The Summer of Sunshine and Margot - Susan Mallery Page 0,64

waiting to destroy his carefully constructed life, and that he would not permit.

Not that he had to be overly concerned about that happening in the near term, he reminded himself. For all that he found Margot a significant temptation, the truth was he had no idea what she thought of him. Considering his lack of luck when it came to women, no doubt she saw him as a doddering old uncle, as sexless as a lamp.

Better to be the brilliant professor. Anything else was too great a risk.

* * *

Like most men, Declan didn’t want problems he couldn’t solve. Figure out how to cross a raging river? Sure. Defeat a fleet of marauding Vikings? Absolutely. But bring laughter back to Sunshine’s beautiful eyes or take away the reason her shoulders were slumped? He had no clue and he didn’t like that one bit.

He tried telling himself it wasn’t his problem to fix. That she had to get over the asshole Norris had been and move on. But thinking the words didn’t make him feel better and with any kind of action out of the question, he was left with too much energy and nowhere to put it.

Saturday morning the easiest solution seemed to be to take out his frustrations on his garden. There were hedges he’d wanted to get rid of for a while. He drove his car to the garage where his company kept their landscaping equipment and came home with a good-size pickup and all the tools he would need.

By nine, he was hard at work. By ten, half the hedge was gone and he had sweated through his clothes, which he didn’t care about, but he also couldn’t get Sunshine off his mind, which he did.

What was it about her? After over a year of not wanting anyone, why did he have to want her with the kind of desperation that left him feeling both powerful and asinine? Was this what Iris had been talking about when she’d tried to explain her affair?

He still remembered the shock of her telling him there was someone else. He’d had no clue—he’d thought they were happy together. Sure they’d been in one of those down times when they were each busy and Connor required whatever attention they had left over, but didn’t that happen to everyone? Not every relationship was perfect every second.

Only she hadn’t seen it that way. She’d been so calm, he remembered, as she’d told him she was seeing someone else and it was serious. She wasn’t sure it was love, but the passion between them was unlike anything she’d experienced before.

He’d been so angry, so disbelieving she would throw away something as significant as a marriage for the fleeting pleasure of passion. She’d told him her feelings consumed her and he’d reacted with contempt. He’d been disdainful even as he’d fought against a rage he couldn’t fully explain.

Later, when they’d tried talking about it again, he’d demanded to know if she was leaving. She’d surprised him by telling him she wasn’t sure she wanted to lose her marriage. He’d nearly thrown her out then, but for reasons he still couldn’t explain, he hadn’t. Probably because he hadn’t wanted to put Connor through the trauma, and maybe partly because he didn’t want to deal with it, either. Not if things were going to be all right in the end.

So they’d continued with their separate lives for nearly a month. Then she’d come to him and told him it was over. That she and her passionate lover were no longer together. She hoped she and Declan could patch up their marriage and grow stronger from the experience.

He’d still been angry. He’d told her it was going to take him some time to work through everything and she had told him that was fine. What he hadn’t known then was she’d already been diagnosed with cancer. What he hadn’t known was she had told her lover about her disease and that he’d left her. Rather than be alone, she’d decided to return to Declan. He hadn’t known that Iris had chosen the other man and when that hadn’t worked out, she’d decided that second best was enough.

He continued to tear through the hedge, digging out roots and tossing them onto the growing pile.

She hadn’t said a word about being sick. He’d noticed she was losing weight but had assumed it was because she was missing the other man. Perhaps part of it had been, but he was pretty sure