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Authors: Mariah Stewart

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Wonderful You (38 page)

BOOK: Wonderful You
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Y
ou can still change your mind, you know. It isn’t too late,” Ben whispered in Zoey’s ear.

“You have the damnedest timing, Ben Pierce.” She leaned back against the pillows, wrapping her legs around him to take him with her.

“I thought I’d wait for a weak moment.” He nibbled on her ear.

“I have no weak moments.” She nipped at his chin. “At least, as far as that particular conversation is concerned. And you’re wasting time.”

“Oh, a bit anxious, are we?” His brows slid together in a frown. “You know, it really isn’t ladylike to be quite so insistent, Zoey. As a matter of fact, I think—” Whatever it was that Ben was thinking at that particular time was lost when she took his earlobe between her lips and her hands went seeking the length of his body.

When she had finished with him—for the time being—she asked, “You were saying something about my lack of inhibitions.”

“Was I?” Ben seemed dazed.

“Something that started with the letter
i,
I believe,” she sighed and rolled over on him.


‘Incredible’ was probably the word I was looking for.” He scraped his teeth lightly along the side of her jaw line. “Or maybe it was
ay carumba.

She laughed and kissed him soundly, then snuggled back down against him, closing her eyes tightly to impress every one of these last seconds with him deeply into her heart. The thought of his leaving, even if only for a few weeks, terrified her. How long before the life he would make for himself would consume him and begin to edge her out, bit by bit? How long would it be before a Greta or an Ursula found him at a lonely, vulnerable moment? How many more nights like this would there be for them to share? If she thought about it, she would grow cold inside and her hands would start to quake and she would want to cry, so she would not permit herself to think about it right now. Later—tomorrow, after his plane had taken off and he was safely on his way to England—she would think of it. But when he left, it would be a smiling, confident, understanding Zoey who would be seeing him off, not the sobbing red-eyed woman she would be if she gave in to the tears now.

“I guess it would be overstating my case to remind you that it’s still not too late to change your mind,” he told her the next morning in the shower, taking his sweet time soaping her back. “My grandfather might never forgive me for stealing you away from the HMP, but I’ll take my chances.”

She ignored his plea, however cavalierly it had been delivered. “Do you think Delaney is really all right with your leaving?”

He thought for a moment before responding. “I think he is. At least, if he was upset, he hid it well. As happy as he had been to have me here, he was still supportive of my going into business with Tony.” He turned his back to the steady stream of hot water to rinse off the soap. When he was finished, he stepped out of the way to
permit Zoey to rinse her hair. “But it’s been a very good thing, being here.”

“You found something to your liking amidst the rolling hills of Chester County?”

“You could say I found a lot to my liking here.” Ben kissed her shoulder blade before stepping out of the shower and into a large fluffy white bath sheet. He grabbed a second towel and held it open for her to step into. “Everything I love best is here in these rolling hills.”

“Then why are you moving to England?” Zoey pulled a towel from the rack and blotted her hair with it.

“I’m not moving to England.” He frowned.

“What do you call it?”

“I’m just working there.”

“And living there.”

“I like to think I live here, with you.” He opened the bathroom door and pointed across the room to the tall oak armoire they had found at an antique store three weeks before. Over the past month or so he had spent more and more time at Zoey’s, less and less at Delaney’s condo. They had both fallen in love with the Empire-style piece and thought it would be just the place to hold his clothes, and so they had struggled together to carry it up the narrow steps from her first floor to the second. “My clothes are—”

“Packed, Ben,” she told him flatly. “Most of your things are packed.”

He turned and watched her comb out her straight dark hair.

“Ben, you can call it anything you want, but you will not be living here with me. You’ll be thousands of miles away, living a life that has nothing to do with me.”

“Everything I do has to do with you,” he told her.

“I know you think that, but things change, Ben.”

“That won’t change, Zoey. I love you. I’ve never loved anyone else. I can’t imagine my life without you.”

Then why are you leaving me?
she wanted to ask, but
could not make the words come out. Instead, she said, “
I
love you, too, Ben. I think I always have, I always will.”

“You could still come with me.”

“You know that I can’t do that. As important as it is for you to have this business with Tony, that’s how important it is for me to be where I am. Maybe more so.” She picked up the hair dryer and held it loosely in her right hand. “You’ve always known who you were, Ben. I never did. It wasn’t until I found this job that all the pieces began to fall into place. I love what I do. I get up in the morning and look forward to going to work.
I
love the people I work with and the people who call in to talk to me. I love being on camera and I love working behind the scenes with the buyers. I’m good at what I do, Ben. It makes me happy, it’s helped define me. And it took me so long to find myself, that I’m afraid I wouldn’t know who I’d be if I left now. I love you with all my heart, and I hate the thought of your leaving, but just being with you can’t make me what I am.”

“I understand, of course I do. So we’ll just have to make the most of our time together—you know, quality over quantity. And we’ll find a way to work this out. I promise you, it will work out. We’ll spend as much time together as pos
sible, and we will take things o
ne step at a time. But it will work out.”

Ben stood in the doorway, wishing he knew for sure just
how.

As did Zoey, when three hours later she stood in the airport, her arms wrapped around her chest, the warmth and strength of his last kiss still fresh on her lips, her face pressed up against the glass as she watched his plane taxi down the runway.

“I’ll be back in two weeks,” he had whispered, “and I’ll miss you every minute of every one of those days.”

“Me too,” she had told him, her bottom lip starting to quiver as he kissed her.

“Don’t worry, Zoey,” he said as he turned to go through the gate. “It’ll be fine. Other people have done this and survived. We will, too.”

She had nodded and forced a smile. “I know.”

And then he was gone. She had started to sniff a little when she realized she didn’t know where on the plane his seat was. She should have asked. She wanted to know if he was by the window, on the side of the plane facing the building, so she would know if she waved, he might see her. A silly thing to think about, she chided herself, but the thought only made the lump in her throat get bigger.

For all the years Zoey had lived here and there, in this city or in that, as she had tried on first one job, then another, she had never been lonely. Alone, yes. Lonely, no.

S
he had never known the meaning of the word until Ben had taken his shirts out of the armoire that morning and packed them in his suitcase. The space looked so empty when she went home and opened the door and stood in front of the handsome piece of furniture as if to measure the space in terms of something more than how many shirts had so recently hung inside. She closed the door quietly and sat on the edge of her bed.

Before Ben, everything had been easier. It didn’t matter if she ate alone or slept alone, watched a movie alone or not. But her daily routine would be different now. Reading the morning paper alone would mean there was no one there to share the outrage over some reported miscarriage of justice or a chuckle over a particularly witty column on the op-ed page. Having someone to share these things, she had only recently begun to discover, was better than not.

And they had shared so much over the past few months—their secrets, their dreams, their fears. In the hush of an early July morning, he had told her why he had stayed away so long, and she had immediately understood. She had told him of her long journey in search of her own place in this world, and he had cheered her for having found it.

She sat on the edge of the bed and smoothed the pillow on what had become Ben’s side. Knowing it would go unused for two full weeks made the fist in her gut turn
and twist just a little. She wondered what he would have said if she had asked him to tell Tony he wasn’t interested in this company he was forming. Or if she had been willing to quit her own job and go with him.

She sighed, knowing neither option was right for them.

Ben would be back, every two weeks, Friday through Monday. Every six weeks Zoey would fly to London and spend four days. They
had carefully marked it all off
on the calendar.

And, she reminded herself, there were lots of people whose relationships survived greater hardships. Whether or not theirs would be one of them remained to be seen.

Only time would tell.

 

 

28

 

 

Z
oey eased slowly into the only available parking space in front of CeCe’s apartment building and turned off the ignition. She carefully lifted the lemon meringue pie she had bought in that pricey little dessert emporium outside of West Chester, Helen’s Hamper, and slid out of the car, balancing the white bakery box flat on the palm of her hand. Nothing, not even chocolate, raised her spirits like a truly great lemon meringue pie. Tonight she needed all the help she could get.

CeCe met her at the door, her new puppy, Elvis, at her heels. “Come on in. Watch she doesn’t trip you.”

“Hi, Elvis.” Zoey handed the pie box to CeCe and lifted the pup with both hands. Elvis covered Zoey’s face enthusiastically with sloppy puppy kisses. “If she’s a she, why is her name Elvis?”

“Well, there were only four pups that survived the litter. And the hands on the ranch had already named them John, Paul, George, and Elvis. Unfortunately, only John and George were males.”

“Tell me again what kind of dog she is?”

“She is what we call a ‘barn dog’ back home. A mix of
whatever was in the barn when her momma came into heat.” CeCe grinned. “Elvis’s mom was a Labrador retriever, and we think her daddy might have been a visiting weimaraner, but we’re not sure. And watch her, Zoey, she will lick the freckles right off your face,” CeCe warned her. “I’m not having much trouble housebreaking her, but teaching her not to lick is near impossible.”

“I kind of like it, to tell you the truth”—Zoey smiled wryly—“since it’s the most action I’ll see for three more weeks.”

CeCe frowned. “I thought it was supposed to be every other weekend.”

“It was. It is. But there’s a big meeting in Germany that’s supposed to determine whether or not certain types of somethings in the engines can be bigger than a bread box,” she shrugged. “Ben told me about it, but all I really heard was ‘three weeks.’ ”

“How’s it working out?”

“It’s great and it’s horrible.” Zoey settled into a wooden chair in CeCe’s small kitchen, noting that only a few more, if any, of CeCe’s packing boxes had been emptied. “It’s great when we’re together and murder when we’re not.”

“You’re really in love.” CeCe sighed.

“Totally. Terminally.” Zoey nodded.

“How long do you think you will be able to keep this up?”

“For as long as we have to. Ben is the love of my life, CeCe. The absolute love of my life. If this is the most I can have of him, I’ll just have to take it.”

“If you had to choose—”

“Between Ben and my job?” Zoey answered without hesitation. “There’d be no decision to make, not really, if I could only have one. I couldn’t lose him now, I just couldn’t. But I’ve found so much of myself through what I do, that I worry about who I would be without it. Would I be the same person he fell in love with?” She shook her head. “I don’t think I would be, and I’m afraid
to take that chance. But I do know that I’ll fight to keep him. Even if it’s myself I have to fight.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.” CeCe handed her a tall green glass of iced tea. “Let’s hope it doesn’t become an either/or situation.”

“Let’s change the subject. Let’s talk about something fun. Tell me all about your vacation back home.”

“It was so great, Zoey. I got to spend a whole day with my mom, just the two of us. I can’t remember the last time we had that much time alone together. Oh, and I went on an overnight camp out in the hills


CeCe’s eyes took on the sheen of a highly glazed doughnut, a fact that Zoey did not fail to recognize.

“Oh? I think that’s the part I’d like to hear more about.”

“Oh.” CeCe shrugged it off noncommittally. “It was just with my brother, and a few of his friends. Just for a few days, up to the lake.”

“The skating cowboy.” Zoey tapped a finger on the table. “He was there, wasn’t he?”

“Oh. Well, he is a friend of Trevor’s.” CeCe blushed and turned back to the sink, where she was rinsing bay scallops for their dinner.

“Well?”

“Well

” CeCe nodded, as if giving great thought to her response. “It was an interesting few days.”

“Interesting?” Zoey raised an eyebrow. “A few days? You went camping with the cowboy for a few days and you call it
interesting?
Were there any other women on this little camping trip?”

“My sister Liza. She’s the baby of the family. She came home at the last minute and she wanted to come along.”

“So what did you and…
what is his name?”

“Dalt.”

“Dalt.” Zoey tested it aloud. “Nice. What did you and Dalt do for those few days?”

“Oh, it was so great.” CeCe’s eyes began to sparkle.
“We went swimming every morning and we hiked. We went backpacking into the hills and sat on rocks overlooking the canyon and watched the baby bald eagles learn to fly. It was breathtaking.”

“Oh, I can see that it would have been.” Zoey tried not to grin.

“Zoey, you haven
’t lived until you’ve wakened at
dawn to watch the sun come up over the Montana hills, to start the day with a cold dip in a mountain lake and head back to camp to make pancakes with the wild blueberries you’ve picked along the way.”

Zoey watched her friend’s face fill with wonder, then asked, quietly, “What are you doing here, if all that is waiting for you back there?”

CeCe thought it over, then replied, “The same thing you’re doing here, when Ben is on the other side of the Atlantic. It’s a question of where you are, but it’s not necessarily a matter of where you’ll stay.”

“Does that mean you won’t be renewing your contract when it comes up next year?” Zoey asked softly.

“There’s a good chance that I won’t.”

“Is it because of Dalt?”

“It’s because of me,” CeCe said simply. “Yes, I admit that it’s a consideration, knowing that he is there. I’ll never get to know him better, never get to explore those possibilities from here. But it really has more to do with me, Zoe. I am a child of the hills. I miss my family, and I miss Montana. It’s where I belong, Dalton or no Dalton.”

“That’s why you still haven’t unpacked.”

“There’s nothing in those boxes I need on a temporary basis,” CeCe acknowledged. “Every bit as much as you need to stay, I think I need to go home.”

“I can’t even think about what it would be like without you there, at the HMP. You’re my best friend, CeCe.”

“I always will be. If you can maintain a long-distance romance with Ben, you and I shouldn’t have much of a problem holding our friendship together.”

Zoey sipped at her drink thoughtfully, hoping that she would, indeed, be able to do both.

BOOK: Wonderful You
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