“James was a writer and a poet, a quite well-known one.”
“James McClure. Of course! I own a few first editions of his books. For me, that’s saying something, because I don’t keep very many hard copies of books.”
She imagined it must be difficult to maintain a library when one lived a transitory life.
“I was his accountant and...caretaker, I guess you could say. I helped him with the gardens and Pear Tree Cottage.”
Her friendship with James had grown strong. They had shared a love of opera, of plays, of classic movies, and had bonded over discussions and arguments about books and politics and, yes, art.
“His late wife was an antiques dealer who died years before we met and there was quite a bit of remaining inventory at the house. One afternoon I was helping him sort through some things in the storage building where you found me the other night. We found an old table in there that someone had stripped. James wanted it sent to the junk shop but I loved the lines of it, and the legs were these beautiful carved pedestals. I asked if I could have it, thinking I could paint it and give it to Stella for her house.”
The memories of that fateful afternoon came rushing back. She had given it a sea foam–green wash then had followed through on the sea theme by painting a mermaid across the top. James sat watching her without saying a word, his features bright and engaged. The pain, his constant companion, seemed to have left him for those few hours they sat together in the workshop.
“I take it you liked the results.”
“I didn’t. James did. I thought it looked like something a precocious third-grader would do with markers on the bedroom set her parents bought at JCPenney, but James loved it. He said he had an acquaintance he knew would like it and asked if I would mind if he showed her a picture. By then I knew I could never give it to Stella, so I agreed.”
The wind had picked up a little, blowing off the sea. Her hair tangled around her face and she tucked it behind her ear, wondering why she was telling him all of this.
“I take it the friend liked the piece.”
“We wouldn’t be here, I suppose, if she hadn’t. She offered him five figures for it. Five figures! For a piece of scrap furniture I had spent two hours painting, just because it seemed to calm my husband’s pain a little.”
The memory still made her shake her head. She could vividly recall how stunned she had been when James had called to give her the news. That was two months’ salary for her at the accounting firm where she’d been working. She split the commission between the cancer research center where James received treatment and the new charity Stella had recently started to help foster families in the area.
“I thought that would be the end of it. I would be a one-masterpiece artist, kind of like authors who only have one book in them. James wouldn’t let that happen. This friend showed her friends the table, and by the time the month was over, I had commissions for two more tables and a chest of drawers.”
“And Marguerite was born.”
“Yes. I didn’t want to use my own name. There are...a number of reasons for that.”
“This is the part I don’t get. Why not?”
How did she begin to tell him about the complicated reasons for her anonymity, starting with Beatriz? Her sister had been fresh off her divorce and all of Cruz’s cheating, her self-esteem raw and broken. Becoming an artist was all Bea had ever wanted to do and Daisy hadn’t wanted to sweep in and rub her staggering, wholly undeserved success in her sister’s face.
“I have reasons. Let’s leave it at that. I’ve already told you more than anyone else on earth knows. But as you can see, it was really an accident. A mistake, even. I’m not an artist. My sister is. My mother was. I’m just an accountant who happens to be pretty good with a paintbrush.”
His rough laugh seemed to slide down her spine. “Marguerite or Daisy. I’m not sure which one is real and which is an illusion.”
“I’m Daisy. That’s all.”
“Whichever one you are, I can’t seem to stop thinking about you. And not just about your art.”
His words slid through her, seductive and tantalizing. Her? He thought about her?
She again didn’t know what to say.
“I’m sorry,” she finally murmured.
“Are you?”
She was fiercely aware of him, the heat of his shoulder brushing hers, the long, elegant fingers that reached out and brushed an errant strand of her hair back behind her ear.
Her stomach muscles contracted when he touched her skin. “Not really,” she whispered.
He gazed at her for a moment, then growled something that was snatched away by the wind an instant before he lowered his mouth to hers.
The taste of his mouth was like the very first sip of the brandy James had loved—rich, heady, intoxicating. Delicious.
Daisy felt instantly light-headed, unable to believe she was really here on a bench overlooking the ocean, kissing the sexy and fascinating Gabriel Ellison.
What was happening here?
She wasn’t quite sure. She only knew that the brush of his mouth against hers, tantalizing and soft and incredibly seductive, moved her more than any other kiss of her life.
She wasn’t sure she had ever known this sort of sweetness in a kiss.
If she had been on her game—if she hadn’t been so very disarmed by this man—she might have been able to brush off the kiss as a random moment of insanity. But all she could think was that it felt...perfect.
She kissed him back. How could she resist? She wrapped her arms around him, careful of his injury, tilted her head just so and savored every second of it.
Oh, she could fall hard for this man.
They might have stayed there until the sun slid below the horizon, if not for Louie. He barked suddenly, startling both of them, almost as if trying to protect her from the consequences of her foolishness, to keep her from making things worse.
Daisy drew away, feeling more flustered than she remembered being in a very long time.
Should she ask him why he kissed her? Was it better to talk it to death or pretend it hadn’t happened? She opted for the latter.
“We should, um, get back,” she said. “It will be dark soon.”
He looked down at her, his breathing fast, and clear attraction in his eyes.
“Yes. You’re probably right.”
He rose, gripped Louie’s leash and turned his back on the glorious sunset to start back toward her house.
She followed, wishing with all her heart that she wasn’t so awkward at relationships.
GABE
He didn’t know what to think about Daisy/Marguerite.
One moment she was tangled in his arms, kissing him as if she couldn’t get enough. The next she was as cool and indifferent as if he’d simply swatted away a fly.
He could tell she was attracted to him. He didn’t consider it a sign of a huge ego; it was simple observation. He had seen the way she glanced at his mouth every once in a while, the little shiver she gave when he touched her inadvertently. He was fairly certain she wasn’t even aware of doing it but he found it utterly irresistible.
Why, then, had she ended the kiss and returned to this cool formality?
So she didn’t want to kiss him. Big deal. He had no reason to be feeling this sense of...letdown.
He hadn’t been lying about being fascinated with her. How could he help it? She came across as a stiff, serious, somewhat prickly accountant. She wore plain, drab clothing, almost as if she wanted to disappear.
Yet somewhere inside her was a woman who danced alone to sexy salsa music and hid behind the passion and color and joy of Marguerite.
She was a study in contrasts, which made her infinitely captivating.
He had felt honored that she had told him the truth but Gabe had a rather grim suspicion that he w
ould now have an even harder time shaking this fascination with her. Especially now that he had tasted her mouth, heard the seductive little sounds she made when he kissed her, felt the heat and wonder of those artist’s hands against his skin.
If he had his way, his next documentary would be the Marguerite story.
He could see it now, filming her at work while the sun poured in through the skylight of her rustic studio or maybe in the beautiful, wild English cottage–style garden of her house, overlooking the vast Pacific.
He couldn’t do it. He wouldn’t be filming a moment of her daily life. Daisy was an intensely private person. She obviously had powerful reasons for keeping her identity as Marguerite a secret, even if she hadn’t shared those with him.
He had to respect those reasons, even if he didn’t understand them.
13
STELLA
This had been a crazy idea.
Stella gripped the armrests of her comfortable, oversize chair, hoping against hope that she didn’t puke all over this sleek private jet.
She had been feeling good all day long. All week, really. After her initial bout of morning sickness right after her pregnancy had been confirmed, she had felt fantastic. Better than she had in a long time, actually, now that she no longer was anxious about the fertility treatments.
She had carried the secret of her pregnancy close to her heart for days, like a precious little painting only she could see. She didn’t want to tell anyone. She wanted to have this time to cherish her secret, her child.
She had been feeling strong and healthy, empowered with the miracle growing inside her.
All that had changed over the past twenty minutes as they made the short flight from LA back to the small airport outside Cape Sanctuary.
She wasn’t sure if it was the six hours they had just spent at an amusement park, the shift in equilibrium she always got when she traveled or the hormones playing havoc with her body.
Either way, slick, greasy nausea seemed to have settled in her stomach and showed no sign of leaving anytime soon.
“How are you holding up?” Ed asked quietly from beside her.
There was something else she couldn’t quite believe. She felt like she was the recipient of two amazing events. One was this pregnancy that still didn’t feel quite real. The other was the fact that Ed Clayton had returned to her world.
He was the only one besides her OB-GYN who knew her secret. Was that the reason he had been incredibly sweet all afternoon and evening?
She wasn’t sure. She only knew he had watched over her with careful concern as they enjoyed the rare outing Cruz had provided them all.
“Can I get you some water or something?” he asked.
She was afraid to answer him for fear that the delicious grilled chicken kebab she had enjoyed in the park would make a disgusting reappearance. Instead, she pointed to her stomach, made a face and said nothing.
“Let me guess,” he murmured. “Morning sickness.”
“Something like that.” Even the small effort of speaking was enough to send the contents of her stomach sloshing around.
She had to get up. Now. Before it was too late.
He must have seen the distress on her features. He quickly rose from his aisle seat to let her out and she hurried to the bathroom in the back of the airplane.
When she came out several moments later, she felt marginally better—though she couldn’t recommend kneeling on the floor of a tiny airplane bathroom to anyone.
Ed stood to let her back inside. “Feel better?” he asked.
“A little.”
She sat down, still feeling shaky, but was touched beyond words when she found a fresh water bottle in the cup holder. He had fetched that for her, she realized. Something soft and warm and tender seemed to unfurl inside her.
She had been on her own so very long. It was lovely to have someone else on Team Stella, if only for a moment.
Longing, pointed and sharp, jabbed at her. Regret for all she had given up seemed to haunt her. She knew she had made the right choice all those years ago, but sometimes she wondered what would have happened if she hadn’t decided she and the girls would only derail his medical career.
They would have been together nearly two decades. They would probably have several children of their own by now and would be a comfortable old married couple, knowing each other inside and out.
She couldn’t second-guess her choices. She had done what she thought was best at the time.
“I feel somewhat more human.”
“I’ll keep my fingers crossed and hope that particular state of being continues through the flight.”
“We should be home soon. It’s not a long flight.”
In the row across from them, she could see Mari and his daughter talking in low tones, their heads close together. As she had expected, the girls seemed to have become instant friends. They had gone on every single ride in the park that had been opened for the private party, many of them multiple times.
“They seem to be getting along,” she said, gesturing to the girls.
“They’ve had a great time. Ro will be talking about this for months. She loved everything about it. Thank you for inviting us.”
“You seemed to be enjoying yourself, too. I saw you on a few of those rides.”
He smiled. “What can I say? I love roller coasters.”
She remembered that. When they were seeing each other, they had hit Knott’s Berry Farm a few times and the thrill rides there.
Just a thought of being on a roller coaster right now was enough to make her stomach roil again. She did her best to ignore the nausea.
“It was a lovely evening. I’m so glad you and Rowan could come. It was all Mari’s idea.”
As she heard her own words, she had to wonder if she was telling him that to make sure he didn’t think she had orchestrated the whole thing, that she was somehow desperately trying to reconnect with him.
“She seems like a very sweet girl.”
“She is quite remarkable. It can be tough having a celebrity for a father but Mari seems to keep everything in perspective.”
“You’re very close to the girls, aren’t you? Daisy and Beatriz, I mean.”
“Yes. We’re family. They’re like my own daughters. I know that probably doesn’t make sense but that’s how I feel.”
She had sacrificed everything for them. Most of the time she chose not to think about what she had given up to rescue them but sometimes the loss of it hit her hard.
Right now, sitting beside the man she had once loved with all her heart, she was aware as she had never been before that a vein of grief ran through her, deep and well hidden. She had tried to ignore it all these years, had tried to tell herself she had made the right choice to walk away from Ed and allow him his dreams.
What if she had been wrong? What if she had been fooling herself all these years that her decision to cut him loose had been best for everyone?
What if she hadn’t been acting out of altruism, some magnanimous desire for him to become a physician without having to be tied down with a ready-made family consisting of two troubled preadolescent girls?
What if she had only been afraid that the one perfect relationship she’d ever known had only been a lie and he would leave her like everyone else she had ever loved, so she had chosen to leave him first?
She closed her eyes, fighting back sudden tears that came out of nowhere. These pregnancy mood swings were killer.
“Mari mentioned you have a foundation that helps foster care families.”
She seized on the topic, grateful for the diversion from her entirely too raw self-scrutiny. “Yes. It’s called Open Hearts, and the goal is to provide support for foster families. We want to encourage more families to consider opening their homes to the thousands of children who need temporary s
helter in California.”
“Sounds like a worthy project. Did you start it because of Bea and Daisy?”
“That was a big part of it. There’s a huge need for foster families in California. It’s at crisis level, actually. More children than ever before need placements at the same time there are decreasing numbers of families willing to step up. I’m hoping to change that trend, at least in our area.”
“What sort of activities does Open Hearts sponsor?”
He seemed genuinely interested, and since it was one of her favorite topics, she was happy to reply. It took her mind off her nausea, anyway.
“We sponsor monthly activities, everything from family movie nights at one of the local theaters to respite babysitting for parents to have date nights to a big annual picnic that’s coming up in just a few weeks. It’s all designed to help families feel like they have a resource in the community.”
“You feel strongly about it, don’t you?”
“Passionately. There’s no way to sugarcoat it. Being in foster care is hard and being a foster parent is hard. We can’t solve every problem but we try to make sure both children and foster families know they’re supported.”
“Good for you. It seems very important to you.”
“It is.” She paused. “I’ve been on both sides. A foster child and a foster parent.”
“Have you had foster children besides Bea and Daisy?”
She hesitated, not sure how much to tell him. Bea, seated in the row in front of the girls, turned around to do it for her.
“What Stella isn’t telling you, Dr. Clayton, is that she has hosted more than twenty foster children since Daisy and me. Including Cruz Romero.”
“It’s true,” the man in question said, giving Stella an affectionate smile. “Only for a few months, after my grandma died. I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
“And then you ran away with my niece.”
“But you love me anyway,” he said with a grin.
“Most of the time.”
She did, actually, though she had a hard time forgiving him for breaking Bea’s heart.
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