“What is it?” Mikel asked gently, apparently reading her disturbing thoughts in her expression.
“I was just wondering how I ever survived staying away all these years,” she admitted with surprising candor.
He smiled sadly at that. “I, too, have wondered how I survived losing you. Not a day has passed that I haven’t regretted letting you go. I was a stubborn fool for not following and bringing you back. I was so sure I was right, but I found that being right is cold comfort on a lonely night.”
He turned her to face him and plucked the brush from her hands. Then he touched her cheeks with his fingertips with astonishing tenderness.
“You will not go again,” he said fiercely. “This time you will stay and marry me as it was meant to be.”
Regina stared at him. “Marry you?” she whispered.
“Yes.”
Her incredulous gaze swept his face. “You never asked before.”
He sighed deeply. “Is that why you went running off to Iowa? Did you not know that marriage was our destiny?”
“How was I supposed to know that?” she asked irritably. “Was I supposed to read your mind?”
“I could read yours,” he said.
It sounded like an accusation. Regina wanted to explain that she’d been able to read his heart but never his mind. Instead, she merely said, “You should have said what you were thinking.”
“I understand that now,” he said with wry humor. “Which is why I asked you to marry me not more than a minute ago. I still have no answer.”
The thought of marrying this man who’d owned her heart for most of her life both thrilled and terrified her. Could she do it at her age? Could she reach out and claim the happiness that had been stolen from her so long ago when she’d foolishly fled from an uncertain future?
Just thinking about Callie and Eunice’s likely reactions was enough to make her cringe inside. Perhaps Callie was caught up enough in her own romance that she would see the wonder of what was happening to her mother, but Eunice? Eunice would probably try to have her locked away in some psychiatric ward.
She broke free of Mikel’s embrace. “I will have to think about this,” she said, meeting his hopeful gaze with regret.
Hurt darkened his eyes, but he nodded. “Do not wait too long, my love. We have lost far too much time already.”
Regina set out on foot from Mikel’s loft. It was a brilliant spring day with a soft, gentle breeze to catch the occasional fragrance of the gardens she passed. She needed the time to think, just as she had promised.
Oddly, something Jason had said to her the first night they met came back to her now. When she had dutifully recited Jacob’s opinions about television, he had prodded, “What about you? What do you think?”
Perhaps all this worry over what Callie and Eunice might think was just as wrong. What she should be deciding was what she wanted after all this time.
And there was no mistake about that, she concluded. She wanted a life with Mikel for whatever time either of them had left. Her spirit soared just contemplating it. Her pulse raced as it hadn’t in years. He was her destiny. He always had been. She had known it the instant she set eyes on him as a girl and felt her heart thunder wildly. Nothing had changed that, not even more than thirty years of separation.
She paused in front of a fancy department store window and studied her reflection, awestruck by the fact that a man like Mikel had proclaimed his love for her, had apparently found no replacement for her in all this time. She was no longer the young girl with the thick brown hair and unlined complexion he had taken under his wing when she first came to New York determined to discover if she had any talent as an artist.
She touched her fingers to the fine lines feathering out from the corners of her eyes. Hands trembling, she tugged a few wisps of graying hair free from the severe knot atop her head. The effect softened her face, but she still looked old, older than her years.
Suddenly she thought of the money Callie had been tucking into her purse like clockwork every week since she’d been in New York, payment for helping with the fan mail and more besides. And there was Terry’s money, too. Other than what she’d spent on groceries and a few meals in neighborhood restaurants, she’d saved most of it. What if she took the rest and splurged on a complete makeover in some elegant salon? Did she dare? Was she crazy for thinking she could recapture her youth with a little hair dye and a facial?
And where would she go? She knew nothing of such things. Perhaps Neil would know. And he was discreet enough to keep her secret from Callie just a little longer. It was funny how fond she had become of him and Terry. It felt as if she’d known the two of them forever, and there were times when she thought she knew and understood them better than her own daughter.
Yes, she decided, if Neil would help her, she would do it. Anxious to make an appointment now that the decision had been made, she hailed a taxi. Back on the West Side, she practically raced up the stairs to Neil’s apartment, praying that he had come home from work early for once.
She rapped on his door and waited. She was almost certain she heard voices coming from inside, so when he didn’t answer at once, she knocked again.
“That’s odd,” she murmured, positive now that she heard someone speaking in the apartment. She decided that perhaps they had left the radio or TV on in the morning. Terry especially was always in a rush. Suddenly, though, the voices faded.
Images of the chaotic ruins intruders had made of Callie’s apartment came back in a flood. “Oh, sweet heaven,”
