The Perfect Neighbor (23 page)

“Cybil,” he said again, while his fingers itched to touch her.

“If I’d had any more to say to you, I’d have said it in New York.” Go away! her mind screamed. Go away before the tears come back.

“I have something to say to you.”

She flicked him a disinterested glance. “If I’d wanted to hear it … same goes.” She closed her sketchbook, rose. “Now—”

“Please.” He lifted a hand, but when her eyes flared in warning, dropped it again. “Hear me out. Then if you want me to go, I’ll go. You’re too … fair,” he said for a lack of a better word, “not to listen.”

“All right.” She sat back on the rock, opened her sketchbook again. “I’ll just keep working, if you don’t mind.”

“I—” He didn’t know where to begin. All the speeches he’d rehearsed, all the pleas and promises, deserted him. “My agent ran into yours yesterday.”

“Really? What a small, insular world we live in.”

He might have winced at that biting tone, but he was too busy looking at her. “He told her about the series—the television series they’re going to do based on your strip. She said it was a major deal.”

“For some.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

She spared him another glance. “You’re not interested in my work.”

“That’s not true, but I can’t blame you for thinking it. I worked it out, time-wise. The day you came to see me, almost bursting with excitement. You’d come to tell me, and I ruined it for you. I—” He broke off, had to turn away and stare out over the green and restless sea. “I was distracted by the play, and more, what I was feeling for you. What I didn’t want to feel for you.”

Her fingers tightened and she broke the tip of her pencil. Furious with herself, she stuck it behind her ear and dug in her small tool bag for another. “If that’s what you came to say, you’ve said it. Now you can go.”

“No, that’s not what I came to say, but I’ll apologize for it, and tell you I’m happy for you.”

“Whoopee.”

He shut his eyes, fisted his hands. So, she could be cruel, he thought, when it was deserved. “Everything you said to me the night you threw me out of your life was right. I let something that had happened a long time ago stand in front of now. I used it to cut myself off from the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I watched my sister’s world shatter, saw her struggle to function over the betrayal and the pain, to raise her son alone and give birth to another before the ink was dry on her divorce papers.”

How could she hold herself aloof from that, Cybil thought, as she closed her book again? How could she be unmoved? “I know it was hell for her, for both of you. No one should have gone through what your sister did, Preston.”

“No, they shouldn’t. But people do.”

He turned back, met her eyes. Already, he thought in wonder, already there was sympathy in them. “It would work, wouldn’t it, if I used my sister to play on your compassion? That’s not what I want to do. Not what I’m going to do.”

He walked to where the land fell off, where it seemed to have been hacked by an ax to form a wall that faced the churning sea. Gulls screamed overhead, swooping down with flashes of white wings, then rising up again to soar.

She came here, he thought, here to this place whenever she visited her childhood home. Came here on those rare times when she needed to be alone with her thoughts.

It was only right, he supposed, that he finally gave her his thoughts, and the feelings behind them, in a place that was hers.

“I loved Pamela. What happened between us changed me.”

“I know.” She would have to forgive him, Cybil realized as she could feel her heart softening. Before she let him go.

“I loved her,” he repeated, turning toward her again, stepping forward. “But what I felt for her isn’t a shadow, isn’t even a pale substitute, for what I feel for you. What I feel when I think of you, when I look at you. It overwhelms me, Cybil. It makes me ache. It makes me hope.”

Her lips trembled open. Her heart began to beat in a quick, almost painful rhythm she recognized as joy. She saw on his face what she’d never really believed she would see. Struggling to absorb it, she looked away, down the long, rocky coast that seemed to stretch into forever.

“For what?” she managed. “What does it make you hope for?”

“Miracles. I hurt you. I’ve no excuse for it.” He spoke quickly, terrified she would tell him it no longer mattered, that it was too late. “I attacked when I thought you might be pregnant because I was angry at myself. Angry that part of me was thinking that having a baby with you would be a way I could keep you.”

When her head whipped around, her eyes wide with shock, he dragged his hands through his hair. “I knew you didn’t want marriage, but if you’d been … I could have pushed you into it. And my only defense against that kind of thinking, against using something like that, was to turn on you.”

“Pushed me into marriage?” was all she could say. Staggered, she rose, walked a few feet away to stare blindly down into the thrashing waves. How was she supposed to keep up with this? she wondered. How had it all changed so fast?

“It’s no excuse, but you have a right to know I never thought you’d planned it or tricked me. I’ve never known anyone less calculating than you. Cybil, you’re a warm, generous woman, with a capacity for joy unlike anyone else I’ve ever known. Having you in my life … you made me happy, and I think I’d forgotten how to be.”

“Preston.” She turned back, her vision blurry with tears.

“Please, let me finish. Just hear me out.” He grabbed her hands now, gripping hard. “I love you. Everything about you staggers me. You said you loved me. You don’t lie.”

“No.” She saw him clearly now. The exhaustion in his eyes, the tension in his face. If he hadn’t been holding her hands so tightly she would have tried to smooth it all away. “I don’t lie.”

“I need you, so much more than you need me. I know you can get over me and move on. You’re too resilient, too open to life, not to. Nothing would stop you from being what you are. You can tell me to go. You’ll forget me. Whatever part I played in your life won’t keep you from being happy.”

He kept his eyes on her face, surrendering everything to the desperate whirl of emotion inside him. “And I’ll never in my life get over you. I’ll never stop loving you or stop regretting everything I did to push you away from me. You can tell me to go,” he said in a voice strained taut with emotion. “And I will. Please God.” Helpless, he lowered his brow to hers. “Please don’t tell me to go.”

“Do you believe that?” she said quietly. “Do you really believe I could forget you?” Amazed at how steady her voice, and her heart were, she waited until he lifted his head and looked down at her. “Maybe I could get over you and be happy. But why should I risk it? Why should I tell you to go when I want you to stay?”

He let out the air clogging his lungs. Even as her lips began to curve, he pulled her against him, kept her there, swaying with relief. She felt him shudder once as he pressed his face to her shoulder.

“You didn’t let me ruin it.” His voice was raw, and his heart seemed to batter against hers until it moved inside her.

“No, I didn’t.” She held on, rocked with the knowledge that he had so much feeling for her in him. This strong, stubborn, serious man was weak for love of her. “I couldn’t. I need you, too.”

He held her away from him, his heart in his eyes as he skimmed his thumbs over her cheeks. “I love this face. I thought I lost it.” He brushed his lips over her brow, her eyelids. “I thought I lost you. Cybil. I can’t …”

His mouth covered hers. He meant to be gentle, to show her she would be cherished, but emotion raged through him, wild and strong as the sea below them. All of it poured into the kiss.

When he drew back, her eyes were wet. “Don’t cry.”

“You’re going to have to get used to it. We Campbells are an emotional lot.”

“I figured that out. Your father wants to break me into very small pieces.”

“When he sees you make me happy, he’ll let you live.” She grinned, and laughter bubbled out. “He’ll love you, Preston, and so will my mother. First because I do, then because of who you are.”

“Moody, rude, short-tempered?”

“Yes.” She laughed again when he winced. “I could deny it, but I’m such a lousy liar.” She took his hand in hers and began to walk. “I love it here. This is where my parents met and fell in love. He lived in the lighthouse then, like a hermit, guarding his work, irritated that a woman had come along to distract him.”

She shot him a sidelong look. “He’s moody, rude, short-tempered.”

The similarity had him grinning. “Sounds like a very sensible man.” He brought their joined hands to his lips. “Cybil, will you go to Newport with me and meet my family?”

“I’d like that.” She glanced up, her head angling when she saw that familiar intense expression in his eyes. “What?”

He stopped, turned to her in the shadow of the great light with the water warring against the rocks below. “I know you don’t want marriage or a house in the country. You like living in New York in the center of things, and I don’t expect—you’d like the house,” he said, interrupting his own thoughts. “It’s a great old place, near the coast like this. Anyway,” he continued, shaking his head as she remained silent, just looking at him, “I don’t expect you to change your lifestyle. But if you decide, later on, that you want to marry me, make a home and a family with me, will you tell me?”

Her heart did three wonderful and stylish handsprings, but she only nodded. “You’ll be the first to know.”

Telling himself to be content with that, he gave her hand a quick squeeze. “Okay.”

He started to walk again, surprised when she stopped, pulling back so that both their arms were extended, linked only by warm fingers. “Preston?”

“Yeah?”

“I want to marry you, make a home and a family with you.” The smile lit up her face as he gaped at her. “See, you’re the first to know.”

Hope spun cheerfully into bliss. “Sure.” He brought her stumbling into him with one quick jerk. “But did you have to keep me dangling for so long?”

Then she was laughing as he swung her off her feet, spinning her in dizzy circles.

If you liked
The Perfect Neighbor
, look for the other novels in the MacGregors series:
Playing the Odds, Tempting Fate, All the Possibilities, One Man’s Art, The MacGregor Brides, The Winning Hand, The MacGregor Grooms
and
Rebellion & In from the Cold
, available as eBooks from InterMix.

Keep reading for a special excerpt from the newest novel by Nora Roberts

THE WITNESS

Available April 2012 in hardcover from G.P. Putnam’s Sons

June 2000

Elizabeth Fitch’s short-lived teenage rebellion began with L’Oreal Pure Black, a pair of scissors and a fake ID. It ended in blood.

For nearly the whole of her sixteen years, eight months and twenty-one days she’d dutifully followed her mother’s directives. Dr. Susan L. Fitch issued
directives
, not orders. Elizabeth had adhered to the schedules her mother created, ate the meals designed by her mother’s nutritionist and prepared by her mother’s cook, wore the clothes selected by her mother’s personal shopper.

Dr. Susan L. Fitch dressed conservatively, as suited—in her opinion—her position as Chief of Surgery at Chicago’s Silva Memorial Hospital. She expected, and directed, her daughter to do the same.

Elizabeth studied diligently, accepting and excelling in the academic programs her mother outlined. In the fall, she’d return to Harvard in pursuit of her medical degree. So she could become a doctor, like her mother; a surgeon, like her mother.

Elizabeth—never Liz or Lizzie or Beth—spoke fluent Spanish, French, Italian, passable Russian and rudimentary Japanese. She played both piano and violin. She’d traveled to Europe, to Africa. She could name all the bones, nerves and muscles in the human body and play Chopin’s Piano Concerto—both One and Two—by rote.

She’d never been on a date or kissed a boy. She’d never roamed the mall with a pack of girls, attended a slumber party or giggled with friends over pizza or hot fudge sundaes.

She was, at sixteen years, eight months and twenty-one days, a product of her mother’s meticulous and detailed agenda.

That was about to change.

She watched her mother pack. Susan, her rich brown hair already coiled in her signature French twist, neatly hung another suit in the organized garment bag, then checked off the printout with each day of the week’s medical conference broken into subgroups. The printout included a spreadsheet listing every event, appointment, meeting and meal scheduled with the selected outfit, shoes, bag and accessories.

Designer suits and Italian shoes, of course, Elizabeth thought. One must wear good cut, good cloth. But not one rich or bright color among the blacks, grays, taupes. She wondered how her mother could be so beautiful and deliberately wear the dull.

After two accelerated semesters of college, Elizabeth thought she’d begun—maybe—to develop her own fashion sense. She had, in fact, bought jeans
and
a hoodie
and
some chunky heeled boots in Cambridge.

She’d paid in cash, so the purchase wouldn’t show up on her credit card bill in case her mother or their accountant checked and questioned the items, which were currently hidden in her room.

She’d felt like a different person wearing them, so different that she’d walked straight into a McDonald’s and ordered her first Big Mac with large fries and a chocolate shake.

The pleasure had been so huge she’d had to go into the bathroom, close herself in a stall and cry a little.

The seeds of the rebellion had been planted that day, she supposed, or maybe they’d always been there, dormant, and the fat and salt had awakened them.

But she could feel them, actually feel them sprouting in her belly now.

“Your plans changed, Mother. It doesn’t follow that mine have to change with them.”

Susan took a moment to precisely place a shoe bag in the pullman, tucking it just so with her beautiful and clever surgeon’s hands, the nails perfectly manicured. A French manicure, as always—no color there either.