From the Beginning (21 page)

Which was why she’d broken things off with him so many years before. She hadn’t wanted—

Amanda cut her thoughts off before they could go any further. She wasn’t going to think about that tonight. This was a celebration and she was going to treat it as such. Enjoy this new milestone in her life and let everything else fall by the wayside. At least for a little while. If she kept doing what she was doing, kept putting one foot in front of the other, then everything was going to be all right.

For the first time in her life, she had nowhere she had to be. Nothing she had to do. No one but herself to take care of. And if that last thought caused a little hitch in her chest—or a huge one, for that matter—then she was the only one who needed to know about it. She was going to put on a happy face and enjoy the hell out of her new life. Fake it till you make it. That was her new motto and she was sticking to it.

Dropping to her knees on the lush quilt, she spread out the food she’d bought. A crusty loaf of bread, some rich Brie that oozed warmly as she didn’t have a refrigerator yet, green and black olives, pasta salad, fresh strawberries. And a bottle of champagne she’d been chilling in a small ice chest.

The plates were paper and the cups plastic, but somehow, she thought it would be a fitting celebration, anyway.

The doorbell rang just as she was popping a strawberry into her mouth. She glanced at her watch. Five minutes until seven—she was counting on at least fifteen more minutes before Simon showed up. But he’d obviously turned over a new leaf.

Or, in his way, he was trying as hard as she was to make this night special. Her stomach tightened a little at the thought, so she took a couple of deep breaths until it relaxed again. She could do this, she told herself, as she walked toward the entryway. It wasn’t that difficult. Really, it wasn’t.

By the time she’d reached the front door, she even believed what she was saying. Or at least she did until she opened the door and saw Simon standing there, a huge bouquet of flowers in one hand and a bottle of champagne in the other.

Her first thought was that he looked more handsome than any man had a right to. Her second was that she didn’t stand a chance of keeping this simple. She tried to quash that thought as soon as it came to her, but it was difficult when Simon was giving her that half smile of his—the one that always made her a little giddy, even when she wished it wouldn’t. Especially when she wished it wouldn’t.

Damn it. She was doing okay. Making an effort. Yes, Gabby was still the first thing she thought of in the morning and the last thing she thought of at night, but it was getting better. She’d started to remember the good times with her daughter instead of only the bad. Had begun to allow herself to remember what it felt like to be hugged by Gabby—warm and sweet and slightly sticky—and the way her daughter’s little hand had felt clasped in her own. It wasn’t huge progress, but it was something. After all, she wanted to cry only five or six times a day now, instead of five or six hundred.

Which was why she needed to keep doing what she was doing. What she didn’t need was to invite Simon in again, to leave herself vulnerable to him. Because no matter how many promises she made to herself about not making the same mistakes, the fact of the matter was, with Simon, she always did.

As she stared at him, Simon’s smile faded, replaced by a look of uncertainty that was so unfamiliar she almost didn’t recognize it. “Is something wrong, Mandy?” he asked.

His old nickname went through her like an electric current, delivering a pleasant warmth. And burning other parts of her to a crisp, she reminded herself viciously, because that’s what electric shocks did.

“Mandy?” he asked again, and this time he reached for her. “What’s wrong?”

Pulling back before he could touch her, she forced herself to snap out of whatever bizarre time warp her brain kept trying to slip into. Holding the door wide, she said, “Sorry about that. I’m still a little off sometimes. Come on in.”

He crossed the threshold, handed her the flowers. They were freesia—her favorite.

“I thought you had changed your mind.”

She smiled sadly. “Only about a dozen times or so since this afternoon.”

He didn’t laugh, as she’d intended. Only nodded as if he knew exactly how truthful she was being.

“When you said you’d bought a house, I didn’t realize you meant one of these,” he said, looking around the large antebellum house with interest. “I thought you went for more modern architecture.”

“Usually, I do. But something about this place…” She shrugged. “I fell in love with it the first time I saw it.”

“I can see why.” He said it with such a straight face that she cracked up.

“Use that face on someone who doesn’t know you so well,” she told him. “I am well aware that this place looks a disaster. But structurally, it’s sound, and the rest is all cosmetic. All it will take is time and some TLC. Two things I happen to have a lot of right now.”

His face softened, and for the second time that evening, he reached for her. She held up the flowers he had brought her, used them as a shield. “Thank you for the freesia by the way—and for the vase. I don’t have one yet.”

“I figured it might not be top of the list. And you’re welcome.”

“I have dinner laid out in the dining room, such as it is,” she said, leading the way. “Or would you like a tour first?”

He glanced up at the peeling paint of the ceiling. “A tour would be fantastic.”

“Really?” She glanced at him incredulously. “I don’t have any furniture yet.”

“That’s the best way to see a house.”

“Fine. Let me put these down.” She dropped the flowers on the kitchen counter and then reached for the bottle of champagne he had in his other hand. “Would you like me to open this now? Or later?”

Simon’s eyes darkened to a deep forest-green, and for a moment she was pulled into them, pulled into him. Taken back through time to the first bottle of champagne they’d ever shared—right after he had won his first Pulitzer for a series of articles he’d written about El Salvador. They’d killed the bottle, and he had drunk the last of it from her naked body.

It had been one of the best nights of her life. At least until she’d woken up and found herself alone, with nothing but a quick note from Simon telling her that duty called. She didn’t see or hear from him until almost two months later.

Focusing on that fact, on the heartbreak she’d felt as days and then weeks had passed with no word from him, she yanked herself out of that small hotel room in Jamaica and back to the present.

“Later’s fine,” he said, his voice strained and eyes ablaze. “Unless you’d like some?”

“I can wait.” She led him out the other side of the kitchen, trying to ignore the way her knees trembled. Or the way she felt his gaze burning straight through her back. She obviously wasn’t the only one who remembered that night.

Despite the size of the house, the tour didn’t last long, as there wasn’t much to see—unless you were a contractor.

They ended the tour outside, in the gardens, just as sunset streaked across the sky. And even though the backyard was completely overgrown, it was still one of her favorite things about the house. In fact, she’d spent most of the afternoon messing around back here with her brand-new gardening tools, clearing a path through the weeds. She had visions of being able to sit out here on early-spring afternoons, before it got too hot, and sip lemonade as she watched the flowers grow.

It was a small dream, one as far removed from the grand plans she’d once had to save the world as it could get. But it was hers. Something to hold on to, to focus on, when the dark days came. The image of her with the sun on her face and gardenias in her lap. Somehow she thought her beautiful, precocious, flower-loving
daughter would approve.

“Gabby would have liked it out here,” Simon said suddenly, his voice aching just enough that she wondered if he’d somehow read her thoughts. But a quick glance told her he’d taken one look at the wild tangle of flowers and his mind had immediately jumped to their daughter.

“I think so, too.”

“I miss her.”

“Simon—”
Don’t,
she wanted to say.
Please, don’t do this, not now. Not when I’m finally beginning to get my feet back under me. Please, don’t drag me back down.

But she’d been his daughter, too, and like Amanda, he’d been too busy trying to run away from the pain to grieve properly.

She lay a gentle hand on his shoulder and he grabbed on to it like a lifeline, holding so tight that she thought he might actually crack a bone.

“Right, sorry about that,” he said, and he sounded so unbearably British that she wanted nothing more than to comfort him.

“You mentioned dinner,” he said with a final squeeze of her hand before letting go.

“Of course, dinner. It’s nothing fancy. I don’t have a working kitchen yet.”

“But it
would
be fancy if you had a stove to cook it on?” The blatant disbelief in his voice had her laughing.

“Hey, I’ve gotten better through the years.”

“Well, you couldn’t get worse, that’s for sure.”

She socked him gently in the arm. “I’ll have you know, some people actually like my cooking.”

“Let me let you in on a little secret,” he said with a snort. “It doesn’t count if they’re
starving.”

She laughed despite herself. “Well, what does that say about you, then? You accepted my invitation to dinner even though you know I’m a terrible cook.”

“It says I don’t give a damn about the food. That I’m here because I want to spend time with you.”

She stopped dead, right in the doorway to the dining room, and struggled to make sense of his words. To make them mean something less than they did.

He stood directly behind her, and then it was his turn to put his hands on her shoulders. She trembled a little at the delicate sweetness of his touch, and he pulled her against him, her back resting on his chest.

“Simon.” She meant it to come out as a protest, but it ended up sounding more like a moan.

“I missed you,” he said, brushing his lips over her temple.

She gave a slight shudder. “Don’t say that.”

“Why not?” His mouth skimmed across her cheek to a spot right beneath her ear. It was a spot he knew well, one that lit her up like the Fourth of July.

“Because I didn’t invite you here for this.” She tried to pull away, but she was too weak and he felt too good.

She waited for him to press his advantage, to turn her in his arms and kiss her until she couldn’t remember her name, let alone why sleeping with him was a bad idea. It was what the old Simon would have done. Enjoy the moment and to hell with the consequences. He’d burned her that way many times before, and deep inside she was deathly afraid—despite all the promises she’d made herself—that tonight wouldn’t be any different.

But she wasn’t counting on the new Simon. Because at the first hint of protest, he gave her a chaste kiss on the cheek. Then he released her.

“I think I could probably use that drink now,” he told her as he walked through the dining room and into the kitchen.

For long seconds, she stood still as a statue, trying to figure out what had happened. Then, when it became apparent that no explanation would be forthcoming—either from him or from her own brain—she headed after him, trying desperately to convince herself that dinner was the only thing she wanted.