Sun-Kissed

by Florand, Laura

  Mack shrugged, liking the soreness in his shoulders. “I beat ’em.” Answer enough. Anne knew how he liked to win. Especially against competitive, arrogant sons-in-law. Well, Luc wasn’t technically his son-in-law, but Summer had such crap-awful parents, he’d always tried to keep up with Julie’s habit of including her with his girls whenever possible. Unfortunately, Summer’s parents had shipped her off to boarding school right at the same time as Julie died, and Summer had gotten lost there for a while. So had they all.

  After a second, he added wryly: “Still paying for it, but I taught them a lesson or two.” And after another couple of strides, he had to laugh. “Of course, they didn’t know how to play when we started the morning,” he admitted.

  And Anne laughed, too, that warm, rare, husky sound, kind of like the waves tossing in and the sunlight glancing off them all at once. “‘Figure out how you’re going to win before you even pick the game’,” she told him. It took him a second to remember it was something he’d said once.

  Hell, it was one of those things that had somehow gotten quoted in stupid books people read in bathrooms. Nobody cared about his codas, all the times he’d tried to clarify that he actually pretty frequently found himself in the middle of completely new games he had to figure out how to win on the fly.

  That was the trouble with being famously successful. Any idiot thought that passed your mind could shape future generations into deliberate idiocy, just because they were trying to be you.

  “If you get a chance,” he said wryly.

  Sometimes, after all, the damn Department of Justice took after you, or after your closest friend and ally in the whole damn world, and you couldn’t figure out any way around those rules, any way to win that game. Fucking bastards.

  “Well, you make your chances,” Anne said. “But…yeah.”

  Even though those six months she had spent in prison pissed him off in the worst way possible, he still got a kick out of the way she said yeah these days, instead of her elegant yes, or just the way she more openly flaunted that fuck you attitude. As if under that cool blond exterior, a whole layer of tattoos and piercings was trying to show through. Anne Winters, the elegant, New England punk.

  When she’d shot him that bird last night, he’d wanted to suck her middle finger into his mouth and make it feel appreciated.

  He’d always known she had that punk part in her, that ability to give a smile that was essentially like raising the middle finger, but he kind of liked her letting the rest of the world see it a bit now, too. Although maybe they’d always sensed it. Maybe that was why the world had gone after her so viciously. He could flaunt his yeah, that’s right, I’m smarter, stronger, more powerful than you attitude openly, but she was a woman, and women weren’t allowed to be the strongest person in the room.

  Yeah, fuck you, you pathetic world. He’d never, ever forgiven it for what it did to Jaime.

  Or to Anne.

  And it had better leave Cade the hell alone, because that oldest girl of his would kick it in the teeth, if she had to.

  “But I meant—you know.” Anne waved a perfectly manicured hand. Probably why she’d kept him waiting that morning. Chipped a nail last night and had to repair it before she could take a walk on the beach. It would be like her, but—he’d been getting ready to come pound on her door to make her talk to him again, just in case. “How are you doing. Today. Now that the last one is married.”

  And his stomach knotted that fast, punched in, closing hard around the loss and emptiness, closing as hard as it could. Fuck. He looked away, trying not to let his eyes sting. But they stung anyway. Shit. He brought his fingers up to rub them closed, trying to make it look as if he was just having a little trouble with the brightness of the light starting to gleam across the water.

  Anne touched his arm. Just that. They’d never walked hand in hand, not ever, but he wanted to link his fingers with hers so bad.

  The idea scared him more than all kinds of aggressive come-ons. Anne could roll her eyes over aggressive come-ons, if she wanted. Hell, they could have all kinds of wild sex and still come out of it friends at the end. They’d taken hands a few times. He’d gripped hers across a table when it was obvious she was going to lose that battle with the justice system. Held them hard, held her eyes, pushed you can survive this into her with all his might. She’d closed hers around his with every muscle in her, when he was on that damn plane flying across the Atlantic to get to Jaime.

  But walking hand in hand—that was intimacy. That was a whole different level of vulnerability and softness and shield-lowering.

  Still he opened his hand just a little, turning the palm subtly up, making it easy for her hand to slide down his arm and slip right into it, if she wanted.

  Hell, he’d raised two little girls and gotten them across all kinds of parking lots, he knew how to get someone to slip her hand into his.

  Knew how good it felt when they did.

  And how fucking lousy it felt when they didn’t. When they grew up and stopped doing that, crossed their own parking lots and looked both ways and didn’t need him.

  Anne didn’t slip her hand into his. She gave his arm a little squeeze and took the wet stick from Lex, tossing it out again.

  Then she touched his arm just briefly, delicately again. And slipped her hands back into her pockets.

  “It feels like shit,” he said.

  She grimaced a little and nodded, the wind stirring that pixie cut of hers.

  He just wanted to kiss her, okay? Just lean over and kiss her, hold onto her, kiss her some more. Not think about this emptiness his daughters had left. Think about fullness. About all the other things his life could hold.

  “But you like them,” she said. “Sylvain and Dominique.”

  Well…like. He grunted. “They’re competitive, arrogant bastards.”

  She raised one eyebrow and slanted a glance at him, her eyes so warm and amused. He did understand why the world called her an Ice Queen, but that warmth of hers—how could it get caught on film over and over, during her shows, and this whole mass of people still not see it?

  “So…yeah,” he said. “I li—I mean, they’re okay. Kind of. I guess.”

  She smiled.

  Like maybe she wanted to lean over and kiss him.

  Hunh. Really?

  “I mean, what the hell my daughters see in them, and why the fuck they’re so determined to live on the opposite side of the world from me, I don’t know.” He shoved his hands back in his pockets and scowled at the foam seeping away from his strides, back into the ocean.

  Because they had, hadn’t they? His daughters. They’d sought out a place as far away from his power over their lives as they possibly could. And it hurt so damn much, he didn’t even know how to think about it straight on.

  Hell, they liked his dad. Their grandfather was welcome in their lives. The man who had been the plague of Mack’s entire existence.

  “I mean—artisan chocolatiers,” he said suddenly, and pinched the furrow between his eyebrows, hiding his eyes again for just a second. “I worked so fucking hard. I made—this.” He spread his arms out to encompass the ocean and its enormous horizon. Not that he thought he was The Actual God who had created the world—he wasn’t that bad, quite—but, you know…close. Corey Chocolate was a dominant world player. He had more power than most presidents, and was just as helpless as those guys were sometimes, too. “And they don’t even want it. It’s like they think it’s crap.”

  Anne’s hand came back. This time, she curled her fingers around the edge of his actual hand and squeezed it.

  “Everything I did for them. My whole fucking life. Every accomplishment. All of this. And they don’t think it’s worth more than some idiot who likes to pretend his little chocolate shop in Paris is the most important thing in the world?”

  Anne’s fingers flexed again over the edge of his palm. Not quite hand-holding—although, God knew, he made his hand welcoming—but more a nurse consoling a pati
ent. “I don’t know,” she said, low. A little twisted smile. “Kurt did the same thing, you know. Kai is my polar opposite.”

  Mack didn’t quite know what to say. It stopped him, that different hurt in her. Because he didn’t think his daughters had chosen his polar opposite, actually. He and his sons-in-law were a lot alike: the drive, the intensity, the arrogance that made them positive they should be the person controlling any room, their convictions always the most important ones in any space. Fine, yes, he didn’t have their fragile, sensitive, princess-on-a-pea natures—nobody could bruise him or pierce him through to the heart just by looking at one of his chocolates askance—but underneath the different accents, they had a hell of a lot in common.

  His daughters—well, they’d gone far away physically. They’d done different things with their lives. But maybe, at heart, they actually loved their father a lot and looked for men who were kind of like him.

  Hey. Really? His heart warmed all through, this silly, funny, fuzzy warmth that kind of choked him all up, like he’d gotten a teddy-bear stuck in his throat. One of his daughters’. One of those teddy-bears they used to drag along with them when they ran across his office to bury themselves in his lap.

  He took a deep breath, letting it out, breathing more sea air in again. Between the memories, and the warm pleasure at the realization that maybe his daughters did get something from their dad, and the loss, it was all—this parenting stuff was a shit hard joy to deal with sometimes.

  “Maybe they’ll give you grandkids,” Anne said, with this strange, wistful wryness. Half humor, half something else. “And your grandkids will rebel against their parents and be crazy about you.”

  Heh. Yeah, and he could drive Sylvain and Dom nuts by luring their children into the capitalist fold. A malicious, delighted curl of his lips at the thought. Nice idea on Anne’s part.

  Anne.

  He frowned. Kurt was a damn idiot, to want someone so different from his mother.

  Except—Mack liked Kai. Liked her a lot, actually, this happy, generous-hearted young woman whose eyes lit whenever she looked at Kurt. Kurt and Kai had gone through a real rough spot, but nobody could say that Kurt was an idiot for choosing her.

  His frown deepened. After all, if Kurt had chosen someone exactly like his mother—that would have been weird, right? Anyway, Anne was a unique challenge. He didn’t think most men had the guts for her.

  Actually, he was pretty sure only one man in the world had that much guts. And drive. And arrogance. And strength.

  He turned his wrist and took her damn hand. Held on to it firmly, too, just in case she got any ideas about using her martial arts training or something to break free.

  She started and jerked at her hand.

  He slid his fingers down and forced them between hers, locking her hand in tighter.

  She stared down at their hands.

  He stared right at her face, so that when she lifted her gaze, theirs could lock challengingly. He wouldn’t want her to get the wrong idea, after all—like that he might be capable of backing down.

  She didn’t challenge him, though, when her gaze finally lifted to his. She looked away and bent her head and left her hand in his, all three things which were so unlike her that it hit his heart a little—this startled worry that he might have hurt her somehow in a vital way, or that she might be sick.

  “I won’t,” she said low. “Have grandkids.”

  And her throat moved, and she bit hard into her lips, and—

  Holy fuck, were Anne’s eyes filling?

  Anne was trying not to cry?

  Shit.

  He just pulled her straight into his arms, wrapping her up hard, holding her close and tight. Two little girls whom he’d single-parented through their teenage years—yeah, he knew how hard a girl needed to be held when she was crying. And how long you had to do it sometimes, until they got it all out.

  And fuck, the last time one of his girls had gotten badly hurt, he hadn’t been able to hold her hard. She’d had too many broken bones, and by the time she got well enough for a man to hold on hard to her, she’d already picked out Dom for the job, damn him.

  Good guy, though, Dom, in his way. There was that, at least. Mack’s hand lifted to stroke Anne’s hair—only she didn’t have much hair left, of course, unlike his daughters. So he stroked her nape, rubbing it gently while he kept that other arm wrapped tight around her.

  “What are you talking about?” he tried roughly, because despite all the lessons from his daughters, he still could not get over that urge to try to fix the problem, when the women he loved started to cry. To talk them out of it. To just batter the damn problem to smithereens and make it go away. “Kurt and Kai have plenty of time to still have kids. Lots of couples don’t start until their thirties. Hell, Cade’s twenty-eight, and no news on that front yet.”

  Of course, with her living in Paris, he’d probably be the last to know, part of him thought sulkily. She’d probably tell Sylvain, and then her sister, and her sister would tell Dom, and while Sylvain was busy telling his parents, she’d be telling Mack’s dad next, damn it, because his dad would be over there bouncing around causing trouble and endearing himself to his grandkids like he always did, and her own father would be the very last to know.

  “They tried, a lot,” Anne told his chest. Her breathing was very funny. Anne hadn’t cried for a prison sentence and here…surely she was not actually crying? “I think they’ve stopped trying. The, the miscar—I told you.”

  The miscarriages, right. Mack was still warily conscious of the fact that he was missing something important here. Were miscarriages that hard on people? Like anything you didn’t succeed the first time, didn’t you just try again?

  He tried to imagine what it would have been like for Julie, early in the pregnancy, if she’d lost it, but, God, it had been so long ago. Then he imagined suddenly if Cade or Jaime had never been born and—fuck.

  Fuck.

  Oh, yeah, fuck that was a ghastly, god-awful thing to imagine.

  Fuck.

  His arms tightened around Anne, like he was trying to hold onto his daughters. Or hers, for her.

  God damn it, why did the world do this shit to the people he loved all the time? This shit he couldn’t beat.

  “And I never managed to have more kids either,” she said, muffled, into his chest. It was so alien to hear Anne’s voice muffled, unclear.

  Low, quiet, yes. But always clear and firm. Never hidden or protected by anyone’s chest. Never protected by anyone at all. She fought her own corners. She defended herself. It was why her walls were so high and strong.

  “Shit,” he said, because he didn’t know what else to say. This was clearly something horribly painful for her that he had never even understood. He petted his hand over her nape again. “Did you—?”

  “Oh, yes, I tried,” she told his chest. She pulled back, turning away from him. The sudden removal of herself from the hug caught him by surprise, so that she managed to get away before he thought to tighten his arms. “That’s more or less what Clark and I broke up over,” she said over her shoulder, without really turning her head. A hand came up to dash across her face, at the level of her eyes, but her back was to him and she was already striding away.

  He reached out, caught the waistband of her jeans, and yanked her back against his chest. “Sorry,” he said, as she fell against him with a startled sound, and he turned her expertly back into his arms—funny how a skill gained from dealing with small girls in a tantrum of tears could come in handy two decades later—and pressed her right back against his chest. “I don’t think we were done here.”

  Broke up, he thought. As if her ex-husband had been some high school boyfriend. Well, that pathetic weak-assed bastard probably didn’t deserve the term divorce, really.

  Even if they had been married over ten years.

  Damn, but Mack hated weak men. He couldn’t understand them, and how they wasted so many good things just because they were to
o pathetic to fight for them.

  “He got mad at you because you couldn’t have more kids?” Clark had cared about kids? The man had moved to California and only seen Kurt during summer visits. Who did that? It wasn’t like he lacked for job opportunities closer to where his ten-year-old son lived.

  “Nooo,” Anne said slowly. She couldn’t seem to quite figure out what to make of her forcibly restored position against his chest. She wasn’t fighting for freedom, but she wasn’t settling in, either. Her fingers, delicate against his chest, couldn’t figure out whether to push away or sink in. “I guess it’s closer to say I got mad at him. I just—” Her voice tightened all up again, that surreal, unfamiliar tone of Anne fighting tears. “—it was hard. On me. Not to be able to-to make my body carry that little girl I wanted to term. And he—well, he didn’t really care very much.” And now she pressed her forehead into his chest hard, as if she wanted to drive out so many things from her head.

  Or maybe just beat down the damn world with her head, and his chest was the closest substitute.

  Well, shit. He could be stronger than the world if she needed it. He’d gotten in the habit. It still sometimes managed to win some rounds against him, mostly through sucker-punches, but damned if he would let it get in the habit of that.

  “I guess they might adopt,” Anne said. “I don’t know. It’s their decision.” She shrugged against him, like he was going to believe that gesture, and tried to pull back. He let her, a little bit, just so he could see her face. “But if they don’t…” She shrugged again, and lifted her chin, and tried that wry smile with which she’d eyed him across the table at the damn courthouse after her sentence came down and they knew she was going to have to do those six months. He’d loved her so much then, for the courage of that wry smile, that it had about killed him. “Well, no grandkids for me.”

  She stepped away, setting off on the walk again.

  He fell into step beside her and looped her back for a hug against his side. “Well, fuck, then, Anne, I guess we’ll just have to share mine.”