Bed of Roses (40 page)

“I don’t want a damn apology.”

“You’re getting one, so deal with it. I was angry because you didn’t give me what I wanted.” She arranged the flowers, stem by stem. “I should’ve respected your boundaries; I didn’t. You were unkind, so that’s on you, but I pushed. That’s on me. But the biggest issue here is we promised each other we’d stay friends, and I didn’t keep that promise. I broke my word, and I’m sorry.”

She looked at him now. “I’m so sorry for that, Jack.”

“Fine. Are you done?”

“Not quite. I’m still your friend. I just needed some time to get back to that. It’s important to me that we’re still friends.”

“Emma.” He started to lay his hand on hers on the counter, but she slid it away, fussed with the flowers.

“These really are beautiful. Where’d you get them?”

“Your wholesaler. I called and begged, and told them they were for you.”

She smiled, but kept her hand out of reach. “There. How can we not be friends when you’d think to do something like that? I don’t want any hard feelings between us. We still care about each other. We’ll just put the rest behind us.”

“That’s what you want?”

“Yes, it’s what I want.”

“Okay then. I guess we get to talk about what I want now. Let’s take a walk. I want some air to start with.”

“Sure.” Proud of herself, she put away her snips, her jug.

The minute they stepped outside, she put her hands in her pockets. She could do this, she thought. She was doing it, and doing it well. But she couldn’t if he touched her. She wasn’t ready for that, not yet.

“That night,” he began, “I was exhausted and pissed off, and all the rest. But you weren’t wrong in the things you said. I didn’t realize it, about myself. Not really. That I put those shields up or restrictions on. I’ve thought about that since, about why. The best I can figure is how when my parents split, and I’d stay with my father, there’d be stuff—from other women. In the bathroom, or around. It bothered me. They were split, but . . .”

“They were your parents. Of course it bothered you.”

“I never got over the divorce.”

“Oh, Jack.”

“Another cliché, but there it is. I was a kid, and oblivious, then suddenly . . . They loved each other once, were happy. Then they didn’t and they weren’t.”

“It’s never that easy, that cut and dried.”

“That’s logic and reason. It’s not what I felt. It’s come home to me recently that they were able to behave civilly, able to make good, happy lives separately without waging war or making me a casualty. And I took that and turned it on its head. Don’t make promises, don’t build a future because feelings can change and they can end.”

“They can. You’re not wrong, but—”

“But,” he interrupted. “Let me say it. Let me say it to you. But if you can’t trust yourself and your own feelings, and you can’t take a chance on that, what’s the damn point? It’s a leap, and I figure if you take that leap, if you say this is it, you have to mean it. You’d better be sure because it’s not just you. It’s not just for now. You have to believe to make the leap.”

“You’re right. I understand better now why things . . . Well, why.”

“Maybe we both do. I’m sorry I made you feel unwelcome. Sorry you now feel you crossed a line by trying to do something for me. Something I should’ve appreciated. Do appreciate,” he corrected. “I’ve been watering the planters.”

“That’s good.”

“You were . . . God, I’ve missed you so much. I can’t think of all the things I’ve worked out to say, practiced saying. I can’t think because I’m looking at you, Emma. You were right. I didn’t value you enough. Give me another chance. Please, give me another chance.”

“Jack, we can’t go back and—”

“Not back, forward.” He took her arm then, shifted so they were face-to-face. “Forward. Emma, have some pity. Give me another chance. I don’t want anyone but you. I need your . . . light,” he said remembering Carter’s word. “I need your heart and your laugh. Your body, your brain. Don’t shut me out, Emma.”

“Starting from here, when we both want—both need—different things . . . It wouldn’t be right for either of us. I can’t do it.”

When her eyes filled, he drew her in.

“Let me do it. Let me take the leap. Emma, because with you, I believe. With you, it’s not just now. It’s tomorrow and whatever comes with it. I love you. I love you.”

When the first tear spilled, he moved with her. “I love you. I’m so in love with you that I didn’t see it. I couldn’t see it because it’s everything. You’re everything. Stay with me, Emma, be with me.”

“I am with you. I want . . . What are you doing?”

“I’m dancing with you.” He brought the hand he held to his lips. “In the garden, in the moonlight.”

Her heart shuddered, swelled. And all the cracks filled. “Jack.”

“And I’m telling you I love you. I’m asking you to make a life with me.” He kissed her while they circled, swayed. “I’m asking you to give me what I need, what I want even though it took me too much time to figure it out. I’m asking you to marry me.”

“Marry you?”

“Marry me.” The leap was so easy, the landing smooth and right. “Live with me. Wake up with me, plant flowers for me that you’ll probably have to remind me to water. We’ll make plans, and change them as we go. We’ll make a future. I’ll give you everything I’ve got, and if you need more, I’ll find it and give it to you.”

She heard her own words come back to her in the perfumed air, under the moonlight while the man she loved turned her in a waltz.

“I think you just did. You just gave me a dream.”

“Say yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“How well do you know me?”

Smiling, she blinked away tears. “Pretty well.”

“Would I ask you to marry me if I wasn’t sure?”

“No. No, you wouldn’t. How well do you know me, Jack?”

“Pretty well.”

She brought her lips to his, lingered through the joy. “Then you know my answer.”

 

 

 

O
N THE THIRD FLOOR TERRACE, THE THREE WOMEN STOOD watching, their arms around each other’s waists. Behind them, Mrs. Grady sighed.

When Mac sniffled, Parker reached in her pocket for a pack of tissues. She handed one to Mac, to Laurel, to Mrs. Grady, then took one for herself.

“It’s beautiful,” Mac managed. “They’re beautiful. Look at the light, the silver cast to the light, and the shadows of the flowers, the gleam of them, and the silhouette Emma and Jack make.”

“You’re thinking in pictures.” Laurel wiped her eyes. “That’s serious romance there.”

“Not just pictures. Moments. That’s Emma’s moment. Her blue butterfly. We probably shouldn’t be watching. If they see us, it’ll spoil it.”

“They can’t see anything but each other.” Parker took Mac’s hand, then Laurel’s, and smiled when she felt Mrs. Grady’s rest on her shoulder.

The moment was just as it should be.

So they watched as Emma danced in the soft June night, in the moonlight, in the garden, with the man she loved.

KEEP READING FOR A SPECIAL PREVIEW OF THE NEXT BOOK IN THE BRIDE QUARTET BY NORA ROBERTS

SAVOR
the
MOMENT

COMING IN MAY 2010
FROM BERKLEY BOOKS

A
S THE CLOCK TICKED DOWN ON HER SENIOR YEAR IN HIGH school, Laurel McBane learned one indisputable fact.

Prom was hell.

For weeks all anyone wanted to talk about was who might ask who, who did ask who—and who asked some other who, thereby inciting misery and hysteria.

Girls, to her mind, suffered an agony of suspense and an embarrassing passivity during prom season. The halls, classrooms, and quad throbbed with emotion running the gamut from giddy euphoric—because some guy asked them to some overhyped dance—to bitter tears—because some guy didn’t.

The entire cycle revolved around “some guy,” a condition she believed both stupid and demoralizing.

And after that, the hysteria continued, even escalated, with the hunt for a dress, for shoes; the intense debate about updos versus down-dos. Limos, after parties, hotel suites—the yes, no, maybe of sex.

She would have skipped the whole thing if her friends, especially Parker Right-of-Passage Brown, hadn’t ganged up on her.

Now her savings account—all those hard-earned dollars and cents from countless hours waiting tables—reeled in shock at the withdrawals for a dress she’d probably never wear again, for the shoes, the bag, and all the rest.

She could lay all that on her friends’ heads, too. She’d gotten caught up shopping with Parker, Emmaline, and Mackensie, and spent more than she should have.

The idea, gently broached by Emma, of asking her parents to spring for the dress wasn’t an option, not to Laurel’s mind. A point of pride, maybe, but money in the McBane household had become a very sore subject since her father’s dicey investments fiasco and the little matter of the IRS audit.

No way she’d ask either of them. She earned her own money, and had for several years now.

She told herself it didn’t matter. She didn’t have close to enough saved for the tuition for the Culinary Institute, or for the living expenses in New York, despite the hours she’d put in after school and on weekends at the restaurant. The cost of looking great for one night didn’t change that one way or the other and—and what the hell, she did look great.

She fixed on her earrings while across the room—Parker’s bedroom—Parker and Emma experimented with ways to prom-up the hair Mac had impulsively hacked off to resemble what Laurel thought of as Julius Caesar takes the Rubicon. They tried various pins, sparkle dust, and jeweled clips in what was left of Mac’s flame-red hair while the three of them talked nonstop, and Aerosmith rocked out of the CD player.

She liked listening to them like this, when she was a little bit apart. Maybe especially now, when she
felt
a little bit apart. They’d been friends all their lives, and now, rite of passage or not, things were changing. In the fall Parker and Emma would head off to college. Mac would be working and squeezing in a few courses on photography.

And with the dream of the Culinary Institute poofed due to finances and her parents’ most recent marital implosion, she’d settle for community college part-time. Business courses, she supposed. She’d have to be practical. Realistic.

And she wasn’t going to think about it now. She might as well enjoy the moment, and this ritual Parker, in her Parker way, had arranged.

Parker and Emma might be going to prom at the Academy while she and Mac went to theirs at the public high school, but they had this time together, getting dressed and made-up. Downstairs Parker’s and Emma’s parents hung out, and there’d be dozens of pictures, and “oh, look at our girls!” hugs, and probably some shiny eyes.

Mac’s mother was too self-involved to care about her daughter’s senior prom, which, Linda being Linda, could only be a good thing. And her own parents? Well, they were too steeped in their own lives, their own problems, for it to matter where she was or what she did tonight.

She was used to it. Had even come to prefer it.

“Just the fairy dust sparkles,” Mac decided, tipping her head from side to side to judge. “It’s kind of Tinkerbelly. In a cool way.”

“I think you’re right.” Parker, her straight-as-rain brown hair a glossy waterfall down her back, nodded. “It’s waif with an edge. What do you think, Em?”

“I think we need to play up the eyes more, go dramatic.” Emma’s eyes, a deep, dreamy brown, narrowed in thought. “I can do this.”

“Have at it.” Mac shrugged. “But don’t take forever, okay? I still have to set up for our group shot.”

“We’re on schedule.” Parker checked her watch. “We’ve still got thirty minutes before . . .” She turned, caught sight of Laurel. “Hey. You look awesome!”

“Oh, you really do!” Emma clapped her hands together. “I
knew
that was the dress. The shimmery pink makes your eyes even bluer.”

“I guess.”

“Need one more thing.” Parker hurried to her dresser, opened a drawer on her jewelry box. “This hair clip.”

Laurel, a slim girl in shimmery pink, her sun-shot hair done—at Emma’s insistence—in long, loose sausage curls, shrugged. “Whatever.”

Parker held it against Laurel’s hair at different angles. “Cheer up,” she ordered. “You’re going to have fun.”

God, get over yourself, Laurel! “I know. Sorry. It’d be more fun if the four of us were going to the same dance, especially since we all look seriously awesome.”

“Yeah, it would.” Parker decided to draw some of the curls from the sides to clip them in the back. “But we’ll meet up after and party. When we’re done we’ll come back here and tell each other everything. Here, take a look.”

She turned Laurel to the mirror, and the girls studied themselves and each other.

“I do look great,” Laurel said and made Parker laugh.