Who Loves You Best (36 page)

I don’t, but I nod politely.

“I won’t see as much of the twins as I’d like. But I’ll be back and forth to London every couple of months. And maybe, when they’re older, they can come visit.”

“Maybe,” I say.

I kiss him goodbye, relieved but also strangely bereft. It’s not just Marc I’ve lost. I had a vision of the future, a life that included a husband and family. I feel as if I’ve somehow lost my innocence. The page is no longer fresh, but blotted with mistakes and crossings-out. Life will go on, but nothing will ever be quite the same.

Worst of all, of course, is the knowledge that I have lost Cooper for nothing.

Only for my children
. I would have given him up for nothing and no one but them.

“Call him,” Jenna urges, one night when we have both stayed up too late and drunk too much wine. “What have you got to lose?”

“I made a choice,” I tell her. “No matter what happened between us, he’d always remember that.”

I take heart, instead, from her blossoming romance with Brendan. Jenna has been through the romantic mill: first with Jamie, and then Xan. I know my brother came very close to breaking her heart. Brendan Kelly is the sort of man she wouldn’t have looked at twice a year ago: respectable, thoughtful, quite handsome in a conventional
way, but lacking that devilish spark, that certain something, that sets girls’ hearts pounding. He’s too
nice
, I decide, the second time he comes around to take Jenna out, as I put his flowers—a little redundant given the unsold blooms we bring home from work every day, but it’s the thought that counts—into a vase. Women like the bastards, heaven only knows why. You don’t appreciate a decent man until you’ve been hurt a few times. Perhaps Jenna wasn’t ready for Brendan until now. Maybe somewhere out there, someone is waiting for me to be ready, too.

The first Saturday in September, at Davina’s suggestion, I take the twins to Long Meadow for the weekend. She hustles me unceremoniously back out to the car. “I’m sure you have work to do at the shop,” she says, “and I don’t want to be inhospitable, darling, but I have a gentleman friend visiting this afternoon. The twins will be a charming addition, but one really doesn’t need one’s
adult
daughter broadcasting one’s age.”

Slightly put out, I drive back to Fulham. Jenna made me promise to go in and sort out the accounts this weekend, so I might as well get on with it. Finances will clearly never be her forte, and the last thing I need is to play third wheel to my own mother.

I notice with annoyance that Anna, the Saturday temp, has filled every single bucket outside the shop with yellow tulips. They look wonderful, of course, but the sun will wilt them in a matter of hours.

I storm in, ready to haul her over the coals, and find my way barricaded by another magnificent bank of yellow
tulips. Clearly there’s a problem with the suppliers. We seem to have half the fields of Amsterdam filling our floor space.

“Anna!” I move a large box of orchids and red heather out of my way. “Anna, I can hardly move in here! We need to call—”

A shadow moves in the back of the shop.

I gasp, and drop the box of orchids.

Cooper carelessly pushes aside the heaps of flowers blocking his way, and picks up the orchids, lifting the cellophane lid. “There are over twenty-five thousand species of orchids,” he says conversationally. “More than any other flower. In the wild, they grow in the rain forests of the tropics, strange and brilliant, their intense scent almost too much to bear. The Victorians believed they stood for ecstasy.”

Davina, Jenna: They were in on this, too
.

“Red heather,” Cooper says, handing me a spray, “promised passion. Lavender,” he adds it to the heap in my arms, “signified devotion. Orange blossom, eternal love. Red roses, of course, need no explanation.”

My arms are full.

“Cooper—”

“You made the right choice. The only choice. I promised you the next time I rescued anyone, it would be you.”

“Cooper,” I whisper.

“Yellow tulips,” he says, drawing me towards him, down into a dizzying kiss, crushing the flowers in my arms between us, drowning us both in their heady, glorious, intoxicating scent.

Hopeless devotion
.

“Yellow tulips,” I say.

As always, my deepest thanks to my wonderful friend and agent, Carole Blake, and to my talented editor, Caitlin Alexander. I am the luckiest of writers to have both of you. Every conversation is a pleasure.

All those at Blake Friedmann and Bantam/Random House—Oli Munson, Trisha Jackson, Kelly Chian, Connie Munro, Nita Taublib, Jane von Mehren, Beck Stvan: You are amazing. How you manage to do what you do, in the time that you do it, never fails to astonish me.

In researching the background to this novel, I found one book,
The Meaning of Flowers: Myth, Language & Lore
by Gretchen Scoble and Ann Field, particularly helpful. I recommend it to any readers looking to pursue this avenue of interest.

For the girls: Michèle, Georgie, Danusia, and Sarah: What would I do without you. The next book is specially for you … I love you all.

Kisses, too, to my father Michael and WSM Barbi, to my out-laws, Sharon and Harry, to Charles and Rachel, to
Brent and especially to my WIL Jelena: Thank you all for providing me with never a dull moment. I’m truly blessed in having a family like mine.

Henry, Matthew, and Lily: You’re the reason I get up in the morning. Quite literally, thank you very much. I adore you.

To my wonderful, amazing mother, Jane, whose love, wit, and wisdom I miss still.

Above all, to my husband, Erik. For tea in the morning, for three
A.M.
editing sessions, and for quite simply being the sexiest, funniest, most wonderful man alive.

Tess Stimson
Vermont, April 2009
www.tessstimson.com

Tess Stimson is the author of
One Good Affair
and
The Adultery Club
, as well as three previous novels and one biography. She writes regularly for newspapers and women’s magazines. Born and brought up in Sussex, England, she graduated from Oxford University before spending a number of years as a news producer with ITN (UK) and CNN. She now lives with her American husband, their daughter, and her two sons in Burlington, Vermont, where she is at work on her next novel.

www.tessstimson.com