“Maybe Italian,” Bianca said. “Italy is so romantic.”
They’d spent the morning going over the cultural norms of various European countries. Bianca had memorized expectations for punctuality, how close to stand, how formal the greeting and a few key facts about every country.
“Bianca,” Margot began. “We are genuinely running out of things to talk about.”
Bianca raised her hand. “Tut, tut. We agreed not to discuss that until next week.”
“I’m not cheap. You’re spending a lot of money to keep me here and it’s not necessary.”
“It is to me. Now I don’t want to talk about it until next week. Is that clear?”
Margot thought about pushing back, but she’d learned that Bianca couldn’t be rushed. With a sigh, she said, “Sure.”
“Good. Now help me decide what language program I should use.”
“You can download a sample from a couple of them onto your tablet. Do the practice lessons and see which you like best.”
“Let’s do that now,” Bianca said, coming to her feet. “I’ll go get it and you can show me how to load everything.”
But before Bianca could walk to her bedroom, Edna appeared in the doorway.
“There’s a gentleman to see you,” she said, looking a little flustered.
“You mean Wesley?” Bianca asked. “I thought he was in meetings today.”
“Not him.” Edna turned to Margot. “A gentleman to see you.”
Who on earth? she thought, then mentally slammed on the brakes. No. No! It couldn’t be.
“Did he give his name?” she asked, hoping she sounded calmer than she felt.
“Dietrich. He didn’t offer a last name. He said you would know who he was.”
Oh, she knew. But how had he found her? She figured out the answer as soon as she thought the question. One of her friends had caved.
“Dietrich? Oh, the ex-lover.” Bianca’s tone was arch, her expression inquisitive. “This is going to be exciting, isn’t it? I do love unexpected drama.”
Margot couldn’t figure out what to say to that, so she ignored the comment. She rose and headed for the stairs, aware of the other women following her. How lovely—an audience.
At the bottom of the stairs she found Dietrich in the foyer. He looked as he always had—tall, thin, blond. There was a studied casualness about him, as if he had more important things to do than worry about his clothes or how he looked. He was a filmmaker. An artist. The mores of the ordinary world were not his problem.
He smiled when he saw her. “Margot. At last! I’ve been trying to reach you, but you are hard to find these days, aren’t you.” He put his hands on her upper arms, then leaned in and kissed each cheek before settling his mouth on hers.
She let him, wanting to know what she would feel. Regret? Longing? Desperate hope that this time it would be different, that this time it would be forever? She held her breath, braced for any emotion.
His mouth lingered. She didn’t respond, mostly because she really didn’t want to be kissing him. In fact, as she checked in with her heart and girl parts, she realized she felt exactly nothing. No anticipation, no passion, not even interest. If she had to define any emotion it was a sense of inevitability at the tiresomeness that was to follow. Getting rid of Dietrich before he was ready to be gone had never been easy.
He stepped back and smiled at her. “Oh, I know what you’re doing. Playing hard to get so I want you more. Well, it’s working, my love. How I have missed you. I’ve missed us. I have so many ideas for films, but without you, everything is meaningless. I thought we could start in Bali. A week at the St. Regis, yes? Then to work.” He smiled. “Do you want to go start packing?”
She didn’t have to turn around to know Bianca and Edna were right behind her, taking in every word.
“Just like that?” she asked. “You show up uninvited and expect me to drop everything so I can be with you?”
He frowned. “Of course. You always have.”
She always had. She wanted to ask why he would say that or even think it, only she knew the answer. She really always had.
She touched her lips. She’d felt nothing when he kissed her and looking at him, she continued to feel nothing. They were done. Completely and totally over. At one time he’d been her world and wasn’t that just sad?
“No,” she said with a smile. “Absolutely not. To quote my girl Taylor, we are never ever, ever getting back together.”
“Margot, please.” He raised both hands, palms up. “I shouldn’t have left the way I did. You are still angry, yes? I understand. But come on. You know we belong together.”
“We don’t. It’s not the leaving I object to, it’s the coming back. You need to stop that. I don’t want to be with you anymore. Dietrich, we’re done.” She pointed to the door. “It’s time for you to go.”
He smiled at her. “Not without you. You want me to fight for you. I understand that. I stayed away too long.” He winked. “You want to punish me and I would like that, too.”
She flushed and wished she could bolt, but first she had to take out the trash.
“Margot,” he said, his smile fading. “I need you. You’re my muse.”
“You heard the lady, Dietrich. It’s time to go.”
The voice came from behind her. Margot held in a groan. She’d hoped to get through this conversation without Alec hearing any part of it but her luck just wasn’t that good. She glanced over her shoulder and saw him glowering at Dietrich.
“It’s okay,” she said quickly, not wanting things to escalate.
“It’s not okay.” He moved to stand next to her. “He’s not listening.”
“Who is this?” Dietrich demanded. “Who are you?”
“I’m the owner of this house and I’m telling you to leave.”
Dietrich glared at her. “You live with him? You live with another man? How could you? Our love was forever.”
She felt the beginnings of a headache. “Apparently not.” She walked to the door and held it open. “Goodbye, Dietrich.”
“No.” He sounded petulant and for a second she thought he was going to stomp his foot on the floor. “It’s not fair. I love you.”
“You only love yourself. I should have seen that a long time ago.”
“While I hate to repeat myself,” Alec told him, “you heard the lady.”
Dietrich looked between them. Margot had no idea what he was thinking so she wasn’t expecting him to lunge at her. Before he even got close, Alec grabbed him by his shirtfront, spun him and shoved him face-first into the wall. Hard. Alec held him, with an arm twisted behind his back.
“Now, are you leaving or are you going to make this difficult?” he asked calmly.
“I’m leaving, I’m leaving!” Dietrich’s voice was a squeak. “Stop! You’re hurting me.”
Alec held on for another second before releasing him. Dietrich scampered toward the front steps. As he passed Margot, he glared at her. “You could have just said you weren’t interested.”
He ran to his rental car and in a second was gone.
“Bravo,” Bianca said, clapping her hands together. “Oh, Alec, that was magnificent. You were so strong and determined. My heart is fluttering just thinking about it.”
Instead of answering his mother, he looked at Margot. “Are you all right?”
She nodded.
He turned and walked away. When he was out of sight, she closed the door and leaned against it. Bianca went off with Edna, the two women discussing what had just happened. Margot stayed where she was.
While she appreciated the save, she had a bad feeling about what had just occurred. Not Dietrich—he didn’t matter anymore. But Alec’s reaction. It had been wonderful but very out of character and something inside of her told her there would be consequences—for all of them.<
br />
Chapter Twenty-Five
Sunshine’s sad mood lasted until the end of class when her professor passed back the results of their most recent test. She stared at the bright red B plus and nearly whooped out loud. Professor Rejefski smiled at her.
“A nice improvement, Ms. Baxter. Keep it up.”
“I will.”
Sunshine gathered her backpack and raced out of the building, heading for the math lab. When she got there for her standing appointment with Ann she bounced from foot to foot until the older woman walked out to get her.
“Look! Look!” She waved the test. “I got a B plus! Can you believe it? Do you know how close that is to an A? OMG, I’m so happy.”
Ann smiled at her. “You worked hard and now you’re seeing the results of that. Come on back and we’ll go over your homework.”
“I knew I’d done better, but not like this,” Sunshine told her. “There’s been so much crap in my life lately. No, that’s not true. It’s my own fault and I’ve been dealing with—”
Ann turned to her. “Stop. Just stop. If you have a problem, talk to a friend. If you need emotional support, find a therapist. I do math. It’s my thing.”
The words were so harsh, Sunshine thought, feeling emotions rise to the surface.
As they walked into the small study room where they held their sessions, Sunshine fought against tears. She was about to complain when she realized Ann was right. This was the math lab, not group counseling. Ann was a tutor, not a friend or support buddy. Sunshine’s emotional state wasn’t her job.
“Are there counselors on campus?” she asked.
“You mean like therapists? I don’t know. Google it and find out. Now show me your homework.”
Tough love, Sunshine thought. If she wanted answers to dealing with her past, then she should do the work of finding them herself. If that meant getting professional help, then she should do that. Sulking and feeling bad accomplished nothing. Hard work got results—and she had the test score to prove it!
* * *
Declan had to admit, he was a big city guy at heart. Not a New York kind of city where high-rises dominated and museums were around every corner. He supposed he was more an LA or San Diego kind of city guy where the suburbs sprawled for miles, strip malls were high-class, and in the right part of town, there really was a taco truck on every corner.
He missed those tacos, along with the sun and his son and his bed and, what the hell, no one was going to hear him think this, he missed Sunshine most of all.
He’d been gone four days already and it felt like a lifetime. He and Heath were looking for ways to connect the hotel gardens. Still. It was the project that would never end, he thought grimly. So far they’d spent two days in Napa where they’d discussed using vineyards as the connecting element and then two days in Seattle. Salmon, it turned out, were not the answer. They required more space to swim than the hotel could offer. That led to an entire discussion on koi, but Jessica thought they were too common.
Their next stop was a miniature horse farm in Idaho, because why not miniature horses? He’d tried to explain that, much like the salmon, the small horses would need more space than was available, not to mention care and a zoning modification, but his clients were determined.
He poured himself a cup of coffee from the carafe in the small conference room he and Heath had reserved for their meeting with Jessica and James before the four of them headed for the airport to fly to Idaho. If the horses didn’t work—and they wouldn’t—the next stop on their never-ending journey was a rock quarry in some place he honestly couldn’t remember.
He crossed to the window and looked out at the gray skies and damp garden. From what he’d seen, it had literally rained every second they’d been in Seattle. The town was beautiful, but the rain got to him. He wasn’t sure how the locals survived winter.
He wanted to go home. He wanted to hang out with his son and talk to Sunshine. He wanted to do a lot more than talk, but thinking about anything else left him with a dilemma he had no idea how to solve.
“Where is the rock place?” Heath asked as he walked into the conference room.
“I was just trying to remember. It’s on our tickets.”
“I think I’d rather be surprised.” His business partner put down his briefcase and poured himself coffee. “The horse idea isn’t going to work.”
“I know.”
“Whatever it is, it has to be small and preferably not alive.”
“So the rocks.”
Heath swore and joined him at the window. “What’s going on?”
Declan frowned. “What do you mean?”
“There’s something. You’ve been distracted and not just by our clients’ inane conversation. Everything okay at home?”
Declan opened his mouth to say it was all good but what came out was, “I can’t stop thinking about Sunshine.”
“The nanny?”
“That’s her.”
“You want to bang the nanny?”
“Hey.” Declan glared at him. “It’s not like that.”
Heath was unimpressed by the glare. “Really? Not even a little?”
Declan returned his attention to the hotel garden. “I don’t want to bang her. That’s wrong.”
“But you would like to have sex with her.”
“Yes, but it’s more than that. It’s... I don’t know. I like her.”
“Oh man, you’re screwed.” Heath slapped him on the back. “You can’t date her because she’s the nanny and you can’t really try to get to know her better without things getting uncomfortable. I mean, how do you have that conversation? You sure as hell can’t sleep with her. If you want to find out where things are going romantically, the obvious solution is to fire her so you can have a relationship but once you fire her, she’s not exactly going to want to date you. Plus she’s going to be gone and who knows where her next job is. And talking about all this with her flirts with the inappropriate and mentioning sex makes you a jerk and possibly the defendant in a lawsuit. Like I said, you’re screwed.”
“Thank you for clarifying,” Declan said, his voice thick with sarcasm.
“I didn’t say anything you didn’t already know.”
“No, you didn’t.”
Just then, their clients breezed into the conference room. Jessica smiled at them.
“What an amazing hotel. There were so many vegan choices for breakfast. Most places don’t offer that.”
They sat at the table in the center of the room. He and Heath joined them.
“Disappointing about the salmon,” James said regretfully.
“Miniature horses are going to be the same problem.” Declan raised a shoulder. “If you still want to go see them, we will, but I don’t see them as the solution.”
“We were talking about that over breakfast.” Jessica sighed. “We should cancel the Idaho leg of our trip. I suppose the rock quarry has possibility.”
“It could if we had something unique,” James mused. “Maybe different textures or colors. Or rocks from different parts of the country. Maybe tell a story of what the continent was like before man first stepped foot on it.”
Declan saw a muscle twitch in Heath’s jaw and nearly laughed out loud. He knew exactly what his partner was thinking—some version of “Kill me now.” Rocks telling a story? In a place like The Huntington maybe, but not in a hotel garden.
“I wonder if we could do anything with fossils,” James asked. “That would be interesting.”
“But not unique.” Jessica pouted. “A lot of places have fossils and even rock gardens. I want something special. Something no one has ever seen before.”
And I want to go home, Declan thought. He wanted to be in his house, or even his yard, listening to Connor go on and on about his new ant farm. The one that—
“Ants,�
� he said, putting down his coffee mug.
All three of them looked at him with identically blank expressions.
“Ants,” he repeated, and pulled his tablet out of his briefcase. “Ants have been around for millions of years. The weight of the ant population equals the weight of the human population. There are super colonies of ants that stretch thousands of miles, across entire continents.” His son would be so proud, he thought happily.
He typed into the search bar of his laptop, then waited until the photo of an ant farm appeared on the screen. He turned the tablet so everyone else could see the picture.
“Ants,” he said again. “They’re hardworking, familiar and small. They’re low maintenance and no one else has the world’s biggest ant farm at their hotel.”
He pointed to the tubing. “We could make it beautiful, have lighting for evening strolls. There could be different species and signage with facts.” He wasn’t sure if he’d just solved the problem or gotten himself thrown off the job. He supposed if he got fired, at least he could go home.
Jessica and James looked at each other.
“I like it, Jess,” James said. “Ants are ubiquitous and that is perfect. We need to figure out the design, but as Declan pointed out, ants are small. Imagine how the ant farm could twist and turn.”
“No one else has one.” Jessica’s voice was eager. “I love it.” She laughed. “Yes, let’s do ants. What’s the next step?”
Heath cleared his throat. “I guess we find an ant expert and go talk to him.”
“Or her,” Jessica corrected.
“Yes. Or her.” Heath typed on his tablet, then turned to Declan. “Looks like we’re going to Texas.”
* * *
Alec wasn’t sure he’d ever been to the Glendale Galleria. It was a perfectly nice shopping center, with lots of stores and people. It was well lit, open and friendly—the antithesis of how he was feeling.
As he walked the length of the mall, ignoring the stores and shoppers, he tried to reconcile who he had always considered himself to be with who he had obviously become. He’d worked hard to create a life that was orderly and purposeful. There were those who wouldn’t see the value in what he did, those who thought the ancient scraps of papyrus should go undeciphered, but their opinions didn’t matter. He preferred the opinions of other scholars, university professors and fellows, and his peers. He was well respected, admired even. He had created a perfect life in a wonderful home and somehow it had all gone to shit.
The Summer of Sunshine and Margot Page 31