I set down my glass with a clink, gripping the counter with damp palms as she told me the story of our parents. The real heart of the rivalry. She told me how her parents ended up married and why her father stayed.
Thoughts pinged around my skull like gravel in a vacuum cleaner. My father with Evelyn Bower. No universe existed wherein that statement could be true. But it was. I could see it on her face.
“I didn’t believe it either,” she said quietly. “I knew about my parents and the baby they lost, but not how your family was involved. He only told me now because my mother has put me in the middle, and he thought I should know why.”
I scrubbed a hand over my mouth. “It would explain … well, it would explain just about everything. But goddamn.” After a pause, I joked, “Bright side—you won’t lose a man to the Bennets.”
She didn’t smile. “But I could. One day, you might be asked to choose, and I don’t think you would choose me.” Before I could argue, she continued, “And if not, she might lose me to the Bennets. I can’t imagine that would be much easier for her.”
I stepped around the island to her. “I knew telling you what I wanted would put you in a position to have to choose. How could I ask so much of you?” I shook my head. “I couldn’t. I still don’t know if I should.”
“Well, that isn’t your decision to make, is it?”
“But isn’t it my responsibility?”
She shifted in her seat, face upturned as she took my hands. “Is there anything I could say that would convince you that you aren’t responsible for my feelings, for my happiness?”
“Nothing.”
With the shake of her head, she said, “But you aren’t.”
“Maybe I want to be.”
She stood, stepped into me until our bodies were flush, her hands on my chest and mine on her waist. “I love that you want to be. So few people in my life ever have.”
“And fuck every single one of them who haven’t. You deserve everything, and I want to give everything to you.”
Her cheeks flushed. “You don’t even know me, not really.”
“You don’t believe that,” I whispered, sweeping her jaw with my knuckles. “I may not know your favorite color or your middle name, but I know you, somehow. I know you are filled with goodness. I know what you do is for others before yourself. I know your life has been hard for being so privileged, and I know you have not received the love you’ve given to the world. And as far as I’m concerned, that ends right now.”
Her lips parted to speak, but I swallowed her answer with a kiss, unwilling to let her speak, knowing I’d said too much. I kissed her, not understanding the fierce devotion I felt for someone so new to me. All I knew was that no one had ever protected her, and she didn’t know her worth.
And I was exactly the person to show her.
It was a compulsion, a deep and instinctive impulse to keep her safe. To make her happy. To show her a better life than the one she’d been living in the long shadow of her mother. I understood her, and I believed she understood me.
I’d spent my life feeling separate from the family I loved, different, unlike them in almost all ways. I’d found my place by being useful, dependable. And though we knew each other well and loved each other unconditionally, we never understood each other.
I hadn’t realized just what that meant, to be understood. I hadn’t known just how much it meant, not until that moment, holding Maisie in my arms, knowing she saw me just as distinctly as I saw her.
In my world, this was a rare and impossible gift.
One I didn’t intend to waste.
I kissed her to prove that point, kissed her until we were noisy breaths and thundering hearts. Kissed her until her hands were under my suit coat and mine sought the hem of her skirt.
Kissed her until the goddamn timer on the oven went off.
I broke away with a pop and a swear on swollen lips. She sank into her seat as I marched to the traitorous oven and temped the stupid pork loin, which was inconveniently done.
“Dinner’s ready,” I said flatly, glancing at her when she laughed.
Her face was bright, her cheeks high, chin resting in her palm. She gazed at me like I was the most wonderful thing in the world.
With her looking at me like that, I even believed it.
I let the meat rest while I plated the vegetables, then carved the loin into juicy medallions, lining them up in the center of the tray. And once it was all ready, she followed me into the dining room with our wine in her hands.
“Blue,” she said as she sat, taking the servingware to fill her plate. “And Ann.”
My brow quirked, and she laughed.
“My favorite color and my middle name. What are yours?”
“Also blue, though I prefer the darker shades, navy or cobalt. And Antony.”
Her fork paused midair. “Marcus Antony? Mark Antony? As in Cleopatra’s lover?”
I sighed. “My mother is a romantic with a penchant for Roman names.”
“I hope that’s not a bad omen. I’d hate to end up in a double suicide.”
I snorted a laugh as I served myself. “I don’t think we’ll ever be in it so bad as all that. And please, don’t ever call me Mark.”
“Don’t ever call me Margaret, and you have yourself a deal.”
She popped a bite into her mouth with a teasing smile that dissolved into a moan. The sound sent a wave of heat through me. “This is incredible.”
“Thank you. I derive odd pleasure from physically putting food on the table.” I took a bite of my own, savoring it for a moment. “Does anyone call you Margaret other than your mother?”
“My grandmother did, but that’s all. Everyone else calls me Maisie. My mother hates it.”
“I can imagine she does.”
“Just another thing she blames my father for.”
“I don’t know how he does it. How he stays with her. Thirty years,” I said to myself. “That’s no life to live.”
“No, it isn’t. I’ve tried to convince him to leave, but … he’s afraid to leave me with her, even now. Anyway, it’s always been the two of us. The truth is, he’s only been around Mother for a year out of the last eight. When I left, so did he, and we only came home on holidays to pay our dues so we could leave again in peace.”
“When I was a kid, I always daydreamed about being an only child,” I said as we ate.
“That’s funny because I always daydreamed about having a big, rowdy family.”
“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”
“And how about now? Do you still wish you were an only child?”
“Not for a second. I spent my childhood trying to control the chaos that is my family. Five kids in four years didn’t help my mom’s general lack of organizational skills, and I’m smack in the middle of us in age. Jett and Laney have their twin thing. Kash and Luke have their Irish twin thing. And I’m just … well, just in the middle, is all. But it makes me happy to help them. It fulfills me to see their happiness.”
“And you all get along?”
“We do. I mean, don’t get me wrong—we fight but not with teeth. I might punch Luke in the kidney, but I don’t mean it any more than he does when he choke-holds me for not telling him who I’m dating.”