“If you’ll excuse me.” She pivoted toward the Sunshine Room. “I should check on dinner service before joining the party.”
Daniel stepped forward. “May I accompany you?”
“No. Go to the ballroom.”
Freddie put in, “Another twist. I thought you’d tell him to go to hell.”
Daniel gripped Freddie’s shoulder, turning him by force. “Go. Away.” He returned to her side. “Let’s not ruin our date. We’ll go into the party together. These are for you.”
Flowers wagged in her face. “They’re lovely,” she said. “Give them to someone who cares.”
She walked toward the Sunshine Room with as much dignity as three-inch heels allowed. With most of the staff working the party, service for the inn’s regular guests was suffering. A skeleton crew of waitresses dashed between tables. A father with fogged spectacles and two boisterous toddlers flagged her down.
“Miss?” Swiping at his glasses, he appraised her formalwear with bafflement. “We’ve been waiting thirty minutes to order.”
“Linnie, will you give me one—”
The apology stiffened her spine. Taking Daniel by the arm, she thrust him before the table. “Take their order,” she commanded. “Give it to one of the waitresses.”
“I don’t have a pen or paper.”
“Daniel, you made it through law school with flying colors. Memorize.”
The roses hung in his dejected grasp. She took the bouquet and stalked off. A couple stewing at table nine, a family with three adolescent boys gripping forks with looks of starvation—let the service decline much further, and a slew of one-star reviews would pop up on Travelocity.
At table eleven, a waitress dealt out the orders on her tray like winning hands in blackjack. When she’d finished, Linnie pulled her aside. “Give these to our female guests.” She handed off the bouquet.
“Gosh, red roses. Can I have one?”
“No.”
The dash of hostility snapped the waitress to attention. “Right.”
“If an order takes longer than fifteen minutes, tell the other waitresses not to charge for the meal.”
“Sure thing, Miss Wayfair.”
The kitchen. Was Ellis still waiting for regular staff? Best to check before heading to the ballroom. With a little ingenuity, avoiding Daniel all night was a no-brainer.
Strong fingers clamped around her waist.
Daniel half walked, half carried her out the French doors to the patio. Cool air swirled through the railing. The sun, weary from the day, pulled a carpet of stars across the firmament.
“What are you doing?” She wrenched free.
A bad sign: his eyes wore the intimidating hue of forged metal. Her stomach knotted beneath his tightly constrained anger.
Then a reprieve as his attention sank from her face. His eyes ranged across the silver screen–worthy dress. For a heart-stopping moment, he paused at her cleavage. He rubbed his chin, dazed. A thrilling emotion bounced through her ribcage.
“Daniel, I’m busy,” she got out with a skinny dose of dignity. The way he was staring at her breasts, he’d need a cold shower before joining the party. “Whatever you have to say can wait until tomorrow. Call me. I might pick up.”
The dismissal yanked him from his bedazzlement. “We need to talk now.” He looked at her imploringly. “This afternoon, I didn’t mean to lose my cool. I’d never intentionally hurt you. I was totally out of line.”
A decent attempt at an apology, but she was too angry to accept it. “I didn’t even know you had a temper,” she tossed back. “Feel free to stow it in the future.”
“Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean what I said about your parents.”
“Yes, you did.”
He was no more comfortable with falsehoods than she. “Okay—you’re right,” he conceded, dragging nervous fingers across his scalp. “I do think your parents should get their priorities straight, especially where you’re concerned.”
“Why don’t you say what you really mean? You’re convinced they don’t love me.” She backed up, sought the railing for support. The wood scratched against the thin material of her gown, catching the threads. She didn’t care. “My parents have incredibly dated ideas about the inn and tradition, but they don’t play favorites. They love me just as much as Freddie. For Pete’s sake, when we were kids, you would’ve thought I was the favorite. They never had a decent word for my brother. The big disappointment with his lousy grades and poor manners—my father argued with him constantly.”
Daniel moved in, careful not to touch her. “Were you scared?”
A non sequitur, the meaning unclear. “What do you mean?”
“Your father. Were you frightened when Treat argued with Freddie?”
“Yes,” she whispered, and the admission drove straight through her heart.
“How often did they go at it?”
“Constantly. The warring didn’t stop until Freddie left for California.” The earth tilted on its axis. A stream of images followed, each memory more painful than the last. “You’ve never seen my father at full throttle. Cornering my brother, threatening to ship him off to boarding school if he didn’t get his act together. Bad enough when we were little. So much worse after Freddie reached high school, learned to fight back. I thought they’d come to blows.”
“They didn’t?”
“No. Never.” Loyalty compelled her to add, “My father isn’t the sort of man who’d strike his children.”
“Doesn’t make his behavior acceptable.” Daniel frowned. “Your mother’s either. She should’ve asked him to tone down his temper.”
Emotion rose inside her, threatened to spill over. “Stop talking about my parents.”
“I’d rather talk about us. I don’t think you’re ready for the conversation.” She tried to march past, but he stopped her, adding, “Linnie, I really need to know. Will your feelings for me always take second place to the inn?”
Sorrow wound through the query, and doubt. “Of course not,” she replied, hating the quaver in her voice—hating how she’d given him reason to question her devotion.
“I want to believe you.”
“But you don’t, which is my fault. I want this to work with you—I do. That doesn’t mean I can pretend the inn’s not in jeopardy, and my future here as well. My mother’s visit didn’t go as planned, and I’m hurt. If you feel like I’ve been pushing you away, I’m sorry.” She met his eyes with a look of entreaty. “I don’t care about the inn as much as I care about you. Not even close.”
“I’ll do whatever you want. Stay in Sweet Lake, or leave. Tell me what you need.”
A sense of responsibility to Silvia and her guests warred with the ache centering in her ribcage. “Let’s not go into this tonight,” she said, choosing responsibility. “I should check on the kitchen staff.”
He let her go. A trivial concession. The soft greying of his eyes held her in place.
Softly he said, “I love you.”
The moment ground to a standstill. The clink of water glasses hustled on a tray. The breeze fondling the hem of her gown. Daniel, assessing her face for a reaction, for any sign he hadn’t lost her.
Finding none, he added, “I love you heart and soul. Maybe I’m the first. Maybe no one’s ever noticed how special you are until I came along. Your parents don’t. Freddie sure doesn’t. But they’re your family, and Lord knows you’re devoted. You don’t love easily, but you never stop once you make the leap. Can’t you find a way to love me too? I’ll never let you down.”
“You never have. You wouldn’t know how.” She climbed out from beneath the raw emotion clouding her mind. “You’ve been my rock for as long as I can remember, as good a friend as Jada or Cat—but you’re so much more, the best man I know, the man I want to spend my life with. I love you, Daniel. I’m trying to make this work, trying to understand this fierce, consuming emotion that’s been hounding me since we kissed the night Freddie arrived.”
Th
e declaration thumped against Daniel. He stiffened, a tall man at risk of losing his purchase on gravity.
“But I love my parents, and my brother too,” she added, refusing to sink beneath the passion rising between them. “I don’t know how to fix everything wrong with my family. I’m not even sure how to forgive my brother, and nothing would give my parents greater joy.” Without conscious planning, she allowed her heart to veer in a new direction. “The other day? I was talking to Frances. She caught me on her way out of the Sunshine Room. She’d just finished lunch with Penelope and Tilda.”
“What did you talk about?”
“Did you know she’s the oldest of five sisters? I never even knew she had a sister. Guess her family grew up outside Cincinnati.”
“Linnie, I have no idea where you’re heading with this.”
“Frances has a saying about sibs. It struck me as corny when we were chatting. Now I feel differently.”
“What was the saying?”
“A sibling carries your history.”
She read the longing in his eyes, felt her bruised heart answer in kind. One of the busboys peered through the French doors but left them to their privacy.
“Beautiful, don’t you agree?” She lifted her face to the shifting heavens, the orange day bleeding down to the horizon. “We only have our parents for part of the journey—friends too. But a sibling? Freddie remembers the stuffed bunny I dragged around until first grade and the day I got my first pimple. I remember the wild boy of the woods, the tree house he built without our parents’ knowledge, and the summer he fell in love with filmmaking. It’s the same with you and Philip. I’ve heard him talk about how you taught him to ride a bike while your dad was away on business.”
“Philip told you about the lessons?” Daniel asked, clearly moved. “I wasn’t aware he remembered.”
“Well, he does. You watched your little brother fall in love—you carried him after he buried his wife. You’ve been part of each other’s lives from the beginning. You’ll continue to carry each other’s history all the way to old age.”
“Frances is wise.”
“She is.”
“With regard to siblings, she’s damn quotable.”
Tell me what you need.
Inside Linnie, a desire crystallized.
“Why did Freddie come to Ohio?” she asked, tacking deep into her heart, unaware of what she needed, precisely, until her voice added form to necessity. “This is one time you must forget attorney-client privilege. For me. For us.”
Tears caught on her lashes. She let them clot the mascara she’d applied earlier. Daniel leaned closer.
Warding him off, she said, “Fixing everything that’s broken in my family might be impossible. I might be wasting my time. But I can’t try without all the facts. Whatever brought Freddie here matters. It matters a great deal. I’ve never understood the first thing about my brother—I’d like to start. So I’m asking. Don’t say you love me and then pretend it’s okay to hide the truth.”
Regret burned in Daniel’s eyes. “Linnie . . .”
Disappointment steadied her chin. She loved him, and so she waited. Ticking off the seconds, she hoped for a miracle. For proof Daniel prized devotion above all else.
His silence remained unbroken.
Head bowed, she brushed past.
Chapter 17
Dragging out a chair, Philip sat heavily.
“Man, I never thought I’d escape,” he told Daniel. He murmured greetings to the others at the table, Marco’s great-uncle and his wife, and a clutch of pubescent cousins who’d waited too long to grab seats. “Don’t think I can deal with much more Pretty, Pretty Princess. Who invents these games? Fancy wouldn’t go to bed until she’d covered herself in glitz.”
Daniel grunted. “Why didn’t you ask the babysitter to play? Would’ve made for a clean escape.”
“She was playing. Fancy insisted on all three of us.” Philip craned his neck, searched in vain for a waiter. He eyed Daniel’s untouched meal. “You mind?”
“Go right ahead.”
With relish, he dug in. “I love prime rib.”
The cousins finished their plates, took off for the dance floor. The great-uncle rose next, led his wife toward the music.
Once they were alone Philip asked, “Why are we stuck in the back of the room? I thought we’d share a table with Linnie and Jada.”
“Change of plans.”
Philip accepted the explanation. A relief, since the lowdown would lead to a revelation of Daniel’s true feelings for Linnie. His dreamy kid brother still wasn’t up to speed. It was entirely possible he’d miss the obvious until a wedding invitation dropped into his mailbox. Of course, a wedding wasn’t a done deal.
Not until there was a plan to patch things up.
Women. Whatever happened to his ability to read Linnie without error? For years he’d provided counsel and guidance, assessing her internal temperature with ease. He’d gauged her moods with unerring precision. Toss romance into the mix, and he was picking up so much static, he wasn’t sure how to get a message through.
Or how to fix this. There was no clear indication of where to start. She’d professed her love—a thrilling development his miserable heart refused to celebrate—then backed off twenty paces. All night long she’d veered out of his path. He was beginning to feel like he carried some sort of plague. He’d given up trying to approach her.
Was it time to quit the battlefield and return home to his lonely mutt? He’d recite Linnie’s name like a poem, give the dog over to tortured howls until the few neighbors not invited to the party called the police.
Philip elbowed him. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing.”
“If you had a crappy day at work, put it behind you. Great music, lots of beautiful women—it’s playtime.” His brother swiveled in his chair. “Mind if I ditch you? I see a good target by the dance floor.”
Daniel peered over the heads at the tables blocking theirs. “Better hurry. Silvia’s got two nephews with ‘sex maniac’ written all over them. A third one too, but that chump can’t be older than twenty-five. You can take him.”
“Guess it’s time to try out my dancing shoes.”
Curiosity pulled Daniel from his fog. “Do you want to ask Jada to dance?” Since his wife’s funeral, Philip hadn’t so much as mentioned dating.
His brother shrugged, a clumsy ruse. “Think she will? I mean, if she’s not busy?”
“Get moving. The Latin A team will crowd in if you don’t.”
His brother stuffed a last roll in his mouth, brightened. “Kay!” Swallowing, he waved her over. “Mind keeping a sulky bastard company? He’s oozing bad vibes. I’m too busy to cheer him up. They’re playing my song.”
Kay adjusted the beaded shawl nesting on her shoulders. “We’ll stay with him,” she told Philip.
Daniel weighed the social call against a root canal. The dentist won out.
“I’m fine by myself, Kay.”
“Pouting in public? So unlike you.”
“I’m not pouting.”
“You have a reputation to uphold. Besides, doom and gloom doesn’t suit.”
“We’re staying,” Frances added.
Nearing, she swished layers of charcoal fabric. The old dame looked good in the classic gown and diamond necklace. The Siren-inspired earrings ruined the effect. On each ear, white string wrapped around cobalt-blue feathers.
From a blue jay? Daniel hoped she wasn’t picking off birds with her late husband’s rifle.
Dredging up his manners, he held out chairs. The women hemmed him in.
Frances patted his hand. “Lovers’ quarrel? The roses were beautiful. I’m sure the diners in the Sunshine Room appreciated them.”
Hoodwinking the Oracle of Delphi was probably easier. “Yes, Frances,” he admitted. “I’m quarreling with Linnie.”
“How difficult.” The old dame sipped primly at her martini. “Have you tried sex? Archibald, G
od rest his soul, mended hundreds of our quarrels with the heat of his loins. I never could latch on to my fury when he got that look on his face.”
“Frances! I’m not comfortable discussing my sex life with you.”
Kay muttered, “Or lack thereof.” He glowered, and she shrugged, asking, “What happened?”
He waited a beat then admitted, “Linnie wants something I can’t give.”
Veering off point, Frances put in, “You can give her whatever she needs. There’s nothing wrong with experimenting. Have you tried those devices? Some women need help reaching organism.”
“I think you mean orgasm.” Daniel peered at her closely. “How much booze have you had?”
Following up, Kay swatted her. “Frances, this is your last martini. For a woman who prizes her dignity, you cannot hold your liquor.” Lowering her voice, she asked him, “Do you mean the matter with Freddie?”
“Kay, I can’t disclose his business. I won’t sidestep my ethics, no matter what my feelings want.”
“You’re a fine man.”
“Linnie would debate your assessment.”
“Why does she care about Freddie’s business?”
“Curiosity, mostly. They don’t get along, and she’d like to know what’s behind this visit. She’s aware the inn wasn’t the real draw.”
Frances said, “I imagine she craves what she’s never had.” He frowned, and she added, “Daniel, you’ve had your nose pressed to the glass for too long. You don’t see the Wayfairs for what they are.”
“Which is?”
“A family encumbered by history. Every first grader in Sweet Lake learns about the Wayfairs alongside stories of Johnny Appleseed. Their ambition founded this town. The Wayfairs spend more time protecting that monument of an inn than interacting like normal people. All the talk of their uncanny luck. Siring a son in each generation ended up being a curse, frankly.”
He wondered if she was onto something. “Why a curse?” he asked.
“Until Linnie came along, they were never forced to choose between family and real estate. They’ll hurt their daughter to protect their son.”
Sweet Lake (Sweet Lake #1) Page 20