Maid for Love (A Romantic Comedy) (6 page)

Zoe hugged her pillow close to her chest. She didn’t want to have this conversation. The pain she was experiencing now reminded her of how she’d felt when her father had died suddenly of a heart attack. One minute he’d been there and the next he’d been gone. Just like that. She’d been ten at the time and she’d vowed never to let herself get hurt that way again.

“Zoe, love, I know you’re thinking of Daddy.”

She nodded and hugged the pillow tighter. As much as her mother’s gift often annoyed her, sometimes it made life easier when her mother read her thoughts.

“It isn’t the same, honey. Daddy never would have left you if he’d had a choice. You must know that.”

Zoe nodded again.

“But this situation with Michael is different. Just because you love someone doesn’t mean that your heart will get broken.”

“Yours did.”

Her mother sighed. “Yes, it did. But it was after many happy years together, and I’d never trade that time for anything.”

“Even if it meant that you could have avoided all the sadness?”

“I’d do it all over again for half the time and twice the heartbreak, it was that worth it.”

“I wish I knew what to do.”

“I think you do, Zoe. Deep down. You know.”

They sat in silence for a few moments. Zoe knew what her mother wanted her to do. She wanted her daughter to throw caution to the wind and rush up to the beach house in Nantucket. According to her mother’s romantic notions, Michael would declare his undying devotion to her the first moment he saw her. As if.

But the beginning of an idea began to germinate in Zoe’s mind. Maybe she should join Michael and the kids. Just not for the reason her mother wanted her to. She leaned further back into the sofa cushions and out of her mother’s direct line of vision. “You might be on to something, Mother.”

Her mother clapped her hands together. “Wonderful, darling. So you’re going to head down to Nantucket?”

“I am. First thing in the morning.” Zoe felt a sudden surge of certainty that she was making a wise move, just not the one her mother wanted her to make. The smart thing to do would be to end the Skype session before her mother tuned into her plan. She leaned forward and blew a kiss toward the computer.  “Thank you, Mother.”

“Kisses, darling.” She waved goodbye. “I’m so proud of you.”

Zoe disconnected their session with a trace of guilt for so blatantly misleading her mother. Not about heading to the beach house. She was going to go just as she’d said she was. But she wasn’t going to reconnect with Michael in the hopes of rekindling their romance. No. Just the opposite. She was going to have another go at memory alteration. Just in case Michael started to remember her, Zoe was going to make him forget all over again.

***

Michael watched as his niece and nephew ran down toward the water. The late afternoon sun still held a trace of warmth but the breeze coming in off the Atlantic brought with it a bit of cool relief from the summer warmth. Seagulls soared over-head although their cries did little to drown out the sound of Kathryn’s laughter as the cold water lapped against her ankles.  He smiled and leaned against the deck railing. They were great kids. His sister and brother-in-law were lucky. He loved being an uncle and didn’t doubt that he’d love being a father. An image of a smiling Zoe with a baby on her hip popped into his mind. His smile faded. Zoe couldn’t even bear to acknowledge that she’d met him before.

Yet she hadn’t refused to spend time with him, not outright. Granted, she’d turned down the invitation to join them at the beach house, but that was a case of too much too soon. Not to mention that it had come on the heels of an evening gone wrong. But still, he had to take heart that Zoe had at least agreed to have dinner with him in the first place. In fact, when they’d run into Kendra, Zoe had been the one to suggest they all get together for a meal.

But as much as he might try to convince himself that there was hope, he couldn’t buy into it. Bottom line, if Zoe didn’t want to admit that they’d had a past, he was a fool for even daydreaming about a future with her. Now he just needed to get his mind to stop replaying their kiss the other night. If he’d had any doubt that he was still in love with Zoe, kissing her had removed it. In the brief moment she’d been in his arms, he’d fallen in love with her all over again.

He sank down on to the weathered wooden steps. Reconnecting with Zoe had done nothing but wreak havoc on his emotions. The car ride from Connecticut to Massachusetts had seemed interminable with Josh and Kathryn’s endless questions about her. He’d done his best to dodge them but he needed to face the fact that no good was going to come of wishing for more. A happy ending was out of the question.

“Any room there on that step for me?”

At the sound of her voice behind him, Michael shot to his feet and whirled around. “Zoe?” She wore a bright madras plaid skirt, a white polo shirt and sneakers. Her eyes were hidden behind her sunglasses but her tentative smile pierced his heart. “What are you doing here?”

“Hoping that the invitation to join you guys for the weekend was still open?”

He struggled to find the right thing to say. ‘First tell me what on earth you’re doing here’ seemed a bit brusque but ‘stay forever’ went too far in the opposite direction. He nodded. “Sure.”

Her smile faded. She slid her sunglasses to rest on top of her head. “You don’t sound sure.”

Michael sat back down on the step and motioned for her to join him. He kept his eyes on the waves rolling in. “I’m happy to see you. Just really surprised after how things ended the other night.”

“Not the smoothest evening together we’ve ever had.”

He was growing weary of the game she was playing. “It’s the only evening we’ve ever spent together.” He turned to face her, curious to see her reaction.

She winced. “I deserved that. And you deserve an explanation.” She laid a hand on his arm. “Michael, I’m sorry.”

His surge of hope was so strong that it warned him to proceed with caution so he didn’t end up going over an emotional cliff. “Maybe it’s as simple as you said it was. No big deal if you and Kendra had a personality clash.”

She shook her head. “That’s not what I meant. I meant that I’m sorry for acting like we’d never met before.” Her eyes, so blue that they put the summer sky to shame, beseeched him to hear her out. “I hardly know how to explain why I responded that way to seeing you.”

“Try.”

She sighed. “My feelings are so complicated.”

“The important ones always are.”

They sat in silence for awhile. He was content to wait for her explanation. Being this close to Zoe, the real Zoe, the woman who he’d loved and who'd loved him, felt so good. Felt right. As far as moments went, this one he didn’t want to end.

“I had no idea when I showed up on your doorstep that it was actually your house. My mother does the scheduling and so when she booked you, my guess is that she recognized your name and decided not to mention it to me.”

“Any particular reason she’d set you up like that?”

Zoe’s smile was indulgent. “She probably saw it as a chance to put me out of my misery. She knows I was unhappy without you. It’s been a really long year.”

He shifted so he could see her better. “Tell me about it.”

As her eyes searched his, he didn’t try to hide his truth. It had flat out been the most miserable year of his life. And a less than generous part of him was selfishly pleased that she’d missed him as much as he’d missed her.

“It’s a long story filled with a lot of lonely moments so I’ll just skip to the end,” she said. “When I saw you again, I panicked. That much was probably obvious by the way I hurried back out to the car and got on the phone to my mother. Real mature, huh?”

“I get that you were surprised. I was stunned to see you.” Michael resisted the temptation to tuck a stray wisp of her hair behind her ear. It wasn’t time for such familiarity. He still needed to hear more of an explanation so that he would have a better idea of her intentions. “Why didn’t you just explain all of this then?” He could tell by the way she refused to look at him that his question made her uncomfortable but it was a fair one and he didn’t retract it.

“Would you believe that I was afraid you’d forgotten me?”

Michael didn’t dignify that with an answer. Instead, he got to his feet and began walking toward the water. He was willing to be understanding but not willing to be played for a fool. He ignored Zoe’s voice calling after him as he continued to walk.

When she caught up to him she was out of breath. “Michael, come on. At least hear me out.”

He stopped and whirled around, catching her off guard. “You want to know if I remembered you?” Without giving himself enough time to change his mind, he pulled Zoe into his arms and kissed her. It wasn’t a questioning, tentative kiss, but a kiss that expressed a year’s worth of longing. When he finally pulled back, he looked into her eyes. “Zoe, do you honestly think I could forget you? Even for a moment?”

CHAPTER SIX

Zoe stared up at Michael for a moment and then decided that the only answer to that question was another kiss. She reached up and placed her hands against his chest. She didn’t take her eyes from his. “I’d have to kiss you again just to be sure.”

Michael rewarded her attempt at levity with a laugh, which delighted her. She’d missed the sound of his laughter as much as she’d missed the sound of his voice.

“Far be it from me to say no to a lady.” Michael gently took her face in his hands. His eyes lingered on her lips for an excruciatingly long moment before he finally kissed her.

Zoe melted into the embrace. She was playing with fire and she knew it but the flames were too tempting to resist. Their kiss ended far too soon but as Michael drew back to look down at her, Zoe consoled herself with the knowledge that there would be more. At least for this weekend.

“So what do you think?” Michael asked.

What did she think? She thought she could spend forever right there on the beach being kissed by the most amazing man she’d ever met. She also thought she could make billions of dollars if she could find a way to bottle and sell the joy she felt. But that wasn’t what Michael was asking. He deserved an answer to his question. She reached up and traced his lips with her thumb. “I believe that you didn’t forget me.”

“I never could.”

Zoe moved back out of his embrace. Oh, yes he would forget her. Because when this weekend was over she was going to be sure that she completely erased herself from his memory. Completely and totally.

“What’s wrong?” Michael’s brow creased. “What’s that look for?”

“Um…I was just wondering where the kids are.” Great, she’d just told her first lie of the weekend. That wasn’t what she’d planned on her ride down from Bridgeport. In fact, when she’d left the house her only plan had been to find Michael and erase his memory. But as her car had neared Nantucket her good intentions faded and she selfishly wished for one weekend with him.

Surely it wasn’t so wrong to spend a weekend creating good memories that she could keep after Michael forgot her?

“They’re down the shore a bit.”

“What? Oh, right.” She’d been so caught up in her own thoughts that she’d forgotten what she’d asked him. “You don’t think they’ll mind my being here?”

He grabbed a hold of her hand. “Nope. They’ll be delighted. They like you.”

Zoe held tight to Michael's hand and pushed away her niggling guilt about Josh and Kathryn. They wouldn’t remember her either when the weekend was over. The best thing she could do was to relax and enjoy the next few days. No one was going to get hurt except for her. And she could take the emotional fallout once Michael was out of her life for good.

Lie number two.

***

Michael spotted his niece and nephew before they saw him. No doubt that was because they were engaged in what he hoped was a good-natured tussle to see which one of them could throw the other in the water first.

“They look happy,” Zoe said.

They did. And they weren’t the only ones. Michael couldn’t remember a time when he had been happier or a time when his heart held more hope than it did right now. The sun was making a slow slip toward the horizon in what promised to be a colorful sunset. His niece and nephew appeared as carefree as any two teenagers could possibly be and he had his arm around the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. All was well in his world.  

“Josh, don’t you dare,” he called out when he saw that his nephew held his sister up, dangling her over the incoming waves. “You win, dude. Put her down.”

Zoe was still laughing by the time both sand covered kids ran up to them. Michael watched as she readily embraced Kathryn in a hug and shared a fist bump with Josh. It delighted him to no end that the kids liked Zoe so much.

“It’s so great that you came up here, Zoe,” Kathryn said once they began the trek back to the beach house. “I didn’t think we’d see you again.”

Zoe swept aside a lock of hair that had blown in her face. “It was too good an offer to pass up. I hope you guys don’t mind that I joined you.”

“Nah, it’s cool,” Josh said as they trudged along. “How’d you find us?”

Michael hadn’t even thought of that. He looked down at Zoe.

She hesitated for a second but when she spoke her voice was light and teasing. “Sorry, kid, I can’t give away my methods. Just chalk it up to clever detective work.”

Once back at the house, they sipped lemonade while sitting on the back deck overlooking the shore. Michael felt himself slip into a deep state of relaxation as he listened to Zoe and the kids talk about their favorite vacation spots and places they’d like to visit. It seemed impossible that a year had gone by since he and Zoe had been a couple. So much had happened in his professional life, not to mention that he’d bought a new house and moved, but it was as if his heart had been frozen the entire time. Now the thaw was setting in. Being with Zoe felt both new and exciting, yet at the same time familiar and comfortable. Just how that was he didn’t know, but he knew that he wanted forever to be like this.

He just needed to figure out how to make that happen.