that he blamed Lance. Feeling as if he’d been cast adrift after his wife died, he’d left Lance to be raised by Bess. He hadn’t realized how his leaving had affected his son.
Unconsciously, Bruce gathered her a little closer to him as they danced. “I might be out of place saying this, but seems to me that your father would have done a lot better by you as well as himself if he were a God-loving man instead.”
The smile she offered him reminded Bruce of fireflies lighting up a June sky. And, if he didn’t know any better, he would have sworn there was a tinge of gratitude in her eyes.
For a tongue-tied man, he certainly did know how to turn a phrase, Margo thought. “For Melanie’s sake, I do hope Lance takes after you.”
The remark struck a chord that had, until recently, been very painful. “Lance went out of his way for a long time to be the exact opposite of me.” Bruce placed the blame where it belonged. With him. “I wasn’t a very good father.”
Margo swept past his remorse, a spring breeze traveling through a ripening orchard. There was nothing so useless as regret over things that couldn’t be changed. “I’m sure that if there’s any basis for your feelings, there were extenuating circumstances.”
There were very far-reaching, painful circumstances. But this was Lance’s wedding. It wasn’t a time to talk about death and the way it had burned out his heart, leaving only ashes in its place.
“Tell me, are you always this broad-minded?”
She inclined her head. “Some people say it’s my best feature.”
Holding her close to him, Bruce wasn’t so sure about that. If asked, it would have been difficult for him to say just exactly what Margo’s best feature was. She was beautiful in a warm, welcoming sort of way rather than in the precise features of an ice princess.
Looks weren’t supposed to matter. He’d learned a long time ago that transient outer beauty was hardly important, but he had to admit Melanie’s mother was a feast for the eyes. And her manner, open, warm, sensually charming, enhanced that feast tenfold.
“I wouldn’t exactly say that,” he told her.
She liked the way he smiled. “Oh?” Her eyes delved straight into his soul. “And what would you say. Exactly?”
Compliments really weren’t his forte. Neither was conversation, but he had the heartening feeling that he was at least holding his own. “That I have the comfort of knowing that I wouldn’t be the only tongue-tied man around you.”
But she shook her head at his assessment of himself. “For a ‘tongue-tied’ man, you’re doing very well, Bruce. And for what it’s worth, I really do hope Lance is exactly like you.”
The compliment, sincerely rendered, touched him. It had been a long time since he’d thought of himself and Lance as a unit.
“Thanks to Melanie, I’ll get to find out if he is or not firsthand.” He saw the question enter Margo’s eyes. “It’s because of Melanie that Lance and I reconciled. From what I hear, she kept after him about it, making it easier for me when we finally did talk.” He could see a great deal of Margo in her daughter. “You did a wonderful job raising her:”
She hadn’t raised her so much as just been there to oversee the process. Melanie had never really needed guidance. She was inherently savvy, inherently good. Other than a bout with the croup, Margo had never given her even a moment’s concern. She’d always been the kind of daughter every mother dreamed about.
But Margo had no intentions of playing the gushing mother and boring Bruce to tears. She gave him the short, unannotated version. “I had help.”
Bruce made the most logical assumption. “Your husband?”
Husband, now there was a joke. Margo shook her head. “My aunt.”
“We have that in common, I guess. Lance was raised by his aunt Bess, my sister. That’s her over there,” he said, pointing her out, “dancing. I’ll introduce you to her later. She took over with Lance when my wife died.”
If he was going to be family, Margo decided, there would be no secrets. Any shame attached to the situation had long since been burned away in the glow of Melanie’s smile. “Melanie’s father did a very impressive vanishing act as soon as he knew that fifteen minutes of pleasure resulted in something that was going to require an eighteen-year commitment.”
The revelation surprised him. Bruce couldn’t picture any man in his right mind walking away from Margo. “I take it he was blind?”
She laughed softly. “No, just heartless and stupid.” Whenever she thought of Jack, there was nothing there anymore. No pain, no anger, nothing. It had taken her a long time to arrive at that juncture. “To be blind he wouldn’t have been able to see his way out of my life, which he did. Quickly.” At the time it had taken her breath away just how quickly. Taken her breath and her heart.
“But Jack was very stupid because he missed out on a hell of an experience. I wouldn’t have traded being Melanie’s mother, not even a minute of it, for anything in the world, including a fantastic marriage.”
She’d talked enough about herself, she thought, steering the conversation onto a new road. “Which, by the way, I’m sure Melanie and Lance are going to have. She’s crazy about him.”
That was very evident and it made Bruce’s heart glad. “And he about her. We both are. Lance is convinced she’s brought out the best in him, and, even though I’ve only known her a few short months, I certainly can’t argue with that.”
Melanie was surprised that neither her mother nor Bruce seemed to notice her as she came up to them. But the fact that they were still dancing told her that they were well on their way to slipping into a world of their own.
One look at Bruce and she knew that her mother was weaving her magic again. Maybe this time, Melanie hoped, she’d get tangled in the threads herself.
But that wasn’t her mother’s style.
Melanie placed a hand on each of their shoulders, securing their attention. Bruce looked surprised to see her, her mother only looked amused. “Hey, did anyone tell you two that the music stopped two minutes ago?”
Margo merely smiled at her daughter. There was music and then there was music. Melanie would learn, she. thought. Someday. “Just the music you can hear, dear.” Very slowly, she disengaged her hand from Bruce’s. “But we don’t want to give them anything to talk about, do we?”
Bruce found himself reluctant to break contact. He slipped his arm around her shoulders, escorting Margo from the floor. “That depends on what they’re saying.”
Melanie looked from Bruce to her mother. Just the slightest flutter of uncertainty traveled through her before disappearing. She’d never interfered in her mother’s life before. She owed everything to her mother, and there was no one she loved more dearly, except for Lance. But Bruce was her father-in-law now. More like a father, really, than just someone the law claimed was related to her. Though she’d known him only four months, she felt protective of him. At bottom, Bruce was a sweet man who might misunderstand her mother’s ways. She didn’t want to see either of them hurt.
Melanie
