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Out on the charming cobbled street as the car pulled away, Molly took a deep breath and let it go into the damp night. But the place still did its magic. Her shoulders lowered. That pounding in her chest settled. The knots in her belly eased...a little.
She let herself in the heavy door and heard the sound of music from the second level in what her real estate agent had loftily called herreception room. It was the heart of the little house. Kitchen on one end, a great hearth, French windows and a terrace over the cobblestones, and all the oversize, cozy things Molly had managed to make fit.
And since the last great implosion of her latest scheme, courtesy of Constantine Skalas, her mother, too.
Molly shrugged off the wrap she’d worn on the plane, hanging it near the door in her downstairs foyer. She kicked off her heels, flexing her toes against the polished wood floor as she padded up the stairs, absently reaching up to gather her hair, twist it back, then secure it in a thick ball on the top of her head. She walked up into the great room that had enough windows to make it bright and sunny on the days the weather wasn’t foul, and she liked to sit out on her terrace and soak it in. And the clear nights, too. But tonight it was wet and cold, and anyway, even this magical little house of hers wasn’t quite the oasis of calm when Isabel was around.
Her mother looked up as Molly walked into the room, looking flustered and determined all at once. “Darling. You’re home at last. I’ve spent all day making the mostdivinepasta from scratch. As an offering.”
“I can see that,” Molly replied. The kitchen was a disaster. Pots and pans she didn’t even know she owned were not only out, but half-filled with this or that, every single one of them noticeably dirty.
“Don’t tell me you’re not eating carbohydrates tonight,” Isabel continued airily. “Pasta is the least you can do for yourself after the day you must have had.”
And though Molly opened her mouth to say that no, obviously she couldn’t eat bowls of pasta, she stopped herself. Because, actually, pasta sounded absolutely perfect for the mood she was in. She didn’t want anything to do with all the feelings swirling around inside her. Might as well eat them instead.
Still in the slinky dress she’d worn to Magda up the situation with Constantine, she didn’t comment on the state of her kitchen. She simply set herself to the inevitable task that would fall to her anyway, of washing the dishes as her mother fluttered about putting the final touches to her homemade masterpiece.
By the time they sat down at the table near the side windows, Molly felt a bit better for having had the opportunity to lose herself a bit in the sheer drudgery of scrubbing and rinsing and drying, all better than thinking or feeling anything. It reminded her of long, long ago, when her mother had been a housekeeper in a grand house and she and Molly had lived in a small rented cottage in the village. On Isabel’s days away she and Molly would cook up fanciful meals and then dress up to please themselves.
She’d spent so long trying to repress those years in Greece, she too often forgot that she and Isabel had, in fact, had a whole life before the Skalas family had crashed into them and crushed them flat.
“I’m quite impressed, Mum,” she said after her first, marvelous bite. “I know you can cook when you have a mind to, but I would have thought pasta from scratch was a bridge too far.”
Isabel was still the beautiful woman she’d been when she’d caught Demetrius’s eye in the stately old home where her family had been in service, in one form or another, since around about the Norman conquest. Beautiful and young, since she’d had Molly when she’d been seventeen—and had never named the father.He knows where we are if he can be faffed, she’d said dismissively.No sense in chasing after a man if he doesn’t want to be caught. There are always more.That attitude hadn’t made much sense to Molly back then, when she’d been the object of scorn and derision in the village herself, little though Isabel ever took notice. Now she understood Isabel’s lack of concern. She was very, very pretty.
Too pretty to be a housekeeper, the tabloids had screamed when Demetrius had married her, then paraded her in front of the world.
He hadn’t taken that from her, Molly thought with a rush of that same old love that got her into trouble. Nothing ever dimmed Isabel’s spirits for long, and unlike many in her position, all of her looks were natural. No work.
At the moment, she looked rueful. “I’m not a total disaster, then,” Isabel said with that self-awareness that always took Molly by surprise. “That’s something.”
“Of course you’re not a disaster,” she replied.
Isabel sat back in her chair, her bowl filled with pasta and aged parmesan steaming before her. “Go on then. Tell me what the damage is.”
And Molly had intended to do exactly that. She had practiced fiery speeches on the plane ride home, each more bracing than the last. Hard truths were needed, she’d assured herself. It was high time she and Isabelcame to terms.
It was always easier to fight with the people she loved in the abstract. Or the person she loved, to be more precise. Because it was only this one. Only and ever her beautiful, reckless mother, who for all her faults, loved Molly completely. Unconditionally. Even if that might not look the way Molly wished it would—like those long-ago fancy dress evenings, kitted out in costume jewels and pretending they were in Italy—it was real.
Molly knew that she could say anything to her mother. Isabel’s guilt was a real thing. She had no qualm whatsoever about admitting fault, and apologizing, and taking it if Molly needed to shout at her.
But somehow, tonight, Molly felt that shouting at Isabel would be giving horrible Constantine Skalas exactly what he wanted.
I will need time to consider your charming proposal, she had told him with a regal disdain in that office.
Think of it less as a proposal and more as a lifeboat you do not deserve, he had replied, looking maddeningly handsome and inexcusably sure of himself. As if he already knew, as she did, that there was almost no way to get out of it and like it or not, she would be slinking back to him to do precisely as he commanded.
Still, she needed a bit of space, first. She needed to recalibrate. Because she’d expected that her temper would be involved, and she’d known deep down that what he would ask of her would feel unbearable, but what she hadn’t expected was her response to him. That wildfire that raged in her still, and led to an insidious little voice inside wondering if really, it wouldn’t betoobad, would it?
She’d wanted to rail at Isabel. It wasn’t enough that Isabel had dragged her into the Skalases’ harsh and cruel, glittering diamond-edge of a world back then, but now she was forced to return to it. To hand herself over to the architect of her first and greatest despair.
You are entirely too full of yourself, Constantine, she had told him.No wonder you’re so easily dismissed when you don’t have a blackmail scheme in your back pocket.
You are welcome to dismiss me, if you like, he had said in return. He’d even sounded encouraging.My understanding is that you love that little house of yours in London. What a shame it would be if you were forced to sell it, to keep both you and your mother afloat in these uncertain times.He had smiled when she glared at him.Alternatively, you can return in two days’ time, ready and willing to begin our torrid affair.
She was still having trouble with that. An affair with Constantine when she’d barely survived a kiss? Atorridaffair?
What would become of her?
