All Who Dream (Letting Go) (21 page)

I kept busy by arranging several vases of flowers.

When Cody was in kindergarten, I took a job
as a florist part-time, and even now, working with flowers remained one of the
most soothing hobbies in my life. My love of flowers was also behind my name
change from Angela
Luterra
to Angel Flores years ago.

As I clipped the few stems, I breathed in a
sigh of relief. All I had to do was keep this
up,
and
I could get through this night.
I didn’t know what Jackson wanted from
me, but I knew without a doubt, that my feelings for him were stronger than his
for me. That had been made abundantly clear earlier today at the lake.

Hiding in
a house the size of this
one,
was easy. When the
caterers arrived, I became one of them. When the bakery deliveryman came with
the birthday cake, I led the way the table. I simply never stopped moving.

Pippy
introduced me to several groups of people when the
guest started to arrive—mainly relatives and good friends. It was quite a
gathering for a forty-second birthday celebration, but maybe that was normal
around these parts.

As
someone made a toast in the next room over, the doorbell rang. Since no one
else was close, I decided to add
doorman
to my list of titles for the evening.

Opening
the door, my jaw fell slack.

Dee Bradford?

She
seemed quite surprised to see me here as well.

“What a
great surprise. I didn’t know you would be here tonight, Angie.” Her perfectly
manicured hand clutched her heart as she smiled. “This is my husband, Marcus
Bradford.”

“It’s a
nice to meet you, Marcus, and it’s nice to see you again, Dee,” I said, opening
the door for them to enter.

“You’re
here for the birthday party?” I asked her, puzzled, as we stood in the
entryway.

She
opened her mouth to answer me, but then looked up and beamed at something
behind me. Before I could turn to investigate, I heard a familiar voice at my
back.

“Hi, mom.”

Dot.
Line.
Dot.

Again, my
mouth fell open. “She’s your—you’re his mother?” I swiveled from Jackson to
Dee.

Confused
was an understatement.

“Yes,”
she said. “We don’t usually advertise all the family connections within the
company. Nepotism is frowned upon I hear.” She laughed as she threw her arms
out to hug Jackson.

I watched
him, his face calm and composed as ever. I couldn’t get past my astonishment.
How did I not know they were related?
Marcus
shook his hand.

“Good to
see you again, Marcus,” Jackson said.

I
remembered then that this man was not Jackson’s father. His dad had died years
ago from a heart attack, leaving his mom as a widower—Dee Ross as it turned
out.
 
She had apparently remarried.

But
still, there were so many missing dot connections in my brain.

And then
I remembered something else—something from earlier that morning at sunrise. I’d
heard Jackson say it, but it didn’t make sense then, and I wasn’t even sure it
made sense now, but I recalled it nonetheless.

“
My father and Jacob were cut from the same
cloth, even though they never shared the same blood.”

What did
that mean? Dee said she’d been a single mom…she had told me that at our meeting
in Dallas…but did that mean—

“You’re
gonna
hurt yourself, thinking that hard,” Jackson said,
staring down at me. I looked around, Dee and Marcus had already walked past us
into the party. I was standing in the same spot, hand still frozen to the door handle.

“I’m just
confused. You’re mom told me she was a single mom at one time.” I kept my voice
low.

His eyes
swept over my face in a way that made my insides swim.

“Jacob is
my half-brother. My father adopted him once he and my mom had married. Jacob was
about ten at the time. I came along two years later.”

I bit my
bottom lip, soaking in this new revelation.

“Come on,
let’s go to the party.” He reached for my elbow. “That is, if you’re done
hiding from me.”

I flushed
hot, nodding.

There was no shortage of food; it was everywhere. But even
still, Jacob didn’t hold a plate in his hands. Instead, he held a very familiar
thick, green smoothie. I shuddered at the sight of it.

“So
you’ve met our mom?” Jacob asked, bumping his way through the crowded living
space to get to me.

“Yes,
although that connection was lost on me until tonight.” I chuckled.

“I
figured she wouldn’t have said anything to you about that at your meeting in
Dallas. She’s all for real first impressions,” he said, leaning in so that his
voice was muted.

Prickles
of anxiety crept up my neck. “What do you mean?”

He
grinned and glanced over at Jackson who was getting us something to drink.

My
stomach dropped.

Jackson and I?

“And you
most certainly have impressed her,” Jacob said, drumming his finger on his
tumbler glass of green goo, “which is one of the highest complements a woman
can be paid. Her approval is worth its weight in gold.”

For what
felt like the tenth time that evening, I was at a loss for words.

I was
overcome with a need to breathe
fresh
air.
 
“Will you excuse me, Jacob? I need
to—please, excuse me.”

I
shuffled through the crowd to the back patio, careful to slide the door shut
behind me. The air was stuffy, humid, but I could breathe easier out here than
inside. My mind swam with snippets of conversations and jumbled memories. So
many things were starting to make sense now. I had been so stupid to assume
that a CEO like Jackson would be working with a runt like me out of the
goodness of his heart. He’d been requested to—by his mother.

Dots and
lines were connecting left and right, but all I wanted to do now was erase
them—all of them.

“Jacob
said you were out here.”

It was
Dee, in her designer summer dress and heels. She had not received the
casual
memo apparently.

She
leaned against the patio rail near me, studying my profile as I looked out at
the dark lake, my manners struggling to surface.

“I’m
sorry about what happened—at the interview. Jackson told me how upset you were.
He was furious when he called me yesterday, wanting to make sure that nothing
had leaked from the inside. And I’ll assure you, as I assured him, nothing did.
We have done everything in our power to protect you, Angie, but
Divina
is a ruthless and resourceful woman. Though I understand
your reasoning for keeping the whereabouts of your ex-husband a secret, we need
to come up with a plan-”

I turned
quickly, facing her for the first time.
“Who—you and
Jackson?”

She was
startled by my tone; I was startled by my tone. But I meant it. Playing nice
had gotten me nowhere. I was still back rolling the dice moving inch by inch,
while these socialites had swooped in and purchased every high-dollar property
that Monopoly sold.

I was so
out of my league.

“Well,
yes…along with our public relations department,” she began. “We feel we need—”

“I don’t know
if I can hear this right now, Dee.”

Her eyes
narrowed. “You can’t let someone like
Divina
stop you
from your future,” she said, placing her hand on her hip.

“I don’t
care about
Divina
!” I blurted.

This was
a showdown. It was like the wild, wild,
west
—only
instead of a dusty dirt road in front of a saloon, it was an outdoor patio, on
a summer night in rural Connecticut.

“What’s
this about then?” she asked.

“Tell me
why you invited me on this tour Dee,
really
?”

She
squared her shoulders.
“Because you’re talented.”

I raised
my eyebrows. “Is that the only reason?”

Dee
glanced out toward the water and then back to me. “You’re a mother, Angie. So
you should believe me when I say that there is no greater
pain
than watching your child go
through life unhappy. I would do anything
for my son.”

Though my
heart contracted at her words, I felt every last morsel of strength leak from
my bones. “You told Jackson to work with me, then?
With that hope
that something might happen with us—romantically?”

 
“Angie, you likely know as well as I do that
telling
Jackson to do anything is a
waste of breath. He rejected my motherly push to get to know you on a personal
level prior to you coming out, but…” Her eyes twinkled at me. “But it looks
like that’s changed.”

I leaned
onto the railing, my stomach hollowing as I forced the words out, the truth
that simultaneously burned my throat and broke my heart. “There’s nothing
between Jackson and I, Dee.”

“You’re wrong
about that.”

My head
jerked up, the low voice jarring me back into reality.

Jackson
walked toward me.

“You’re
wrong about that,” he repeated.

I spun
around, face to face with Jackson, my insides a mess of spams and knots. I
watched Dee leave, winking at me as she slid the door closed behind her.

“You…you
heard all that?”

He
nodded.

Of course
he’d heard. My life was anything if not a long list of badly timed events. I
fought to swallow the ball of thick molasses that was working its way up into
my throat. The anger I felt floated on the surface of my tears, carried by the
current of my hurt.
 

As I
blinked my tears away, my back was pushed up against the banister, Jackson’s
hands in my hair, on the side of my face, his mouth dangerously close to mine.

“She may
have asked me to be open to meeting you—but I have my own mind, my own eyes,
my
own…heart. Everything I’ve done regarding you has been
because I
wanted
to do it, maybe even
needed
to do it. You’re not the only
one who’s scared about what this is between us, Angie.” His breath was quick
and shallow, skittering across my lips. “I’m scared, too.”

A whimper
caught in my throat as I lifted my chin a fraction of an inch. It was the only
invitation he needed. His lips met mine with such desperate fervency that I was
grateful for the post at my back. His hands were in my hair and on my neck,
killing any sense of self-control I had. It was the kind of kiss that made
oxygen a second-rate commodity.

A quiet
moan escaped me as he pulled back, chest heaving.

“I lied
to you.” His voice broke my trance. “When I said I didn’t know what I wanted
from you—I
do
know. I want to be with
you, Angie.
Every day.
All the
time.”

“Jackson-”

He pulled
me into his chest, wrapping his arms around me. “But I need you to know some things
before you say anything—I need you to know me.”

“Okay,” I
rasped into his shirt.

 
“Can we go to the dock?”

I glanced
inside the house and nodded. “Yes.”

As I
walked onto the patio and down the steps after checking on Cody, Jackson
grabbed my hand, lacing my fingers through his. In that moment I felt like a
teenager, one that needed to text every friend I had to make sure that this was
actually
happening,
that it was for real.

We rolled
up our jeans and stuck our feet into the water. The air was still sticky with
heat. He laid back, keeping my hand in his. I did the same.

The stars
and moon were bright above us, illuminating his face perfectly as he stared up
into the vast beyond. No matter what the future held for us, this moment was
beautiful. He was beautiful. I wanted to memorize his face, to etch it into the
confines of my heart.

“I met
her in grad school—
Livie
. She was my polar opposite
in so many ways, yet it was those very qualities that made me feel whole when I
was with her. We were part of a study abroad group in Europe. It was an amazing
time—traveling where we wanted, whenever we wanted. My major was in literature,
hers was in art history.

“One
night, while our group was asleep on the train, I had my first itch to write—to
really
write. My father had died
earlier that year, and somehow when I wrote, I felt more connected to him than
ever before. I started writing my first novel while aboard a train to Rome.

“
Livie
was my muse and my first reader. Within four
months time
I’d finished it. I was happy just to brush it
under the rug uncelebrated and unpublished, but
Livie
wouldn’t allow it. She badgered me constantly until finally we came up with a
plan—a pen name. I didn’t want the Ross name to publish me. If it was
publishable, I wanted it to be published because of talent, nothing else. I
sent it to the toughest publishing house I knew—Pinkerton Press—under my pen
name. Amazingly it wasn’t rejected.

“
Livie
was ecstatic; I was in shock. I kept my identity a
secret, handling everything through secured communication while I stayed
overseas and continued writing. I wrote three books while I was in Rome, in
just over a year’s time. I was on fire…on top of the world. By that time, my
first book had been published, and the secret identity of my pen name seemed to
boost sales and publicity. Right before
Livie
had to
go back to New York to start her own career, I asked her to marry me, promising
her that we would set a date once we were both back stateside.