Renee wouldn’t put it past her assistant to bring the girls and their camping gear here and insist on putting up the tent in the cottage’s back garden. Tamara had been hovering ever since she’d shown up for work Tuesday morning and found Renee already busy in the kitchen surrounded by mounds of food.
Renee headed for the front door and caught a glimpse of a taxi driving away through the window. Who would take a taxi to her house? She flicked on the porch light and glanced through the peephole. Flynn stood on her welcome mat.
Heart pounding, she staggered back a step. Why was he here?
She didn’t want to see him. She wasn’t ready. Panic set in.
A fist pounded on the door. “Renee, I know you’re in there. Open up.”
Loving him and knowing she couldn’t have him hurt more than she could have imagined. But leaving had been for his own good. She had to remember that.
Wiping her damp palms on her jeans, she took a deep breath and opened the door. She drank in the sight of him with his dark hair tousled and five-o’clock shadow darkening his jaw. He looked tired. His tie hung askew and the top button of his white shirt gaped open, as did the coat of his black designer suit.
She looked past him, but his BMW wasn’t in the driveway. “Why did you take a taxi?”
“I chartered a plane to get me here faster. Besides, you can’t throw me out if I have no way to leave.”
His logic startled a laugh from her. “I could just call another cab.”
“It would take at least an hour for it to get here. That’s an hour I could use to talk some sense into you.”
“Sense? Into me?”
“You can’t leave me, Renee. I love you.”
She gasped. Those were the words she’d longed to hear. But it was too late.
“We’re good together, Renee. No one understands me the way you do. No one loves me the way you do.” He moved forward and she automatically stepped back and let him in. Dumb move. She should have shut the door in his face.
“Flynn—”
He brushed her cheek with his fingertips and erased whatever protest she’d meant to make. “You love me. Admit it.”
She couldn’t deny it. “It’s not that simple.”
How could she make him understand? She turned and led him into the living room.
With a sinking feeling of doom, she realized she’d have to tell him the truth—all of it—and watch his love die. “It was never you, Flynn. It was about me.”
He took her hands and pulled her down on the sofa beside him. “Explain.”
The love and patience in his eyes tore her apart, but that love wouldn’t last long when he learned the truth.
Just do it. Spit it out like ripping off a bandage. Fast.
“After your father died I…I started turning into my mother.”
“How?”
She gulped down her fear. “My drinking started innocently enough. I’d open a bottle of wine to share a glass with you when you got home. Then you’d be late. I’d start thinking about what your mother said. How I didn’t fit into your crowd. How I was an embarrassment to you when you had to meet with clients, and that I’d never be smart enough to carry my end of a conversation, since I didn’t have a college degree. And I’d have a second glass of wine and wonder if Carol was right. Maybe you did regret marrying me. Maybe that was why you didn’t want to tie yourself to me with a baby. Maybe there was someone else.”
Fury filled his eyes. “My mother said all that?”
Renee nodded.
“Renee, from the day I met you in that paint store there was never another woman. I was working.”
“But you weren’t coming home.”
He wiped his face. Regret filled his eyes. “The adjustment to the VP job wasn’t going well. I felt as if I was failing and letting the team down. I was exhausted from trying to clean up the mess my father left behind, and when I came home and you wanted to make love…sometimes I was so exhausted I couldn’t. I knew the rejections hurt you, and I hated the idea of failing at home, too, so I slept at the office.”
With hindsight, what he said made perfect sense. “I wish you’d told me.”
“I didn’t want to burden you. Besides my mother’s viciousness, what made you leave?”
A fresh wave of shame washed over her. “One day I woke up and there were two empty wine bottles on the floor. I didn’t even remember opening the second one. I realized I was becoming my mother. So I ran. I came home to L.A., and Granny helped me find a therapist.”
“You should have come to me.”
“Why? So I could see you lose respect for me because I was weak? So I could watch your love die? I saw that happen over and over again with my ‘uncles’ when they discovered my mother was an alcoholic.”
“You’re saying you’re an alcoholic?”
She searched his face, looking for condemnation, and found none. “I don’t know, Flynn. I’ve talked to several counselors. They seem to think that because my drinking only lasted a couple of months and I stopped voluntarily that maybe I’m not. I’ve worked very hard to develop healthy coping skills for my stress. But I have my mother’s genes. I can’t take the chance on maybe, so I err on the side of caution.”
“That’s why you don’t drink.”
She nodded. “I don’t want to trigger whatever it is that makes people fall into that downward spiral.”
“I think you’re too strong to fall.”
“Even strong people falter.”
He brushed his fingertips over her cheek. “What does that have to do with us not being together for the next fifty years?”
Her love for him swelled inside her. “Flynn, I would never want to force someone I love to become an enabler like my grandmother and I had to be. We had to cover for my mother, make excuses for her. You’re better off without me. Not only am I a risk, but my DNA is also contaminated. Our children could carry the tendency to be alcoholics.”
“Renee, if only perfect people had children, the population would cease to exist. We’ll teach our children those healthy coping skills you mentioned. I love you, and I want you in my life.”
Hope fizzed inside her, but she burst the bubble. “I can’t live with the idea of others always watching and waiting to pounce on my weakness and use it against you or Maddox Communications.”
“You won’t have to. I’m leaving Madd Comm.”
Surprise stole her breath. “Why?”
“You told me seven and a half years ago that if I couldn’t be happy with myself, then I could never be happy with anyone else. And you were right. I finally understand what that means. I was trying to live the life my father had mapped out for me, instead of the one I wanted for myself—the one we had planned with each other.
“I’m going back to architecture. It will allow me the chance to do something that invigorates me, instead of drains me.”
“I’m glad. You deserve to be happy.”
“There’s only one thing that would make me happier.”
“What?”
“Come home with me. We’re a good team. And I will be there for you this time if you’ll give me that chance. I love you, Renee. Let me spend the rest of my life proving that.”
“I love you, too. And there’s nothing I’d like more than to spend the rest of our lives together.”