Free The Kiss by Danielle Steel

than it ever had before.
    “Because that's who they always were. At some level, we both knew going in that this was how it would wind up. Cindy was adorable when she was in college, she was bright and cute and a lot of fun, but she was never warm. She's probably the most selfish, manipulative, calculating woman on the planet. And Gordon is cruel, cold, and controlling. Nothing we did would ever have changed that. The trouble is, that was what we were willing to settle for, whether we admit it or not. The question is, why did we think that was all we deserved?”
    “My parents were like that,” Isabelle said softly, looking at him with her enormous green eyes, and he nodded. “I loved them, but they were very distant and reserved.”
    “So were mine. My parents hated kids, and had decided not to have any, and then I came along in their forties, as a surprise. They never let me forget it, and always let me know, or made me feel, that they were doing me a huge favor having me around at all. I couldn'twait to get the hell out when I went to college. And they both died in a plane crash when I was twenty-five. I never even cried. I felt as though strangers had died when the airline called. I didn't know what to say. I don't even know who they were, just two very intelligent people who let me live with them for eighteen years, and were relieved when I finally moved on. I don't know what they'd ever have done if I'd hugged them, or kissed them or told them I loved them. I don't remember my mother ever hugging or kissing me as a child. She always spoke to me from across the room, and my father never spoke to me at all. Cindy's like that. She always speaks to me from ten feet away, farther if she can.”
    “It's a wonder you're as sane as you are,” Isabelle said sympathetically. She could barely imagine his childhood, in some ways, and yet hers hadn't been much different. There had been hugging and kissing, but mainly the form of it, and beneath the form, there had been very little love. “My mother was very English. I think she wanted to love me, and she did probably, but she didn't know how. She was very proper and very cold, she had lost her own mother when she was a baby, and her father had been very cold to her. He sent her to boarding school when she was nine, and left her there until she married my father. She met him at her presentation at court, and I think my grandfather arranged the marriage to get her out of the house. And once she was gone, he remarried, a woman he'd been involved with for years, even before his wife died. The British side of the family was full of skeletons and secrets, and people we weren't allowed to mention ortalk about. All we had to do was dress properly, be polite, and pretend that everything was fine. I never had any idea how my mother felt about anything, and my father was so involved in politics, I don't think he knew we were alive. My mother died when I was in my teens, and my father never had time to talk to me, or be with me, although I think he was a nice man. Their marriage was a little like mine and Gordon's, which may be why it doesn't shock me more than it does to have a husband who has shut me out. I've never given it much thought, but it's the only model I know.”
    “I guess me too,” he said philosophically. There was nothing he couldn't say to Isabelle. “I suppose if Cindy had been warmer than my parents, I wouldn't have known how to deal with it in those days. I was twenty-two when we got married, and I think part of me has been frozen for years.” It was only when he had begun talking to her four years before that so much had become clear to him, and so many of his views had changed. He had been drawn to Isabelle's warmth and light like a moth to flame, and in some ways, she had kept him alive ever since. But the contrast between her and his wife had made him feel even more distant from Cindy after so many years. He could see now how vastly separate and distant they