The Summer of Sunshine and Margot

by Susan Mallery

  “You don’t have to keep apologizing. I know you feel bad. I do, too. Everything is different now. I don’t know how to go back. I don’t know what you want and if we can’t go back, then is there any point in going forward?” She looked at him. “I don’t know how to fix this.”

  “I don’t, either, but I have a couple of ideas, although I’m not exactly sure how to say this.”

  He hesitated. In that second, she realized he was going to fire her. Nicely, of course, with a good severance. He was going to tell her that they’d crossed a line and that while she’d been great, it was over and she should move on.

  Her chest tightened and she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak. No. No! She loved him, loved Connor. She didn’t want to go. They were great together. Why couldn’t he see that?

  “I’m in love with you.”

  She heard the words but didn’t understand them. At least not at first. “I’m sorry, what did you just say?”

  He raised a shoulder. “I’m in love with you. I love how you are with my son. I love that you went back to college and you’re making it work. You’re honorable and funny and you have the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever known. So there we are. And I know it’s complicated. Believe me, I’ve thought of little else. Do you quit and then we date? Do I fire you and then we date? I know you can’t work for me while we date, so that’s a problem, but Sunshine, I love you and I don’t want to lose you, so just tell me what you want and that’s what we’ll do.”

  He looked hopeful and nervous, as he spoke. “Oh, and if it’s too soon, then I’m just suggesting but if it’s not, will you marry me?”

  He was in love with her? As in he loved her? Wait! He wanted to marry her?

  Her mind went blank, then slowly started filling in the pieces. He had told her why he loved her and he’d never once mentioned how she looked.

  She stood up. He did the same. They stared at each other, then she ran to him and wrapped her arms around him. He drew her close and pressed his mouth to hers.

  Their kiss, their first kiss, was sweet and tender, filled with love and promise and everything she could want. She tilted her head and parted her lips. He deepened the kiss, igniting passion in every part of her.

  She leaned into him, wanting to feel his body against hers. He was as strong as she had imagined and she fit him perfectly. This, she thought happily, was where she belonged.

  “I love you, too,” she said, easing back enough to look into his eyes. “That’s what made everything so awful. I didn’t want to leave, but it was all so different and I was scared you didn’t see me as more than a convenience.”

  He chuckled. “You’re many things, Sunshine, but easy isn’t one of them.”

  “Easy isn’t the same as convenient.”

  “Yes, but they’re close enough. So what do we do? Tell me what makes you happy and I’ll do everything in my power to make that happen.”

  “Is the reason you think I can’t stay here and still be Connor’s nanny while seeing you is because I’ll feel used?”

  “Yes.”

  She smiled. “Of course it is.”

  She stared into his eyes and thought about the wonder of a man who had been through what he had with Iris and yet was still open and willing to get married again. She thought about how he respected what she wanted and was willing to do whatever it took to make her feel whole. Every day he’d shown her what a great guy he was. He loved her and he wanted to give her the world. She was in love with him and could easily imagine spending the rest of her life with him. What, exactly, was she waiting for?

  “Marry me,” she said, resting her hands on his chest. “Marry me, Declan. Let me help with Connor, have babies with me, grow old with me.”

  He whooped and grabbed her around the waist, lifting her into the air. As she eased back to the floor, she leaned into him and kissed him.

  He kissed her back, then laughed. “Looks like we’re getting married. I should probably warn you I promised Connor a vacation this summer, and he wants to get a dog.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  “You really want to have kids? Because I think that would be great.”

  “I do want children,” she said. “With you.” She took his hand in hers. “We done talking?”

  “We can be.”

  She smiled. “Excellent. Your place or mine?”

  “Mine is closer.”

  “I like how you think.”

  * * *

  Time did not heal and Alec was pissed about it. Margot had been gone over a week and he was still missing her as much as he had the first day. Maybe more. The entire situation was ridiculous and frustrating and he had no idea what to do about it.

  He went down to breakfast, determined that today he would eat something and that it wouldn’t sit like a rock in his stomach, only to find his mother already at the table. She had a cup of coffee in front of her and looked tired. For once she wasn’t wearing makeup, which made her look older than she usually did.

  “Good morning, Mother. Are you feeling well?”

  She smiled. “I’m not sick, if that’s what you’re asking.” She pointed to the carafe sitting out. “Get yourself some coffee. We need to talk.”

  He didn’t like the sound of that, but knew there was no point in trying to avoid the conversation. She would simply stalk him until he was cornered. Better to get it over with and get on with his day.

  When he was seated across from her, she looked at him.

  “I’ll admit at first I thought what was happening was charming. You were falling in love with Margot and really coming out of your shell. I enjoyed seeing that side of you. I thought the change was permanent. But as you grew to care about her more, you started to worry about your new behaviors. What if you were turning into me?”

  Alec couldn’t have moved if the building had caught fire. He considered himself self-contained, intelligent and relatively inscrutable. In a handful of sentences, his mother had laid him bare, exposing his deepest, darkest secrets as if she’d known all along. Which, apparently, she had.

  “Before you tell me I’m wrong,” she continued, “you are in love with her. That’s the problem. Or do you want to argue about that?”

  In love with Margot? He couldn’t—He wasn’t—Dammit all to hell, she was right.

  He picked up his coffee. “Go on.”

  “Alec, you have always been my first and greatest love. When I found out I was pregnant, I was so excited. I didn’t ever really want to get married, but I loved the idea of being a mother. I thought we would be a team. I wanted so much for you—mostly that you would be happy.”

  “I have been happy. And we were a team.” Bianca had her flaws, but when he’d been young, she’d looked out for him, had cared for him. She might not have believed in rules, but she had believed in love. Later, things had gotten complicated, but not while he’d been a kid.

  “Alec, you’ll never turn into me. You don’t have to worry about that.” Her gaze was steady. “You can’t. Margot was right—there is a secret from my past, one I’ve never wanted to tell you. I’ve been thinking about it and I now believe the only way to convince you is to explain why I’m broken and you’re not.”

  Dread coiled in his belly. Whatever she was going to say, he didn’t want to hear. With an intuition he didn’t believe in, he knew her truth, her secret, was bad. Worse than anything he could imagine.

  “You don’t have to tell me anything.”

  “I do.” Her smile quivered a little. “I worked very hard to keep you whole. To give you confidence and to make sure you knew, no matter what, you were loved.”

  “I always knew that.”

  “I’m glad.” She drew in a breath. “My mother, your grandmother, was a very stern woman and extremely religious. She didn’t believe like regular people believe. Her view of God was vengeful and r
itualist. Her beliefs were cruel and absolute. I don’t know if she never wanted me or if she hated me after I was born, but by the time I was four, I knew she resented me with every breath she took.”

  He wanted to run, only there was nowhere to go. “I’m sorry,” he said automatically, loathing the uselessness of the words.

  She shrugged. “I tried to make her happy but I couldn’t. Eventually I figured out she hated that I was pretty. As I got older, she slipped into madness. By the time I was nine, she was convinced the devil lived in me. She said only the devil would make a child so beautiful. She locked me in a closet. She beat me and starved me. She would scream at me that the only way to get the devil out of me was to kill me and when God told her it was time, she would do just that.”

  He couldn’t imagine. Even though her words painted a picture, it wasn’t real to him. No child should go through that.

  “I told a few adults what was happening but no one believed me until I was twelve and she tried to strangle me. I was put into foster care.” She sighed. “They were mostly in it for the money but they were so much kinder than my mother, I didn’t care. You know the rest. I was discovered when I was fourteen and an emancipated minor by the time I was fifteen.”

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated, too stunned to think of anything else to say.

  “I know. It’s done. I never saw my mother again. I got word that she’d been committed and, shortly thereafter, killed herself.”

  She picked up her coffee, then put it down. “I never told you because I didn’t want you to know. Some of it was because I was ashamed and some of it was I never wanted you touched by her evil. I wanted to protect you.”

  He pushed back his chair, circled the table, then pulled her to her feet and held on to her. She hugged him back, her grip fierce.

  “You did protect me,” he whispered. “I never knew. Never suspected.”

  She released him and stepped back. “I try to forget but I can’t always. Sometimes I worry she was right. Maybe the devil does live inside of me. When I get scared or nervous, the past gets close and I act out. Being outrageous reminds me I’m my own person and then I win. But there can be a cost to that.” She touched his face. “I’m sorry I slept with your roommate when you were in boarding school. I was so shocked at how grown-up you were and I thought I was losing you and then I got scared, and well, you know what happened.”

  “Mom, it’s all right. That doesn’t matter.”

  “It does matter. I hurt you. Worse, I betrayed you. I’m not making excuses, Alec. I’m explaining. I hope you can see that. You’re not like me. You’ll never be like me. You can stop worrying about that.”

  He hugged her again, his mind unable to grasp all she’d said. “I love you so much. You’re the strongest woman I know.” He stepped back so he could see her. “Wesley is a damn lucky man, and if he doesn’t love you for exactly who you are, then he doesn’t deserve you. Don’t change, Mom. Don’t you ever change. You’re exactly who you should be and if he doesn’t see that, dump his sorry ass.”

  For the first time since she’d started talking, tears filled her eyes. She brushed them away and laughed.

  “He never wanted me to change, Alec. I wanted it for a lot of reasons, but he was happy with me exactly as I was.” She took his hands in hers. “You never call me Mom. It’s always Bianca or Mother. I like hearing it.”

  Before he could respond, not that he had a clue about that, either, she said, “Now, about Margot. It’s perfectly safe to love her. Whatever you’re feeling is not bad. You won’t suddenly take your clothes off in public or do anything else to embarrass yourself.”

  “I nearly shoplifted a bottle of wine. That’s not nothing. I attacked Dietrich.”

  “The wine was an accident and Dietrich deserved what happened. You were protecting your own. That’s something to be proud of.” She squeezed his hands. “She’s good for you. You know that. And even more important, you’re good for her.”

  With that, she released him and walked out of the dining room.

  He slumped into a chair. It was going to take a long time to process everything she’d told him. Her past had been a nightmare and he’d never suspected, but now that he knew, so much made sense.

  She was stronger than he’d ever imagined, and if loving Margot meant turning into his mother, then he was one lucky guy.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Margot’s new clients—three sisters from Chile who had beautiful textiles to sell to the fashion industry—were exactly what she needed. As part of a team, Margot was helping the women find their way through the maze of venture capitalists, industry meetings and LA traffic. The short-term assignment was more fun than challenging and allowed her to decompress from what she’d just gone through.

  She was looking forward to a quiet evening at home. Some kind of frozen dinner, a couple of hours of HGTV, then off to bed where, hopefully, she would actually sleep instead of lying there, missing Alec and trying to figure what, if anything, she could have done differently.

  She parked in her spot and walked into the lobby to pick up her mail before taking the elevator to her third-floor apartment.

  She knew what had gone wrong with Alec—that part was totally clear. It was fixing it that had her unable to sleep. Or maybe it was just missing him. She’d gone into the relationship thinking of him as little more than her client’s son. Then they’d become friends and lovers and somewhere when she hadn’t been paying attention, she’d fallen in love with him.

  She hadn’t known she was in danger, so she hadn’t protected herself. She hadn’t thought he could become so much a part of her that being without him was like losing half of herself.

  She ached for him, for them, for what they’d been together. She wanted another chance. She’d thought of calling him a thousand times, only she hadn’t. There was no point. She genuinely wasn’t the problem. Until Alec could embrace every part of himself, until he understood that life was messy and sometimes people were, too, there was no hope. She couldn’t be with someone who was unwilling to give his whole heart on the off chance he might do something that made him uncomfortable. Unfortunately knowing what was wrong didn’t make dealing with it any easier.

  She inserted the key in her front door. When she stepped into her apartment, the first thing she noticed was the delicious and familiar smell of coq au vin simmering on the stove, something that under other circumstances would have been welcome but, considering she pretty much lived alone, was unsettling.

  “Sunshine?” she called, wondering if her sister had stopped by for something. Not that she expected to see her anytime soon. She and Declan had declared their feelings and were both in the throes of young love and planning a late August wedding at Universal Studios in Florida. Given the median temperature and humidity level that time of year, Sunshine was hoping for something indoors.

  Someone stepped out of her kitchen. Someone tall and handsome and who made her heart beat faster and her mouth go dry.

  “Not Sunshine,” Alec told her. “Sorry to disappoint.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for you.”

  “In my apartment?”

  “So it seems.”

  “You broke into my apartment?”

  She was having trouble grasping the fact that he was here and he was cooking.

  The big kitchen windows were behind him so she couldn’t see much beyond his silhouette. She had no idea what he was thinking, but figured it couldn’t be bad. He’d hardly break into her place and heat leftovers so he could hurt her again.

  He leaned against the door frame and raised and lowered one shoulder. “One of my mother’s boyfriends was a cat burglar. He taught me a few basic skills. I never thought I’d use them, but it turns out they came in handy.”

  “You broke into my apartment?” she repeated, then shook her head. “W
ait. That’s not like you at all.”

  “You’re right. It’s not. It’s something my mother would do, though.”

  Now Margot was confused. Kind of hopeful, but confused. “I don’t understand. Is Bianca here?”

  “No. Just me.”

  He walked toward her, his stride just a little bit predatory. As if he was going to... What? Claim her? No, that wasn’t his style, but neither was an early evening B&E.

  He stopped in front of her. At last she could see his face. His expression was warm, his eyes filled with affection as he smiled at her.

  “I screwed up,” he told her. “I was wrong to end things the way I did. Actually I was wrong to end things at all. My feelings for you terrified me.”

  “You didn’t want to turn into your mother.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “You knew that?”

  “Everyone knew that. The gardeners knew that. Why else would you keep yourself so tightly wound and your world so controlled?”

  “And I did want to be that man of mystery.”

  “Sorry. That’s not going to happen.”

  He touched her cheek. “I love you, Margot. I have from the first day you walked into my office, although it took me a while to figure it out.”

  She forced herself to stay silent. She wanted to hear all he had to say and not just the highlights.

  “I don’t trust easily,” he said. “You know many of the reasons. Bianca can be wonderful, but she can also be difficult and there were times when she downright terrified me. I was determined to be nothing like her. I defined my life by that credo and built up walls.”

  “Literal and figurative,” she murmured.

  He smiled. “Exactly. But what I didn’t notice while doing all that is that my mother is strong and passionate and brave. We all have flaws, but few of us have her courage. I didn’t until now.”

  He stared into her eyes. “You are my world, Margot. My one true love. I hope you can forgive me for reacting so poorly to my ridiculous fears. We’re good together and I’d like the chance to spend the rest of my life proving that to you.”