Home Matters (A Ripple Effect Romance Novella, Book 1) (15 page)

The powdery sweet scent of lavender hung in the air, bringing her back to a time when a young girl with dreams of romance and fame had called this room home. Dreams that had felt real, attainable, as long as she never crossed the threshold. For on the other side of these pink-striped walls, the journey she’d travel could no longer be of her own making. But that of fate. And as she’d come to learn, fate made for unpredictable, if not cruel, company.

Wish-boning her arms behind her head, Olivia gazed up at the lace fabric veiling her childhood bed and thought again about Pete. During the two weeks since the final taping, she’d had a little time to recover from the fallout caused by his substituting her design for Eleanor’s, and she’d arrived at two very dichotomous conclusions. First: He’d risked his future and that of Hearts and Hammers in order to show her she had potential beyond the narrow scope of the goals she’d set for herself. That a real life, one with true substance was out there waiting for her. Possibly even one with him? Second: Whenever she considered that Pete’s motives had been driven by a true affection for her, the newspaper picture of Teresa would drop before her mind’s eye again. Then a voice in her head would whisper that this ghost from Pete’s past was the love his heart truly sought and not that of some cut-rate replica—not Olivia.

A knock at the door, followed by her mother’s chipper voice, pulled her from her thoughts. “You about ready to go?” Emma-Jean asked as she inched the door open, her smiling face filling the gap. She’d been beyond ecstatic when her famous daughter had decided to come home between tapings instead of flying back to LA with the rest of the cast. Olivia hadn’t the heart to tell her she’d come home in hopes of creating some distance between her success and the confusion that had followed.

Olivia sat up. “Go?” she questioned. Her gaze found the open, half-packed suitcase at the foot of her bed. “Oh, right.”

It was time for her to fly out to the show’s next location. Valentine, Nebraska. Very apropos for February’s show.
Ugh!
The thought of starting the process all over again formed a bittersweet lump in her throat. Sweet when recalling the moment she’d brought Mr. and Mrs. Calhoun into their newly renovated home, and how Mrs. Calhoun had instantly begun calling out, “We choose renovation!” over and over. That, along with the satisfaction of watching William lapse into a sullen, on-air brood, followed by his fans taking to social media, calling him a sore loser and predicting Olivia as the winner of the next challenge. All of the above had increased her star power considerably, which should have had her scaling the moon. But try as she might, she just couldn’t muster even a trace of pride. Even though she’d achieved the impossible and pulled her design together in record time while managing to shame William in the process, Eleanor had reclaimed the designer’s seat, strapped herself in tight, and vowed to watch Olivia with hawk-like efficiency from now on.

Olivia’s greatest success had yielded her most devastating disappointment.

Emma-Jean’s brow creased with concern. “Sweetheart, are you all right?”

Olivia forced a smile in her mother’s general direction. “Yes, Momma, fine.” Lifting a blouse from her heap of unpacked clothes, she gave it a half-hearted fold, and tossed it into the suitcase. “I’ll be ready in a minute.”

Slipping through the door, Emma-Jean sidestepped a pile of shoes and crossed to the bed. “Baby girl, what have you been doing in here all this time?” She plucked up a pair of jeans and began to fold. “If we don’t get a move on, you’re gonna miss your flight.” She placed the folded jeans in the suitcase and took a closer look at her daughter. “Olivia, what
is
the matter, child?”

“Nothing, Momma,” Olivia denied. “I was just thinking is all.”

“About who?” Emma-Jean asked. “William?”

Olivia took note of her mother’s bouncing eyebrows. She, like the rest of the show’s fans, was still under the assumption Olivia and William were madly in love. That William just might be Olivia’s forever after. She hated lying to her mother, and honestly didn’t have to, but given the current state of her emotional turmoil, she didn’t have the strength to deal with the side effects of obliterating a mother’s matrimonial dreams for her only daughter.

“Sure…” Olivia forced a smile that pricked the contempt she was unable to keep from her eyes. “William.”

Emma-Jean’s lips curled up into a dreamy smile. “That’s my lucky girl.”

“Yeah, lucky,” Olivia echoed, noticing for the first time her mother had something gripped in her hand. “Is that my cell phone?”

An innocent look crossed Emma-Jean’s face. “Now, don’t go accusing me of snooping, or any such thing, but your phone was just lying there on the counter when I happened by, and it started convulsing all over the place.” She added a dire spin to what came next. “I had to grab it before it hit the floor and noticed that William has called you a number of times. But you haven’t returned not one of his calls.” She tossed the phone to the bed.

Sparing her cell a glance, Olivia regarded her meddling mother a moment. Why did she insist on denying a behavior they both knew she couldn’t control? “Really, you just happened to notice all that, did you?” she asked, knowing Emma-Jean would never own up to it. Just like how Olivia wasn’t going to corroborate what she guessed her mother had already begun to suspect. “Don’t fret, Momma. I was planning to call him back from the airport,” she lied as a good daughter would.

“See that you do,” Emma-Jean said, using a mother’s expectant tone, the kind that doubled as a subtle threat. “All right then.” She stepped back, as if intending to leave Olivia to her packing. Only she didn’t go.

Olivia did a quick study of her mother’s face. On the back side of fifty-five, her green eyes popped from radiant skin. Her blonde hair shined with slight touches of gray. Her figure forever held fast at a size six. She had always been so beautiful.

“Momma, how come you didn’t become a big star?” she asked, the question popping from her mouth before she’d given herself a chance to consider where the inquiry might lead. “I mean, you’re a talented actress and singer. You certainly had the looks for it. And still do.” She’d grown up watching her mother star in community theater productions and had viewed tapes of auditions from her early attempts at catching a Hollywood producer’s eye. “Why didn’t you go for it when you were young? What held you back?”

Emma-Jean slid Olivia’s suitcase out of the way and sat on the bed. “Well, I met your daddy, for one.” She smiled through glistening eyes. “Fell head over heels for a grad-student with not a penny to his name.” She laughed, though it wasn’t a happy sound. “Can you imagine?”

Actually, yes. Olivia could, in fact, imagine. Scooching closer, she asked, “How did you know he was the one?” then held her breath.

Emma-Jean shrugged. “Well, I couldn’t stop thinking about him,” she said, her eyes looking into Olivia’s and yet somehow beyond at the same time. “When we were apart, it was like a chunk of my soul went missing.” She rubbed her shoulders as if afflicted by a sudden chill. “It sounds silly now, but back then I became physically ill whenever we were apart.”

Olivia’s hand lifted to her chest and pressed as if to hold together the broken fragments of her racing heart. “That doesn’t sound silly at all,” she said, though it wasn’t just a piece of her that had gone missing when Pete had driven away. Her heart had split in two, the contents spilling to the bottom of that empty cavern in her soul, a fissure that grew with every day she spent away from him, with each second she kept to her present course.

“We got married, started having babies,” Emma-Jean continued. “And well, my life just seemed to chart a course of its own from there,” she explained, like abandoning her dreams was as easy as that.

“Do you regret it?” Olivia asked pointedly. “Not going after your dreams?”

Emma-Jean ran her tongue over her top lip. Her gaze drifted further away, far past Olivia this time, and on to a place she appeared hesitant to go. Her expression rotated through an array of emotions: anger, betrayal, regret, envy, sadness, and finally resignation. “I did for a while. You know, every now and then when being a wife and mother became mundane.” A repentant smile thinned out her lips. “But now, looking back, I wouldn’t change a thing. Your big brothers and you. Your daddy. Our life. I wouldn’t give it up for anything,” she said, after which the room fell into a weighted silence. A moment or two later, she spoke again. “Love and family. Home. These are the only things in life that matter.”

Olivia pulled in a steady breath, gathering the courage needed to say what she had to next. “Momma, I don’t think I want to go—” she started, but then as if a hypnotist had snapped his fingers, Emma-Jean shook free of her reverie, her poignant expression flipping instantly to its usual bright self again.

“Oh, I forgot!” she interrupted and began to sift through Olivia’s pile of unpacked clothes. “That assistant of yours… Twisty, is it?”

Olivia blinked in response, requiring a second or two to process her mother’s quick-change in demeanor. “It’s Tristi,” she corrected.

Emma-Jean swatted her mistake away. “Right, whatever,” she dismissed. “Since you’re ignoring your cell,
Tristi
called the house phone, wanting you to see this online article.” Locating Olivia’s phone, she tapped the screen and scrolled, then held it out. “Here, she texted you this link.”

Olivia arched an eyebrow at her mother. “Given as how you weren’t snooping and all, you’re awfully familiar with the workings of my cell.” She maintained her accusing stare as she retrieved the phone from her mother’s outstretched hand.

Emma-Jean puckered her mouth in a what-did-you-expect fashion. “Excuse me for being helpful.”

Shaking her head, but taking comfort in the fact that some things never change, Olivia turned her focus to Tristi’s text. Her throat instantly clogged at the sight of Pete. Grinning for the camera, he held up a giant check with
Hearts and Hammers
scrolled onto the beneficiary’s line. The number that followed was trailed by six zeroes.

“He did it, but how?” she whispered. “Drew?” It had only been a couple of weeks since she’d sat across a coffeehouse booth from the young millionaire. He must have been sincerely desperate to rid himself of his family’s wealth.

Her quivering fingers touched the display. Without warning, a tsunami of regret, driven by her decision not to accept Pete’s offer to become his designer, his partner, engulfed her.

And that was when she knew she couldn’t hide from the truth any longer. The seeds of a fulfilling life’s purpose had been sown inside her, taken root, and begun to sprout. She was an artist, a designer—a creator—none of which cared one whit about money or fame. She wanted to use this talent, her every breath, to help people, to make a difference. How could she not have seen this in herself before? Like being sealed in a box, the need for air growing more intense the harder she tried to convince herself she didn’t need to breathe, the craving to pick up her sketchpad and set to work recreating a home, a single room—a coat closet, for heaven’s sake—consumed her.

“Seems to me like a noble cause,” her mother observed.

Olivia swallowed against the well of change rising up inside her. “Yeah, he’s going to be doing some pretty amazing things for people who genuinely need the help,” she said, trying though not succeeding to keep her voice even, to conceal what her heart was urging her again to admit out loud.

Eyes shadowed by defiance one instant and melting to acceptance the next, Emma-Jean studied her daughter. “Hum, I wonder,” she said, as if musing aloud. “What are the chances he’s in need of a good designer? Someone with no formal training but who possesses great potential all the same?” She smiled then, the very essence of maternal love shining through the tears watering her eyes. “I’ve seen her work, and I have to admit, she’s quite talented.”

Luckily, Atlanta was only a three-hour drive east from Nashville. Not so fortunate, however, was that it took another three hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic to get from one side of the city to the other. Olivia had left home before sunrise, hoping to arrive early in the day. People tended to be more optimistic, more open to new ideas, and more accepting of change first thing in the morning. Or so she’d heard on one of those early morning news shows.
News?
Well anyway, the kind of show where “newscasters” get paid an obscene amount of money to sit around and talk about themselves—ad nauseam—between information segments where an “expert” is forced to speed-talk through his/her spiel as to allow sufficient time for the extended commercial break to follow.

Except, now that she thought about it, if what the “expert” from the next segment had claimed was also correct, and most Americans were sleep deprived, how was it logical to assume any one individual might be more open and optimistic while still in the thawing-out phase that followed an insufficient night’s sleep? Only what did it matter when, technically, it wasn’t “the morning” anymore.
Ugh!
This was a disaster already. What had she been thinking? Then again, maybe that was her problem.