It turns out that instead of escaping, I was really running to something beautiful. This is exactly where I belong, in large part because of the friends I’ve made here.”
Sam sent a swift look at Margaret, wondering how Gemma’s mother handled her daughter finding a new home and friends halfway across the world. Margaret seemed emotional, but Samantha somehow sensed she was also happy that her daughter had found acceptance and love here.
It was hard not to compare that to Linda’s likely reaction under similar circumstances. Linda hadn’t even been able to bear the idea of Samantha moving away for college in Boise, two hours away. How would she have endured if Samantha had moved to another country?
She would have pouted and thrown a tantrum for a week or two and then would have been accepted the inevitable.
It was a startling realization, another reminder that in some ways she most likely had been too hard on her mother when Linda had still been alive. Her mother hadn’t been completely unreasonable.
The shower began to break up after that. As she had been working and hadn’t been able to assist in the decorating, Samantha stepped up to help clean up.
“You don’t need to do that,” Eliza assured her after Samantha carried a load of dishes to the gourmet kitchen. “The caterer has it under control.”
“Is there something else I can do, then?”
“Gemma might need help carrying gifts out to her car,” Eliza suggested.
Samantha filled her arms with gift bags, then headed around the house to the porte cochere out front.
As she approached, she heard Margaret and Gemma talking.
“I had a wonderful time,” Margaret was telling Gemma. “All your friends are truly lovely.”
“Aren’t they?”
Samantha couldn’t see her friend but could hear the happiness in her voice.
“I like them,” Margaret replied. “Which makes me wonder why you’re still hiding the truth from everyone.”
Sam froze at Margaret’s sudden sharp tone, so much like something she might have heard from her own mother before Linda would go on a tirade.
“Don’t, Mother. Not tonight,” Gemma said softly.
Margaret didn’t heed her. “Don’t you think it’s only fair you stop hiding who you are?”
“I’m not hiding anything,” Gemma said, her voice so low Sam almost couldn’t hear it. “This is who I am now. I’m a computer nerd working for Caine Tech. And I’m happy to be that.”
“That’s only part of it. Try as you might to hide it, you’re also Lady Gemma Summerhill. Daughter of the Earl and Countess of Amherst and sister to Lord Ian Summerhill, Viscount Summersby.”
Sam almost dropped the gift bags. Her heart began to pound so hard she couldn’t understand why Gemma and her mother didn’t turn around at the sound.
“Nobody cares about that here, Mother,” Gemma said firmly.
Oh, she was so very wrong. Samantha cared. The chasm between her and Ian had just widened until it now stretched farther than Lake Haven Valley.
He was a peer. His father was an earl. She knew enough about the peerage from the historical romance novels she loved reading to know that since Ian’s older brother had died, he must now be his father’s heir.
Why hadn’t he told her? He had let her make a fool of herself over him, knowing all the time that any relationship between them was utterly impossible.
How could the future Earl of Whatever the Heck Margaret Had Said pursue anything with a dressmaker from a tiny town in Idaho?
What did it matter? This news changed nothing. So what if he was Viscount Summersby and would one day become a freaking earl? She was still exactly where she had been five minutes ago, before she found out the truth.
She had always known anything between her and Ian was impossible. This only confirmed exactly how impossible.
Sam wanted to cry suddenly. The tears burned hot and no amount of blinking them back could prevent one or two from slipping out.
Oh, she was stupid. No matter how mature she told herself she had become, inside she was still Starry-eyed Sam, who fell in love with every guy who was nice to her.
Love. Who said anything about love? She wasn’t in love with Ian. She was attracted to him, yes, and she liked him very much. But she couldn’t possibly be in love with him.
So why did she feel shattered to learn exactly why they could never be together?
The two glasses of wine and the chocolate lava cake she’d had early in the evening seemed to churn through her and she thought for a moment she would