested,” she said.
“I didn’t.” Cameron shrugged. “The school sent these people to my house and they brought me here.”
“Do you like it here?”
He shrugged. “I get to go to class and play basketball.”
“Sounds good.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to apologize for the way I acted last week.”
“Apologies from drunks don’t mean anything,” he snapped and she felt as if she’d been blasted right between the eyes with shards of glass.
“Okay…” She sighed and steeled herself for his venom because she deserved it. “How about a job?”
He looked at her, made a rude noise and looked away, but quickly looked back at her. “What are you talking about?”
“We have a wedding coming up in a month and I need help in the kitchen.”
“Peeling potatoes?” His eyes narrowed and she nearly smiled. He was so transparent, as she figured she had been this morning with Gabe. Wishing so much that she was different. That he was. That they could make it work between them, in some alternative universe.
She nodded. “Among other things. I’ll pay you well enough that, when you turn sixteen, Max will go with you to buy a used car so you can get to school.”
His mouth fell open and his shoulders slumped and for a moment she saw his eyes turn bright with a sudden flood of tears.
She could feel the hope and longing roll off him and slam into her chest. Breath was thick in her throat, her chest felt tight, but in a good way, as though she couldn’t hold in all the things she felt for him. How glad she was she could help him. Gabe probably wouldn’t approve of her hiring Cameron with part of her salary, but he had left it up to her. And this was her choice.
Wanting more for Cameron felt good. She’d start there, maybe, and work toward getting more for herself.
“No,” he said, surprising the hell out of her.
“No? Why?”
He chewed on his lip and crossed his arms over his chest, revealing a sudden strength she’d hadn’t expected. “I’ve had enough of drunks,” he said. “I’m here now. My dad can’t—” he stopped, his voice cracked, and Alice’s heart, which she’d been sure had been broken and rubbed into the dust, clenched and tore. “I won’t work for you if you’re drinking,” he said.
“I’m not drinking anymore,” she said. The words, like birds startled from a tree, were a surprise. But she realized that if Gabe couldn’t make her happy, she needed to do it herself, and not drinking was square one.
“Since when?” he asked, doubtful, probably having heard similar words from his father.
She swallowed her pride, a thick ball of it that did not go down easy. “Since right now.”
Alice stepped toward him and he watched her sideways as she put out her hand to shake on the offer, sealing his chance at school and a future and her promise to stop drinking and work on being happy, on her own.
“I want to work the grill,” he said, jerking his chin up.
“Not on your life.”
“No potatoes.”
She winced. “Sorry. There will be potatoes.”
“A car?”
“A Max-approved car.” She nodded, her hand still hovering in the space between them.
“All right,” he said, his hand slapping hers so hard her palm stung. “You’re on.”
She bit back a gleeful bark, a strange crow of joy, and shook his hand. “We’ll pick you up tomorrow.”
12
Gabe had ended his share of relationships. Probably more than his share. More like his share, Alice’s share and probably Max’s share, too, since Max and Alice didn’t seem to believe in ending things when they needed to be ended.
Even so, with all that practice, with his “it’s not you it’s me” speech refined to an art form, spending Wednesday evening telling Daphne that he couldn’t see her anymore didn’t go quite as he had planned.
She braced herself on one of the posts in the gazebo and laughed until tears rolled down her cheeks.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” She sighed. “I am. This is just—” She started to laugh again and Gabe crossed his arms over his chest and waited, impatiently, for Daphne to stop laughing.
“Oh, this is perfect. Just my luck, you know?” Daphne pulled a tissue from her dark blue barn jacket and wiped her eyes. “My first time back out in the dating scene and I get involved with a guy who isn’t over his ex-wife.”
“This has nothing to do with Alice,” he lied. Too many things right now were tied to Alice. Breaking up with Daphne, the success of his inn, his dreams, his thoughts. He felt a resentment churn into the feelings he still had for Alice, the desire he felt when she touched him, when he saw her bent over the chopping block, the sun in her hair. “We are only working together.”
Daphne tilted her head at him as though he were some misguided teenager. “Gabe, it’s fine if you don’t want to tell me the truth. I understand that. You and Alice have a right to your privacy, but you have to at least be honest with yourself.”
“I am,” he said, but he could tell she didn’t believe it, and frankly, neither did he. “It’s a proximity thing,” he finally admitted. “She’ll be gone in a month and my life will get back to normal. We just—” He kicked a rock on the worn path. “She’s got this gravitational pull that I get sucked into every time I’m around.”
“Then why fight it?” Daphne put her hand on his arm and with that touch and its total lack of electricity and heat he knew that even if Alice weren’t here it would never work with Daphne. “Gabe, if my ex came back, nothing in my life would change. Helen would probably be happier, but I don’t feel anything for him. I don’t hate him, I don’t still love him, nothing. He has no gravitational pull.”
“You’re lucky.”
“No.” Daphne’s voice had bite and she grabbed him to face her. “You idiot. You’re lucky and you don’t get it. What I felt for Jake is gone. Vanished. Because it wasn’t real. If you really love someone, really love them, those feelings may change but they don’t go away.”
The truth in her words rattled around in his head, stirred things up in his chest.
“We don’t work,” he whispered. “Outside of sex and the restaurant business, we’ve never worked.”
“Then you’re not trying,” she said, patting his cheek. “Start with the sex and work out from there.”
Through the window over the stove Alice surreptitiously watched Daphne leave.
“What are you doing?” Cameron asked, a sneak catching another sneak.
“I’m spying on Gabe,” she said as Gabe slammed the driver’s-side door of Daphne’s beat-up truck and she drove out of the parking area.
“Aren’t you an adult?” Cameron asked.
“Sometimes,” Alice answered, ducking out of the way when Gabe started walking toward the kitchen. “Keep going on those pots,” she said and Cameron scowled, hating his temporary job as dishwasher.
She whirled to the far work counter where she’d stacked the material she’d ordered for the Crimpson wedding, grabbed it and hit the door to the dining room running before Gabe entered the kitchen.
She was being a child, she knew that, spying on the guy and then leaving so she wouldn’t have to talk to him for fear of what she might say.
Their conversation four days ago haunted her. A thousand times since those moments of naked honesty she’d wanted to turn to him and ask him, Why now? Why couldn’t they have spoken that way while married? When they’d both so clearly needed it.
“Alice?”
Crap. He’d followed.
“Hi, Gabe,” she said, setting the bundles of blue silk on a nearby table. “What’s up?” She pretended to check the bundles, keeping her back to him, but his silence compelled her to turn. “Did Daphne—”
Looking at him, her words stopped, hung suspended in her throat. He was a man ravaged, dark eyed and stormy. Barely contained anger mixed with a desire they’d both been suppressing rolled off him like heat from a banked fire.
They’d been skirting this moment, pretending this heat between them wasn’t happening.
Apparently, Gabe was no longer pretending.
Her treacherous body longed for this reckoning.
“Drop off the spina
ch?” She finished the question, her voice weak.
He shook his head, coming farther into the room until he stood next to her. His silence was like another person in the room, a person sucking in all the air, taking up all the space.
“How did the tour with Joy go on Monday?” She asked, playing with the hemmed edge of silk like an inspector.
“Fine.” His voice was that low rumble of thunder, like a faraway storm gathering strength.
“You and Marcus sure seemed friendly,” he said, sounding like a jealous ex-husband. Alice lifted her head, aware of a sudden change. A rise in temperature.
“We dated.” His eyes flared. “It was brief,” she said, moving from stroking the edges of the cloth to unfolding it, as though more industry on her part would help her breathe, or would speed up this conversation, so she could see where it would go.
“When?”
“After the divorce before he got the full-time job and moved to the city.”
She handed him one edge of the material, the indigo edge that matched his eyes at this moment. “Take this,” she said, unable to stand next to him, feeling the heat of him, smelling the spicy and warm scent of him—that had nothing to do with soap or fabric softener and had everything to do with him—and talk of the other people in their lives.
She stepped away, holding the silver edge of the cloth and it unfurled into a watercolor banner six feet long and ranging from indigo to violet, to royal blue and down the radiant spectrum.
“Pretty, isn’t it?” she asked, to fill the room with some sound other than the odd pounding of her heart.
What do you want?
What are you doing here?
“Beautiful,” he said. Again the distant thunder and she looked up at him, caught his eye and knew it wasn’t the cloth he’d been talking about.
“Marcus asked me to meet him in the city for dinner some night,” she said, throwing it between them like a shield, but it landed like a gauntlet and his hands fisted the fragile fabric.
Wedding At the Riverview Inn Page 13
