Hot Buttered Yum (21 page)

“To the best kind of friends,” she said. “The ones I want to
celebrate everything with. And the ones I’m fortunate enough to always have on
my side.” Her gaze landed on Roni. “Just like I know you two know I’m there for
you. No matter when, and no matter where I am.”

Affection swelled inside Roni. She missed their times
together.

They clinked glasses and took a sip, and Roni noticed both
of them eyeing her over their rims.

“So …” Ginger began when it became clear that Roni was
stalling. Ginger popped a slice of strawberry in her mouth, chewed, and then
said, “Should we talk men first?”

The tension eased from Roni’s shoulders and her face split
into a wide grin. “Yes,” she breathed. “Men first.” She thought of the conversation
she and Lucas had had in her kitchen yesterday morning and blurted, “
Ohmygod
,
I think I’m in a relationship.”

Ginger choked on her mimosa, and Andie rolled her eyes and
took another drink.

“Honey.” Andie reached over and patted Roni’s hand. “I could
have told you that when we talked the other day.”

“You knew she was in a relationship?” Ginger yelped. “And
you didn’t tell me? I thought she was just having sex!”

Andie swallowed a bite of her quiche. “She thought she was
just having sex too.”

Roni placed her fork carefully beside her gold-trimmed plate
and clasped her hands in front of her. Her breakfast would just have to get cold.
“What …
exactly
,” she started, her attention turned to Andie, “made
you think it was more?”

Because Roni was fairly certain she’d only said that they
were having sex.

Andie’s eyebrows rose above her blue-gray eyes. The color of
her eyes had always reminded Roni of the calm surf glistening in the bright
morning sun. “I believe your exact words were,” she began, “‘He just makes me
feel good to be around him.’”

Ginger sucked in a breath. “She said that?”

Roni shot both of them a scowl. They ignored her. “Enjoying
being around someone does not mean it’s more than sex,” she pointed out.

“I’m so happy for her,” Ginger said in a hushed tone.

Great. Roni could see her friend’s romantic streak coming to
life—while both her friends seemed to have forgotten that Roni was right there
with them.

“Mark makes you feel good to be around him,” Ginger asked
Andie. “Right?”

Andie nodded. “And when I’m not around him. Just knowing I
get to be around him again works too.”

Roni wanted to make a face at the sickeningly sweet
sentiment, but she’d seen Andie and Mark together. It was true. They each made
the other feel good. Just being around one another.

“And she’s like that with Lucas?” Ginger pressed.

“That’s what she said.”

“Hello?” Roni clanged her fork on her glass. “I’m right
here.”

And
she
should be the one to determine when it had
turned from sex into a relationship.

She looked at Andie, prepared to argue the point, but then
slumped in her chair. “Damn it,” she muttered. She should have known it the
instant she’d seen Gracie on that computer. “How did you know that?
I
didn’t
even know at that point.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Andie said. “You can’t see it when
you’re right in the middle of it. Especially when you think it’s just sex.”

“And you couldn’t have bothered to tell me?” Roni grumbled.
Not that she would have believed her. Heck, she still didn’t know what to make
of it.

Ginger scooped up a bite of eggs and watched the other two
women. Andie swallowed a bite of berry before wiping her hands on the napkin in
her lap and pointing an accusing finger at Roni.

“How long did you date Charles?”

“Two years.” They’d met the season they’d both played with
the Chicago orchestra, and had stayed together after that. She’d later flown
Andie and Ginger to New York to meet him. “Why?”

“Did he ever make you feel better to be around him?”

She opened her mouth to say that of course he had. She’d
thought she wanted to marry the man, for heaven’s sake.

“I enjoyed my time with him,” she hedged, thinking back over
the years spent with Charles. They’d shared a lot of the same likes and
dislikes, and had both understood the pressures of the business. They’d
respected one other, as well as their talents. They’d also rarely been in the
same city together. And she had been fine with that. But no, she realized, he
hadn’t made her simply feel good to be around him. Not the same way she got
with Lucas.

“We were both worried, waiting for you to tell us you were
going marry him.” Andie motioned between her and Ginger. “But we could see he
didn’t do that for you. He was just …” Andie shrugged. “I don’t know. Comfortable.”

Roni nodded. “He was comfortable. We both understood each
other well.” Charles was as driven as Roni had been.

“And then you moved here,” Ginger jumped into the
conversation. “And we didn’t push because we didn’t want you to go back to
him.”

“You didn’t like him?” Roni asked. Someone could definitely have
told her that.

“We liked him fine,” Ginger said. “But he wasn’t the one. He
didn’t make you get all swoony.”

Roni shook her head. There was more to making a relationship
work than getting all swoony. Her dad had made her mom all swoony for years,
and even with that, they hadn’t been able to make it work. He hadn’t paid
enough attention to her.

Just as Charles hadn’t paid attention to Roni.

“We had a lot in common,” Roni argued, knowing the point was
moot. “He understood my passion for playing, and I understood his.” Charles had
played the violin. He still did.

And then it dawned on her that her friends had assumed she’d
moved here because she’d been running from a bad relationship. They thought
she’d given up her career over Charles?

“I didn’t move here because of him,” she said with a healthy
amount of incredulity.

“Okay,” Andie accepted the statement.

Ginger looked uncertain for a few seconds and then scratched
at a spot on her neck. “Okay,” she parroted. “Then why did you? And what
happened with Charles?”

Do or die, Roni thought. It was time to tell them.

She took a deep breath, pulling in the scents of their
mostly uneaten breakfast and the honeysuckle bushes surrounding her deck from below,
then let it back out. “I moved here because he made me choose,” she stated
flatly. “And then my choice eventually broke me in two.”

Two confused gazes stared back at her.

“I’ll start at the beginning,” she said. “Three years ago I
played a charity event at the children’s hospital in New York. I’d done plenty
of similar events before, so when my manager suggested the hospital, I loved
the idea. What better way to give back than to put a smile on a kid’s face? It
was June, and I was doing one concert. When I got there, I was overwhelmed.
There were so many kids in the crowd.”

Ginger leaned her elbows on the table, and Roni watched her
eyes mist over. Ginger would make a great mother someday.

“I looked out over this crowd of miniature people and was
overwhelmed with the spirits pouring back at me. Some looked at me as if I was
the most magical thing they’d ever seen. Some as if I were the
only
magical thing they’d ever seen.

“And there was this one little girl,” Roni continued. She
could picture Zoe so easily in her mind. “She watched me with no expression whatsoever.
She just sat there and took it all in. It wasn’t that she was incapable of
expression or feelings, but it was as if she wanted to make absolutely certain about
something before sharing with me even the barest hint of herself.”

“She was protective,” Andie said.

Roni nodded. She’d recognized it the instant she’d laid eyes
on Zoe. “I could see that from where I sat at the front of the room. This
little girl, so tiny she could get lost in the crowd, was sitting there, afraid
to so much as spare me a smile.”

Roni sat back in her seat and placed her hands in her lap. She
had to concentrate to tell the story without letting grief take hold. “She was
seven, and her name was Zoe,” she stated. “When I finished and asked if there
were any questions, Zoe raised her hand.” Roni closed her eyes and pictured the
slight girl with the thin blonde hair and slightly too-large head.

“What did she ask?” Ginger whispered.

Roni took a long drink and finished off her mimosa. When she
set her glass down, she dug her teeth into her top lip before answering, “She
asked if I had a mother.” Roni swallowed. It had been said with the most
wishful voice she’d ever heard. “And then if my mother had been the person who’d
taught me to play the piano.”

She closed her eyes again as her chest burned.

“I got to know her over the next six months.” Roni thought
about her visits to the hospital. About the terror that would squeeze the
breath out of her each time she approached the front doors. “Every time I
walked into that hospital, I feared it would be the last. So I’d stop by to see
her whenever I was in town. I sent her postcards from the places I traveled.
She loved to see the cities I visited. I even gave her lessons on the piano a
few times. She’d developed Alexander disease before she was two. Her mother hadn’t
been overly responsible up to that point, and had left Zoe with her grandmother
much of her first two years of life. Then when Zoe went into the hospital for
the first time, no one ever came to pick her up.”

“Oh my.” Ginger put her hand to her mouth. “She was just … deserted?”

Roni nodded. “Her mother never showed up for court dates
after the abandonment, and eventually lost parental rights. Not that she wanted
them, apparently. Zoe lived in and out of foster care and hospitals at that
point. Alexander disease is fatal, so no one wanted her long-term.”

“How awful.” Andie looked a little green at the thought.
“What happened to her?” She reached over and held Roni’s hand. Ginger did the
same.

Tension squeezed from the base of Roni’s stomach, up to the
back of her throat. Tears once again leaked from her eyes. “I fell in love with
her,” Roni whispered brokenly. The back of her nose burned as she tried
unsuccessfully to keep in the tears. “I’d taken one look into her pale-blue
eyes that first day, at the fear radiating back at me, and I had the strongest urge
to run to her. To scoop her up in my arms and hold her so tight. I wanted to
help. And I wanted to make her smile.” She sucked in an unsteady breath. “I
wanted to be there for someone.

“I went home that day a changed woman. It took a while, but
I reevaluated my life. I took a long, hard look. And I didn’t like what I saw.
I was heading down the same path my father had chosen. Profession over all
else. I loved my career. Very much. But I didn’t want to be alone the remainder
of my life. And I didn’t want to die knowing that all I had for anyone to remember
me by was the piano.”

Those months of self-evaluation had led to a major decision.

She’d scale back. Teach at Juilliard instead of performing. She’d
give everything she had to Zoe.

She would change her life for the child.

“I wanted to be Zoe’s mom,” she told her friends. Her voice
shook when she spoke. “I had it all figured out. Charles and I would get
married, and I’d cut back. I’d stop playing completely if I had to. So that I could
be there for Zoe. I knew she had limited time to live.”

“That’s a huge thing to do,” Andie spoke softly. Her fingers
stayed wrapped tightly around Roni’s. “I take it Charles didn’t like the idea?”

A dry chuckle came from Roni. “Charles didn’t waver for a second.
He said he would marry me—
he supposed
—but he wanted no part of having a
kid.” Roni glanced down at the food on her plate as she continued in a whisper,
“And certainly not a reject who would take time away from his music. Only to end
up dying in the end.” Her voice was monotone by the time she finished relaying Charles’s
words. Shame filled her for ever having loved the man.

“Zoe or him, he’d said.” She lifted her face and smiled
weakly at her friends. “And he was arrogant enough, he thought I’d choose him.”

“He was an ass,” Ginger’s tone was harsh. Harder than
anything Roni had ever heard come from her. “And he didn’t know you at all.” She
used her free hand to wipe the tears from Roni’s cheeks. “You’ve always wanted
a family.”

Roni blinked at that, pulled out of the past. “What?”

She’d never even thought about a family until she’d met Zoe.
And then the thought had only crossed her mind because the girl had so
desperately needed someone. Roni had realized that she’d needed someone too, of
course. Not just someone. She’d needed Zoe. She’d wanted to give the girl everything
she’d never had before.

And she’d wanted to make sure that Zoe never felt alone
again.

“When we were little, you were the one who always wanted to
play ‘house.’” Andie added to Ginger’s statement. “You were the mother, I was
the kid, and Ginger was your husband.”

Roni let her eyes lose focus as she went back in time. She
remembered playing house with her friends. And yes, she had wanted to do that.
All the time. Funny, she’d never thought about that being so telling. But maybe
she had wanted a family, even then. Or maybe it had simply been because her own
family had splintered.

“Sometimes that boy would play with us,” she muttered. “What
was his name?”

“Carter,” Ginger answered. “He would be your pain-in-the-butt
son.”

Carter had lived on the island year-round. He’d been
Ginger’s friend. Roni had another memory and she grinned suddenly at Ginger.
“When he was around, you always wanted to play ‘wedding.’”

Ginger blushed. They’d teased her endlessly as a teenager
about her crush on the boy next door. Carter had been their age, but he’d looked
older. He’d filled out and was muscular by the time he was thirteen. And he’d
moved on from playing house with silly girls. Ginger had been chunky and shy,
and easy to ignore at that point.