Wonderful You (20 page)

* * *

“
Z
oey, speed it up a little, will you?” Ellen’s voice pleaded into Zoey’s earpiece. “The carrots don’t need to
be sculpted, just chopped. It’s stir-fry for the crew, Zoey. It won’t be photographed for the cover of
Bon App
é
tit
.”

Zoey smiled sweetly at the camera and said, “My producer thinks I’m not chopping quickly enough. But we know, don’t we”—she winked at the viewing audience somewhere out there—“what happens when we chop too quickly. We don
’t want to bleed into the stir-
fry. Oh, we have a call. Hello.”

“Hello, Zoey. I’m so happy to talk to you.”

“I’m happy to speak with you, too. What’s your name and where are you calling from?” Zoey pinned a
hi, neighbor
grin onto her face.

“My name is Evelyn and I’m calling from North Carolina.”

“Evelyn, are you calling in with a cook’s tip?”

“Well, I was watching you chop that onion
and seeing your mascara run…”

Zoey flinched and peered into the monitor to see if she had raccoon eyes. She grabbed a paper towel and blotted away the telltale black circles.

“…
and I wanted to tell you that, if you run that knife under cold water before you slice into the onion, it won’t make your eyes tear.”

Now she tells me.

“Really? Does that work?” Zoey tried to sound chipper.

“Oh, yes. Every time.”

“Well, thank you, Evelyn. I will add that to my list of things to remember. Thanks for calling in with that tip.”

“Oh, Zoey, I wanted to tell you that you are a dead ringer for someone I met on vacation last year in Maryland.”

“Really?” Zoey measured olive oil and slid it into the electric wok, the product she was selling, where it sizzled angrily and immediately began to smoke. “Oops. Too hot, I guess.”

“Turn the temperature down, Zoey,” Ellen sighed into Zoey’s ear.

“She could be your sister,” the caller continued.

“Well, then, give her my regards. And you have a good day, Evelyn.” Zoey glanced down at her cards, trying to figure out what to do next.

Slice chicken breasts.

“Okay. Now we slice up the chicken into thin strips and throw it into the wok, then we add the peppers and the onions. Or is it the other way, veggies first, then the chicken?” She flipped through her notes, frowning.

A chuckle drew her attention to the side of the set. Ben stood in the doorway, looking handsome and casual in khakis and a loose knit sweater the color of amber. Zoey flushed, and her hands began to rattle.

“Ah
…
I think we add the wok to the peppers first. I mean, the
peppers
to the onions. In the
wok
."

“Zoey, I think the rice is burning,” Ellen warned.

“Ellen the producer says it’s check to time the rice.” Zoey muttered to the camera, momentarily flustered by Ben’s presence.

“Time
to
check
the
rice,”
Ellen corrected her impatiently.

“That’s what I said.” Zoey turned to face Ellen who stood across the set from her. “And time to take another call.”

Ben leaned against the doorway to the set and shoved his hands into his pockets. He hadn’t meant to stop in every day on his way out to lunch, just occasionally. And he tried to convince himself that the fact that his visits to the set just happened to coincide with Zoey’s noontime show, well, that was nothing more than coincidence, wasn’t it? He smiled to himself, knowing that if Zoey’s show was switched to two in the afternoon, he’d probably find himself eating later than had recently become his habit. Only to himself could he admit that he had begun to look forward to these few minutes every day, when he could just watch her. She had grown into so beautiful a woman, and he regretted not having been around to have watched her metamorphose from her self-described gawky teen stage into the beauty she now was. He wished he had been there to take her to those
dances she never got to go to, wished he had been her first date. Her first kiss. Her first lover.

Where had
that
come from?

He shook himself out of his reverie, grateful that she could not read his mind, that she would not know he’d thought of little else but her for the past week, since the night he had sat across from her at her little kitchen table and talked like the old friends they were.

And that’s all I am to her. An old friend. Nothing more. Best not to think beyond that. As soon as the foot is healed, I
’ll
be on my way back to England, whether to race or go into business with Tony. Either way, I’ll be leaving.

But
friends,
he acknowledged, was better than nothing.

Zoey turned unexpectedly and flashed him a smile when the promo shot for another segment began to run. He felt dazzled, the way he felt after a race when the photographers all aimed and shot at the same time. He returned the smile and waved, then left the set quietly, afraid to overstay his welcome. Returning to his office, he checked his phone messages absently, then glanced at the calendar. Nick’s engagement party was in three days.

He walked to the window and looked out at the flat expanse of turf that grew between the building and the two-lane country road beyond, where an Amish buggy, drawn by a single horse, trotted past at a nice clip. There were times when he could not help but envy what he perceived to be their simpler life. How much less complicated when the day-to-day living is reduced to a lower denominator. Rise early. Tend the animals. Tend the fields. Love your wife. Love your children.

He knew it was more complicated than that. The Amish way of life had its own brand of stress and its own problems. But sometimes, he thought, a simpler routine might be welcome. The Sunday paper had run an article about farms in the area where one could go and stay for a weekend or a week, or t
wo weeks, sort of like bed-and-
breakfasts with a twist—the twist being that the guests would take part in the normal activities of the farm. He
mused momentarily about doing just that one of these days.

He could see himself, mucking out the ba
rn
and pitching hay. Riding the tractor, plowing the field in the spring. Harvesting the wheat at the end of summer. He’d be wearing one of those big black hats he’d seen the Amish men wear in the fields. And when he went back to the farmhouse for the noontime meal, it would be Zoey who would smile a greeting at him from her place at the stove in the big kitchen. She would be dressed in a homemade, loose-fitting dress of coarse dark blue cotton, a black apron tied around her slender waist, a black cap snug over her dark hair, which would be pinned back into a tight bun. Her eyes would sparkle and she would be humming as she set a plate piled high with chicken and wide noodles before him.

Of course, the chicken would most likely be as tasty as truck tires
, and the noodles like glue…

He laughed out loud at the very thought of it, then sobered somewhat, thinking there were worse ways a man could spend his life than living on his own land and raising a family with a woman like Zoey Enright.

16

T
he red sports car flew into the driveway, stopping on a dime three feet from the garage door. Zoey ripped the keys from the ignition and hopped out. Nick and India’s engagement party was starting
now,
and she was already late, having had to work until five.

Running through the house, she discarded her purse, her shoes, and her blouse—in that order—before she hit the bathroom and turned on the shower. Stripping off her skirt while she rummaged in the linen closet for her favorite oversized bath towel, she next pulled off her panty hose and underwear as she fled into the shower stall. She turned the nozzle to allow for more and hotter water, trying to catch her breath and calm herself down at the same time she squeezed shower gel onto a bath sponge. She lathered shampoo onto the top of her head and worked it through the long strands of thick dark hair. She rinsed the froth out thoroughly, as quickly as she could. She turned off the water and opened the glass door, grabbed a towel to wrap around her head and another to dry her body with.

She brushed her hair straight, then turned on the dryer, impatiently moving the hot air through the long tangles of hair. When finally—finally!—it had dried sufficiently, she skipped into the bedroom and reached for her dress.

“Come to Momma,” she whispered to the narrow bit of silk she dropped over her head. She snuggled into it, smoothing the fabric over her hips. She leaned over and hit the replay button on the portable CD player that sat on the edge of the bedside table with that morning’s choice of music still poised and ready to play. She cranked up the volume and filled the small house with the passionate sound of what she considered to be one of the all-time greatest songs of love and longing.

Layla.

The original version.

Nothing got her going like Clapton.

She spilled some hairpins into a small antique celluloid dish on the dresser and began to put her hair up atop her head in a sort of knot, allowing a strand here and there to ease loose. Then makeup. Smoky dark lavender shadow on her eyes, plum on her cheeks and mouth. Diamond studs in her ears, a single diamond in a thick bezel of gold on a thin chain around her neck. A wide gold bangle bracelet that coiled like a snake around her upper left arm. A wide gold band set with emeralds—her birthstone—on her right ring finger, a thin plain gold band on the middle finger of her left hand. Strappy high black heels. S
h
e broke a piece of baby’s breath off a stem that remained in a small vase on the bedside table—the last of the flowers Ben had brought her the previous week—and tucked it behind her right ear.

She hit the replay button and stepped back to look at the finished product.

The thin straps of the dress came up around her neck to form a low U in the front, then crossed once across the small of her back. Other than that, the dress was essentially backless. Zoey had found it in a designer’s boutique on a Saturday afternoon trip to Manayunk, a once industrial but now trendy Philadelphia neighborhood. The dress had called to her and Zoey had been unable to resist it. It was a
knock ’em dead dress
if ever she had seen one. And someday, she had mused at the time, she might want to do just that.

Well, tonight’s the night. She smiled nervously at her reflection, realizing, as she turned off first the CD player, then the light, that she had waited for this night for most of her adult life.

Now that it was here, she could not get on with it fast enough.

The valet waved her forward through the gate flanking the entrance to her mother’s home. She never passed between those tall twin pillars of stone without wondering if there had ever been a fence or a wall around the property. After all, what good is a gate if there is no fence? She stopped her car and put it in park, requesting that it be left around the back near her mother’s garage. The young valet, seemingly struck dumb at the sight of Zoey emerging inch by long cool inch from the small car, complied with a few quick nods of his head.

Taking a deep breath, Zoey picked her way on high thin heels through the loose white stones in the driveway and forced herself to walk, not run, toward the house, where the party was obviously in full swing. The cars were parked all the way back to the barn and music spilled out from every door and window. Shades of lavender and gold backlit the old stone house as the last remnants of the day slipped into the horizon. The small candles in every window made the house sparkle. She stepped up her pace and entered the house through one of the French doors opening off the dining room.

Walking briskly through one room into the next, she greeted old friends, all the while admiring the ambience her mother had created with white flowers—lilies, roses, and lilac—that spilled from vases on tabletops and mantels and scented the air. How very
Delia,
she mused,
as she strolled into the front hallway, her heart pounding and her palms sweating, wondering if in fact
he
had arrived.

“Zoey’s here! Yay! Zoey’s here!”

The rapid sound of excited little feet fled down the steps, and the small curly-haired child flung herself into Zoey’s arms.

“Corri!” Zoey affectionately hugged the child that India, her soon-to-be sister-in-law, was in the process of adopting. “I was wondering where everyone was!”

“We were upstairs with Delia and Aunt August, see?” She pointed a small finger skyward to where Delia stood at the top of the stairs in deep conversation with Augustina Devlin, India’s aunt. Zoey waved, and both women came down the steps.

“Hello, August. It’s wonderful to see you again.” Zoey fondly embraced first August, then Delia. “Hello, Mother. And aren’t you pretty in pink tonight.”

“It
is
a flattering shade, isn’t it, this silvery pale pink?” Delia held out a soft section of her silk skirt. “So kind to fifty-something skin, wouldn’t you say?”

“I would indeed.” August nodded. “It’s lovely. As is the party. Everything is perfect.”

“Well, of course. My boy and your girl deserve perfect.” Delia patted August’s arm gently. “Have you seen the cake, Zoey? Mrs. Colson totally outdid herself this time. Ivory buttercream frosting, with palest pink frosting roses and candied violets. To die for. If she isn’t careful, Mrs. Colson may get roped into making the wedding cake.”

“I’m sure she’d be thrilled. Nicky was always her favorite,” Zoey remarked.

“Zoey, I saw your little cooking show last week.” August’s blue eyes sparkled with amusement.

“Oh, I’m sure that a world-class cook such as yourself must have been appalled.” Zoey cringed.

“On the contrary. I thought it was fun to watch.”

“Fun?” Zoey sighed. “You thought it was fun?”

“Absolutely. Everyone makes the same mistakes as
you did, dear. Everyone has to learn the same things you are learning. It’s refreshing, really, to watch you, you are so natural. However,
if I might mention one thing…”

“Anything.” Zoey looped her arm through August’s and leaned closer. “When it comes to the kitchen, August, you are The Man in my book.”

“Well, dear, I just thought that the chicken recipe you made on air the other day was a bit complicated for a”— she sought a suitable word—“a novice such as yours
elf. If I might recommend one…”

“Recommend away.”

“Perhaps I’ll fax something to you. India’s new computer has a fax capability, and I find that fascinating. I’m tempted to invest in my own.”

“Before you leave this weekend, I’ll write the fax number down,” Zoey assured her. “We have been soliciting recipes and helpful tips from our viewers—the response has been overwhelming—but I suspect that some of them may not be much more skilled than I am. It would be wonderful to have your recipes, August. I would be grateful for any help you would be willing to give me.”

“Well, then, I’ll be sure to send a few off to you this week.”

“Oh, sweetie, excuse us. There’s Angela Weston. I wanted August to meet her, they have so much in common.” Delia pecked Zoey fondly on the cheek, then dragged August off to the next room.

“Delia is so fun,” Corri piped up. “I read a book one time and it said that a lady
swooped.”
She emphasized the word. “Delia
swoops,”
she told Zoey, who laughed and gave Corri’s little shoulder an affectionate squeeze.

“Corri, you are absolutely right. My mother does indeed
swoop.
”

“Delia is nice. She gave India a pretty little necklace to wear at the wedding. It has pearls and a silvery blue stone like the ring that Nick gave to India.”

“I’ll have to see it. It sounds lovely.” Zoey smiled at Corri and bent down to give her one extra little hug for
good measure. “I missed you, child. I’m glad you’re here.”

“Me, too. I got to ride the ponies this afternoon.” Corri leaned over and whispered this last into Zoey’s right ear, touching the small white flowers with her index finger as she did so. “Nicky let me. Aunt August didn’t want me to because she didn’t want me to smell like a horse for the party, but Delia said I could take a bath. And I did.” She held her arm up to Zoey and said earnestly, “See? I don’t smell like ponies at all.”

“Why, you’re right. You don’t smell at all like a pony. You smell like”—Zoey sniffed at Corri just as the child wanted her to—“like
…” She
sniffed again, unable to place the fragrance. “What
do
you smell like?”

“Bubble gum.” She announced solemnly. “It was in the bubble bath.”

“I see.” Zoey straightened up, suppressing a grin. “Oh, so much better to smell like bubble gum than ponies.”

Corri nodded. “Especially if you are going to a fancy party.”

“And this is a fancy party, I would say.” Zoey laughed—bubble gum, the fragrance du jour—as she took Corri’s hand. “Now, you wouldn’t happen to know where Nick and India might be, would you?”

“They were in the big sun room.” Corri grabbed Zoey’s hand and tugged on it. “I’ll show you. It’s this way.”

Corri led her through the crowd, having forgotten—as excited six-year-olds might tend to do—that Zoey, being Delia’s daughter, had grown up in the house and knew exactly where the solarium was located.

“India!”

“Zoey! I’ve been watching the door for the past hour. Delia said you had to work today and that you’d be a little late.” India excused herself from the small circle of guests to greet Zoey with an eager hug. “Oh, wow! Don’t you look gorgeous! Oh, my, what a
dress…”
India
whistled, her violet eyes widening as Zoey turned around to give her future sister-in-law a back view of the dress.

“You look quite the knockout yourself,” Zoey laughed and stood back to admire India’s long dark teal blue sheath that started with a high neck and followed India’s curves until it ended at the ankles. “Those jewel colors really do set off your hair and your eyes.”

Zoey reached a hand up to touch India’s strawberry blond curls.

“And where is my big brother?” Zoey asked.

“The last I saw him, he was headed out through the back door with an old friend.” India leaned closer and whispered, “This is your Ben, isn’t it? Nick’s old friend, the one you told me about once. The one who left and went
away for years, is back now…”

Zoey bit her bottom lip and nodded.

“I met Nick’s friend, Zoey. He’s nice,” Corri chimed in. “He has a little car and the top comes off. He said I could have a ride tomorrow with the top off if it doesn’t rain.” Without pausing for breath, she went on. “Isn’t the lake beautiful? I saw Delia’s swans. India said I could be in the wedding. You and Georgia and Darla, too. And we get to wear dresses that reach all the way to the floor.”

“Breathe.” India admonished the child just as she appeared to be ready to launch into another round. She handed Corri a cookie and said, “Here. Eat something. Give your mind a rest. Go get some punch to drink with it.”

Zoey laughed along with India as Corri skipped off to find the punch bowl. All the while, Zoey’s eyes were darting from one side of the room to the other, then trying to see over the crowd onto the front hallway, scanning the group, hoping that no one would notice.

India did, and knew exactly whose face Zoey sought.

“He’s with Nick,” she told Zoey quietly. “In your mother’s study.”

“Who?’

Ignoring Zoey’s feeble attempt to appear nonchalant, India laughed. “Is he as wonderful as he looks? Your Ben?”

“He’s not my Ben.”

“Oh, but how could he resist you?” India’s eyes sparkled. “You look absolutely stunning, Zoey.”

“Well, I admit that I was hoping to get his attention.” Zoey lowered her voice.

“Oh, I don’t think getting his attention is going to be a problem.” India tilted her head slightly toward the doorway, where Ben was poised to enter the room behind Nick. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Zoey, as if stunned.

“Whatever you paid for that dress, it was worth every blessed penny,” India whispered in her ear as Nick approached them, oblivious to the fact that his friend was in a state of suspended animation, stuck somehow between one footstep and the next.