How to Bake a Perfect Life - Barbara O'Neal [68]
No. Steeling myself, I walk around him, unweaving my braid as I go, so my hair is falling down my back, which is a mistake I would not have made if he had not awakened me. My hair is like a siren call to him, irresistible, and he follows me into the kitchen, watching from the table as I pour out the old coffee and draw fresh water for a new pot. “You really don’t want me to talk to you at all?”
I frown over my shoulder. “Right.” I pour beans into the grinder and push the button, releasing that most elegant, reviving scent. I breathe it in.
He comes up behind me, putting his hands on my shoulders, his forehead against my hair. “Ramona, tesoruccio mìo, give me another chance. I have been an ass, I know it, but just forgive me, huh?”
For the first time I realize that his feelings are strong, that perhaps I have been leading him on in a way, leaning on him because I am lonely without my family. And he, being the man he is, took my continuing friendship as encouragement.
Gently, I turn and put my hands on his dear face. “Cat, I’m grateful to you for all the things you’ve done for me.” I rub his smooth jaw with my thumbs. “But I am not in love with you and I never will be.”
“I don’t need for you to be in love with me.” Urgently, he takes fistfuls of my hair into his hands. “I love you enough that it doesn’t matter. We can be happy. Prosperous. It’s a foolishness that women now have to prove themselves, even if they fail, when they don’t have to.”
I drop my hands, smiling gently. He genuinely doesn’t understand, and nothing I say will make any difference. “You need to go, Cat.”
And to my surprise and dismay, he bends his head and gathers me into a bear hug. “No.”
I endure it for one minute, then push him away, and it’s only then that I hear the footsteps on the stairs. He’s still clinging to a fistful of my hair, and there might be tears in his eyes when my mother comes into the kitchen, carrying a flat of bedding plants. She halts, taking in the tableau. A slide show of emotions moves across her face—surprise, then dismay, then fury, and then something I can’t quite identify. She’s looking at Cat, not me.
And then she does look at me. Squarely. Her nostrils flare ever so slightly before she rights herself, almost visibly slipping into her cloak of blankness.
“I’m sorry,” she says smoothly. “Are we interrupting?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I say, scowling at him. “Cat was just leaving.”
“Hello, Lily,” he says. He, too, is a master of the cloak. His is debonair and charming. “You look wonderful,” he says, and means it. We all know he does. It is his gift, that he sees the best in all of us and gives it back to us like a shiny apple—all women, everywhere, and he genuinely admires each one. When I am with him, I forget the ten extra pounds I am carrying, forget the lines etching themselves into my face, and become as gloriously beautiful as a mermaid. Is that what my mother feels, too? If he is so devastating now, how much more was he at twenty-five, when he pursued her as if she were a queen to rule over his kingdom?
“Thank you,” she says coolly, putting the flowers on the table. “How are you?”
“Very well, thank you.”
I’ve never seen them in the same room together. Cat and my father are sworn enemies, so there would be few chances for Cat and my mother to cross paths. Looking at them—she so trim and well tended, looking much younger than her years, he so big and sturdy and beautiful—I think they must have been a stunning couple back in the day. What happened there? What made my mother choose my father?
My mother brushes her hands delicately, gives me a glance loaded with meaning. “Katie is on her way up with some dahlias. Would it cause any trouble if she came to my house for supper? She wants to help me plant some more, and I told her I’d make her a banana pudding.”
Katie comes into the room then, looking flushed and as happy as I’ve ever seen her. In the new clothes—clothes that actually fit her—she doesn’t look nearly so awkward. “We bought zillions of flowers!” she cries,