Ice Blue - Anne Stuart [115]
Tomorrow she’d get on the Internet, book herself a flight back home and put all this behind her.
Because he wasn’t coming. She hadn’t even realized she’d been waiting for him, watching the winter-dead garden, her fingers busy wrapping yarn around needles.
Genevieve was right, it was a beautiful day, unseasonably warm. She had set a table out in the awakening garden, dripping with country fabrics and beautiful old china, and Summer liked her too much to resent playing dress-up. The pale blue flowered dress she’d borrowed was the very essence of a “frock,” flowing, feminine, discreetly ruffled and laced. She even let her hair loose around her shoulders, deciding she, too, could be a British debutante from the 1930s, or whatever fantasy Genevieve was living.
When Summer walked out into the warm air of the garden, she could see that Jilly had been willing to play as well, though there was a certain goth streak to the black sash against the pale lavender flowers of her dress, and her spiky hair was tipped with the same lavender color. She was also wearing her Doc Martens, but she was bubbling and happy, and for a short while that was all that mattered.
Coffee for breakfast, Hu Kwa for afternoon tea. Summer would have preferred something Japanese, she thought, and then mentally slapped herself as she sank into one of the delicate chairs, her knitting in her lap. She really had to get home.
Peter was the first to arrive. He was barely limping by now, and Summer had refrained from asking what had happened to him. She knew enough from Taka to know how dangerous a profession they had, but she didn’t want to think about that.
Peter leaned down and kissed Genevieve’s cheek, and she looked up at him with such adoration that Summer felt her stomach clench. Not blinding adoration, but a wise, knowing look, as if she’d gazed into the heart of darkness and accepted what was there.
Could Summer do the same? She wasn’t going to be given the chance, she thought, concentrating on the complicated pattern between her fingers.
“Isobel will be along soon,” Peter said easily, accepting a cup of tea from his wife. “She had to make a couple of stops along the way.”
“I can put some more water on,” Genevieve said.
“That’s all right—you know she likes her tea strong enough to strip wallpaper, and you can just microwave it.”
“Blasphemy!” Genevieve said. She was facing the drive, and her eyes narrowed suddenly. “Help me in the kitchen!” she demanded.
“Now? I just got here,” he protested.
“Now,” she said. “You, too, Jilly. I need some help with the scones.”
Jilly was sitting cross-legged in a chair, her textbook in her lap, and she looked up, blinking. “There are plenty.”
“I need your help, Jilly,” Genevieve said in her most lawyerly voice, and the girl suddenly emerged from her physics-induced stupor and rose.
“Sorry,” she said. “Of course. We’ll be right back.”
“I can help, too…” Summer began, but all three of them said no in unison.
Shit. Was it her birthday? she thought, when they’d disappeared into the house. They had some jolly little surprise planned for her, and she wasn’t in the mood. They’d all been watching her for the last few weeks, as if they were expecting her to explode, but she’d gone through her daily life with complete calm; it was only when she was alone in her room that she lay dry-eyed, miserable, sleepless. That she faced the fact that she was being torn apart.
Post-traumatic stress syndrome, she thought again. There was probably some kind of drug for her condition, and L.A. was the place to find any kind of prescription pill you needed. Just pop something twice a day and she’d forget all about him.
No, her birthday was in May. They couldn’t be planning any kind of surprise celebration. She could only hope and pray that Lianne hadn’t returned to provide some