One Wish (Thunder Point #7)(82)

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there were daughters for you?” she said. “You will do so much better with them than I did.”

“I hope there are daughters and I hope I can love them as much,” she said, even though for so many years she had found fault with her mother’s form of affection.

“We got to the top, Izzy,” she said.

“Yes, Mother. Thank you for all you did.”

“No, Izzy. Thank you for doing it for me.”

Grace never thought she’d hear that! “We were a good team when it came to winning,” she said. She made a vow. When she had children, she wasn’t going to put the burden of her desires on them.

Every day exhausted her. She would see Troy on and off through the days. He poked around the house and neighborhood, went down to the wharf a couple of times and kept himself busy. He made friends with the maintenance men, pestered Gretchen in the kitchen, got lost in the library and spent some time on his laptop. She’d have dinner with him in the kitchen, fall into bed with him at night and sometimes she cried. She was losing the mother she had always loved, tried so hard to please and never really known.

Finally Tuesday came and it was time to go back to Thunder Point. She was so relieved, but frantic at the leaving. Virginia would stay, help get her mother to Thunder Point when the time came. Mikhail was planning on coming to Thunder Point, as well. Then Virginia would return to San Francisco. The housekeeper would remain to keep the house in order and in good repair until it was time to close it up. All the account information and household data was uploaded to accessible accounts so they were easy for Grace to oversee. She could call the accounting firm or lawyers whenever there was a question or request. The neighborhood and the house had private security; the contents had been inventoried, and her mother was in good hands with Virginia running herd on her health care providers.

The plane that Virginia arranged for Troy and Grace wasn’t a large plush jet, but rather a small Lear that returned them to Thunder Point in no time at all.

Grace wanted to tell him about the baby. Funny, in her mind it had gone from a positive pregnancy test to a baby. Oh, she was falling in love with the baby already.

But she was so tired after four days of getting things settled, she just fell asleep on the plane. They had a quick bite to eat on the way home from the airport then Troy helped her get her suitcase up to her little apartment. “I have to go home, babe,” he said. “I need to get ready for work in the morning. You going to be all right?”

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “Thank you for coming with me. Thank you for everything you did.”

“I didn’t do much. You handled it all. I’ll talk to you after work tomorrow.”

Nineteen

Troy couldn’t count the number of times Grace had said “You don’t understand” when she was telling him about her childhood, her life as a competitive figure skater, her parents. Likewise, he couldn’t imagine how many times he had replied, “Of course I do, Grace.” Now, he realized, he really hadn’t. Grace had come from a world so alien to him he wondered if he would ever understand it.

Troy had never been around people with the kind of money it took to rent a jet or live in a mansion with a complete staff to take care of it. But of course there had to be a staff—no one could take care of something that big alone. The closest he’d ever come to that kind of wealth was knowing a guy who had a cousin who was a pro football player and bought himself a three-million-dollar house and a fast car. He couldn’t even remember what kind of car because of course he’d never seen it. Troy didn’t even read about rich people. He read about rafting, climbing, diving. He was scrimping to make his Jeep payments. Grace could probably pay it off out of her allowance.

Did Grace get an allowance?

He left Grace at her place and went home to his apartment, which was very quiet. It was also very lonely. He had only rarely spent a night alone since he started sleeping with Grace and he wasn’t thrilled about being alone tonight, either. Troy had never lived with a woman and he still didn’t, not officially at any rate. He and Grace each had their own place. Except he checked in with Grace at least three times a day and saw her when they were both off work. And stayed the night more often than not.

But right now he needed a little space and time to think. He thought he knew her inside and out, but after four days in San Francisco he wondered if he knew her at all. He was more than a little intimidated by the magnitude of her wealth. It made him feel like a failure by comparison. Intellectually he knew that wasn’t the case, but somewhere inside, he had that sinking feeling of not being good enough.

The next day, during his free period, he went looking for Iris, whom he considered his closest friend. She was a counselor and he needed counseling. There was a part of him that hoped she’d be busy with a student, because he wasn’t sure how he was going to put into words what he was thinking.

“Got a minute?” he asked, standing in her doorway.

“Sure,” she said with a smile. “Want to sit?”

“Thanks,” he said, sitting in front of her desk. But then he didn’t say anything.

“Troy? Problems with a student?”

He shook his head. “Listen, I don’t know how to say this, how to explain this, so if I sound like an idiot...”

“Just spit it out. We can rake through the idiocy afterward.”