Page 62 of Expecting an Argument
“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 windowon 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 withme—was runningout.
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.
