Blushing Violet (13 page)

Heat flashed through her body and she squirmed against his cock until the ridge of his head scraped over her clit as it beat with the pulse of her body. “I meant about you meeting Morgan.”

His teeth nipped against the side of her neck, leaving behind a pleasant sting that he soothed with his tongue. “I’ll be out of town next week down in Miami for a photo shoot. Why don’t we set something up after that?” He laughed and worked his fingers through her tangled hair. “I have no idea what the protocol is for meeting my girlfriend’s boyfriend. Should I bring him flowers?”

She giggled and ground her hips against his erection, making him all slippery with her cream. “Uh, I don’t think that’s his style. Let me talk to Morgan and see what he thinks.”

“You do that,” he said as she reached over into the drawer next to her bed and pulled out a condom with anticipation sending a rush of heat through her body.

Chapter Eleven

Sunlight gleamed off the wet pavement as Violet drove toward her parents’ house in Auburn Hills. It was two days before Valentine’s Day and Violet couldn’t wait. She had picked out gifts for both of her men and laughed with Bethany while they hunted for the perfect greeting card for each of them. Last week Bethany had met Carlos before he left for Miami and pronounced him utterly delicious. Yesterday Violet and Morgan had met Bethany for lunch and afterward Bethany had calmly told her that she was going to kidnap Violet and impersonate her so she could have the experience of dating two of the most amazing men on the planet.

Behind Bethany’s joking exterior Violet detected a hint of true longing, so she urged Bethany to give the Literary Love matchmaking site a whirl. Bethany had joked that she didn’t think reading
Cosmo
qualified as literature, but she would think about it. Violet really hoped she did, because everyone deserved a chance at true love. God only knows how she had been lucky enough to end up with not just one, but two men.

She sang along with the radio, unable to contain her happiness. Morgan had called her twenty minutes ago to confirm the address for her parents’ house where he would be meeting her there to have dinner with her family. Normally the thought of leaving any man alone with her mother and sister would have terrified her, but she knew Morgan could handle them.

It felt kind of weird to introduce Morgan to her family before Carlos, but he was out of town and her mother had demanded to meet the young man who was taking up so much of her time. While she’d met a few of Morgan’s sisters, she hadn’t been formally introduced to his family yet like she had with Carlos’ parents. Before she had started dating Carlos and Morgan, she hadn’t realized how much of her free time she spent running errands and doing things for her family. She was always the niece who would take her elderly aunts to Bingo, the daughter who would sit at her parents’ house and wait for the cable guy while her mom went grocery shopping, the younger sister who would feed Penny’s cats while she and her husband went away on vacation.

To be honest, Penny’s husband always tried to pay Violet for cat sitting and was grateful for her help. Violet often wondered how such a nice guy ended up with a bitch like her sister. Brad, Penny’s husband, often said that he knew the moment he saw Penny cheering for the football team at a U of M game that he had known she was the one. It had surprised everyone when Penny brought home the team manager instead of the quarterback, but Brad had graduated with honors and was now a successful banker providing Penny with every luxury she could ever want. And she wanted a lot.

The song ended and an annoying announcer blared about a monster truck show coming to the Joe Louis Arena. After flipping through the channels, she found a jazz station playing a mellow tune. Her peach-painted fingernails tapped out the beat with the snare drum as she coasted off the freeway. Morgan had introduced her to jazz and she had fallen in love with it during a long, steamy afternoon spent tied up in an elaborate series of silk ropes while Morgan teased and tormented her with a riding crop. Just the memory of his intense passion had her pussy clenching.

To her delight, she had found some of the same CDs in Carlos’ music collection and had spent an hour dancing with him in front of his full-length windows. She had wondered how they looked together, swaying in the soft golden light of candles while a wicked and unexpected snowstorm turned Detroit into a winter wonderland outside. It had seemed so magical, held in the warmth of his arms as the world turned to ice around them. A small, irrational part of her hoped that since the men shared similar tastes in jazz music, they might have more in common.

The only thing that marred her happiness was how fragile it actually was. If things didn’t go well next week between Morgan and Carlos, she was afraid she was going to lose both of them. She had tried to pick between them, even drawn up a list of pros and cons with both men and talked it over with Bethany. It always ended in a stalemate as her heart literally ached when she thought of not seeing either of them ever again. In a weird way, together they were her perfect man.

While she waited for a stop light to turn green, she checked her makeup again. For the first time in years she wore a sparkly gray eye shadow that brought out the silver in her eyes. The kiss-proof, rose-pink lipstick made her lips seem fuller than usual, and she knew Morgan would love it. Her father might not approve of her form-fitting silver silk shirt, but it complemented the pearl-and-jade earrings that Carlos had bought her after their first date.

Two nights ago she’d had dinner with Carlos’ family and had spent most of the night talking with his father while Carlos and his mother played chess in the family’s well-appointed home. Dr. Paolo’s passion for his work was evident in how carefully he paid attention to what she said, and he was very interested in her elderly clients that she worked with at the spa. Carlos had to practically drag her out the door while Dr. Paolo yelled questions about what type of aromatherapy was helpful for insomniacs.

She pulled into the familiar driveway of her parents’ stately white colonial and parked behind her father’s sedan. There was no sign of Penny’s Mercedes and Violet let out a relieved sigh. For a while she and Penny had gotten along much better than they ever had, but that all changed last year. She didn’t know what had happened, but Penny had become steadily bitchier as time went on to the point where even their mother avoided talking to her. If Penny said one cross word to Morgan, Violet was going to have to kick her ass.

The thought of rolling around on the floor of the foyer, punching and pulling each other’s hair like they used to when they were growing up made her laugh as she got out of her car and pulled her jacket tight. Her father had ignored them, but her mother had gotten sick of it one day and brought the hose into the house and sprayed them with it. She could still remember Penny’s shriek of outrage that had dissolved into a fit of giggles as they both ran outside to avoid their mother’s wrath.

Before she even made it up the first step, the red-painted front door with its gleaming brass knocker swung open and the scents of home filled her nose on a warm draft of air. It didn’t matter how long she had been away, all she had to do was smell that particular blend of aromas that had sunk into the wood of the house and it was as if she had never left. Her mother smiled at her from the doorway, giving her a quick once-over and raising her meticulously shaped brows in surprise.

“Why, Violet, have you lost weight?”

She bit her tongue and shook her head, brushing past her mother and stamping the slush off her shoes on the mat just inside the front door. “Nope.”

Her mother took her jacket and cocked her head to the side. Her hair was the same shade of red as Violet’s, but threaded with white. “I haven’t seen you in something this flattering in years.” She busied herself in hanging up the coat in the closet and added, “Your father may not approve, but I think you look lovely.”

Violet gaped at her, unable to process what her mother had said. Did she actually
compliment
her? She braced herself for the next part of her mother’s statement, the stinging insult that would surely follow. When her mother did nothing more than tuck a strand of hair behind her ear and smile, Violet blurted, “Have you been drinking?”

Her mother flushed and glanced toward the back of the house where her father no doubt sat in his den, busy with whatever corporate disaster required his expertise at the moment. She led Violet into the blue-and-white parlor off the foyer, decorated with her grandmother’s blue Wedgewood plates.

After sitting in an uncomfortable formal blue silk chair, her mother gestured to the matching couch. “Please have a seat, Violet. There is something I need to tell you.”

With her heart pounding in her ears, Violet slumped back into the couch and immediately sat up straight, her mother’s countless lectures about posture ringing in her ears. Anxiety brought the taste of bitter metal into her mouth as she waited for what was coming next. From the odd way her mother was acting, it had to be something horrible.

Her mother dithered with the pleat of her carefully creased slacks and the silence between them thickened to the point where Violet had to break it. “Did one of the aunts die?”

Her mother’s dark eyes flashed up to hers, wide with shock. “What?”

“The only time you brought me into this room when I was a kid was to give me some really bad news.” She clasped her hands together; the knowledge that Morgan would be here soon gave her strength. No matter what her mother said, he would be there for her.

Her mother’s lower lip trembled and she swallowed hard. “Violet, I’m sorry.” Her ears rang as she went through a list of worst-case scenarios in her head, so distracted by her thoughts of doom and gloom that she almost didn’t hear her mother add, “That I’ve been such a bitch to you.”

Now Violet did slump back into the uncomfortable sofa, the air leaving her body like a pricked balloon. “What?” she asked in a faint voice.

Her mother’s pink lipsticked lips, in a shade not too far from what she wore, Violet absently noted, thinned then relaxed again. “I’ve been seeing a psychiatrist at the urging of your father.” She glanced up at Violet and plucked at her pants again. “You see, I’ve been suffering from depression for a very, very long time.”

“What?” she asked again, sounding like a rather stupid broken record.

“My psychiatrist thinks that I’ve had depression for most of my life, and that I’ve learned to cope with it enough to get by.” She looked up and the pain that Violet saw in her mother’s eyes broke her heart. “I’ve always been sad, but I thought everyone felt that way. I tried to suck it up and go on with my life and pretend everything was all right, like my mother did, but sometimes it got to be too much and I’m afraid I took it out on you girls.”

“Grandma was depressed too?”

“She would never admit it, but I think she was.” Her mother stood and sat next to her on the couch. “I’ve been on an antidepressant for five months now, and I’ve never, ever felt so good for so long. Oh, I’ve been happy in the past, but those good times were small islands in an ocean of sadness.”

So much of her childhood was being rewritten as her mother spoke, things that had always puzzled and confused her falling into place. She could remember Penny making her breakfast at a very young age, and how her mother had screamed at them for spilling cereal on the counter. Afraid, she tried to tell her mother to stop yelling at Penny, that it was her fault because she was hungry, but her mother wouldn’t listen. More and more memories filled her mind, days when her mother wouldn’t even leave her bed, making Penny responsible for the household while their father was away on one of his many business trips.

“I managed to convince the world that everything was okay, and you and your sister paid the price.” Her mother took her hand. “I took out my irrational anger, my frustration on you. I tried not to scream at you like my mother screamed at me, but I’m afraid I was just as cruel. I put an impossible amount of pressure on both you and Penny to be perfect, to be the kind of person I was pretending to be. I’m so sorry.”

Violet stared at her, noticing for the first time how the lines around her mother’s eyes had deepened and multiplied. It wasn’t that her mother had aged overnight, but that she was seeing her clearly for the first time in a long time. “You said Dad made you go?”

“Yes.” Her laugh had a brittle edge as she patted her carefully styled hair. “Now that he’s semi-retired and mostly working from home, and you girls are out of the house, it became impossible to hide my ‘blue’ times from him. That’s what I used to call them, the blue days. Weeks when the world lost its color and became a cold, cruel place.”

Her heart ached for her mother and she wanted to give her a hug, but Violet also needed to hear the rest of what her mother had to say. “That’s horrible.”

“It was.” She sighed and actually slumped on the couch next to Violet. “Your Aunt Penny and Violet tried to help, I would often spend summers as a child at their cabin in the Upper Peninsula, outside of the critical eye of my own mother. Back in those days a lady’s reputation was everything, and your grandmother did everything she could to make sure mine was intact. I was a virtual prisoner in my own home. Forbidden to speak to boys, forbidden to go to dances, forbidden to wear anything but a proper skirt.” She plucked at her pants again. “My mother would be appalled at the sight of me wearing slacks.”

The grandfather clock in the hallway chimed the hour and her mother glanced out the bay window to the slush-caked street out front. “Your young man will be here soon. I just wanted to let you know that I will try very hard to make up for the past. I can’t promise miracles, as my psychiatrist likes to remind me, but I can promise to try my hardest.”

“Oh, Mom…” Violet’s throat closed up.

Her mother stood from the couch. “No crying, you’ll make your mascara run. You know we look like scared rabbits without our mascara.” She actually winked and Violet felt unreality wash over her again. Like she was having a really vivid dream and any second Hulk Hogan would leap out of the closet in an elf costume and ask her if she wanted some brie.

“Right, no tears.” She spied Morgan’s SUV pulling into the driveway. “My date’s here.”

Her mother leaned over so she could see out the window and made a low hum of approval as Morgan got out. His faded blue jeans clung to his powerful legs and the dark-brown leather jacket brought out the caramel undertones in his blond curls. Before shutting the door he pulled out two bouquets of flowers, one of pale-russet roses and one of tulips, her favorite flower.