She could see that their future would have some rough patches they’d have to wade through as well as all the wonderful moments. Today they were taking a leap of faith, in each other, in the future.
Risk. That’s what it came down to. What was love but a risk? Risking your heart, and your happiness, maybe even sometimes your sense of self. She understood that Iris’s fears were nothing more than an expression of how deeply she was risking her heart and her happiness. But, if you could ever calculate a risk, Marguerite believed with all her heart that Geoff was a very good risk where Iris was concerned.
While she was watching, Alexei emerged.
He looked so beautiful her breath caught.Riskmight not be the most terrifying word in her vocabulary. Perhapstrustwas the word she had trouble with. She didn’t want to name the sensation she was feeling but the truth was she did recognize this feeling. It was love.
She had expected love to be sunny days and roses in bloom, laughing and simultaneous orgasms. But she was beginning to realize that love was so much more. It was feeling so deeply connected to another person that she felt his presence when he stepped out of the patio doors. It was wanting him to be happy, even if she wasn’t the person who could make him happy. It was believing in him. Believing he could be anything and do anything and, strangely, seeing that when he looked at her he felt the same way.
It was also the pain of knowing that there were no guarantees. On some level she had to trust not only what she was feeling but that Alexei was a man who could be trusted. Trusted with her heart.
“I think you two need to kiss and make up,” Rose said before gliding away, the only woman Marguerite knew who could wear Manolo Blahniks across a lumpy grass field and look as though she were strutting down a catwalk.
Alexei seemed to be looking for someone. She watched his gaze skim over Daphne, standing with her hand in Jack’s, chatting with some of their neighbors. She saw him pause and watch Iris and Geoff for a second, witnessed her sister raise her right hand, the one that wasn’t currently holding a glass of sparkling water and give him the thumbs up sign. He nodded briefly in response and she knew that he was accepting praise on a job well done, one food professional to another. But his steps didn’t veer towards any of those groups of people.
And then he turned and saw her standing there watching him. It would’ve been so easy for her to avert her gaze, walk inside the house, join herself onto one of the other groups scattered around the lawn in happy clumps like recently opened petunias. But she did none of those things. When their gazes connected she didn’t drop hers. And she didn’t move. For one timeless moment they stood staring at each other. As their gazes connected she felt the sizzle not only of attraction but something deeper and stronger, and then he strode purposely forward to where she was standing.
But Marguerite wasn’t the only woman who’d been watching Alexei. One of Geoff’s fellow teachers, a very attractive and very single math teacher who looked as though she’d been dipping freely into the punchbowl tottered across the lawn and threw an arm around his waist. While Marguerite watched, the woman leaned up and whispered in his ear. She was tempted to go and rescue him, then realized he’d been handling incidents like this for a long time, when he dexterously removed himself from her arms, said something Marguerite couldn’t hear, and gave the woman a hint of a brotherly grin.
The sexy math teacher watched him for a moment, then shrugged, and walked toward James, who was probably the second best looking single man at the wedding.
Alexei pulled up in front of her and for a second just looked at her face. She felt a pulse begin to race and something that felt like dancing butterflies across the skin of her chest. He didn’t speak for moment so she began.
“The catering was perfect,” she said.
“Thanks.” He gazed down at her somewhat ruefully. “Aren’t you going to bust my balls for that woman talking to me?”
She opened her eyes wide. “Talking to you? She was so close to you there are drool marks on your shoulder.”
“You don’t sound mad.” But he looked at her somewhat warily as though he wasn’t quite sure.
She sighed. “I owe you an apology.” It was so hard to say these words, but everything was so clear to her right now that she wanted to share her newfound knowledge with him. “When I saw you kissing Melissa — well, let’s just say, it took me back to a time in my life when I was deeply betrayed by someone I loved and trusted. I kind of freaked out.”
His eyebrows rose. “Kind of freaked out?”
“Maybe even overreacted,” she admitted. “I’m sorry. Obviously, you’ve worked together a long time and if you wanted to be with her, you’d be with her. I should have listened.”
His eyes began to dance. “If I wanted to be with Melissa, I’d need a sex change. She’d been dumped and needed a shoulder. I swear it on my mother’s Moussaka. Melissa’s in the kitchen if you want to go in and ask her.”
She shook her head. “That’s okay. I believe you. And I am really happy she’s gay. It will make it easier for me knowing you work so closely with her.”
He put his head to one side considering her, his hands jammed into his pockets. “So, you’re saying that the only women I can talk to are lesbians?” He seemed to consider the possibility. “Or presumably blood relations. You know that could get in the way of my business.”
She nodded. “I can see that could be a problem.” It was difficult to put her heart out there on a silver platter for him to choose or not choose but she understood that was what she had to do. She’d been wrong and she’d hurt him and she needed to make it right. She hadn’t known Melissa was gay, but today, somehow she’d gained enough perspective to see that she’d rushed to make assumptions about Alexei that weren’t true. He was a better man than Tim and she’d known it.
So she sucked in a breath and tried to suck up all the courage she could from the land she loved so much and all the rooted plants she’d helped put here, all the strength and stability she could draw from the soil where she had grown up and been happy for so many years. She said, “I have trust issues. And I understand they are my own problem and I need to work on them. So, yes, it’s always going to be hard for me when women drape themselves on you and throw themselves at you and offer themselves to you and try to seduce you.”
“You know I don’t ask for any of that,” he said urgently. “It's a curse.”
She tried to keep a straight face. “Okay. A curse.”
As she gazed into his eyes she could see how much that had to be true and how hard it must be for him. She said, “I know. And I need to trust you more.”
“You need to rescue me. If you see me trapped in the grip of some woman, you need to rescue me.”
No way she could keep the grin off her face. “Okay.”
Then, because he was so adorable and she loved him so much, she said, “I’ll make sure you have a wedding ring so big and bright that no woman will be able to ignore it.” As she heard the words echo around her she slapped a hand over her mouth. “I mean, that’s not what I meant. Words came out of my mouth that I don’t even remember forming in my head.”
