Crazy About Cameron: The Winslow Brothers #3 (The Blueberry Lane Series -The Winslow Brothers) (7 page)

“Pris,” she said, thinking Priscilla had nothing on pythons when it came to squeezing the air from another life form. “I thought you were still in Provence.”

Priscilla leaned back to beam at Margaret, her neon-blue mascara bleeding from her tears. She wiped them away quickly, showcasing her chipped, hot-pink fingernails and a new tattoo, which looked like a long quote in French, on the underside of her wrist.

“Non! Non, belle soeur.
I’m home now.”

Margaret was finally permitted to draw away and look up into her sister’s deep brown eyes. “Xavier?”

Priscilla looked behind Margaret, flashing her thousand-megawatt smile at Shane before locking eyes with her older sister.
“Quel salaud. Connard. J’en ai plus rien à foutre.”

All the Story sisters—educated at a Swiss finishing school, at their mother’s insistence—were fluent in French, and it was their language of choice when they wanted a moment of privacy. Margaret cringed. Suffice it to say that things hadn’t ended well with Xavier. The approximate translation of her sister’s soft-spoken tirade was so filthy, it would have made a sailor blush.

Priscilla didn’t blush. She kept a smile plastered on her face, but her eyes burned, a phoenix-style fever in their fury.

Margaret flinched at the pain she saw in her sister’s eyes before raising her chin and reaching for Priscilla’s hand
.

“Je suis désolé, Priscilla.”
I’m so sorry.

“Je m’en fiche.”
I don’t give a damn.

And yet it was clear that she did. A lot.

Shane cleared his throat from behind Margaret. Having forgotten he was there, she dropped Pris’s hand and turned to her nonexclusive, more-and-more-unwanted pseudo-boyfriend.

Shane cocked his head to the side. “My French isn’t terrific, but that didn’t sound too good.”

Priscilla’s trilling laugh echoed in the portico as she took Margaret’s arm and pulled her against her hip, facing Shane.

“Shane! It’s so good to see you again.”

“Is it?” he asked slowly, looking at Priscilla with narrowed, searching eyes.

“Of course,” she answered, looking away quickly to give Margaret a flustered grin before dragging her sister into the house.

Pausing her memories of last night, Margaret stared at the exposed beams in her bedroom and puzzled over the odd exchange. There’d been a quick shot of electricity between her sister and her un-boyfriend. Something indefinable, but palpable. There was history between them—she’d bet her life on it. Maybe something small and insignificant, but
something
nonetheless.

A place had been set for Priscilla at the dinner table, but at some point between welcoming Shane and Margaret and the dinner bell, Pris pulled one of her famous disappearing acts, which infuriated Margaret’s father.

“Damned
flibbertigibbet
,” he puffed, settling himself in his throne at the head of the table and directing the housemaid to clear away Priscilla’s place. “If she’s going to stay here for a while, I’d appreciate it if you’d have a word with her, Margaret Anne. Tell her to cover up those disgraceful markings all over her arms. And observe common courtesy at mealtimes.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We run a tight ship here at Forrester.”

“Yes, sir.”

“None of this fly-in, fly-out business.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That one’s always been a little crazy.”

Margaret stared down at her lap to hide her smile as she answered dutifully, “Yes, Father.”

“Now, you, Margaret. You’re a gal I can be proud of. Here on time. With Shane. Great things ahead.”

Margaret’s eyes widened as she basked in this rare moment of approval.

“Helping with the family business, not wasting your trust fund allowance running after some ne’er-do-well Frenchie.” He took a loud slurp of his soup. “Settling down with a good, solid, respectable businessman.”

A slight chill went through Margaret as her father’s shrewd blue eyes connected with her dazed brown ones. He wore a satisfied smile on his face, overconfident and puffed up, and something inside Margaret started to panic as the words
settling down
resonated like a gong in her head.

She vaguely registered the rustle of Shane moving his chair beside her, and turned—in horrified slow motion—to find him kneeling on the floor, an open ring box sitting in his flat, upturned hand.

“Margaret,” he said softly.

“Shane!” she gasped, leaning back from him. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Now, Margaret!” thundered her father. “You’ve no cause for that sort of language!” His tone gentled a little as he nodded toward Shane. “Listen to what the man has to say.”

She jerked her head to look at her father, her eyes filling with tears as she raised her chin in protest. “You knew.”

“Well, of course I did. Think Shane would pop the question without my permission?”

Margaret leaped to her feet, still staring at her father, the heavy weight of Shane’s kneeling form like a boulder behind her.

“Shane shouldn’t be
popping the goddamned question
at all! Unless he’s popping it to
you
!”

“Is that right?” asked her father, throwing his napkin on the table and leaning back in his chair with angry, narrowed eyes.

“That
is
right!” she exclaimed. She balled up her napkin and threw it down on the table, just like her father.

He pointed a stubby finger at her, his voice almost a growl. “You will sit down, Margaret Anne, and you will listen to what Shane has to say.”

“I. Will. Not.”

Margaret winced at the memory, sliding under her comforter to burrow into its warmth and hide. Her eyes filled with tears as she remembered the helpless feeling of being flanked by her father and her nonexclusive non-boyfriend, feeling trapped in a situation that she’d never even solicited.

Shane had snapped the ring box shut, and she turned to find him standing up behind her.

“Are you crazy?” she gasped, blinking furiously to hold back tears of anger and humiliation. “We’ve barely dated. We’ve never even . . .”

She stopped herself before blurting out “slept together,” cutting her eyes to her father’s furious face before clenching her teeth together and facing Shane again.

“It’s out of the question,” she whispered, barely registering the sheepish look in Shane’s eyes before stepping around him. She didn’t stop until she reached the powder room just outside the dining room and closed the door firmly. Then she’d braced her hands against the sink and let her tears of frustration and embarrassment flow freely.

Sighing deeply as the sunlight continued to bathe her face in morning light, Margaret wondered, was this what Shane had been droning on about in the car last night while she’d been daydreaming of Cameron Winslow? Proposing? Marriage? How could Shane be so insensitive, so stupid, so ridiculous, to think she’d accept him after two months of lukewarm dating?

The answer came swiftly and turned her empty stomach: because her father had assured him she would.

After cleaning herself up, she’d slipped out of the bathroom only to have her arm practically yanked out of its socket as Priscilla pulled her into the adjacent coat closet and quietly closed the door, leaving the sisters alone together in the dark.

“Did he do it?”

Margaret raised her foot, made her best approximation of where Priscilla’s bare foot would be, and slammed her heel down as hard as possible.

“Ouch, Meggie! What the fuck?”

“
You knew
? God, isn’t there anyone in this family willing to let me live my own goddamned life?”

“Shit, that hurt.”

“Traitor! How could you let me walk into that without a warning?”

“Because Shane was standing right behind you,” her sister whined. “Why do you think I was speaking French? I was trying to figure out if he understood. He understood enough to know what I was saying about Xavier, so I couldn’t tell you.”

“Instead you jumped ship like you always do and let me walk into the lion’s den alone. Great, Pris. Thanks.”

“I came back, didn’t I?”

Some keys rustled in the darkness, and Margaret felt the cold metal slip against her arm.

“Take my car. Get out of here.”

The darkness hid her sour expression. “Oh. Just like that. Just . . . leave.”

“You got a better idea?”

Run away. Just run away. Honestly? It sounded like heaven. And why shouldn’t she? Why should she be pleasant, dutiful Margaret when her father and un-boyfriend were trying to bulldoze her into a loveless marriage for the sake of business?

She reached for the keys. “What are you driving these days?”

“BMW, clean diesel.”

“Of course you are.”

“Just go, will you? I’ll . . .”

“You’ll what?”

“I’ll try to fix things.”

The problem with this plan? Generally Pris didn’t fix things. Her forte was making a bigger mess.

“How?”

“Do you love Shane?”
“No.”

“Do you want him?”

“No.”

“Not even a little tiny bit?”
“Not even if he was the last man on earth,” said Margaret as a pair of green eyes flashed in her head, lighting up the darkness of her present situation.

“Then why do you care?” asked Priscilla in the most unexpectedly level voice Margaret had ever heard her use.

“I don’t. But Daddy . . .”

“. . . is going to be pissed for a while. You foiled his plan.”

“He treats me like some
eighteenth-century chattel. It’s humiliating.”

“And yet you care.”

“Pris—”

“You don’t have to explain it to me, Meggie. I’m his daughter too.”

For a moment, Margaret felt puzzled. Because Priscilla had always been such an oddball free spirit, Margaret hadn’t thought much about her feelings when it came to their father. Pris was wild and tattooed, got caught making out with boys at an early age, and was a constant, consistent source of disappointment to their buttoned-up parents. And yet for all her freewheeling ways, their father’s lack of affection hurt Priscilla too.

“Okay, I’ll go.”

“Good,” said Pris, pushing Margaret toward the door. “Then what are you still doing in the closet with me?”

“I miss Mother,” said Margaret softly, a sentiment the sisters rarely shared with one another.

“She wouldn’t have gotten in the way tonight,” said Priscilla in a hard voice. “She wouldn’t have stepped in. She would have let it happen, and she would have made you feel bad for refusing. He always got his way. Always. No matter what.”

Margaret leaned back and grabbed her sister’s cheeks, pulling her close so that she could rub Priscilla’s nose with hers. “I love you, Pris.”

Priscilla’s voice softened appreciably. “I love you too. Now, get out of here.”

Margaret exited the closet stealthily, slipping her shoes off and walking tiptoe across the front hallway.

“Oh God,” she moaned, flipping over in her bed and burying her face in her pillow. She should have just kept walking. She should have tiptoed out the front door, started up Priscilla’s save-the-earth car, and escaped to The Five Sisters. But no. Stupidly, she’d paused by her father’s cracked-open office door and heard the words she wished she hadn’t.

“I never wanted five
girls
. I wanted, well . . .,” her father said, the splash of Scotch filling a glass competing with his humorless chuckle. “I wanted a boy. A son. Someone like you.”

“Yes, sir,” she heard Shane mumble as two more ice cubes landed in a tumbler.

“Instead I got
them
. A mouthy rebel, a shrinking violet, an airhead, a hippie, and a baby. Five
girls
.” He paused. “Ellen miscarried a boy, you know. Between Alice and Margaret. Margaret
should
have been a boy. My son. Instead . . .”

His disappointed voice trailed off, and standing in the quiet hallway outside her father’s office, Margaret felt her heart ache. She hadn’t known that she was supposed to have an older brother. It made her incredibly sad to learn about him now.

“I know my responsibility to them. To buy their dresses and pay for their weddings. But the least they could do is bring home a decent man. Someone to help me shoulder the burden of five girls. Someone to take over the family business so they can start having some grandchildren and be good mothers.”

“Margaret is very bright, sir. She’s—”

“
I didn’t want Margaret
,” her father boomed as humiliating tears coursed down Margaret’s cheeks. “I wanted someone like
you
!”

There was a long silence as Margaret worked hard to regain her composure, and she wondered what Shane could possibly say next.