by Ava Miles
But he was already leading the way again for Evan. “You’re a good man, Chase.”
“Definitely don’t tell anyone that,” he said softly. “I’m going to grab a bourbon at the bar. Can I get you anything? We’re going to be sitting down at the head table pretty soon, and all they’re serving is wine.”
Evan was deep in discussion with the head of European operations now. The distinguished older man was obviously trying to court Evan’s favor and get in good with him. She realized Evan would have a lot of traveling ahead of him. He’d need to meet with his employees all over the world and likely their clients too. After the reception, she would encourage him to leave Dare Valley and go to DC for a while. It would be okay. They would learn to make compromises like they had about her two dresses today. He hadn’t tried to argue with her about the one she’d borrowed from Jane. And he hadn’t suggested the custom-made one was better, even though it hugged her frame perfectly. The bold red color she’d chosen suited her declaration, and the neckline bordered the edge of modest since she hadn’t wanted to look anything less than professional as his date. No one was ever going to accuse her of being a trophy wife like her mother had been.
“Do you think they have champagne?” she asked Chase, who was waiting patiently for her answer.
“They have pink champagne. Evan insisted.” He winked at her. “It was the only suggestion he had for the entire reception.”
She refrained from expressing how sweet that was. Chase didn’t strike her as a lovey dovey type. “Can you grab two glasses? I want to toast with Evan.”
“I’d be happy to,” Chase said.
Conversations were buzzing all around her now, and since she didn’t want to interrupt Evan and his employees, she scanned the crowd for some of her friends. Evan had included everyone from the cinnamon roll tasting, although Arthur Hale had a standing invitation to receptions like this one since his name was on the Hale School of Journalism. Evan had also included the students living at her house, which made her heart swell.
“Margaret!” a voice cried out. She hadn’t heard that voice in almost a decade, but she recognized it instantly.
Shock poured into her as a hand cupped her bare arm. It was a gentle touch, but it felt like a shackle. She turned and looked into the calculating eyes of her mother. They were the same color as hers, but that’s where the resemblance ended. “Mother.”
Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God, oh, God.
“And father,” a man said on her other side.
He hadn’t changed either, still puffing his chest out like the peacock who’d snared a beautiful, younger woman—although her mother didn’t look quite so young anymore.
All the air seemed to have disappeared from her lungs.
“What are you doing here?” she rasped out, but she knew. Oh, how she knew.
Her mother smiled, but the rest of her face didn’t move. Botox had stolen her ability to even make a fake expression. It was almost like staring at a statue.
“Well, darling girl,” her mother continued as if they hadn’t been estranged for years, “we just had to come to support you and your new beau once we read about you two in the news.”
She felt lightheaded. “I know why you’re here, mother. What I want to know is how you got in. They didn’t sell tickets to the reception.”
The look in her mother’s eyes turned downright feral, and she felt a familiar sickness rise in her belly. Her mother was the type of woman who would do anything to get what she wanted, no matter who it destroyed. And what Cindy Lancaster wanted was all the glitter and glory money could buy.
“I simply called the university president and told him your father and I wanted to surprise you by coming to the reception.” She leaned in and pinched Margie on the arm. “I told him we were vacationing in St. Barts, and you didn’t want us to interrupt our trip, but we just had to be there for our darling girl.”
Margie tried to step away, but her father grabbed her other arm. Their hold was designed to keep her in her place. With them calling the shots.
It was happening all over again.
They were going to enhance their power and connections—through her.
And she couldn’t allow it. She couldn’t.
Shoving at them, she finally managed to break their hold. Her breaths were shallow now, and she knew she was going to have a panic attack, the kind that had plagued her while growing up. She had to get out of here fast.
Even though she seemed to be moving quickly, she felt like she was wading through water. Her unnatural heartbeat pounded in her ears. She spotted an Exit sign at the side of the large banquet hall and made it through the door. A few people were watching her with odd looks on their faces, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t. She felt like an elephant was sitting on her chest.
When she made it to the hallway, she kept right on going, pushing through the water, fighting to stay upright and not give in to the faint she could feel pressing down on her.
She had to get away.
She had to protect Evan.
***
Evan had enjoyed talking with his executives at the start of the reception. It had been thoughtful of Chase to arrange for them to attend. He would have to start thinking like that now. There were so many relationships he’d let Chase handle for him in the past. Stepping up to the plate would be part of his new mandate after today.
It would mean traveling away from Margie, which worried him. He’d read her so easily when Rajan suggested he come to corporate headquarters next week. She thought he should go, but it felt too soon to leave her. Their future wasn’t secure, and nothing was more important to him right now, not even his new invention or the company he owned.
When he finally managed to politely extricate himself from his employees, he searched the room for her. There was no sign of her, so he decided to head to the main table to see if she’d sat down early with Chase.
A couple rose from their seats beside the university president as he approached them. They both had the predatory look of money, and he wondered why they were sitting at the head table if he didn’t know them.
Then the older woman gave him a flirtatious smile, and he took a step back when he realized her eyes were the same shape and color as Margie’s—and her long, lustrous hair was the same rich sable. He knew who they were before the older man beside her stuck out his hand for a shake.
“Evan—”
“Get out,” he said in a low but commanding voice.
The man had the audacity to look shocked. “Now, see here—”
“Evan,” Margie’s mother said, running her fingers in a coquettish gesture that made him sick. “We’re here to meet the special man in Margaret’s life. Your speech was—”
“I said, ‘Get out,’” he repeated in the same hard tone.
They didn’t even call her by the name she preferred. She wasn’t Margaret. She never had been.
“If you don’t want the press to photograph a scene of my security dragging you from this room,” he said, “you will leave now. Quietly.”
Her mother simply shook her head. “Now, Evan. That would only embarrass Margaret, and we wouldn’t want that. Would we?”
He broke her vile gaze to scan the room again for Margie. She was nowhere to be found. All he could think about was how seeing her parents would have affected her. He needed to find her. Immediately.
“The best gift I could give Margie would be to expose you for the vile people you are. If you don’t leave right now, I can promise you that I will give interviews to every person with a press pass about how you disowned your only daughter without a thought.”
The woman pressed a hand to her heart like the poor actress she was. “But it broke our hearts to do that to our little girl. We were trying to do what we thought was best for her. And we were clearly right. She hasn’t made the best choices—God knows it’s embarrassing to have a daughter who spends her days in front of an oven like the household help—but at least she ended up wit
h a powerful and successful man like you.”
His vision turned red for a moment. “Any character Margie possesses is in spite of you, not because of you, you horrible, blood-sucking woman.”
She gasped, and her husband elbowed in. “Suddenly you’re an angel in the press because you gave this no-name school an endowment,” he snarled, “but that can end in a moment. I’m going to tell them how you treated us.”
This time he scoffed. “Feel free. We can bandy things about in the papers if that’s how you want to play it. That is, if that isn’t embarrassing for you and your friends,” he said. “Now get the hell out of here, or I’ll look into every one of your assets and find a way to take everything from you. Everything. That’s a promise.”
The older man was turning purple from outrage.
“Do you understand me?” he asked as a strong hand cupped his shoulder.
He knew immediately it was Chase.
The woman’s surgically enhanced lips were trembling now. “But…but I’m her mother.”
“Get out,” he said. “And if you ever contact her or me again, I will destroy you. You’ll be begging to work at a fast-food place to make the rent once I’m finished with you.”
The man finally stood tall and put his arm around his wife, acting like Evan had just stolen their only daughter. He started to lead her away, but she paused.
“We’re going to tell everyone we know you’re a heartless son of a bitch,” she said. “We know some of the same people you do.”
He bowed mockingly. “You can have each other. Our security team will make sure you leave.”
Signaling to one of the men in the back of the room, he inclined his chin toward the couple. The man nodded and came forward.
“There’s no need for this,” Margie’s dad blustered when the security guard reached them.
People were talking all around him, and Evan realized he was making a scene. The university president was looking deeply concerned, as if he’d realized he’d made a colossal mistake inviting the Lancasters without clearing it with Evan and Margie. Right now, Evan couldn’t care less.
“I need to find Margie,” he said to Chase once the couple was gone. He scanned the room again, but as he feared, she was nowhere to be found.
“Go see if security saw her leave,” Chase said. “I’ll handle everything else.”
“Please give my apologies—”
“I will, Evan,” Chase said, giving him a slight nudge toward the door.
With the help of the security team, Evan quickly discovered Margie had made it to the limo. She’d claimed to be unwell, so the driver had taken her home.
He strode back into the reception hall and headed to the table where her boarders were seated. After he briefly explained the problem, Gary lent him a key to the house so he could go check on her.
Evan left the reception without a thought.
When he reached the Victorian and knocked, she didn’t answer. But he knew where her bedroom was, and the light was on in the tower.
He needed to get in there. He hated to invade her privacy without her permission, but her phone was going straight to voicemail and this was an emergency. Using the key, he entered the quiet house.
He hadn’t been on the second floor since returning to Dare Valley. Passing the room that had once been his, he continued down the hall. As he neared her bedroom door, he could hear the sobs coming from the other side.
Oh, baby.
He opened the door quietly. The lamp by her bed was on. She was curled up in a ball in the center of the mattress, crying her heart out. His heart broke, hearing her.
He almost didn’t know what to do, but then he realized there was only one thing he could do. Love her through the storm. Comfort her until she didn’t need it anymore. He planted his knee on the bed and lowered himself to the mattress. Fitting himself to her body, he wrapped his arm around her.
She jumped from his touch and then turned over to look at him. Her makeup was a disaster, her mascara running down her face. But it was the utter devastation in her tear-drenched eyes that killed him.
“Margie,” he said softly.
Her ragged inhalation sounded painful, so he rubbed her back as she struggled to breathe. She squeezed her eyes shut, her features tensed to the point of breaking. “My parents…”
“I know,” he whispered. “They’re gone now, and they will never bother us again.”
Her lips trembled, and then she dissolved right before his eyes, crying and keening with so much pain he feared for her. But he held her tight through it all.
He didn’t know how much time had passed when the violence of her tears finally abated, but it seemed like hours. Tucking her closer to him, he made sure to give her room to inhale oxygen. Finally she slumped against him, and he kissed the top of her head.
“Oh, Margie,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
She shook her head and then lifted her gaze to meet his. “It’s not your fault. It’s mine. I brought them to you.”
He sat up because he could feel it already, the jagged and gaping crevice between them, the one that had cracked open tonight after her parents’ surprise visit.
“You didn’t bring them. They came. And now they’re gone.”
Covering her eyes with a hand like she was ashamed to be seen by him, she let out a tortured breath. “Oh Evan, I can’t do this. I can’t…”
His fear rose up like a dark tower, one he knew he couldn’t scale without her. “We’re doing it. Together. You did what you had to do with them, and so did I. They know better than to try again.”
“No, no, no,” she cried out.
“Margie, you’re safe now,” he said, feeling it was important to say that. “I’m here for you. I’ll always be here for you.”
When she lifted her head to look at him, he felt it. He couldn’t climb the tower at all, he realized. It was about to fall on top of him, destroying everything in its wake.
“You asked me if I could do this, and I…I can’t. I just can’t.” Tears spilled down her cheeks. “Please don’t press me anymore. If you love me…”
The tower struck him, and its debris drove into every cell of his body. “Don’t say that right now. You’re in shock. It’s going to be better.”
“No, it won’t,” she said. “Please just go. Evan, I’m begging you.”
Tears stung his eyes. “Don’t let them do this. Don’t give your parents this kind of victory.”
“It’s too late,” she said and then started crying again in earnest.
He tried to put his arms around her again, but this time she pushed back.
“No,” she said through the tears. “You have to go. I mean it, Evan. I love you, but I can’t do this anymore.”
For a moment, he couldn’t think. The brain waves guiding decision making ceased to work. He managed to rise from the bed.
“You’re hurting now,” he made himself say. “You’re going to feel differently about this.”
Even as he said the words, he didn’t believe them. When was she going to feel differently? She’d been honest with him from the beginning. She didn’t want the kind of life he led. He just hadn’t wanted to listen.
He walked to the door, and all he wanted to do was lower his head against the frame and cry. “I won’t…” Oh, Jesus, he couldn’t say it. It hurt too much to say it. But he managed to pool all the remaining strength he possessed into his voice. “I won’t bother you anymore.”
As he left, he hoped she would jump off the bed and come after him, that she would assure him it was all a mistake and everything would be fine.
But she didn’t, and so he walked out of her house for the last time.
Chapter 7
For the next few days, Margie walked around in a fog. She forced herself to get out of bed at two-thirty in the morning when her alarm went off and started to make bread at three. She managed to tell Jill the entire story without bawling, but she cried plenty the rest of the time.
She cried more than she had ever cried in her whole life.
Her heart was broken, and so was Evan’s, she knew. All she wanted to do was wind back the clock to before her parents had ruined everything.
But she couldn’t.
And now Evan was gone. According to Jill, he had checked out of the Grand Mountain Hotel with the rest of the Quid-Atch executives.
The press had asked her why Evan had left the reception for an unaccounted period of time before returning to deliver a few short remarks to the attendees. He’d excused himself early, which had only caused more speculation.
She’d lost her temper and said, “No comment,” which had only prompted one of the papers to report she and Evan were on the outs.
Work no longer gave her the same sense of joy, and tears filled her eyes every time she took a baguette from the oven.
When she made it back to her house, she didn’t test out new baking recipes. No, she headed straight to her bedroom, which had become her sanctuary from her renters’ curious gazes. Of course, none of them had asked her about Evan—not even Gary. The pale face she saw whenever she looked in the mirror was enough of an explanation. Her sorrow was written all over it.
She was brewing a cup of tea in the kitchen of the Victorian when she heard a knock on the door. Since she’d only just returned from closing the bakery, she couldn’t imagine who it was. But part of her wondered if it was Evan, if he had been courageous enough to come to her door one more time.
When she opened it, Jane was standing there.
She told herself she was relieved, but it wasn’t true. Not if the tears filling her eyes were any indication.
“I wanted to stop by,” Jane said, clenching her hands. “See if you needed anything.”
“Not unless you have a cure for heartbreak. Things with Evan didn’t work out.”
Her gaze was soft, and she nodded. “Jill told me. She’s worried about you. She thought…well…can I come in for a little while? I promise not to stay long.”