Home Matters (A Ripple Effect Romance Novella, Book 1) (8 page)

Nevertheless, a tiny voice in her heart whispered for her to beg his forgiveness. Another advised that maybe it was better Pete stayed mad at her. That way they could both avoid any future unwarranted kissing incidents.

“I never asked you to kiss me,” she defiantly asserted.

Pete’s nostrils flared. “Well, you didn’t exactly pull away either,” he spat out the words. “Falling for that shallow party-boy. I really thought
you
, of all people, were more original than that.”

Now he’d flat out insulted her character, not to mention, intelligence. A string of colorfully offensive nouns lined up, poised to leap from her lips when another thought occurred and told her insult arsenal to stand down. In all honesty, William wasn’t the deepest of thinkers, and he enjoyed his scotch, but he was also kind and attentive. So what did it matter if he didn’t have much of interest to say when he was unbelievably easy on the eyes, and… Olivia heaved an inward groan. Could Pete be right? Was her attraction to William purely superficial, an affection born out of a media frenzy, driven by a society obsessed with physical attraction?

More confused now than ever before, she felt the fight draining out of her, a sieve missing its plug. How could she justify her feelings for William with all this doubt clouding her mind? Was it fair to stay mad at Pete when, after reliving their kiss through his eyes, it appeared she was the one who needed to apologize? And how did one apologize for stomping all over one man’s affection while in the process of racing into the arms of another?

For lack of any semblance of an appropriate response, she looked back to the wall she’d been painting and opted for a change in topic. “This color is all wrong.” Her eyes fell to the floor where her messenger bag and sketchpad lay. “I mean, gray’s a pretty color and all, it’s just not right for this…”—she slid Pete an ironic look—“‘space.’”

Amusement twined around hurt to produce a smile he mostly held back. Instead, he studied the room an extended moment. “Yeah, well, if you ask me, with the way these walls catch the late afternoon’s ‘natural light’,”—he looked to her with a sly eye—“a warm ochre would be best for this… ‘living space.’”

A smile forced its way onto her lips. She couldn’t help herself. In the dying afternoon light, his rugged features, mess of tousled hair, and playful gaze had her feeling all gooey inside. “Hmm, that’s exactly what I was thinking.” She turned back to the wall to hide the pleasure tickling her insides and shifted topics again. “It breaks my heart, what Eleanor’s doing with this design.”

“Really?” He raised a sarcastic brow. “You don’t say.”

Olivia set the roller down on the pan and planted her fists on her hips. “Well, I’m right, you know,” she asserted. “Proper Southerners like the Calhouns don’t want monochromatic and straight lines. It’s cold.” She wrapped her chest with her arms and visibly shivered. “The South is more French Provincial meets country chic. This home should say, ‘Sit down. Stay a while. Have another glass of tea.’” She threw him a stoic glance. “Not, ‘Who ordered the autopsy?’”

This time Pete didn’t hold back his smile either. In fact, he outright laughed. “You really are one of a kind Miss Pembroke,” he said.

And with that, her frustration with him—her situation in general—became light and sudsy, popping from her throat in the form of a hearty laugh.

After a few seconds, Pete’s laughter quieted, falling to a resigned look. It seemed as though his thoughts were pulling apart, then reconnecting in a different order—a darkened bulb unexpectedly bursting forth with light.

He silently watched her before asking, “Hey, you want some pizza?”

The calorically lethal combination of grease, dairy and carbs shouldered its way through the paint fumes to entice her nose, tease the void in her gut left by the kale cleanse she and William had started together yesterday. She resisted. “I don’t eat pizza,” she said and meant to turn back to her painting. Only, her body resisted, her stomach begging for sustenance.

Pete’s gaze assessed her from boot to tunic. “Come on, one slice won’t hurt you.” He back-stepped to the plastic sheet, and pulled it open for her to enter. “Besides, beauty has nothing to do with maintaining a size two.”

“Size four,” she corrected, but only in her head. And for reasons she wouldn’t admit, but that had everything to do with his flattery, she followed him into the next room.

On the other side of the plastic, two of Pete’s crewmembers, Brandon and Tom along with Sean, had situated a few crates in a horseshoe around a grouping of stacked flooring boxes they were using as a supper table. Quietly chewing, they each had a slice of pizza in one hand, eyes trained on the pages of a celebrity gossip paper they each held in the other.

Sean looked up, his concerted expression quickly washing to,
uh-oh
. “Look everyone, it’s Bull’s-eye.” He folded the paper and tucked it behind his back. “What the he—” he started to say, a smile stiff on his lips, “h-heck are you doing here?”

Brandon made a show of searching Olivia with his eyes. His beard and ponytail bespoke
Duck Dynasty
. “She’s not packin’, is she?” He glanced down at the nail sticking out from the toe of his steel-toed boot. Another one of Olivia’s casualties. He’d said he was leaving it there as, “a cautionary tale to the danger of operating a power tool without a license.”

Pete grabbed a couple of crates and situated them to close the circle. “Nah, I frisked her,” he said, indicating with a nod that Olivia should sit. “She’s unarmed.”

The unbidden image of Pete patting her down with his strong, capable hands flooded her brain. When she found she wasn’t completely appalled by the notion, she spared him a murderous look and sat before he could decipher her scandalous thoughts.

Pete lifted a pizza box, holding it out to Olivia. “Here, help yourself.”

A storm surge of anticipation swamped Olivia’s mouth, but she gulped it back. “No, thank you, not just yet,” she stalled, giving her willpower time to kick in. “Maybe in a minute.”

Pete chose a slice heaping with veggies and sausage, then dropped the box back to the makeshift table. “Wait too long, and it’ll all be gone,” he advised. Folding his pizza in half, he bit down on the tip.

The urge to strike out, to rip the food from his fingers, rose out of the void in Olivia’s stomach. She slipped her hands between her thighs and the crate to suppress the compulsion. Was it the food she wanted, or Pete? She couldn’t be sure at the moment.

Tom ducked his bald head behind the gossip paper. “Maybe she needs Pete to feed it to her?” he mumbled.

Olivia turned her scathing eyes across the circle. “I’m capable of feeding myself just fine,” she said.

“Really?” Sean piped up. “That’s not what this says.” He lifted his paper again and waved the front page in her face.

With the image shaking around, she couldn’t be sure, but it looked as if a grainy picture of William bringing that one bite of pancake to her waiting mouth was engulfing the front page.

The headline read: “Is America’s Heartthrob Officially Off the Market?”

Olivia reached out to snatch the publication from his hand. “Let me see that.” But Sean was quicker, and all her fingers could manage was a torn-off corner.

“Not so fast, princess.” Sean sent her a cautionary look. “Says here, you make more money in one episode than I do in an entire season.” He set down his pizza and pointed to the open page. “I think you can afford to buy your own.”

“Is that a fact?” Olivia said, posing for a second attempt at claiming Sean’s paper. “Well, it just so happens that I don’t get paid in full until this particular season wraps, and my agent took thirty percent of my advance, so by my calculations that makes us even.” Springing up, she lunged over Pete’s lap, snatching Tom’s paper instead.

He threw his shoulders back, hands raised. “Whoa! She’s a testy little thing, isn’t she?” he said to Pete, then proceeded to sweep the group a knowing look. “Guess she forgot to take her Midol today,” he added, but Olivia ignored him. Her sights had already been reset onto a more compelling matter.

Turning to the inside fold, her eyes traveled over the pages. The byline read: “Wi-Livia Takes to the Streets of Romantic Savannah.” People were already calling them by their uni-name! How exciting. No wonder her social internet following had grown to over a few million in the last twenty-four hours alone. Then, framed by assorted shots of William and her together, a picture of Olivia leaning out of her hotel room, giving a mussed William a kiss was centered on the page. A timestamp at the bottom indicating five-forty-five a.m. provided readers with the impression he’d spent the night in her room. Shame blossomed on her cheeks and her neck. Her first thought should have been,
my folks are going to see this,
but it wasn’t. For some reason she was more worried about what Pete would think. Not that anything beyond kissing had happened that night, or since—she wasn’t that kind of girl, and William hadn’t pressed—but what good was the truth when fiction could be so much more interesting?

Desperate to avoid the subject, she searched the remaining shots for a change in focus. “Is that a picture of me coming out of Walgreens?” she asked, aghast for dramatic effect. “And a copy of my sales receipt?” she added, faking outrage when in fact, the idea that someone might care what she’d bought at Walgreens made her feel lightheaded, dizzy almost—at first. But as the guys continued to quote from the article, adding their own demented spin, a feeling altogether different began to emerge. A sensation of being… hollow? A deep crevice, an emptiness, that seemed to be expanding the more the guys continued to discuss the article.

“Looks like it,” Tom said, then proceeded to list the items on the receipt. “D-batteries?” he read, wagging his eyebrows. “And ring pops? You hiding an illegitimate child no one knows about in your room?”

“First, get your mind out of the gutter,” she scolded. “If you must know, the batteries were for my cordless fan. I get hot when I sleep, and I like the white noise. It soothes me. I need my beauty sleep,” she explained. “And don’t you dare go starting any rumors about fatherless babies,” she warned, to which the guys continued to regard her with cynical eyes. “What? I like to snack while I’m reading, or watching a television show, and sometimes I don’t want to eat the whole sucker at once. So I just pop it onto my finger, and it’s there when I’m ready for more. Simple as that.”

Sean studied her with a wary eye. “Right,” he said, drawing out the word. “At least the Midol needs no explanation. But given what happened the other day, you might want to up your dose,” he said, referring to the sander that had flown from Olivia’s hands, off the top of the nursery dresser she was “refinishing,” and right into the crotch of an unsuspecting crewman.

Humiliation darkened her blush. “I already told y’all that was an accident.”

“Tell that to Larry, laid up back at the hotel with his
who-ha
recovering in an ice sling,” Sean said.

“‘Who-ha?’” Brandon shoved Sean’s shoulder. “Dude, what are you, like four?” he said, to which the rest of the group joined in with jeers of their own.

Olivia glanced around at Pete’s crew, laughing, taunting one another. How long had it been since she’d felt lighthearted? Again, she mentally ran through her list of blessings, so long and yet still lacking, missing that one mysterious item equating to happiness. What could it be? The more she tried to answer that question, the greater that canyon inside her widened. Then the pleasing scent of pizza wafted up again, tempting her nose, whetting her taste buds. What if she wasn’t dissatisfied with her life at all? What if she was simply hungry? Yes, that had to be it.

Casting the paper aside, she went for a slice, and drove it into her mouth before her better sense had a chance to thwart her decision.

The crust, cheese, veggies, and yes, even the greasy sausage blended together, rolling over her tongue to form a divine combination. If heaven had a signature food, this pizza would certainly fit the description.

“It’s been a while since I ate pizza,” she said around the glorious bite delighting her ravenous appetite. “But this has to be the best I’ve ever tasted. Where did it come from?” she asked, already making plans to procure a pie for her own private enjoyment. Kale cleanse? What a ridiculous notion.

A smile tugged up the corner of Pete’s mouth. “It came from a place called Vinnie Van Go Go’s
.
It’s down by the river, close to the design school,” he was saying when a voice of disbelief cut in.

“Olivia?”

All eyes swung to see William pulling back the plastic.

“Are you eating pizza?”

Downtown Savannah fascinated Olivia. She marveled at the way history had survived amidst the present day in the form of resurrected storefronts, cobblestone streets, and grand-spired churches with bell towers that sang out hymns of praise at the top of each hour. But her favorite part of all was the squares scattered every few blocks. While some hosted sparkling fountains, others epitaphs to a fallen hero, all were sheltered by the mysterious fingers of crooked branches dripping in moss.

Her mouth watered in anticipation as she worked her way through the quaint antique and gift shops of City Market, toward the outer corner, and to the home of Vinnie Van Go Go’s Pizza. It had been three
long
days since she’d savored that one delectable bite, and she’d been anxiously anticipating the arrival of Friday and the week’s end of her rigorous schedule. Maybe she’d even go so far as to devour an entire piece this time.