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Suddenly, I felt like a horrible daughter.
Drifting toward her, I slowly reached out my hand to set my palm against the outer ring of the fountain. When my fingers met with cool stone, I shuddered and closed my eyes.
Back in my youth, that stone had always been warm to the touch, soaking up the daylight and radiating it back to my fingers. To me, it had felt like my mother’s warmth saying hello, and it had comforted me.
With no sun now, of course the stone should be cool, but if felt more like my mother was gone, because I’d abandoned her statue these past few years since my life had turned difficult, and she’d given up on waiting for me.
I wanted to apologize to her, tell her I would come back again, visit her every day from here on out. Just please, could she bring back her warmth and make me feel not-so-alone anymore?
A presence at my side reminded me I wasn’t alone now. Not technically, anyway.
Maleficent sat on the fountain wall beside me. “Bruno said the original proprietor of JFI, Arthur Judge, erected this statue of his first wife after she passed away from cancer.” He looked up at my mother with a respectful kind of honor. “Her daughter would come out here every day and cry at her feet until they built the fountain around it to hold all her tears.”
Pressure formed in my throat. I tried to swallow it down, but it only seemed to grow bigger. I wanted to cry more tears into the fountain, fill it once again.
If only I could have both my parents back.
Maleficent made a sympathetic sound in his throat. Then he shook his head. “Bruno and his stories, huh? Sounds like a tragic fairy tale.”
I nodded and whispered, “Yeah. It does.”
“I doubt there even was a daughter.”
I spun to him, surprised. After a confused blink, I carefully asked, “What… What makes you say that?”
“Well,” he started slowly. “Where is she? Both her parents were the very foundation of this place, and she just abandoned it in the hands of someone like Lana Judge after they died? I find that hard to believe.”
My hackles rose as I straightened my back. I wanted to defend myself and tell him he knew nothing. I hadn’t abandoned anything, and certainly not at the hands of Lana. I would never desert my parents’ legacy. I was still here. I was working and fighting tooth and nail to regain my inheritance. My place.
If it were up to me, Lana would be far and away from JFI. And the other CEO, Nash, never would’ve been allowed to even buy half the company. But I would change that. All of it. Someday, it would be mine again.
Maleficent shrugged and kept talking. “Or maybe I’m just a sentimental idiot with too much family loyalty.” He tipped his head my way, explaining, “My mom died in a fire when I was nineteen, and I just figured if there’d been a statue erected somewhere of her, I’d drop by and visit every once in a while. But for as long as I’ve been here, no one but Bruno’s come out to this garden to tend it. At least not to my knowledge.”
My anger died, replaced by an empathic sadness. He knew what it was like to lose a parent, what it was like to hurt and miss them, as if a huge hole had hollowed itself out through the center of him. I wanted to reach for his hand and share the ache, but the intensity of my feelings kind of freaked me out. I shoved to my feet, making him lurch in surprise.
I wasn’t sure I could handle this moment. It felt too big. Too deep. I didn’t even know his name. Heck, I couldn’t tell you what he looked like, except that he was tall, had a nice figure, and smelled good.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing.” I took a few steps away, seeking the darkened shadow of a tree to put space between us, but not wanting to go far in fear I’d make him think he’d said something wrong. Because he hadn’t. Not at all. “I’m just looking for your shoes.”
Did I enlighten him to who I was? Explain my father’s will and how I hadn’t been given a portion of the company? Share how much I missed my mother?
And risk him being one of Lana’s spies so he could possibly ruin my entire future here?
“I’m, uh…” With no idea how to continue, I turned to him, only to trip over something on the ground. “Oh!”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Maleficent sprang to his feet, alerted to my surprise. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?” Spreading his hands in front of him as if feeling for me, he took a step in my direction. “Where’d you go?”
“I’m right here.” Kneeling, I felt the grass around me until, aha, my fingers wrapped around a shoe. “I think I found one of your high heels.” And yes! The second shoe was right beside it. “Both of them!”
“You did?” Sounding excited, Maleficent hurried forward. “That’s great.”
Since I was still kneeling, I tugged on his skirt, so he could feel where I was and wouldn’t trample me. But then an idea struck. Since I was already down here, I lifted the hem of his dress and reached for his ankle.
“Whoa!” He lurched backward, obviously not expecting me.
