“I just need to make you happy again,” he stated.
“This whole thing started because you forgot what it was to indulge your own happiness. Who’re you doing this for now? Me or you? If it’s not for both of us, then we shouldn’t even be having this conversation.”
“We can be happy,” he asserted. “I don’t know how long it will take, but I know we can both be happy again.”
Her lips parted. With realization came sudden hope. “What if I want to be happy right now?”
“You can do that?”
She smiled because she didn’t need three months in the mountains and a guru to tell her so.
She just needed a chance neighbor, as wise as he was Greek. She just needed the escape of this old house on Serendipity where there was room to breathe, think, and pace and to confront herself and her feelings. She just needed to yell at the man who had betrayed her, no matter how many calm, civilized years they’d spent together in their French Colonial.
The smile came fast and true, miraculous in itself. “I think I can. Not only that, I think it’s what I deserve. I deserve to be happy. Right now.”
Both of Richard’s brows arched. Lines appeared in his brow, betraying a hint of his old skepticism. “Is that realistic?”
“If it isn’t realistic, it should be,” she said. “Can’t it ever just be simple?”
“I don’t know. I always thought if there was anything worth having, you had to work for it. Like us. But what you’re telling me, I think, is that you don’t want to work. You don’t want to try.”
“I love work,” she told him. “You know that. If I wasn’t a trier, I never would’ve left New York. I never would’ve given up the life my mother envisioned for me. I never would have considered for a moment that I was wrong in divorcing you. It was Cassandra, believe it or not, who made me question my motives.”
“Cassandra?”
“She said something to me about her and Jefferson. They don’t love each other anymore but they fear failure more than they fear unhappiness. And here you are telling me you need to make things right. Not that you want to. That you need to.”
“Is there a difference?”
“Yes!” she shrieked, balling her hands around handfuls of her hair. “Yes, there is a huge difference, Richard! It’s the difference between the brain and the soul. It’s obligation versus desire. It’s...it’s...” She heard the words in her head and they were Byron’s. “Oh, my God. It is apples and oranges.” Clapping her hand over the lower half of her face again, she felt a wavering laugh chase through her. Could the truth really have been so simple all along?
It was Vivienne who’d been on point when she asked Byron at the wedding how he was always right.
Richard winced at the cliché. He stepped back to the bench and folded onto it.
It was then that Roxie began to see what coming here had cost him. The veneer was gone and behind it was a crestfallen man—a man she’d once loved. She found her feet moving toward him and her touch gliding across his arm in a pacifying caress. “I’ve spent the last two months wishing there was some way that the pieces of us that are left could amount to what we had before. But I can’t make myself go back. I can only move forward.”
“It’s human nature, I suppose.” Sliding his glasses from his nose, he lifted the corner of his shirt.
“Let me,” she whispered, taking them delicately. She used the edge of her sweater to clean the lenses, letting him collect himself. He’d come here for her. It had been honorable. Even in light of his betrayal, she could see that. Just as she could see that part of him still loved her and clung to her as she had clung to the idea of him.
But what good was an idea when you needed the tangible? What good was a half when you needed the whole, and perhaps a bit more after that? A touch of the extraordinary.
In habit, she placed the glasses back on his face and watched him lift a finger to push them against the bridge of his nose. He looked through them at her and took her hand, holding her fingers gently. “The loss is mine, and it’s a big one. You’re right, of course. Maybe it did start before Cassandra. Maybe I’ve never known how to balance passion and stability. To me, they’ve always seemed like two sides of a coin.”
“They are,” she mused. “They’re opposites, but they’re two halves of the same whole. Without the other, they don’t amount to much. I think that’s the best recipe for marriage, don’t you?”
He nodded. Squeezing her hand, he asked, “Would you be okay walking me out?”
Yes, she would be okay. It was a startling conclusion and the best closure she could have wished for.
As they left the tea and cheese straws on the patio and walked back through the house, the fatigue hit her. She had spent weeks questioning, trying to figure out what the best course of action would be concerning him. She’d thought until she couldn’t think anymore, doubting herself, her own mind and heart. Now it was all over. At last. She was relieved, but drained.
As they stepped onto the front porch, he faced her. “I came here believing this would work. Your mother. She left me ten dozen messages saying... Well, you can imagine what she said.”
Roxie groaned. “Marabella. Ever the complicated optimist.”
He gave her a half smile. “What will you do from here?”
She glanced back at the walls of the house. “I’ll live here. Through the rest of my lease, anyway. I’ll work, as I always do.”
“And that’ll make you happy?” he questioned.
“Now that I know what I want,” she said, “yes, I think it will.”
“And what about Marabella? How will you handle her?”
Roxie rolled her eyes, gathering the folds of her sweater together over her middle. “Well, when I can no longer avoid her, I suppose I’ll dye my hair and change my name.”
He laughed quietly. “We go our separate ways from here, Roxie. And since relationships rarely end so amicably, I think it’s only right to hold you.”
She had gone from not wanting him to touch her ever again last March to wishing he was there to do just that in the New Year. Pressing her lips together, she decided to give herself one last test. “Okay.”
He closed the space between them and wrapped her in his arms. She pressed her face into his collar as she had often done before. She closed her eyes and let her arms link around his waist.
They stood just that way for some time. She breathed him in, her brows knitting together. When finally he moved away, she blinked in surprise. The warmth of the familiar was a potent thing. But she didn’t want it as she once had. There was no draw. No ache.
The hollow place inside her had sealed itself shut.
As Richard nodded to her one last time and edged toward the porch steps, Roxie saw something over his shoulder. Her breath quickened and her heart leapt wildly, tuning itself to the presence of another.
Byron. As she rubbed the space between her lungs, she felt another ache, this one sweet.
He was in casual attire—that denim shirt she’d seen him in before and Dockers. He carried flowers. White lilies cupped in lavender sprays.
His expression, however... He stood in the middle of the walkway to the house, watchful, and didn’t show any further signs of approaching either the house or her as Richard made his way toward him. “Byron,” he greeted with a polite nod.
“Dick,” Byron said, his reply at once flat and prickly.
“Good to see you,” Richard said hesitantly as he bypassed him to his car parked on the street.
“Yeah, you, too, Dick,” Byron responded, not taking his eyes off Roxie. Her stomach tightened when she saw the accusation there.
She couldn’t breathe, much less deny what he’d seen and assumed. As Richard drove away, Byron continued to stand there, debating, assuming, and she didn’t know how
to move toward him. She felt chaos for him when her chaos had just ended.
Could she afford any more chaos?
With a brusque nod of decision, he climbed the steps to the porch and all but thrust the bouquet at her. “These are from Vivi.”
“Byron...”
“I just got back from dropping her and Sid off at the airport,” he explained quickly, undeterred. “They wanted to say thank you, again. And I wanted to say thank you, also. I guess I owe you one.” And with that, his flight reflex kicked into high gear and he retreated. “See you.”
“Byron,” she said again, but he kept going. To the driveway, past the garage and down the street. Sighing, she lowered to the step. She needed to sit.
She touched her nose briefly to a sprig of lavender before setting the bouquet on the porch next to her. It was beginning to drizzle.
For a while, she sat on the porch and watched it rain.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“THESE ARE THE numbers Grim and I have drawn up for you,” Byron said, handing the paperwork over the bar of Tavern of the Graces. It was midday. The Leightons had yet to open for business and each of them held an infant dressed in a literary-themed body suit. If Byron wasn’t mistaken, the quiet one with tufts of cotton hair was Poe and the bald, wiggly one was Beowulf.
Parenting level expert, he acknowledged as they pored over the spreadsheets. Olivia bounced Beowulf and her lips moved as she read. Gerald had donned his horn-rimmed spectacles and was leaning over the bar with a content young Poe gnawing on his thumb.
Byron drank the beer Olivia had poured for him off tap. Not a bad lunch either, he mused as he popped a few peanuts into his mouth. He tried not to eye the doors or think about the duchess upstairs at Belle Brides. When he drove up to the white two-story next to Hanna’s Inn that housed the tavern, Flora and the boutique, he’d seen Roxie’s car in the parking lot.
She’d better not be planning to come to the tavern for a midday repast, because his mission in avoiding her had gone over with surprising success so far. He used the basement equipment in the Victorian only when he was sure she was tied up with consultations or events. He felt ridiculous sometimes waiting to hear her car leave before he departed for work in the mornings. But, damn it, the bunny colony wouldn’t die off until he stopped seeing her everywhere.
It had been a week. His plan was working, for the most part. It would help if Athena would stop asking him about her hips and if Priscilla would stop reminding him that he had danced with her under the stars when no one—he’d presumed—was watching. With no Roxie-related run-ins, however, he expected to flush every last cottontail from the burrow of his subconscious.
Byron ate the entire bowl of peanuts, fine-combing the details of the microbrewery the Leightons planned to open as a side venture. With Olivia’s lifetime of expertise behind the bar and Gerald’s cash, they had more than enough to get it off the ground. He guided them through timetables and profit margins, what they could expect from equipment, production and advertising costs. He listened to them quibble over a name for the house beer. Despite the competitive exchange, he could feel their mutual fervor for the project.
“I’ll talk to ’Cilla, too,” Byron said as he filed all the information back in the packet. He handed it to Olivia. “She’d be happy to do a write-up in the paper to help spread the word once you crack the first cask. Just promise you’ll let me have the first draft.”
“Are you kidding? You can be one of the testers.” She made a face as she sniffed, holding the baby up for inspection. “I think this newb’s made himself another fine mess.”
“Switch off.” Gerald neatly exchanged the clean newb for the dirty one. Beowulf began to wail. “It’s all right, Finnian, my lad. We’ll get you a new nappy. Then you’ll be a good little scallywag and catch some winks with wee Willy, eh?”
Olivia watched them exit, folding wee Willy against her. She brushed the cotton tufts with her fingertips as he nuzzled against her breast. The look on her face was a bit glazed and dreamy when she glanced at Byron again. It was startling and oddly touching to see the local firebrand so unapologetically smitten. “He’s better at that than I am,” she pointed out. “He generally is in any kind of a jam. He’s the calm. I’m the storm.”
Byron smiled. “He lives for the storm.”
“He does,” she said with a chuckle. “And now he’s got himself three bona fide tempests.” She looked down at William and softened when he cooed at her. “Or two. Willy here’s as cool as a cucumber.”
“How will you manage it?” Byron asked. “The bar, the babies, the brewery...?”
“Oh, it’ll be madness, I expect,” she acknowledged. “But, in the words of my husband, ‘it’ll be smashing.’” Her brow arched finely as she measured him from tip to toe. “You’ll be coming up against a whole other kind of madness when you accompany Roxie to that big Honeycutt do this Saturday. Marabella alone is a spectacle of Cirque du Soleil proportions.”
“Isn’t Roxie’s husband escorting her to the demonstration?”
“Richard? Didn’t you hear?” Olivia asked. “She sent him on down the river again.”
“She...what?” Byron’s frown was pronounced. He thought of Roxie and Richard’s embrace last Sunday.
“I’m surprised she didn’t tell you,” Olivia stated. “Seeing how close the two of you have gotten.” She tossed him a subtle wink.
He frowned at her for a moment more. “Excuse me,” he said and turned for the door—he had to see Roxie.
When he got to her boutique, the Closed for Lunch sign on the door of Belle Brides was flipped toward the street. Byron pushed through anyway. The cheery chime of bells greeted him as did the mournful sounds of Edith Piaf. “Rox?” he called when he saw that the shop was empty. When no one answered, he wove through bedecked mannequins and dress racks to the curtained-off doorway leading into the back. “Roxie!” he called again as he ducked under the drapes.
“Byron,” she said, surprised. She sat at a sewing machine while a small man in a pinstriped suit fussed with the beaded ivory train spilling over her lap onto the floor.
Byron planted his feet. “What’s going on?”
She took a good look at his expression and stopped what she was doing. “Yuri, you can take your lunch break now.”
“But Georgiana’s dress,” the man said. His words were peppered with the heavy vowels of Eastern Europe. “Your mother said she would be by later to pick it up.”
“It’s all right,” Roxie assured him. “You can go downtown with the Grisenwalds for the sugar-flower tasting at two. I’ll work through until my mother arrives.”
Yuri helped her arrange the folds of pristine material before he walked around Byron, inspecting him closely. “Size 14s?” he asked, pausing to stare at the toe of Byron’s brogues.
“Yeah,” Byron said, a bit taken aback.
“Hmm.” He glanced back at Roxie with a knowing expression before departing.
Roxie finished hanging the dress on a rack from the ceiling and pinning up the train so it didn’t drag on the floor. Smoothing her hand down the beading, she tucked a long sewing needle back into the upsweep of her hair and noted that Byron’s hands hadn’t moved from their position at his hips. “I have a lot to do here,” she warned. “Georgiana’s changed dresses again.” She frowned. “And you’ve been avoiding me. So what is it?”
“I thought you and Richard patched things up after Vivi’s wedding,” he tossed back at her. When she didn’t argue, he asked, “Am I wrong? Because Olivia’s under the impression that your waltz partner is standing right here.”
“You talked your way out of the waltz.”
“I don’t give a damn about the waltz,” he said. “However, I do give a very great damn who you’re going with on Saturday.”
“Nobody!” she answered, testy. Her eye
s heated to larkspur flame. “Okay? Nobody! I’ve declined the option of a plus one.”
“What about Richard?”
“What about him?” she asked in a defeated sort of way.
“Did you send him down the river like Olivia said?”
“I wouldn’t put it exactly like that,” she said carefully. “When I saw him, I realized that getting back together with him wasn’t... It wasn’t...” She faltered. When he stepped toward her, she closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. Pressing the heel of her hand against her sternum, she shook her head as a line drew between her eyes. “Would you like some chamomile tea?”
“Tea?” he asked as she skirted him.
“Yes. I need chamomile.”
He was on her heels. Before she could go behind the glass counter, he brought her up short with a hand on her arm. “Hey. Look at me.”
“I don’t think I can do this right now.” She shook her head. “Not without tea.”
“Forget the tea. I’m asking you a simple question. At any point in the future do you plan on getting back together with Richard?”
“No,” she said softly. “No.”
He blinked as the impact hit him. “Was it you who decided this?”
“Yes, it was me,” she replied, pulling out of his grasp and dodging behind the counter. She moved past the teapot and escaped by way of the waist-high hatch on the other side.
“When I saw you two—”
“You didn’t ask, did you? Because if you had, you would know that it was a goodbye that you saw.” She bent down to pick up something slinky and colorful that had fallen from the lingerie rack. Her hands were trembling, he saw as she threaded the straps back through the hanger and hung it up. “I told him goodbye.”
He stared at her as she moved through the clothing racks, tucking here, smoothing there. Again, anything to avoid looking at him directly. “So...” He blew out a breath. “No more Dick?”
Wooing the Wedding Planner Page 17
