Forbidden Fruit (47 page)

I
n the days and weeks following her mother's suicide and the resulting scandal, Glory had fitted together the pieces of her mother's other life. Though at times it had been almost too painful to bear, she had wanted to know and to try to understand. For she had realized that only by doing both would she be able to move on.

To that end, Glory had seen a psychiatrist, and he had helped her to fully understand her mother's state of mind. Her mother had been very ill. The doctor had used the term schizophrenia. He believed that had she lived, she wouldn't have stood trial, but instead of being sent to jail, she would have been institutionalized.

Glory wished with all her heart that her mother could have gotten help, but she also knew that to her mother the scandal would have been a punishment worse than death. Her mother had made her choice.

Glory's own feelings had been more difficult to deal with—ones of loss and betrayal, of anger and helplessness, of confusion. She had felt as if she had been cut loose and cast adrift. In the space of twenty-four hours, her life had been changed forever, and once again all that she had known, about her mother and herself, had been proven a lie.

And again, she had been forced to ask herself,
“Who am I?”

So she had come here, to the River Road house, to be soothed, to feel the loving arms of a family around her, though a family she had hardly known. She had come here to put the pieces of her identity back together.

And as the weeks had passed, she had done just that. Finally, she felt whole, again—or maybe, whole for the first time in her life.

Glory dug her trowel into the damp, black earth. The June sun beat down on her back, and sweat beaded her upper lip and between her breasts. She enjoyed it all—the heat of the sun, the moist earth, her sweat.

Soon she would have to go back to the city, to her air-conditioned office at the St. Charles. She smiled and fitted the plant into the hole she'd dug, then refilled the hole with earth. She had spoken with Jonathan Michaels several times since their first meeting; their lawyers were working on the details of their agreement now.

She felt good about her decision. Restoring the Pierron House to it original overblown grandeur would take a considerable amount of money. Converting three of the upstairs bedrooms into luxurious guest accommodations and two of the others into an owner's apartment, would also be expensive. She would have to hire a live-in housekeeper/manager, daytime tour guides, and a part-time grounds keeper.

She had no illusions that opening the Pierron House for tours, private parties and overnight stays was going to make her money. If she broke even, she would be doing well. But she wasn't doing it for money; she was doing it out of love. The Pierron House was a part of Louisiana history, and a part of her history. She didn't want it to be forgotten or to fall into disrepair and crumble away, as so many other pieces of Southern history had.

Smiling, Glory stood, and dusting the dirt off her hands, admired her work. She had spent the last week planting summer annuals in the front flower beds. Now, the entire gallery was edged with a triple row of bright red begonias.

Fitting, she thought, for the women who had lived and worked in this house. Women whose lives fascinated her. She had been engrossed by the accounts of their days and nights; drawn into their hopes and dreams and disappointments. It seemed that those women and girls had had many of all of those, and little of anything else. Certainly not what Glory would call a real life.

Her fascination had led to understanding; understanding to love. They hadn't been bad people. Or evil, as her mother's twisted mind had believed. They had been lost. And trapped—in a world that had created them, yet had no room in their hearts to accept or love them.

A breeze stirred off the Mississippi, and Glory lifted her face to it, smiling at its sweetness, at the way it cooled her damp skin. In understanding the women of this house, she had come to understand herself. She, too, had been trapped. By her mother's inability to love her, her inability to accept the person she was. And by her own enslaving need for that acceptance and love.

A need so powerful, so all-consuming that she had tried to change herself, had tried to mold herself into the person her mother wanted her to be, the person her mother would love.

Glory shook her head, remembering. All her life, her mother had looked at Glory as if she were lacking, as if there was something
wrong
with her. Something bad about her.

All along, the wrong, the bad, had been inside her mother.

Glory laughed. Finally, she was free. To be herself. To love who she was, this moment and the next, on to forever. She would never again try to be a person who she was not; she would never stop believing in herself only because someone else didn't believe. She would never again have to ask herself,
“Who is Glory St. Germaine?”

Now she knew.

From behind her she heard the sound of a car coming up the driveway. She turned, holding a hand to her eyes to shield them from the sun.

Santos.

He had come at last.

Heart pounding, Glory let him find her, let him make his way from the driveway to the house. She had missed him, longed for him. But she'd had demons to wrestle with; ones she'd had to face alone.

In facing them, she had realized something else: she had come too far to settle for less than everything from Santos. Although, she admitted, watching him walk toward her, her pulse and heart stirring, an offer of anything at all from him would be damn tempting.

He stopped before her and unsmiling, met her eyes. “Hello, Glory.”

“Santos.” Her lips lifted even as she drank in the sight of him, growing almost intoxicated with longing. “I was wondering when you'd come. If you'd come.”

“And I was wondering if you'd want me to.”

“I did. I do.” She laid her hand on his chest, over his heart. Beneath her palm it thundered, strong and sure. “I'm glad you're here.”

He reached out and cupped her cheek in his palm. “Are you all right? I've been worried about you.”

She smiled and covered his hand with her own, tipping her face into his caress. “I'm good. Really good, Santos.”

“I've missed you.”

Her heart began to thud; her palms grew damp. Hope bloomed inside her, as brightly as the rows of begonias at their feet. “And I you. So much.”

He lowered his mouth to hers, though he only brushed his against hers, then straightened. “I brought you something.”

“You did?” she said, searching his gaze, pleased.

He drew a small, white cardboard box out of his jacket pocket. At least it had once been white. Now, it was battered and smudged, half-crushed. It looked as if it had spent a lifetime clutched in someone's fist.

Santos caught her hand, turned it palm up and set the battered box in its center. “For you.”

She looked up at him, heart in her throat. She saw something in his eyes she had never seen before, something deep and hot and strong. Her hand began to shake. She carefully, reverently, opened the box. Inside, wrapped in tissue, was a pair of earrings. She lifted one out, and held it to the sun. Made of colored, cut-glass beads, it sparkled in the sunlight, glittering like rainbow fire.

“They were my mother's,” he said softly, taking the earring from her, clipping it on her ear, then doing the same with the second. “They're the only thing of hers I have. She loved them.”

Tears swamped her. She met his gaze once more. “I will, too, Santos. Forever.”

She took his hand and led him inside and upstairs. There, on a bed drenched in sunlight, they made love. Real love, for the first time since they had been teenagers, back when they had been too young to know that together they had paradise in their hands.

They weren't too young now. They knew.