The Summer of Sunshine and Margot(49)

“You were barely a teenager when you went to live with your grandparents, weren’t you?”

“Yes. She took me to Australia that summer before boarding school. Winter for them, of course. We must have been gone six or eight weeks. She bought an old used car and we drove everywhere. My job was to constantly tell her ‘left, left’ so she stayed on the correct side of the road.”

“That’s right. They drive like the British, don’t they? I’m not sure I could do it.”

“It would be challenging,” he admitted. “But she did fine. When we got home, I packed up my things and flew to Switzerland to stay with my paternal grandparents.”

“She must have missed you.”

“I’m sure she did.”

But she let him go, Margot thought. Was it because she felt she didn’t have a choice or was it more that she knew it was the right thing for him?

“She loved me,” Alec said. “She was totally supportive of whatever I wanted. Once when I was eight or nine, she was dating a man I didn’t like and when I told her, she broke up with him. Just like that. I always felt a little guilty about it. What if he was the one and because of me she lost her chance at happiness?”

“If he’d been the great love of her life, don’t you think you would have sensed it and felt better about the guy? Plus, do you really believe there’s only one person for each of us?” she asked.

“No. I’m not sure I believe in ‘the one’ at all.”

“Then you couldn’t have ruined anything.”

“That’s very logical. Love doesn’t work that way.”

“I’m not sure either of us is an expert on the subject,” she said with a laugh.

He raised his wineglass. “You’re right about that. Tell me about when you were growing up.”

“Funny you should ask. I was just talking about my great-grandmother with Bianca. Francine raised Sunshine and me after our mother took off. By then she was in her early seventies and raising two kids was the last thing on her mind. Her charm and beauty pageant school was winding down and she was tired. I’ve always felt badly for her.”

“That she had to raise you two?”

Margot nodded. “First her daughter ran off, then her granddaughter. While neither Sunshine nor I made it to the Miss America pageant, at least we didn’t end up pregnant at eighteen. Progress, I suppose.”

“When did she shut down her school?”

“We were about fourteen. She’d always wanted to move to Las Vegas. We did that and lived in a double-wide trailer. We could see the lights of the strip at night. Francine constantly warned us about the dangers of gambling and fast-talking men. She worried.”

Margot wondered what Francine would think about them now. They’d broken the pattern of being unwed mothers but not the Baxter curse of loving the wrong man. Sunshine had her many and Margot had Dietrich. Maybe biology was destiny after all.

“Yet here you are, free of the evils of gambling, and not a fast-talking man in sight.”

Margot smiled. “Oh, I think she would see you as a bit of a danger.”

Alec looked so surprised Margot started laughing.

“What?” she asked. “You don’t see yourself as a threat to women everywhere?”

“Hardly. I’m too academic. My life is solitary. I don’t enjoy going out to nightclubs or parties. I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie in a theater.”

Personal perception was an interesting phenomenon, she thought. People got ideas of themselves stuck in their heads for reasons that had little to do with reality and everything to do with their emotional past.

“You’re looking at the wrong things,” she told him. “You’re successful, kind, good-looking, knowledgeable and, I suspect underneath the reserve, there’s a hidden depth only a very few see.” Which was her way of avoiding saying passion, because wouldn’t that be awkward.

“Is that how you see me?” he asked, sounding surprised.

“That’s how everyone sees you.” She raised a shoulder. “With the possible exception of the visiting scholars. I doubt they see anything but work.”

He looked at her for a long time before murmuring. “Very unexpected.”

“You’re welcome.”

He laughed. “Yes, thank you. Now when are you going to start exploring the root cellars? I want to be braced for the screams.”

“There aren’t going to be any bodies. I don’t believe monks are the hide-a-body type. But I’m still hoping for some kind of exciting treasure.”

“The ledger you found is fascinating. I’ve been through it. You’re right—the donkeys they raised were highly prized.”

“Don’t tell your mother. She’ll want you to start raising them.”

He groaned. “I’m sure she will. Probably as emotional support animals. Try getting one of those on a plane.”

Their conversation continued to flow easily, but Margot was aware of an undercurrent that hadn’t been there before. It was her own fault for saying what she had about him. Not that it wasn’t true, but somehow her words had shifted things between them.

What if Alec thought she was coming on to him? That would be... Well, she wasn’t sure what, but something. Not that he wasn’t great—he was. And not that she wouldn’t mind finding out if he kissed with the same intensity that he did everything else. Because a few hot kisses would go a long way to brightening her day. Only it wasn’t like that between them and she’d never really thought that they would... Not that she wasn’t interested, but it was...