They had made their point. She lifted her face to the sun.
“It’s a beautiful day.”
She intended to spend it in her garden, away from the crowds that would pack into the village and the traffic that would stream along the roads. She intended to spend it on simple things, the tasks that gave her pleasure.
A day without worry, she thought. A clean and clear day with all shadows brushed away like dust with a broom.
She gathered the herbs and flowers she’d selected for her midsummer harvest with a bolline, the curved white-handled knife she saved for that purpose alone. The scents and shapes and textures never failed to delight her, the variety of their uses never failed to satisfy.
Some she would dry by hanging them in her kitchen, some in her tower room.
She would make charms from some, potions from others. From soaps to creams to healing balms and divination aids. And some would simply be sprinkled into sauces and salads for flavor, or mixed into a potpourri to scent the air.
Just before twelve she stopped to light the noon balefire. She set it on her cliffs, like a beacon. And stood for a time watching the sea and the pleasure boats that skimmed over it.
Now and then she saw the glint of binoculars and knew she was watched as she watched. There! the summer people would say. Up on the cliffs. She’s supposed to be a witch.
Such attention would once have caused her to be hunted and hanged. Now, Mia thought, the possibility of magic brought people to the island and into her store.
So the wheel ran, she mused. A circle spinning.
She went back to her garden. When her herbs were tied and hung, she used the sun to brew a small pot of chamomile tea. She had it iced with a hint of fresh mint when Sam stepped onto her path.
“Traffic’s a bitch,” he said.
“Midsummer and Mabon draw the most tourists.” She poured the tea into a glass. “Tourists who are interested in such things,” she added. “Did you light your balefire?”
“This morning, near your circle in my woods. Your woods,” he corrected when she arched her eyebrows. Absently, he reached down to pet Isis, who had come to rub against his legs. He noted the new collar and the charm hanging from it, a pentagram carved on one side, a sun wheel on the other.
“New?”
“For the Midsummer blessing.” She cut a slice of bread from a fresh loaf, drizzled it with honey, and offered it to him. “I made more than the faeries need.”
He took a bite, but she noticed that his restless gaze roamed her garden. It was rich and ripe with summer, the tall spires dancing in the breeze, the mobs of color tumbling over the ground. He watched a hummingbird flash by, then drink from the long purple bells of foxglove.
Roses, red as passion, climbed up the trellis to her old bedroom window as he had once climbed, risking flesh and bone to reach her.
The scent of summer roses could still make his heart ache.
Now he sat with her, in the sun and dappled shade of her garden. Adults with more weighing on them than the girl and boy could have imagined.
She wore a sleeveless dress, green as the lush leaves that surrounded them. And her face, beautiful and calm, told him nothing.
“Where are we, Mia?”
“In my midsummer garden, having tea with bread and honey. It’s a lovely day for it.” She lifted her cup. “But judging from your mood, perhaps I should have served wine.”
He rose, paced away. He would, she knew, tell her what was on his mind soon enough. Whether or not she wanted to hear it. Only a few nights before, he’d been lighthearted and playful enough to coax her into a swim. But today there was a cloud around him.
He’d always been a moody creature.
“My father called me this morning,” he told her.
“Ah.”
“Ah,” Sam repeated, and managed to make the syllable a bite. “He’s ‘displeased with my performance.’ That’s a direct quote. I’m putting too much time and money into the hotel here.”
“It’s your hotel.”
“I pointed that out. My hotel, my time, and my money.” Sam rammed his hands into his pockets. “I might’ve saved my breath. I’m told I’m making rash and dangerous financial and career decisions. He’s pissed off that I’ve sold my place in New York, annoyed that I’ve budgeted so much for the rehab at the hotel, and irked that I sent a proxy rather than attending the June board meeting personally.”
Because she felt for him, Mia rose and rubbed his stiff shoulders. “I’m sorry. It’s difficult ramming up against parental disapproval. It doesn’t matter how old we are, it stings when they don’t understand us.”
“The Magick Inn is our first and oldest asset. He’s figured out that I finessed it from him. Now it’s like a bone he wants to drag back from me.”
“And you’re just as determined to keep your teeth in it.”
He shot a furious look over his shoulder. “Damn right. He’d have sold it to strangers years ago if he hadn’t been legally bound to keep it in the family. He sold it to me happily enough, but now he’s realized I intend to make something of it, so he’s irritated. It’s a thorn in his side. So am I.”
“Sam.” For a moment she pressed her cheek against his back. And for a moment she was sixteen again, and comforting her unhappy, moody love. “Sometimes you just have to take a step away, and accept what is.”
“What is,” he agreed, turning to her. “He never could. Neither he nor my mother ever accepted what I am. It was something not to be discussed, as if I had some sort of embarrassing condition.”
Furious, as much because of letting himself be sucked in again as by the facts themselves, he strode down the path, through an arbor where morning glory vines were busily tangling.
“It’s in his blood as much as mine.” He saw her start to speak, then stop herself. “What? Just say it.”
“All right, then. It’s not the same for him. You respect what you have, you celebrate it. For him it’s a . . . well, a pesky inherited trait: He’s not alone in that. And because of it, you have more—are more—than he can ever have or be.”
“He’s ashamed of it. And me.”
“Yes.” Her heart wrung with pity. “I know. It hurts you. It always has. You can’t change what he thinks or feels. You can only change what you feel.”
“Is that how you handle your family?”
It took her a moment, and that was a jolt, to realize he meant her parents and not Lulu, or Ripley and Nell. “I used to envy you on some level. Just the fact that your parents worked up the interest and energy to push at you. Even if it meant pushing you in the wrong direction. We never argued here.”
She turned back to study the house she loved. “They never noticed if I was angry. My rebellions were completely wasted on them. There came a point when I had to accept that their disinterest wasn’t personal.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.”
She nearly laughed at his impatient explosion. “It was healthier, and more practical, and certainly more comfortable all around. What was the point of breaking my heart over it, when they wouldn’t have noticed? Or if they had, it would have baffled them. They’re not bad people, just careless parents. I’m who I am because they were what they were. That’s enough for me.”
“You always were sensible,” he replied. “I could never figure out whether I admired that or found it annoying. I still can’t.”
“You always were moody.” She sat on the bench by the arbor. “And the same goes. Still, it’s a shame the call put a blight on your holiday.”
“I’ll get over it.” He slipped his hands into his pockets again, fingering the tumbling stones he’d forgotten he carried. “He expects me back in New York within the month, to resume my proper place in the company.”
Her world tilted. She gripped the edge of the bench to balance herself, then forced herself to her feet. Forced shut that piece of her heart she’d allowed to be touched by his pain. “I see. When will you leave?”
“Wha
t? I’m not going back. Mia, I told you I was here to stay. I meant it, no matter what you think.”
With a careless shrug, she turned to start back to the house.
“Damn it, Mia.” He grabbed her arm, pulled her back.
“Watch your step.” She said it coldly.
“Are you just waiting for me to pack up and go?” he demanded. “Is that where we are?”
“I’m not waiting for anything.”
“What do I have to do to get us past this?”
“You can start by letting go of my arm.”
“Letting go is just what you expect.” To prove her wrong he took her other arm so they were facing each other in the dappled shade of the path. “So you won’t let me touch you, not where it matters most. You’ll take me to your bed, but you won’t come to mine. You won’t so much as sit and have a meal with me in a public place, unless it’s under the guise of business. You won’t let me talk about the years without you. And you won’t share magic with me when we make love. Because you don’t trust me to stay.”
“Why should I? Why should I do any of those things? I prefer my bed. I don’t choose to date. I’m not interested in your life off-island. And to share magic during the physical act of love is a level of intimacy I’m not willing to explore with you.”
She shoved his hands aside and stepped back. “I’ve given you cooperation in business, some friendly companionship and sex. This is what suits me. If it doesn’t suit you, find someone else to play with.”
“This isn’t a goddamn game.”
Her voice was sharp. “Oh, isn’t it?” He stepped toward her, and she held up her hands. Light, spitting red, shot between them. “Be careful.”
He merely held up his own hands, and a wash of searing blue water struck the light until there was nothing but the sizzle of vapor between them. “Was I ever?”
“No. And you always wanted too much.”
“Maybe I did. The problem was I didn’t know what I wanted. You always did. It was always so fucking clear to you, Mia. What you needed, what you wanted. There were times when your vision choked me.”
Stunned, she dropped her hands to her side. “Choked you? How can you say that to me? I loved you.”
“Without questions, without doubts. It was as if you could see the rest of our lives in this pretty box. You had it all lined up for me. Just the way my parents did.”
Her cheeks paled. “That’s a cruel thing to say. And you’ve said enough.” She hurried back down the path.
“It’s not enough until I’m done. Running away from it doesn’t change anything.”
“You’re the one who ran.” She whirled back, and the pain of it crashed through all the years and struck her with a fresh blow. “It changed everything.”
“I couldn’t be what you wanted. I couldn’t give you what you were so sure was meant to be. You looked ahead ten years, twenty, and I couldn’t see the next day.”
“So it’s my fault you left?”
“I couldn’t be here. For God’s sake, Mia, we were hardly more than children and you were talking marriage. Babies. You’d lie beside me when my head was so full of you I couldn’t think and talk about how we’d buy a little cottage by the woods and . . .”
He trailed off. It seemed to strike both of them at once. The little yellow cottage by the woods—where she hadn’t come since he’d moved in.
“Young girls in love,” she said, and her voice trembled, “dream about marriage and babies and pretty cottages.”
“You weren’t dreaming.” He walked to her table again, sat and dragged his fingers through his hair. “It was destiny for you. When I was with you, I believed it. I could see it, too. And at that point it smothered me.”
“You never said it wasn’t what you wanted.”
“I didn’t know how, and every time I tried, I’d look at you. All that confidence, that utter faith that this was the way it would be. Then I’d go home and I’d see my parents and what marriage meant. I’d think of yours and what family meant. It was hollow and airless. The idea of the two of us moving in that direction seemed insane. I couldn’t talk to you about it. I didn’t know how to talk to you about it.”
“So instead, you left.”
“I left. When I started college, it was like being torn in two. The part that wanted to be there, the part that wanted to be here. Be with you. I thought about you constantly.”
He looked at her now. He would say to the woman what he’d never been able to say to the girl. “When I’d come home on weekends, or breaks, I’d be half sick until I’d see you waiting on the docks. That whole first year was like a blur.”
“Then you stopped coming home every weekend,” she remembered. “You made excuses for why you needed to stay on the mainland. To study, to go to a lecture.”
“It was a test. I could go without seeing you for two weeks, then a month. Stop thinking about you for an hour, then a day. It got easier to convince myself that staying away from you, and the island, was the only way I was going to escape being trapped into that box. I didn’t want to get married. I didn’t want to start a family. Or be in love with one girl my entire life. Or root myself on a little island when I’d never really seen the world. I got a taste of the world in college, the people I met there, the things I learned. I wanted more.”
“Well, you got more. And the lid’s been off the box for a number of years. We’re in different places now, with different goals.”
He met her eyes. “I came back for you.”
“That was your mistake. You still want more, Sam, but this time I don’t. If you’d told me this eleven years ago, I would have tried to understand. I would have tried to give you the time and the room you needed. Or I’d have tried to let you go, without bitterness. I don’t know if I would have succeeded, but I know I loved you enough that I would have tried. But you’re not the center of my life any longer—you haven’t been for some time.”
“I’m not going away, or giving up.”
“Those are your decisions.” Ignoring the headache brewing, she gathered up the tea things. “I enjoy having you for a lover. I’ll regret having to end that, but I will if you insist on pressing for a different dynamic in our relationship. I think I’ll get that wine after all.”
She carried the dishes inside, rinsed them. The headache was going to plague her, so she took a tonic before selecting a bottle of wine, taking out the proper glasses.
She didn’t allow herself to think. Couldn’t allow herself to feel. Since there was no going back, no crisscrossing over paths that were already long overgrown, the only direction was forward.
But when she stepped outside, he was gone.
Though her stomach fluttered once, she sat at the table in her midsummer garden and toasted her independence.
And the wine was bitter on her tongue.
He sent her flowers at the bookstore the next day. Simple and cheerful zinnias, which in the language of flowers meant he was thinking of her. She doubted he knew the charming meaning of a bouquet of zinnias, but puzzled over them nonetheless as she selected a suitable vase.
It wasn’t like him to send flowers, she mused. Even when they’d been madly in love, he’d rarely thought to make such romantic gestures.
The card was explanation enough, she supposed. It read:
I’m sorry.
Sam
When she found herself smiling over the flowers instead of getting on with her work, she carried the vase downstairs and set it on the table by the fireplace.
“Aren’t those sweet and cheerful?” Gladys Macey slipped up beside her to coo over the bouquet. “From your garden?”
“No, actually. They were a gift.”
“Nothing perks a woman up more than getting flowers. Unless it’s getting something sparkly,” Gladys added with a wink. She slid a discreet glance over to Mia’s left hand. But not discreet enough.
“I’ve found that a woman who buys herself something sparkly ends up with something that suits
her own taste.”
“Not the same, though.” Gladys gave Mia’s arm a quick squeeze. “Carl bought me a pair of earrings on my last birthday. Ugly as homemade sin, no question about it. But I feel good every time I put them on. I was just on my way up to the café to see how our Nell’s getting on.”
“She’s getting on beautifully. When she tells you she thinks she’s started to show, just go along with her. It makes her happy.”
“Will do. I just pre-ordered Caroline Trump’s new book. We’re all excited about her coming here. I’ve been delegated by the book club to ask if she would agree to doing a book discussion just before the official signing.”
“I’ll see if I can set it up.”
“Just let us know. We’re going to give her a real Three Sisters welcome.”
“I’m counting on it.”
Mia made the call to New York herself. Once the wheels were set in motion, she checked her book orders, called her distributor to nag about a delay in a selection of note cards, then picked up the newest batch of e-mail orders.
As Lulu was busy, Mia filled them herself, slipping in the notice that signed copies of Trump’s book would be available. Then she carted them down to the post office.
She ran into Mac as she came out again. “Hello, handsome.”
“Just the woman I was looking for.”
Smiling, she slid her arm through his. “That’s what they all say. Are you on your way to the café to meet Ripley for lunch?”
“I was on my way to the bookstore to talk to you.” He glanced down, noted that she was wearing heels. “No point asking you to take a walk on the beach with me.”
“Shoes come off.”
“You’ll ruin your stockings.”
“I’m not wearing any.”
“Oh.” He flushed a bit, delighting her. “Well, let’s walk, then, if you’ve got a few minutes.”
“I always have a few minutes for attractive men. How’s your book going?”
“Fits and starts.”
“When it’s finished, I expect Café Book to host your first signing.”
Books by Nora Roberts Page 221