Prince of Secrets
Page 10
“It’s not a business deal.” Chanel ground out the words, refusing to be hurt by her stepfather’s observation.
Because it was true. She couldn’t imagine anyone better than Demyan ever coming into her life, but that wasn’t what was holding her back, was it?
“No, it’s not,” Andrew chimed in, giving his dad a fierce scowl. “Leave her alone about it. Demyan would be damn lucky to have Chanel for a wife and he’s obviously smart enough to realize it.”
Their mom tut-tutted about swearing, but Andrew ignored her and Chanel just gave her little brother a grateful smile. He and Laura had never taken after their parents’ dim view of Chanel. Their extended family, other friends and colleagues of the Saltzmans might, but not her siblings.
For that, Chanel had always been extremely thankful. Because she loved Andrew and Laura to bits.
Instead of looking annoyed by Andrew taking Chanel’s part, Demyan gave him an approving glance before turning a truly chilling one on Perry. “Neither of us is likely to do better, hence my proposal.”
“Well, of course,” Perry blustered, but no question—he realized he’d erred with his words.
Chanel wanted to agree to marry Demyan right then, but she couldn’t. There was too much at stake.
*
Chanel was sitting down to watch an old-movie marathon on A&E when her doorbell rang the next evening.
She’d turned down Demyan’s offer of dinner and a night in at the penthouse, telling him she wanted some time alone to think.
He hadn’t been happy, insisting she could think as easily in his company as out of it. Knowing that for the fallacy it was, she’d refused to budge. No matter how many different arguments he brought to bear.
Chanel had taken the fact she’d gotten her way as proof she could withstand even the more forceful side of his personality. And that he respected her enough to accede to her wishes when he knew she was serious about them.
If he was the one ringing the bell, both suppositions would be faulty and that might be the answer she needed.
As painful as it might be to utter.
It wasn’t Demyan through the peephole, though. It was Chanel’s mom.
Stunned, Chanel opened the door. “Mother. What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to talk to you. May I come in?”
Chanel stepped back and watched with some bemusement as her mother entered her apartment for the first time since she’d moved in years ago.
Beatrice sat down on the sofa, carefully adjusting the skirt of her Vera Wang suit as she did so. “Close the door, Chanel. The temperature has dropped outside.”
“Would you like something to drink?” Chanel asked as she obeyed her mother’s directive and then hovered by the door, unsure what to do with herself.
“No, thank you.” With a slight wave of her hand toward the other end of the sofa she indicated Chanel should sit down. “I… You seemed uncertain about your relationship with Demyan last night. I thought you might want to talk about it.”
“To you?” Chanel asked with disbelief as she settled into her seat.
Her mother grimaced, but nodded. “Yes. I may not have been the best one these past years, but I am your mom.”
“And he’s rich.” His penthouse showed that even to someone as oblivious as Chanel could be. Beatrice would have noticed and probably done a fair guesstimate of Demyan’s yearly income off it.
“That’s not why I’m here.”
“He has corporate connections Perry and Andrew might find useful, too. I suppose that might carry even more weight with you.” After all, scientists could be rich, but Beatrice had never made any bones about not wanting another one in the family.
Her mom sighed. “I am not here on behalf of your brother or my husband, either.”
“You’re here for my sake,” Chanel supplied with full-on sarcasm.
But her mother nodded, her expression oddly vulnerable and sincere. “Yes, I am. The way you two are together. It’s special, Chanel, and I don’t want you to miss that.”
“We’ve only been dating a month,” Chanel said, shocking herself and voicing her biggest concern.
Beatrice nodded, as if she understood completely. “That’s the way it was for me and your dad. We knew the first time we met that we would be together for the rest of our lives.”
“You stopped loving him.” What would Chanel do if Demyan stopped wanting her?
Her mother’s eyes blazed with more emotion than Chanel could ever remember seeing in them. “I never did.”
“But you said…” Pain lanced through Chanel as her voice trailed off.
There were too many examples to pick only one.
“He was it for me.”
“You married Perry.”
“I needed someone after Jacob died.”
“You had me. You promised we would always be a team.” That broken promise had hurt worst of all.
“It was too hard. You were too much like him. I tried to make you different, but you refused to change.” Her mother sighed, looking almost defeated. “You are so stubborn. Just like him.”
For the first time, Chanel heard the pain in those words her mother had never expressed.
Some truths were just as hurtful to her. “Perry hates me.”
“He’s a very jealous man.”
“He wasn’t jealous of me. You weren’t affectionate enough to me to make him jealous.”
Sadness filled Beatrice’s eyes. “No, I haven’t been. He was jealous of Jacob.”
“Because you never stopped loving him.” Despite all evidence to the contrary.
“How do you stop loving the other half of your soul?”
Finally Chanel understood a part of her childhood she’d always been mystified by. She’d tried with Perry at first. Really tried. “Perry blamed me. He took his jealousy out on me.”
“Your father wasn’t around to punish.”
“You let him.”
Beatrice looked away and shrugged. As if it didn’t matter. As if all that pain was okay to visit on a child.
“You let him,” Chanel said again. “You knew and you let him hate me in effigy of my father.”
Her mom’s head snapped back around, her expression dismissive. “He doesn’t hate you. He wanted you to be the best and all you wanted was your books and science.”
“It’s what I love. Didn’t that ever matter to you?”
“Of course it mattered!” Beatrice jumped up, showing an unfamiliar agitation. “Science stole your father from me. Do you for one second believe I wanted it to take you, too?”
“So, you pushed me away instead.”
“That wasn’t my intention.”
“I don’t fit with the Saltzmans.”
Beatrice didn’t deny it, but she didn’t agree either. Should Chanel be thankful for small mercies?
“I did fit with the Tanners.”
“Too well, but they’re all gone, Chanel. Can’t you see that?”
“And you think I’ll die young like Dad did because of my love for science?”
“You’re too much a Tanner. You take risks.”
“I don’t!” She’d been impacted by the way her father and grandfather had died, too. “I’m very careful.”
“If you are, then I’ve succeeded a little, anyway.”
“You succeeded, all right. You succeeded in picking away at our relationship until there wasn’t one anymore.” Chanel nearly choked on the words, but she wouldn’t hold them back anymore. “You couldn’t handle how much having me around reminded you of Dad, so you pushed me away with both hands.”
“And now you can barely bring yourself to see me even once a month.”
“Visits with you are too demoralizing.”
“Your sister and brother see you more often.”
Even Andrew. He was away at university, but Chanel went to visit her brother at least once a term. She always made sure she got time with him when he was home. While she’d done her best to nurtur
e her relationships with her siblings, Chanel had avoided her mother with the skill of a trained stunt driver.
“You have your sister date with Laura every week, but somehow you manage to avoid seeing me or Perry.”
“Can you blame me?” Chanel demanded and then shook her head. “It doesn’t matter if you do, or don’t. I know whose fault it is we don’t have a relationship and it’s not mine.”
Finally, she truly understood that. It wasn’t that Chanel wasn’t lovable. Unless she’d been willing to become a completely different person, with none of her father’s passions, mannerisms or even affections, Chanel had been destined to be the brunt of both her mother’s grief and Perry’s jealousy.
There was no way she could be smart enough, well behaved enough or even pretty enough to earn their approval.
Not with hair the same color as her dad’s and eyes so like his, too. Not with a jaw every Tanner seemed to be born with and her bone-deep desire to grow up and be a scientist.
Beatrice’s eyes filled with grief that slowly morphed into resolution. “No, it’s not. You deserved better than either Perry or I have given you. You deserve to be loved for yourself and by someone who isn’t wishing every minute in your company you would move just a little differently, speak with less scientific jargon…”
“Just be someone other than who I am.”
“Yes. You deserve that.” Her mom’s voice rang with a loving sincerity Chanel hadn’t heard in it since she was eight years old and a broken vulnerability she never had. “That’s why I’m urging you with everything in me not to push Demyan away because how you feel about him scares you. I wouldn’t trade the years I had with your father for anything in the world, not even a life without the constant pain of grief that never leaves.”
“You think Demyan loves me like Dad loved you?”
“He must.” In a completely uncharacteristic gesture, Beatrice reached out and took both Chanel’s hands in her own. “Sweetheart, a man like that, he doesn’t offer you marriage when he could have you in his bed without it, not unless he wants all of you, but especially the life you can have together.”
Her mother hadn’t called her sweetheart in so long that Chanel had to take a couple of deep breaths to push back the emotion the endearment caused. “He’s really possessive.”
And bossy in bed, but she wasn’t going to share that tidbit with her mom.
“He needs you. For a man to need that deeply, it’s frightening for him. It makes him hold on tighter.”
“Did Dad hold on tight?”
“Oh, yes.”
Chanel had a hard time picturing it. “Like Perry?”
“Nothing like Perry. Jacob wasn’t petty. Ever. He wasn’t jealous. He trusted me and my love completely, but he held on tight. He wanted every minute with me he could get.”
“He still followed his passion for science.”
“Yes. I used to love him for it.”
“You grew to hate him, though, didn’t you?” That made so much sense.
Chanel hadn’t just spent her childhood as scapegoat to Perry for a man who couldn’t be reached in death. Her mom had punished her for being too like her father, too.
“I did.” Tears welled and spilled over in Beatrice’s eyes. “I betrayed our love by learning to hate him for leaving me.”
Chanel didn’t know what to do. Not only had she not seen her mother cry since the funeral, but they didn’t have the kind of relationship that allowed her to offer comfort.
“He doesn’t blame you.” Chanel knew that with every fiber of her being. Her dad’s love for her mom had had no limits.
“For hating him? I’m sure you’re right. He loved so purely. But if he were here now to see the damage I’ve done to you, to our bond as a family, he’d be furious. He would hate me, too.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHANEL COULDN’T RESPOND.
Her throat was too tight with tears she didn’t want to shed, but her mom was probably right.
Jacob Tanner had loved his daughter with the same deep, abiding emotion he’d given his wife. He’d expected a different kind of best from both of them than Perry ever had.
The good kind. The human kindness kind.
Beatrice sighed and swiped at the tears on her cheek, not even looking around for a tissue to do it properly. “I wish I could say I would do it all differently if I could.”
“You can’t?” Chanel asked, surprised at how much that hurt.
“As I have grown older and watched your brother and sister mature, had the opportunity to observe the way you are with them, it’s opened my eyes to many things. I have come to realize just how weak a person I am.”
“If you see a problem you have the power to fix and do nothing to change it, then yes, I think that does make you weak.”
“So pragmatic. Your father would have said the same thing, but you both would have assumed I had the power to change myself. If I did, do you think I would have worked so hard at changing you?”
“So, that’s it? Things go on like always?”
“No,” Beatrice uttered with vehement urgency. “If you’ll give me another chance, I will do better now.”
“So, you have changed.” Could Chanel believe her?
“I’ve acknowledged the true cost of my weakness. The love and respect of my daughter. It’s too much.”
“I don’t know if I can ever trust you to love me.”
“I understand that and I don’t expect weekly mother-daughter dates.”
“I don’t have time.” Chanel realized how harsh that sounded after she said the words, and she winced.
Her mom gave her a wry smile. “Your time is spoken for, but maybe we could try for more often than once every couple of months.”
“Let’s see if we can make those visits more pleasant before we start making plans for more.” Words were all well and good, but Chanel had two decades of her mother’s criticisms and rejections echoing in her memories.
Beatrice nodded and then she did yet another out-of-character gesture, opening her arms for a hug. When Chanel didn’t immediately move forward to accept, her mother took the initiative.
Chanel responded with their normal barely touching embrace, but her mom pulled her close in a cloud of her favorite Chanel No. 5 perfume and hugged her tight. “I love you, Chanel, and I’m very proud of the woman you’ve become. I’m so very, very sorry I wasn’t a better mother.”
Chanel sat in stunned silence for several seconds before returning the embrace.
“You don’t think I’m too awkward and geeky for Demyan?” she asked against her mother’s neck.
Still not ready to see the older woman’s expression in case it wasn’t kind.
But Beatrice moved back, forcing Chanel to meet her eyes. “You listen to me, daughter. You are more than enough for that man. You are all that he needs. Now you need to believe that if you’re going to be happy with him.”
“It’s only been a month, Mom.”
“Your dad proposed on our third date.”
The synergy of that took Chanel’s breath away. Demyan hadn’t proposed on their third date, but he’d told her then that they were starting something lifelong, not temporary. “I thought you got married because you were pregnant with me.”
“I was pregnant, yes, but we’d already planned to get married. Only, our original plan was to do it after he finished his degree.”
“You said…”
“A lot of stupid things.”
Chanel’s mouth dropped open in shock at her mother’s blunt admission.
Beatrice gave a watery laugh. “Close your mouth. You’ll catch flies.”
“I love you, too, Mom.”
“Thank you. That means more than you’ll ever know. I know I don’t deserve it.”
“I didn’t say I liked you,” Chanel offered with her usual frankness and for once didn’t regret it.
Their relationship was going to work only if they moved through the pain, not try to bury it.
“I don’t remember.” She didn’t say it to belabor the point. She just didn’t.
“You will. I’m stubborn, too. You didn’t get it all from Jacob.”
“What about Perry?”
“I’ll talk to him. I guess I never realized how bad it was in your mind between you. He really doesn’t hate you. He’s even told me he admires you.”
Chanel made a disbelieving sound.
“It’s true. You’re brilliant in your field. I think it intimidates him. He’s a strong businessman, but if he had your brains he’d be in Demyan’s position.”
With a penthouse with a view of the harbor? Her parents lived in the suburbs and she couldn’t imagine them wanting anything different.
Her mother left soon thereafter, once she’d promised again to change and make sure Perry knew he had to alter the way he interacted with Chanel, too.
No one could have been more shocked than Chanel when she got a call from the man himself later that night. He apologized and admitted he’d thought she had always compared him unfavorably to her dad, just like her mom did.
Chanel didn’t try to make him feel better. Perry did compare unfavorably with Jacob Tanner. Her dad had been a much kinder and loving father, but Chanel agreed to try to let the past go if the future was different.
How had Demyan affected such change in her life in so little time? She wasn’t going to kid herself and try to say it was anything else, either.
Somehow Demyan had blown into her life and set it on a different path, one in which she didn’t have to be lonely or rejected anymore.
If she could let herself trust him and the love she felt for him, the rest of her life could and would be different, too.
She picked up the phone and called him.
“Missing me, little one?” he asked without a greeting.
“Yes.” There was a wealth of meaning in that one word, if he wanted to hear it.
“Yes as in yes, you miss me, or yes as in you will marry me?” he asked, sounding hopeful but cautious.