And yet the undeniable truth was that she thought of him in every quiet moment, in every distraught moment, in every happy moment. He was on her mind constantly.
It wasn’t just the way he made her feel—on fire and breathless, wanting and wanton—or the way his kisses curled her toes and made her fantasize about what it would be like for his body to belong to hers. It was also that Cameron coaxed an honesty from Margaret that she’d never really shared with anyone else. She could be herself around him—completely herself, without the responsibility she felt to her parents and sisters, or the strict expectations the Story name had placed on her since birth.
She could be an obsessed vintner who wanted to live her life among rows and rows of grapes. She could be someone who wore her hair down every day, with the clean earth of her vineyard forever caught between her toes and staining the knees of her jeans. She had the strangest feeling that with Cameron by her side, she could live the life she wanted to live, instead of the one that duty had thrust upon her.
For weeks, she’d felt like a caterpillar emerging from its chrysalis, born anew in authenticity, delicious freedom, and newfound courage—fragile virtues somehow cultivated and strengthened by Cameron’s recent presence in her life.
Was such an awakening enough to bear and deliver the first fruits of love?
“Maybe,” she whispered, swinging her legs over the side of her bed and pressing one hand over her heart. “Maybe.”
And stretching before her was a whole day in his company. She giggled softly as she headed to the bathroom. She couldn’t wait to get started.
Remembering his fondness for pulling her childhood braids, and inspired by Priscilla, she gathered her thick, long hair in her hands and French-braided it loosely, so that it was sexy and romantic but also a throwback to their shared youth. She pulled on her favorite pair of jeans and a short-sleeved cotton sweater in navy blue with a low scooped neck. She swiped on some lip gloss, grabbed her tennis shoes and sunglasses, and checked out her reflection in the mirror.
Long gone was stiff, starched Margaret Story, and before her stood Cameron’s Meggie, someone who spent her days in a vineyard, and her nights . . .
She flushed.
She knew exactly where she wanted to spend her nights: laid bare beside Cameron, her heart beating against his, the heat of his skin pressed against the softness of hers, his arms around her, his sex throbbing within her, loving her until they were both exhausted and slept entangled until dawn.
If you asked me to be with you, I wouldn’t be able to say no.
That was the problem, though, wasn’t it?
She respected his reasoning—that his life was complicated, and he didn’t want to start something with Margaret now only to sacrifice it later. In fact, she loved that Cameron, who lived his life impetuously, seemed to move with a tense deliberation when it came to her, as though he couldn’t bear to misstep and lose her once she was his.
“You have to trust him,” she said to her reflection. “Don’t push him.”
Trust that when he can, he’ll come for you. Maybe today. Maybe next week. Maybe not until next year. But when he comes for you, he’ll have cleared the way ahead, and you won’t have to fear taking his hand and stepping forward, because he will keep you safe.
She turned away from the mirror and picked up a small box of items she’d been meaning to take from her apartment to the cottage: her high school and college yearbooks, some favorite books, a photo album, and a few framed photos of Margaret and her sisters as children. In the elevator, she rested the box on her hip and pulled one of the pictures from the box. She looked at it carefully.
It was taken at the Englishes’ pool in 1998. She and her sisters stood in birth order: thirteen-year-old Alice, tall and strong, with her hand on one jutted hip; eleven-year-old Margaret in thick glasses with a shy smile and her thin arms around Alice’s and Betsy’s shoulders; ten-year-old Betsy winking at J.C. and étienne Rousseau; nine-year-old Priscilla, with her wild, wet hair dripping around her shoulders and forbidden sparkly nail polish on fingers flung high into the air; and little Jane, only seven, her pudgy, baby tummy sticking out of her one-piece and a chocolate ice cream mustache over her top lip.
Grinning, Margaret scanned their young faces for an extra moment before widening her examination to the rest of the picture. The Rousseau boys stood to the right, making silly faces at the girls, the Ambler brothers splashed in the pool with the Rousseau twins, and Brooks Winslow and Barrett English were leaning against the fence talking to Bree Ambler. And to the left . . .
She gasped, drawing the picture closer and squinting as she realized that thirteen-year-old Cameron Winslow was also in the photograph. He stood between Alex and Fitz English, who were both laughing at something going on in the pool.
But Cameron . . .