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Authors: Mariah Stewart

Tags: #Retail Industry, #Smitten, #Racing, #Sports Industry, #TV Industry

Wonderful You (24 page)

BOOK: Wonderful You
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“He won’t,” she said stubbornly, not willing to delve into
that
particular pot right then and there, then before he had a chance to add another two cents, caught him off guard by asking, “What was Mom crying about this morning?”

“What do you mean?” Nick turned his back and sprayed the second canoe.

“Nicky, don’t play that game with me.” She exhaled loudly. “I saw you in the garden with Mom this morning. She was crying, Nicky, and you know that she was.”

“Well, you know how Mom is,” he said, not looking at her. “She gets sort of overcome sometimes when she thinks about the wedding.”

“Nicky, are you lying to me?” Zoey asked quietly. “Are you and Mom keeping something from me and Georgia?”

“Yippee!!” Corri called as the little sports car spun into a soft slow arc at the foot of the drive. “That was so fun! Zoey, it was so fun! We went all the way down the road, then back up around the pond!”

“Wow! I’ll bet that was fun,” Zoey’s gaze was still fixed to the back of her brother’s head. He still had not turned around to look her in the eye.

“Come on.” Corri grabbed Zoey’s arm, “Let’s go tell Aunt August.”

“You go on without me, sweetie,” Zoey told her. “I’ll be along in a minute.”

“Go on up with her,
Zoey.”
Nick turned around. “There’s nothing I can tell you.”

Zoey stared at her brother’s eyes and could see there was something there, something he would not share. A chill of fear shot through her.

“Nicky,” she whispered, “just tell me if she’s sick.”

“What? Oh, sweetie, no. No one’s sick. I swear it.”

“Then why won’t you tell me, Nicky?”

“Sweetheart, there’s nothing I can tell you,” he repeated, then turned his back again. “Mom just has a lot on her mind, with t
he book tours and the wedding…”

“Come on, Zoey. We have to get some apples from Mrs. Colson.” Corri pulled her in the direction of the house, and Zoey followed her for a dozen steps or so before turning and calling over her shoulder, “You’re sure that’s it, Nick?”

“It’s all I can tell you, Zoe.” Nick turned back to the job of hosing down the canoe.

With absolute certainty, Zoey knew that her brother was lying to her, pure and simple. Nick was simply not an accomplished liar. He never had been. It was obvious to her that he was lying now. It would nag her until she found out the truth.

Why was he lying
? And what in the world was he—
and their mother—hiding?

 

 

18

 

 


W
ow. Flowers for me?” CeCe grinned. “Can’t say I can remember the last time someone brought me a bouquet of anything.”

“Picked them myself.” Zoey handed over the enormous bundle of lilac and followed her friend through the apartment door into the small living room.

“They really are beautiful.” CeCe bent her face into the blooms and inhaled. “And the fragrance is heavenly. My mother had this color”—she touched the deepest of the several shades of purple—“and tons of the white. And she used to have this lavender growing along one side of the ba
rn
, but my brother, Schuyler, flattened it with the pickup the year he was learning how to drive.”

Zoey laughed. “Now, Schuyler is your twin, right?”

“No, that’s Trevor. Sky is a few years younger. Trevor and I are the oldest. Actually, I am the oldest by about seventeen minutes, which makes me everyone’s big sister.” CeCe dragged a cardboard box from one of the co
rn
ers in the living room and pulled open the top. “None in there,” she muttered.

“What are you looking for?” Zoey asked.

“A vase.” CeCe poked into a
nother box. “Maybe in here…

“I realize I may be going out on a limb here, but it may be easier to find th
ings if you unpack,” Zoey dead-
panned. “Now, it may not work the same for everyone, but I’ve definitely noticed an increase in success in locating things once the boxes were emptied.”

“Very funny.” CeCe made a face. “I’ll unpack. Someday.”

“If you need help


“Nah. It’s just that I don’t really want to stay here, in this apartment, but I haven’t found anyplace else I’d want to live in, either.” CeCe sighed. “I guess I just don’t feel settled here.”

“Didn’t you sign a two-year contract?”

CeCe nodded somewhat glumly.

“Are you planning to live out of boxes for the next two years?” Zoey asked.

“I guess not.”

Finding a vase large en
ough for the tall woody stalks o
f lilac, CeCe took it into the kitchen to fill it with water.

Zoey followed her into the small, all-white room. “Is it the apartment that you don’t like?”

“The apartment is okay. It’s smaller than what I’m used to, though.”

“So find another one.”

“I guess.” CeCe shrugged, then said, “I think I’m just a little homesick today. I got a phone call this morning from my mother. All the family news makes me wish I was back there with them.” She set the vase in the middle of the kitchen table, then passed a plate of cheese, grapes, and apple slices to Zoey, who took the plate and set it down on the table.

“Well, don’t you have some vacation time coming up?”

“Next month. I’ll be going back for my cousin’s wedding.”

“That should be fun.” Zoey picked at a grape, peeling it absentmindedly with her teeth.

“It will be.” CeCe nodded and took a pot down from the pot rack.

“Will the skating cowboy be there?”

“He’s the best man.” CeCe grinned.

“Ah, I see.” Zoey nodded, then wiggled her nose. “By the way, that smells wonderful. What are you making?”

“Pasta primavera.”

“You really should be doing the cooking shows.” Zoey shook her head and popped another grape into her mouth. “I am so pathetic. My future sister-in-law’s aunt called in this morning during the show to tell me that I had the flame too high on the chicken fryer and if I didn’t lower it, I would most likely suffer bu
rn
s from hot oil flying out of the pan when I put in those cold pieces of chicken.” Zoey rolled her eyes. “How embarrassing.”

CeCe laughed. “Well, the word is that your cooking show is gaining viewers at a faster rate than any other recurring show to date.”

“And no one is more surprised than I am. Do you know they are planning to do a cookbook of the recipes that people have sent in to me?”

“How are they going to decide what goes in and what gets pitched?”

“I suggested that they give all the recipes to India’s aunt August and pay her to do the editing. Which they are doing. She’s a natural. And she calls in during most of the shows now, so the viewers are familiar with her. I asked if we could do a special from time to time and have her come on and be a guest cook. You know, at holidays, or for special events.”

“What did Ted say?”

“He loved it. As a matter of fact, he asked if we might include her on the all-day Summer Wedding special they are planning. She said she would, as long as it doesn’t interfere with India and Nick’s wedding.”

“The station is really getting into these all-day events, aren’t they?” Without waiting for an answer, she continued. “And how are your brother’s wedding plans progressing, by the way?”

“Great.” Zoey recalled her mother’s tearful face looking up into Nick’s as
if pleading for something…

“Zoey, I said, what’s your dress like?”

“My dress?” Zoey asked blankly.

“For the wedding.” CeCe sliced first a green pepper, then a red one. “Did you just mentally
go
someplace?”

“I’m sorry. I’m afraid I drifted.”

“Something on your mind?”

“A lot, actually.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“Where to start?” Zoey sighed. “It was quite a weekend.”

“How was the party?”

“Wonderful. The best.”

“Really?” CeCe giggled. “Might that explain why Mr. Home Marketplace was seen prowling the halls all week wearing a silly grin and mismatched socks?”

“Ben was wearing two different socks?”

“Yep. One blue, one brown. Where I come from, that’s a sign of total distraction.”

Zoey smiled happily.

“So. I take it your path crossed with Ben’s this weekend.”

“Ummm.”

“Well, now. An ‘Ummm’-rated weekend. My favorite kind.”

“Mine, too.”

“And I trust there will be more ‘Ummm’-rated weekends in your future?”

“Oh, I sincerely hope so.” Zoey grinned. “It was wonderful. The party was wonderful. We danced in the moonlight on my mother’s porch. Did I say it was wonderful?” She sighed. “On Sunday, we went canoeing, and he stayed for dinner at my mother’s. My mother invited his grandfather to come as well.”

“You said that they knew each other from years ago?”

“More or less. It was fun.” Zoey’s lips tilted at the edges, as she remembered the way he had kissed her good night and left her standing in the driveway wanting
more, her toes curled and her heart pounding. No one had
ever kissed her like that…

“I’ll just bet it was.” CeCe measured olive oil into a frying pan and turned on the burner. “Well, there’s nothing like a perfect weekend to make you feel like all is well in the world.”

“Not quite.” Zoey shook her head.

CeCe turned to her, a puzzled look on her face.

“I don’t know

” Zoey struggled with the words, as if afraid that speaking her fears aloud might give them a life of their own, and make them come true.

“Don’t know what?”

“I don’t think Ben’s going to be staying here for too long. I think he’s going to go back to England.”

“When?”

“I don’t know.” Zoey unfolded the napkin at her place at the table, then folded it again. Then unfolded. Folded.

“Well, what did he say?”

“He said that if he couldn’t drive again, he was going to go into business with a friend of his.”

“What kind of business?”

Zoey shrugged. “Something to do with racing.”

“When will he know if he can drive?”

“Probably not for a few months.”

“Don’t waste your time worrying about what might or might not happen, Zoe. Save your energy for the
now,
and deal with things as they happen.”

“There’s more,” Zoey told her.

“More what?”

“More to worry about.”

“Such as…
?”

“Something odd is going on with my mother. I saw her crying in the garden yesterday with my brother. Yet, when I saw her later, she was her usual charming self. As if she didn’t have a care in the world.”

“Maybe she doesn’t. Maybe she and your brother were having a mother-and-son moment.”

“You know, that’s what I tried to tell myself. But it
doesn’t feel right.” Zoey shook her head slowly. “As much as I wanted to believe that it’s nothing more than Mom being sappy about her little boy getting married and all that, I just know that there’s more to it than that. You’d have had to see the look on her face.
She looked so… sad. So…
lost,
somehow.
Frightened,
even. It’s so hard to explain. My mother is always together, CeCe, I’ve never even seen her really afraid. And she is always in control.”

“Zoey, no one is always in control.”

“My mother is,” Zoey insisted.

“Maybe that’s what she would like you to think. But I’ll bet there are times when she falls apart like the rest of us.”

“Nah. I’d know if she did.”

“Zoey, all you really ever know of anyone is that which they
want
you to know.”

“CeCe, this is my
mother
we’re talking about. We have no secrets. I know all there is to know.”

“You can’t really believe that.”

“Sure. What’s not to know?”

“Why did your father leave?”

Zoey’s hand, wrapped around her wineglass, stopped in midair on its way to her mouth.

“I cannot believe I said that. Of all the insensitive

I’m so sorry, Zoey.” CeCe cringed when she realized what she had said. “I’m sorry, it just came out.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay. It was thoughtless and it was—”

“No. Really. It’s okay.” Zoey looked up, her blue eyes clouded with uncertainty. “I have no idea why my father left. And you’re absolutely right.” She pondered the possibility for the first time. “I’m sure there are many things in my mother’s life that I don’t know anything about. It was a very arrogant assumption on my part.”

For the rest of the evening, Zoey wondered just how many secrets her mother might have, and which one of them had driven her to tears on Sunday morning.

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