Bleeding Heart by Liza Gyllenhaal Read Free Book Online Page B

come to love? The thought was so upsetting that I threw off the sheets, got out of bed, and went downstairs. I made myself a cup of tea in the kitchen and then wandered out to the living room and my laptop to click through my presentation one more time.
    It was good. No, it was better than good. Anyone who had a serious interest in landscape design would probably be able to spot my influences—most notably Beatrix Farrand and Gertrude Jekyll. Farrand had designed the gardens for The Mount, Edith Wharton’s estate in nearby Lenox, but it was Farrand’s plans for Dumbarton Oaks in Georgetown that I turned to again and again when I was thinking through how best to handle Mackenzie’s sloping acres. She’d dealt with the same problem at Dumbarton Oaks, though to a lesser degree, and I studied her solution with care: leveled-off areas at different elevations that formed intimate garden rooms, each with its own unique character and focus: a fountain, a reflecting pool, a walkway covered with wisteria and climbing roses. In the end, what she’d created was an outdoor mansion—with a ceiling as high as the sky.
    Just as I was finally drifting back to sleep around daybreak, the computer still open on my lap, the kitchen phone rang. I ran to answer it.
    “When can you get up here?” Mackenzie demanded.
    “And good morning to you, too,” I said, irritated that he didn’t have the courtesy to apologize for the delay in getting back to me.
    “Oh, honestly, Alice,” he said with a laugh. “Lighten up. I’m the client here, remember? I’ll be waiting.”

    I was out of sorts from lack of sleep, and I made the mistake of drinking two cups of strong coffee to make up for it. By the time I started up Mackenzie’s winding private driveway my nerves were jangling. But as I got to the top of the mountain and looked down on the hillside I’d now come to know so well, I felt myself relax. Mackenzie was right: I needed to lighten up. I had every reason to be proud of my plans. What I was about to present to Mackenzie was by far the best work of my life.
    There were several cars I didn’t recognize parked in front of the garages. I pulled in next to Eleanor’s familiar blue Passat and carried my laptop and presentation case up to the house.
    “He’s in the sunroom having breakfast,” Eleanor said after she greeted me at the door. “With his ex and his son.”
    “Won’t I be interrupting?” I asked as she started to lead me down the hallway. I’d already picked up from gossip around town that Mackenzie was divorced. I wasn’t surprised. I never felt a sense of family life in the house. It was more like a male bastion. A bachelor’s aerie.
    “I have a feeling he’ll welcome that,” she said. “It’s not exactly a love fest this morning.”
    I could hear what she meant as we approached.
    “. . . dare you speak to your son that way.”
    “Because he deserves it. When I was his age—”
    “Oh, man, not that again! I’m not you, okay, Dad? I’m never going to
be
you. I stopped trying to fill your shoes a long time ago.”
    “You’re twenty years old, Lachlan. A long time ago for you means
kindergarten
, for chrissakes! Either you get a job or you go back to school. I’m not going to underwrite any more of your half-assed ideas.”
    The sunroom was a spacious octagon with floor-to-ceiling windows that faced southeast over the valley. Mackenzie, his ex-wife, and his son were seated at a round glass table. The former Mrs. Mackenzie was a redhead with a faultless porcelain complexion and suspiciously taut features for the mother of someone Lachlan’s age. She was tall—nearly Mackenzie’s height—with the upright, self-aware posture of a ballerina. She was probably beautiful, but it was hard to tell; anger had pulled her face into an unpleasant rictus.
    Lachlan favored his father—the same high forehead and milky blue gaze, but his thick, wavy hair was jet-black. He wore hip dark-framed glasses and stubble