by Lauren Dane
Gillian shook her head and blubbered like an idiot.
“You can work this out. He was wrong to jump to conclusions but we know he’s got that thing about reporters.”
“What about her thing about being humiliated in public?” Jules countered Mary’s statement.
“This isn’t a bloody contest! I ripped his family apart and then he fell back to his original position about me. All this started because I sang well! We got into a tiff about it, or rather he was pissy and I wanted to just leave. But if I’d told him about my father, the stuff that happened with the reporter wouldn’t have hurt him nearly as much.
“He doesn’t trust me. He thinks I have to be with him every minute of the day and tell him every horrible thing in my past to be trustworthy, and I can’t. I can’t do that and I don’t want to. Part of it is my fault. I own it. I should have told him.”
She stood and they hovered around her. She was just totally and completely exhausted by everything. The truth about her father was out and she realized holding it in had been weighing on her heavily. She should have told him. She could own it and whatever damage she’d done. She’d sent an apology letter to Erin and arrange to be out of the house when Adrian was there with Miles.
“I’ll have to find a way to tell Miles.” She breathed out. She’d never told him either. Had simply said her father was a criminal and that she hadn’t seen him since she was younger than he was now.
“Not tonight, though.” Mary ran her hands up and down Gillian’s arms. “Why don’t you come back to my place and stay? I’ll have Ryan run over and pick Miles up in the morning and I’ll make everyone crepes.”
“I must be in pretty bad shape for you to offer to make crepes.”
“You’re scaring me. I’ve never seen you like this before. You’re the one who is always together and strong. It makes me want to punch him in the nose.” Jules hugged her.
“Come back to my house. I’ll even watch something that’ll skeeve me out like The Ring. We’ll have a slumber party, just us girls.” Mary smiled hopefully.
She shook her head. “I need to be alone.”
They both looked so worried she took their hands in hers. “I’ll survive. It hurts like hell. I can’t regret loving him and believing in my happily ever after, even if I’ll miss it.”
“Are you sure it’s over? Gillian, he loves you. I know this. I believe it with all my heart. You two bicker all the time. How can this fight be any different?” Mary brushed the hair from Gillian’s eyes.
“Because it is. I can feel it. Before we weren’t disagreeing about the final outcome. Not really. This is not the same. He feels betrayed, and part of it is real because it has everything to do with his distrust of outsiders for doing exactly this.”
“I don’t want to leave you alone.” Jules looked miserable.
“You’re going to have to. I need a bath. I need some gin and I need some sleep. I have to get this dealt with and gone before Miles comes home tomorrow morning. Adrian and I started this relationship, so we can’t just break up and not expect him to notice. It has to stay civil and not involve him at all.”
“I’m coming by in the morning with the makings for crepes and you can’t stop me.” Mary sniffed.
Jules nodded. “I’ll bring coffee.”
“You have a shop to open in the morning.” Gillian shooed them both to the door. “I’ll call you both later. Thank you for the ride and for the shoulder to cry on. I’ll be all right. I just need a long cry with the blankets over my head.”
She locked up, including the dead bolts she never threw if she was expecting Adrian to visit—because she didn’t have an extra key for those locks, which meant he had no way to get in if she used them.
She headed to the shower and gave in to tears again. The last few months had been the best of her entire life. She couldn’t regret loving Adrian Brown. Even right at that moment she couldn’t regret it. He’d filled her life with so much.
She cried and cried some more, standing there and feeling horrible until the water started to run cold and forced her out. The gin had hit enough to have taken the edge off the pain, but it was still there.
All she wanted was to get under the covers and go to sleep so she wouldn’t have to experience this anymore. But she couldn’t sleep. She needed something else, so she turned to go back downstairs to her piano.
Adrian slumped home. Empty. He’d meant that night to be a new step and it had started off so well. With a sigh he decided to work awhile. Why not? He turned his computer on, cracked a beer and sifted through e-mail.
Brody’s words echoed through his head.
Erin’s face as the reporter had yelled out his question to her also echoed through his head. The hurt of it, of wanting more of Gillian and getting it in the way he had, sliced through him.
Miles’s e-mail address caught his attention. That was good. His boy was good, damn it. He opened it to find an attachment and a note.
Hey, Dad!
I forgot to send this to you earlier this week but we were just goofing around and I saw it on my phone. Just some video Mum took of us. I told you we would nail it after some more practice. Thanks for all the help.
See you soon. Mum says we’re all hanging out this weekend.
Miles
He clicked and watched his son and his band come to life. They played all the way through “Creep” pretty damned well, especially Miles. The boy was a natural, no doubt about it.
And then Gillian’s voice. Laughing. Encouraging Miles. Teasing in her way all the while giving compliments.
He put his head between his hands and hit play again.
By the time he’d listened to Gillian for the fifth play, he was standing because he’d made a choice.
They’d worked out everything else. They’d work this out. She was his woman and they’d work it through.
Of course, he’d missed the last ferry, which meant he had to drive around. Which was fine; it gave him time to fight with himself and accept that he’d reacted badly and done some major damage. Especially the part where he called her and told her he never wanted to see her again.
He turned on the mini-recorder he carried with him everywhere and began to work on a new song as he drove the long way around.
It was late when he finally arrived. Long after two and heading into three. But he knew she was awake because he heard her piano as he walked up the steps. Sad. Soulful. His heart broke just standing there listening to it.
His key worked but the door wouldn’t open. She had the dead bolt engaged. Damn.
He knocked and continued to do so. Miles wasn’t home, he knew that much, and he wasn’t going to wake anyone up because the houses next door were too far away to hear his knocking.
She continued playing, though louder. So he rang the doorbell and then started knocking again. He’d called and she didn’t answer. He texted and she didn’t answer.
“Gillian, open up,” he said, his mouth close to the door.
He heard an abrupt jangle of piano keys and then the sound of what had to be stomping to the door she then yanked open, standing squarely in his path.
“Why are you here?”
Her face was red and swollen. She wore sweats and a ratty shirt and looked as miserable as he felt.
“We need to talk.”
“Go home, Adrian. I’ve sent your sister an e-mail apologizing to her for what she had to face tonight. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about my father. I never wanted to hurt you and I have. That’s really it. We’ve said all we need to say.” She tried to close the door but he blocked it with his shoe.
“We said too much and yet not enough. The both of us. We need to work through this.”
She straightened her posture and took on that starchy thing, but it wasn’t erotic. She was deliberately putting him on blast. “Miles isn’t home. I’ll let him know you stopped by. If you wish to return tomorrow morning, I’ll be gone so that can happen.”
“Gillian . . .
please.”
He stood there on her doorstep looking so beautiful it was all she could do not to leap into his arms. She loved him more than she could express. And she wanted him to go before she did and they both embarrassed themselves.
“It’s better this way, Adrian. Before we did something stupid like moving in together and something else comes up you can’t handle.” She closed her eyes. “That was uncalled for. But my past has ugly things in it. Ugly things I can’t put down on a list for you so you can feel as if you know everything about me. This can’t work. You need to go.”
Her breath hitched and the sob was clear enough that even she couldn’t deny it. He stepped toward her but she warded him off with a hand.
“No. It’s for the best that this happened early on. You have trust issues and I’m not sure anyone outside the circle you already have will be good enough for you. I have trust issues and God knows I react poorly to being humiliated in public. They clash and I thought it could work, but clearly it can’t. I won’t stand in the way of you seeing your son, of course. I’d never do that. He loves you.” Like she did. Tears were streaming down her face and she couldn’t stop them so she simply ignored them.
“Don’t do this.”
“I hope you’ll consider Miles’s feelings in all this. He doesn’t know about my father. Not the specifics. Just that he was a career criminal and not part of my life. Don’t blame him for my faults or the faults of a man he never met.”
She let herself touch him then. If only to push him back enough to shut the door and lock it again.
He put a hand over the place she’d just touched him. “Baby, please. English, I was wrong to be so harsh. I was shocked and I reacted wrong. I love you. I know you love me. I know you didn’t tell me because you were ashamed.”
He heard her crying, ached to help. Ached to make her feel better.
“This isn’t over, Gillian. Just know that I’m coming for you. We will work this out because no one is perfect for me except you.”
Her crying got worse and he put his forehead against the door, helpless against his own tears.
“Go. God, please. It’s too much to have you there. I can’t. Please.”
She turned off the porch light and he stood in the darkness as she turned off all the lights inside as well.
When she’d spoken to him she was not his Gillian. Her eyes didn’t hold the light she had just for him. Her voice had lost the lilt she used to speak to him. Not even her prim British. She sounded empty and numb.
Being that he felt empty and numb, he supposed they made a great pair.
It was too damned cold to wait on the porch until morning. Worse, Miles would be coming home and he knew it was important to keep their son away from this mess.
He drove to a local hotel and though he lay in bed, sleep would not come. She hadn’t seen her father at least since she left England. He’d not been any part of her life if Miles had no idea about the man. She had never returned to England since the day she left either.
Of course she must have gotten some voice training while at Juilliard. Now, with some distance from the actual event, he could see the truth of it. In his desire to know more he let himself get pissy over something totally stupid, which had cascaded into something worse because that reporter had been waiting for just such a moment.
His stupid overreaction had led to the spiral of insanity that had blown up in their faces. Christ, what a pair they were.
He’d seen her face when the reporter spoke to Erin. Had heard her tortured, whispered apology and watched her run away. She didn’t run. She stood and fought when she thought she was right. She was like a little bulldog, she simply didn’t let go until she won.
But tonight she’d run. She’d refused to speak to him and had shut down. And it was partly his fault. Okay, mainly his fault, though after listening to her on her doorstep, he could tell she held herself responsible. Which was his fault too.
No. Gillian Forrester was the one. She was his lid and he’d fucked it up but he’d not go down without a fight. He’d win her back and show her they could weather any storm.
Because there was love between them. He did have trust issues and she hit on an important point. His circle was his comfort zone. She didn’t fit in it the way everyone else did and he’d looked for that to be a problem instead of just a process.
That he could see and hear the difference between how she’d been with him earlier, and the last months told him she had been sharing herself with him on her own terms. God, that she’d cried in front of him was major.
He had his own walls. They weren’t as straightforward as hers were. He loved her, though. He knew it as much as he knew he loved Miles and his siblings. She was his.
So he’d be back in the morning and they’d hash this out and they’d be fine. In the meantime since there was no way he’d be sleeping, he may as well work on some music.
23
Gillian shuffled through the kitchen as Miles zoomed around. She’d called and begged Mary not to come over for crepes. She had to hold herself together for Miles, and if anyone showed her any pity or kindness just then, she’d lose what composure she’d managed to find at about five thirty that morning.
There was a knock on the door, but she was on the phone with a client so Miles rushed off, Claypool weaving through his legs like a fluffy road hazard.
Adrian.
She heard his voice and then Miles’s surprised, happy response. It made her smile even as it broke her heart. She used to be part of that and now she wasn’t.
She continued speaking, focused on her client and shutting out the beautifully sad sound of Adrian’s walk through her house. She’d gotten used to it.
“Mum’s on the phone,” Miles explained when they came through.
She kept her back turned and headed to her office, shutting her door.
But that small peace was cut short when Miles barged in five minutes later, well after she’d hung up.
“Mum! Dad brought doughnuts and bear claws and stuff. Come on. I saved you one of those goopy lemon ones you like.”
“No really, Miles, I can’t. I have work to do today.”
She looked up to find Adrian in her doorway looking a little rough. Served him right.
“Everyone needs a good breakfast. I know you tell Miles this all the time. Have some coffee. I brought you some.”
She noted the box and the cup were not from Tart. He must have known the reception he would have received. Hmpf.
“I made a pot already.” How dare he use the “it’s good for you” against her.
“Come on, Mum.” Miles grinned.
“Fine. For a few minutes, and then you and your dad should go to his house for a while. Or away for the afternoon. Whatever.”
She followed Miles out, avoiding Adrian’s gaze and his proffered cup of traitor coffee. She’d have to hide those cups deep in the recycling or Jules would have her head if she saw them.
The doughnut was probably quite tasty, but not just then, with everything she’d ever wanted just across from her.
Miles was seemingly unaffected by their tension as he chattered about all the fun he and his friends had had the night before and an upcoming band concert at school.
“Be sure to reserve enough tickets for everyone.” Adrian spoke and that drawl of his caressed her skin, made her crazy to touch him so much she glared at him just for good measure.
But he was looking at her and caught her gaze. One corner of his mouth quirked up and she had to lick her lips. Which only made his smile bigger. The cad.
“Do you know what? We should jam while I’m here. I’ve been working on something new and it’ll help if you two noodle around with me.”
“Really?” Miles’s eyes widened at the suggestion. “That would be awesome. Like how you and Aunt Erin do it?” “Yeah. Only she and I have been making music together since I was eleven, so she and I have a distinct sort of rhythm. I thought it would be good to change it up with
other people I trust and love.”
She made to leave. How dare the man, really? Last night it was some vast conspiracy that she could sing and today he wanted to jam with her?
He preferred the fire in her gaze to the numbness he’d gotten earlier. Preferred anger to sadness. Fire he could deal with. Fire was something they did well together.
He’d been sort of annoyed at first to walk in and see her chatting on the phone as if nothing had happened. She’d turned her back and left the room even. But when he and Miles had interrupted her, he saw how wrong he’d been. Far from being unaffected, she had dark circles under her eyes to match his own, he’d bet.
“Please, Gillian? I really need you . . . to help me.”
“Mum, please?” Miles already had his bass in his hand and he noted the way Gillian saw that too and her spine relaxed as she accepted the inevitable.
They all moved to the living room and she sat at her piano, waiting.
“This one I’m calling ‘Indelible.’ Starts off like this. You two just go with it.” He started to play, falling into the song he’d written over the last several hours.
Looks can be deceiving
Fragile can hide strong
Her roots dig in
Dug deep like the rest
She’s indelible
Scratched into my skin
Her scent on my fingers
Taste on my tongue
Yeah, try to forget, but you can’t
She’s indelible
He paused because he noted Miles staring at him and then back to his mother, who made a big deal out of not looking at Adrian.
“I need to call Jason about something. Be back in a while.” Miles stood and took his guitar before bending over again to whisper in Adrian’s ear. “Just say you’re sorry and buy her something nice. But not like your nice. Normal nice.”
Which made Adrian laugh because not only would Miles say something like that but Adrian understood it.
He ran from the room on thundering feet, leaving Adrian filled with so much love he thought he’d burst.
