Trusting Again (18 page)

She opened the box. “It’s a ring.” When she looked up at him, she felt her tear-filled eyes widen. “A beautiful ring.”

“Yes,
querida,
an engagement ring. The diamond is traditional. The sapphires are the color of your eyes. The design I remembered from one of your neckpieces. So — and this is time number four or maybe even five — marry me.” He took the ring from the box and slipped it on her finger. It fit perfectly.

“Marry you. But … ” She stared at the ring, unable to think coherently.

“No more ‘buts.’ I want you to come home with me now. We’ll sort out when we’re getting married after we talk to our families. For now, just come home with me.”

“Home?”

“Yes, home. We can move your things from your apartment over the next week. We’ll combine your things and mine, whatever you want, into our house. We can put what we don’t have room for into storage for when we move into a bigger house.”

“A bigger house?” She was beginning to wonder if she would ever again have anything to say that didn’t echo something he’d just said.

“When our family gets too big, we’ll move someplace larger. But always where we can see the water. I promise.”

She sniffed back a tear and bit back a smile. “You have this all figured out, don’t you?”

“I’ve been thinking about it for a month.”

“I haven’t agreed to any of this and already you’ve planned out my life for me. Suppose I don’t want to marry you or live in your house?”

He looked devastated. “You don’t love me?”

“Of course I love you. You have no idea how much I love you. I just don’t like being told everything’s settled before I even have a chance to say anything.”

Taking her face in his hands, he gently kissed her forehead, her eyelids and her lips. “You’re right. I shouldn’t be making all these decisions alone. You have every right to think it over. I’ll just wait while you think about it. Let me know when you decide.” He went back to her mouth again, took her lips in a fiery kiss that melted her knees and most of her insides. “You don’t mind if I keep kissing you while you decide, do you? It’ll give me something to do while you think.”

She took a step back from him. “You know I can’t think when you kiss me.”

“No,” he said with a half-smile. “I didn’t. But it’s good to know. I’ll keep that in mind. The information might come in handy.”

She was playing with the ring on her finger as she watched his face, looking for … for what? He’d said everything she’d ever wanted to hear from him. And what he’d already said was written right there on his handsome face. Had been all along.

Taking a step back toward him, she put her arms around his neck, buried her fingers in his hair and kissed him as thoroughly as he had kissed her.

“Okay. I’ve thought about it. I’ll marry you.”

“Thank God. Now let’s go home.” He took her hand and started to the door.

“Wait. First, I have to close up the studio.”

“What can I do to help get us out of here? I want to get some food into the house before I fall asleep.”

She handed him a dustpan and broom, pointing out the remains of the broken glass rod. He laughed and started sweeping them up.

“It sounds like you think you’ve covered just about everything,” she said as she began to put away her tools. “But I bet there’s one thing you haven’t thought about.”

“What’s that,
mi corazon
?” He dumped the glass shards in the trashcan and put the broom away before coming behind her and nuzzling her neck.

“How in the world are we going to get a car seat in the Porsche?”

Thanks for reading
Trusting Again
, book number four in the Second Chances series. I hope you enjoyed getting to know Cynthia and Marius. If you’re curious about the other two couples in the story, check out
Beginning Again
, the story of how Liz and Collins met, or
Loving Again
, which tells Sam and Amanda’s story. Oh, and there are two more books in the series, one due out in October 2013, the other in early 2014.

If you’d like to keep in touch, here are a few places where you can find me:

My website and blog:
www.peggybirdwrites.com

On Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Peggy-Birds-Authors-Page/264392460308782?__req=6

On Twitter:
https://twitter.com/peggybirdwrites

On Pinterest:
http://pinterest.com/writingbird/

One last thing: I always like to know what readers think of my books. So if you’d write a review on Amazon or Goodreads with your honest opinion, I’d appreciate it. Thanks so much.

Instead of the peace and coffee she’d been looking for before boarding her plane, Margo Keyes’s latte came with a side order of idiot-on-a-cell-phone. Anyone within twenty feet of the man in the blue blazer heard some of the conversation. Where she was sitting, it was in Dolby digital surround sound.

It figured her trip would start like this. She’d been apprehensive about it from the get-go. Not that she had a fear of flying. It was the landing — or rather, what was waiting for her
after
she landed — that was the problem.

Her chance for quiet acquisition of caffeine courage diminishing by the second, she glared at the man in the blue blazer, hoping he’d take the hint and shut up. Too intent on his call, he seemed to miss what was, she was quite sure, a stunning look of disapproval.

“Are you interested or not?” he yelled. Allowing no answer to what was apparently a rhetorical question, he continued, “If you don’t want what I’ve got, I know someone who does. So, what’s it worth to you?” After he paused, presumably for the response, he said, “Good. I’ll let you know what the bid is after I talk to my other customer.” He ended the call, shoved his phone in his pocket and glared back at Margo before storming off.

Walking down the concourse, she consoled herself that if the coffee break hadn’t worked, at least she had a business class seat reserved on the plane and a hotel suite waiting at her destination. She’d indulged in both, rationalizing if she was making this trip at least it should be comfortable. Interesting concept, that; comfortable discomfort.

As the plane taxied out to the runway, she pulled out her BlackBerry to review her schedule for the next ten days, hoping some magic wand had been waved over it, making it all shiny and fun. However, as usual, her fairy godmother was AWOL. She put her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. What the hell had she been thinking, saying yes to this? Ever since she’d moved to Portland, she’d restricted her Philadelphia visits with her mother to long weekends in the spring and fall. It got her points for being a good daughter, avoided too much time being fussed over and kept her out of the two East Coast seasons she didn’t like. This trip? Ten days in mid-June when she’d just been there two months before.

Checking the airline schedule online, she found a flight home the day after the presentation she was to give the following week. That would cut three days off the trip. But before she could change her reservation, the flight attendant asked her to turn her phone off.

Nothing left to do but work. She opened her stuffed-to-the-gunnels messenger bag and took out what she’d brought to help her craft her speech. It looked like she’d included everything in the courthouse except the old law library. Being tapped as the last-minute stand-in for your boss at an important conference will make you do that.

While trying to organize it all, she lost track of her jacket. She eventually saw it too far under her seat to grab and asked the person sitting behind her to get it for her. A man threw it back. When she turned to thank him he added a dirty look — a familiar dirty look. Shit. The man in the blue blazer from the coffee stand.

Finally settled, she began to review case files. Unfortunately, the steady stream of orders to the flight attendants from the seat behind her distracted both her and the cabin crew. When she’d read the same report three times and still didn’t know what the hell it was about, she gave up trying, put her work away and replaced it with her iPod. By plugging in the ear buds she could drown out ABB (“Asshole in Blue Blazer,” as he had now morphed into being) with Pink Martini, Colbie Caillat, Suzanne Vega and Alicia Keys.

By the time she’d worked through most of her current favorite albums, the pilot announced their imminent arrival in Philadelphia. Winding the cord for the ear buds around the iPod before stashing it away, the thought occurred that ABB had now wrecked a second part of her day. Two strikes against her and she hadn’t even gotten to the hard part yet.

The man jumped up as soon as the plane’s wheels hit the ground, arguing with the flight attendant when she insisted he get back in his seat. He sprang into action again as soon as they arrived at the gate, rooting around in the compartment above Margo like he was hunting for truffles. Fearful he’d dump out the contents of her messenger bag she stood, too, and removed it from the overhead.

“Out of the way,” ABB said. “I’m in a hurry.”

“We all are,” Margo said. “But they haven’t opened the door yet.”

“I have to be out of here when they do. Move, bitch.”

“Excuse me? What did you … ?”

The man grabbed his briefcase and pin-balled his way through passengers and cabin crew to the door, which was still closed. “Asshole in Blue Blazer” moved ahead of “walking across the country pushing heavy beverage carts” on the list of reasons she was glad she hadn’t followed up on that girlhood fantasy of being a flight attendant so she could get paid for traveling.

At baggage claim, still thinking of comebacks for ABB, some of which were anatomically impossible, most of which were too obscene to say out loud and many of which were both, she let her bag go past a couple times before she realized it had made an appearance. Off balance when she snagged it, she swung around awkwardly, smacking into someone behind her. When she started to apologize she saw, much to her consternation, she’d whacked — guess who? — talking again on the phone.

Echoing her sentiments, ABB said, “Oh, hell, you again. Just what I need,” and elbowed past her. He grabbed the briefcase leaning up against the luggage belt in front of her, and ran toward the taxi stand, leaving her apologizing to empty air. “Welcome to Philadelphia, Margo,” she muttered to no one in particular as she pulled out the handle from her suitcase.

At the exit for the rental car shuttles, she hesitated long enough to inhale one last little bit of cool, clean air. Thus prepared, she forced herself out the automatic door into the wall of hot, wet vapor, which, laced with vehicle exhaust and the effluvium of the nearby oil refineries and storage facilities, was what passed for air during summer in her birthplace.

Oh, yeah, welcome to Philly.

• • •

A short, stocky man in a business suit paced on the spongy ground, wiped his forehead with a handkerchief and swatted away a bug. He hated this weather. When he delivered what he was about to get, he’d be on the next plane out of here.

A taxi approached and he stepped back into the shadow of the trees. The car’s interior light illuminated a man in a dark blue blazer paying the driver. After the cab peeled off, the stocky man emerged from the shadows and beckoned.

The two men walked silently into the copse of trees. When they were hidden from the road, the stocky man asked for what he’d contracted to purchase. The man in the blue blazer said he had another offer that the buyer had to meet or the deal was off. The stocky man shook his head. The man in the blue blazer pulled out his cell phone and punched in a number. He handed the phone over after the call was answered. The stocky man said a few words in a foreign language before handing the phone back to its owner.

While Blue Blazer was focused on winding up the phone conversation, the stocky man reached under his jacket and pulled out a gun. His problem eliminated, the gunman pulled the blazer-clad body further into the trees and covered it with branches.

Taking the phone and the briefcase, he returned to his car. When he searched the briefcase, he discovered that what he wanted wasn’t there. Nor, he found out when he went back and searched the body, was it in the fucking blue blazer. All he had was a flash drive with what he’d already seen and a pissed-off buyer waiting for what he now couldn’t deliver.

• • •

In her rental car and headed toward Center City on I-95, Margo went over, again, what she had ahead of her. The shoes she’d packed said it all — Manolo Blahniks for a high school reunion she’d been conned into attending, mid-heel pumps for the conference where she was to give the still-unwritten presentation and the flats she wore to please her mother who hated running shoes. No shoes were needed for the other thing niggling at the back of her mind.

In Portland, where she was a thirty-something deputy district attorney, Margo’s colleagues thought it was great she was going for a longer-than-usual visit with her mother. She’d explained her reluctance was because she didn’t like the summer weather. But it wasn’t just the weather she didn’t want to face. There was the world of Daisy Keyes to deal with.

“Daisy” was what her maternal grandmother, for whom she was named, had called her. It was the literal translation of Margherita, her given first name. Margo was grateful no one else had joined her
abuelita
in that folly. What the hell had she been thinking? Daisy? Really?

What made it worse was she thought of herself as a wilted daisy that last year of high school, at the mercy of people and events over which she had no control. Now Margo would be spending an evening with people she largely avoided when she visited her mother, all of whom she was sure remembered only too clearly what had happened that year.

But a suite at the Bellevue would help. No memories there. And, she noticed as she looked around the lobby while waiting to register, no guy in a blue blazer either. She crossed her fingers that she’d seen the last of him. All she had to do was unpack and freshen up and she’d be ready to face whatever was waiting on Fir Street.