White Lace and Promises

Maggie felt that a strong gust of wind would have blown her over. Mechanically, she allowed Angie to direct her through the back door and into the kitchen. Angie pulled out a chair at the table and Maggie sank into it, feeling more wretched than she had ever felt in her life. Tears were perilously close, and she shut her eyes in an effort to forestall them. Maggie could hear Angie scurrying around for a glass of water.

  She brought it to the table and sat across from Maggie. “Should I call the doctor? You’re so pale.”

  “No, I … I’m fine. I apologize for putting you to all this trouble.” Her wavering voice gained stability as she opened her dry eyes.

  A few awkward seconds passed before Angie spoke. “I’m pleased that Glenn married. He’s a good man.”

  Maggie nodded. Everything she had wanted to say had been set in her mind, but all her well-thought-out questions had vanished.

  “How long have you been married?” Angie broached the subject carefully.

  “Five weeks.” Holding the water glass gave Maggie something to do with her hands.

  “Glenn must have told you about me?”

  “No.” Maggie took a sip of water. The cool liquid helped relieve the parched feeling in her throat. “He won’t talk about you. He’s married to me, but he’s still in love with you.”

  A sad smile touched the expressive dark eyes as Angie straightened in the chair. “How well do you know Glenn?”

  “We grew up together,” Maggie said. “I … I thought I knew him, but I realize now that I don’t.”

  “Do you love him?” Angie asked, then offered Maggie a faint smile of apology. “Forgive me for even asking. You must. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

  “Yes, I love him.” Words felt inadequate to express her feelings for her husband. “But that love is hurting me because I don’t know how to help him forget you. He won’t talk about what happened.”

  “Of course he wouldn’t,” Angie said with a sweet, melodic laugh. “His pride’s at stake, and, as I recall, Glenn is a proud man.”

  “Very.”

  The dark eyes twinkled with encouragement. “First, let me assure you that Glenn isn’t in love with me.”

  Maggie opened her mouth to contradict her, but Angie cut her off by shaking her head.

  “He isn’t, not really,” Angie continued. “Oh, he may think he is, but I doubt that. For one thing, Glenn would never marry a woman without loving her. He holds his vows too sacred. He could have married me a hundred times after I first saw Simon again, but he wouldn’t. Glenn was wise enough to recognize that if we did marry I would always wonder about Simon. Glenn’s a gambler, and he gambled on my love. At the time, I don’t think I realized what it must have cost him to give me the freedom to choose between the two of them.”

  “You mean you would have married Glenn?”

  “At the drop of a hat,” Angie assured her. “Glenn Lambert was the best thing to come into my life for twelve years, and I knew it. I cared deeply for him, too, but that wasn’t good enough for Glenn. He wanted me to settle my past, and heal all the old wounds before we made a life together. It was Glenn who led me by the hand back to the most difficult days of my life. Glenn’s love gave me back Simon, and I’ll always be grateful to him for that. Both Simon and I will. We realize how dearly it cost Glenn to step aside so I could marry Simon.”

  Maggie grimaced at Angie’s affirmation of love for Glenn and briefly closed her eyes to the pain. So this was the sacrifice Angie had mentioned in the letter.

  “Knowing this, Maggie, you couldn’t possibly believe that Glenn would take his vows lightly.”

  She made it all sound so reasonable and sure, Maggie thought uncertainly. “But … but if he was so strongly convinced that you should settle your past, then why is he leaving his own open like a festering wound?”

  “Pride.” There wasn’t even a trace of hesitation in Angie’s voice. “I doubt that Glenn continues to have any deep feelings for me. What happened between us is a painful time in his life he’d prefer to forget. Be patient with him.”

  Maggie realized that she had rammed heads with Glenn’s pride when she’d asked him to tell her about Angie. His indomitable spirit had been challenged, and admitting any part of his pain to her went against the grain of his personality. Logically, knowing Glenn, it made sense.

  “Glenn deserves a woman who will give him all the love he craves,” Angie continued. “I could never have loved him like that. But he’s found what he needs in you. Be good to him, Maggie, he needs you.”

  They talked nonstop for two hours, sometimes laughing, other times crying. Angie told Maggie of her own love story with Simon and their hopes and dreams for the child she carried. When it came time for Maggie to leave, Angie followed her to the airport and hugged her before she boarded her flight.

  “You’re a special lady, Maggie Lambert,” Angie stated with conviction. “I’m confident Glenn realizes that. If he doesn’t, then he’s not the same man I remember.”

  Impulsively, Maggie hugged Angie back. “I’ll write once we’ve settled. Let me know when you have the baby.”

  “I will. Take care now, you hear?”

  “Thank you, Angie, thank you so much. For everything.”

  Maggie’s throat filled with emotion. There were so many things she wanted to say. Glenn had given Angie her Simon, and in return Maggie now had Glenn. She could leave now and there would no longer be any doubts to plague her. Angie would always be someone special in Glenn’s life, and Maggie wouldn’t begrudge him that. She would leave him with his memories intact, and never mention her name. Angie was no longer a threat to their happiness. Maggie understood the past and was content to leave it undisturbed.

  The flight from Groves Point to Atlanta and the connection from Atlanta to San Francisco went surprisingly well. Although before Maggie would have worried that each mile took her farther from Glenn, she didn’t view the trip in those terms anymore. She was in love with her husband, and the minute she touched down in San Francisco she planned to let him know her feelings.

  A smile beamed from her contented face when she landed in the city of her birth. She took a taxi directly to the beach house, set her bags in the entryway, and headed for the kitchen and the phone. She had to talk to Glenn; she burned with the need to tell him of her love. In some ways she was concerned. There was a better time and place, but she couldn’t wait a second more.

  His phone rang, and she glanced at the clock. With the time difference between the East and the West Coast, it was well after midnight in Charleston. Discouraged, she fingered the opening of her silk blouse, wondering if she should hang it up and wait until morning.

  Glenn answered on the second ring. “Maggie?” The anger in his voice was like a bucket of cold water dumped over her head, sobering her instantly. Somehow, he had found out that she’d gone to Groves Point and talked to Angie.

  “Yes,” she returned meekly.

  “Where the hell have you been? I’ve been half out of my mind worrying about you. Your flight landed four hours ago. Why did you have to wait so long to call me? You must have known I was waiting to hear from you.” The anger in his voice had lessened, diluted with relief from his worries.

  Maggie sagged with relief onto the bar stool positioned by the phone. He didn’t know. “To be honest, I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to phone or not.”

  “Not phone?” He sounded shocked. “All I can say is that it’s a good thing you did.” His voice grew loud and slightly husky. “It’s like a tomb around here without you.”

  Maggie tried to suppress the happiness that made her want to laugh. He missed her. He was miserable without her and she hadn’t even been away twenty-four hours.

  “Whose idea was it for you to leave early, anyway?”

  “Mine,” she admitted ruefully. “But who agreed and said I should?”

  “A fool, that’s who. Believe me, it won’t happen again. We belong together, Maggie.” He made the concession willingly.

  Fr
om the moment she had left that morning, he’d been filled with regrets. He should never have let her go, he had realized. He’d tried phoning an hour after her plane touched ground in California. At first it didn’t bother him that she didn’t answer her cell and when he tried the house, she didn’t pick up there either. He figured she’d probably gone to Denny’s, Glenn assured himself earlier. Later, when he hadn’t been able to get hold of her, Glenn assumed she had unplugged the phone and taken a nap. After a time his worry had grown to alarm, and from alarm to near panic. If she hadn’t called him when she did—he hadn’t been teasing—he would well have gone stir crazy. His feelings were unreasonable, Glenn knew that. His reaction was probably part of his lingering fear that he’d lose Maggie, he rationalized. But there was no denying it: the past few hours had been miserable.

  Glenn said they belonged together with such meaning that it took a moment before Maggie could speak. “Glenn,” she finally whispered, surprised at how low her voice dropped. “There’s something you should know, something I should have told you long before now.”

  “Yes?” His voice didn’t sound any more confident than her own.

  “I love you, Glenn. I don’t know when it happened, I can’t put a time to it. But it’s true. It probably embarrasses you to have me tell you like this, there are better times and places—”

  “Maggie.” He interrupted her with a gentle laugh. “You don’t need to tell me that, I already know.”

  “You know?” All these weeks she’d kept her emotions bottled up inside, afraid to reveal how she felt—and he’d known!

  “Maggie, it was all too obvious. You’re an artist, remember? You don’t do a good job of hiding your emotions.”

  “I see.” She swallowed down the bitter disappointment. Although eager to tell him of her feelings, she had wondered how he’d react. In her mind, she had pictured a wildly romantic scene in which he’d tenderly admit his own feelings. Instead, Glenn acted as if she were discussing the weather.

  “Well, listen, it’s late here, too, I think I’ll go to bed.” She tried to make her voice light and airy, but a soft sob escaped and she bit into her lower lip to hold back another.

  “Maggie, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Maybe. There’s lots to do, and—”

  “Maggie, stop. You’re crying. You never cry. I want to know why. What did I say?”

  The insensitive boor, she silently fumed—if he couldn’t figure it out, she wasn’t going to tell him. “Nothing,” she choked out in reply. “It doesn’t matter. Okay?”

  “No, it’s not all right. Tell me what’s wrong.”

  Maggie pretended she didn’t hear. “I’ll phone tomorrow night.”

  “Maggie,” he shouted. “Either you tell me what’s wrong or I’m going to become violent.”

  “Nothing’s wrong.” Her heart was breaking. She’d just told her husband she loved him for the first time, and he’d practically yawned in her face.

  “Listen, we’re both tired. I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” she finished. Before he could argue, she gently replaced the receiver. The phone rang again almost immediately, and Maggie simply unplugged it, refusing to talk to Glenn again that night. For a full five minutes she didn’t move. She had left Atlanta with such high expectations, confident that she could create a wonderful life with Glenn. There was enough love in her heart to build any bridge necessary in their marriage. A half hour after landing in San Francisco, she was miserable and in tears.

  Maggie slept late, waking around eleven the next morning. She felt restless and desolate. Early that afternoon, she forced herself to dress and deal with her mail. By evening her desk was cleared and she phoned Denny. She was half-tempted to paint, but realized it would be useless with her mind in turmoil. Glenn would be furious with her for disconnecting the phone, and she had yet to deal with him. He might not have appreciated her actions, but it was better than saying things she was sure to regret later.

  By early evening she had worked up her courage enough to dial his number. When he didn’t answer, she wasn’t concerned. He was probably at the health club, she thought. An hour later she tried phoning again. By ten, Pacific Coast time, she was feeling discouraged. Where was he? She toyed with the idea of phoning his family and casually inquiring, but she didn’t want to alarm them.

  A noise in the front of the house alerted her to the fact that someone was at the door. She left her office and was halfway into the living room when she discovered Glenn standing in the entryway, setting his suitcases on the floor.

  He straightened just in time to see her. Time went still as he covered the short space between them and reached for her, crushing her in his arms. “You crazy fool. If you’d given me half a chance I would have told you how much I love you.”

  “You love me?”

  “Yes,” he whispered into her hair.

  With a smothered moan of delight, Maggie twined her arms around his neck and was lifted off the floor as his mouth came down hungrily on hers.

  Chapter Ten

  “Why didn’t you say something earlier?” Maggie cried, and covered Glenn’s face with eager kisses, locking her arms around his neck.

  “Why didn’t you?” She was lifted half off the ground so that their gazes were level, his arms wrapped around her waist.

  Maggie could hardly believe he was with her, and she stared at him in silent wonder, still afraid it could all be part of some fanciful dream. She couldn’t very well admit that it had been her conversation with Angie that had convinced her that Glenn needed to know what was in her heart. The time had come to quit playing games with each other. The shock had come when he’d already known how she felt. Well, what did she expect? She’d never been good at disguising her feelings, and something as important as love shouldn’t be concealed.

  “I take it you’re pleased to see me?”

  Happiness sparkled from her eyes as she raised her hands and lovingly traced the contours of his face. “Very.”

  His hold on her tightened. He hadn’t slept in thirty hours. The first ten of those hours had been spent in complete frustration. He had tried countless times to get her to answer the cell until he realized she must have turned it off. The only thing that made sense was that she’d turned it off for the flight and then forgot to turn it back on, which was why he’d tried the house countless times. He needed to talk to her; to explain his reaction to her confession of loving him. It wasn’t a surprise. He’d known almost from the first even if she hadn’t verbalized her feelings. He’d been at a total loss to understand why she’d resorted to tears. He relived every word of their conversation and as far as he could see she was behaving like a lunatic. She announced she loved him and immediately shocked him by breaking into sobs. Maggie wasn’t a crier. Several times in the first weeks of their marriage he would have expected a lot more than tears from her. He’d certainly given her enough reason. But Maggie had proudly held up her head, unwilling to relinquish a whit of her pride.

  With startling clarity it had come to him in the early-morning hours. Maggie had expected him to declare his own love. What an idiot he’d been. Of course he loved her. He didn’t know why she could ever question it. He had realized he felt something profound for Maggie the minute she had walked down the aisle at Steve and Janelle’s wedding. She’d been vulnerable, proud, and so lovely that Glenn went weak with the memory. He had originally assumed that his friends’ wedding followed the lowest point of his life, but one look at Maggie and he’d nearly been blown over. She’d lived next door to him for most of his life and he’d blithely gone on his way not recognizing what was before his own eyes.

  Maggie shared his name and his devotion, and, God willing, later she would bear his children. How could she possibly think he didn’t love her? Just as amazing was the knowledge that he’d never told her. Glenn was astonished at his own stupidity. He would phone her as soon as she would talk to him, he had decided, and never again in her life would he give he
r reason to doubt.

  In theory, Glenn felt, his plan sounded reasonable, but as the hours fled, and a rosy dawn dappled the horizon, he began to worry. In her frame of mind, Maggie might consider doing something stupid.

  The first thing the following morning, Glenn decided not to jeopardize this marriage more than he had already. He would fly to Maggie on the first plane he could catch. When he tried phoning several times, and there wasn’t any answer, he fretted all the more. For caring as much as he did he’d done a good job of messing things up.

  Now that he was looking at her face flushed with a brilliant happiness, Glenn realized he’d done the right thing.

  “Do you have to go back?”

  “I probably should, but I won’t.” Her smile was solidly in place, he noticed. He adored that smile. “I don’t deserve you, Maggie.”

  “I know.”

  Tipping back her head she laughed, and his heart was warmed by the sound. Maggie made his heart sing. Being around her was like lying on a sunny beach on a glorious day and soaking up energy. She was all warmth and vitality, both springtime and Christmas, and he couldn’t imagine his life without her. Twisting her around in his embrace, he supported her with an arm under her legs and carried her down the long hall that led to the master bedroom.

  “My dear Mr. Lambert, just where are you taking me?”

  “Can’t you guess?”

  “Oh yes,” she said, and her lips brushed his, enjoying the instant reaction she felt from him when her tongue made lazy, wet circles outlining his mouth.

  “Maggie,” he groaned. “You’re going to pay for that.”

  “I’m looking forward to it. Very forward.”

  She couldn’t undress fast enough. When Maggie’s fingers fumbled with the buttons of her blouse in her eagerness, Glenn stopped her, placing her hand aside. Slowly, provocatively, he unfastened each one. As the new area of her skin was exposed, Glenn’s finger lovingly trailed over the perfection until he finally slipped the smooth material of her blouse from her shoulders and down her arms, letting it fall to the carpet.