The Summer of Sunshine and Margot(64)

He wanted to say more—he wanted to tell her that he needed her in his house, only that wasn’t true. Yes, he liked Margot but need? That was completely unreasonable.

“My boss thinks I should stick it out,” Margot admitted. “He says it will be good for me, that my plan is sound and all Bianca’s reports to the office have been excellent.”

“There. You have proof you’re doing well.”

“Until today. And the whole soup thing.”

She shifted so her bare feet were flat on the floor. Until that moment he hadn’t realized she wasn’t wearing shoes, but now that he’d seen her bare toes, he couldn’t seem to look at anything else.

Her toes? He didn’t have a foot fetish. It wasn’t that her feet were especially erotic, it was that they were bare. There was something vulnerable about that, something that made him want to hold her and tell her everything would be all right. None of which made sense. What if what his mother had was contagious?

“There’s something in her past,” Margot said firmly.

For a second Alec thought he’d spoken his thoughts out loud, but then he realized Margot was talking about something else.

“Behavior is all on a spectrum,” she continued. “Including being impetuous and not caring about what other people think. Most of the time your mother is well in the middle range. What you and I think of as normal. But every now and then she becomes outrageous. From what I’ve observed, some of that is by design, but some isn’t.”

“We’re back to an incident from her past.”

Margot nodded. “You really have no idea what it is?”

“I really have no idea. I would tell you if I knew something but wasn’t comfortable discussing it.”

She smiled. “I knew you were going to say that. And you’re her only family?”

He nodded. “She never knew her father—she’s an only child, as was her mother, who has since passed away.”

“So we have a mystery and absolutely no way to solve it,” Margot said with a sigh. “Not unless we can convince her to tell us what it is.”

“Unless you can convince her.”

She grinned. “Not willing to delve deeply into your mother’s psychological past?”

“I’d rather face lions.”

“Not even for the key to Indus script?”

He considered her words. “No, not even for that.”

“Wow. She is powerful.”

“You have no idea.”

  Sunshine finished squeezing limes into a measuring cup. She had tequila, she had Cointreau, she had ice, she had a glass and absolutely nothing planned for the evening. She was going to put the crappy week behind her, get drunk, then start fresh in the morning. Come dawn, or maybe eight-thirty, she would rise refreshed, hopeful and ready to figure out how to graph linear equations. Barring that, she would check out the math lab on campus. She was not going to be undone by Math 131. She was going to excel—or at the very least, pass.

She poured the ingredients into the Vitamix, added ice, put on the lid and flipped the sucker on. It leaped to life with the power of a jet engine and before she could say Why, yes, I am sulking, she had margaritas. She turned off the machine.

“Is this a party for one, or can anyone join?”

The voice came from behind her. She shrieked and jumped, then spun around to see Declan standing in the entrance to the kitchen. She pressed a hand to her chest, as if she could still her thundering heart.

“I thought you were out with Connor,” she said breathlessly. “Jeez, don’t sneak up on me.”

“Sorry. Connor’s staying over at Elijah’s tonight. I just got back from dropping off his stuff. They were having a lot of fun and Phoebe said she didn’t mind, so here I am. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I know. It’s okay.”

She reached for another glass. “Just so you know, I’m feeling especially pouty tonight. If you hang out with me, I’ll whine and be unreasonable.”

“I think I can handle it.”

She ran a wedge of lime around the rim of both glasses, dipped them in salt, then poured in the slushy mixture. She put the leftovers in the refrigerator—not that she expected them to have to last long. It was definitely a two-margarita kind of night.

Together they carried their drinks out to the patio and took seats in two of the lounge chairs. The late afternoon temperature was a balmy seventy-two degrees and the sun had headed west but was still visible. Sunshine kicked off her shoes and put her bare feet on the ottoman by her comfy chair. Maybe she would just sit here forever. Later, when she’d decomposed, Declan could bury her bones in the garden.

She smiled, thinking there were a lot of steps between right now and being nothing but bones. For one thing, she was going to have to pee in a while.

“What’s so funny?” he asked, stretching out in the chair next to hers.

“Nothing you want to hear.”

“Okay, then why are you pissy?”

“I said pouty, but pissy works.” She sipped her drink. “I went to a TA session a couple of days ago. The guy was a total jerk. He talked down to everyone, was totally demeaning and then had the balls to practically ask me for sex.”

Declan put his feet on the floor. “Did you report him? I worked with the college on several projects and they’re supportive of the students. They would not tolerate that kind of behavior. I can get you the name of someone in administration.”