Ch17_EAA_EBOOK #2
I let out a silent sigh—Olivia was having another low day.
With the third trimester just around the corner, her movements have gotten slower, she was in bed more often, and she was somehow even quieter.
The only time I had seen her spark back to life was when we went to Miss Kaye’s.
I never knew someone could be so ecstatic over paint and paper on walls in an old house.
Had Mom not ruined half the manor with her…
eccentric style, maybe Olivia would have been just as excited about this old house.
Well, Olivia had a history degree. Maybe she spent time with her smutty books and murder shows because she craved a good story.
I carefully put the tissue box on the nightstand next to her mom’s ashes and then held out my hands. “Come on, Adams. We’re going on an adventure.”
She groaned. “I don’t want to move.”
“It’ll be short, I promise.” I placed my hand on her shoulder and gave it a little rub. “And it involves me info-dumping about historic home design for at least twenty minutes.”
Her hands wrapped around her belly and she slowly rolled over to face me.
I gently slid her glasses onto her face and helped her out of bed.
She wore a little green lounge set meant for nursing, so the underside of her belly peeked out from her blousy top.
Even though her hair was a fluffy mess and she wore those clunky, yet practical, anti-slip shoes, she still looked quite cute.
And if I could get her to smile, she’d be damn adorable.
Olivia didn’t even bat an eye at the delivery men wheeling the stacks of boxes into the nursery as I led her into the hallway. We stopped on the second story landing in front of a small portrait of a man with a snowy white beard sitting with his bright-eyed wife.
I gestured at the portrait. “This is Jacques and Adelaide Fontaine, my great-great-grandparents. As one of Elren’s founding families, they were the first to buy up the land around the city and they struck oil.
Thanks to that bit of luck, they went from being moderately well-off to unmanageably wealthy almost overnight. ”
Olivia admired the portrait. “Adelaide had a fantastic sense of fashion. If I had oil money, I’d sparkle like that too.”
My eyes wandered from the jeweled hairband that held back my great-great-grandmother’s dark pin curls to her draping pearl necklaces and the shining rings on her slender hands. “Not all of it came from oil money.”
I pointed to the ring on Adelaide’s left hand. “Jacques fell in love with Adelaide when they were children, so he spent ten years saving every penny he earned until he had enough to buy her a proper wedding ring.”
Olivia took a closer look at the photo. “He must have saved a lot of pennies. That diamond is huge, especially for the time.”
“Love is worth waiting for, I guess.” I turned over my shoulder to look at the foyer below.
“After the black gold flooded their bank account, Jacques and Adelaide built Fontaine Manor. The manor was a spectacle back then mainly because of its massive size. The idea was to have lots of kids and have everyone live together…but turns out the Fontaines aren’t all that fertile. ”
Olivia cut me a sly look. “Until you.”
I bit my tongue to hold down a smirk. “What can I say? I’m the oddball of the family.” I turned her attention to another portrait. “Jacques and Adelaide did have an heir to the family fortune, though—my great-grandpa Louis.”
She turned to Louis’s black-and-white framed portrait. He gave her a cheeky smile beneath his pencil-thin mustache.
“He looks like a trouble-maker,” she remarked.
I held down another smile. “We’ll get to him in a minute.” I pointed to another portrait. “In complete contrast, here’s a man you actually know—the first Beau.”
Despite being a young man in his portrait, Grandpa was just as buttoned-up as I had remembered as a kid.
His cold blue stare even kept the yellow tint of the mid-century photograph from looking too warm.
Grandma stood next to him in the portrait with her hair teased a foot high and her pink lips stretched into a smile.
I just hoped I wouldn’t have to come up with an excuse for why Dad wasn’t on the portrait wall.
Olivia pointed to a smaller framed photo. “And who is this? Do you have a female cousin?”
I swallowed as my eyes found the photo of a squinting baby being devoured by an ivory monster of lace and ribbons. “No…that’s me.”
She bit her lower lip. “What an outfit.”
“That lace gown is a Fontaine male tradition that I intend on breaking.” I turned toward the elevator. “I hope Brady heard that.”
“He just punched me in the liver to express his earnest relief,” she replied dryly.
“Anyway,” I said as I pushed the call button on the elevator. “Since great-grandpa Louis was the only child, Jacques and Adelaide tended to spoil him. If he wanted it, he got it.”
The elevator doors slid open and Olivia stepped inside. “That doesn’t sound like anyone else I know.”
I rolled my eyes and entered the elevator. “Louis was…a bit of a partier, to put it lightly. So, instead of allowing their son to get rowdy on the streets of Elren night after night, Jacques and Adelaide made a compromise to try to contain him.”
Olivia’s eyebrows furrowed as I pressed the third floor button. “They contained him in the attic?”
The elevator rose and I laughed. “Who said the third floor was an attic?”
The golden cage doors parted and Olivia gasped.
She wandered onto the polished marble floor and I couldn’t contain my smile.
Not since the twins’ last ultrasound had I seen a more beautiful sight than Olivia admiring the manor’s ballroom.
She stood in the middle of the dance floor designed to look like a sparkling pool and looked up at the huge stained glass window on the ceiling.
The hand-crafted window featured pink water lilies, green lily pads, flying egrets, and lagoon blue marbled glass.
Where I had hoped for a smile, I was instead treated to pure wonder.
I hadn’t taken anyone up to the ballroom since Katie and I practiced our first dance for our wedding. Maybe I could replace that bittersweet memory with a better one.
I pulled out my phone as I entered the ballroom and opened my playlists. In an instant, swing music blasted through the nearly invisible speakers around the ballroom.
Olivia jumped as I wrapped my arm around her shoulder.
“Go back in time with me, Adams.” I turned her toward the row of tall windows facing the circular driveway. “Picture it—cars from everyone in Elren, and even people from all over the state, lined up out front.”
I spun her around to face a clamshell alcove in the far wall. “A big band is set up there. The best musicians from the city would come all the way out here to play for Louis’s parties.”
I ran off to the opposite wall and stood in front of a large mural of a willow tree. “Elren had a complete prohibition on alcohol until forty years ago.” I gave her a wink. “But laws don’t apply when you’re a Fontaine.”
Olivia covered her mouth to hide a giggle as I opened up the panels in the wall that the willow tree hid, revealing a full bar with shining bottles of old booze lining the glass shelves.
“And that wasn’t all.” I turned back to face her and gestured to the far wall as if I could conjure a party from the past. “He had towers of flowing champagne, trays of delicious food, and…”
I took Olivia by the hands and pulled her in as close as her belly would allow. I looked into her eyes as a soft smile played on her lips.
I won.
I gave her a triumphant smile back. “…everyone at the party would dance until dawn.”
She let out a little yelp as I spun her around in time with the music, leading her in the first couple steps of a swing dance. Her little moment of shock brightened into a laugh and I felt nothing less than golden.
Olivia stumbled over my feet. “Beau! You’re going too fast!”
I slowed to a stop in the middle of the dance floor and splayed my hand across her back to brace her. “How much dancing experience do you have?”
She gave me a sheepish look. “Does dancing on tables at bars count?”
“No.” I pulled out my phone and quickly selected another song on my playlist. A slow piano waltz softly played throughout the ballroom. The first notes of the song sent a pang through my chest that I tried to ignore. “Consider this your exercise for the day—you just have to follow me.”
Though I expected a protest, Olivia merely steadied her hold on my hand and slid her other hand up my bicep.
I took my first step back and slowly led her around the dance floor as I taught her how to waltz. Olivia looked around the ballroom instead of up at me, but I didn’t mind. I needed to keep an invisible wall up—reminding myself that she wasn’t mine and didn’t want to be.
Although, at that moment, her belly holding my babies had never pressed against me before. I had never noticed the slight lavender scent of her shampoo, either.
But maybe I had thoughtlessly selected the song Katie and I were fated to waltz to at our wedding for a reason.
Beneath the delight of the moment was the undercutting melancholy that every second of closeness was temporary.
Happiness was fleeting. Olivia’s time in the manor—time with me—was running out.
And while I had her in my arms for what might have been the final time, all I wanted was to kiss her. Not ravenously in secret, but slowly as a sigh as the golden sunlight brightened her eyes.
Just once. Just so she knew she could always come back to me.
My feet went still and she paused the dance with me. Slowly, I took my hand off the small of her back. Right as I lifted my hand to tilt up her chin, Olivia sniffed and stepped away. I looked down and caught her eyes glistening with tears.
“I’m sorry, I…” she stammered before covering her mouth with her hands.
She retreated to the bandstand and sat on the step leading into the clamshell as she cried. I followed her, hoping I hadn’t pushed her too far.
She pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes as I quietly sat next to her.
I resisted the urge to pull her into a hug. “Are you tired? Are you hurting anywhere?”
“No…it’s just…” she wiped away the tears on her cheeks. She put her glasses back onto the bridge of her nose and stared out into the ballroom, deep in thought.
Was I foolish enough to hope that she was having her doubts about leaving? That she realized she would miss me too?
She blew out a shaking breath. “I always hated you because you had what I didn’t.
When we were in school, you had money, a big group of friends who worshiped the ground you walked on, and everything was just so easy for you.
And now…” She swallowed and gestured out to the ballroom.
“I hate that you have a history—a good story—because you have a family and I don’t. ”
I rested my elbows on my knees to distract from the heavy disappointment sinking into my stomach. She was only jealous of my family, but she had no idea what the Fontaine family history even was.
I ran my hand through my hair and stared at the blue tile of the dance floor. “Everyone has a history, sugar. You just have to find yours.”
Olivia whipped her head toward me. “You think I haven’t tried? All I have of my dad is a bad reputation and a name—Johnny Adams. Do you have any idea how many men named John or Johnny Adams there are in this country? Even the best background check programs at my old firm couldn’t find him.”
She hiccupped. “I want my babies to have my last name because I wanted my mom’s last name.
I never understood why she wanted to honor that man instead of just using her sense!
” She threw out her hands. “The Fontaine name carries a legacy, memories, meaning. What does the Adams name carry? Nothing! Because the man I was named for stole everything from my mom and left us with nothing.”
My heart started to ache, but then she turned to me with a ferocity in her eyes that I hadn’t seen in months. “So every single time you’ve ever called me ‘Adams,’ you really just called me nothing.”
I held my breath, forcing my next words behind an imaginary gate as if it were a race horse rearing in its stall.
Then there’s no reason to give Annie and Brady his name.
The argument was sound, and since Olivia was emotional and vulnerable, it was sure to win her over. I would finally conquer the last name debate. I could get her to agree to securing the Fontaine legacy once and for all.
But though the opportunity was laid before me, I couldn’t take it. Unlike the Fontaine men that came before me, I was weak. My sense of self-preservation had withered to dust. Just like when she had broken down in the kitchen on Christmas, I wanted to break down too.
I couldn’t let the mother of my children believe she was nothing.
Not when comparing herself to the Fontaine legacy. Not when she didn’t even know the real truth.
I ran my hands down the front of my jeans. Only because I knew my mother was drunk at a parade and would have no idea what I was about to confess to, I took a deep breath in and gathered every molecule of courage I had left in my body.
“Olivia, don’t ever think you’re inferior to me because of your father,” I said over the soft sniffles of her crying, “especially when I haven’t told you about my dad.”