Star Promise (42 page)

“You must take her rings,” he said. “It won’t be a proper ceremony without an exchange of rings.”

He was right. I tucked my bouquet under my arm and slipped them off my finger. “Don’t let Bridget hold them,” I warned, handing them to Adam.

“I won’t.” He finally smiled. “She’s got nowhere to stash them now that she’s ditched the boots.”

I didn’t complain when Jean-Luc suggested we wait a few more minutes before heading inside. I was hardly an excited bride. Adam and I had no interest in walking down the aisle. We were merely taking one for the team – a notion that the king quickly picked up on.

“This is not really your scene is it, Charli?” he asked.

“The wedding or New York in general?”

He dropped his head, but I still saw his smile. “I think you’ve adapted remarkably well this time around, unlike Adam.”

“We’re leaving, you know,” I warned. “I’m going to steal your precious boy away again.”

Jean-Luc didn’t seem alarmed. He probably knew it was on the cards when Adam quit his job.

“He hasn’t been ours for years, Charlotte,” he replied dryly. “Time away will do you good. I think you probably need it after the events of the past few months.”

It wasn’t an answer I was expecting, but he was right – I did need it. And the only way he could’ve known was if he’d been told. “You know that I found my mother?”

Jean-Luc nodded. “Life is full of defining moments,” he said gently. “I hope you don’t count that as one of yours.”

I scowled. “I don’t want to talk about this with you.” I was too busy plotting what I was going to do to my bigmouth husband when I got hold of him.

“No; perhaps
your
father might be the better option,” he said awkwardly.

My father-in-law wasn’t renowned for heartfelt pep talks, so this rare moment was gauche and uncomfortable. Jean-Luc glanced across at the huge church and wisely changed the subject. “I wasn’t joking about Bridget and the flowers,” he said. “She was stripping red roses from the floral arrangements. I can only assume she knows something we don’t.”

“Bridget knows a lot of things you don’t,” I declared. “I made her that way.”

“She’s part Décarie,” he insisted.

“Only the good parts.” My catty comment didn’t faze him at all. He would’ve expected no less from me.

“I heard that Ryan reinstated her wings,” he commented. “I’m pleased.”

He must’ve been lying. The king was the biggest opponent of all things La La.

“You and I don’t fluff around and pretend to be polite to each other, Jean-Luc,” I reminded him. “It’s one of the things I like best about you. Please don’t ruin it.”

“I’m not trying to be polite. I admire Bridget’s desire to fly. I always encourage ambition.”

I couldn’t argue. It was the only thing he did encourage. We were quiet for a long moment. I had nothing more to say, but Jean-Luc seemed to be working up to something else. I shuffled from foot to foot, trying to find relief from the freezing pavement while I waited.

“When Adam was young, he was a terribly restless sleeper,” he said finally. “He’d throw himself out of bed some nights. It used to terrify his mother.”

I couldn’t help smiling. “He didn’t grow out of it until Bridget was born,” I told him. “He hasn’t been restless in a while.”

“He used to dream he was chasing something,” he continued. “We asked him time and time again what it was, but he didn’t know. Quite odd, don’t you think?”

“Why would it be odd?”

“Well, it would’ve made more sense if something was chasing him.”

I shook my head, suddenly seeing the much deeper picture. Adam had been running for most of his life, always trying to catch up to the life his parents had mapped out for him. He only stopped running when his daughter was born.

“Every night I’d line a stack of pillows on the floor next to his bed. Running while sleeping is only foolhardy if you have no backup plan. I assume the same rules apply to flying, – at least, that’s what I told Bridget.”

I dropped my line of sight to the pavement, unable to look at him. “I can’t imagine you telling her any such thing.”

“I have never clipped her wings, Charli,” he said seriously. “Who do you think taught her to stack cushions on the floor?”

My head snapped up at the question. “You taught her that?”

He shrugged. “I encourage ambition, but a backup plan is important.”

His admission floored me. I had no idea how to reply. “We should go,” I told him, walking away. “Everyone will be waiting.”

Jean-Luc called me back, just as he always does.

I groaned. “Don’t ruin it.” I spun around so fast that the bottom of my dress flared. “You and I just had a moment. Don’t ruin it by saying something mean.”

“You think I’m hard, don’t you?”

Inconsistent was a better description. He
was
hard on me, but every now and then he’d show me glimpses of a much kinder man. I’d never fully managed to crack his tough exterior, and probably never would. Perhaps that’s why I elected to agree with him. “Brutally hard at times,” I agreed. “I hope you’ll treat Bente differently.”

“I expect I will. We don’t share the same rapport.”

Ignoring the fact that I’d begun shivering, I paced back to him. “Say something nice about me.” I thrust my bouquet at him as if I was casting a spell. “I dare you.”

He lifted his head. The smirk was gone. “You’ve been a wonderful, fiery addition to my family and I adore you.” His low tone was as serious as the look on his handsome face.

I was so shocked I couldn’t speak, which was a good thing. It saved me from killing the compliment with a smartarse comment. I mustered a rigid nod and walked away again.

“The loss wasn’t yours, Charlotte,” he called. “It was entirely your mother’s.” I stopped walking but didn’t turn back. “You’ll do well to remember that.”

I swallowed hard to clear the lump from my throat. Then I walked back to him again and took his arm. “Hurry up and walk me down the aisle. Just to piss you off, I’m going to marry your son again.”

Despite the earlier drama of the day, our second wedding went off without a hitch. Both of us struggled to get through the stiflingly traditional ceremony, but we managed. Charli even managed to promise to love, honour and obey me without laughing. The inclusion of that vow proved how just little attention Ryan and Bente had paid to the planning of their nuptials.

By the end of the night, their reasons for bailing were obvious. It was hardly a romantic or intimate affair – more a well orchestrated production designed to showcase wealth and social pedigree. We endured walking up the aisle, cutting a six-layer cake and slow dancing – and had our photo taken a million times to prove it.

Any favour I owed my brother, dating back to the day I was born, had now been repaid.

Our first day of remarried life was good. For the first time since Bridget’s fall we ventured back to the park. I expected her to hesitate, but she didn’t show a hint of trepidation as she cut across the lawn and headed for the playground.

“She’s fearless,” I muttered under my breath.

“She has fear,” amended Charli. “She just understands her limitations a little better now.”

I stood on the edge of the path for a long time keeping an eye on Bridget. She flitted from one piece of equipment to another, steering clear of the climbing frame. “This is the beginning, isn’t it?” I asked Charli.

She clenched her fists together and blew a warming breath into her hands. “Of what?”

“A few weeks ago she thought she could jump off that frame and fly,” I replied. “She knows she can’t now. Eventually she’ll land there no more.”

It was the only part of the
Peter Pan
quote I could remember, but the meaning was firmly in my mind.

Charli patted the seat beside her. “She still believes.” As soon as I sat down, she cuddled against me in a ploy to get warm. “And if she stops, we’ll show her more magic.”

Keeping half an eye on Bridget I murmured against her cold cheek, “You sound mighty sure of yourself, Coccinelle.”

She laughed quietly. “If I can make a believer out of her uncle, I can make anyone believe.”

Not even Ryan could find an explanation for the discovery he’d made in Tiger’s upstairs apartment a few days earlier. The horse he claimed to have almost won the Kentucky Derby with back in the sixties was named Secret North – the coordinate on Bridget’s compass that they’d spent weeks tirelessly searching for.

I’d given up looking for logical explanations a long time ago. I’d been hit with the magic stick too many times.

“I’m going to convert your father next,” she claimed.

It wasn’t one of her better ideas. He wasn’t the most open-minded man to begin with, and he’d become impossible to deal with lately. I refused to try any more.

The final straw was when he made good on his promise of having someone clear out my desk at the office. Nothing could describe the hurt of having my belongings delivered to our door as if it was trash he was putting out. Charli did her best to play it down, urging me to forgive and move on. But I wasn’t interested in making peace this time round –I’d done it too many times before. All I was interested in was getting back to the beach and kick-starting the life we should’ve been living.

“I think you should just steer clear of my father,” I suggested.

Charli slipped a hand inside my coat. “I’m sorry, Boy Wonder,” she explained, “but yesterday when I agreed to obey you, my fingers were crossed.”

A firm plan for getting out of the country was hatched over the dinner table that night. I had no reason to stay in New York a minute longer. My job was gone, and now that the all the permits were approved, Ryan was overseeing the club renovations perfectly well by himself.

“You want to go next week?” Charli choked. “I can’t wrap everything up in a week. I haven’t even quit my job yet.”

“I could go before you,” I offered. “It’ll give me a chance to make sure everything is perfect for when you get there.”

Her stare was so intense that I had trouble maintaining eye contact. I focused on Bridget instead, who was doing her usual routine of pushing her food around her plate. I straightened her chair and pulled it closer to the table. “Eat something, please,” I ordered.

“I am,” she insisted. “You just can’t see me.”

Charli’s mind was still on the subject of moving. “I’ll need at least two weeks,” she insisted.

“No problem,” I replied. “It’ll take me a week to get everything sorted at the cottage.”

Her eyes drifted to our daughter. “And what about Bridge?” she asked. “Who will she travel with?”

I shrugged. “Let’s ask her.”

It was a risky move. Charli’s confidence in the parenting department had taken a battering lately, and Bridget inadvertently had the power to knock her down even lower.

In a few short sentences I laid out the options to Bridget. She could either come to Australia with me or hang out in New York for an extra few weeks with her mama.

The kid barely thought about it. “I have to stay with my mum.” She pointed her fork at Charli. “I need her.”

My relief was nothing compared to the jolt that hit Charli. “You need me?” she asked in a tiny voice.

Bridget answered as if it was a silly question. “Yes,” she replied. “All the time.”

I leaned across and kissed the top of her head. She had no idea that she’d patched up her mother’s heart with a few simple words, and that was how it was supposed to be.

“You’re beautiful,” I told her. “And I love you.”

“Good,” she replied. “Then I don’t have to eat more dinner.”

Quitting my job was like a bad break up. There were tears, and the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ line was used more than once. Mercifully, Bronson didn’t need much recovery time. After a cup of tea and a handful of tissues, he pulled himself together and went back to polishing the leaves on his potted plants.

“I’ll be fine, darling.” He took a step back and looked up at the top branches of his ficus. “Maybe I’ll find someone taller next time.” He was clearly over me. I, however, would never be over him.

I agreed to work until the end of the week, to make sure everything was up to date. I spent the rest of that morning cataloguing new pieces that Bronson had just picked up on a four-day buying spree. Everything was just about in order when something caught my eye.

“Bronson, what do you know about this?” I waved the piece of paper at him. “This painting was sold weeks ago.”

He set his can of Pledge down and snatched the paper. “Oh, yes,” he crowed, barely glancing at it. “It was returned. Your mother brought it back.”

Olivia’s audacity astounded me. I wasn’t expecting her to take up my suggestion of returning the work to cover the costs of her failed charity scam, but she had.

“Did she say why?”

“She said she couldn’t bear looking at it,” he replied. “Apparently it reminds her of something ghastly – a time in her life that she doesn’t wish to be reminded of.”

The hateful words sank in. A few weeks ago they would’ve wrecked me, but as I sat absently clicking my pen, I realised something huge. I wasn’t hurt. I wasn’t even remotely affected. The storm caused by the introduction of my mother into my life had passed, and I’d survived.

“Did you refund her money?”

“Of course.” Bronson picked up his can, grinning like a Cheshire cat. “I told her I’d send a cheque in the post – which I did – to the person who paid for it in the first place.”

Nothing could dull my smile. “Adam?”

Bronson sighed wistfully. “Oh Adam, my Wedgwood-blue-eyed beauty,” he crooned, flapping his dusting cloth at me. “Tell him to buy you something nice with the money. Cocktails and shoes.”

I laughed. “I will.”

“Good,” he replied, walking away. “Karma has no menu, darling. You get served what you deserve.”

We were experts when it came to packing up a household, mainly because we never really did. Jumping from country to country involved little more than a few pieces of excess luggage.