The Garden of Happy Endings (42 page)

Elsa became aware of a man behind her speaking in urgent Spanish into a cellphone. The accent pricked her—Spanish from Spain, not Mexico or Latin America—and then his words caught her attention. Her Spanish was rusty, and she listened shamelessly, translating laboriously.
I cannot find her. The house is closed up. You need to find the address of her aunt
.

She turned. There in the corner, taking out a cigarette, then putting it back, was a young and very handsome man. He was dressed well, casually but expensively. For a long moment, she tested her recognition. Could it really be? He hung up the phone and flung his head into his hands, the curls tumbling in glossy, glorious disarray around his golden fingers. Fever rose around him in an orange cloud.

It was the man she had seen in her vision, weeping over Alexa.

“Carlos?” she said.

He raised his head. “Do I know you?” he asked in English, beautifully accented.

Elsa smiled. “You will,” she said. “Please, join us.”

As he stood, a puzzled expression on his face, Elsa picked up her phone and dialed. When her sister answered, she said, “Bring Alexa to Angelo’s. We’re on the lower level.”

B
efore the phone call, Tamsin was working on a new quilt. She had the base spread over the dining room table. It was an emerging landscape of a tall cliff overlooking a clear aquamarine sea. Bougainvillea tumbled in pink and salmon swaths down a craggy, dangerous cliff. She had only just begun to piece the flowers.

She’d rescued her car and the money, but it made her jumpy. What if someone had seen her? What if the police found out about the cash? Her fear kept her from telling Elsa or Alexa about it. It also made her change the hiding place for the stash about every three hours.

She did not have the nerve to be a criminal. And maybe it wasn’t right, having that cash when so many others had lost everything, but she …

Well, she was keeping it anyway.

Quilting helped. At this stage, the work was blurry, just big areas of color and a few layers and shapes. She could see in her mind’s eye what the finished piece would look like, but to the uninformed eye, it was nothing much.

A song kept weaving through her mind as she cut hot pink paisley fabric into triangles, a French folk song, “Dominique,” a lively little tune that looped through her mind every time she started to work on the quilt. Something about the song nagged her. As if she should remember something about it.

But whatever it was swirled away every time she tried to catch it. She would just keep working on the quilt. Eventually it would come to her.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Tamsin saw that it was Elsa calling, and she picked up. “Hey, what’s up?”

A
lexa had only joined her mother reluctantly. She yanked her hair back into a ponytail, stuck her feet into flip-flops, and climbed in the car. Her mother drove.

“Why are we doing this?”

“She didn’t say. You haven’t been down there in ages—you might be surprised by how lovely it is. And anyway, it’s good for you to get out.”

“I helped in the garden.” Alexa leaned back. “Never mind. I get that you’re both trying to make me feel better.” She watched the shops pass by, the storefronts with their small-town feel, clean and tidy. “I hope you know that I really am trying.”

Her mother patted her hand. “I do.”

They parked by a fountain and crossed the street, then wound around the path to the restaurant. A lot of people were sitting on the patios. Alexa wished, suddenly, that she’d taken a little more care with her appearance. It was something that mattered and she should be respectful of others. Not that a ponytail was so terrible, or her yoga pants and tank. But no makeup, the floppy shoes—she really should get her act together.

She saw her aunt Elsa and her boyfriend, or whatever he was, sitting on the deck. And maybe because she’d just been thinking of him, she saw a man who looked just like Carlos. That thick
hair. His beautiful face. He was standing up, almost in slow motion, and suddenly Alexa heard a roaring in her ears.

He cried out, “Azul!” and dove around the tables, running toward her.

Alexa spun around and ran down the Riverwalk, as fast as she could. He couldn’t see her this way. She couldn’t face him with so much disgrace piled upon her family. He thought he could be romantic and fix it, but romance and love couldn’t fix
anything
.

She nearly tripped on her flip-flops, and kicked them off. One landed in the water, and she didn’t care—she kept running in bare feet. People moved out of her way, and she leapt over a skateboard. Carlos was a strong sailor and lacrosse player, but she thought she could outrun him, and he didn’t know the neighborhood. Her breath came in ragged gasps—and then she tripped over the hem of her yoga pants and tumbled into the grass.

He tackled her, crying out her name. “Alexa, my Azul, stop! Stop.” He used his body to hold her down, and suddenly, Alexa realized how foolish it was, running away. The smell of his skin overwhelmed her, and with a cry, she turned in his arms and kissed him, tears running sideways over her temples. She grasped the back of his head and kissed him deeply, and he kissed her back, murmuring, “Why did you go, Azul? Why did you run away? What happened?”

He held her and they both wept, overwhelmed and clinging to each other. “I’m sorry,” Alexa said. “I wanted to make it easier for you.”

“Easier? I don’t understand any of this.” He took her hands, kissed her fingers. “Tell me what happened.”

Alexa raised her head, and shook it slowly. “I love you,” she said. “And this is the most beautiful, romantic thing I’ve ever even heard of. But I can’t marry you. My father—” Her voice broke. She took a breath. Spoke firmly, so he would understand. “My father has disappeared. He stole a lot of money. Like, millions.
The police have frozen all of my mother’s accounts. They took our house. He’s gone and I’m poor and have nothing.”

“Your father has disappeared?”

“He’s wanted by the federal police. Your family—” She broke off, shaking her head.

He was, in addition to being passionate and beautiful and rich, very intelligent. She did not have to explain it twice. His breath left him as if he’d been punched—
ooff!
—and he bowed his head over her hands. “That is bad,” he agreed.

Gently, she extracted her hands. “So that’s why I left. So you didn’t have to make a choice between me and your family.” She stood, wiping tears from her face with resignation. It was done.

“Azul.”

She turned, and he got to his feet, moving his hands to his neck. He lifted a chain from beneath his shirt, and on it was the ring he’d given her. “I have made my choice.” He took the ring off the chain and held it in his palm. “I choose you.” His eyes burned brighter than a noonday sky, so blue and intense that she wanted to melt. In that fierce gaze, she saw his devotion, his love, his passion. And she saw that she had wounded him. “Do you choose me?”

“Yes,” she said, and took the ring and put it back on her hand, and flung herself into his arms, weeping with relief and love. “I’m so sorry,” she choked out. “I didn’t know what else to do.” He hugged her back, tightly.

“Do not,” he said, “ever leave me again.”

“No,” she promised.

He pulled away and held her hands in his own. “We may not be able to marry properly. I don’t know how to make that happen. But from now until we are dead, I am your husband and you are my wife.”

Alexa nodded solemnly. “I am your wife and you are my husband.”

They kissed once more, to seal it.

She tugged his hand. “Come. It’s time you met my mother.”

E
lsa watched the flight down the Riverwalk with her heart in her throat. They all did—not just Deacon and Tamsin and Elsa, but everyone on the patio, and the people out walking their dogs, and the romantic couples. When Carlos tackled her, one man looked ready to get involved, and then Alexa turned and hugged him.

Tamsin said, “That has to be one of the most romantic things I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Elsa wiped away a tear. “I hope they can work it out.”

Deacon took her hand, raised it, and kissed the palm. She looked up at him. “I’m not going to try to top that,” he said, leaning in to speak quietly, “but I hope you won’t let this … distract you.”

She smiled, a very small smile. “From?”

“Me.”

She slid an arm around him and leaned into his body. “Not a chance.”

Carlos and Alexa came up the hill hand in hand. Both had tear marks on their faces. The diners broke into spontaneous applause, and Carlos lifted their clasped hands into the air.

“Sometimes you’ve gotta run ’em aground,” said a craggy voice.

Carlos bowed, then gave a little wave, and Alexa led him to the table where her mother waited. “Mom, this is Carlos. Carlos, my mother, Thomasina Corsi.”

He bent over her hand with courtly grace. “I am honored to meet you.”

“I’m so glad you’re here,” Tamsin said.

Alexa introduced Elsa and Deacon, and then it was plain they wanted only to escape. “I will return her to you soon,” Carlos
said, and they walked off, into the gloaming, heads twining like swans.

Tamsin touched her chest. “I’ve never seen a couple so madly in love.”

“Me, either,” Elsa agreed.

Deacon put his hand on Elsa’s lower back, lightly. The heat moved from his hand to the base of her neck, spread in radiating waves around her ribs. She said, “I’m sorry to desert you, Tamsin, but I have plans with Deacon.”

Tamsin waved a hand. “Go.”

Deacon pulled her toward the parking lot and they climbed into his truck. Before he even closed his door, Elsa leapt on him, laughing, and buried her face in his neck, kissing his throat and chin playfully. He slid away from the steering wheel a little and pulled her closer, putting his hands in her hair, shivering under her rain of kisses.

Her playfulness fell away as she lost herself in the smell of his skin, the taste of it against her lips. “You better drive us home,” she said.

“Yes,” he agreed, and turned the key in the ignition.

D
eacon awakened in the soft gray gloaming on Monday morning to find himself wrapped around Elsa like a limpet. She was fast asleep, her naked back pressed against his chest, her bottom nestled into his genitals in the classic spooning pose. Her hair spilled over his arm.

A powerful sense of gratitude poured over him. Her tiny body was so small that his arm, angled across her chest, almost completely covered her. Her skin was smooth and clear and olive. She smelled of some fruity shampoo and garlic and sex, and he wanted to begin again, kissing her from head to toe and every nook and cranny in between, but there was a day to get going.

He didn’t want this weekend to end. She had stayed with him Saturday night and all day Sunday and Sunday night, too.
Flashes of their lovemaking moved through him, her hair flung out on the pillow, the earthy sound of her coming, the pulse and heat of it around him. He thought of the long hours they’d spent talking, and the midnight snack he had scrounged out of his kitchen.

It was a miracle that he could feel this way after so many years, filled with possibility and hope and a sense of honor. He held himself still so as not to disturb her and let it all move through him.

Love. Love, love, love. He’d maybe thought he was too old for it, had made too many mistakes, and yet, here she was, curled up like a kitten against him, her hands tucked under her face like a child. She had confessed she wanted children. She had confessed she wanted a husband.

His old self, the self he had been yesterday, might have said he didn’t deserve any of those things. The self he had become under her ministrations knew that he would give as much as he would take.

She moved a foot against his shin, and he tucked his hand close around her breast. “I have to get to work, sugar,” he said.

“I know.” She turned in the circle of his arms, lifting her face to be kissed. He obliged and rubbed his nose over hers.

“I really don’t want to leave this weekend behind,” he said.

She gazed up at him seriously, lifted a hand to his face. “Me, either.” Flinging a leg over his thigh, she clasped his hand on her breast and gave him a coquettish blink. “Would you like to come to supper tonight?”

“I’ve got a long day,” he said with regret. “Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow it is.”

“Good.”

Suddenly, she tossed the covers off her body. “Oh, crap! I forgot I promised I’d go to court with Tamsin. I have to get going, too.” She picked up the phone from the night table and punched in a number. Waited for the call to be answered. “Hey, Tamsin.
What time is court?” She listened, nodding. “Good. I’ll spend an hour at the garden and then head home.

“Whew.” She clicked the phone off and set it aside. Deacon lay where he was, admiring her compact nakedness, her small breasts and flat belly, her generous thighs and that wild hair.

“Come here,” he said, and flung back the covers himself.

Laughing, she leapt on him, covering and kissing him, and they made love one more time.