White Ivy(104)

“That’s impossible.”

“How can you be so sure?”

His grip tightened around her waist. “Look at the way he treats you. He still thinks you’re that little girl who liked him back in middle school. You probably trailed after him trying to tie his shoelaces. That’s what he wants from you—a wife to tie his shoelaces for the rest of his life.” He turned her head with one hand until she was looking at him. “Maybe I was harsh when I said all those things last summer at the beach house. But you needed to hear it. The Speyers—they’re frauds.” Ivy began to scoff, but Roux said emphatically, “Mark my words, no one in that family is honest. I’ve seen con artists more honest than they are. Gideon looks like he’s about to have a hernia anytime anyone asks him a personal question. And Ted and Poppy? They’re always so peppy and nervous… No, it’s not charm, Ivy, it’s some kind of perverse cover-up. They’re hiding something.”

“And Sylvia? What’s she hiding?”

“Sylvia was the worst of them. She never lifted a finger for anything. She expected me to pay for all her vacations, her plane tickets, book her hotels and villas. As if getting things handed to her was her birthright. She’s gotten by her entire life on this charm you worship—oh, she was charming when she wanted to be—but she was also spoiled and crazy.” He withdrew one arm to pick up the flask. “Why do women do that?”

“Do what?”

“That push-and-pull thing. It’s mad. One day she’s hurt that I didn’t tell her about my childhood in Romania, the next day she’s telling me that I need to assimilate into America. That I had a chip on my shoulder.” He shuddered. “I always thought she was cheating on me, but I couldn’t prove it.”

“Did you see her…?”

“No, it was just a hunch. All those musicians and actors and writers—I couldn’t tell if they were actually her friends or people she’d picked up on the street. Sometimes I thought Sylvia was conning me.”

“For what?”

Roux shrugged. “I don’t know. Money. It’s always about money in the end.”

“But say Gideon did forgive me,” Ivy repeated, shivering with the wind. “What would you do?”

“We don’t live in that kind of world,” he said coldly. He handed her the flask but she shook her head. “If we did,” he continued, “I wouldn’t have had to corner you like this. We’d be together already. Instead of on this frozen mountain, we’d be in my bed. Soaking in the tub. You’d be redecorating my apartment.”

Ivy saw it just as he described. The bed. The tub. The fresh start. Children. Asia. The ease she’d felt with him their first night together, on Poppy’s four-poster bed in Cattahasset, returned to her now, singing its haunting, irresistible tune.

“Tell me the truth,” he said, guiding her chin up to meet his eyes. “Have you told him yet? Because if you haven’t, this grandiose gesture isn’t going to change my mind.”

“I told him about us,” she said. “We broke up.”

He flinched. “I don’t believe you.”

“I love you.” She smiled gently, the gentleness of a mother.

Roux lowered his head. He kissed the hollow of her neck where the skin jumped with her heartbeat. She understood by the aching pain in her throat and her dry, hot eyes that her words were not a lie. He was Roux, and she was Ivy. Who else in the entire world would ever understand what that meant?

She thought he, too, might be overcome by emotion, but when he looked up, she realized the slight tremors she felt from his body were laughter. His eyes were the clear glittering gray of a frozen lake in which drops of dew hung in eternal suspended beauty; she felt she could see down the depths of a subterranean world, just by peering at those hard, gray eyes.

“Let’s get going,” he said, jumping to his feet.

She didn’t move. Something like grief was clawing at her temples. “Are we sure we want to go on? The temperature’s dropping. And it’s supposed to snow soon.”

“What are you talking about? We came all this way.”

“Let’s just go back, Roux. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“You lazy cat.” He pulled her up. “I’m getting my second wind. Come on, I’ll carry the bag.” He began to whistle as he brushed snow off his pants.

“Please let’s go back!”

He broke off in astonishment. Staring at her stiff, frightened face, he said gently, “It was so important to you earlier that we see your special spot. I’ve never believed in omens, but I think we were meant to be here today. I can’t explain it. I want to be here with you. So we’ll always remember today. Do you understand?”

She could only nod, exhausted by her outbreak to the point of dumbness. He squeezed her hand.

Ivy slowly shook out their picnic blanket and folded everything back in her backpack. It was just as Roux said, she told herself. They were only going to see her special spot. Reality was how you framed it. Gideon had taught her that. “We’re going to be climbing down,” she said, leading him to the edge of the rock. “Watch your step.”



* * *




ALL HER LIFE, she had sought something she couldn’t name. Love? Wealth? Beauty? But none of those things were exactly right. What she sought was peace. The peace of having something no one could take away from you. Had she ever been at peace for a single minute in her life? She was tired of the struggle to achieve that innocent simplicity she admired in old-fashioned people like the Speyers, or the effortless, entitled elegance of Sunrin, traits that appeared so natural in others but which she could only emulate through cunning calculation. She was tired of trying. More than anything, she longed to rest.