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The only thing he knew how to do was love her. It simply wasn’t enough.
“You don’t hate your mother.” Winston stepped closer, close enough that she had to tilt her head up to meet his eyes. “You’re afraid of what might happen because you love her.”
Tears welled again in Beatrice’s eyes. She swiped at them impatiently. “Thanks for the wisdom, Captain Obvious.”
“Bea!” someone called from the front. “You’ve got a customer.”
“Ten seconds!” she called back. To him, she said, “I’ve got to go.”
Winston put his hand on her arm. “Being afraid of what might happen to someone you love is just part of love. I’m afraid of what might happen to you every time you cross the street. I’m afraid whatever you’ve done to your arm might get infected.”
“I did it clean.”
“Sure. And your mom will climb safely, but that’s not the point.”
She looked away and set her mouth in a perfectly Rosemary shape of impervious indifference. “I’ve got to go.”
It seemed to him, then, with his tired and emotional daughter ready to walk away from him and his tired and emotional lover in the other room—with his brother and Cath here to see him and build on their fragile accord—with Allie and her sister together rebuilding a foundation of trust after drifting dangerously far apart—that love had such incredible power to ruin people.
He hoped that Rosemary would return safely from her climbing expedition, and that she and Bea would find the ease in their relationship they’d had before the divorce. He hoped that love would give Allie what she’d come to New York to find—her mother, her sister, her family back. But he couldn’t promise it would. Allie would get some of what she wanted and some of what she didn’t want. That was how life worked.
The girl standing in front of him, biting her lip, coltish and restless, wasn’t ready to hear any of that. Not from him.
Instead, he simply told her what to do. “When your shift is over, I want you to call Jean and have him take you to the apartment. Sleep on the pullout sofa, with Nev and Cath nearby, and if you can’t sleep, rest your eyes. And when your mind starts telling you to worry about your mum, I want you to think instead about what an excellent mum she’s been to you, your whole life, and to make a list of all the ways she’s taken care of you. And then tomorrow, first thing, I want you to phone her.”
“Bea!” her coworker called.
“Coming,” she called back.
She glanced at him. Recrossed her arms. “I’ll talk to you later,” she said, and walked away.
Winston watched her go, thinking of the quiet gray interior of the car that took him to the office in London.
Thinking about what his world would look like in a few months without his daughter’s rainbow hair or Allie’s extraordinary outfits to give it color.
Chapter 19
The night was still hot when they climbed out of the Town Car, but the air in Winston’s apartment was almost too cold, making Allie aware of the full day’s worth of grime and dried sweat on her skin and under her arms.
Winston draped his coat over a chair and collapsed onto the couch with an audible huff. He flipped on a lamp, then began his ritual removal of cuff links, crossing them on the side table before rolling up his sleeves.
Allie’s throat tightened.
He was already so familiar, and so dear.
“I think I might grab a shower.”
“Have at it. Do you need anything?” His phone chimed and he glanced at the screen, then swiped it.
“Everything okay?”
“Yes, it’s only Beatrice letting me know she’s settled in at the apartment.”
“You did good with her tonight,” Allie said. Winston and his daughter. Winston and his brother and his brother’s partner, who she liked very much, and her sister, and Winston’s assistant, and that coffee shop, so many people trying to help her, people who felt a little bit like family already, like friends.
Allie couldn’t think about it.
Their eyes met. He beckoned her over with a lazy sweep of his arm until she stood at his knees. He held her by the hips, looking into her eyes. “I was glad to have the chance. Grateful that she chose to be scared with me, instead of keeping her fear to herself.”
