Gwynneth Ever After (28 page)

“I’m sure he was,” Sandy told her, admiration for her “nephew” ringing in her voice. Quiet concern underlined her next question, however. “They were close enough for him to kick one of them?”

“They were close enough to be talking to both of them on the playground at recess. That’s been dealt with, too.” Gwyn realized she’d passed what she was looking for. She swore and flipped backwards through the pages.

“Maggie,” said Sandy, “Why don’t you go and help Nicholas with the Lego and I’ll make us all some popcorn – would you like that?”

“’kay,” Maggie said agreeably. “Can we have hot chocolate too?”

“Of course.”

Maggie trotted off to join her brother. Sandy took the phonebook away from Gwyn.

“Take a deep breath and tell me what you’re looking for,” she said. “I’ll find it for you.”

Gwyn took the suggested deep breath, then another. And then she began to shake. “Damn it to hell and back, Sandy, those – those – ”

She gritted her teeth against the uncharacteristic language that threatened to spill over, and filled her lungs for a third time. “Maggie was in hysterics. They wouldn’t stop taking pictures even while she was crying. Half the playground was in an uproar.”

With no similar compunctions regarding language, Sandy quite succinctly described what Gwyn herself thought of the paparazzi lying in wait outside her front door. When she had finished, she remained silent for a moment, then asked, “What are you going to do?”

“I’m calling the cops. That’s the number I was trying to find, by the way. Non-emergency.”

Her friend flipped to the front of the book and located the listing within the first few pages. She took a green highlighter from the drawer and drew a line over the number. “Have you considered calling – ”

“No.”

“But he might be able to – ”

“No. Apart from the fact that it would give those leeches another reason to hang around my front door, I’m perfectly capable of handling this on my own.” Gwyn took the book from Sandy and lifted the cordless phone from its base. “I used to manage just fine before Gareth arrived in our lives, remember? I’m sure I still can.”

“Would that be me or you you’re trying to convince?”
 

Gwyn declined to answer and headed instead for the hallway. “I’m going to call from upstairs where the kids can’t hear. Do you mind watching them for me?”

Sandy’s raised voice followed her out of the kitchen. “He’d want to know about this, Gwyn. There’s such a thing as
too
independent sometimes, you know!”

***

Gareth prowled the perimeter of Sean’s living room, his mind and heart so hopelessly enmeshed that he could no longer sort raw emotion from rational thought. Not the best state in which to attempt solving a problem that seemed insurmountable in the first place.

He stopped at the balcony doors and scowled across the river. He should just go over there and – what? Try to talk to her through her front door? Because he was fairly certain that’s what he’d be doing. She’d already stopped taking or returning his calls, so his chances of getting inside her house seemed nothing short of impossible.

Which left him at the same point he’d been when she’d hung up on him last night: exactly nowhere.

Bloody hell, there had to be
something
he could do. Some way to get through to her, make her listen, make her give him –
them
- another chance.

He resumed his pacing.

“Keep that up and you’ll wear a hole through my carpet,” Sean’s voice observed from the kitchen doorway.

Gareth shot him a black look. “I’ll buy you a new one.”

His cousin held out a glass to him. “That wasn’t the point.”

Gareth took the glass and sniffed suspiciously at its contents. He raised an eyebrow. “Whiskey? It’s a little early in the day, don’t you think?”

Sean lifted his shoulders in a lazy shrug. “You looked like you could use it. Besides, it’s not like you’re going to be driving anywhere soon.”

“Rub it in, why don’t you?” Gareth handed the glass back to him. “Thanks, but no thanks. My head is messed up enough as it is.”

Resting his shoulder against the wall, one hand tucked into his jeans pocket, Sean swirled the glass in slow, thoughtful circles.

Gareth heaved a pained, exaggerated sigh. “What?”

“Maybe she just needs a little time. This was an awful lot to be hit with, after all.”

“Finding out about Amy, you mean?”

Sean nodded. “And the whole secret thing. That had to have hurt.”

“It did,” Gareth said grimly. “But Amy’s not the problem.”

“What, then?”

“Jack.”

“Her son?”

“Her ex. She’s determined not to put the kids at risk of another break-up.”

“So much so that she’s causing the break-up herself?”

“Something about it being better to do so now, before the kids get more involved, because there are no guarantees that we’d make it as a couple.”

Sean frowned, mulling over the information, then grunted. “Damned if that doesn’t make sense,” he muttered, “in a twisted-logic kind of way.”

Gareth laughed, a short, humorless bark of sound, and resumed his trek around the apartment. “Tell me about it. I’m still trying to figure out an argument.” He glanced over his shoulder as the phone rang. “Unless that’s Amy, I’m not in.”

Stopping at the balcony doors again, he listened to his cousin answer the phone and ask who was calling, then gave a start of surprise when Sean tapped him on the shoulder with the instrument.

He turned. “Amy?” he asked.

Sean shook his head.

“I told you – ”

“It’s someone named Sandra Masters. She says she’s a friend of Gwyn’s and it’s urgent.”

Chapter 42

Gwyn peeled off her coat and unwound the scarf from her neck. She dropped them onto the hall bench with a huge sigh of relief and not a trace of guilt about violating her own
put it away
rule. Glancing into the living room, she saw Nicholas and Maggie cuddled up on the couch to listen to their favorite audiobook. Katie’s excited voice drifted down the hall from the kitchen where she’d run to tell Sandy about their brush with fame. As if the camera flashes in the school yard and the police escort home had all been just one big adventure.
 

Heaving a sigh, she stooped to undo her boots. The creak of a floorboard heralded her friend’s approach down the hallway.

“Well, mission accomplished.” Gwyn flashed a sideways smile at Sandy, working to untie a knot that had formed in one lace. “The cops were great. I can’t do anything about those creeps hanging around in the street, but they’ve been read the riot act about coming anywhere near the kids again, and now I know how to go about laying a complaint if I need to.”

Boots removed, she straightened up again. In the kitchen, Katie’s voice reached a high note of excitement and Gwyn shook her head wryly. Oh, to be seven again.

Wait. Katie’s voice was continuing? Why?

She strained to eavesdrop on her eldest daughter for a moment. Yes, she was definitely telling the story. To someone on the phone?

Sandy cleared her throat. And looked unbelievably guilty.

“Sand? What’s going on?”

 
“I was worried!” Sandy burst out. “You, the kids – you don’t need this paparazzi crap, Gwyn!”

“I know. That’s why I called the police,” she said, the words slow as she struggled to say them without betraying the panic rising in her. Sandy wouldn’t have. She couldn’t have.
 

“I know. And it was a great idea, but I just wanted to be sure – I just wanted you to be safe. I even called Rob and he agreed it was the best thing to do.”

And Gwyn knew who listened to Katie’s story. Knew who waited for her in her kitchen.

“Oh, God, Sandy, why?”

“Hear me out before you get mad, okay? Please? He only wants to help. He knows how to handle those jerks. And besides, having a bodyguard is only temporary – ”

Gwyn sagged against the wall. “A
what
?”

“A – a – ” Sandy looked pale and miserable as she twisted her hands together. “A bodyguard. A temporary one.”

For a long moment, she didn’t respond. She didn’t know how. Staring past her friend, down the corridor to where Gareth sat listening to Katie’s story, she waited for the panic to overtake her, to mar her thought processes the way it always seemed to when he was involved. She’d had no time to prepare, no time to shore up her defenses or assemble her arguments or plan her strategy.

Had, really, every right to be an absolute wreck.

But instead, calm infused her - the kind of calm she hadn’t known since before she first sat down in a theater box on a rainy Sunday afternoon and had her world turned upside down.

“Enough,” she said.

“What?” asked Sandy.

She straightened up from the wall. “I said enough. I can’t do this anymore.”

“Do what, the paparazzi? Gareth said it wouldn’t last long.”

“Any of it. I can’t do any of it any more.”

Sandy sidestepped hastily as she strode down the hallway. “Gwyn? Sweetie, are you all right?”

Ignored her, Gwyn focused with single-minded determination on her destination – and her purpose. Her momentum carried her to the middle of the kitchen, where she pulled up short beside the table and faced down Gareth Connor without so much as the flicker of an eyelid.

“I don’t want a bodyguard,” she announced, “and I don’t need your help.”

Gareth regarded the auburn-haired, whirlwind presence with a wary eye, taking in the determined set of her jaw, the coolness of her blue gaze. A far as conversational openings went, a simple hello would have been a great deal more promising.

Pushing back from the table, he rose to his feet. At least he’d made it through her front door, even if it hadn’t been by Gwyn’s own invitation. All he had to do now was keep from blowing his chances. He began by pitching his voice to a low-keyed calm of his own.
 

“I know it’s hard, but they’ll lose interest soon. I’ve already arranged to appear on a talk show next week with Amy. Once the whole story comes out, the tabloids will move on to more exciting things. In the meantime, this is Guy Armand, a friend of Sean’s.” He indicated the man at the end of the table. “If it’s all right with you, I’ve asked him to make sure the wolves keep their distance from you and the kids.”

Sean’s friend, a professional bodyguard and an absolute ox of a man, stood up.
 
Ignoring his outstretched hand, Gwyn eyed his bulk from head to toe with a cool assessment that had Gareth admiring her sheer nerve.

“No offense to Monsieur Armand, but it’s
not
all right with me. I don’t want a bodyguard, temporary or otherwise. I’ve already called the police and dealt with the matter.”

 
Armand, his own gaze assessing, began gathering up his briefcase and papers.

“I’ll just wait in the other room,” he said. “You can let me know when you’re ready for me.”

“We’ll join you,” Sandy volunteered, shepherding a solemn Katie from the kitchen.
 

With the room empty but for the two of them, Gareth tucked his hands into his front pockets and tried again. “Gwyn – ”

She cut him off and again he felt that unfamiliar edge to her.
 

“I mean it, Gareth. No bodyguards and no help. Sandy meant well, but she shouldn’t have called you.”

“The press can be pretty rough when you’re not used to them. The kids – ”

“The press will go away when you do.”

 
Gareth felt as if she’d slapped him. He balled his hands into fists inside his pockets.

“Damn it, Gwyn – ”

“No.” Gwyn lifted her chin. “It’s over, Gareth. I want my life back. I want to start sleeping again and stop jumping every time the telephone rings. I want to take my children to school without running a gauntlet to get there and let them play in the front yard without a bodyguard. I want to be normal again. I want – ” she paused and took a deep, shaky breath. “I want you to go home. Go back to the world where you belong, get to know your daughter, take the paparazzi with you. It’s time to let me and the kids start healing before any more damage is done.”

Gareth turned his back on her, struggling with a sense of overwhelming futility. She spoke with such conviction, such certainty. How did he even begin to argue with a determination like that?

He stared around Gwyn’s kitchen, his eyes lingering on the counter where a polka-dotted Maggie and her brother had negotiated with him for French fries; the stool where a tearful Katie had turned to him for comfort over a job-day gone awry; the place where he’d stood watch over Gwyn while she slept, exhausted from the demands of a life he wanted only to ease.

Futility began to mesh with overwhelming loss.

He closed his eyes. Listened to her slow, indrawn breath.

“You’re sure this is what you want.”

“I’m positive.”