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Authors: Mariah Stewart

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

Wonderful You (39 page)

BOOK: Wonderful You
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*
* *


B
en, I said it’s after seven. Are you coming to dinner?” Tony Chapman stood in the doorway of Ben Pierce’s office and waved the newspaper he held in his hand to get his friend’s attention.

“What?” Ben frowned. “Oh. Dinner. No, no thanks. I’ll grab something on the way home.”

“Not much of a life you’re living these days, mate,” Tony observed.

“Well, I’m not here to socialize,” Ben told him. “I’m here to work.”

“All work and no play, all that,” Tony chided.

“I play when I go home.” Ben grinned.

“And you work your tail off while you’re here. Not much of a balance, old friend. You’re bound to tire of it soon.” Tony said. “It worries me.”

“Why ‘worry’?”

“Because we both know what you’re doing.”

“What’s that?”

“You’re working nearly around the clock so that when you go back to the States, you can go with a clear conscience and you don’t have to feel that you’re taking advantage of our friendship when you leave for four days at a time. And it’s okay. I don’t mind, Ben. If I had someone like your Zoey, I’d be doing the same thing. But it worries me that all you do these days is work.”


I
want to pull my own weight.”

“I
know you do. And you are. More than you need to.”

“I don’t want to let you down, Tony.”

“You never have, Ben. You never could.” Tony took a small breath, then added, “If you left tomorrow, I’d still consider you my best friend.”

“Why did you say that?” Ben frowned. “I’ve never said a word about leaving.”

“No, no, you’re right. You haven’t.” Tony’s voice softened. “But there’s something in your eyes, when you
come back from a weekend away. You’re totally in love with her.”

“Absolutely.”

“And you miss her terribly.”

“Terribly,” Ben agreed.

“Maybe you should think about bringing her over here.”

“I’ve asked her. She won’t come.”

“Well, then, I guess it’s up to you to solve that little dilemma, isn’t it?” Tony smiled a half smile and swung himself through the door. “As for me, I’ve dinner waiting at Greta’s.”

“Why’d you ask me to join you, if you were going to her apartment?”

“Because I knew you wouldn’t come.” Tony saluted his friend as he left the room. “You never do.”

Well, he’s right about that.
Ben nodded as he shuffled through the latest stack of design specifications that the engineers had dropped off that afternoon. Dinner out or dinner in, alone or with friends, it was all pretty much the same to him these days. The only time he felt alive was when he was back home with Zoey, in her little house on Skeeters Pond Road. The rest of the time, he could be anywhere. Since the last time he’d been home, he’d traveled to Paris to interview test drivers and he’d gone to Spa-Francorchamps for the running of the Belgian Grand Prix. He’d been to Monza for the Italian race and to Nurburgring for the Luxembourg circuit. In two weeks he’d travel to Japan to watch the race at Suzuka. More and more, he was beginning to suspect one thing. There was a world of difference between
racing
— strapping into one of those sleek, incessantly whining cars and driving as if your life depended on it, because in so many ways, once the race started, it did—and
watching.

Ben had never been much of a spectator.

He sighed and swung his chair around to face the open window behind him. On the other side of the building,
Tony had had a track built so that they could test their own engines right there where they built them. Even though it was well after hours, the sound of an engine’s whine rattled the windows. Someone else was working late.

Ben pushed his chair back and walked the short hallway to the small lobby, then out through the front door and around the building to the track. A small vehicle—more engine than body—sped around the dry track in a cloud of dust. After seven more laps, the test car coasted to the edge of the field and stopped and its driver hopped out. As the young man unstrapped his helmet, Ben recognized him as a test driver they had hired just several weeks before.

“How’s she feel?” Ben called.

“Like silk.” The young man called back. “Try her yourself.”

He walked to within ten feet of Ben before tossing him his helmet. Ben caught it with both hands, then stood staring at it for a long time. Once upon a time, not so very long ago, he’d have strapped on the helmet and slid behind the wheel in one motion, without a second thought, and taken flight. Now, he realized, he was debating whether or not even to drive, wondering what the consequences might be if his ankle got stubborn at the wrong moment. He twirled the helmet for a long moment, then popped it on his head. Tossing his sport jacket onto the nearest fence post, he slipped behind the wheel and turned on the ignition. That the engine purred was no exaggeration. Ben eased his right foot onto the accelerator and glided onto the track.

She was fast, she was easy.
Silk
had said it all. Loud, whiny, but definitely silky. Their engineers had done one hell of a job. Ben was lost in the sound and the speed, and lost count of how many times around the track he had taken her, until the engine began to sputter. Disconcerted at the sound of distress from their perfect machine, he tried to ease up on the gas pedal, but his foot
did not want to cooperate. Braking with his good left foot, he had to slide his right foot from the accelerator, exactly what he had feared. As the car slowed to a stop, he realized two things. The stutter coming from the engine was due to a lack of fuel, and the decision to retire had been a wise one.

He sat in the car long after he turned off the ignition. He looked up to see the young driver approaching him, a smile on his face.

“What’d I tell you?” He grinned.

“You didn’t exaggerate,” Ben called back.

“Nothing like it, is there?” The young man patted the side of the car.

“No.” Ben nodded slowly. “No, there isn’t. Nothing at all.”

Later that night Ben sat in the small sitting room in the suite he’d rented at an old inn about a half mile from the factory. The year was slipping into an early fall, just like last year. And it was hard not to remember that this time last year he had been preparing for the race that ended his career.

“Nothing like it, is there?”
the test driver had said.

Nothing but
driving
is driving. Nothing but
racing
is racing. Not designing the cars, not building the cars, not owning the cars. There was no worthy substitute, he acknowledged. Everything else connected with the sport was, for him, just another form of spectating.

Then why,
he wondered,
was he here?

“A good question,” he said aloud to the empty room. “A
damned
good question.”

*
* *

Z
oey stood on the deck of her house and sniffed the air. Definitely a scent of fall there. Of course, she mused, all one had to do was look at her lawn to know that. The leaves had begun falling early, lining the paths of her still colorful garden with gold and russet droppings, but she just hadn’t been motivated to rake. On this Thursday morning in late October, she still lacked motivation, but
faced the unpleasant truth that the longer she put it off, the harder the job would be.

“Sort of looks like the yellow brick road,” she muttered as she hauled a rake out of the garage.

“What’s that?” Wally asked from the corner of the garage.

“I said, it looks like the yellow brick road.” She narrowed her eyes. “Where did you come from?”

He nodded toward the garden. “Just sitting on your bench watching the crows and wondering when you were going to get around to doing some raking.”

“Obviously today,” she told him archly.

“Glad to see it. Don’t want to smother your grass.” He sat himself down and took out his pipe.

“Smother my grass,” she mumbled.

“Doing a lot of
talking to yourself these days,
aren’t you, missy?”

“No more than usual.”

“Did a real nice jo
b with your garden this year. I
know
that Addie must be pleased.”

“You think Addie keeps her eye on this garden?” Zoey began to rake, pulling the
leaves toward her with long
strokes.

He nodded. “I don’t think Addie’s missed a thing.”

“There’s a scary thought,” Zoey said, looking up to
the house and the second-floor bedroom where she and Ben had spent so many nights. Even here, in the garden, they had made love on more than one occasion. Why, right here where she raked, they had

She blushed at the thought of Addie
Kilmartin keeping tabs on the
goings-on at her old home.

As if reading her mind, Wally laughed out loud. “I sure had you going for a minute there, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you did.” She laughed in spite of herself.

“Good to see you laugh, Zoey.” He puffed on his pipe. She understood what he was saying—that she didn’t seem to laugh as much anymore—but couldn’t bring herself to acknowledge it. To do so would invite conversation about why, and they both knew why. There was no point in discussing it.

Wally apparently didn’t agree.

“So. When’s the boyfriend due back in town?” he asked.

Zoey shrugged as if it wasn’t of consequence, though they both knew differently. “I’m not sure.”

“How’s that?”

He just wouldn’t let it drop. Zoey leaned on her rake and said, “Something came up and Ben couldn’t make it home last week. And no, he can’t make it home this weekend either.” She started to rake a little more fiercely, stabbing at the leaves as if they were somehow responsible for her present situation. “And don’t ask, Wally, ’cause I don’t know when he’ll be here, okay?”

“I hear you, loud and clear.” He nodded. “Course, that probably means that you don’t have a partner for the paddleboat races this year.”

“Is that this weekend?” She frowned.

“It is,” he told her.

“Has it been a whole year since I met you?” She stopped again, confounded by the realization that a whole year had gone by since she had first seen the house that had become her beloved home, a whole year since Wally had befriended her. And in that one short year, Ben had come back and, miracle of miracles, he had loved her.

“Yup. The sixtieth Brady’s Mill Pumpkin Fest will open at eleven a.m. on Sunday.” Smoke puffed from the bowl of his pipe. “So. Whatcha say?”

“About what?”

“About the paddleboat race on Sunday. Want to make it two for two?” He grinned. “Word around the post office has it that Clifford and Nancy are just itching to challenge us.”

“Well, then, Clifford and Nancy had better practice up this week”—Zoey grinned—“because the reigning champions will be back to defend their title on Sunday.”

The reigning champ
ions of the Brady’s Mill paddle
boat race scored an easy victory, and as she stood on the dock with Wally to accept the prize, Zoey felt a certain satisfaction. She loved this little town. She fit in here—
fit like a glove,
Wally would say. And later, as she lined her front porch steps with the pumpkins she had bought that day at the Brady’s Mill Pumpkin Fest, she wished that Ben had been there to share the sheer fun of it, the camaraderie, the laughs, the simple pleasure of drinking a cup of cool, fresh apple cider, and the warmth of the sweet autumn sunshine. Maybe next year Ben would be there.

Sure.
She shrugged w
ithout enthusiasm as she went
into the house and locked up for the night.
Sure he
w
ill

On the following Tuesday afternoon, she walked off her cooking set—peanut satay (“Okay, who’s the wiseguy who thought that it would be fun to watch me do Thai?”) and was flagged down by her producer, who told her, “You’re wanted in the boss’s office.”

“Whoops, I guess there was a little too much lime juice in the dipping sauce for good old Petey.” She grimaced as she took off her apron and folded it under her arm.

Made of heavy black co
tton, it loudly pronounced “To
hell with housework” in red block letters. Ben had sent it to her his first week in England and it had become a show favorite.

She took the steps two at a time, wondering what Peter wanted to see her about. Maybe he’s had enough of my cooking. She grinned to herself, having instructed the show coordinator to make sure that a serving of whatever it was she had cooked went to the man who sat behind the big desk in the executive suite. Maybe he’d get the message and let her off the hook, she reasoned.

She smiled at Beth, the secretary Peter had inherited when he took over Ben’s old job.

“Go right on in,” Beth said without looking up. “He’s expecting you.”

“I never thought I’d say this, but you’re really turning into a good cook.”

Her head snapped up at the sound of his voice and she stopped dead in her tracks.

She must be hallucinating.

She must want so badly to see Ben behind that desk that she had conjured up his image.

“This really isn’t all that bad. Did you taste it?” Her vision held the fork out to her, as if they were in some small, intimate restaurant somewhere sharing a romantic dinner for two.

She shook her head dumbly.

“No?” He grinned. “Don’t trust your own cooking? Well, then, maybe you’d rather go out for lunch?”

She still could not speak. He was acting as if

well, as if he’d never been gone, as if the past few months had been an unpleasant dream.

“I personally c
an vouch for the satay, but…
” He glanced at his watch. “Oh, gosh, we’re going to be late. We’d better get going.”

“Late?” She managed to get out the one word in a sort of squeak.

“For our appointment.” He walked from behind his desk, and took her elbow, pausing to kiss her gently.

“What appointment?” she asked, not bothering to close her eyes, although her lips were tingling at the touch of his mouth and it would have been oh so easy to wrap her arms around him and lose herself there.

“Beth, take a long lunch for yourself. Leave early if you like,” he told his secretary as he escorted Zoey through the doorway and into the hall.

“There’s no place in this world like Pennsylvania in the fall,” he said as they strolled toward his car, Zoey still wide-eyed and wanting to pinch herself. “And don’t you think,” he said as he started the car, “that the trees are particularly beautiful this year? Have you ever seen such a shade of red before?”

“Ah, no.” She shook her head.

“And how ’bout that one, that Japanese maple,” he pointed to a small graceful tree with leaves like coral-colored lace. “Gorgeous.”

“Ummm,” she nodded, sneaking a glance at him from across the console.

Ben slipped a CD into the stereo, pausing to ask, “How do you feel about Pink Floyd?”

She nodded. “Fine.”

He hit the button and “Dark Side of the Moon” filled the small car with music and maniacal laughter.

Why, of course. That’s it,
she reasoned calmly.
He’s lost his mind. That would explain his bizarre behavior.

“Where are we going, Ben?” she asked in cool, soothing tones.

“It’s a surprise,” he told her, grinning as if very pleased with himself.

“Give me a hint.”

“Well, you see, when I was in England—”

“Oh, good. So you
do
realize that you’ve been away.”

“Of course I realize I’ve been away.” He frowned at her.

“Go on.” She gestured.

“Well, when I was away, I had time to think about it. To put it all into perspective, you know?”

She didn’t, but she nodded anyway.

“And I came to the realization that if I wasn’t doing what I really loved to do—which is racing—then what was I doing
there,
alone, when I could be
here,
with you?”

“I give up. What were you doing there?”

“I was running a business. Which in itself is not a bad thing to do. But then it occurred to me that if I was going to be a businessman, I didn’t need to be there.”

“You didn’t?”

“No. Tony could hire anyone to do what I was doing. He didn’t need me to do that job. But Delaney, now that’s a different story altogether.” He peered in the rearview mirror, then made a quick right-hand turn down a narrow two-lane country road. “Delaney needs me. I’m the only grandson—the only living relative—he has. And besides, I had started to like the HMP. It’s not quite the same as
driving,
but then again, neither is
building engines. So Tony and I had to sit down and talk about where the company was going and where I was going.”

“Which was…
?”

“Back here, of course.”

“Back here?” Zoey’s heart flipped over. “To stay?”

“Of course, to stay.” He took her hand and squeezed it, then said, “Hey, I think we’re here.”

He made a left into a wide driveway and stopped in front of a three-car garage that sat well behind a white farmhouse. Without another word he hopped out and was around the car to open Zoey’s door before she could ask
where.

Which she did, as soon as she got out of the car.

“Ben, where are we?” She grabbed his arm.

He took her hand as the back door opened and a trim woman in her mid-fifties stepped out onto the small porch.

“Hi.” He smiled as he led Zoey toward the steps. “I’m Ben Pierce. I called earlier.”

The woman smiled at Zoey and said, “They’re all awake now, but you know how babies are. Awake and playful one minute, napping the next. Come in, come in.” She stepped back so that Ben and Zoey could follow her into the house.

“This way.” She beckoned to them.

Zoey stopped and sniffed at the particular smell of the house, something vaguely familiar that she just could not place.

“They’re in here,” the woman told them as she opened a door, and a flood of yellow fur spilled out onto the tiled kitchen floor.

Ben’s laughter filled the room as a dozen balls of pale gold rolled onto the floor in a moving heap.

“Puppies!” Zoey exclaimed. “They’re puppies!”

“They certainly are,” Ben picked up first one, then the other, as if silently evaluating the merits of each.

“What are they?” Zoey asked.

“Golden retrievers,” the woman responded, then bent
over just slightly to scratch the head of the much larger lump of lumbering pale fur. “It’s okay, LuLu,” she crooned. “No one will hurt your babies.”

Zoey’s head was spinning, much as the yellow lumps were spinning around her feet and licking at her legs. One, two, three runs sped down the side of her leg as her pantyhose fell victim to a platoon of tiny puppy toes. She leaned over and picked up the pup who had started an assault on the heel of her shoe.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Zoey laughed as the pup merrily slurped her face with an eager pink tongue.

“Which one do you think, Zoe?” Ben asked, holding up a waggy-tailed specimen who looked a bit brawnier than the one that was still washing Zoey’s face.

“Which one what?” She asked.

“Which one do we want?” He spoke as if they had discussed it.

Zoey thought that she could hear the crazy-man laughter from “Dark Side of the Moon” all over again.

“Which one do we want?” she repeated.

“Which puppy. Zoey, are you feeling all right?”

“I feel fine.”

“Good. Which puppy do we want?”

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