The Glass Kitchen

by Linda Francis Lee

  He leaned over and cupped her face. “All that matters,” he stated, “is your mother made sure that legally, I’m still your dad.”

  Forty-three

  PORTIA HEARD A CAR pull up out front, then the outer door of the town house opened, and her heart surged into her throat.

  Neither she nor Miranda had slept much in the hours since they’d returned to the city. Even though she was sure they would have said yes, Portia hadn’t wanted to impose even further on Stanley and Marcus by asking that they put up both her and Miranda. Plus, Miranda would want to be at home so she could see that Ariel was okay the minute she returned. So Portia had stopped by next door to say good night, and then returned to the town house. She felt surrounded by memories in the house, the memory of her great-aunt and the memory of what she had thought she shared with Gabriel.

  Miranda had fallen asleep on the sofa. Portia had hunkered down in an overstuffed chair, reminding herself that this house wasn’t a home, not the kind where she belonged, with its perfect, expensive fabrics, sterile of emotion despite the rich materials and heavy silk.

  After a few hours, she had realized she wasn’t going to sleep at all, so she had gotten up and gone to the kitchen. Eventually Miranda had followed, and the two of them sat there, not saying much, until the front door opened.

  Miranda leaped up and flew down the hall. Portia drew a deep breath, then followed.

  When she came out into the hallway it was just in time to see Miranda throw herself at her dad and sister. “I’m sorry!” the teen cried.

  Looking on, Portia’s heart twisted. She loved the girls and would miss them. But after everything that had happened, she knew she had no future in this house.

  As if sensing her thoughts, Gabriel glanced up. His eyes drifted over her, dark, assessing, as if trying to understand what she was thinking.

  “Dad,” Miranda said, drawing his attention.

  Portia didn’t wait to hear what the girl had to say. She used the distraction to make her escape.

  She slipped past the three of them, heading for the front door.

  “Portia,” Gabriel stated, hard and clipped, like a demand he expected to be obeyed.

  She went faster.

  “Portia.” This time softer, mixed with a sigh.

  Portia didn’t care. She raced out the front door, literally running over to Stanley and Marcus’s.

  Stanley raised a brow from his place by the window when she walked in, and Marcus bustled her over to the sofa, plopped down beside her, and said, “Tell me everything!”

  Portia caught her breath. “Marcus!”

  “You can’t hold out on me, not after all the Little Debbie cakes I gave you! I am dying of curiosity. You didn’t give us one single detail last night! Granted, it was late, but now, out with it!”

  She sank back against the cushions, suddenly exhausted. “Miranda went to New Jersey. Ariel followed, had a bad asthma attack, and ended up in the hospital overnight. She’s fine now. There.”

  “Glad to hear it, but now I want the good stuff,” he demanded. “What happened with Gabriel? Tell me he groveled at your feet, apologizing up and down for not bothering to mention he owned your apartment!”

  “No, no apology.” She pursed her lips. “Not that an apology solves anything.”

  The words were barely out of her mouth when her cell phone rang.

  Kane, Gabriel.

  She pressed ignore with relish. When she glanced up from the phone, Stanley and Marcus were looking at her. “What?” she said.

  “You’ll have to talk to him sometime.”

  “No, Marcus, I won’t.”

  Marcus cringed.

  Not two minutes later, someone was at the front door.

  Stanley glanced out the window, then exchanged a glance with Marcus. This time it was Stanley who struggled up from the chair while Marcus gathered their coats.

  “Where are you going?” she squeaked.

  “No more hiding, Portia. Gabriel’s a good man.” Marcus paused and gave her one of the very few frowns she’d ever seen on his face. “True, he should have told you about owning the apartment. But he’s still a good man. Deep down, you know that.”

  They hurried out the door, letting Gabriel in, but not before she heard Stanley growl, “You hurt her again, and you’ll answer to us.”

  Once the door shut, Gabriel stepped forward. There was nothing soft and approachable about him. “We are going to talk, Portia.”

  “There’s no point.” She started to turn away, but he strode forward and took her arm. Not hard, not bruising; unrelenting, but oddly gentle. “You will listen to me. You owe me that.”

  All her careful calm evaporated. “I don’t owe you anything! I’m not the one who lied and betrayed you.”

  “Damn it, I’m trying to apologize!”

  She gasped her disbelief. “Last I heard, apologies don’t start with barked-out orders!”

  He visibly reined himself in, and let her go. With a few quick steps, she moved away.

  He raked his hands through his hair. “I’m trying, Portia. I don’t know the first thing about nice or simple. Charm. That’s my brother’s domain. I’ve always been hard.” As if that made it better. “I know I’ve messed up at every turn. With you. With my daughters. Christ, I nearly lost one.” The entire frame of his tall, hard-chiseled body shuddered, every bit of searing anger draining out of him. She felt his pain. She thought of the way he was when he made love to her, the control she knew he didn’t believe he could afford to lose.

  She wanted to reach out, but kept her hand at her side.

  He stepped forward. She stepped back until she hit the wall. He didn’t stop until he was inches from her. He took her in, assessing in that way he had, this time as if to determine if she was safe, as if he couldn’t afford for someone else in his life to be hurt.

  “Move away, Gabriel.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” he said softly. “We are going to talk. I am going to apologize. You need to stop running away from me and listen.”

  She met his gaze defiantly. “I don’t need to do anything other than tell you to leave, because, apology or not, we’re over.”

  He flinched, but didn’t relent. “We haven’t even begun, sweetheart.”

  “Don’t ‘sweetheart’ me!” She tried to step sideways, but again he blocked her.

  Then, as if he was giving in to something he fought, he ran one hand up her neck, his palm cupping her face, his thumb brushing over her cheek. She felt the tremor rush through his body, the heat that hit her. “If I could do it all over again,” he said, his fingers sliding into her hair, “I would.”

  “But you can’t,” she snapped, forcing herself not to look at his mouth.

  “I know that. I screwed up. I get that, too. And now I’m trying to explain. Something I haven’t done a lot of in a long time.”

  “Ah, so the great Gabriel Kane, who doesn’t answer to anyone, will deign to explain. And I’m supposed to be all excited about this big emotional breakthrough?”

  His dark eyes went hard. “That isn’t what I meant, Portia.”

  He looked at her, his jaw cemented before his eyes drifted to her lips. She knew he wanted to kiss her. Her heart sped up.

  “I meant that it’s not easy to explain because I hardly understand myself. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what I feel, or why I couldn’t bring myself to tell you I already owned the apartment. Not any of it. But from the first time I saw you sitting on the front steps, wearing those flowered shoes, something about you … spoke to me. Hell, I’d been dead for years, long before my wife died.” He hesitated, as if searching for words, but clearly believing he had to. “Seeing you sitting there, I felt something … intense. Not long after, I recognized that if I let it happen, I would come to need you.” His gaze hardened. “I don’t do need.”

  “That’s great,” Portia said with a scoff, refusing to let up, unable to let up. She couldn’t afford to. “You’re just wh
at every woman wants.”

  “Don’t, Portia. Don’t keep throwing this back at me.” His face was ravaged. “I’m doing the best I can. I’m trying. At least give me that.” He waited a breath, and when she remained silent, he continued. “I denied what you made me feel. Hell, I fought it tooth and nail. But every time I told myself to just tell you that I owned the apartment and kick you out, I couldn’t. And that infuriated me. How had I become so weak? It’s only been by not being weak that I’ve succeeded in life. Who the hell am I if I wasn’t the strong guy? Look at this face, Portia.”

  Her breath caught in surprise.

  “Is this the face of a man who can afford to be weak?” he demanded. “No, it’s not. I learned that as a boy. But that’s the thing: The minute you saw me, without having any idea who I was, or that I had money, you looked at me in a way I had never experienced before. You couldn’t have been drawn to my money, because you had no idea who I was when you first saw me. You saw me walking toward you, I saw you see me. I saw the way you looked at me. Drawn in. You wanted me, Portia. I felt it. I saw it. And when you learned I had money, real money, the kind you needed, you wanted nothing to do with it. Do you know how amazing it was to me that you didn’t want my money? Hell, you wouldn’t even cash the check that I had to force you to take. Anyone else in your position would have snapped up my offer of financing—”

  “Offered without believing in me,” she interjected, holding on to her anger, hating that her heart was melting.

  “But I gave you a check. It doesn’t matter how it was offered, because you didn’t want a penny of it anyway. Every day I have people who want a piece of me, but only for my money. Even my mother, my brother.” He hesitated. “Even my wife. All they want or wanted from me was my money.”

  She swallowed back the ache she felt for him. She wanted to tell him there was beauty in every strong and harsh plane of his face. It got harder to hold out. Her fingers itched, not to bake, but to touch him. But on the heels of that thought came another. The reality of Gabriel’s Meal, a reality that she wanted to run from, but couldn’t. How could she after she had watched her grandmother being struck down by lightning based on a meal, the scar on her shoulder a reminder if she was ever inclined to forget?

  Her heart slowed at the thought, a deep settling of resolve. As much as she loved him—and she knew she did—as much as she ached for him right then, despite what he had done to her, her grandmother’s entry proved all the more that Cuthcart meals spoke truths.

  The meal she had prepared for Gabriel had been followed by a very different kind of storm. Gabriel’s Meal had been the beginning of a total unraveling of both their lives, starting with the fight between Gabriel and Anthony and ending with Ariel nearly dying, the arrival of the inspector squashing her dream sandwiched in between. Gabriel’s Meal had spelled disaster.

  “It’s too late for us, Gabriel. You betrayed me. You lied to me.” Emotion and pain swelled, pushing her on. “But the fact is,” she stated, “you said I was ridiculous. Crazy.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “When I told you that Ariel was in New Jersey. You said, ‘That’s crazy. Hell, you are crazy. Ridiculous.’”

  She could see by his expression that he remembered.

  “And you didn’t say it in some flip way. You looked me in the eye and I saw that you believed it. Admit it, Gabriel, you think I’m odd. Different. Ridiculous. Deep down, you don’t believe in me. That makes you no different from my ex-husband. You both want me to be someone I’m not, someone who fits into a normal box, someone who doesn’t know things because of food. My husband said I wasn’t normal. You used different words, but you said the same thing.” She had never felt so sad. “So no, despite the fact that all you have to do is touch me and I melt, despite the fact that I fell in love with you, madly, deeply, in a let-you-eat-crackers-in-my-bed, shouting-Stella-from-the-courtyard sort of way, there is no future for us.” Her voice broke. “I deserve better than men who think of me as lesser than them, when they bother to think of me at all.”

  “Portia—”

  She saw the pain in his eyes, but she didn’t let up. “I deserve better than men who want me to fit whatever they think suits their particular life.”

  He stared at her hard, and she could see the truth sink in. And still, she didn’t let up. “I thought you were a different kind of man, Gabriel.”

  He flinched.

  She sucked in her breath, hating this, but held his gaze. “I fell I love with you, Gabriel. But you only thought of yourself. I deserve someone who will love me just the way I am. Now, please, move away. I want you to leave.”

  She saw the moment he realized she was serious, that she wasn’t going to be convinced. After a long furious, aching second, he nodded.

  He left her then, without looking back. And her heart broke a little bit more.

  Forty-four

  “ROBERT BALEAU, please,” Portia said into the phone, Stanley and Marcus standing on either side of her.

  The woman who answered hesitated, then asked, “Who may I say is calling?”

  Portia grimaced, glanced at Stanley, who scowled at her, then raised her chin. “His ex-wife.”

  The woman gasped. “Portia, is that you?”

  Portia’s stiffened. “Rayna?”

  “I knew it! Portia, darlin’, how are you?”

  “I’m fine, how are you? What are you doing answering the phones?”

  “Well, you know how you had to stay on top of everyone around here to get them to do their jobs. Now you’re gone and that Sissy—” She cut herself off. “Let’s just say that things aren’t running too smoothly around here.”

  Portia had heard just that after a woman who used to work for Robert had tracked her down and offered her a bit of good fortune.

  Rayna sighed over the phone. “He has me doing everything from answering the phones to dealing with the press. Lordy, do I miss you. And not just because without you things are a mess. Are you really okay?”

  Portia searched for a cheerful voice to answer. “I’m great.” She glanced at Stanley and Marcus. “And I’m about to be even better. Is Robert there?”

  “Let me see—”

  Suddenly Portia heard Rayna cover the receiver with her hand, but not before she heard Robert’s familiar bark in the background.

  Rayna came back, this time as proper as when she had first answered. “Yes, Mr. Baleau is in. I’ll put you through.” But just before she transferred the call, Rayna whispered into the phone, “Miss you.”

  Then the clicks before Robert bellowed into the phone. “Portia! It’s about time you returned my calls.”

  As if she were a child reprimanded by an adult. It sank in that it had always been that way between the two of them, more so the longer they were married. She felt the sting of embarrassment.

  Stanley must have sensed something, because he leaned forward and rasped, “We didn’t spend the last twenty-four hours teaching you how to not be a nice girl to have you fall apart the minute you get on the phone with that guy!”

  She squeezed her eyes closed. Their lessons didn’t have one bit in common with the “ladylike behavior” her mother had drummed into her head. But even she had figured out that her mother’s pilfered etiquette book was for the birds.

  Every ounce of embarrassment and fury rose up, pushing every trace of devastation she felt over the loss of Gabriel aside. Never in her life had she wanted to kick someone’s tail.

  “It’s time you pay what you owe me, Robert.”

  Stanley nodded.

  Robert scoffed into the phone. “What are you talking about, Portia?”

  “You owe me for the apartment!”

  A surprised pause before, “Portia, you’re upset—”

  Stanley and Marcus waved their hands, shaking their heads. “Do not get upset!” they hissed.

  “Me? Upset? Why would that be, Robert? You divorced me. Then you married the only friend I had in Willow Creek. Fine, that’
s your prerogative. But it’s not your prerogative to withhold the money you owe me, both from our marriage settlement and the proceeds from the sale of my apartment—and let’s not even discuss my forged signature.”

  “Portia, you need to calm down.”

  “Robert, I am calm, calm enough to tell you that I want the money you owe me wire-transferred into my bank account before the end of the day. I know exactly how much you got for my apartment, and I want every dime from the sale, as well as interest from the date of closing. Capisce?”

  Stanley rolled his eyes. Marcus snickered. Sure, it was a little much. But she was on a roll.

  Robert must have sensed that she was serious. Ever the consummate politician, he reined in the moral outrage and replaced it with something that had served him well in the past.

  “Portia,” he said, his tone aggrieved. “I feel terrible that you and I have come to this. But there is no reason for you to be going on so.”

  “Let me repeat myself: You must deposit every dollar you owe me in my bank account by the end of the day.”

  She could all but see him, nearly two thousand miles away, formulating yet another new move, a master playing chess. She was half certain he was enjoying himself.

  “I don’t have that kind of money readily available.”

  “Then you’d better find a way to get it. If you don’t, I’ll make sure your constituency learns you’re a lying, cheating manipulator. I’m not so sure those same voters you say love you are going to be thrilled to reelect a man who swears he supports the sanctity of traditional marriage but got one of his employees—his wife’s best friend, at that—pregnant while he was still married.”

  “I know you, Portia,” he snapped, his patience spent. “You didn’t fight me before. You won’t fight me now. Nothing’s changed. At heart, you’re still a poor girl from a trailer park, raised by a crazy grandmother.”

  She laughed, which she knew he hadn’t expected. “Maybe so. But what has changed is that I’m dead serious. Mark my words, I will tell the media about Sissy, but I’ll tell the police about how you managed to sell my apartment. In case they don’t teach basic law in that fancy law school you graduated from, forgery is illegal, Robert.”